Gallery: Spiders and Space: The Most Popular Stories of 2010
01sleeping-mars-rover-finds-evidence-of-liquid-water
Wired Science's [most popular stories of 2009](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/topstories-gallery/) featured a wide range of topics including sharks, zombies, spiders, meteor showers and strange clouds. But this year, we seemed to have homed in on two of your favorite topics: spiders and space. Among the top stories, we've got some very big and very old spiders, as well as one of our favorite [mind-blowing space photos](http://wired.com/wiredscience/tag/mind-blowing-space-photos/) ever, Mars, Jupiter and the sun. Here are the ones that caught the most eyes this year from No. 10 up to the most popular story of the year. 10. Sleeping Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Liquid Water ------------------------------------------------------ October 28 Ten months after officially giving up on getting Spirit out of the Martian sand trap that ensnared it last year, NASA announced the rover had made perhaps its biggest discovery in that very spot. Spirit's wheels dug up soil beneath the crusty surface that contains minerals thought to be hematite, silica and gypsum, which don’t dissolve easily in water. But just below this soil, there are layers of iron sulfate minerals, which do dissolve easily. These layers suggest water, maybe in the form of frost or snow, seeped into the ground relatively recently and carried the soluble minerals deeper into the soil. Sadly, this serendipitous discovery may be Spirit’s last. NASA hasn't heard from the rover since it went into hibernation for the Martian winter in March. [Full story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/sleeping-rover-finds-water/) *Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University*
02Animation of Giant Iceberg Collision Seen From Space
9. Animation of Giant Iceberg Collision as Seen From Space ---------------------------------------------------------- March 5 Last year's top stories included two based on images of ice from space: a [mysterious ice circle](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/astronauts-spot-mysterious-ice-circles-in-worlds-deepest-lake/) in Lake Baikal, and a gallery of [images of glaciers](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/gallery_glaciers/) taken by satellites and astronauts. So, it's no surprise that this animation of colliding icebergs is among the most popular stories this year. The collision in early February of the 60-mile-long B-9B iceberg with the protruding tongue of the Mertz Glacier in East Antarctica is captured here in a series of satellite radar images. The crash created a second massive iceberg nearly 50 miles long and 25 miles wide, named C-28. The name means that it's the 28th glacier since 1976 that has broken off from the quadrant of Antarctica that faces Australia. [*Full story*](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/animation-of-giant-iceberg-collision-as-seen-from-space/) *Images: ESA*
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8. Celebrate Hubble's 20th With Best Space Image Ever ----------------------------------------------------- April 23 The Hubble Space Telescope did not make an appearance in our most popular stories of 2009, so we are very happy to see this mind-blowing space photo of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula in our Top 10 this year. We think this shot rivals what may be Hubble's most famous image, a shot of the [Pillars of Creation](http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1995/44/image/a/) taken in 1995. The enormous pillar of gas and dust in the image above is 3 light-years tall. The seam in the middle is the result of new stars forming and emitting powerful gas jets that are ripping the pillar apart. With the last shuttle-repair mission to Hubble completed, every image the telescope sends to us could be its last. So enjoy this one, and join us in crossing our fingers that Hubble has lots of life left in it yet. [Full story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/hubble-20th-anniversary/) *Image: NASA, ESA and M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)*
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7. Dark Matter May Be Building Up Inside the Sun ------------------------------------------------ July 9 Dark matter and dark energy are always intriguing to our readers, especially any observable clues to their existence. This story focusing on the idea that the sun could be a net for dark matter and alter how heat moves inside it in a way that would be observable from Earth is a perfect example. Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that makes up about 83 percent of the matter in the universe, but doesn't interact with electromagnetic forces. Although the universe contains five times as much dark matter as normal matter, dark matter is completely invisible both to human eyes and every kind of telescope ever devised. Current dark-matter detectors are looking for [WIMPs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_particles), or weakly interacting massive particles, that connect only with the weak nuclear force and gravity. But what if dark matter is much lighter than WIMPs, which annihilate each other on contact? They wouldn't eliminate each other and might be swept up by the sun. And because dark-matter particles only interact with each other, ignoring regular matter, they have less stuff in their way and can transport heat more efficiently inside the sun. [Full story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/dark-matter-sun/) *Image: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory*
