# The "Science and Space" Thread #2



## lotuseclat79

Big Bang Conditions Created in Lab.

*By smashing gold particles together at super-fast speeds, physicists have basically melted protons, creating a kind of "quark soup" of matter that is about 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun and similar to conditions just after the birth of the universe.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First bounds on the Higgs boson from hadron colliders.

*The two experimental collaborations at the Fermilab Tevatron accelerator have published first results of searches for the Higgs boson, excluding parts of the otherwise allowed mass range.*

3 PDF papers available at above link.









Global fit to all published data sensitive to the Higgs boson mass. This comprises direct searches as well as electroweak precision data. The left vertical axis shows goodness-of-fit relative to the minimum χ2 value, while the right vertical axis shows σ values as a function of Higgs mass. The dashed line shows the situation before the Tevatron publications, while they are included in the solid line. The left shaded portion is the mass range excluded by LEP, and the central shaded region is the range excluded by the Tevatron. High masses are excluded by precision measurements of the weak mixing angle and the W mass, leaving only the range 115-150 GeV/c2 for future searches if the standard model is the correct theory.

-- Tom


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## franca

New Close-Ups


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## lotuseclat79

Starship pilots: speed kills, especially warp speed.



> *Star Trek fans, prepare to be disappointed. Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew would die within a second of the USS Enterprise approaching the speed of light.*


In other words, traveling at warp speed is as lethal as standing in front of the Large Hadron Collider beam at full power.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Supermassive Black Holes Spinning Backwards Create Death Ray Jets?.

*Why do some of the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei create back-to-back jets that can vaporize entire solar systems, while others have no jets at all?*









Centaurus A. Image credit: NASA









Radio image of a typical DRAGN, showing the main features (Image credit:C. L. Carilli)









1477 MHz image of 3C 33 (Credit: Leahy & Perley (1991))

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Fish hold the key to better wind farms.

*Wind farm power is significantly limited by how close one turbine can be to another. But a fish-like configuration could change all of that.*












> Wind farms traditionally use the horizontal axis (HAWTs). But by doing so, the maximum power a rotor can extract is proportional to the cube of the windspeed. More specifically, the power coefficient for HAWTs is defined as the mechanical power output of the turbine divided by the power of the free-stream air through the cross-sectional area of the rotor normal to the free-stream direction.
> 
> But since they slow the air passing through them, neighboring turbines need to be around 10 turbine diameters apart. This is a huge limit on what can be generated from a given area of land.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Coronal Mass Ejection in late January 2010.



















-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Most precise test yet of Einstein's gravitational redshift.

*While airplane and rocket experiments have proved that gravity makes clocks tick more slowly - a central prediction of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity - a new experiment in an atom interferometer measures this slowdown 10,000 times more accurately than before, and finds it to be exactly what Einstein predicted.*









Cesium atom matter waves oscillate more slowly along the lower path because the gravitational field is stronger, which means time passes more slowly. In the experiment, laser pulses kicked half the atoms 0.1 mm higher than the others; a second laser sent them on a course to merge; and a third laser measured the phase difference between the interfering matter waves. (Courtesy of Nature magazine)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Upside-down answer for deep Earth mystery: Clues point to 'density trap' in early mantle.

*When Earth was young, it exhaled the atmosphere. During a period of intense volcanic activity, lava carried light elements from the planet's molten interior and released them into the sky. However, some light elements got trapped inside the planet. In this week's issue of Nature, a Rice University-based team of scientists is offering a new answer to a longstanding mystery: What caused Earth to hold its last breath?*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Chandra Reveals Origin of Key Cosmic Explosions.

*New findings from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have provided a major advance in understanding a type of supernova critical for studying the dark energy that astronomers think pervades the universe. The results show mergers of two dense stellar remnants are the likely cause of many of the supernovae that have been used to measure the accelerated expansion of the universe.*









Composite image of M31, also known as the Andromeda galaxy. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MPA/ M.Gilfanov & A.Bogdan; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ SSC; Optical: DSS

-- Tom


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## franca

Galaxy quest:


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## lotuseclat79

Jurassic Space: Ancient Galaxies Come Together After Billions of Years.

*Imagine finding a living dinosaur in your backyard. Astronomers have found the astronomical equivalent of prehistoric life in our intergalactic backyard: a group of small, ancient galaxies that has waited 10 billion years to come together. These "late bloomers" are on their way to building a large elliptical galaxy.*









These four dwarf galaxies waited billions of years to come together, setting off a fireworks show as thousands of new star clusters come to life. The distorted galaxies are quickly producing massive, hot, young stars that are pumping out ultraviolet radiation, heating up surrounding gas clouds, and causing them to glow. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Gallagher (The University of Western Ontario), and J. English (University of Manitoba)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Exploring the secrets of dark matter.

*Even the biggest Star Trek fan would probably have trouble understanding the technical details of the research done by Queen's University Particle Astrophysics Professor Wolfgang Rau of Kingston, Canada.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Chickens 'One-Up' Humans in Ability to See Color.

*Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have peered deep into the eye of the chicken and found a masterpiece of biological design.*









All five cone types are interwoven together in the chicken retina so that all cone types are present throughout the retina, but two cones of the same type are never directly next to each other. (Credit: Joseph Corbo/Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers discover secret of the supernova.

*Nasa astronomers may have finally discovered what initially sparks a cosmic explosion, according to new research.*









Supernovas are often used by astronomers as 'cosmic mile markers' to measure the expansion of the universe Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

-- Tom


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## ekim68

*Voyager Celebrates 20-Year-Old Valentine to Solar System*

Twenty years ago on February 14, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft had sailed beyond the outermost planet in our solar system and turned its camera inward to snap a series of final images that would be its parting valentine to the string of planets it called home.

Mercury was too close to the sun to see, Mars showed only a thin crescent of sunlight, and Pluto was too dim, but Voyager was able to capture cameos of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Earth and Venus from its unique vantage point. These images, later arranged in a large-scale mosaic, make up the only family portrait of our planets arrayed about the sun.

http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=33502


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## lotuseclat79

LHC Ready for Duty Again.

*For the Christmas holiday, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was shut down for a break and for a little technical tinkering. But next week, the hope is that the LHC will start up again around the 25 of February.*









CERN LHC Tunnel Image source: Julian Herzog via Wikimedia Commons

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists unlock mystery in photosynthesis step.

*An international team of scientists, including two from Arizona State University, have taken a significant step closer to unlocking the secrets of photosynthesis, and possibly to cleaner fuels.*



> Plants and algae, as well as cyanobacteria, use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and "fuels," the latter being oxidizable substances like carbohydrates and hydrogen. There are two pigment-protein complexes that orchestrate the primary reactions of light in oxygenic photosynthesis: photosystem I (PSI) and photosystem II (PSII). Understanding how these photosystems work their magic is one of the long-sought goals of biochemistry.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

As Skiers Go Down, Moguls Migrate Up, Study Finds.

*Gravity always wins, one might think. Avalanches roar and skiers plunge inexorably downhill. But moguls -- or bumps, as skiers know them -- move uphill.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Weird Science: The Bootstrap Hypothesis w/Videos.

*There are many topics in Astronomy that are fascinating, but one of the most intriguing is the Bootstrap Hypothesis. This cosmological idea contends that as we examine the larger and larger things in the universe, they are ultimately microscopic parts of a far larger universe, one that merges with the very small.*










-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

What Came 'Before' the Big Bang? Leading Physicist Presents a Radical Theory (New VIDEO Weekend Feature).

*String theorists believe that the cosmos we live in was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes (which they define as three-dimensional branes plus time) that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Rewriting Science: Is the Universe Actually a Multiverse? (w/Video).

*Thanks to advanced cosmological technology, we may be on the verge of changing the way we see life, the universe, and everything. According to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, we may be edging nearer and nearer to a new Copernican revolution - one that will push us to see our Universe as a Multiverse.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Warp Drives: Making the 'Impossible' Possible.

*When it comes to warp drives -- the staple of Star Trek propulsion systems -- there's no shortage of critics, but singling out the impracticalities of faster than light-speed travel could be considered a little premature, says an expert.*

Slide show at above link: The warpship concept.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Are Quarks And Leptons Elementary Or Composite?.

*The question is at the basis of investigations for a substructure of quarks and leptons.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Life beyond our universe: Physicists explore the possibility of life in universes with laws different from our own.

*Whether life exists elsewhere in our universe is a longstanding mystery. But for some scientists, there?s another interesting question: could there be life in a universe significantly different from our own?*










-- Tom


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## ekim68

*Milky Way galaxy littered with 'alien' stars*

Dwarf galaxies gobbled up by our own Milky Way make up about a quarter of the 160 star-packed "globular clusters" littering the galaxy, astronomers report Tuesday.

In the Monthly Notioves of the Royal Astronomical Society report, which was led by Duncan Forbes of the United Kingdom's University of Swinburne, a team looked at chemical signatures of 93 globular clusters. The clusters are balls containing hundreds to millions of stars littered throughout the galaxy.

"It turns out that many of the stars and globular star clusters we see when we look into the night sky are not natives, but aliens from other galaxies," Forbes said in a statement.

http://content.usatoday.com/communi...2/mily-way-galaxy-littered-with-alien-stars/1


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## ekim68

*Cassini Finds Plethora of Plumes, Hotspots at Enceladus*

Newly released images from last November's swoop over Saturn's icy moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal a forest of new jets spraying from prominent fractures crossing the south polar region and yield the most detailed temperature map to date of one fracture.

The new images from the imaging science subsystem and the composite infrared spectrometer teams also include the best 3-D image ever obtained of a "tiger stripe," a fissure that sprays icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds. There are also views of regions not well-mapped previously on Enceladus, including a southern area with crudely circular tectonic patterns.

The images and additional information are online at http://ciclops.org , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .

http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30280


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## LANMaster

I love this thread .... and I do not wish to take anything from it.
But if I post this in the joke thread, you guys would never see it.

So I have to post it here. Made me crack up out loud..... forgive me please.










Okay .... carry on. Sorry for the brief hijack


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## LANMaster

I was watching a program on space on either History or Discovery (I am usually glied to one or the other) and they were talking about the Hubble ST...... they pointed it to the darkest spot in space and zoomed in only to find literally thousands of galaxies never before seen in the distance.

Simply amazing. It seems our universe never ends.


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## ekim68

"glied"?


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## LANMaster

glued ...  fat-fingered that one


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## ekim68

LANMaster said:


> glued ...  fat-fingered that one


 :up: I know fat fingers...


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## lotuseclat79

An Undiscovered Link Between Sensory Perception and Shannon's Theory of Information.

*The mathematics that describe both sensory perception and the transmission of information turn out to have remarkable similarities.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

CDF and D0 joint paper puts a further squeeze on the Higgs.

*Almost a decade after the experiments at CERN's Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider set a limit on the mass of the Higgs boson of 114.4 GeV/c2, the two experiments at Fermilab's Tevatron, CDF and D0 have been able to reduce further the allowed mass range for the missing particle in their first joint Run II publication.*









The ratio (Rlim) of the excluded Higgs production cross-section over the theoretical Standard Model cross-section. The mass range where the observed curve falls below one is excluded at the 95% confidence level.

-- Tom


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## LANMaster

Hey, Tom,

Did you ever catch that 4-part video that I posted from Louie Giglio?
I won't post the links here, you can search it out if you want.
It's entitled "How Great is Our God", but you may find the astronomy quite interesting.
.... if the earth were the size of a golf ball .....


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## lotuseclat79

Evidence of a new phase in liquid hydrogen.

*We like to think that we've got hydrogen, one of the most basic of elements, figured out. However, hydrogen can still surprise, especially once scientists start probing its properties on the most fundamental levels. "We ran simulations in order to provide a quantitative map of the molecular to atomic transition in liquid hydrogen," Isaac Tamblyn tells PhysOrg.com. "Some of what we found was surprising, and could change the basic equations of state used in models involving hydrogen."*









Protium, the most common isotope of hydrogen. Image: Wikipedia.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory.

*One way to get noticed as a scientist is to tackle a really difficult problem. Physicist Sean Carroll has become a bit of a rock star in geek circles by attempting to answer an age-old question no scientist has been able to fully explain: What is time?*









Multiverse Depiction: Artist's rendition of the multiverse./Jason Torchinsky.









Arrows of Time: Diagram of the multiverse./Sean Carroll. 3) Ken Weingart.

-- Tom


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## LANMaster

Sorry ... no time to read about it.   .... joking


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## lotuseclat79

Descartes Letter Found, Therefore It Is .

*A long-lost letter by René Descartes to Marin Mersenne that has come to light at Haverford College, in Pennsylvania, where it had lain buried in the archives for more than a century. The discovery could revolutionize our view of one of the 17th-century French philosopher's major works.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The First T2K Neutrino Event Observed At Super-Kamiokande.

*Physicists from the Japanese-led multinational T2K collaboration announced today that they had made the first detection of a neutrino which had travelled all the way under Japan from their neutrino beamline at the J-PARC facility in Tokai village (about an hour north of Tokyo by train) to the gigantic Super-Kamiokande underground detector near the west coast of Japan, 295 km (185 miles) away from Tokai. Stony Brook University has been the leading US institution in the T2K experiment.*









A schematic of a neutrino's journey from the neutrino beamline at J-PARC, through the near detectors (yellow dot) which are used to determine the properties of the neutrino beam, and then 295 km underneath Japan to Super-Kamiokande.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum measurement precision approaches Heisenberg limit.

*In the classical world, scientists can make measurements with a degree of accuracy that is restricted only by technical limitations. At the fundamental level, however, measurement precision is limited by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. But even reaching a precision close to the Heisenberg limit is far beyond existing technology due to source and detector limitations.*









This illustration shows an adaptive feedback scheme being used to measure an unknown phase difference between the two red arms in the interferometer. A photon (qubit) is sent through the interferometer, and detected by either c1 or c0, depending on which arm it traveled through. Feedback is sent to the processing unit, which controls the phase shifter in one arm so that, when the next photon is sent, the device can more precisely measure the unknown phase in the other arm, and calculate a precise phase difference. Image credit: Hentschel and Sanders.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientist eyes 39-day voyage to Mars.

*A journey from Earth to Mars could in the future take just 39 days -- cutting current travel time nearly six times -- according to a rocket scientist who has the ear of the US space agency.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers Rediscover the Structure of Water.

*A team of researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource has found the molecular structure of water to be more complex than recently thought, suggesting that molecular models that went out of fashion decades ago may be in fact more accurate than recent ones.*









Researchers at SSRL recently determined the distances between the molecules in this jet of flowing water. (Image courtesy the research team)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

World's most powerful atom smasher restarts: CERN.

*Scientists have restarted the world's most powerful atom-smasher overnight, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said Sunday, as they launch a new bid to uncover the secrets of the universe.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Micro-ear lets scientists eavesdrop on the micro-world.

*Acting as a microscope for sound, a new device called a micro-ear could make objects on the micro-scale audible. The device could enable scientists to listen to the sounds that cells and bacteria make as they move about, as well as listen to micro-scale events such as how drugs interact with microorganisms.*









The micro-ear could enable scientists to listen to bacterial flagellum in a non-invasive way. Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Fill in the Blanks: Using Math to Turn Lo-Res Datasets Into Hi-Res Samples.

*Compressed sensing was discovered by chance. In February 2004, Emmanuel Candès was messing around on his computer, looking at an image called the Shepp-Logan Phantom. The image - a standard picture used by computer scientists and engineers to test imaging algorithms - resembles a Close Encounters alien doing a quizzical eyebrow lift. Candès, then a professor at Caltech, now at Stanford, was experimenting with a badly corrupted version of the phantom meant to simulate the noisy, fuzzy images you get when an MRI isn't given enough time to complete a scan. Candès thought a mathematical technique called l1 minimization might help clean up the streaks a bit. He pressed a key and the algorithm went to work.*









Using a mathematical concept called sparsity, the compressed-sensing algorithm takes lo-res files and transforms them into sharp images. Illustration: Gabriel Peyre

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists look for the arrow of time, biologists find it.



> *Briefly, time's a bit of an annoyance to physics. For relativity, time is just another dimension in space-time. The panel Carroll organized was about equally divided between physicists who are dealing with time, and people who are working on understanding how different aspects of biology may reflect an arrow of time. There was also a philosopher of science to tie it all together.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomically Large Lenses Measure the Age and Size of the Universe (w/ Video).

*Using entire galaxies as lenses to look at other galaxies, researchers have a newly precise way to measure the size and age of the universe and how rapidly it is expanding, on a par with other techniques. The measurement determines a value for the Hubble constant, which indicates the size of the universe, and confirms the age of the universe as 13.75 billion years old, within 170 million years. The results also confirm the strength of dark energy, responsible for accelerating the expansion of the universe.*









Oftentimes it is difficult for scientists to distinguish between a very bright light far away and a dimmer source lying much closer. A gravitational lens circumvents this problem by providing multiple clues as to the distance light travels. When a large nearby object, such as a galaxy, blocks a distant object, such as another galaxy, the light can detour around the blockage. But instead of taking a single path, light can bend around the object in one of two, or four different routes, thus doubling or quadrupling the amount of information scientists receive. As the brightness of the background galaxy nucleus fluctuates, physicists can measure the ebb and flow of light from the four distinct paths, such as in the B1608+656 system imaged above. Credit: Image courtesy of Sherry Suyu (University of Bonn)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A New Look at Newton's Second Law Could Explain Away the Existence of Dark Matter.

