Oxygen & Wildfires: Clues to Early Life

How big can an insect get? One night a few years back, I opened the door onto our patio to let the dogs out and an enormous flying, buzzing thing came through the door. When I say 'enormous,' I simply mean it was big enough to startle both dogs enough that they ran upstairs, causing me to grab for a flyswatter as it flitted and hummed around the room. I lost sight of it and suddenly all was silent. Our cat had sprung, and the bug was quickly dispatched. We dubbed it 'Mothra' and added it to our dog lore. After all, where were our Border Collie and Sheltie when we needed them? Peering down at us from the upstairs landing, while the cat did the dirty work. 'Mothra' was probably no more than an inch long -- he was noisier than he was big. But there was a time when 'enormous' really meant something. Meganeura is a genus of insects dating to the Carboniferous period when creatures related to our own familiar dragonfly boasted wingspans of two feet or more. Meganeura monyi is considered...

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Imaging Giants and Dwarfs

Was it really three years ago that New Horizons moved past Jupiter, returning images of its stunning systems of storms and cloud? The mission continues to go well, and the photo below, taken by the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) paints an unusual portrait of Jupiter and two of its largest moons from a distance of more than 16 AU, looking back toward the inner system. Note how faint the moons are, the consequence of the fast shutter speed used, with an exposure time of 0.009 seconds. I like what mission principal investigator Alan Stern says: "This haunting image of Jupiter - far in the distance back in the Sun's warmer clines from whence New Horizons came - reminds us of Voyager's family postcard of the planets taken from beyond Neptune's orbit about 20 years ago. Perhaps after we flyby Pluto in 2015, we'll try something similar from our perch aboard New Horizons." Image: The New Horizons team looked back at Jupiter during Annual Checkout (ACO) 4 to test the...

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Charter

In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For many years this site coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation. It now serves as an independent forum for deep space news and ideas. In the logo above, the leftmost star is Alpha Centauri, a triple system closer than any other star, and a primary target for early interstellar probes. To its right is Beta Centauri (not a part of the Alpha Centauri system), with Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Crucis, stars in the Southern Cross, visible at the far right (image courtesy of Marco Lorenzi).

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