What's Happening In Space?

Space News from

• Huge Tsunamis May Have Ravaged Ancient Mars
  When Mars was a wet world, did its oceans experience powerful tsunamis spawned by meteorite impacts?
• Collapsing Cosmic Clouds Birth Black Hole Monsters
  Supermassive black holes occupy all known galaxies, but astronomers have little idea how they formed. Now space telescopes have found a clue.
• Mystery Plumes: Did the Sun Bruise Mars?
  Strange plumes have been spotted high in the Martian atmosphere that have, so far, defied explanation. Now scientists think space weather is to blame.
• NASA Probe Tracks Object in Solar System's Badlands
  While coasting through the outer solar system, NASA's New Horizons is busying itself with astronomical observations of a distant Kuiper Belt Object.
• Solar Superflares Set Stage for Life on Earth
  Earth could have grown warm enough for liquid water as far back as 4 billion years ago thanks to massive and frequent solar flares.
• See the Red Planet with Your Own Eyes This Weekend
  Mars reaches opposition this weekend, making Saturday and Sunday (May 21 and 22) an opportune time to see the Red Planet with your own eyes.
• Extreme Exoplanets Reveal Migration Mystery
  A star hosting 4 massive gas giant exoplanets has been spotted -- is this how our solar system looked in its ancient past?
• How to Form Io's Mountains? Just Squeeze!
  On Earth, mountains form along tectonic boundaries, but Io, Jupiter's volcanic moon, is awash with molten rock and dotted with solitary mountains -- how did they form?
• DNews: Meet a Black Hole 17 Billion Times the Sun's Mass
  DNews sits down with U.C. Berkeley astronomy professor Chung-Pei Ma to learn all about supermassive black holes, including one nearby that's just honking huge.
• LHC Opens the Quantum Physics Floodgates
  As it restarts its mission to discover weird and exotic things about our universe, the Large Hadron Collider is about to become a firehose of quantum data.