ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Solar storms could sandblast the moon
• New horned dinosaur announced nearly 100 years after discovery
• Ancient meat-loving predators survived for 35 million years
• NASA's Voyager hits new region at solar system edge
• Early Earth may have been prone to deep freezes, study finds

Solar storms could sandblast the moon Posted: 06 Dec 2011 09:08 PM PST Solar storms and associated Coronal Mass Ejections can significantly erode the lunar surface according to a new set of computer simulations by NASA scientists. In addition to removing a surprisingly large amount of material from the lunar surface, this could be a major method of atmospheric loss for planets like Mars that are unprotected by a global magnetic field.

New horned dinosaur announced nearly 100 years after discovery Posted: 06 Dec 2011 08:50 AM PST A new species of horned dinosaur was just announced by an international team of scientists, nearly 100 years after the initial discovery of the fossil. The animal, named Spinops sternbergorum, lived approximately 76 million years ago in southern Alberta, Canada. Spinops was a plant-eater that weighed around two tons when alive, a smaller cousin of Triceratops.

Ancient meat-loving predators survived for 35 million years Posted: 06 Dec 2011 07:14 AM PST A species of ancient predator with saw-like teeth, sleek bodies and a voracious appetite for meat survived a major extinction at a time when the distant relatives of mammals ruled the earth.

NASA's Voyager hits new region at solar system edge Posted: 05 Dec 2011 11:18 AM PST NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. In it, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system's magnetic field is piled up, and higher-energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space.

Early Earth may have been prone to deep freezes, study finds Posted: 05 Dec 2011 11:05 AM PST Researchers who have adapted a three-dimensional, general circulation model of Earth's climate to a time some 2.8 billion years ago when the sun was significantly fainter than present think the planet may have been more prone to catastrophic glaciation than previously believed.

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