Science discovery

underground it was a year that saw

long-held beliefs challenged by newly

found wonders a church that led to

innovations and a glimpse 130 million

years into the past

in August 2017 alarm sounded at the most

sensitive scientific devices ever

constructed in Washington State the

laser interferometer gravitational-wave

Observatory LIGO detected faint

disturbances from deep space the signal

also hit Lycos sister facility in

Louisiana gravitational waves had

reached Earth prepetition waves are

ripples in space-time space-time is

incredibly dense so to cause ripples you

have to have some sort of object that

has a enormous gravity like a black hole

or a neutron star and when these objects

are rapidly accelerating they bend

space-time and create these ripples that

then travel through the universe to our

detectors on earth like the one last

almost on high alert the LIGO team

quickly reached out to Virgo its

European counterpart in Italy who

confirmed that they too had detected

gravitational waves and then as if by

destiny the stars would align once more

to pave the way to a groundbreaking

discovery

just two seconds later with the Fermi

gamma-ray Space Telescope we detected a

short bright flash of high-energy light

and we call a gamma-ray burst this

alerted the entire astronomical

community to the fact that something

very exciting was happening using data

collected from LIGO Virgo and Fermi

seventy ground and space-based

telescopes scoured the edge of galaxy

NGC for 993 some 130 million light-years

away from Earth searching for a small

flash of light amidst a sea of stars it

would take less than 12 hours after the

alarms rang at LIGO for earth to have

visual confirmation of a

never-before-seen astronomical event

what we saw was the result of the

merging of two neutron stars when they

merged they created an explosion in

space-time those ripples went out across

the universe as gravitational waves and

were detected on earth the matter

involved gave off gamma rays and other

forms of light neutron stars are the

collapsed cores of massive stars left

behind after a supernova explosion no

larger than a mid-sized city these dense

stars have 10 to 60 percent more mass

than our Sun

this pair of stars 200 miles apart were

locked in each other's orbit for over 11

billion years but as they started

accelerating and moving inwards their

orbit quickened from 30 times a second

to an astonishing and unsustainable

2,000 orbits a second then 130 million

years ago they collided in a resounding

explosion

peering into the past telescopes are

able to see the remnants of one of the

universe's most impressive firework

shows a bright flash of blue followed

the initial explosion growing redder and

duller as the days passed until

eventually fading to black the

conditions around these merging neutron

stars have densities and temperatures

completely unlike anything we can do on

earth

the violent explosion was observed to

have produced 200 earth masses worth of

gold and 500 earth masses of platinum

revealing for the first time the origins

of heavy metals in our galaxy we think

that all the gold in the universe was

formed in explosions of this kind after

the explosion happens the gold is spread

out into the gas and dust of the

interstellar medium later on that gas

and dust collapses into brand new stars

and brand new planetary systems and

these weren't the first gravitational

waves detected by LIGO this year two

separate events have been measured

before including a pair of monstrous

black holes that collided to form a

single spinning hole 53 times more

massive than the Sun we received a

perfect signal from this last merger it

traveled three billion light years to

get here in any given galaxy one of

these events might only happen once

every million years but we're now able

to monitor about 10 million galaxies at

a time it's a new type of astronomy

but while we wait for gravitational

waves that can open a window on the

origins of our universe

volcanic activity off the coast of Japan

is presenting scientists with a picture

of Earth's early history when land first

rose from the Seas

violent eruptions spew a steady stream

of lava and rocks expanding the newly

emerged island of Nisshin Oshima three

square kilometers in just five short

months this year these most recent

blasts stopped in August but could

resume at any time situated atop the

junction of four tectonic plates the

Japanese islands offer stunning insights

about the formation of a variety of

landscapes

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analysis of nishino Shima's magma shows

it to be and acidic similar to the

composition of continental crust

monitoring the growth of nation ocean

geologists hope to learn more about the

forces that led to the birth of the

world's eight continents yes not seven

eight

in February 2017 the Geological Society

of America published a startling paper

Zealandia Earth's hidden continent

geologist Nick Mortimer was the lead

author to discover Zealandia is to

change the map of the world quite

literally before hand most people would

say yes we got seven continents they

could count them off but now the world

maps change and we've got an eighth one

on there in the beginning there was no

search for Zealandia Mortimer and his

team discovered the shallow submerged

continent while performing geological

work aboard a research vessel off of New

Zealand's coast and so what the various

geological investigations have led us to

is that we do have the the components of

a continent here when you pull the plug

on the world's oceans

you literally reveal the continent of

Zealandia Mortimer and his team

confirmed for geological markers the

qualifying criteria for a continent

height a varied geology or diversity of

rock types a thick crust and ultimately

size is it big enough corroborating data

include rock samples ocean drill cores

and satellite microgravity measurements

translated into bathymetric or elevation

maps of the seafloor situated between

the Pacific plate and the Australian

plate tectonic forces squeeze to

Zealandia raising out of the water what

we know today as New Zealand

with 94% of Zealandia underwater the

islands of New Zealand and New Caledonia

are just the tip of this continental

iceberg in measuring in at 4.9 million

square kilometres Zealandia is six times

bigger than the so called micro

continent of Madagascar and more than

twice as large as Greenland which also

happens to be attached to North America

to understand Zealandia Zorich ins we

must travel back in time to the time of

the supercontinent Gondwana comprised of

what we know today as Africa South

America Antarctica and Australia when

Gondwana split apart eighty million

years ago it was a bit like the

stretching of bread dough in a kitchen

and then you start to pull that big lump

of dough apart and if you pull slowly

some of those pieces will stretch and

get thinner just like Zealandia which

broke off and slowly sank because of its

relatively thin continental crust it's

not as thick as the main continents but

it is thicker than the ocean crust and

geophysicists know that when you have

thin crust

it floats lower in the mantle and so it

sits lower elevation wise and and that

explains in very simple terms wiser land

areas so submerged

[Music]