*And all it takes to measure is a simple spinning disk here on Earth. When reached for comment, Dark Matter says: "Come on, you almost found me!"*









Dark Matter Ring Does this ring pattern truly reflect the presence of dark matter? NASA/ESA/M. J. Jee & H. Ford et al.

-- Tom


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## franca

On a clear day










This mesmerising view of Earth is a montage of images taken by the Terra satellite orbiting 435miles above the planet's surface..


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## lotuseclat79

Chilean Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days.

*The Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shortened the length of each Earth day.*

Interesting: The farther away from the equator and the steeper the fault the more effective (the fault is) in moving Earth's mass vertically and hence more effective in shifting Earth's figure axis (not the same as north-south axis).

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Measuring material hotter than the sun.

*Three Vanderbilt physicists are members of the scientific team that have reported creating an exotic state of matter with a temperature of four trillion degrees Celsius. It's the hottest temperature ever achieved in a laboratory and 250,000 times hotter than the heart of the sun.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA finds up to 1.3 trillion pounds of lunar ice.

*Data gathered from a NASA radar on board an Indian spacecraft indicate that more than 40 craters permanently in shadows contain as much as 600 million cubic meters of ice.*









A map of the north pole of the moon, showing the locations of the many craters that have now been determined to contain frozen water. (Credit: NASA)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A measure for the multiverse.

*When cosmologist George Ellis turned 70 last year, his friends held a party to celebrate.
...
For a start, Ellis's celebration at the University of Oxford lasted for three days and the guest list was made up entirely of physicists, astronomers and philosophers of science. They had gathered to debate what Ellis considers the most dangerous idea in science: the suggestion that our universe is but a tiny part of an unimaginably large and diverse multiverse.
...
Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley, has also been grappling with the multiverse, and in the past few months he has found a way round the troubling problem of unobservable universes.*



> Even Ellis is impressed by Bousso's results, if not exactly sold on the multiverse. "It is a useful and intriguing kind of consistency test based in fascinating but speculative physics," he says. And there is another far-reaching consequence. If Bousso's equivalence holds, then not only can the resulting measure be used to make real, testable predictions, they can also make calculations in the multiverse without ever referring to unobservable universes lurking beyond our cosmic horizon. Everything we need to know about the multiverse might be right here in our own universe.











Getting the measure of the multiverse: Traditional View; Casual Patch Measure; Holographic Multiverse

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists catalog zoo of bacteria inside our guts.

*The human gut is a virtual zoo, full of a wide variety of bacteria, a new study found. And scientists say that's a good thing.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Geophysicists push age of Earth's magnetic field back 250 million years.

*Planetary shield formed soon enough to protect early life forms from harmful solar radiation*









Shields up: Earth's magnetic field protects life at the planet's surface by holding the solar wind at bay, as shown in this artist's illustration. New research suggests the magnetic field existed 3.45 billion years ago but was 30 to 50 percent weaker than it is today. Credit: NASA

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

From two-trillion-degree heat, researchers create new matter -- and new questions.

*A worldwide team of researchers have for the first time created a particle that is believed to have been in existence immediately after the creation of the universe - the so-called "Big Bang" - and it could lead to new questions and answers about some of the basic laws of physics because in essence, it creates a new form of matter.*









The diagram above is known as the 3-D chart of the nuclides. The familiar Periodic Table arranges the elements according to their atomic number, Z, which determines the chemical properties of each element. Physicists are also concerned with the N axis, which gives the number of neutrons in the nucleus. The third axis represents strangeness, S, which is zero for all naturally occurring matter, but could be non-zero in the core of collapsed stars. Antinuclei lie at negative Z and N in the above chart, and the newly discovered antinucleus (magenta) now extends the 3-D chart into the new region of strange antimatter.



> The discovery may help elucidate models of neutron stars and opens up exploration of fundamental asymmetries in the early universe.











The Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC (STAR) is a detector which specializes in tracking the thousands of particles produced by each ion collision. The massive unit weighs 1,200 tons and is as large as a house. Credit: Photo courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory.









In a single collision of gold nuclei at RHIC, many hundreds of particles are emitted most created from the quantum vacuum via the conversion of energy into mass in accordance with Einsteins famous equation E = mc2. The particles leave telltale tracks in the STAR detector (shown here from the end and side). Scientists analyzed about a hundred million collisions to spot the new antinuclei, identified via their characteristic decay into a light isotope of antihelium and a positive pi-meson. Altogether, 70 examples of the new antinucleus were found.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Transcendental Meditation activates default mode network, the brain's natural ground state.

*A new EEG study conducted on college students at American University found they could more highly activate the default mode network, a suggested natural "ground state" of the brain, during their practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique. This three-month randomized control study is published in a special issue of Cognitive Processing dedicated to the Neuroscience of Meditation and Consciousness, Volume 11, Number 1, February, 2010.*









These raw EEG tracings during eyes-closed rest (left) and Transcendental Meditation (right) represent 18 tracings over 6 seconds. The top tracings are from frontal sensors; the middle tracings are from central sensors; the bottom tracings are from parietal and occipital sensors (back). Note the high-density alpha activity in posterior leads during eyes-closed rest, and the global alpha bursts across all brain areas during Transcendental Meditation practice. Credit: Cognitive Processing, Volume 11 (2010), Issue 1









These are eLORETA images of sources of alpha EEG during TM compared to eyes-closed rest in the default mode network (the white areas). Credit: Cognitive Processing, Volume 11 (2010), Issue 1

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Herschel Finds Possible Life-Enabling Molecules in Space.

*The Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potentially life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy.*









Data, called a spectrum, showing water and organics in the Orion nebula. The data were taken by the heterodyne instrument for the far infrared, or HIFI, onboard the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important participation from NASA. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First of Missing Primitive Stars Found.

*Astronomers have discovered a relic from the early universe -- a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang.*









The newly discovered red giant star S1020549 dominates this artist's conception. The primitive star contains 6,000 times less heavy elements than our Sun, indicating that it formed very early in the Universe's history. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star's presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks. (Credit: David A. Aguilar / CfA)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Sun is White Not Yellow, and other factoids about our Sun.










-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists unlock the mysteries of crack formation.

*In research published in the March 4 issue of the journal Nature, Northeastern University physicists have pioneered the development of large-scale computer simulations to assess how cracks form and proliferate in materials ranging from steel and glass to nanostructures and human bones.*



> The research could yield innovations in the production of lighter automobile and aircraft parts that reduce energy consumption, and composite artificial bones that will not fracture when inside the body. The results also have implications for understanding the evolution of geologic faults and fractures in the earth's crust.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

*Could the Tumbleweed Rover Dominate Mars?*

Before Mars can become the next great frontier for human exploration, we need to send more robotic missions to gather as much information as possible about our planetary neighbor. But what kind of robot has the right combination of weight, cost and range, while still being able to carry out groundbreaking science?

Cue the Tumbleweed Mars rover, an ingenious concept vying for attention in the hope of becoming an entirely different method to explore vast regions of the Martian surface, one that rolls across the surface instead of six-wheeling.

http://news.discovery.com/space/could-the-tumbleweed-rover-dominate-mars.html

(Cool video included.)


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## lotuseclat79

Dark, dangerous asteroids found lurking near Earth.



> *An infrared space telescope has spotted several very dark asteroids that have been lurking unseen near Earth's orbit. Their obscurity and tilted orbits have kept them hidden from surveys designed to detect things that might hit our planet.
> 
> Called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the new NASA telescope launched on 14 December on a mission to map the entire sky at infrared wavelengths. It began its survey in mid-January.*











Now you see it: a near-Earth object becomes visible in infrared (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Stephen Hawking: The Future of Space -Manned vs Robotic Missions? (A Weekend Feature).

*Will unmanned robotic missions be able to detect weird microscopic life-forms they are not programmed to recognize that might be lurking below the surface of Saturn's Titan, or beneath the murky seas of Jupiter's jumbo moon, Europa?*









"Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don't catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don't spread the human race into space, which I'm arguing should be our long-term strategy. If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before." Stephen Hawking, Cambridge University

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mysterious cosmic 'dark flow' tracked deeper into universe.



> *Distant galaxy clusters mysteriously stream at a million miles per hour along a path roughly centered on the southern constellations Centaurus and Hydra. A new study led by Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., tracks this collective motion -- dubbed the "dark flow" -- to twice the distance originally reported.
> 
> "This is not something we set out to find, but we cannot make it go away," Kashlinsky said. "Now we see that it persists to much greater distances -- as far as 2.5 billion light-years away." The new study appears in the March 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
> 
> The clusters appear to be moving along a line extending from our solar system toward Centaurus/Hydra, but the direction of this motion is less certain. Evidence indicates that the clusters are headed outward along this path, away from Earth, but the team cannot yet rule out the opposite flow. "We detect motion along this axis, but right now our data cannot state as strongly as we'd like whether the clusters are coming or going," Kashlinsky said.
> 
> The dark flow is controversial because the distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for it. Its existence suggests that some structure beyond the visible universe -- outside our "horizon" -- is pulling on matter in our vicinity.*











The colored dots are clusters within one of four distance ranges, with redder colors indicating greater distance. Colored ellipses show the direction of bulk motion for the clusters of the corresponding color. Images of representative galaxy clusters in each distance slice are also shown. Credit: NASA/Goddard/A. Kashlinsky, et al.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Galaxy Study Validates General Relativity on Cosmic Scale, Existence of Dark Matter.

*An analysis of more than 70,000 galaxies by University of California, Berkeley, University of Zurich and Princeton University physicists demonstrates that the universe -- at least up to a distance of 3.5 billion light years from Earth -- plays by the rules set out 95 years ago by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity.*









A partial map of the distribution of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, going out to a distance of 7 billion light years. The amount of galaxy clustering that we observe today is a signature of how gravity acted over cosmic time, and allows as to test whether general relativity holds over these scales. (Credit: M. Blanton, Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Europe's LHC to Run at Half-Energy, Tightening Race for Higgs.

*The world's highest energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will run at half its maximum energy through 2011 and likely not at all in 2012. Officials at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, had previously planned to run the gargantuan accelerator at 70% of maximum energy this year.
...
The new plan balances safety with the desire to collect data, Myers says. CERN officials say they will run at 7 TeV until experimenters collect enough data-1 inverse femtobarn, in the units they use-to give them a shot at, for example, discovering the new particle predicted by a theory called supersymmetry. The LHC would then shut down for a year so workers could replace all of the 10,000 interconnects with redesigned ones, allowing the LHC to run at 14 TeV in 2013. "By doing it this way, we have the time needed to design the new interconnects in a thorough way and make sure it's done correctly," says Myers.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Puzzle of 21 Lutetia.

*21 Lutetia has puzzled astronomers since its discovery. Now they have made a daring set of predictions about what the Rosetta spacecraft will find when it flies past this mysterious asteroid in July*









Lutetia

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Cryogenic electron emission phenomenon has no known physics explanation.

*At very cold temperatures, in the absence of light, a photomultiplier will spontaneously emit single electrons. The phenomenon, which is called "cryogenic electron emission," was first observed nearly 50 years ago. Although scientists know of a few causes for electron emission without light (also called the dark rate) - including heat, an electric field, and ionizing radiation - none of these can account for cryogenic emission. Usually, physicists consider these dark electron events undesirable, since the purpose of a photomultiplier is to detect photons by producing respective electrons as a result of the photoelectric effect.*









In cryogenic electron emission, at first as temperature decreases, the dark rate decreases. But at about 220 K, the dark rate levels off, and with further cooling, it begins rising again. Image credit: Meyer.









Electrons are emitted in bursts that last for different lengths of time, with their duration distribution following a power law. Image credit: Meyer.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Large Hadron Collider set for high speed bash by early April: CERN.

*The world's most powerful atom smasher will be brought up to unprecedented power by early April, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research said on Wednesday.*



> "We hope to have collisions at 7.0 TeV (teraelectronvolts) at the end of March or the beginning of April," CERN spokesman James Gillies told AFP.
> 
> The 3.9 billion euro (5.6 billion dollar) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was restarted after a winter break two weeks ago to ready it for collisions at unfathomed energy levels.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

15 Strange and Awesome Facts About Outer Space.

-- Tom


----------



## franca

All of Life's Ingredients Found in Orion Nebula


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists at UCSB discover 600 million-year-old origins of vision.

*By studying the hydra, a member of an ancient group of sea creatures that is still flourishing, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a discovery in understanding the origins of human vision.*



> "This work picks up on earlier studies of the hydra in my lab, and continues to challenge the misunderstanding that evolution represents a ladder-like march of progress, with humans at the pinnacle," said Oakley. "Instead, it illustrates how all organisms -- humans included -- are a complex mix of ancient and new characteristics."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Magnetic flows cause sunspot lows, study shows.

*Satellite observations could improve forecasts of future solar cycles*









A new study may explain why the most recent solar minimum lasted an extra 15 months and may help predict the duration and severity of future solar cycles. This image was taken by an ultraviolet camera on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory on March 11. Credit: ESA, NASA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists Can Read Minds with Brain Scans.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Orange Dwarf Confirmed to be On Collision Course With Solar System.

*Gliese 710 should arrive sometime within the next 1.5 million years*









Gliese 710 Hi there, neighbor! NASA



> Our solar system's 'hood may get a bit rougher sometime during the next 1.5 million years. An astronomer has given an 86 percent chance for a neighboring star to smash into the frozen Oort Cloud surrounding the outskirts of the solar system, and may scatter some comets toward Earth
> ...
> If Bobylev's prediction holds and Earth escapes unscathed, it will catch a bit of a breather barring the oddball asteroid, solar storm or human-engineered disaster. That should give enough time to figure out a plan for the inevitable Andromeda galaxy collision in 4.5 billion years.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Antimatter Supernova -The Biggest Bomb in the Cosmos.









We've recently seen the largest explosion ever recorded: a supergiant star two hundred times bigger than the sun utterly obliterated by runaway thermonuclear reactions triggered by gamma ray-driven antimatter production. The resulting blast was visible for months because it unleashed a cloud of radioactive material over fifty times the size of our own star, giving off a nuclear fission glow visible from galaxies away.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Human Cells Exhibit Foraging Behavior Like Amoebae and Bacteria.

*When cells move about in the body, they follow a complex pattern similar to that which amoebae and bacteria use when searching for food, a team of Vanderbilt researchers has found.*









New research reveals that when cells move about in the body, they follow a complex pattern similar to that which amoebae and bacteria use when searching for food. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sven Hoppe)



> The discovery has a practical value for drug development: Incorporating this basic behavior into computer simulations of biological processes that involve cell migration, such as embryo development, bone remodeling, wound healing, infection and tumor growth, should improve the accuracy with which these models can predict the effectiveness of untested therapies for related disorders, the researchers say.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

What Is Science? By Patrick Lockerby.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Science: Pi Day and an Interview With a Pi Researcher.



> "In honor of Pi Day, March 14 (or 3.14 for those who may need a hint), readers may be interested in reading an interview with Professor Daisuke Takahashi, the Japanese researcher who found 2.5 trillion digits of Pi back in August, before being apparently being edged out in December by a French computer programmer looking to prove his efficient coding abilities. Professor Takahashi's interview gives some unique insight into one man who truly marvels at the number that has driven people to ever greater lengths to find more digits for centuries."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Astronomy for Kids: Gemini - Twins Everywhere!.









Now that we've hunted down Orion and been bull ridin' with Taurus, it's time for us to discover a pair of celestial brothers - the Gemini twins. Gemini is one of the members of the zodiac which means the imaginary path the Sun, Moon and planets follow across the sky passes through the stars of this constellation. But what happens when you don't have these solar systems objects to point the way to the pair? Then look over the top of Orion's left shoulder and you'll see two bright stars that live about a thumb's length apart from each other - Castor and Pollux. For many of us, Gemini will be almost directly overhead at sky dark.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New analysis of the structure of spider silks explains paradox of super-strength.

*Spiders and silkworms are masters of materials science, but scientists are finally catching up. Silks are among the toughest materials known, stronger and less brittle, pound for pound, than steel. Now scientists at MIT have unraveled some of their deepest secrets in research that could lead the way to the creation of synthetic materials that duplicate, or even exceed, the extraordinary properties of natural silk.*



> The long-term impact of this research, Buehler says, will be the development of a new material design paradigm that enables the creation of highly functional materials out of abundant, inexpensive materials. This would be a departure from the current approach, where strong bonds, expensive constituents, and energy intensive processing (at high temperatures) are used to obtain high-performance materials.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mysterious Speed Record May Explain Mystery of Sun.

*A new study reports that the top of the gigantic conveyor belt of plasma moving inside the sun has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years.

The phenomenon might be the reason why the sun has continued to have so few sunspots recently when it should be ramping up the production of these surface-blotching storms.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Black Holes Can Form Rings, Helices, and Even Saturn Shapes.

*String theory implies that black holes can come in all kinds of forms and flavors, according to a cosmologist who has catalogued all known types.*









Black Hole Catalogue



> Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1003.2411: On the Black Holes Species (By Means Of Natural Selection)


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researcher solves 37-year old space mystery.

*A researcher from The University of Western Ontario has helped solve a 37-year old space mystery using lunar images released yesterday by NASA and maps from his own atlas of the moon.

Using his atlas and the NASA images, Stooke pinpointed the exact location of the Russian rover Lunokhod 2, discovering tracks left by the lunar sampler 37 years ago after it made a 35-kilometre trek. The journey was the longest any robotic rover has ever been driven on another celestial body.*









Lunokhod

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Simulations solve a 20-year-old riddle about why nebulae around masssive stars don't disappear.

