(News via Caltech) Astronomers have detected what appear to be bands of clouds streaking across the surface of a cool star-like body known as a brown dwarf. The bands, resembling those that stripe the surface of Jupiter, were discovered using polarimetry, a technique that works in the same way that polarized sunglasses block out the…
Tag: brown dwarf
Our Five-Trillion-Mile Close Call: the Star(s) That Skimmed the Solar System
It’s like something out of a Hollywood film or a science fiction novel: a dark star sneaks up on Earth from just outside the Solar System, discovered too late to do anything about it (and really, what could we do?) and plows through the cloud of comets that surrounds the Sun like a haze of icy gnats, sending them flying…
Got Questions About Comet Elenin?
NASA’s got answers. For some reason, ever since it was first discovered last December, Comet Elenin has been surrounded by a lot of misinformation regarding the danger it poses to Earth. True, it will be swinging around the Sun in a path that takes it “relatively” close to Earth and the other inner planets in…
Lights in the Dark 