Meteor bombardment may have made earth more habitable

September 17th, 2009 LONDON - Researchers from the Open University, UK, are laying the groundwork for a new equation that could mathematically quantify a habitat's potential for hosting life, in a similar way to how the Drake equation estimates the number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way. Dr. Axel Hagermann will be proposing a method to find this 'habitability index' at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany.

September 13th, 2009 LONDON - There are thousands of habitable moons orbiting planets in other solar systems trillions of miles from our own, British scientists say. On the basis of mathematical calculations, scientists at the University College London have said that it should be possible to spot these moons using a space telescope launched by NASA.

August 12th, 2009 According to Patric Wiggins NASA Solar System Ambassador page, Meteors and Meteorite falls are often spellbinding, producing spectacular visual and audible effects when they occur. Good news for the residents of Utah , the best show of the  Perseid Meteor Shower will be in Utah right above your head tonight.

August 12th, 2009 Skywatchers to see streaking meteorsLOS ANGELES — The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to put on a dazzling sky show. Astronomers say up to 100 meteors per hour are expected to streak across the sky during the shower's peak.

August 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Reports indicate that the Perseid meteor shower, which will be visible on August 11 and 12, would yield more than 80 meteors an hour streak across the sky during the best viewing time. Meteors are bits of dust or rock that collide with Earth's atmosphere and heat up gas particles to produce a glowing trail.

August 7th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Reports indicate that this year's best viewing of the Perseid meteor shower will be before dawn on August 12, with a second chance after sunset that night. At its peak, this year's shower could produce up to 100 meteors per hour.

July 28th, 2009 LONDON - A new study of ancient rocks in Greenland has suggested that icy comets - not rocky asteroids - launched a dramatic assault on the Earth and moon around 3.85 billion years ago, thus causing the lunar surface to become scarred. "We can see craters on the moon's surface with the naked eye, but nobody actually knew what caused them - was it rocks, was it iron, was it ice?" Uffe Grae Jorgensen, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, told New Scientist.

July 20th, 2009 Researchers: Still learning from moon rocksST. LOUIS — Forty years after the Apollo 11 astronauts made their historic lunar landing, the rocks they collected are still helping researchers learn about the moon and the solar system.

June 19th, 2009 MELBOURNE - In the latest UFO riddle to grip Australia, a flaming object has been spotted crashing into a mountain in central Queensland. The spectacle was initially treated as a possible plane crash but is now believed to be a meteor or space junk falling to earth.

June 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, a group of international scientists took the help of a lunar eclipse to take a snapshot of earth's chemical fingerprint, which could help to identify planets most similar to earth where life may be thriving. The team used some of the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain) to observe light reflected from the moon toward the earth during a lunar eclipse on August 16, 2008.

June 2nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has suggested that large bombardments of meteorites approximately four billion years ago could have helped to make the early Earth and Mars more habitable for life by modifying their atmospheres. When a meteorite enters a planet's atmosphere, extreme heat causes some of the minerals and organic matter on its outer crust to be released as water and carbon dioxide (CO2) before it breaks up and hits the ground.

May 28th, 2009 LONDON - A Russian scientist claims that a UFO deliberately crashed itself into Tunguska meteor to save Earth from destruction 100 years ago. Dr Yuri Labvin, president of the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation, insists that an alien spacecraft sacrificed itself to prevent the gigantic meteor from crashing into the Earth, above Siberia on June 30,1908.

May 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Since the early 1990s, astronomers have discovered more than 300 planets orbiting far away stars, nearly all of them being gas giants like Jupiter. Now, powerful telescopes, similar to NASA's recently launched Kepler Mission, will help spot much smaller rocky extrasolar planets, or exoplanets with water, more similar to earth.

May 7th, 2009 LONDON - A new analysis has suggested that the best bet that scientists have in finding life in the Universe may be around stars a little less massive than the sun, called 'orange dwarfs'. According to a report in New Scientist, these stars live much longer than sun-like stars, and have safer habitable zones - where liquid water can exist - than those of lighter red dwarf stars.

April 21st, 2009 Scientists discover a nearly Earth-sized planetHATFIELD, England — In the search for Earth-like planets, astronomers zeroed in on two places that look awfully familiar to home. One is close to the right size.