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metalman

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Astronomers Find Two Dust Belts around Proxima Centauri
 

Robert

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Hello Rocky McRockface.

Though "F***ing Potatoes" looks like a good fit to me.
Yes, the artist's impression certainly lends weight to some sort of double-spud moniker.
According to the article the latest information suggests it's "skinny football" shaped but we won't know for sure for another year or so.
 
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FluffyMcDeath

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There soon won't be any of these Apollo guys left and they'll almost certainly all be gone by the time humans return to the moon.
I get the feeling that we'll all be dead before there are humans on the moon again. People on the moon is just something old people talk about and young people think is just some senile "good old days" talk.

"As if, granddad! - You watched too much sci-fi back in the day!!"
 

Robert

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New paper makes the case that Mars is dry
We're still not sure what's causing seasonal changes on some Martian slopes.
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Mars clearly had extensive water in the past, and there's still plenty of it locked up as ice in glaciers and the polar ice caps. But the atmosphere is too thin and cold to allow liquid water to exist on the surface, which makes prospects for life on the Red Planet far less likely.
Back in 2011, however, researchers suggested that, contrary to our expectations, there might still be some water seeping out onto Mars' surface. Darkened features were identified on a variety of slopes, and they seemed to appear during warmer seasons and vanish as temperatures plunged again. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter appeared to detect water at the site. But other researchers proposed a physical mechanism that didn't involve water that could account for the seasonal changes.

Now, a review of the evidence in Nature Geoscienceargues that there are problems with almost all of the potential causes for these seasonal features. And, in the absence of a compelling case for water, it's best to assume that the harsh conditions mean what we typically thought they did: Mars is a dry planet.
 
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metalman

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Ancient spiral galaxy is 11 billion years old

2.9 billion years after big bang

Astronomer Tiantian Yuan at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia and colleagues found the new record-holder thanks to a closer cluster of galaxies, which acted as a gravitational lens that helped astronomers produce two magnified images of A1689B11
 

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