Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Recipe for the Moon’s Magnetic Field: Spin and Stir

Recipe for the Moon’s Magnetic Field: Spin and Stir

When astronauts from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission returned to Earthwith about 50 pounds of lunar rocks and soil, scientists were surprised to find that some of the samples were magnetized. TheMoon has no magnetic field, so it must have had an unknown magnetic past.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Tatooine World’s Moon Could Potentially Host Alien Life

Link: Tatooine World’s Moon Could Potentially Host Alien Life

Life probably doesn’t exist on one of the most famous exoplanets, the gas giant Kepler-16b, which like Star Wars’ Tatooine orbits two stars. But a potential moon orbiting this planet might be a good place to search for ET.


Kepler-16b is a Saturn-sized planet 200 light-years away that orbits a pair of stars with about two-thirds and one-fifth the mass of the sun, respectively. Yet with no solid surface to stand on, the planet seems unlikely to have any creatures on it watching the spectacular view of a double sunset.