either we've got Zealandia in the in the

scientific arena we do hope to

consolidate it and to promote Zealandia

in New Zealand schools first of all and

we have to get in atlases on globes we

hope that the Vandy will become as

common and well-known as any of the

other major continents of course the

initial buzz about Zealandia can only

help its name recognition the notion

that something is so big and so

important could be hidden for so long I

think captured people's imagination out

of sight out of mind no more of course

not everything that's undetected is so

obviously obscured

and one remarkable discovery this year

offers clues about how some prehistoric

creatures could hide in plain sight in

northern Alberta Canada the remnants of

a hundred and ten million year old

dinosaur from the late Mesozoic era

is providing the world with an

unprecedented look at a new species the

notice or a fossil so pristine and

complete that it shows the texture

patterns and color of a prehistoric

giant the notice or is the best vestment

we have and it's the closest you'll come

until we find a better one in terms of

coming face-to-face with the dinosaur

the notice or is next to surreal

a petrified beast caught by Medusa's

gaze we knew it was good but we didn't

know how good it was I think it's the

best preserved armored dinosaur in the

world I'm calling this the rosetta stone

for armored dinosaurs the anatomy of the

new species has already given scientists

clues to how these animals evolved how

they radiated and diversified through

time and it doesn't stop there a skin is

preserved it's not just the impression

of the skin we actually have some of the

original biomolecules preserved one of

the cool things that they tell us for

this festival is that the animal had at

least a component of reddish brown

pigment to its skin the coloration

aspect is very exciting so it's cool to

know what color it was but it's it's

actually more exciting when that has

implications for how the animal lived

researchers believe the notice or was

darker on the back and lighter on its

sides and underside a method of

camouflage called countershading now

keep in mind this was a five five and a

half metre long ten and a half animal

covered in the armor but it still has

camouflage and to us that just

illustrates how intense the predation

was that in the Cretaceous you have

these very large community dinosaurs and

they would have also been very visual

predators so it actually kind of just

shows you how extreme that who system it

likely was back in the Cretaceous

the plant-eating slow-moving beast only

stood a chance because of its

impenetrable coat of armour we see three

rows of osteoderms those are splitter

called cervical rings and it's armored

that would have protected the neck of

the animal and as we move to the side we

see this giant pair of scapular spine

it's basically a big armored spine

coming off the shoulder that's about

half a meter long and the spectacular

specimen still has many secrets to

unveil contents of the notice or stomach

in addition to having skin preserved all

over most of the surface of the animal

we also have abundant gut contents so be

the last meal of the animal preserved

inside and this is what that stuff looks

like so we're currently doing all sorts

of work on this geochemical work

histological work and CT scanning trying

to figure out what these spheroid

structures are and there's been many

ideas that part of the diversification

of dinosaurs is tied to the

diversification of flowering plants and

it would be great to see exactly which

types of plants this guy was eating and

if that hypothesis makes sense we know

what dinosaurs ate how they fought and

now what they looked like

but there are still many questions to be

answered and Alberta might just be the

place to find them it's estimated that

there are thousands of fossils hidden

underneath the earth but when a

six-mile-wide asteroid struck the

Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago

dinosaurs had nowhere to hide

in the resulting global Cataclysm of

earthquakes fire storms and tsunamis

ultimately led to their extinction

some analysts however managed to survive

but how since its discovery in 1978

investigations of the asteroids impact

crater include data from seismic images

and recently collected core samples from

deep within the site at Chick shaloo the

data paints a devastating picture of

destruction and led scientists to create

a broad new survival Theory focusing on

habitat and diet adaptability when

dinosaurs perished and a vast new eco

space emerged the surviving species

expanded rapidly to fill it this is

called adaptive radiation a recent study

shows that one out of ten frog species

descend from the original three frog

species that survived the Cretaceous

tertiary extinction event frogs were

able to escape extinction for a number

of reasons they live in an aquatic

habitat that offered protection their

small size and unique metabolism allow

for better endurance of environmental

stress eventually when vegetation

returned they were able to diversify

worldwide and adapt to new lives in

trees

birds - exhibited the same adaptive

radiation around the same time a newly

found 62 million year old mouse bird

fossil in New Mexico helped

paleontologists map the diversification

of land birds which can be traced back

to nine original ancestors which

survived the event warm-blooded birds

feathers insulated them from temperature

extremes their small size and ability to

fly allowed for easier escape from

hostile and barren terrain and their

diet of seeds worms and insects who gave

them the edge after much of the Earth's

surface plant life had died in the end

the ability to adapt to changing

conditions proved two key

characteristics for the survival of many

ancient animals including our smallest

mammal ancestors just as it may be for

humans today as we confront the

challenges of climate change

the city of Miami Beach already knows

what it means to wade through sea level

rise in recent years residents have

experienced elevated high tides at

certain times of the year known as king

tides these events are clear evidence of

incremental increases right now we are

definitely witnessing a sea level rise

impacts these high tide flooding events

that are growing in severity more often

deeper more widespread that sort of a

pattern that we expect will continue

that means huge financial costs by the

year 2100

another predicts two and a half million

Miamians could become sea level refugees

and leave the area it's not only Miami

all around the world sea levels are

expected to rise the question is by how

much

in adopting a multi-pronged approach

Miami Beach has committed 400 to 500

million dollars to combat sea-level rise

building water pumps and raising their

