SETIInstitute: Search continues in subglacial Lake Whillans, Antarctica but a thrilling preliminary result has detected signs of life. http://t.co/ZlnXKESg

SETIInstitute: Today marks the third in a week of three tragic anniversaries in space exploration... but should we stop exploring? http://t.co/VULD5vCy

SETIInstitute: An essay contest for US students (Grades 5-12) who, like us, feels inspired by the exploration of Titan or Europa. http://t.co/k9ddxgv6

Television technology is not in Kansas anymore. Image displays are about to go where no displays have gone before. Nonetheless, I figure they'll hit the equivalent of a brick wall within a decade or two. There will be an end point to how good TV pictures can get. Seth Shostak http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-shostak/

Television technology is not in Kansas anymore. Image displays are about to go where no displays have gone before. Nonetheless, I figure they'll hit the equivalent of a brick wall within a decade or two. There will be an end point to how good TV pictures can get. Seth Shostak http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-shostak/

SETIInstitute: NASA Hi-C data answers one of the sun most puzzling mysteries: Why is the sun upper atmosphere hotter than its surface? http://t.co/93mg8yPz

SETIInstitute: @denebofficial thanks for the #FF

SETIInstitute: @ninatypewriter thanks for he #FF

SETIInstitute: A piece of Mars: What would it be like to be standing on the top of a large dune in the middle of Kaiser crater? http://t.co/ilIdmSrp

SETIInstitute: Astronomers think a companion star and a newly confirmed outer exoplanet could explain an exoplanet’s “backward” orbit. http://t.co/8hknE4oO

SETIInstitute: "Bring your sleeping bag, we're going camping... in Antartica" part 4 of D. Andersen expedition by M. Becker. http://t.co/0RAJyLsr

SETIInstitute: An unique 3D model movie of the star GK Persei which exploded in 1901 was created based on ground-based telescope data. http://t.co/ClSz6UgF

SETIInstitute: An usual "baby" star that periodically emits infrared light bursts may be twins or a binary star in formation. http://t.co/qn09yz8U

SETIInstitute: The story of human's efforts to understand the origins of life. Part 3 Explorations to the Seafloors of Earth & Europa http://t.co/BwPJ0jVf

SETIInstitute: The dwarf planet Eris killed Pluto in 2006, but may also be used to detect dark matter and dark energy http://t.co/xk9O1iqo

SETIInstitute: DARPA's Phoenix program is exploring the feasibility of harvesting components from retired satellites and reusing them. http://t.co/RvqRiHnP

SETIInstitute: Spectacular double transit of Jupiter by Io & Europa, observed by Voyager 1 on Feb. 7 1979 (reprocessed by B. Jonsson) http://t.co/Brr8Vx9J

More art and science are colliding! The Lunar and Planetary Institute is hosting the Humans in Space Youth Art Competition. Kids from anywhere in the world ages 10 – 18 are encouraged to express their feelings about human spaceflight using "…visual, literary, musical and video artwork".

I’m a big supporter of scientific art, and I think this is a great idea. If you’re that age, or know someone who is, let them know! The deadline for submitting the work is midnight U.S. Central Standard Time, November 15, 2012. The website has the details.

Go! Be artistic!

Related Posts:

- The Sky Is Calling
- Libration libretto
- Something Fierce
- The Universe Has Us in Its Crosshairs (and this followup)
- Zen Pencils: Welcome to Science

Hey, remember that one ton nuclear rover we sent to Mars? Yeah, that. On October 20, it aimed its megaWatt laser at the sand on Mars and blasted it 30 times in rapid succession, carving out a hole about 3 mm across. NASA kindly has provided a before-and-after animation of the damage inflicted on the Red Planet:

Cool, eh? [Click to coherentlightenate.]

Curiosity’s laser is designed not as a weapon against a hapless Marvin, but instead to do actual science. It very rapidly heats the rock (or sand or whatever) to the point where it vaporizes. Material heated like that glows, and in fact glows at very specific colors. By identifying those colors, scientists can determine precisely what the material is composed of. I gave the details in an earlier post when Curiosity zapped its first rock. You should read it, because spectroscopy is cool, and I spent many years doing it.

This sand was chosen to get lasered because it’s made of fine grains that are blown by the wind. Some Martian sand is bigger, some smaller, but it’s all pretty much formed from eroded rocks. But different grains may have different compositions, and ...

Our Milky Way galaxy is a sprawling collection of gas, dust, and hundreds of billions of stars, arrayed in a more-or-less flat disk. In the very center of the galaxy – just as in countless other large galaxies like ours – lies a hidden monster: a black hole. And not just any black hole, but one with four million times the Sun’s mass.

It’s called a supermassive black hole for a reason.

Usually, it’s not doing a whole lot except sitting there being black and holey. But sometimes it gets a little snack, and when it does it can let out a cosmic-sized belch. A very, very, very hot belch. Like it did in July 2012:

[Click to schwarzschildenate.]

These images were taken with NASA’s newest X-ray satellite, NuSTAR (more on that in a sec). NuSTAR can detect high-energy X-rays coming from space, and happened to be pointed toward the black hole when it erupted. On the left is an overview of the region near the center of our galaxy. The whitish area is the stuff immediately surrounding the black hole (the pink glow is most likely from a ...