Space

Get ready stargazers! The Orionid meteor shower peaks next week overnight on Oct. 20-21, bringing with it a flurry of spectacular ‘shooting stars’ to brighten a blissfully dark moonless sky. The Orionid meteor shower is active from Oct. 2 to Nov. 7. It occurs when Earth barrels through the trail of debris shed by Halley’s Comet as it makes its 76-year orbital tour of the solar…

The case for a newborn ocean on Saturn’s moon Mimas continues to build. Research mapping the thickness of the world’s icy crust not only provides a window for how old an existing ocean might be but also probes where the crust might be at its thinnest — the perfect spot for future missions to detect the ocean. At the same time, examination of Mimas’ largest crater is providing…

The volatile, back-and-forth relationship between baking soda and vinegar is one we all know well. Every time the two get together, you can count on a serious — and seriously fun — reaction. But if you’re still mixing your chemical-reaction cocktails to make miniature volcanoes, today is the day to point those erupting bubbles in the other direction. Today, we’re using baking soda and…

With the number of exoplanets having recently passed the 6,000 mark, astronomers are busy preparing for many thousands more in the coming years, with underutilized planet-finding techniques about to come to the fore to add the deluge from transit surveys. “We’ve found 6,000 planets, but none of them are like Earth,” said Aurora Kesseli, an astronomer at Caltech who works on…