Online volunteers could be set task of spotting alien technology, evidence of mining and rubbish heaps in moon images. Hundreds of thousands of pictures of the moon will be examined for telltale signs that aliens once visited our cosmic neighbourhood if plans put forward by scientists go ahead.
Passing extraterrestrials might have left messages, scientific instruments, heaps of rubbish or evidence of mining on the dusty lunar surface that could be spotted by human telescopes and orbiting spacecraft.
Though the chances of finding the handiwork of long-gone aliens are exceptionally remote, scientists argue that a computerised search of lunar images, or a crowd-sourced analysis by amateur enthusiasts, would be cheap enough to justify given the importance of a potential discovery.
Prof Paul Davies and Robert Wagner at Arizona State University argue that images of the moon and other information collected by scientists for their research should be scoured for signs of alien intervention. The proposal aims to complement other hunts for alien life, such as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti), which draws on data from radiotelescopes to scour the heavens for messages beamed into space by alien civilisations.
Read the entire article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/25/scour-moon-ancient-traces-aliens
Scientists studying satellites orbiting the planet have come to an astounding conclusion: Earth has multiple moons at any given time, the MIT Technology Review reported.
Mikael Granvik, along with colleagues at the University of Hawaii, first discovered a mysterious body orbiting the Earth in 2006. The object -- or RH120 as it was known -- turned out to be a tiny asteroid just a few meters across. Moreover, it was a natural satellite just like our moon.
Since then, the researchers have been studying how this "Earth-Moon" gravitational system captures bodies into its orbit while also modelling their frequency and duration. The asteroid RH120 for instance was captured in September 2006 and orbited the planet until June 2007.
But how often do these "temporary moons" actually occur? Quite often, the astronomers found.
"At any given time, there should be at least one natural Earth satellite of one-meter diameter orbiting the Earth," Granvik, Jeremie Vaubaillon and Robert Jedicke wrote in "The Population of Natural Earth Satellites," a paper published in online physics journal ArXiv.org.
In other words, at this very moment, our planet likely has a secret moon orbiting us (no word as to whether it's a blue moon). Such objects typically stay for about 10 months, making three revolutions around the planet.
Read the entire article: http://news.discovery.com/space/earth-has-two-moons-111222.html
For explorers searching for life beyond Earth, the siren song of Europa, Jupiter's icy moon, trills sweetly.
"Europa has the best chance of having life there today," said Britney Schmidt, who studies the moon at the University of Texas at Austin. Astrobiologists think so because NASA's Galileo probe found strong evidence for a deep, briny ocean covering the entire moon deep under the icy surface.
A theory published by Schmidt and colleagues Wednesday in the journal Nature is sure to raise the volume of the siren call. The scientists suspect liquid lakes lurk just under the moon's cracked and mottled surface.
The lakes themselves could provide a second habitat for life, said Don Blankenship, a geophysicist and Europa specialist also at the University of Texas.
Read the entire article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/17/MN1S1M059A.DTL
NASA isn't headed back to the moon anytime soon, but some day space tourists may be on the way to the Apollo mission lunar landing sites.
...NASA isn't expecting the sites to generate the kind of traffic we see at national parks on Earth, but the prospect of future tourists could affect plans to inspect the sites and artifacts in the future. So, the space agency released guidelines this summer on protecting lunar landing sites and artifacts. They call for a 1,200 acre "no-fly" zone around the first Apollo 11 landing site, and final Apollo 17 one. Tourists could only walk within 82 yards of the Apollo 11 landing site where Neil Armstrong first took "One small step for man," on July 20, 1969, under the guidelines.
Read the entire article: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/story/2011-11-06/apollo-moon-space-tourism/51084312/1
I have often heard that we never went to the moon. One friend of mine is always asking me why we can't see any evidence of our past visits there. Well, recently the LROC has spotted the landing site (and the materials and trails left behind) of the Apollo 17 mission.
For more info look at the LROC section of the university of arizona website:
