‘Unlucky’ dinosaurs: no extinction if asteroid had hit almost any other part of Earth | Science | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/...aurs-no-extinction-if-asteroid-had-hit-almost-any-other-part-of-earth

Only 13% of the Earth’s surface harboured rich enough hydrocarbon deposits to cause a mass extinction following an impact, research reveals

The massive asteroid that slammed into Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs might never have triggered a mass extinction had it struck almost
any other part of the planet, scientists claim.

In work that reveals just how unlucky the prehistoric beasts were, researchers calculate that the odds of the enormous space rock wreaking
such havoc were low across 87% of the Earth’s surface.

Unfortunately for the dinosaurs, the 9km-wide asteroid thumped into the ground in what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, where the concentration
of hydrocarbons in the rocks was so high that the soot and sulphate aerosols sent into the sky caused global cooling and drought. The impact crater
near the town of Chicxulub is 180km wide and 20km deep.


A glimpse of when Canada's badlands were a lush dinosaur forest by the sea
Read more
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, Kunio Kaiho and Naga Oshima at Tohoku University in Japan describe calculations that suggest only 13%
of the Earth’s surface harboured rich enough hydrocarbon deposits to cause a mass extinction in the event of such a devastating impact.

Surprising Results from October's Triton Cover-Up - Sky & Telescope
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/surprising-results-from-octobers-triton-occultation/

By watching a star disappear behind Triton, one of Saturn's moons, astronomers learned about the state of its ultrathin atmosphere.

For those of us who keep track of where and when solar-system objects occult a background star, the brief cover-up of a dim star in
Aquarius by Neptune’s large moon Triton on October 5th was especially newsworthy.

The target, 12.6-magnitude star UCAC4 410-143659, was the brightest star occulted by Triton since 1997. It’s about a magnitude
brighter than Triton itself, and its location only 13 arcseconds from 8th-magnitude Neptune made observations relatively easy.

Dnešní NASA APOD se vyvedl :) https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171107.html

Can Organisms Sense via Radio Frequency? | Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/can-organisms-sense-radio-frequency

A new project by researchers at the University of California San Diego will investigate a biological mystery that has so far gone unsolved: can organisms use radio frequencies to sense surroundings?

Radio frequency waves (RF) are electromagnetic waves between the frequencies of 3 kilohertz to 300 gigahertz, used in radio, cellphones, wi-fi, radar, GPS, and many other systems. While humans have
used RF technology to communicate for over 100 years, no living organism has ever been observed using RF to communicate without technology.

But recently there have been clues that this may in fact occur.

VIRGO: https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=38679

Just how elaborate is the planetary system around the nearest star? It’s a question rendered more interesting this morning by the news that the ALMA
Observatory in Chile has now detected dust in the system in an area one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun.
Moreover, there are signs of what may be an outer dust belt, an indication that while we have already discovered Proxima Centauri b, we are looking
at a system in which cold particles and debris that could have formed other planets continue to accompany the star.

Chandra :: Photo Album :: Jupiter :: November 6, 2017
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2017/jupiter/

A Quick Look at Jupiter's Auroras
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48vGm0q4a4


New X-ray observations show the auroras — northern or southern lights — on Jupiter behave differently at each pole.

This makes Jupiter puzzling and unlike Saturn (no known auroras) or Earth (where north and south pole auroras mirror one another).

These latest X-ray findings are challenging the current theoretical models that explain the Jovian auroras.

Scientists hope to combine Chandra, XMM-Newton, and Juno data to learn more about the source of Jupiter's auroras.

Tracing the Fuel for Forming Stars
http://aasnova.org/2017/11/03/tracing-the-fuel-for-forming-stars/

Huge reservoirs of cold hydrogen gas — the raw fuel for star formation — lurk in galaxies throughout the universe.
A new study examines whether these reservoirs have always been similar, or whether those in distant galaxies are
very different from those in local galaxies today.