Community discoveries

Space

Every discovery began with someone wanting to know a little more.

12 discoveries

Space2 min read

Lunar dust can levitate because sunlight charges the Moon's surface

Ultraviolet light and solar wind strip electrons from lunar soil, leaving the daylit surface positively charged. The resulting electric fields can lift fine dust off the ground near the terminator.

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Space2 min read

The Moon's gravity keeps Earth's axial tilt from swinging chaotically

Without the Moon, Earth's tilt could wander by tens of degrees over millions of years. That stability keeps our seasons moderate and climate livable.

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Space2 min read

Earth's orbit now holds 40,000 tracked objects, and one crash can start a chain

Since 1957, launches and explosions have left millions of debris fragments circling Earth. In 1978 NASA's Donald Kessler warned that enough collisions could make low orbit self-sustainingly dangerous.

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Space2 min read

Apollo 11's 1202 alarm was triggered by a rendezvous radar switch left on

During the lunar module's descent, a mis-set rendezvous radar switch fed extra data to the guidance computer, causing overload alarms. Flight controllers let the landing continue.

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Space2 min read

Io's volcanoes create a giant plasma ring that can block spacecraft radio signals

Sulfur and oxygen from Io's eruptions get ionized and trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, forming a doughnut-shaped plasma torus around the planet. This dense plasma can absorb or distort radio signals from probes passing through it.

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Space3 min read

Venus spins backward, and a day there outlasts its year

Venus rotates in the opposite direction to almost every other planet, and it does so extremely slowly: one Venusian day lasts about 243 Earth days, longer than its 225-day orbit around the Sun.

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Space2 min read

The 1977 Wow! signal lasted 72 seconds, the exact time a telescope could see one spot

Ohio State's Big Ear telescope only observed any given point for 72 seconds as Earth rotated. The signal's full duration at full strength is consistent with a celestial source, not a duration chosen by anything.

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Space2 min read

Titan's rivers and lakes are made of liquid methane, not water

Saturn's moon Titan is the only world besides Earth with stable surface liquids. But at -179°C, water is rock-hard, so its rivers, lakes and seas are filled with liquid methane and ethane.

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Space2 min read

Saturn's north pole has a six-sided jet stream wider than Earth

A hexagonal pattern in Saturn's atmosphere spans about 30,000 km and has persisted for decades, yet no solid surface shapes it. The corners contain rotating vortices, and the jet stream's speed drops at the vertices.

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Space2 min read

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is shrinking and could vanish within decades

The storm's width has dropped from about 40,000 km in the 1800s to roughly 14,000 km today. If the trend continues, it may become circular and dissipate.

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Space2 min read

Mercury has a comet-like tail of sodium atoms blasted off its surface

Without an atmosphere to shield it, Mercury's surface is hit by solar wind and micrometeorites that knock sodium atoms loose. Radiation pressure from the Sun then pushes them into a long tail pointing away from the Sun.

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Space2 min read

Olympus Mons spans a France-sized area but has slopes gentler than a ramp

The Martian volcano stretches roughly 600 km across, an area comparable to France. Its flanks rise only about 5–10 degrees, shallower than typical accessibility ramps.

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