defenses with the continued issue of

climate change and sea level rise we're

seeing a increase of water level every

year we had to make changes to adapt to

this future condition what you're seeing

here we put a boardwalk initially to

give some height but we found that that

wasn't protecting the city what we've

done here is we've increased the levels

of our new seawall the new wall you see

in the background here is our new

standards this is good for a property

another 50 years and we're going to see

water levels challenging even that new

seawall raising its elevation Miami

Beach seeks to stay dry and take control

of its future the city's philosophy our

culture is rising above we believe we

can meet the challenge the challenge is

not only in rising above meaning

elevation its rising too and and

withstanding the challenges that come

with sea level rise due to climate

change as the city engineer I have

complete faith that we can do we can

mitigate we can survive

of course the Earth's oceans have risen

and fallen many times during the

planet's history and new archaeological

evidence suggests these shifting

shorelines may conceal clues about the

earliest Americans until just recently

archaeologists generally agreed that the

earliest people to populate North

America where the Clovis people dating

back to some 12 to 13 thousand years ago

but a group of scientists in San Diego

California have a different theory we

have the bones the fossils the

distribution that rocks the date we have

evidence for humans in North America

130,000 years ago we realize that that

is a startling claim but the scientific

community is struggling with the idea

that humans arrived in North America

130,000 years ago the study of early

humans in the new world has been very

political and very controversial for

over 125 years it's an old mystery yet

to be solved

deciding who got to North America first

and win welcome and thank you for

joining us this morning at the San Diego

Natural History Museum as we share some

exciting news about our discovery made

right here in San Diego

well back in 1992 Caltrans was doing

improvements to State Route 54 which

involved adding a couple new travel

lanes and Richard Cerruti who's a field

paleontologist here at the Museum was

monitoring the excavations on the very

north side of the freeway alignment and

saw this little puff of what's a tusk

material being scraped up by an

excavator and said stop let me go look

at this the bones that Richard Cerruti

found belonged to an ancient Mastodon

that's one - its characteristic of

American ambassador were these giants

sharing North America with early man

130,000 years ago the answer may lie in

the position of the bones and tools

found at the site tooth enamel scattered

throughout the site just don't make

sense

put these stones amongst ancient bone

remnants have been an early form of

primitive tools we felt that it was

important to produce a map where we

carefully plotted or precisely plotted

the position of all the bones and the

stones or whatever else is in there so

we can understand what the general

pattern it's thought that the tools

found with the Mastodon bones were used

for butchering the animal so this is one

of the cobbles that we hypothesized was

used as a hammer stone 100 3,000 years

ago where where there was a carcass of a

mastodon these people were trying to

recover raw materials from it they had a

problem how do how do we break these

bones they look over into the active

River channel find some cobbles of the

appropriate size and weight bring them

back to the site and if you look closely

there's some striations coming off of

that that are indication indications of

what this flake has come off the cuts in

this rock led the San Diego team to

conclude that these were actually tools

used by humans an idea that de Muir says

might not be so far-fetched dr. Stephen

Hollen is co-director of the Center for

American Paleolithic research in South

Dakota he was part of the team that

evaluated the findings from the San

Diego excavation site

so what do we got in here Steve I said I

can't get my mind around this

this site has to be really really old

beat-up tears evidence of humans I said

it goes against everything I thought I

knew and everything I have ever been

taught whole and evaluated the Mastodon

bones and the stone tools recovered from

the excavation site we would take the

drawers out of the cabinets in here and

bring them in on this table and look

through them paleontologists and

archaeologists together richard Cerruti

came in so there were four of us my wife

Kathleen Tom and I and we would look

through and we've looked for these very

diagnostic pieces and one of the things

that we got all excited about first were

these cone flakes that form in a circle

around the point of impact from the

hammerstone and based on the experiment

that we've done in Africa breaking an

elephant femur with a big hammer we saw

the same kinds of fracture patterns that

we did experimentally Poland specializes

in evaluating broken bones at

archaeological sites looking for human

causes as this video shows from a test

he conducted in Africa two years prior

to working on the San Diego project as

we puzzled over this we kept coming back

to this one explanation that explains

all the data was that humans did this

the detective work by the San Diego

Natural History Museum team was capped

by the age dating that Richard Cerruti

had done to prove the age of the

mastodon bones he discovered

this is one of the specimens that he

used in his analysis he cored it and

they also sliced it and after analyzing

over a hundred micro samples from this

specimen and two other specimens of bone

from the site yielded an age of 130

thousand plus or minus nine thousand so

after the article came out there has

been no critic come out to say that the

dating is incorrect in fact other

specialists in uranium series dating

have come out and said the dates look

perfectly good so we're very comfortable

with the dates

while humans arrival in the Americas may

have occurred earlier than previously

thought

new dating of another paleontological

find found in a south african cave could

soon upend long-held theories about the

evolutionary tree of primates and early

humans when we actually got into the

chamber and could start removing it we

realized that not only was there one

individual lying there on the surface

but the floor was literally comprised of

Homo Naledi

there are thousands and thousands and

thousands of remains down in those

chambers and all of you have to do is

sweep the surface off and there they are

so the first time I sort of slid through

that hallway it into the open area where

the chamber is and sort of started

looking around you know you're only