*The birth of the most massive stars -- those ten to a hundred times the mass of the Sun --has posed an astrophysical riddle for decades. Massive stars are dense enough to fuse hydrogen while they're still gathering material from the gas cloud, so it was a mystery why their brilliant radiation does not heat the infalling gas and blow it away.*









This is a simulated observation of a massive star viewed along the plane of the disk. This visualization of dust emission traces the density and temperature of the gas cloud that surrounds the star. The regions that are currently ionized (in red) and have been ionized in the past (blue structures) show how the nebula flickers. Credit: Peters, et al. 2010

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

lotuseclat79 said:


> Mysterious Speed Record May Explain Mystery of Sun.
> 
> *A new study reports that the top of the gigantic conveyor belt of plasma moving inside the sun has been running at record-high speeds for the past five years.
> 
> The phenomenon might be the reason why the sun has continued to have so few sunspots recently when it should be ramping up the production of these surface-blotching storms.*
> 
> -- Tom


Interesting Tom....The Sun shows life and evolution, eh?


----------



## lotuseclat79

Teen wins $100,000 Intel science award.

*Erika DeBenedictis' research to help spacecraft quickly and more easily travel to other planets has earned her a top student science award from Intel.*



> The second place award of $75,000 was given to 18-year-old David Liu of California for creating a system to recognize and interpret similar objects in digital images. Liu's research has already been used to pinpoint dangers to oil pipelines buried beneath the ground.
> 
> Third place was given to Akhil Mathew, an 18-year-old from New Jersey who took home $50,000 for his work with Deligne categories, a method for studying various algebraic structures with ties to theoretical physics.











The top three winners of the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search are: first-place winner Erika DeBenedictis (middle), second-place winner David Liu (right), and third-place winner Akhil Mathew (left). (Credit: Intel)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Searching for Another Earth.

*A new discovery advances the hunt for Earthlike planets beyond our solar system.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Asteroid Mission May Offer Clues into Life's Origins.

*Four tablespoons worth of real estate from a nearby asteroid could help to explain how life began.*



> THE GIST:
> 
> * A sample from a pristine asteroid may explain whether the chemistry for life on Earth exists in space.
> * The targeted asteroid, RQ36, is a rare, carbon-rich rock.
> * RQ36 is on the list of potentially dangerous asteroids, with a slim chance of striking Earth in 160 years.


-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Team's quantum object is biggest by factor of billions*

Researchers have created a "quantum state" in the largest object yet.

Such states, in which an object is effectively in two places at once, have until now only been accomplished with single particles, atoms and molecules.

In this experiment, published in the journal Nature, scientists produced a quantum state in an object billions of times larger than previous tests.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8570836.stm


----------



## Gabriel

Hadron Collider stuff:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25356219/ns/technology_and_science-science/


----------



## lotuseclat79

Large Hadron Collider Triples Its Own Record.

*The Large Hadron Collider set a new record for the creation of energetic particle beams this morning. The particle accelerator, which surpassed Fermilab's Tevatron in December as the baddest atom smasher of them all, smashed its own record, charging particles to 3.48 trillion electron volts.*









CMS: Photo: A piece of the Compact Muon Solenoid/CERN

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Big Bang: Solid Theory, But Mysteries Remain.

*The Big Bang was the beginning of the universe as we know it, most scientists say. But was it the first beginning, and will it be the last?*



> A popular picture of the early universe imagines a single Big Bang, after which space blew up quickly like a giant bubble. But another theory posits that we live in a universe of 11 dimensions, where all particles are actually made of tiny vibrating strings. This could create a universe stuck in a cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, due to repeat on loop.
> 
> Which scenario is closer to the truth remains to be seen, but scientists say new experiments underway could provide more answers soon.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

For One Tiny Instant, Physicists May Have Broken a Law of Nature.

*For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook*haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.*



> Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.











This image of a full-energy collision between gold ions shows the paths taken by thousands of subatomic particles produced during the impact.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Experience Hubble's Universe in 3-D (w/ Video).

*Take an exhilarating ride through the Orion Nebula, a vast star-making factory 1,500 light-years away. Swoop through Orion's giant canyon of gas and dust. Fly past behemoth stars whose brilliant light illuminates and energizes the entire cloudy region. Zoom by dusty tadpole-shaped objects that are fledgling solar systems.*









This image depicts a vast canyon of dust and gas in the Orion Nebula from a 3-D computer model based on observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and created by science visualization specialists at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md. A 3-D visualization of this model takes viewers on an amazing four-minute voyage through the 15-light-year-wide canyon. Credit: NASA, G. Bacon, L. Frattare, Z. Levay, and F. Summers (STScI/AURA)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

'Cold fusion' moves closer to mainstream acceptance.

*A potential new energy source so controversial that people once regarded it as junk science is moving closer to acceptance by the mainstream scientific community. That's the conclusion of the organizer of one of the largest scientific sessions on the topic - "cold fusion" - being held here for the next two days in the Moscone Center during the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Reductionism And Systems Thinking: Complementary Scientific Lenses.

-- Tom


----------



## franca

New-found galaxy


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientific reasons for Earth's seasons.

*Our planet's tilt dictates cycle of spring and autumn*









Earth's tilt affects seasons. In this graphic, distances and sizes are not to scale.









This montage of satellite imagery shows how vegetation changes on Earth with the seasons. NASA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Why Black Holes May Constitute All Dark Matter.

*No Earth-based experiments have spotted any sign of dark matter-type particles. Perhaps that's because dark matter is an entirely different kind (of) thing*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New Proof Unknown "Structures" Tug at Our Universe.

*Mysterious "dark flow" extends deeper than previously seen.*









The Coma Galaxy Cluster, which appears to participate in the mysterious motion known as dark flow. Photograph courtesy Misti Mountain Observatory

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Why Dark Coffee Is Easier on Your Stomach.

*Roasting coffee beans doesn't just impart bold, rich flavor. It also creates a compound that helps dial down production of stomach acid, according to research presented on March 21 at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society. The discovery may explain why dark-roasted brews are gentler on the stomach than their lighter peers, and could lead to a new generation of tummy-friendly coffees.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Large Hadron Collider 7 TeV experiment on March 30.

*European researchers on Tuesday said they would next week move to the next stage of the experiment that will recreate conditions close to the Big Bang that hatched the universe.*



> The infinitesmal scale recreation of the conditions that followed the Big Bang is meant to run for 18 to 24 months.
> 
> After another technical shutdown, CERN is aiming for full power operation with beams running at 14 TeV after 2012.


-- Tom


----------



## franca

Who needs a Space Shuttle?


----------



## lotuseclat79

Found: 90% of the distant Universe.

*This is fascinating news: 90% of the distant Universe was thought to be missing, but it was recently found. And what's weird is, it was found to be in the red. Quite literally.*









The GOODS Deepfield



> note: this has nothing to do with dark matter.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

DNA Reveals New Hominid Ancestor.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Gravity Emerges from Quantum Information, Say Physicists.

*The new role that quantum information plays in gravity sets the scene for a dramatic unification of ideas in physics*









Gravity from quantum information

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Mars Rover Examines Odd Material at Small, Young Crater*

PASADENA, Calif -- Weird coatings on rocks beside a young Martian crater remain puzzling after a preliminary look at data from examination of the site by NASA's Opportunity rover.

The rover spent six weeks investigating the crater called "Concepción" before resuming its long journey this month. The crater is about 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter. Dark rays extending from it, as seen from orbit, flagged it in advance as a target of interest because the rays suggest the crater is young. An image from orbit showing Opportunity beside Concepción is at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12969 .

http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30448


----------



## lotuseclat79

Research concludes there is no 'simple theory of everything' inside the enigmatic E8.

*The "exceptionally simple theory of everything," proposed by a surfing physicist in 2007, does not hold water, says Emory University mathematician Skip Garibaldi.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mpemba effect: Why hot water can freeze faster than cold.

*Scientists have known for generations that hot water can sometimes freeze faster than cold, an effect known as the Mpemba effect, but until now have not understood why. Several theories have been proposed, but one scientist believes he has the answer.*









Mpemba Effect. Image: James Brownridge

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Hubble telescope shows Universe expansion is speeding up and proves Einstein's theory.

*The expansion of the Universe is speeding up - proving once again that Einstein's theory of relativity is correct - according to astronomers who studied hundreds of thousands of galaxies.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Everything you ever wanted to know about particle smashers (but were afraid to ask).

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Geneva atom smasher set for record collisions.

*The world's largest atom smasher is ready to start a new era of science by colliding beams of protons to learn more about the makeup of the universe and its smallest particles.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

An Avalanche of Asteroids.

*Imagine you're a Brontosaurus with your face in a prehistoric tree top, munching on fresh leaves. Your relatives have ruled planet Earth for more than 150 million years. Huge and strong, you feel invincible.

You're not.*









An artist's concept of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).









This blink comparison shows why infrared wavelengths are so good for asteroid hunting. It's a patch of sky in the constellation Taurus photographed at two different times by the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. The two frames are correctly aligned; the objects are moving because they are asteroids. At thermal infrared wavelengths, most of the bright objects in the plane of the solar system are space rocks. (Click 'Enlarge' for animation)









The red dot in this image is the first near-Earth asteroid discovered by WISE.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Tricky tiny Mercury easier to see in sky for a bit.

*Mercury, the solar system's most elusive planet, will be easier to see for the next two weeks.*









Mercury surface taken by Mariner 10. Credit: NASA

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

A brief history of CERN and the LHC.....

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62T1J420100330


----------



## lotuseclat79

Strange Antihyperparticle Created.

*Physicists, including nine from UC Davis, working at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory recently created some strange matter not seen since just after the Big Bang -- an "antihypertriton" composed of antimatter and "strange" quarks. A paper describing the work was published online this month in the journal Science.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The software brains behind the particle colliders.

*The LHC today (Mar 30, 2010) began running 7TeV collisions for the first time. In the instant that its detectors register the events associated with a collision, the challenges move from the hardware realm into software, as the LHC will literally produce more data than we can possibly handle. We have to figure out what to hang on to in real time, and send it around the globe via dedicated connections that aggregate multiple 10Gbp/s links; those on the receiving end need to safely store it and pursue the sorts of analyses that will hopefully reveal some new physics. In our final installment, we'll take a brief look at the computational issues created by the LHC.*









What the theoreticians tell us a Higgs decay would look like if it occurs within the CMS detector. DOE

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Astronomers See Historical Supernova From a New Angle (w/ Video).

*Since Galileo first pointed a telescope at the sky 400 years ago, a myriad of technological advances have allowed astronomers to look at very faint objects, very distant objects, and even light that's invisible to the human eye. Yet, one aspect usually remains out of reach - the benefit of a 3-D perspective.*









Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). The red, green, and blue regions in this X-ray image of Cas A show where the intensity of low, medium, and high-energy X-rays, respectively, is greatest. While this photo shows the remains of the exploded star, light echoes show us reflected light from the explosion itself. Credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/UMass Amherst/M.D.Stage et al.









Three light echoes from the Cas A supernova are shown here in three rows. For each row, the left panel is a reference image while the middle panel shows the same field of view at a later time. Right panels show the difference between the two previous shots, highlighting the (changing) light echo. The position and size of the spectroscopy slit is indicated by the rectangular overlay. For all images, north is up and east is to the left. Credit: CfA/KPNO

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researcher unravels one of geology's great mysteries.

*Danish researcher has solved one of the great mysteries of our geological past: Why the Earth's surface was not one big lump of ice four billion years ago when sun radiation was much weaker than today. Scientists have presumed that the Earth's atmosphere back then consisted of 30 percent CO2 trapping heat like a greenhouse. However, new research shows that the reason for Earth not going into a deep freeze at the time was quite different*.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Setting the record straight: no simple theory of everything.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicists Identify New Kind of Star.

*Stars don't exactly ease into retirement, and for some stellar objects, the twilight years just got more complicated.*










-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Cosmic magnetic field strength measured.

*Hints of weak magnetism between galaxies may provide information about early universe*









For active galaxies classified as blazars, jets of particles traveling near the speed of light beam right toward Earth. Credit: Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Sunset Planet Alert.

*The solar system's innermost planets are about to put on a beautiful show.*









Venus and Mercury converging over Saitama, Japan, on March 30th. Photo credit: Mitsuo Muraoka.



> The best nights to look are April 3rd and 4th. Go outside at the end of the day and face west. Venus pops out of the twilight first, so bright it actually shines through thin clouds. Mercury follows, just below and to the right: sky map.











Sky Map

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Spacewoman power: 4 women in orbit at same time.

*Space is about to have a female population explosion.*









Three female astronauts that will fly aboard space shuttle Discovery, from left, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki, mission specialists Stephanie Wilson and Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger arrive at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday, April 1, 2010. Discovery is scheduled to launch April 5 on a mission to the International Space Station.(AP Photo/John Raoux)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Invisibility cloak that generates virtual images gets closer to realization.

*In a twist on the concept of an invisibility cloak, researchers have designed a material that not only makes an object invisible, but also generates one or more virtual images in its place. Because it doesn't simply display the background environment to a viewer, this kind of optical device could have applications that go beyond a normal invisibility cloak. Plus, unlike previously proposed illusion devices, the design proposed here could be realized with artificial metamaterials.*









Illusion media can transform a real image into a virtual image. For example, a golden apple (the actual object) enclosed within the illusion medium layer appears as two green apples (the illusion) to any viewer outside the virtual boundary (dashed curves). Image credit: Jiang, et al.

Now that looks like the illusion of creating multiple copies of a person or object used as a trick to confuse an opponent when engaged in conflict - just like in StarTrek!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Probe to Explore Big Bang's Burst.

*What exactly happened at the beginning of time? A new probe may uncover the answer.*









This illlustration depicts the universe shortly after the Big Bang, just after the first stars began to form.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Missing link between man and apes found.

*A "missing link" between humans and their apelike ancestors has been discovered.*









**** habilis lived 2.0-1.6 million years ago and had a wide distribution in Africa Photo: SPL



> The new species of hominid, the evolutionary branch of primates that includes humans, is to be revealed when the two-million-year-old skeleton of a child is unveiled this week.
> 
> Scientists believe the almost-complete fossilised skeleton belonged to a previously-unknown type of early human ancestor that may have been a intermediate stage as ape-men evolved into the first species of advanced humans, **** habilis.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Saturday Morning Science Experiment: Gyroscopes in space (w/Video).

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Molecular Middle Managers Make More Decisions Than Bosses.









Scientists are finding that on a molecular level organisms often function like social institutions. Some employ a military-like chain of command while in others important decisions are made by genetic middle managers.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Why Volcanic Eruptions Can Spark Lightning.

*Physicists have long puzzled over why sand grains and other small particles can build up electrical charges as they collide with one another, sometimes to the point of discharging lightning in dust storms or plumes of volcanic ash.*









Volcano Lightning



> Now, a paper in an upcoming issue of Nature Physics suggests that particles transfer electrical charge vertically during a smashup, such that positive charges move downward and negative charges move up in the cloud.
> 
> The findings could help combat a wide variety of practical problems, such as the adhesion of charged dust to solar panels on a Mars rover or the generation of dangerous electrical discharges that sometimes occur when a helicopter takes off in the desert. Dust clouds can create problems in grain silos, where charge sometimes builds up and leads to explosions, and in the pharmaceutical industry, where particles of ground-up drugs can become charged and not mix properly, says Hans Herrmann, a materials researcher at ETH Zurich.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Where Is The Best Clock in the Universe?.

*The widespread belief that pulsars are the best clocks in the Universe is wrong, say physicists*









Clocks

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Einstein equations indicate possibility of black hole formation at the LHC.

*One of the concerns that has been voiced about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is that it could result in the formation of black holes that could destroy the world. While most scientists dismiss claims that anything produced in the LHC would destroy the planet, there are some that think that black formation could be seen with LHC collisions of sufficiently high energy. This idea has gotten a further boost from recent efforts by Matthew Choptuik at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and Frans Pretorius, at Princeton University in New Jersey.*

Note: Possibility does not mean Probability!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mysterious Planet-like Object Challenges Simple Definition, Reveals Its Surprising Identity.

*A mysterious planet-like object orbiting a not-quite-starlike "brown dwarf" is the most recent enigma discovered by astronomers with their ever-more powerful telescopes. Kamen Todorov, a graduate student at Penn State University, and a team of co-investigators including Kevin Luhman, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, used the keen eyesight of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini observatory to directly image the planet-like object. The team's discovery, which resulted from a survey of 32 brown dwarfs in the Taurus star-forming region, will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.*









This is an artist's conception of the binary system described in this story showing the primary brown dwarf (at left) and its orbiting planet-like object (at right). The disk of the brown dwarf likely never had enough material to make an orbiting object of this mass. As a result, this small companion probably formed like a binary star. In this illustration, both objects are presented at the same distance to show relative sizes. Not shown are two other nearby objects, a low-mass star and a brown dwarf that are probably both parts of this system. Science Credit: NASA, ESA, and K. Todorov and K. Luhman (Penn State University) Artwork Credit: Gemini Observatory, courtesy of L. Cook

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Our universe at home within a larger universe? So suggests wormhole research.

*Could our universe be located within the interior of a wormhole which itself is part of a black hole that lies within a much larger universe?*









Einstein-Rosen bridges like the one visualized above have never been observed in nature, but they provide theoretical physicists and cosmologists with solutions in general relativity by combining models of black holes and white holes.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Nuclear missing link created at last: Superheavy element 117.

