Tidal Friction Could Help Earth-Sized Planets in Eccentric Orbits

Solar system creation is a chaotic and violent event.  Giant planets often barrel through the inner part of a young solar system, which disrupts smaller planets which form closer to the star.  A planet that was in the habitable zone and could have had a good chance to develop life may find itself flung out of the solar system, or at the very least forced into an eccentric orbit, approaching its star very closely or getting much further away that it was previously.  This raises the possibility of our terrestrial planet running into some other planet, or getting absorbed by the star itself.  If the planet does survive, it still has to worry about the intense gravitational forces placed upon it when the planet does get close to the star.

There is good news though, according to a recent study.  If a planet has multiple layers like ours does, it will settle back into a circular orbit much quicker than expected, in less than a million years.  As long as the planet is not melted completely through, it will resist tidal flexing and quite quickly resume a safe, circular orbit.  After a while, the tidal heating would subside, the planet would cool off and potentially become habitable.  Also, the study also found that a planet covered in a thick layer of ice could also benefit from tidal heating, as a layer of ice hundreds or thousands of miles thick is actually rather springy and would flex in exactly the right way to generate a lot of heat, melting much of the ice and creating subsurface oceans, much like on Europa.

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Orion Spacecraft Moving to Testing

Hopefully this will one day become more than just an artist's rendition.

Right now, and for the near future, the United States has no means of getting people into space.  Hopefully this will change in the near future as the Space Launch System and the Orion space capsule move into the testing stage.  The space shuttle was a worthy experiment, but an unsuccessful one.  The whole point of a reusable spacecraft was to reduce costs, but launching the shuttle was very expensive.  And while it was useful, it couldn't go very far.  What we need is a new heavy lift rocket capable of sending people not into low Earth orbit, but out into the solar system.  That is the ultimate goal of this new program, and I am looking forward to 2021, which is when manned flights are projected to begin. 

I don't know if the asteroid capture mission will be undertaken by an Orion ship, but of all the potential missions NASA could do, that's the one I want to see the most.  Actually catching an asteroid and bringing back to be studied would be an incredible feat of technology, and of tremendous value to science.  Of course, I'm in favor of anything that brings the wonder of space exploration closer to the average person.  Space is our future, we should get used to it.

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Is the Great Red Spot Disappearing?

It's hard to imagine Jupiter without its iconic storm, which, next to Saturn's rings, is the most well-known feature in the solar system.  But, observations have shown that the Great Red Spot is shrinking.  Right now, it's only 10,000 miles across, and not even two Earths could fit in that distance, let alone the three we always here about.  This storm has been around for as long as we've been able to observe it, it's difficult to imagine the planet with that big swirling storm.  How will elementary school kids be able to draw Jupiter without a Great Red Spot?  Maybe this is only a temporary thing, maybe it will get better.  Then again, storms can't last forever, even on a gas giant.  Maybe the Great Red Spot is seeing its final days.

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