wearing a headlamp so you just see

flashes but every flash of my headlamp

showed bone so I think right at that

point I realized that we had a lot more

than the original photographs actually

had portrayed so that was pretty

exciting oh no way isn't really similar

to any known hominid species in its

entirety of its package you've got

little bits and pieces of almost

everything we've ever found parts of the

skull if you just look at it quickly

look a little bit like Homo erectus got

a very small brain other parts of skull

look very modern like Homo sapiens it

gets stranger and stranger as you move

down the body you get the ape-like

shoulders you get these more and more

human-like arms which end with a hand

this human proportion I was actually at

the London Natural History Museum and

woman a lady was on the wall and then

there was estimated age between 1.2 and

1.8 million years but then when we

actually did the scientific dating of

those teeth this is when things got very

interesting because then we got an age

of 200 to 300 thousand years old when we

got a date it's much younger than that a

quarter of a million years give or take

we realized that we were dealing with a

primitive creature almost like a time

traveller that had come down from deep

times to a point where it is very

possible

that Tom Emilia was in direct contact

with the emergence of modern humans we

never thought that was possible in

Africa until this moment we thought that

there was effectively during that entire

time period of the Middle Pleistocene

late Middle Pleistocene one form a big

brained form of Homo sapiens now there

are two and that adds incredible

complexity to our record the world of

Homo Naledi and other early humans was

different than it is today a veritable

Garden of Eden teeming with life pure

and free from pollution few places like

this still exist and most of them we got

a date it's much younger than that a

quarter of a million years give or take

we realized that we were dealing with a

primitive creature almost like a time

traveller that had come down from deep

times to a point where it is very

possible that Tom Amelia was in direct

contact with the emergence of modern

humans we never thought that was

possible in Africa until this moment we

thought that there was effectively

during that entire time period of the

Middle Pleistocene late Middle

Pleistocene one form a big brained form

of Homo sapiens now there are two and

that adds incredible complexity to our

record the world of Homo Naledi and

other early humans was different than it

is today a veritable Garden of Eden

teeming with life pure and free from

pollution

few places like this still exist and

most of them quite remote but look just

a few feet underwater and you can find

one of the most productive and

overlooked ecosystems on earth

scientists recently learned that

seagrass Meadows helped scrub the

surrounding water clean of bacteria from

raw sewage and other pathogens a recent

study of polluted waters in Indonesia

showed levels of harmful bacteria to be

50% less in spots with robust seagrass

beds leading to healthier fish and coral

in the surrounding area you see sea

grasses oxygenate the water trap

sediment that might otherwise float

freely and host tiny microbes that kill

many harmful bacteria eliminating toxins

improves the health of any system and

the workings of a human body is no

different in athletics though they say

no pain no gain a nod to the physical

effort required to increase endurance

and enjoy the health benefits of

exercise but new pharmaceutical research

also aims to make those benefits more

easily accessible the potential benefit

of a drug that can tune you up in the

way in which you normally get tuned up

by exercise could have really dramatic

effects

playfully known as the exercise pill the

experimental drug shifts metabolism by

triggering genetic instructions for the

body to burn fat instead of sugar during

exercise something that doesn't normally

happen until after extensive training

and conditioning recent tests increase

the endurance of otherwise sedentary

mice which also proved to be resistant

to weight gain while on the drug we have

two groups of mice and one group a drug

the other group as control without the

treatment of the drug so we were quite

surprised to see the astonishing results

the mice treated with the drug they can

run almost 100 minutes longer than the

one that are not treated the increase

was around 70% researchers ultimately

hope their product can improve the

health of the disabled elderly and obese

there are many reasons why people can't

either walk or run or exercise and the

idea is if you could bring a small

molecule into the picture that can

confer the benefits of fitness without

training you could really help a lot of

people from energizing our bodies -

powering societies so we are just

waiting for the next experiment it's

going to happen in ten seconds

there you go you see the flickering of

the plasma we are creating fusion here

this is our little Sun is extremely hard

each day every 20 minutes

researchers build the Sun at the Cullum

fusion Center in Oxfordshire Britain

generating temperatures greater than 200

million degrees these nuclear fusion

trials would be impossible without jet

the joint European torus a doughnut

shaped plasma containment vessel at this

point we're the most important

experiment in the world thanks to jet

where energy is created by combining

hydrogen atoms there's heavy hydrogen

which we call deuterium and the

super-heavy hydrogen which we call

tritium and when they're running around

at these temperatures like 200 million

degrees they bang into each other with

immense speed and when they do and they

get close enough what we call the strong

force which combines the nucleus of

atoms together rips them pulls them

together and they fuse and they make

helium and they spit out a neutral

fusion really is the perfect way to make

energy and yet despite fusions

transformative potential to provide safe

and sustainable energy to the world the

program faces an uncertain future while

the British government committed to pay

for its share of the experiments up to

the year 2020 brexit its plan departure

from the European Union may also lead to

the UK's withdrawal from scientific

agencies like your atom the European

atomic energy community some say this

could jeopardize jet logistics and

operations

and perhaps also the larger

next-generation fusion experiment

currently being built in southern France

if fusion represents harnessing the

physical power of the Sun

a moment of darkness reflected its

emotional tower and all induced euphoria

experienced by millions as the first

total solar eclipse over North America

in three decades made its way across the

United States

[Music]

