NASA

Plumes on Europa (Image NASA, ESA, W. Sparks (STScI), and the USGS Astrogeology Science Center)

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Yesterday, NASA held a press conference to explain the latest news about the studies of alien oceans. The attention was focused on the two most popular underground oceans, the one in Jupiter’s satellite Europa and the one in Saturn’s satellite Enceladus. There are confirmations of plumes from Europa, also described in an article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters”. The presence of molecular hydrogen in the Enceladus ocean was announced, also described in an article published in the journal “Science”.

The Sun right before the first flare's peak (Photo NASA/SDO)

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In recent days, NASA’s SDO (Solar Dynamics Obersavatory) space probe detected and documented 3 M-class solar flares, the class that includes the most powerful ones after the X-class, where X means “eXtreme”. The first one had its peak on April 2 at 8.02 UTC, the second one at 20.33 UTC and the third one on April 3 at 14:29 UTC.

Artist's concept comparing Mars as it is today and as it was 4 billion years ago (Image NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

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An article published in the journal “Science” describes a research on the atmosphere of the planet Mars that indicates the Sun’s wind and radiation as the principal culprits of the fact that today that atmosphere is so thin. A team led by Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator of NASA’s MAVEN space probe’s mission, examined the measurements of the existing gases estimating for example that 65% of argon present origininally got lost in space. This research confirms the one published in November 2015.

The galaxy Was 49 (Image DCT/NRL)

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A galaxy merger observed with NASA’s NuSTAR space telescope gave surprising results. The galaxy called Was 49 is being formed from the fusion of a large disk galaxy called Was 49a and a dwarf galaxy called Was 49b. The researchers were surprised when they realized that the supermassive black hole at the center of the dwarf galaxy was much bigger and more powerful than expected, going against current models regarding galactic mergers.