Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
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November 12, 2005 Washington, D. C. - National Geographic announced this week that a large fossil sea monster about 135 million years old with a head like a carnivorous dinosaur and a tail like a fish's has been discovered in Argentina's Neuquen Basin at the foot of the Andes. The scientist who found the specimen is calling the fierce-looking animal "Godzilla," or "chico malo," which means the "bad boy" of the ocean.
November 9, 2005 -
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this picture of Mars on October 28, 2005, within a day of its closest approach to Earth on the night of October 29, 2005. Hubble astronomers were also excited to have captured a regional dust storm on Mars that has been growing and evolving over the past few weeks. The dust storm, which is the bright "feathery" feature in the middle of the planet in this picture, is about 930 miles (1500 km) long measured diagonally. That's about the size of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico combined.
"Dione reveals a wonderful variety of surface features that are simultaneously familiar and unlike any other place in the solar system."
- NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
October 19, 2005 Pasadena, California - NASA reports that "speeding toward pale, icy Dione, Cassini's view is enriched by the tranquil gold and blue hues of Saturn in the distance. The horizontal stripes near the bottom of the image are Saturn's rings. The spacecraft was nearly in the plane of the rings when the images were taken, thinning them by perspective and masking their awesome scale. The thin, curving shadows of the C ring and part of the B ring adorn the northern latitudes visible here, a reminder of the rings' grandeur."
October 10, 2005 Hamilton, New York - Colgate University biology professor, Frank Frey, and graduate student, Maggie Eldridge, report new research about trees that produce red leaves, such as maples and oaks, that might be trying to destroy all other tree seeds in the area.
"Foliage changes color in autumn when chlorophyll in leaf cells (green color) breaks down and exposes the pigments that remain, such as carotenoid pigments which appear yellow or orange. But the story is different for maples and a handful of other trees whose leaves turn scarlet. The anthocyanin pigments in maple foliage are actually manufactured by the trees - rather than simply revealed - at a time of year when the organisms can't afford to use up a lot of metabolic energy for such a complex process."
"Instead of Pluto being a unique object that's difficult to understand (has frozen methane crust), we now see it as part of a family of objects (Xena, Sedna and Easterbunny that also have frozen methane crusts). We can try to understand the entire family, with Pluto being the middle sized member of the three. That's very exciting to us."
- Michael E. Brown, Astronomer
September 15, 2005 Pasadena, California - A couple of months ago in late July, astronomer Michael Brown and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, announced their discovery of "Planet X." It's a big chunk of rock and ice nine billion miles from the sun. It's actually bigger than Pluto - and far beyond Pluto in what is known as the Kuiper Belt that circles our solar system. Now, almost two months later, the International Astronomical Union still has not decided if the exciting discovery should be classified a planet or what it's official name should be.
August 24, 2005 Pasadena, California - For twenty months now, the robotic explorer, Spirit, has been exploring the Gusev Crater on Mars, while its twin rover, Opportunity, has been exploring the Meridiana Planum. The two sites are 6,600 miles from each other in the equatorial region.
August 12, 2005 College Park, Maryland - This week geologists, chemists, physicists and planetary scientists from around the world gathered at the 9th International Asteroids, Comets and Meteors Conference in Brazil. One of the presentations was by Carey Michael Lisse, Ph.D., Prof. of Physics at the University of Maryland, and member of the Deep Impact Science Team. Dr. Lisse is Principal Investigator of Deep Impact spectral results from the Chandra X-Ray and Spitzer telescopes.