Soft Splashdown

SpaceX seems to have taken another small step towards reusable rockets.  After its latest Falcon 9 launch, the company successfully re-ignited the main engines of the first stage, deployed landing struts, and achieved a controlled descent to the ocean.

SpaceX has released video of the descent.

CFCs And White Dwarfs

White dwarfs are common stars in the universe; the Sun will be a white dwarf one day. Even though such tiny stars are cool, they still give off enough heat to have habitable zones, where life might exist.

Researchers suggest the habitable zones of white dwarfs may be good places to look for CFCs in planetary atmospheres as markers of industrialized civilizations.

Mining The Moon

The Science Channel aired a documentary about the economic potential of the Moon last night, featuring some small companies working to become big companies by developing that potential.

It also argued that China is planning to be the dominant force on the Moon, which may or may not be accurate.

The UN Steps Up

The United Nations is moving forward on planetary defense.  It has created an analysis and warning network and an action team in case an asteroid threatens Earth.

Scientists are hopeful a technology demonstration mission for deflection of asteroids can be mounted within the next ten years.

Storms On Uranus

Astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii have spotted a batch of new storms developing on Uranus.

Uranus, so far from the Sun, generally shows a fairly placid face, but even large storms are not unknown there.

Pluto And Charon

NASA's New Horizons probe has taken five days worth of images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon.

New Horizons will fly through Pluto's system of at least five moons next summer.

Supermassive Black Holes

Supermassive black holes seem to have formed extremely early in the history of the universe-- begging the question of how they got so big, so fast.

A new study notes the universe was smaller and more densely packed then, allowing black holes to gobble up matter more quickly.  The study also speculates that early black holes may have lacked accretion disks, allowing matter to flow directly into them more easily.