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6. Icelandic Volcano’s Ash Plume as Seen From Space --------------------------------------------------- April 15 The ash plume from Iceland's erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano [disrupted air travel in Western Europe](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/world/europe/16ash.html) due to the possibility the silicates in the ash could turn into molten glass inside planes' jet engines. In this NASA satellite image, you can see the ash plume from the event sweeping east just north of the United Kingdom on the way to Norway. NASA's TERRA imager captured many images of the volcano [since it erupted to life March 20](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/event.php?id=43253) after more than 190 quiet years. [Full Story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/ash-plume-from-space/) *Image: NASA*
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5. Red in Jupiter's Spot Not What Astronomers Thought ----------------------------------------------------- March 16 Jupiter's big red spot is one of the most interesting phenomena in the solar system, and this year scientists got their first detailed look inside the famous storm. These thermal images, captured by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, are the best yet. The darkest red part of the spot turns out to be a strange warm patch inside the otherwise cold storm. And scientists suspect the spot's observed color changes may be the result of weather conditions within it. [Full story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/jupiter-spot/) *Images: ESO/NASA/JPL/ESA/L. Fletcher*
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4. Giant Spider Species Discovered in Middle Eastern Sand Dunes --------------------------------------------------------------- January 11 We are no longer surprised by how much our readers love spiders. Last year's most popular story, by far, was about a golden cloth made from the silk of a [million golden orb spiders](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/spider-silk/). And this year there are two spider stories in the Top 10, including the discovery of a new giant spider species in the sands on the border between Israel and Jordan. The nocturnal spider has a leg span nearly half a foot long, lives in an underground den with a camouflaged door that swings upward so the spider can lunge out at insects and even lizards. [Full story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/giant-middle-eastern-spider-discovered/) *Image: Yael Olek/University of Haifa*
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3. What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory ------------------------------------------------------------ February 26 Here's a question for you: What is time? Or, maybe this is a better question for someone more like Caltech theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. This Q&A with Carroll has a lot of really interesting, somewhat insane-sounding ideas that verge on incomprehensible, but are so intriguing and strange that you still want to follow them. Instead of throwing more adjectives at this, we'll just give you a favorite of Carroll answers: __Wired.com:__ So, the Big Bang starts it all. But you theorize that there's something before the Big Bang. Something that makes it happen. What's that? __Carroll:__ If you find an egg in your refrigerator, you're not surprised. You don't say, "Wow, that's a low-entropy configuration. That's unusual," because you know that the egg is not alone in the universe. It came out of a chicken, which is part of a farm, which is part of the biosphere, etcetera, etcetera. But with the universe, we don’t have that appeal to make. We can't say that the universe is part of something else. But that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm fitting in with a line of thought in modern cosmology that says that the observable universe is not all there is. It's part of a bigger multiverse. The Big Bang was not the beginning. [Full story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/) Image: Artist’s rendition of the multiverse./Jason Torchinsky.
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2. World's Most Precise Clocks Could Reveal Universe Is a Hologram ------------------------------------------------------------------ January 11 We like crazy-sounding ideas, and we're glad to see you do, too. Our second most popular story this year is about a particle astrophysicist building two of the world's most precise clocks to test whether or not the third dimension is actually no more than a holographic projection of a 2-D surface. Many other scientists think the $1 million experiment is bound to fail because it requires verifying the smallest pieces of space, time, mass and other properties of the universe, called Planck units. These units are so tiny, some scientists think measuring them is impossible. The Planck unit of length, for example, is 10 billion billion times smaller than the width of a proton. We may know who's right by the end of 2011. [Full story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/holometer-universe-resolution/) *Image: Fermilab/Craig Hogan.*
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1. Stunningly Preserved 165-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil Found ---------------------------------------------------------------- February 9 For the second year in a row, our most popular stories list is topped by [spiders](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/tag/spiders). This time, instead of a million silk-spinning spiders, it's some really, really old spiders. (If you'd like to see some other extreme spiders, check out Wired Science's [spider hall of fame](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/spiders-gallery/).) These spiders are 165 million-year-old fossils found in China. They are around 120 million years older than the only two other known fossils of their species. But what is most amazing about these fossils is the level of detail that is preserved, right down to the individual hairs on their legs. We owe the ash from a volcanic eruption for this rare look at the arachnids' soft body parts, which usually do not survive fossilization. We promise to keep an eye out for more spider stories next year. [Full Story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/spider-fossil/) *Images: Paul Selden*