it's the most unnatural natural

phenomenon I ever saw this is a solar

eclipse and just what people witnessed

on August 21st along a 70 mile wide path

first along the Oregon coast at 10:15

a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and last in

South Carolina 94 minutes later

[Applause]

the uncommon coupling was the most

viewed and photographed eclipse ever

recorded

and yet even as the Sun reemerged from

the moon's shadow some earthly domains

remain as always far removed from its

rays

like the cave chambers 300 meters below

Mexico's mica mine enormous razor-sharp

crystals dwarf human explorers while

today the cave is totally submerged

previous expeditions collected bizarre

life-forms from these crystal giants

they call this place hell on earth

temperatures climb to 135 degrees

Fahrenheit with over 80 percent humidity

even with life-saving body suits no

visit can safely last longer than a half

hour yet deep within this extreme

environment are life-forms which exists

nowhere else known as extremophiles NASA

astrobiologist penny Boston and her team

found 40 strains of mineral eating

organisms trapped within the crystals

here they collected sample microbes some

dormant but alive estimated to be

between ten and fifty thousand years old

including genetically unique and

previously undiscovered life-forms any

extrema file system that we're studying

actually you know allows us to push the

envelope of life further and we add it

to this atlas of possibilities that we

can apply to different planetary

settings they expanding the definitions

of life on earth and where to find it

Boston's findings could impact the

search for life beyond our planet

on places like the protoplanet Ceres the

largest object located within the solar

system's asteroid belt and one of the

scientific targets of NASA's Dawn

spacecraft when t17 startling and

unexpected news began coming in my

colleague found a spectral signature in

her data that is consistent with our the

same signature of of aliphatic

hydrocarbons so here we're finding maybe

the building blocks of biological

material seen here in red the organic

materials are thought to have originated

in the dwarf planet itself

Don's study of Ceres also revealed

evidence of water and volcanic activity

further raising the scientific profile

of Ceres no longer considered a barren

Rock

however stone isn't the only NASA

spacecraft uncovering new surprises

about our solar system seven months

after arriving in Jupiter's planetary

system the Juno Explorer became fully

operational in February of 2017

astonishing researchers with the steady

stream of images and scientific data

it's sending back to earth

Jupiter's by far the largest planet in

our solar system leaving Juno with a

whole lot of ground to cover and

although it is the second brightest

planet in our night sky its formation

and composition have left us in the dark

previous NASA missions have given us

some understandings of its moons small

dust rings and atmosphere but we've not

been able to see past the Vango like

swirls of dense red brown yellow and

white clouds that paint the planet at

least not until now each individual

image is all inspiring especially those

captured when Juno came within 5,000

miles of Jupiter's Great Red Spot the

planets most famous storm poring over

data from Juno's microwave radiometer

scientists hope to learn more about what

powers the Tempest and how it differs

from other Jovian storms this critical

instrument measures six distinct ranges

of thermal radiation as it peers more

than 300 miles beneath Jupiter's clouds

to create a three-dimensional model of

Jupiter's atmospheric environment though

the first time we're looking inside of

Jupiter within two into the interior and

what we're seeing is that it doesn't

work at all like we had predicted almost

every model that has the interior motion

how the magnetic field the gravity field

how the D batma sphere works it's all

different

[Music]

