Group items tagged

Now it is too late for Bepi Colombo: most interesting thing on Mercury has been already spotted by NASA.

It is not him guys. Everybody knows he got out of that when the Jedi returned. It must be some other forgotten Jabba's prisoner.

Water ice on mercury!!!

some really nice pictures from Mercury's flyby mission

I love the comments: "damn i almost thought this was about Mercury messenger... an OSX messenger app..." "I'm just glad we have an atmosphere" "The US is in the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression... and we're spending all this money... for this? What a waste. Get rid of NASA - it will save us trillions! " sic :-(

Sorry, did not see your entry when posting mine ...

"we conclude that HE 0437-5439 was most likely a compact binary ejected by the Milky Way's central black hole" reminds me a bit of Francesco's proposal to get rid of Mercury for the stability of our solar system ... what was the proposal: "get rid of the sucker?"

They look set to replicate project Mercury. At the same costs too. Wonder if they will send any chimps first :).

Works for mercury as well.

The most astounding fact about Kepler-78b is that it shouldn't even exist, according to our current knowledge of planetary formation. It is extremely close to its star at only 550,000 miles (900,000 kilometers). As a comparison, Mercury only gets within 28.5 million miles (45.9 million kilometers) of the sun in the nearest point of orbit. With that proximity, it isn't clear how the planet could have formed as the star was much larger when the planet formed. With its current distance, that would mean it formed inside the star, which is impossible as far as we know.

Interesting, but obviously something is wrong. How the big giants can remain still if the inner planets and the sun vanish at the same time !

First peer review study about he criticality of rare-earth metals. It can be read "They found that supply limits for many metals critical in the emerging electronics sector (including gallium and selenium) are the result of supply risks. The environmental implications of mining and processing present the greatest challenges with platinum-group metals, gold, and mercury. For steel alloying elements (including chromium and niobium) and elements used in high-temperature alloys (tungsten and molybdenum), the greatest vulnerabilities are associated with supply restrictions" Questions about estimation apart, this can be a valuable market for asteroid mining.. (ot just more market for Infinium-like companies http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527526/a-cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-metals/).