In an article written by Don Reisinger for CNET News, Astroengine.com was selected as one of the “18 cool sites and apps that teach you about space.” This is awesome as one of my main effort on Astroengine is to not only promote space news, opinion, skepticism and logical thinking, I also...

It is an established theory that comets may have, in some way, seeded life on Earth. Some extreme ideas support the panspermia concept (where bacterial organisms hitched a ride on comets, asteroids or some other planetary debris, spreading life throughout the Solar System), while others suggest comets...

Let’s face it, Soyuz is getting old. It’s not that the spaceships themselves are getting rickety, there have been many incarnations, but the original Soyuz design was first conceived in 1966, so the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) is feeling it’s about time for a change. Soyuz has...

In October 2008, Cassini flew very close to the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. From a distance of only 50 km from the moon, the spacecraft was able to collect samples of a plume of ice. In an earlier “skeet shot”, Cassini captured detailed images of the cracked surface, revealing...

This picture was posted by Phil Plait and I was mesmerized. Stan Gaz, the photographer of Meteor Crater in Arizona, will be laying on an exhibition in New York from April 30th to June 6th. If this is anything to go by, it’s an event you can’t afford to miss out on… if you’re...

One hundred Carnivals. Wow. I think it goes without saying that this is a huge Carnival of Space, a celebration of the first century of space blogging as we move into the second. So long as I blog about space and science I will continue to participate in this supreme celebration of the space blogosphere. So,...

In today’s 365 Days of Astronomy, Cameron Hummels and Josh Schroeder from Columbia University, New York, discuss the 2012 doomsday hype. And it is awesome. The special thing about this podcast is that Cameron (who is working toward a PhD in astronomy) is clear, concise, and makes the whole crackpot...

Immediately after the Big Bang, 13.72 billion (±120 million) years ago, the Universe was filled with energy. Nothing but energy. No protons, electrons, quarks or photons; just energy. Even the fundamental forces of nature (gravity, weak, strong, electromagnetic) were a confused mess and could...

747 airliner? Check. Huge laser? Check. Huge-flying-missile-melting-laser? Nearly. Actually, I’d want to fly the aircraft remotely, unmanned, and fire the oversized laser pointer at the 747 from a distance. Just to see how long it would take to melt. But that’s just me. Boeing on the other...

In the first episode of A Green Space — A Green Earth at Astrocast.TV, my friend and astrophysicist Bente Lilja Bye gives a superb overview about the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) that was finally launched in March. It’s a captivating show, detailing the...