current modeling estimates that the

cloud cover is roughly 30 miles thick

below it there lies a 13,000 mile layer

of swirling hydrogen and helium that

changes States from gas to liquid as it

nears the center leading to a 24,000

mile deep sea of metallic hydrogen if we

can probe it and work out the abundance

of elements in it hydrogen helium the

higher elements as well and work out

roughly what that makes is it'll tell us

something about not only how to do but

it was formed they have a solar system

platform if there is a bunch of rocky

material in the center of Jupiter it

means that the in the early solar system

before Jupiter formed that rocky

substances were probably coming together

and Jupiter got built around those it

could be that Jupiter was built without

any of those and then it just collapsed

sort of like the Sun and there is no

rocky material or or core of heavy

elements in the center strangely though

gravity data collected so far points to

a new possibility a somewhat larger than

previously thought

and perhaps partially dissolved core

leaving Jupiter experts with more

questions than answers we're putting the

pieces of the puzzle together and it's

exciting but we don't have the whole

picture yet Juno's primary mission is

scheduled to continue until February

2018 but this past year

NASA saw another of its extraordinary

explorers come to the end and we are in

the atmosphere as the Cassini space

probe plummeted into Saturn's atmosphere

in a fiery death spiral roughly one

minute's philosophy signaled the

culmination of the crafts revolutionary

scientific quest congratulations to you

all this has been an incredible

spacecraft and she's rewritten the text

books about Saturn the Rings the moon's

Titan so many things have changed

because of Cassini from its launch 20

years ago - its bold grand finale the

cassini-huygens mission has unveiled

some amazing discoveries Saturn is

ablaze with storms of unimaginable force

the place our record with our giant

under constraints

the Rings are even more dazzling than

imagined stretching across hundreds of

thousands of miles they're made of

particles of pure water ice some

microscopic

some the size of mountains they break

apart and they reform so there's this

beautiful cosmic dance going on inside

the Rings

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cassini also carried a little Lander

called Huygens

which became the first probe to land on

a moon other than our own its target

Titan because of its atmosphere and as

those first pictures came back we just

saw more and more haze and fog and haze

and haze until finally the probe broke

through that haze and we got to see the

surface of time for the first time

Huygens landed in the surface of what

looked like a mud flat the surface

temperature was minus 350 degrees

Fahrenheit and these pebbles were made

of methane ice the nearby lake

a lake of methane then Cassini went into

orbit around Titan and revealed with its

radar system that there indeed are lakes

of liquid natural gas and other

molecules on the surface of Titan

they've evaporate just like here on

earth great clouds of methane which

rained back on the surface creating

rivers of liquid natural gas and lakes

when there perhaps be some very

interesting life in the lakes on Titan

but there were drive formations here too

including dunes that stretched from

miles and miles reaching 100 metres high

and 3,000 meter mountains suggesting

tectonic forces at work here similar to

those on earth

next Cassini headed for a close look at

Saturn's tiny moon called Enceladus here

on the moon's South Pole

strange blue cracks dubbed tiger stripes

75 miles long and hundreds of feet deep

resemble fault lines here on earth

Cassini's thermal sensors picked up heat

coming out of the ice ball 200 degrees

warmer than the rest of the planet

Cassini then captured giant Jets of

water spewing hundreds of miles into

space from the tiger stripes shooting

out at 1,200 miles per hour vaporizing

and then freezing

back on earth Cassini's stunned

controllers quickly reprogram the probe

to fly right through the Jets collecting

particles and what they found was even

more stunning organic molecules the

basic building blocks of life Enceladus

is really special it's giving us free

samples because the guys is there

erupting and they could guide the

spacecraft very close and look to see if

there's water there and there is water

here on earth wherever there's liquid

water whether it's deep in the ocean and

very hot or rocky places or in ice

there's microbial life so it certainly

suggests microbial life could have

evolved on its ellas because it has all

the properties that the earth had when

life began here NASA controllers plotted

the probes deadly descent into Saturn's

atmosphere

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productive until the end Cassini relayed

detailed information about the planets

environment and then she burned like a

meteor and vaporized scientists will

build on Cassini's contributions as the

search for extraterrestrial life

continues within our solar system and

beyond perhaps around the star system 39

light years away known as Trappist won

the first place found NASA announced to

have multiple planets three year

circling a single star inside the

habitable zone where liquid water can

exist well with this discovery we've

made a giant accelerated leap forward in

the search for habitable worlds and life

on other worlds potentially speaking the

track miss one system has really

captured our imagination because with

this amazing system we know that there

must be many more potentially life

bearing worlds out there just waiting to

be bound earth-like in size and

temperature these three faraway worlds

suggest endless possibilities

the discovery gives us a hint that

finding a second earth it's not just a

matter of if but when these questions

about are we alone are being answered as

we speak in

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Categories: Science