*A collaboration of Russian and US physicists has finally created element 117 - a superheavy element made of atoms containing 117 protons that is roughly 40% heavier than lead.*









The lifetime of element 117 bolsters confidence in theories that predict that superheavy elements occupy an "island of stability" in a chart of elements and their isotopes. The island is indicated by the red region at the upper right. Atoms in the stable region decay much more slowly than atoms with characteristics that place them nearby, but outside, the region. Credit: American Physical Society

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists capture 'terrifying' Tolkien-like eclipse (w/ Video).

*Scientists have captured a 'terrifying' image of a giant Goliath-like star undergoing a two year eclipse. First discovered by a German astronomer 180 years ago, it is the first close-up image of an eclipse beyond the solar system to be captured on camera by scientists.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicists Begin Quest for 'Higgs' Particle at European Collider.

*More than two dozen UC San Diego physicists and technicians began their long-awaited quest last week in a research facility below the Swiss-French border to find a hypothetical subatomic particle that they hope will allow them to finally tie together the fundamental forces and particles in nature into one grand theory.*









Last week's collisions were recorded from the CMS detector by a tool developed at UCSD. Credit: CMS Collaboration

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists discover new principle in material science.

*Materials scientists have known that a metal's strength (or weakness) is governed by dislocation interactions, a messy exchange of intersecting fault lines that move or ripple within metallic crystals. But what happens when metals are engineered at the nanoscale? Is there a way to make metals stronger and more ductile by manipulating their nanostructures?*









A material science team led by Brown University engineers has found that the deformation of nanotwinned metals is characterized by the motion of highly ordered, necklace-like patterns of crystal defects called dislocations. Credit: Huajian Gao and Xiaoyan Li, Brown University

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

CERN creates 10 million mini-Big Bangs in one week (w/slide show).

*Physicists at the CERN research center said on Wednesday they had created 10 million mini-Big Bangs in the first week of mega-power operations of their marathon probe into the secrets of the cosmos.*









A computer-generated image of a particle-smashing event released by CERN on March 30, 2010.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

YoctoNewton Detector Smashes Force Measurement Record

*A team from NIST measures the smallest force ever recorded, beating the previous best by three orders of magnitude*

Note: A yokto-unit is 10^-24, i.e. 10 to the -24 (exponent) power or 1 divided by a 1 followed by 24 0s.









YoctoNewton Detector

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mathematics Reveal Universal Properties Of Old Rope.

*Mathematicians prove that a three-stranded rope is always 68% the length of its component strands, regardless of the material from which it is made.*

PDF link:The Ancient Art Of Laying Rope.

Abstract: We describe a hitherto overlooked geometrical property of helical structures and show how it accounts for the early art of ropemaking. Helices have a maximum number of rotations that can be added to them - and we show that it is a geometrical feature, not a material property. This geometrical insight explains why nearly identically appearing rope can be made from very different materials and it is also the reason behind the unyielding nature of ropes. The necessity for the rope to be stretched while being laid, known from Egyptian tomb scenes, follows straightforwardly, as does the function of the top, an old tool for laying ropes.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Enter the matrix: the deep law that shapes our reality (3 web pages).



> *SUPPOSE we had a theory that could explain everything. Not just atoms and quarks but aspects of our everyday lives too. Sound impossible? Perhaps not.*


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Discovery that quasars don't show time dilation mystifies astronomers.

*The phenomenon of time dilation is a strange yet experimentally confirmed effect of relativity theory. One of its implications is that events occurring in distant parts of the universe should appear to occur more slowly than events located closer to us. For example, when observing supernovae, scientists have found that distant explosions seem to fade more slowly than the quickly-fading nearby supernovae.*









This X-ray image shows the quasar PKS 1127-145, a highly luminous source of X-rays and visible light located about 10 billion light years from Earth. Its X-ray jet extends at least a million light years from the quasar. Credit: NASA.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

'Potato Radius' To Define Dwarf Planets.

*Astronomers propose the first objective definition of a planet that separates potato-like objects from spherical ones*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

First Evidence That Quantum Processes Generate Truly Random Numbers.

*Quantum number generators produce random numbers that are measurably different from those that computer programs generate.*

-- Tom


----------



## franca

Gigantic Baby Stars


----------



## lotuseclat79

Einstein's theory fights off challengers (w/ Video).

*Two new and independent studies have put Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to the test like never before. These results, made using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, show Einstein's theory is still the best game in town.*









This composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 3376 shows Chandra and ROSAT X-ray data (gold), an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey (red, green and blue), and a radio image from the VLA (blue). Two different teams used Chandra observations of galaxy clusters -- including Abell 3376 -- to study the properties of gravity on cosmic scales and test Einstein's theory of General Relativity. Such studies are crucial for understanding the evolution of the universe, both in the past and the future, and for probing the nature of dark energy, one of the biggest mysteries in science. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Vikhlinin; ROSAT Optical: DSS Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA/IUCAA/J.Bagchi

-- Tom


----------



## Gabriel

OMG...Look at this overly awesome incredible video on water drops

http://www.flixxy.com/water-drop.htm


----------



## ekim68

*New ISS machine makes water from waste CO2*

Thirsty astronauts orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have just gained a handy new source of water to eke out supplies shipped up from Earth and those from the station's famously erratic urine recycling system.

The new Sabatier Reactor, named for the Nobel prize-winning French chemist who developed the process it uses, will combine hydrogen and carbon dioxide to produce water and methane.

The station's life support machinery generates oxygen to keep the crew alive by splitting water. Astronauts breathe the oxygen and emit CO2, which is removed from the internal atmosphere by scrubber machinery and - at the moment - thrown away.

The hydrogen from the oxygen generators is currently also dumped into space as waste, but will now be combined with CO2 from the scrubbers to reclaim useful water. According to Hamilton Sundstrand Space Land & Sea, makers of the reactor, it should produce almost a tonne of water every year. The reactor was delivered to the station by space shuttle Discovery, which will undock for return to Earth tomorrow.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/16/iss_sabatier_reactor/


----------



## lotuseclat79

Ah, the benefits of recycling!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

What's the (dark) matter? Physicist Peter Fisher says we may not know for 10 years.









Bullet Cluster

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Large Hadron Collider could reveal our origins.

*The biggest science machine ever built has begun churning out the smallest known bits of matter in the universe. Its goal is to uncover some of the deepest, long-hidden secrets of nature.*









Large Hadron Collider. Image courtesy of CERN.

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

Neat graph on Cassini's path...

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/04/20/science/space/20cassini_graphic.html?ref=space


----------



## lotuseclat79

'Goldilocks Zone' may go colder than previously thought.

*The survival of life on Earth is possible only within a relatively narrow temperature range known as the "Goldilocks Zone," which ranges from around 0 to 100°C. In many ecosystems life is limited by cold temperatures rather than hot because of the reliance on liquid water for survival. Now new research has shown that in the presence of a certain type of solution, large populations of microbes can survive at the incredibly low temperature of -80°C, which is far below the accepted Goldilocks Zone. Since similar solutions exist on cold planets and moons such as Mars and Europa, this increases the likelihood that life may be found there.*









Wallemia sebi fungi making spores. Image credit: Mycology blog/Cornell University.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Shocking! Lunar Craters May Be Electrified (w/Video).

*The Moon keeps getting more interesting all the time! But now comes "shocking" news that exploring polar craters could be much harder and more dangerous than originally thought.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Early humans may have bred with other species - twice.

*Human evolution is looking more tangled than ever. A new genetic study of nearly two thousand people from around the world suggests that some of our ancestors bred with other species of humans, such as Neanderthals, at least twice.*



> Neanderthals are the likeliest contenders for our ancestors' sexual partners, but they aren't the only ones.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Lice hang ancient date on first clothes.

*Genetic analysis puts origin at 190,000 years ago*









A genetic analysis of head and body lice suggests that people may have begun making and wearing clothing as early as 190,000 years ago. Credit: Janice Harney Carr, Center for Disease Control

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Lopsided Growth at the Earth's Core.

*What has twisted the Earth's core so asymmetrically out of shape? That question has been a long-standing mystery for scientists, but two new studies are shining some light on the geodynamic processes that have shaped the core of our planet over the millennia, researchers report in the April 16 issue of Science.*









The inner core grows at the center of the Earth from crystallization of iron in the liquid outer core in such a way that solid iron permanently drifts eastward. Credit: Science/AAAS

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Japanese craft to deliver space rock to outback*

A JAPANESE spacecraft will land in Australia in June, bringing with it samples from an asteroid found 300 million kilometres from Earth.

The unmanned Hayabusa spacecraft, launched in May 2003, will become the first spacecraft to bring asteroid material to Earth when it lands in Woomera, South Australia, later this year.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology...iver-space-rock-to-outback-20100421-t0lp.html


----------



## lotuseclat79

Diving Deep into a Solar Prominence (SDO First Light) : Big Pic.









April 21, 2010 -- What you're seeing here is the highest resolution photograph of the sun available to date, part of a brand new series of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observations. The SDO mission promises "10 times better clarity than a high-definition television," NASA says, and this first SDO image doesn't disappoint.

Slide Show link at above article:
SLIDE SHOW: "Seeing the Sun in a New Light" -- See some of the highlights from NASA's SDO 'first light' photo collection..

Two other slide shows at above article.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

20 Years of Hubble History Under The Telescope.

And 20 amazing photos! Check it out!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mathematicians offer elegant solution to evolutionary conundrum.

*UBC researchers have proffered a new mathematical model that seeks to unravel a key evolutionary riddle--namely what factors underlie the generation of biological diversity both within and between species.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

LHC steps closer to discoveries on antimatter.

*The first particle has been detected in a Large Hadron Collider experiment that hopes to shed light on the nature of interactions between matter and antimatter.*

-- Tom


----------



## franca

Out of this world:


----------



## Gabriel

Great sun shots...look at the second image....how beautiful our sun is in ultraviolet
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/21apr_firstlight/


----------



## ekim68

*Change in Experiment Will Delay Shuttle's End*

A $1.5 billion seven-ton cosmic-ray experiment scheduled to be carried aloft July 29 on the space shuttle Endeavour won't be ready until August, according to the experiment's leader, Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delaying the end of the 29-year-old shuttle program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/science/space/24nasa.html?hpw

Yes, more delays...:up: I'm a fan of the Shuttles.... Those vehicles have had so much science pass through them and I've often wondered why they just didn't build new ones of the same design....Is it cost? Is it planned obsolescence?


----------



## ekim68

*Hubble Celebrates 20 Years of Astonishing Discoveries*

Space shuttle Discovery roared into orbit April 24, 1990, with a most precious cargo, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In the two decades since, teams of astronauts working from other shuttles repaired the orbiting eye on the universe and extended its abilities far beyond what was thought possible for longer than many thought realistic.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/Hubble20thannyfeature.html

:up:


----------



## lotuseclat79

Brain-like computing on an organic molecular layer.

*Information processing circuits in digital computers are static. In our brains, information processing circuits-neurons-evolve continuously to solve complex problems. Now, an international research team from Japan and Michigan Technological University has created a similar process of circuit evolution in an organic molecular layer that can solve complex problems. This is the first time a brain-like "evolutionary circuit" has been realized.*









Magnetic resonance images of human brain during different functions appear on top. Similar evolving patterns have been generated on the molecular monolayer one after another (bottom). A snapshot of the evolving pattern for a particular brain function is captured using Scanning Tunneling Microscope at 0.68 V tip bias (scale bar is 6 nm). The input pattern to mimic particular brain function is distinct, and the dynamics of pattern evolution is also typical for a particular brain operation. Credit: Anirban Bandyopadhyay



> Their processor can produce solutions to problems for which algorithms on computers are unknown, like predictions of natural calamities and outbreaks of disease.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

First Evidence That Mirror Matter May Fill the Universe?.

*If dark matter exists it may take the form of mirror planets, mirror stars and mirror galaxies. Now one physicist says the most recent evidence seems to confirm this idea*









Mirror Matter

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

A picture of Earth from Mars....


__
https://flic.kr/p/4542423536


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicists capture first images of atomic spin.

*Though scientists argue that the emerging technology of spintronics may trump conventional electronics for building the next generation of faster, smaller, more efficient computers and high-tech devices, no one has actually seen the spin-a quantum mechanical property of electrons-in individual atoms until now. In a study published as an Advance Online Publication in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on Sunday, physicists at Ohio University and the University of Hamburg in Germany present the first images of spin in action.*









The different shape and appearance of these individual cobalt atoms is caused by the different spin directions. Image courtesy of Saw-Wai Hla, Ohio University

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Massive Southern Ocean current discovered.

*A deep ocean current with a volume equivalent to 40 Amazon Rivers has been discovered by Japanese and Australian scientists near the Kerguelen plateau, in the Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean, 4,200 kilometres south-west of Perth.*









The Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean where the ocean current has been identified. Image credit - CSIRO

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Two-Dimensional Arrow of Biological Time.

*Biological time is best described by a two-dimensional surface that takes the shape of a second order helix, says a new theory.*









Biological Time

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Lost Reflector Found on the Moon.

*Physicists have pinpointed the location of a long lost light reflector left on the Moon by the Soviet Union nearly 40 years ago. The reflector could actually help today's scientists measure physical properties of the Moon and phenomena such as tidal distortion.*









(Rover Parking Spot): The Lunokhod 1 rover in its final parking spot on the moon. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State U.









(Soviet Rover) The Soviet Lunokhod rovers were about 2.3 meters long and 1.5 meters tall.









A retroreflector is a set of three mirrors, each at a perpendicular angle to the others, that will reflect light directly back in the direction from which it came. Credit: Solar Physics/Montana State University

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Earth microbes may contaminate the search for life on Mars*

Bacteria common to spacecraft may be able to survive the harsh environs of Mars long enough to inadvertently contaminate Mars with terrestrial life according to research published in the April 2010 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

The search for life on Mars remains a stated goal of NASA's Mars Exploration Program and Astrobiology Institutes. To preserve the pristine environments, the bioloads on spacecraft headed to Mars are subject to sterilization designed to prevent the contamination of the Martian surface.

http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30710


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Search for the Sun's Long Lost Siblings.

*Astronomers have published the results of the first serious search for stars that were born with the Sun.*



> Some 5 billion years ago, our Sun was born in a cloud of dust and gas, probably along with about 1000 other stars. These stars must now have a similar age and composition to Sol.











Sun siblings

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists probe Earth's core.

*We know more about distant galaxies than we do about the interior of our own planet. However, by observing distant earthquakes, researchers at the University of Calgary have revealed new clues about the top of the Earth's core in a paper published in the May edition of the journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors.*



> Knowledge of the composition and state in this zone is key to unraveling the source of the Earth's magnetic field and the formation of our planet.











Researchers David Eaton and Catrina Alexandrakis from the University of Calgary used measurements of distant earthquakes to learn more about the Earth's core. Credit: Meghan Sired, University of Calgary

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Algorithm Reveals Secrets of Leaf Shape.

*Plant biologist have long puzzled over the huge variety of leaf shapes that appear in nature. Now a simple algorithm could explain all*









Leaves

Related article: Leaves, trunk and roots: Geneticists reveal how a tree knows to grow.

*Countless words have been put to paper over the years in attempts to describe the beauty of a tree -- including carefully crafted passages by the world?s most gifted writers. But those writings pale in comparison to the intricacy of a tree's own genetic script.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Twisted Physics: 7 Recent Mind-Blowing Findings.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Proposed test of weak equivalence principle could be most accurate yet.

*The weak equivalence principle (WEP) - which states that all bodies fall at the same rate in a gravitational field, regardless of structure or composition - is one of the key postulates of general relativity. Tests have shown that the WEP is accurate to within one part in 10 trillion, or an uncertainty of 10-13 of the acceleration of gravity. However, a violation of the WEP is suggested by most theories that attempt to unify gravity with the other forces, which is one of the biggest challenges in physics today. Looking for new ways to test the WEP to even greater accuracy and perhaps detect a violation, astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have designed a new WEP test to be conducted during free fall in a rocket flight.*









WEPtest: This illustration shows the two test mass assemblies, which consists of two pairs of aluminum cubes. Four tracking frequency laser gauges measure each cube's acceleration as it falls to Earth from altitudes of up to 1200 km. Image credit: Reasenberg and Phillips.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Masses of common quarks are revealed.

*A research group co-founded by Cornell physics professor G. Peter Lepage has calculated the mass of the three lightest and, therefore, most elusive quarks: up, down and strange.*









Quarks exist in a soup of other quarks, antiquarks and gluons within a proton or neutron. Determining their mass has been difficult due to the strong force that binds them together. (Christine Davies/University of Glasgow)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists Explain Why Computers Crash But We Don't.

*Nature and software engineers face similar design challenges in creating control systems. The different solutions they employ help explain why living organisms tend to malfunction less than computers, a Yale study has found.*









The hierarchical organization of the transcriptional regulatory network of bacterium E. Coli, left, shows a pyramidal structure compared to the Linux call graph, which has many more routines controlling few generic functions at the bottom.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Densest dice packing and computing with molecules.

*Physicists have made two new breakthroughs -- discovering a shape that packs more efficiently than any other known, and completing a high speed quantum calculation thousands of times faster than possible with conventional computation.*









Tetrahedral dice have four triangular faces. When the dice are randomly poured into a container, they pack themselves more tightly than any other shape studied so far. Credit: Alexander Jaoshvili, Andria Esakia, Massimo Porrati, and Paul M. Chaikin

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*NASA Mars rover spots its ultimate destination*

It has been years in the making but NASA said its Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has captured a new view of the rim of the planet's Endeavour crater, perhaps the rover's ultimate destination.

