ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Dawn spacecraft delivers new image of dwarf planet Ceres Posted: 19 Jan 2015 08:31 AM PST As NASA's Dawn spacecraft closes in on Ceres, new images show the dwarf planet at 27 pixels across, about three times better than the calibration images taken in early December. These are the first in a series of images that will be taken for navigation purposes during the approach to Ceres.

How planetary building blocks evolved from porous to hard objects Posted: 19 Jan 2015 06:09 AM PST Thinking small has enabled an international team of scientists to gain new insight into the evolution of planetary building blocks in the early solar system. Planetary scientists study chondritic meteorites to reconstruct planet formation. These meteorites are made of a mixture of solid chondrules, millimeter-sized beads (the approximate width of a penny) that became embedded in a fluffy matrix.

Extremely short, sharp flash of radio waves from unknown source in the universe, caught as it was happening Posted: 19 Jan 2015 05:32 AM PST A strange phenomenon has been observed by astronomers right as it was happening -- a 'fast radio burst'. The eruption is described as an extremely short, sharp flash of radio waves from an unknown source in the universe.