Ivy wanted to know if there were other planets like Earth out there, so she asked an expert from the University of New Brunswick…and took a look at Jupiter while she was there!
astronomy
Spot of bother: have we been getting solar activity wrong?
For 400 years sunspot numbers have told us what the sun is up to. But wrinkles in the record have left solar scientists scratching their heads, until now. EVERY lunchtime, Gustav Holmberg leaves his desk at Lund University in Sweden to take part in a scientific ritual that stretches back to Galileo’s time. Back at his flat, […]
Slow science
The world’s longest-running experiments remind us that science is a marathon, not a sprint. Although science is a long-term pursuit, research is often practised over short timescales: a discrete experiment or a self-contained project constrained by the length of a funding cycle. But some investigations cannot be rushed. To study human lifespans or the roiling […]
Canada launches first asteroid-hunting space telescope
The first satellite designed to search for and keep track of asteroids and space debris was launched into orbit today. The Canadian Space Agency’s suitcase-sized Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) will circle the globe every 100 minutes, scanning space to pick out asteroids that may one day pose a threat to Earth. Read more in Nature.