The Mars rover set out for Endeavour in September 2008 after spending two years exploring the Victoria crater. NASA says Endeavour is 13 miles across, some 25 times wider than Victoria crater and could offer scientists more insight into the red planet's make-up.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/60779

(The little rover that could...:up: )


----------



## lotuseclat79

Martian Gullies Were Formed By Flow Of Sand.

*Martian gullies were once hailed as evidence of liquid water on Mars. Now a new theory backed by experiment explains how they are formed by the flow of sand*









Martian gullies

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

NASA team cites new evidence that meteorites from Mars contain ancient fossils.

*NASA's Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars.*









"Biomorphs" found on meteorites traced to Mars have been proposed as evidence that life has existed on the Red Planet. (Nasa Photos)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

How Capt. Kirk Changed the World.

*"Standard orbit, Mr. Sulu." Captain Kirk barks out the order with such confidence. He knows the USS Enterprise can slip in and out of planetary orbits with ease. But it's only easy in the realm of science fiction. In the real world, such maneuvers have been impossible -- until now.*









An artist's concept of Dawn in "standard orbit" around asteroid Vesta.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New Amplifier Pushes the Boundary of Quantum Physics.

*If powerful new quantum computers are to reach their enormous potential, they will need amplifiers capable of transmitting signals so weak they consist of a single photon. In the May 6 edition of the journal Nature, a team of Yale scientists report creating an amplifier almost as efficient as the laws of quantum physics allow.*









Michel Devoret, left, and Rob Schoelkopf conduct a quantum circuit experiment in lab at Yale. Devoret and Schoelkopf are authors of paper published in the journal Nature that describes new way to amplify signals in quantum computers.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researchers crack 'splicing code,' solve a mystery underlying biological complexity.

*Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered a fundamentally new view of how living cells use a limited number of genes to generate enormously complex organs such as the brain.*









Inside living human cells...



> The discovery bridges a decade-old gap between our understanding of the genome and the activity of complex processes within cells, and could one day help predict or prevent diseases such as cancers and neurodegenerative disorders.


-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*'Wet' Asteroid Could Be a Space Gas Station*

The recent discovery of an asteroid wrapped in a layer of water ice has revived the possibility that some space rocks would be great potential pit stops - as well as destinations - for manned or robotic exploration missions.

If a space destination has water, that means astronauts traveling there could potentially use it for drinking and washing. But much more importantly, the water could be broken down into its component parts (hydrogen and oxygen) to make rocket fuel, experts say.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/asteroid-gas-station-100504.html


----------



## ekim68

*Herschel reveals the hidden side of star birth*

ESA PR 09-2010. The first scientific results from ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory are revealing previously hidden details of star formation. New images show thousands of distant galaxies furiously building stars and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across the Milky Way. One picture even catches an 'impossible' star in the act of formation.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM7N7KPO8G_index_0.html


----------



## ekim68

*Problem Detected with Voyager 2 Spacecraft at Edge of Solar System*

NASA has commanded the famed Voyager 2 probe to send only information on its health and status after spotting a puzzling change in the spacecraft's pattern of communication from the edge of the solar system.

The 33-year-old Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. But Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that altered the pattern in which it sends updates home.

Because of that pattern change, mission managers can no longer decode the science data beamed to Earth from Voyager 2. The space probe and its twin Voyager 1 are flying through the bubble-like heliosphere, created by the sun, which surrounds our solar system.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/nasa-tracking-voyager2-problem-100506.html


----------



## ekim68

*Carbon-rich comet fragments found in Antarctic snow*

SYDNEY: Two tiny meteorites recently recovered from Antarctic snow contain material dating back to the birth of our Solar System, and may provide clues about the delivery of organic matter to Earth.

Researchers believe that these micrometeorites likely came from the cold, comet-forming outer regions of the gas and dust cloud that comprised the early Solar System, and sample its composition.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3441/carbon-rich-comet-fragments-found-antarctic-snow


----------



## ekim68

Herschel's at it again...:up:

*Herschel Space Telescope finds space hole*

PARIS, May 11 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency says its Herschel Space Telescope has found a hole in space, giving astronomers a glimpse into the end of the star-forming process.

"Although jets and winds of gas have been seen coming from young stars in the past, it has always been a mystery exactly how a star uses these to … emerge from its birth cloud," ESA said. "Now, for the first time, Herschel may be seeing an unexpected step in this process."

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/201...elescope-finds-space-hole/UPI-26161273595101/


----------



## lotuseclat79

Highly Sensitive Dark Matter Experiment Disproves Earlier Findings.

*Early data from a Columbia-led dark matter experiment rule out recent hints by other scientists who say they have found the elusive particle that holds the universe together. The findings show that dark matter, which is believed to make up 83 percent of the matter in the universe, is more elusive than many had hoped.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Peptides may hold 'missing link' to life.

*Emory University scientists have discovered that simple peptides can organize into bi-layer membranes. The finding suggests a "missing link" between the pre-biotic Earth's chemical inventory and the organizational scaffolding essential to life.*









Emory University scientists have discovered that simple peptides can organize into bi-layer membranes. The finding suggests a "missing link" between the pre-biotic Earth's chemical inventory and the organizational scaffolding essential to life. Credit: Emory University

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Complete Neanderthal genome yields insights into human evolution and evidence of interbreeding.

*After extracting ancient DNA from the 40,000-year-old bones of Neanderthals, scientists have obtained a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, yielding important new insights into the evolution of modern humans.*









**** neanderthalensis, adult male. Image Credit: John Gurche, artist / Chip Clark, photographer

-- Tom


----------



## franca

Jupiter loses one of its stripes


----------



## lotuseclat79

Words to the wise: Experts define wisdom.

*Compassion. Self-understanding. Morality. Emotional stability.*



> These words would seem to describe at least some of the universal traits attributed to wisdom, each of them broadly recognized and valued. In fact, there is no enduring, consistent definition of what it means exactly to be wise. It is a virtue widely treasured but essentially unexplained, a timeless subject only now attracting rigorous, scientific scrutiny.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New evidence for quantum Darwinism found in quantum dots.

*Physicists have found new evidence that supports the theory of quantum Darwinism, the idea that the transition from the quantum to the classical world occurs due to a quantum form of natural selection. By explaining how the classical world emerges from the quantum world, quantum Darwinism could shed light on one of the most challenging questions in physics of the past century.*









These images show a recurring scar found in simulations that bears a strong resemblance to experimental images. Scars were found to replicate and produce offspring states in agreement with quantum Darwinism. Image credit: A.M. Burke, et al. ©2010 APS.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Quantum mechanics reveals new details of deep earth.

*Scientists have used quantum mechanics to reveal that the most common mineral on Earth is relatively uncommon deep within the planet.*



> Using several of the largest supercomputers in the nation, a team of physicists led by Ohio State University has been able to simulate the behavior of silica in a high-temperature, high-pressure form that is particularly difficult to study firsthand in the lab.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

NASA Invites Public to Take Virtual Walk on Moon.

*More than 37 years after humans last walked on the moon, planetary scientists are inviting members of the public to return to the lunar surface as "virtual astronauts" to help answer important scientific questions.*









Moon. Image: NASA

Moon Zoo Website.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Invisible light discovers the most distant cluster of galaxies.

*An international team of astronomers from Japan and Germany has discovered the most distant cluster of galaxies known so far-9.6 billion light years away.*









The image is 3.4 arcmin on a side (1 arcmin is 1/60th of a degree), which corresponds to 5,700,000 light years in the universe 9.6 billion light years away. The arrows indicate galaxies that are likely located at approximately the same distance, and these galaxies cluster around the center of the image. The cluster emits X-rays as shown by the contours. The circles show galaxies whose distances are accurately measured from the near-infrared observations and have been confirmed to be at 9.6 billion light years away. Though the number of the confirmed members may be small, the combination of the X-ray detection and the confirmation of massive galaxies unequivocally prove a real, gravitationally bound cluster.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Time travel? Maybe.

*Imagine that you're a science-fiction writer on a tight schedule. You'd like to play in the vast expanses of the universe, but you have too much scientific integrity to conjure up a warp drive or a DeLorean out of thin air. You're also concerned that your audience would get bored in the thousands of years that it would take for a spaceship to realistically travel the distances between stars. What you really need is a wormhole -- a shortcut through time and space. Best of all, unlike most science-fiction tropes, wormholes might very well be real.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

It's a small world (for small people) after all.

*Lab-coated and goggled, Troy Dassler's 15 third graders are itching to power up their digital optical microscopes.*









Clockwise from upper left, micrographs show a water droplet on a leaf; shed skin from Coco, an elementary class pet gecko; a butterfly wing pattern; and sandpaper texture. Photo: courtesy Troy Dassler/MicroExplorers









Tracy Puccinelli, a postdoctoral research associate with the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Interdisciplinary Education Group (MRSEC IEG), works with, left to right, Brianna Floyd, Molly Jetzer and Diego Paulino as the children conduct a nanoscale science experiment. Photo: Jeff Miller

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

How to Build A Multiverse.

*Metamaterials allow the creation of adjacent spaces with their own laws of physics, just like the multiverse.*









Metamaterial-Multiverse

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

NIST releases successor to venerable handbook of math functions.

*The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) and its printed companion, the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions, the much-anticipated successors to the agency's most widely cited publication of all time. These reference works contain a comprehensive set of tools useful for specialists who work with mathematical modeling and computation.*

Freely available: The DLMF.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The sum of digits of prime numbers is evenly distributed.

*On average, there are as many prime numbers for which the sum of decimal digits is even as prime numbers for which it is odd. This hypothesis, first made in 1968, has recently been proven by French researchers from the Institut de Mathematiques de Luminy.*

-- Tom


----------



## franca

Super-massive black hole


----------



## lotuseclat79

A hole in space… no really, an actual hole!.









NGC 1999 per Hubble









NGC 1999 per Herschel

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Benford's Law And A Theory of Everything.

*A new relationship between Benford's Law and the statistics of fundamental physics may hint at a deeper theory of everything*









Benford's Law

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mathematicians Solve 140-Year-Old Boltzmann Equation.

*Two University of Pennsylvania mathematicians have found solutions to a 140-year-old, 7-dimensional equation that were not known to exist for more than a century despite its widespread use in modeling the behavior of gases.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Uninhabited water: Where no microbe has gone before.

*NASA's 'follow the water' strategy to find life on other planets might need rethinking, according to Australian National University research describing the amount of water on Earth that doesn't support life.*



> In an effort to find the limits of terrestrial life, ANU PhD student Eriita Jones and Dr Charles Lineweaver from the ANU Planetary Science Institute have mapped out the 'uninhabited' water on Earth.
> 
> The researchers say that life on Earth is constrained to live in a thin shell that amounts to less than 1 per cent of the volume of the planet. Yet roughly 3.5 per cent of the volume of the Earth can have liquid water in it.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Sun's constant size surprises scientists.

*A group of astronomers led by the University of Hawaii's Dr. Jeff Kuhn has found that in recent times the sun's size has been remarkably constant. Its diameter has changed by less than one part in a million over the last 12 years.*









The sun's disk showing active region 10486, which became the largest sunspot seen by SOHO, the satellite Dr. Kuhn and collaborators used to monitor the sun's diameter. Courtesy of SOHO/MDI consortium.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Silver tells a volatile story of Earth's origin: Water was present during its birth.

*Tiny variations in the isotopic composition of silver in meteorites and Earth rocks are helping scientists put together a timetable of how our planet was assembled beginning 4.568 billion years ago. The new study, published in the journal Science, indicates that water and other key volatiles may have been present in at least some of Earth's original building blocks, rather than acquired later from comets, as some scientists have suggested.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

12 attoseconds is the world record for shortest controllable time.

*Lasers can now generate light pulses down to 100 attoseconds thereby enabling real-time measurements on ultrashort time scales that are inaccessible by any other methods. Scientist at the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Time Spectroscopy (MBI) in Berlin, Germany have now demonstrated timing control with a residual uncertainty of 12 attoseconds. This constitutes a new world record for the shortest controllable time scale.*









Ultrashort light pulse with stabilized optical phase. An ultrashort laser pulse is comprised of a few of these oscillations. (red or blue curve). Black curves: field envelope of the pulse. Maximum field strength is obtained if the field maximum coincides with the pulse center. (red curve). The newly developed method stabilizes the field pattern of the pulse. Two zoom-ins visualize smallest temporal fluctuations previously demonstrated (green frame, laser stabilization, 100 attosecond jitter) in comparison to those demonstrated with the new method of direct field synthesis (yellow frame, 12 attoseconds jitter).

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

More signs point to quantum entanglement in biology.

*The evidence that evolution has harnessed quantum entanglement, the subject of another recent report, continues to build. Berkeley scientists have modeled the existence of quantum entanglement in a biological structure for the first time. They have shown that, during photosynthesis, these entangled states can exist at high, physiologically relevant temperatures and relatively long timescales.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

25 Fun Citizen Science Projects for Kids and Adults (25 slides).

*From watching nesting birds to catching fireflies, these citizen science projects connect people in fun, family-friendly efforts to understand the environment and benefit wildlife.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Black Holes Should Generate Ring of Light, Say Astronomers.

*Black holes should be surrounded by a ring of light that reveals their fundamental properties*









No Hair Theorem

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Life on Earth Arose Just Once.

*All life on Earth shares a single common ancestor, a new statistical analysis confirms.*









Unity of Life

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Atlantis' Final Mission*

After almost 25 years and more than 115 million miles, space shuttle Atlantis is down to just one final mission - but it will be going out on a high note.

STS-132 will deliver to the International Space Station the Russian Rassvet Mini-Research Module-1, only the second Russian module to ever be carried into space by a space shuttle. It's a fitting final payload for the orbiter that not only launched the first into space, but also was the first shuttle to dock to the Russian Space Station Mir - in fact, Atlantis was the shuttle behind seven of the 11 shuttle missions to Mir.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts132/atlantis_final.html


----------



## lotuseclat79

New water-splitting catalyst found.

Expanding on work published two years ago, MIT's Daniel Nocera and his associates have found yet another formulation, based on inexpensive and widely available materials, that can efficiently catalyze the splitting of water molecules using electricity. This could ultimately form the basis for new storage systems that would allow buildings to be completely independent and self-sustaining in terms of energy: The systems would use energy from intermittent sources like sunlight or wind to create hydrogen fuel, which could then be used in fuel cells or other devices to produce electricity or transportation fuels as needed.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientist inspired by Dalai Lama studies happiness.

*After hearing about his cutting-edge research on the brain and emotions through mutual friends, the Dalai Lama invited Richard Davidson to his home in India in 1992 to pose a question.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physics of gene transcription unveiled.

*A research team has made precise measurements of where and how RNA polymerase encounters obstacles while it reads nucleosomal DNA.*









This shows the mechanism of DNA transcription through a nucleosome. As an RNAP approaches a nucleosome, it encounters obstacles which cause it to pause and backtrack. The arrival of a trailing RNAP exerts an assisting force on the leading RNAP, rescuing the leader from its backtracked state. The two RNAPs, working together, eventually resume efficient transcription. (Michael Hall/Wang Lab)x

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Intel showcases student science innovations (13 slides).

*The Intel International Science and Engineering Fair plays host to pre-college science and engineering innovators, exploring a range of topics from robotics to alternative energy*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mathematical model explains marital breakups.

*Most people know love takes work, and effort is needed to sustain a happy relationship over the long term, but now a mathematician in Spain has for the first time explained it mathematically by developing a dynamical mathematical model based on the second law of thermodynamics to model "sentimental dynamics." The results are consistent with sociological data on marriage breakdowns.*









Durable relationships. Under the assumptions of the model, there is a unique effort policy that takes the initial feeling x0 to the unique equilibrium E. This is achieved by setting the initial effort at point A to get onto the stable manifold Ws+ and then following path AE to approach equilibrium. Image credit: PLoS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009881. See the paper for more details.









Breakup mechanics. The model produces a plausible scenario, through a sequence of effort inattentions, for the deterioration of a relationship in a gradual form, which seems to be typical according to data. Because of the effort gap, there is a tendency to lower the right effort level. Then the intrinsic instability of sentimental dynamics obeying the second law causes the piecewise decaying trajectories to move further and further away from the target trajectory and eventually to cross the threshold level xmin. This is considered a point of pre-rupture, since it is a matter of time before effort is abandoned. Credit: PLoS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009881

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Prehistoric Fish Extinction Paved the Way for Modern Vertebrates.

*A mass extinction of fish 360 million years ago hit the reset button on Earth's life, setting the stage for modern vertebrate biodiversity, a new study reports.*









A Gladbachus shark fossil used in the research, pictured in the scientists' lab. Credit: Jason Smith

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Beautiful PIC of Plasma Plume Erupting from Sun's Surface.









Prominence from the Solar Dynamics Observatory

Notice: The approximate size of Earth in the lower left hand corner!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Daylight Crescent Moon and Venus Rising: APOD May 16th 2010.










-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

> Astronomers have found a bloated, massive galaxy that may be a record-breaker: the most massive galaxy in the near Universe. The mass isn't exactly clear, but it may be 13 trillion times the mass of the Sun!* That's easily twenty times the mass of the Milky Way!


http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/b...nnibalistic-is-no-way-to-go-through-life-son/


----------



## lotuseclat79

A New Clue to Explain Existence.

The toe of God indeed!

Related article: The Plot Of The Week - News On CP Violation.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Ocean's Depth and Volume Revealed.

