LIGHT IS SEEN FROM SUPER-EARTH FOR THE FIRST TIME.

Before we get started: no, the "Super-Earth" is not a habitable world. The planet I'm talking about is 55 Cancri e, which was discovered in 2004. Its only called a super-Earth because of its size and mass. It's mass is about 8 times greater than Earths and its about double in width.

Light was detected from 55 Cancri e for the first time this past week, and was detected by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Many astronomers are calling this a historic achievement because it's the first time light from a rocky super-earth has been seen. Because the side that faces the parent star reaches up to 1,726 degrees Celsius (3,140 degrees Fahrenheit) water cannot exist on the planet in a state that most humans are common with. It can however exist in a "supercritical fluid" state which can be thought of as a gas in a liquid state. Sometimes this happens on Earth in steam engines.

Spitzer found light from another planet in 2005, but it was a gas giant in an orbit extremely close to it's parent star. The alien solar system 55 Cancri e is a part of includes another four exoplanets. The star the exoplanets circle around is called 55 Cancri and the system is found in the constellation Cancer.

ANTARCTIC ICE IS MELTING FROM BELOW

NASA has found that the western shores of Antarctica have been melting from below instead of above. This is because the ocean is getting warmer and warmer faster than the air above it. In the video below, please note that the shelf thickness (how thick the ice is) is indicated by color. Red would be thick (550 meters or thicker) and blue would be thinner (200 meters or thinner).


The information in this graphic was gathered by NASA's ICESat, which was launched in January of 2003. It stand for Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation. It is located in orbit around Antarctica, and scientists collected data on how ice was melting from October of 2005 to 2008. They concluded that nearly half of all ice shelves were melting from below.

LIFE ON MARS FOUND 36 YEARS AGO?

Here's the thing. Mars has water. It's frozen at it's poles, but we know very well that it does have water. We also know that Mars has a gas named methane, which (as far as we know) can only come from two things: Microbial life that releases it or active volcanoes erupting. As far as we know, there are no active volcanoes on Mars. That being said, the only logical thing that could be producing the methane are tiny microbes that might live on the planet. Another thing that further reinforces the theory that there are microbes on Mars is that methane percentage in Mars' atmosphere is higher in the day than during the night.

Now, why do scientists suddenly think that there is life on Mars? Well 36 years ago, we sent the Viking spacecrafts to Mars. When the rover landed, there is a high chance that any microbial life that could have been in the soil could have been melted at temperatures of about 160 degrees.

NASA has commented that there is still a lot of uncertainty on whether there really is life on Mars or not, but followed up by saying that Curiosity (which will be landing on mars in August) has instruments that will allow NASA to "discover the nature of oxidants in the Martian soil".

Now all this being said, this is great! In my opinion there definitely is microbial life on Mars, we just haven't found it yet. If and when we do discover concrete evidence that there is life on Mars (Martian microbes in a petri dish, anyone?) a lot will change.

NASA HAS TO REMAKE PLANS FOR MARS

Yet again, NASA is forced to redraw it's plans for landing people on the Mars. Obama slashed NASA's budget by around 20% during his term, and so scientists have calculated landing a man on Mars would happen in the 2030's. Because of the budget cut, NASA has already cancelled two missions with the European Space Agency that were planned for 2016 and 2018, with the one in 2018 set to bring back actual rocks from Mars.

Now, Obama cutting down NASA's funding is the worst possible thing he can do. Not only is the space program very important to rebuilding our economy, but America and NASA were once known for innovation and setting new frontiers in Space. The budget cuts will only destroy and chance we have at being in the lead in the space race.

It's sad to say that from now on a large amount of space exploration will only come from private companies like SpaceX, which are actually meeting up with NASA to talk about the first private flight to the ISS.

NASA TRYING TO RESOLVE ARTIFACT OWNERSHIP

Over the last couple of weeks, NASA and James Lovell, an astronaut that was on the Apollo 13 mission, have been in a small dispute about a checklist that James had during the Apollo 13 mission and whether he had the right to sell it for $388,000.

Now, while NASA specifically said that astronauts can keep personal items that went to space and anything from the lunar landing module that was abandoned as keepsakes, they never said that they could sell them and that that right is only available to NASA

In my opinion, if the astronauts can keep the items, then they might as well be able to also sell them. After all, it is technically theirs, especially when it's something like a checklist. What isn't fair though is that they got such a large amount of money from just selling something as small as that. Now, I'm not saying they don't deserve the money, but $388,000 is a lot of money from just a checklist.