ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Underground ocean on Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede Posted: 12 Mar 2015 08:21 AM PDT Identifying liquid water on other worlds, big or small, is crucial in the search for habitable planets beyond Earth. Though the presence of an ocean on Ganymede has been long predicted based on theoretical models, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found the best evidence for it. Hubble was used to watch aurorae glowing above the moon's icy surface. The aurorae are tied to the moon's magnetic field, which descends right down to Ganymede's core. A saline ocean would influence the dynamics of the magnetic field as it interacts with Jupiter's own immense magnetic field, which engulfs Ganymede. Because telescopes can't look inside planets or moons, tracing the magnetic field through aurorae is a unique way to probe the interior of another world.

'Chaotic Earths': Some habitable exoplanets could experience wildly unpredictable climates Posted: 12 Mar 2015 06:21 AM PDT Astronomers have delved into possible planetary systems where a gravitational nudge from one planet with just the right orbital configuration and tilt could have a mild to devastating effect on the orbit and climate of another, possibly habitable world.