*A group of scientists used satellite measurements to get new estimates of these values, which turned out to be 0.3 billion cubic miles (1.332 billion cubic kilometers) for the volume of the oceans and 12,080.7 feet (3,682.2 meters) for the average ocean depth.

Both of these numbers are less than many previous estimates of the ocean's volume and depth.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Ancient octopus mystery resolved.

*Trapped air in the shells of rare octopuses is the key to their survival in the deep sea, say scientists.*









Female Argonaut

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

Some cool pics of space....Astrophotography is my new favorite word...

http://www.axilone.com/legault/


----------



## lotuseclat79

First functional synthetic bacterial genome announced.

*Craig Venter, who has been a prominent figure in genome research, has been using Science magazine as a host for updates on his latest project: building a bacterium that runs off a genome engineered for specific tasks. As of early 2008, his research group had managed to assemble the entire genome of a small bacterium in a yeast cell, starting with nothing but mail-order DNA. At the time, it seemed like just a short step from there to having that DNA running a cell. That short step took a year and a half, and there were some stumbles along the way.*

Related: Synthetic Genome Reboots Cell.

*A genome built from scratch is a step toward synthesizing novel organisms.*









Starting from scratch: Scientists rebooted bacterial cells by transplanting a synthetic version of the Mycoplasma mycoides genome manufactured in the lab. The synthetic genome includes a marker gene that makes a blue compound, so the synthetic cells form blue colonies (top). The naturally occurring M. mycoides genome lacks that gene, so the wild-type cells form white colonies (bottom). Credit: Science/AAAS

Related: First 'synthetic life': Scientists 'boot up' a bacterial cell with a synthetic genome.

*Scientists have developed the first cell controlled by a synthetic genome. They now hope to use this method to probe the basic machinery of life and to engineer bacteria specially designed to solve environmental or energy problems.*









Mycoplasmamy: Negatively stained transmission electron micrographs of dividing M. mycoides JCVI-syn1. Electron micrographs were provided by Tom Deerinck and Mark Ellisman of the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research at the University of California at San Diego.

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Opportunity rover surpasses Viking 1's longevity record*

LOS ANGELES - Pop quiz: What spacecraft holds the record for longest-surviving mission on the bitterly cold and dusty surface of Mars?

As of Thursday, there's a new, but possibly temporary, champion.

For decades, the NASA Viking 1 lander held the title after toiling away six years and 116 days on the red planet. But Opportunity, one of the twin rovers that landed in 2004, has surpassed that record and shows no signs of stopping.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2010-05-20-opportunity-rover_N.htm

:up:


----------



## lotuseclat79

How To Build An Atomtronic Computer.

*Using atoms instead of electrons to process information could change the way we think about computing, say physicists*









Atomtronics



> Until recently, electronics had been based on a single property of electrons--their charge. But in recent years, physicists have begun to exploit a second property : electron spin. So-called spintronics promises to revolutionise electronics because it allows information to be encoded in an entirely new way.
> 
> Atomtronics could take that even further by offering entirely new ways to mess about with information. Neutral atoms can be fermions or bosons and the interactions between them can be long or short range, strong or weak and attractive or repulsive.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicists prove Einstein wrong with observation of instantaneous velocity in Brownian particles.

*A century after Albert Einstein said we would never be able to observe the instantaneous velocity of tiny particles as they randomly shake and shimmy, so called Brownian motion, physicist Mark Raizen and his group have done so.*









A 5-micrometer glass bead levitated in air by a single laser beam from below. This optical trap is formed by the balance between the scattering force from the laser beam and the gravitational force on the bead. Tongcang Li, et. al. used a similar optical trap to study the Brownian motion of a trapped bead in air with ultra-high resolution. Their paper is published in Science. Credit: Tongcang Li, the University of Texas at Austin

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Probing the dark side of the universe.

*Advancing into the next frontier in astrophysics and cosmology depends on our ability to detect the presence of a particular type of wave in space, a primordial gravitational wave. Much like ripples moving across a pond, these waves stretch the fabric of space itself as they pass by. If detected, these weak and elusive waves could provide an unprecedented view of the earliest moments of our universe. In an article appearing in the May 21 issue of Science, Arizona State University theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss and researchers from the University of Chicago and Fermi national Laboratory explore the most likely detection method of these waves, with the examination of cosmic microwave radiation (CMB) standing out as the favored method.*









Though the Planck satellite has yet to return results from the cosmic microwave background, its new results show exquisite images of cold dust in our own galaxy. This image shows the galactic plane -- the line running horizontally across the image near the bottom -- and the huge clouds of cool dust that rise far above the plane. Credit: ESA and the HFI Consortium, IRAS

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Family tree branches out.

*UNSW anthropologist Dr Darren Curnoe has identified another new early human ancestor in South Africa ? the earliest recognised species of ****.*









Reconstruction of **** gautengensis. Photo: Darren Curnoe

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New type of supernova may shed light on some universal mysteries.

*In the past decade, robotic telescopes have turned astronomers' attention to scads of strange exploding stars, one-offs that may or may not point to new and unusual physics.*









One theory of this new exploding system is that a white dwarf steals helium from a companion until the mass thief becomes very hot and dense and a nuclear explosion occurs. The helium is transformed into elements such as calcium and titanium, eventually producing the building blocks of life for future generations of stars.(Avishay Gal-Yam; Weizmann Institute of Science)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Hubble Finds Star Eating a Planet.

*The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.*









This is an artist's concept of the exoplanet WASP-12b. It is the hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy, and potentially the shortest lived. The planet is only 2 million miles from its sunlike parent star - a fraction of Earth's distance from the Sun. Gravitational tidal forces from the star stretch the planet into an egg shape. The planet is so hot that it has puffed up to the point where its outer atmosphere spills onto the star. An accretion bridge streams toward the star and material is smeared into a swirling disk. The planet may be completely devoured by the star in 10 million years. The planet is too far away for the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph, but this interpretation is based in part on analysis of Hubble spectroscopic and photometric data. Credit: NASA, ESA, and C. Haswell (The Open University, UK)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

White-Light Solar Flares Finally Explained.

*The flashes of white light accompanying some solar flares are caused by the sun's acceleration of electrons to speeds greater than half the speed of light.*









Main Flare

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New Theory Explains Superrotation on Venus.

*As a Japanese weather satellite heads to Venus, a new theory tackles one of the outstanding mysteries of the planet.*









Venus



> The spacecraft should help answer one of the great mysteries of the Solar System: why the winds on Venus blow faster than the planet itself rotates.


-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Shuttle Atlantis undocks from International Space Station*



> The space station is bigger and packs more power, thanks to Atlantis and its crewmen. They left behind a new Russian compartment packed with supplies, as well as six fresh batteries and other equipment that was hooked up during a series of spacewalks.
> 
> Its total mass exceeds 816,000 pounds, and it's 98% complete in terms of living space.
> 
> "This place is now a palace. It's huge, and I've had great fun exploring it," said shuttle astronaut Piers Sellers. "We're seeing station in pretty much its final form, and it's really magnificent."


http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2010-05-23-shuttle-undock-space-station_N.htm


----------



## lotuseclat79

Copernicus's remains reburied in Polish cathedral.

*The remains of Nicolas Copernicus, the 16th century father of modern astronomy, were reburied in a Polish cathedral Saturday as a cleric expressed regret for Church condemnation of his theories.*









A computer reconstruction of Nicolas Copernicus made from the skull discovered in the cathedral in Frombork, northern Poland, in 2005.

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Quantum teleportation achieved over 16 km*

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists in China have succeeded in teleporting information between photons further than ever before. They transported quantum information over a free space distance of 16 km (10 miles), much further than the few hundred meters previously achieved, which brings us closer to transmitting information over long distances without the need for a traditional signal.

http://www.physorg.com/news193551675.html

(Getting closer..:up: )


----------



## lotuseclat79

How Duality Could Resolve Dark Matter Dilemma.

*Astrophysicists need to choose between dark matter or modified gravity to explain the universe. But a strange new duality may mean they can have both*



> The problem is that galaxies rotate so fast that the matter they contain ought to fly off into space. Similarly, clusters of galaxies do not seem to contain enough mass to bind them together and so ought to fly apart. Since this manifestly doesn't happen, some force must be holding these masses in place.
> 
> Astrophysicists have put forward two explanations. The first is that these galaxies are filled with unseen mass and this so-called dark matter provides the extra gravitational tug. The second is that gravity is stronger at these intergalactic scales and so does the job by itself, an idea called modified Newtonian dynamics or MOND.
> 
> There is no love lost between the dark matter proponents and their MONDian counterparts: both say the other is wrong and scour the universe in search of evidence to damn their opponents. Neither side has convincingly crushed the other's argument so far but all concerned seem to agree that when one triumphs, the other will be ground underfoot.


Find out what entropy has to do with the conundrum - read the rest of the article!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Brownian motion moves beyond Einstein's equations.

*There are nuances to particle movement and energy at tiny scales that one of Einstein's equations did not capture, according to a paper published in Science this week. Researchers were able to measure the instantaneous velocity of a tiny glass bead undergoing Brownian motion, or making tiny random movements, and found that the particle was not always governed by the forces that Einstein predicted. Knowing how Brownian motion works at these short intervals may allow researchers to study these tiny particle systems for quantum effects.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Comet's Collision with the Sun Captured in 3-D.

Solar physicists were able to track the collision of a comet plunging into the sun for the first time. ASA's STEREO mission, which launched in 2006, is actually made up of twin spacecraft that orbit the sun, one ahead of the Earth and one behind it, and provide stereo views of the sun.









NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft caught this image of a comet impacting the sun. The comet apparently survived the intense heat of the sun's outer atmosphere - called the corona - and disappeared in the chromosphere, which is a thin layer of plasma found between the visible surface of the sun and the corona. Credit: NASA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Photo: WISE Telescope Captures Heart Nebula.









A new mosaic from NASA's newest infrared observatory captures the Heart and Soul nebulae, so named because of their resemblance to hearts - both the Hallmark-card and the blood-pumping variety.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researchers discover the plasmaron, a new quasiparticle.

*A new quasiparticle has been discovered, according to a report published in Science on Thursday. The new phenomenon, called a "plasmaron," was found in a sample of doped graphene, where it appeared courtesy of the material's unusual arrangement of electrons in its electron cloud. Because the behavior of the quasiparticle is different from that of its individual components, researchers should be able to use this new knowledge to make better predictions of the atomic and molecular states present in graphene, and keep watch for the appearance of plasmarons in similar materials.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

'Nature's Batteries' May Have Helped Power Early Lifeforms.

*Researchers at the University of Leeds have uncovered new clues to the origins of life on Earth.

The team found that a compound known as pyrophosphite may have been an important energy source for primitive lifeforms.

There are several conflicting theories of how life on Earth emerged from inanimate matter billions of years ago -- a process known as abiogenesis.

"It's a chicken and egg question," said Dr Terry Kee of the University of Leeds, who led the research. "Scientists are in disagreement over what came first -- replication, or metabolism. But there is a third part to the equation -- and that is energy."*









A space-filling molecular model of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), with hydrogen shown white, oxygen red, phosphorous orange, nitrogen turquoise, and carbon black, and with ions marked by a negative sign. (Credit: Courtesy of Wikipedia)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Phoenix's wings have been fatally clipped.

*Phoenix's wings have been catastrophically clipped.

The Mars lander has lost its protruding solar panels, leading NASA to declare it officially dead.*









Now images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show it is casting a shadow with a different shape to when it was last active. Accumulated dust can explain this in part, but mission scientists say the main reason is that the solar arrays that powered the lander have been broken off or bent, rendering Phoenix useless.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Black hole shoved aside, along with 'central' dogma.

*Something pushed supermassive object off a galaxy's bull's-eye*









The galaxy M87, about 50 million light-years from Earth, has jets of material that emanate from a supermassive black hole (image at right). The location of the black hole is offset from the center of the galaxy's light distribution.

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Researchers Create Seven Atom Transistor, Working on Quantum Computer*



> The transistor is the foundation for the semiconductor industry and all of our modern electronic miracles. The ability to shrink transistors has led to cheaper and faster electronic devices, as well as solid state storage and digital photography.
> 
> Australian researchers have now created the world's smallest transistor, consisting of only seven atoms arranged into a single silicon crystal. It is fully functional and can regulate and control the flow of electrical current, despite being only 4nm across.


http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher...+Working+on+Quantum+Computer/article18476.htm


----------



## lotuseclat79

Planetary scientists solve 40-year-old mysteries of Mars' northern ice cap.

*Scientists have reconstructed the formation of two curious features in the northern ice cap of Mars-a chasm larger than the Grand Canyon and a series of spiral troughs-solving a pair of mysteries dating back four decades while finding new evidence of climate change on Mars.*









This is a view of the north polar region of Mars from orbit. The ice-rich polar cap (quasi-circular white area at center) is about 1,000 km across. It is bisected by a large canyon, Chasma Boreale, on the right side. Dark, spiral-shaped bands are troughs. Chasma Boreale is about the length of the Grand Canyon in the US and up to 2 km deep. Credit: NASA/Caltech/JPL/E. DeJong/J. Craig/M. Stetson









Morphology of the north polar region of Mars. Spiral troughs are seen throughout the ice-rich polar cap (quasi-circular dome at center), and Chasma Boreale is the large canyon dividing the polar cap into two lobes. Chasma Boreale is the size of the Grand Canyon in the US and up to 2 kilometers deep. Shaded-relief image based on Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter data. Credit: NASA/GSFC









The top panel shows a perspective view of northern polar cap of Mars, looking up Chasma Boreale. The yellow line indicates ground track of SHARAD in orbit. The bottom panel shows a cutaway view of same, showing subsurface layers as viewed by SHARAD. Detailed mapping of layers over many orbits reveals the history of ice accumulation and chasma formation. Credit: NASA/Caltech/JPL/E. DeJong/J. Craig/M. Stetson

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The IBEX Ribbon: Are we in for a new era in the Sun's voyage through the Galaxy?.

*Is the Sun going to enter soon a million-degree galactic cloud of interstellar gas? Scientists from the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Los Alamos Labs, Southwest Research Institute, and Boston University suggest that the Ribbon of enhanced emissions of Energetic Neutral Atoms, discovered last year by a NASA Small Explorer satellite IBEX, could be explained by a geometric effect coming up because of approach of the Sun to the boundary between the Local Cloud of interstellar gas and another cloud of a very hot gas called the Local Bubble. If this hypothesis is correct, IBEX is catching matter from a hot neighboring interstellar cloud, which the Sun might enter in a hundred years.*









The Sun traveling through the Galaxy happens to cross at the present time a blob of gas about ten light-years across, with a temperature of 6-7 thousand degrees kelvin. This so-called Local Interstellar Cloud is immersed in a much larger expanse of a million-degree hot gas, named the Local Bubble. The energetic neutral atoms (ENA) are generated by charge exchange at the interface between the two gaseous media. ENA can be observed provided the Sun is close enough to the interface. The apparent Ribbon of ENA discovered by the IBEX satellite can be explained by a geometric effect: one observes many more ENA by looking along a line-of-sight almost tangent to the interface than by looking in the perpendicular direction. (Source: SRC/Tentaris,ACh/Maciej Frolow)

So, does Earth only have about 100 years left?

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent.

*It's hardly a secret that large segments of the population choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs: economic, political, religious, or otherwise. But many studies have indicated that these same people aren't happy with viewing themselves as anti-science, which can create a state of cognitive dissonance. That has left psychologists pondering the methods that these people use to rationalize the conflict.

A study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology takes a look at one of these methods, which the authors term "scientific impotence"-the decision that science can't actually address the issue at hand properly. It finds evidence that not only supports the scientific impotence model, but suggests that it could be contagious. Once a subject has decided that a given topic is off limits to science, they tend to start applying the same logic to other issues.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists prove even the thought of money spoils enjoyment.

*The idea that money does not buy happiness has been around for centuries, but now scientists have proven for the first time that even the thought of money reduces satisfaction in the simple pleasures of life.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Moon Dirt Mystery Piled Up Over Billions of Years.

*Cosmic material that has settled on the moon over billions of years could shed light on where a peculiar type of nitrogen in our solar system came from, a new study suggests.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Solar Scientists Agree That the Sun's Recent Behavior Is Odd, but the Explanation Remains Elusive.

*The most recent solar minimum was both long and pronounced. But why?*









SOLAR SURPRISES: An image from the new Solar Dynamics Observatory shows activity on the sun's surface; the solar cycle has proved difficult to accurately predict. NASA/GSFC/AIA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Applied physicists create building blocks for a new class of optical circuits.

*Imagine creating novel devices with amazing and exotic optical properties not found in Nature -- by simply evaporating a droplet of particles on a surface.*









Schematics of two types of optical circuits: the three particle trimer functions as a nanoscale magnet, while the seven particle heptamer exhibits almost no scattering for a narrow range of wavelengths due to interference. Credit: The laboratory of Federico Cappaso, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

> America may have eighty-sixed its moon base ambitions, but the Japanese have no plans to let perfectly good lunar real estate go to waste. An ambitious $2.2 billion project in the works at JAXA, the Japanese space agency, plans to put humanoid robots on the moon by 2015, and now official backing from the Prime Minister's office says the Japanese could have an unmanned lunar base up and running by 2020.


http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-05/japan-wants-moon-base-2020-built-robots-robots


----------



## lotuseclat79

NASA Fixes Bug On Voyager 2.

*NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has resumed sending science data from deep space after engineers fixed a bug that had garbled the information it was sending back to Earth, a leading project scientist said on Monday.*









Voyager 2 Studies Outer Limits of Sun's Heliosphere

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

At NYC sci fest, asking 'What if we're holograms?'.

*Brian Greene works in a world where scientific reasoning rules all and imagination leads to the most unlikely truths. Greene and other "string theorists" are exploring a possible scenario in which people and the world around us are actually a 3-D holographic projection of two-dimensional data that exists outside the accessible universe.*









Brian Greene, a string theorist known for bringing his complex field of science to the masses, and Tracy Day, his wife and organizing partner behind World Science Festival, pose in Times Square, New York, Wednesday May 19, 2010. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)



> "Consciousness is nothing but the physical processes taking place in the brain. ... Consciousness is just another interaction of particles."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Black Hole Universe.

*Is our universe housed in a black hole? Or did it exist before the Big Bang? If so, we could solve the mystery of dark energy-surprisingly, it's all down to the humble neutrino.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Acupuncture's molecular effects pinned down.

*Scientists have taken another important step toward understanding just how sticking needles into the body can ease pain.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Science Of Grilling.

*Cooks want to tell you grilling is an art or a craft. We know better. Grilling, like anything worth doing, is a science. Anything that has been around for a million years is a science and fire has been considered by millenia as the thing that put humans on the map so nothing is more fundamental to anthropology, evolution and archeology than man, meat and fire.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists breed goats that produce spider silk.

*Researchers from the University of Wyoming have developed a way to incorporate spiders' silk-spinning genes into goats, allowing the researchers to harvest the silk protein from the goats' milk for a variety of applications. For instance, due to its strength and elasticity, spider silk fiber could have several medical uses, such as for making artificial ligaments and tendons, for eye sutures, and for jaw repair. The silk could also have applications in bulletproof vests and improved car airbags.*









Goats that produce spider silk protein in their milk could enable researchers to collect large quantities of the silk. Image credit: National Science Foundation.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

'Neutrino oscillation': The OPERA experiment likely seen the first tau-neutrino.

*After seven years since the start of construction of the OPERA experiment and three years of operation in the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), one of the many billions of muon-neutrinos produced at the CERN accelerator complex (CNGS) has likely "transformed" into a tau-neutrino that has been observed by the OPERA apparatus.*









Neutrino

Related article: First 'chameleon particle' spotted after changing type.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Solar Flare Activity For First Light.









A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by the new Solar Dynamics Observatory depicting Solar Flare Activity For First Light: Images taken by SDO immediately after the AIA CCD cameras cooled on March 30, 2010. This image shows several flares and their associated waves across the Sun. Credit: NASA/GSFC/AIA .

-- Tom


----------



## franca

Experimental 'scramjet'










The X-51 Waverider is released form the B52 before it streaks away to hit speeds in excess of 4,500mph


----------



## lotuseclat79

Space: It's....Vast [PIC].

Awesome!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Kilogram and the Kitchen Sink.

*Physicists can't make up their minds how heavy a kilogram should be. Perhaps they should allow a new generation of scientists to help*.









Kilogram

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Backwards Black Holes Might Make Bigger Jets.

*Going against the grain may turn out to be a powerful move for black holes. New research suggests supermassive black holes that spin backwards might produce more ferocious jets of gas. The results have broad implications for how galaxies change over time.*









This artist's concept shows a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its core. The black hole is shooting out jets of radio waves. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

A quick fix for queues.

*Queuing, standing in line... it's what we do well, but complain about the most. Thankfully, science is coming to the rescue as researchers in Taiwan have devised a formula that could revolutionize restaurants, post offices, customer service desks, and theater ticket sales everywhere.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Computer Program Learns to Sort Galaxies Like a Human.

*A computer algorithm modeled after the human brain has learned how to recognize different galaxy types ranging from spiral to elliptical, and can now help flesh-and-blood stargazers with the daunting task of classifying billions of galaxies.

The machine-learning codes have proven reliable enough to agree with human classifications of galaxies 90 percent of the time, according to scientists at University College London and the University of Cambridge in the UK.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicsts reveal how to cope with 'frustration'.

*For most people, frustration is a condition to be avoided. But for scientists studying certain "frustrated" ensembles of interacting components - that is, those which cannot settle into a state that minimizes each interaction - it may be the key to understanding a host of puzzling phenomena that affect systems from neural networks and social structures to protein folding and magnetism.*









This is a simple frustrated system. Credit: JQI









Laser beams intersect at the atoms. Credit: JQI









This is how laser beams affect the atoms. Credit: JQI

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Particle collision thought to replicate Big Bang forces, may help explain how things exist.

*By the logic of science, things simply shouldn't exist. The best scientific minds of several generations have reasoned that shortly after the Big Bang created the universe, matter and antimatter should have wiped each other out.*

Wow!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Teenagers cannot concentrate because their brains are undeveloped.

*New research from the UK has found that teenagers and young adults find it hard to concentrate because their brains are more similar to those of much younger children than those of mature adults, with more grey matter but lower efficiency.*

Well, no surprise there!

But, this was a big surprise:


> *The findings suggest the brain is not fully developed until people reach their late twenties or even early thirties, which is much later than previously thought.*


-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Volunteers begin Mars500 isolation*

Six would-be cosmonauts have entered a sealed facility where they will spend 18 months with no windows and only e-mail contact with the outside world.

The men are taking part in the Mars500 project, which aims to simulate a mission to Mars.

They entered the craft, located at a medical institute in Moscow, just before 1100 BST on Thursday.



> "They will have to cope with limited consumables, for example," said Dr Martin Zell from the European Space Agency, a key partner in the project.
> 
> "That means everything will be onboard at the start. There will be no re-load, re-supply whatsoever. It will be like a real mission."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10197470.stm


----------



## lotuseclat79

Life May Have Formed on Earth Thanks to a Lush, Enveloping Haze.

*You can't rise from the primordial ooze if that ooze is frozen. But about three billion years ago the sun was around thirty percent dimmer, meaning our planet should have been a snowball. The puzzle has haunted scientists for decades, but a study in Science has a new answer: It argues that a dense cloud of "fractal haze" enveloped the Earth.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Astronomers solve Walt Whitman meteor mystery.

*In his landmark collection Leaves of Grass, famed poet Walt Whitman wrote of a "strange huge meteor-procession" in such vivid detail that scholars have debated the possible inspiration for decades.*









On the evening of July 20, 1860, a meteor fragmented during its nearly-horizontal passage through the Earth's atmosphere and became a fireball procession, the subject of a painting by Frederic Church and a poem by Walt Whitman. (Image courtesy Judith Filenbaum Hernstadt)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Fresh insight into the origins of Planet Earth.

*For the first time, an international team of researchers has incorporated extensive geochemical data on the formation of Earth into a model - with surprising results: more models can be used for the process of Earth's accretion than previously assumed.*









Around 100 million years in the making: the Moon and the Earth

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Old Moon Rover Beams Surprising Laser Flashes to Earth.

*A Soviet robot lost on the dusty plains of the Moon for the past 40 years has been found again, and it is returning surprisingly strong laser pulses to Earth.*









It looks like a creature from science fiction, but Lunokhod 1 is real. Photo Credit: Lavochkin Association.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists create artificial mini 'black hole'.

*Scientists from China have built a device that can trap and absorb microwaves coming from all directions with a 99% absorption rate - a property that makes the device simulate, to some extent, an astrophysical black hole.*









(Left) A model of the electromagnetic omnidirectional absorber, in which electromagnetic waves hitting the cylinder bend spirally in the shell region, and become trapped and absorbed by the lossy core. (Right) A photograph of the device, which is composed of 60 concentric layers of copper-coated metamaterials. Image credit: Institute of Physics.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Oyster Shells Tell Story.

*Some oysters provide pearls but all oyster shells have a story to tell, if you know how to look for them. One compelling story about North America's first successful English settlement has unfolded before University of South Florida researchers equipped with a special tool used in a unique way.*










-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The complex lives of bubbles revealed.

*The mystery surrounding what happens when bubbles collide has finally been busted. And knowing how bubbles bounce apart and fuse together could improve the quality of ice-cream and champagne as well as increase efficiency in the mining industry.*

-- Tom


----------



## franca

Scientists find a 'hint of life' on Saturn's moon Titan

Read more:


----------



## lotuseclat79

What does the hottest matter ever made sound like?.

*If you could stand the heat inside a trillion-degree soup of subatomic particles created to mimic the conditions of the big bang, this is what you would hear.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

APOD: 2010 June 5 -Thor's Helmet.









N2359 Thor's Helmet

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

"Twistor" Theory Reignites the Latest Superstring Revolution (2 web pages).

*A simple twist of fate: An old idea from Roger Penrose excites string theorists*



> They have already spun off calculational techniques that make child's play of the toughest problems in ordinary particle physics.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Gravity-like theories give insight into the strong force.

*A new computation of the constant that describes the strength of the force between the quarks in a proton may help theorists tackle one of the most challenging problems of physics: analytically solving the theory of QCD and determining its coupling strength at large distances.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Survey reveals many thousands of supermassive black holes.

*An international team of scientists, led by Penn State Distinguished Professor Donald Schneider, has announced its completion of a massive census in which they identified the quasars in one quarter of the sky.*









The special-purpose telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is now engaged in a number of new astronomical surveys that will continue through 2014, ranging from the discovery of new planets to mapping the large-scale structure of the universe. Credit: The Sloan Digital Sky Survey

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New Type of 'Metalens' Shatters Diffraction Limit.

*An entirely new type of lens can capture details that are 1/80th the wavelength of light*



> The diffraction limit is the inability of conventional lenses to resolve details much smaller than the wavelength of illuminating light. That makes intuitive sense since its hard to see how light can capture details much smaller than its wavelength.
> 
> That intuition is correct at distances of more than a few wavelengths from the object, what physicists call the far field. But at closer distances, em waves do capture sub-wavelength details. However, the contribution of this so-called near field to the em wave is tiny and falls off exponentially with distance.
> 
> The bottom line is that the near field, and the sub wavelength details that it contains, is practically undetectable at distances beyond a few wavelengths.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

How to Send Your Face to Space.

*NASA wants to put your face in space. No, really: Just in time for the last two space shuttle flights, NASA is offering to fly pictures of anyone who uploads a head shot on their Face in Space website to the International Space Station.*

-- Tom


----------



## franca

First clear image










The first high-resolution image of a distant quasar taken as part of a Europe wide project using radio telescopes. The first image shows fine details of the quasar 3C 196 observed at wavelengths between 4 and 10 musing just a small fraction of the final LOFAR array that will cover large parts of Europe


----------



## lotuseclat79

Maybe the math behind string theory is overrated anyway.



> So, we've reached a point where math can't answer many questions in biology, but the most promising path for advancing physics (string theory) remains trapped in the realm of pure math. Is this a cue for panic? Maybe not, as illustrated in an exchange between two panelists: "You're not upset because you're not a mathematician," Chaitin told Livio, "you don't care because you're a physicist."
> 
> "We know there's problems with quantum mechanics, but has that stopped anything?" Livio countered.
> 
> It's not just quantum mechanics. Biology may have resisted easy quantification, but it has hardly slowed the field down. If math turns out to be just a tool (and a tool with some substantial limits), that may disappoint mathematicians, but it won't necessarily slow down our ability to understand and model the natural world. This may be my background as a scientist talking, but that seems like the most important consideration, and I'm willing to live with a community of disappointed mathematicians in order to get there.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

World Science Festival: What if Physicists Don't Find the Higgs Boson?.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

13 Stripes and 51 Stars.

*A mathematician figures out the best way to jam an extra star onto the American flag. Plus: Generate patterns for every possible flag up to 100 stars*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Explained: Quark gluon plasma.

*For a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe consisted of a hot soup of elementary particles called quarks and gluons. A few microseconds later, those particles began cooling to form protons and neutrons, the building blocks of matter.*









A visualization of one of the first full-energy collisions between gold ions at Brookhaven Lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, as captured by the Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC (STAR) detector. Image: Brookhaven National Laboratory



> In 2005, scientists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory reported creating QGP by smashing gold atoms together at nearly the speed of light. These collisions can produce temperatures up to 4 trillion degrees - 250,000 times warmer than the sun's interior and hot enough to melt protons and neutrons into quarks and gluons.
> 
> The resulting super-hot, super-dense blob of matter, about a trillionth of a centimeter across, could give scientists new insights into the properties of the very early universe. So far, they have already made the surprising discovery that QGP is a nearly frictionless liquid, not the gas that physicists had expected.


So, if anyone ever asks you the question: "Where is the hottest temperature in the known (that we currently know of) Universe?" Tell them it is right here on Earth (afawk to date, as other equally advanced civilizations (if they exist) would probably have done the same science).

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Complex Life Traced to Ancient Gene Parasites.

*Mysterious gene structures called introns that help make complex organisms possible are descended from DNA parasites that infested bacteria billions of years ago, according to a new study.

Researchers studying Thermosynechococcus elongatus, a heat-loving microbe teeming with so-called mobile group II introns - the contemporary version of those parasites - found that as temperatures rise, the introns infect genes more efficiently.

Published June 8 in PLoS Biology, the findings fit the notion that group II introns flourished in the early Earth's heat, and were ultimately co-opted into their hosts' genomes.

"The introns that currently exist in the genomes of humans and other higher organisms are thought to have evolved from these group II introns," said molecular biologist Georg Mohr of the University of Texas at Austin. "Over evolutionary time, they acquired function."*









The hot springs in Beppu, Japan where T. elongatus was discovered./Flickr/Joka2000.









The structure of a T. elongatus type II intron./PLoS Biology.









T. elongatus./Georg Mohr.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Japanese Spacecraft Deploys First-Ever Solar Sail.









The unfurling of a Japanese solar sail, the first demonstration of a new space propulsion technology, went exactly according to plan

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Why did nearly all life on Earth die 250 million years ago?.

*Among paleontologists, it's sometimes called the "Great Dying." Roughly a quarter of a billion years ago, 90-95 percent of all life on Earth died out. It took 30 million years for the planet to recover. What happened?

Most people are familiar with the extinction event 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. But the Great Dying was much more devastating. It left almost nothing alive.*









Permian Life

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Entropy study suggests Pictish symbols likely were part of a written language.

*How can you tell the difference between random pictures and an ancient, symbol-based language? A new study has shown that concepts in entropy can be used to measure the degree of repetitiveness in Pictish symbols from the Dark Ages, with the results suggesting that the inscriptions appear be much closer to a modern written language than to random symbols. The Picts, a group of Celtic tribes that lived in Scotland from around the 4th-9th centuries AD, left behind only a few hundred stones expertly carved with symbols. Although the symbols appear to convey information, it has so far been impossible to prove that this small sample of symbols represents a written language.*









This Pictish symbol stone shows two symbols: a divided rectangle with a Z rod and a triple disc, as well as battle imagery. Image credit: Lee, et al.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New model is proposed to explain absence of organic compounds on surface of Mars.

*The ongoing search for evidence of past or present life on Mars includes efforts to identify organic compounds such as proteins in Martian soil, but their absence to date remains a mystery. A new theory to explain what happens to these carbon-based molecules is presented in an article published in Astrobiology.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Planck Mission: Space Probe Peers Into Dark Cosmos.

*Imagine watching the birth of the universe -- the Big Bang -- from the outside. What would you have seen?*

Answer:


> At that moment and for the next 380,000 years, a Big Nothing, as photons and particles clung to each other in a high-energy dance that kept any light from escaping.











An artist's impression depicts the Planck telescope against a background image of the large-scale structure in the Milky Way. Photo copyright European Space Agency.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Chance for Life on Io.

*Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Could it also be a habitat for life?*









High resolution close-up of Io's volcanic surface. Credit: NASA/Galileo

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Stretching single molecules allows precision studies of interacting electrons.

*With controlled stretching of molecules, Cornell researchers have demonstrated that single-molecule devices can serve as powerful new tools for fundamental science experiments. Their work has resulted in detailed tests of long-existing theories on how electrons interact at the nanoscale.*









A scanning electron micrograph of a gold bridge suspended 40 nanometers above a silicon substrate. In the experiment, the bridge is severed in the middle, a single molecule is suspended across the gap, and the substrate is bent to stretch the molecule while simultaneously measuring the electron current through the molecule. Image: J.J. Parks

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Did a 'sleeper' field awake to expand the universe?.

*It's the ultimate sleeper agent. An energy field lurking inactive since the big bang might now be causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.*









Supernovae point to expansion (Image: NASA/CXC/JPL-Caltech/Calar Alto O. Krause et al)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

How To Destroy A Black Hole.

*Astrophysicists think they know how to destroy a black hole. The puzzle is what such destruction would leave behind*









Black Hole depiction

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Team cracks secret of suspended animation.

*Scientists believe they may be able to explain how some people who apparently freeze to death can be revived after a form of suspended animation.*

So, what about those whom have had themselves cryogenically frozen - do they have a chance? I assume Ted Williams does not since his head was separated from his body and both are frozen.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Video of Hayabusa's return.

-- Tom :up:


----------



## lotuseclat79

New study indicates an ancient ocean may have covered one-third of Mars.

*A vast ocean likely covered one-third of the surface of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, according to a new study conducted by University of Colorado at Boulder scientists.*









This is an illustration of what Mars might have looked like some 3.5 billion years ago when an ocean likely covered one-third of the planet's surface, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. (Illustration by University of Colorado) Credit: University of Colorado

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Carl Sagan was right: "Each dot is an entire galaxy containing billions of stars.".









