Hasta La Gadget!

Scientists now believe more than ever that Saturn’s largest moon has an underground ocean. The discovery that presents this latest solid evidence is that Titan has been found to warp during its gravitational tides. This is leading science experts to believe that a large body of water slosed around under its outer shell.

It’s long been a hypothesis that Titan, and other moons far in the deep reaches of the solar system, are capable of holding water underneath their surfaces, but the lack of technology makes it impossible to test these theories. There is however a spacecraft called Cassini, which has been in the Saturn area since 2004. It is the primary source in providing new information about the planet and its moons.

“Liquid water elsewhere in the solar system is one of the main goals of planetary exploration for NASA,” said study lead author Luciano Iess, a planetary geodesist at Università La Sapienza in Rome. “This discovery points to the fact that many satellites in the outer solar system hide large amounts of liquid water,” said planetary geodesis and lead author of the latest study Luciano Iess.

[via MSNBC]

Saturn Titan moon ocean hypothesis strengthens is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

National Geographic is gearing up for its “Chasing UFOs” series, and to celebrate, everyone has been invited to contribute to a reply that will be sent in response to the 72-second long signal known as the WOW! signal, which was detected by Jerry R. Ehman at Ohio State University in 1977. Since then, many have believed the signal was sent by aliens.

Alien or not, National Geographic is taking it seriously and admitted to be working with Arecibo Observatory to prepare the transmission, which will most likely be encrypted in binary code. On August 15, 2012 and exactly 35 years after the WOW! signal was detected, our messages from Earth will be shot up into space in the same direction from where the signal came from.

Contributing to the message is easy. All you have to do is jump on Twitter and start tweeting to get involved. All tweets with hashtag #ChasingUFOs sent between 8pm EDT on Friday June 29 and 3am EDT Saturday June 30 will be included in the message.

[via CNET]

National Geographic invites everyone to reply to 1977 WOW! signal is written by Elise Moreau & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you think there are too many reality shows on this planet, just wait. If a pioneering Dutch company has its way, you’ll be watching people live on an entirely different planet in a little over a decade from now. The project is called Mars One, and it aims to send people to the Red Planet in the year 2023, for the enjoyment of us Earthlings. This is a legitimate project, but of course we’re skeptical about whether or not it will actually happen.

Here’s how it will work. The show will send four trained astronauts to Mars, and every two years they will be joined by new inhabitants. Everyone will be bound by a stipulation that they can never return to Earth, so the population will grow ever so slowly. Apparently at some point a bunch of cameras will be set up on the planet, streams of which will be edited for a reality show like no other. It’s been described as being like the CBS show Big Brother.

An ambassador to the project, physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft, said, “This project seems to be the only way to fulfill humanity’s dream to explore outer space. It is going to be an exciting experiment. Let’s get started.” The monumental funding task will be handled by years of media spectacles. The first scheduled launch to Mars for initial equipment delivery is 2016. Hopefully we can look back on this post four years from now and say that things are actually on schedule.

[via Space.com]

Mars One project wants to put a reality show on Mars. No, seriously. is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Edited and scored with the dramatic tension of a summer blockbuster trailer, NASA’s put together a gripping short clip that dresses down Curiosity’s mission to Mars for the layman. The “car-sized” rover, set to touchdown on August 5th of this year at 10:31PM PDT, is currently journeying towards the Red Planet on a suicide mission of sorts, with the success of its make it or break it EDL (enter, descent, landing) wracking the nerves of our Space Agency’s greatest minds in advance. Their cause for concern? A period of radio silence, dubbed the “seven minutes of terror” for the amount of time it takes a signal to reach Earth, during which the craft will have already either smashed disastrously into the Martian landscape or nestled perfectly down from the ascend phase on a 21ft long tether. The logistics involved are so numerous and prone to error — slowing the craft from 13,000 mph to 0 mph and then deploying, detaching and avoiding collision with the supersonic parachute for starters — that it’s a wonder the government ever signed off on the project. If it all does come off without a hitch, however, the ladies and gents down at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory certainly deserve several thousand bottles of the finest bubbly taxpayers’ money can buy. Click on past the break to gape at the sequence of engineering feats required to make this landing on terra incognita.

Continue reading NASA’s Seven Minutes of Terror: Curiosity’s precarious Mars landing explained (video)

NASA’s Seven Minutes of Terror: Curiosity’s precarious Mars landing explained (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Astronaut Don Pettit doesn’t have the name recognition of Ansel Adams, but his work transcends cultures and borders around the globe, literally. Pettit is the photographer behind the amazing timelapses coming from the ISS and here he is with his cameras; all 10 of them. More »