Star-forming galaxies like grains of sand: Thousands of galaxies crowd into this Herschel image of the distant Universe. Each dot is an entire galaxy containing billions of stars.

How can there not be other life out there?

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New Quantum Theory Separates Gravitational and Inertial Mass.

*The equivalence principle is one of the corner stones of general relativity. Now physicists have used quantum mechanics to show how it fails*









Quantum Mass

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Bouncing beads outwit Feynman (w/Video).

*A life-size thought experiment machine performs work*

Yup, I think the Feynman would have been truly amazed - but, he also would have been able to then figure out why rather than trust his initial assumptions that were the reason he thought it would not work (with emphasis on reason).

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Unexpected antineutrino masses a puzzler for Standard Model.

*Two weeks ago, experimental results seemed to indicate that we're getting a handle on the low-mass particles called neutrinos. Today, Fermilab announced results generated using antineutrinos that suggests we may need to make major revisions to the Standard Model of physics. The textbook description of antimatter is that it's like a mirror image of more familiar particles. But new work from Fermilab indicates that the mass differences among antineutrinos aren't the same as those for regular neutrinos. If the findings hold up, they would call for some new physics to explain the discrepancy.*









Anti-Neutrino Result: Fermilab

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Durham astronomers' doubts about the 'dark side'.

*New research by astronomers in the Physics Department at Durham University suggests that the conventional wisdom about the content of the Universe may be wrong. Graduate student Utane Sawangwit and Professor Tom Shanks looked at observations from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite to study the remnant heat from the Big Bang. The two scientists find evidence that the errors in its data may be much larger than previously thought, which in turn makes the standard model of the Universe open to question.*









The unresolved radio sources used by Sawangwit & Shanks to measure the effect of telescope smoothing are marked on the WMAP CMB map (open circles). Sawangwit and Shanks found that the radio sources implied stronger telescope smoothing than previously found, suggesting that the CMB ripple size may be smaller. Click the image for larger version (Credit: NASA/WMAP plus Durham University).

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

A fraction too much friction causes physics fisticuffs.

*Quick, out behind the bike shed, Professors Pendry and Leonhardt are having a fight over a completely hypothetical situation. If we hurry, we should catch the end of round three. Science: it is exactly like that all the time. It's just that, most of the time, the participants keep their disapproval of each other much more hidden.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicists Propose New Method for Quantum Computing.

*The new system, which can compute faster and more efficiently than previous quantum computers, may bring the technology closer to reality.*









Illustration from a poster by Susanne Yelin, Elena Kuznetsova, and Robin Côté.









Illustration from a poster by Susanne Yelin, Elena Kuznetsova, and Robin Côté.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Sharper than Hubble: Large Binocular Telescope achieves major breakthrough.

*The next generation of adaptive optics has arrived at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona, providing astronomers with a new level of image sharpness never before seen. Developed in a collaboration between Italy's Arcetri Observatory of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) and the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, this technology represents a remarkable step forward for astronomy.*









A picture of the movable secondary mirror during its installation in the Arcetri lab. The image shows the 672 tiny magnets spread over the back of the mirror. The reflecting face of the mirror is face down. The upper portion contains the electro-mechanical devices that control the magnets. Image: LBT Collaboration / R. Cerisola









A double star as observed with the LBT in standard mode (left), and with the adaptive correction activated (right). Because of atmospheric blurring, the fainter companion of the star cannot be identified in the images taken in standard mode, while it is easily visible when the adaptive module is activated. A third faint star also becomes visible in the upper right part of the frame, thanks to the increased sensitivity of the telescope in adaptive mode. Image: LBT Collaboration

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Massive black holes 'switched on' by galaxy collision.

*The centre of most galaxies harbours a massive black hole. Our Milky Way galaxy is one of these - the exotic object there however is reasonably calm, unlike some super-massive gravity monsters in other galaxies. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and other institutions around the world have now analysed 199 of these galaxies and discovered what makes the black holes at the galaxy centres become active: The black holes were "switched on" some 700 million years ago after major galaxy merger events. (The Astrophysical Journal, in press)*









Galaxy mergers - here shown is the system NGC 2207 in the constellation Canis Major - are the most likely reason why active galactic nuclei occur. Image: ESO

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The 'God particle' may exist in five forms, Large Hadron Collider's rival project finds.

*The elusive "God particle" - or Higgs boson - being sought in the Large Hadron Collider may exist in multiple forms, according to a new study.*









The Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois Photo: Fermilab



> The Higgs boson is thought to mediate the force through which all the other particles acquire mass. But scientists overseeing the DZero experiment at the Tevatron particle accelerator in Illinois said the suggestion that five different particles could be responsible for this transaction may point to new laws of physics beyond the Standard Model.
> 
> Researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago observed that collisions of protons and anti-protons produced pairs of matter particles one per cent more often than they yielded anti-matter particles.
> 
> This "asymmetry" of matter and anti-matter is beyond what could be explained by the Standard Model and could be accounted for by the existence of five Higgs bosons with similar masses but different electric charges, the researchers said.
> 
> Three would have a neutral charge and one each would have a negative and positive electric charge. This is known as the two-Higgs doublet model.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Hubble Finds Jupiter's Missing Stripe.

*New Hubble images reveal what happened to one of Jupiter's main cloud belts:


Spoiler



It's hiding behind ammonia clouds.


*








Jupiter



> "Weather forecast for Jupiter's Southern Equatorial Belt: cloudy with a chance of ammonia," planetary scientist Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado said in a press release Wednesday.


-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*Research Suggests Water Content of Moon's Interior Underestimated*

NASA-funded scientists estimate from recent research that the volume of water molecules locked inside minerals in the moon's interior could exceed the amount of water in the Great Lakes here on Earth.

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, along with other scientists across the nation, determined that the water was likely present very early in the moon's formation history as hot magma started to cool and crystallize. This finding means water is native to the moon.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/lunar_water.html


----------



## lotuseclat79

Battle of the bugs leaves humans as collateral damage.

*It's a tragedy of war that innocent bystanders often get caught in the crossfire. But now scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oxford have shown how a battle for survival at a microscopic level could leave humans as the unlikely victims.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicists help biologists to understand protein folding.

*Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have created a microscopic device to assist biologists in making very fast molecular measurements that aid the understanding of protein folding. This development may help elucidate biological processes associated with diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Since proteins in the body perform different functions according to their shape, the folding process is considered a key area of study.*









Image of the microfluidic mixer used for chaperonin measurements. The scale bar is three tenths of a millimeter. credit: Shawn Pfeil









Illustration of rhodanese folding on its own (left) and inside the GroEL-GroES chaperonin cavity (right). The chaperonin slows folding of the C-terminal domain (red), but preserves the folding sequence and prevents aggregation with other proteins. Fast measurements with the UCSB mixer showed that contrary to expectation, capping of the cavity by GroES does not initiate folding. credit: Hagen Hofmann from PNAS, "Single-Molecule spectroscopy of protein folding in a chaperonin cage," copyright PNAS

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Astronomers Witness a Star Being Born.

*Astronomers have glimpsed what could be the youngest known star at the very moment it is being born. Not yet fully developed into a true star, the object is in the earliest stages of star formation and has just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust, according to a new study that appears in the current issue of the Astrophysical Journal.*









Astronomers caught a glimpse of a future star just as it is being born out of the surrounding gas and dust, in a star-forming region similar to the one pictured above. (Photo: NASA, ESA)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Seventh Graders Find a Cave on Mars.

*California middle school students using the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter have found lava tubes with one pit that appears to be a skylight to a cave.*









Sixteen seventh-grade students at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found the Martian pit feature at the center of the superimposed red square in this image while participating in a program that enables students to use the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

-- Tom :up:


----------



## lotuseclat79

Video: Testing Quantum Gravity With Bosons in an Elevator Shaft.

*Dropping ultra-cold quantum gas down an elevator shaft could help prove Einstein wrong. Scientists have shown that it's possible to keep sufficiently close tabs on quantum mechanical objects in free fall to tell whether two such objects experience gravity the same way.*









Image and Video: ZARM - University of Bremen

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Cassini Getting the Lowdown on Titan This Weekend.

*NASA's Cassini spacecraft will take its lowest dip through the hazy atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan in the early morning of June 21 UTC, which is the evening of June 20 Pacific time. This weekend's flyby, which is the 71st Titan flyby of the mission even though it is known as "T70," takes Cassini 70 kilometers (43 miles) lower than it has ever been at Titan before.*









Artist's concept of Cassini's flyby of Saturn's moon Titan. The spacecraft flies to within 880 kilometers (547 miles) of Titan's surface during its 71st flyby of Titan, known as "T70," the lowest in the entire mission. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Halfway to Pluto, New Horizons Wakes Up in 'Exotic Territory'.

*Zipping through space at nearly a million miles per day, NASA's New Horizons probe is halfway to Pluto and just woke up for the first time in months to look around.*









An artist's concept of New Horizons.









Space artist Ron Miller's concept of hypothetical geysers and sundogs on Pluto.









New Horizons baseline spacecraft design. Image Credit: The Boeing Company



> Stay tuned for 2015


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Faster-than-light electric currents could explain pulsars.

*Researchers have built a sort of wire in which an electric pulse can outpace light. They get away with it because the pulse is not a causal process. It does not ripple down the line because charged particles are bumping into each other, a process that is subject to Einstein's speed limit.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

APOD: 2010 June 21 - Sunrise Solstice at Stonehenge.









Circa 2008

-- Tom


----------



## iltos

not quite "a world" or a new species, but tantalizingly close to both 


> A team of scientists from the Instituto Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of Texas has succeeded in identifying one of the most complex organic molecules yet found in the material between the stars, the so-called interstellar medium. The discovery of anthracene could help resolve a decades-old astrophysical mystery concerning the production of organic molecules in space. The researchers report their findings in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.http://www.physorg.com/news196334906.html


----------



## ekim68

Wow, that's a cool picture, Tom...:up:

*Music of the sun recorded by scientists*



> Astronomers at the University of Sheffield have managed to record for the first time the eerie musical harmonies produced by the magnetic field in the outer atmosphere of the sun.
> 
> They found that huge magnetic loops that have been observed coiling away from the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as coronal loops, vibrate like strings on a musical instrument.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7840201/Music-of-the-sun-recorded-by-scientists.html

Video is cool..


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists get a look at the birth of the Milky Way.

*For the first time, a team of astronomers has succeeded in investigating the earliest phases of the evolutionary history of our home Galaxy, the Milky Way. The scientists, from the Argelander Institute for Astronomy at Bonn University and the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn, deduce that the early Galaxy went from smooth to clumpy in just a few hundred million years. The team publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.*









An image of the globular star cluster M80 (NGC 6093) made using the Hubble Space Telescope. M80 contains hundreds of thousands of stars and is one of 147 globular clusters known to be associated with the Milky Way. Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team / AURA / STScI / NASA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Oceans stem the tide of evolution.

*Toxic seas may have been responsible for delaying the evolution of life on Earth by 1 billion years, experts at Newcastle University have revealed.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Sterile neutrino back from the dead.

*A ghostly particle given up for dead is showing signs of life.*



> Not only could this "sterile" neutrino be the stuff of dark matter, thought to make up the bulk of our universe, it might also help to explain how an excess of matter over antimatter arose in our universe.
> 
> Neutrinos are subatomic particles that rarely interact with ordinary matter. They are known to come in three flavours - electron, muon and tau - with each able to spontaneously transform into another.
> 
> In the 1990s, results from the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico suggested there might be a fourth flavour: a "sterile" neutrino that is even less inclined to interact with ordinary matter than the others.


-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

*New Batteries Pack More Punch*



> Researchers have long sought to replace the graphite in the negative electrodes with carbon nanotubes, strawlike tubes of carbon. The hope is to create a more porous material with a higher surface area that could hold on to more lithium ions and thus make longer-lived batteries.
> 
> But in a paper posted online today in Nature Nanotechnology, the MIT team, led by materials scientist Yang Shao-Horn, took a very different approach: using carbon nanotubes to replace the oxide-based positive electrode. Normally, lithium ions wouldn't bind to plain carbon nanotubes. So Shao-Horn and her colleagues decorated the outer surfaces of their nanotubes with two different types of oxygen-containing chemical groups that gave them opposite charges. They then dipped their electrode starting materials alternatively in solutions containing the oppositely charged nanotubes, binding successive layers of tubes atop one another to build up their nanotube electrodes.
> 
> The result was a highly porous carbon nanotube electrode with lots of oxygens exposed on the surface, ready to bind with lithium. Detailed tests showed the new batteries hold five times as much energy as conventional quick-discharging devices called capacitors do, and they deliver that power 10 times as quickly as conventional lithium ion batteries can.


http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/06/new-batteries-pack-more-punch.html

(You gotta love this nano-stuff sometimes....:up: )


----------



## ekim68

Interesting line about the 3 percent...

*Report: 97 percent of scientists say man-made climate change is real*



> Forget the four out of five dentists who recommend Trident…. Try the 97 out of 100 scientists that believe in man-made climate change.
> 
> This data comes from a new survey out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
> 
> The study found that 97 percent of scientific experts agree that climate change is "very likely" caused mainly by human activity.
> 
> The report is based on questions posed to 1,372 scientists. Nearly all the experts agreed that it is "very likely that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for most of the unequivocal warming of the Earth's average global temperature in the second half of the twentieth century."
> 
> Click here for an interactive graphic that shows how global warming occurs.


http://content.usatoday.com/communi...elmingly-believe-in-man-made-climate-change/1


----------



## lotuseclat79

God particle signal is simulated as sound.

*Scientists have simulated the sounds set to be made by sub-atomic particles such as the Higgs boson when they are produced at the Large Hadron Collider.*









The Higgs boson particle is thought to give all others their mass









The Standard Model

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

NASA discovers crack in the Milky Way Doctor Who warned us about.









Milky Way Crack









Doctor Who Comparison Crack

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Neutrino 'ghost particle' sized up by astronomers.

*Scientists have made their most accurate measurement yet of the mass of a mysterious neutrino particle.*









The study used data on the distribution of galaxies



> Neutrinos are sometimes known as "ghost particles" because they interact so weakly with other forms of matter.
> 
> Previous experiments had shown that neutrinos have a mass, but it was so tiny that it was very hard to measure.
> 
> Using data from the largest ever survey of galaxies, researchers put the mass of a neutrino at no greater than 0.28 electron volts.
> 
> This is less than a billionth of the mass of a single hydrogen atom, the scientists say.
> 
> Their nickname is fitting: a neutrino is capable of passing through a light-year (about six trillion miles) of lead without hitting a single atom


.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Astronomers Solve The Mystery of Hanny's Voorwerp.

*Astrophysicists finally discover the origin of a supergiant cloud of green-glowing gas that is floating in intergalactic space.*









Hannys Voorwerp

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

'L2' Will be the James Webb Space Telescope's Home in Space.

*When you ask an astronomer about the James Webb Space Telescope's orbit, they'll tell you something that sounds like it came from a science-fiction novel. The Webb won't be orbiting the Earth -instead we will send it almost a million miles out into space to a place called "L2."*









The five Lagrangian points for the Sun-Earth system are shown in the diagram below. An object placed at any one of these 5 points will stay in place relative to the other two. Credit: NASA









The James Webb Space Telescope (identified as "JWST" here) relative to the Hubble telescope's orbit around the Earth. Credit: NASA

-- Tom


----------



## franca

The moment lightning struck twice










Bolt from the blue: Seen from the Hancock Tower, lighting strikes both the Willis Tower, right, and the Trump Tower in downtown Chicago as a severe storm rolls through the region last night


----------



## lotuseclat79

Quantum Noise Breaks Random Number Generator Record.

*The quantum noise in a laser beam has been used to generate random numbers at the rate of 300 Mbits per second, breaking a record that stood for just a few days*









Laser Noise

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New 'fix' for cosmic clocks could help uncover ripples in space-time.

*An international team of scientists including University of British Columbia astronomer Ingrid Stairs has discovered a promising way to fine-tune pulsars into the best precision time-pieces in the Universe.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Experiment tests underpinnings of quantum field theory, Bose-Einstein statistics of photons.

*Of all the assumptions underlying quantum mechanics and the theory that describes how particles interact at the most elementary level, perhaps the most basic is that particles are either bosons or fermions. Bosons, such as the particles of light called photons, play by one set of rules; fermions, including electrons, play by another.*









Two opposed laser beams, identical except for polarization, attempt to excite forbidden two-photon transitions in a beam of barium atoms. (Image Damon English)

-- Tom


----------



## franca

New Earth observation satellite


----------



## lotuseclat79

Millennium Simulation: "The Largest Model of Our Universe".

*The most current estimates guess that there are 125 to 200 billion galaxies in the Universe, each of which has hundreds of billions of stars. A recent German supercomputer simulation put that number even higher: 500 billion. In other words, there could be a galaxy out there for every star in the Milky Way.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Weird Antimatter Particles Discovered Deep Underground.

*Exotic antimatter particles have been detected deep within the Earth's interior, scientists report.

Studying these particles, which are thought to result from radioactive decay within Earth, could help scientists better understand how the flow of heat inside our planet affects surface events like volcanoes and earthquakes.

The particles, called geoneutrinos, are made of a strange type of matter called antimatter, which has properties opposite those of regular matter. When a regular particle, like an electron, meets with its antimatter partner, called a positron, the two annihilate each other in an energetic explosion.

Geoneutrinos are the antimatter partners of neutrinos, which are very lightweight, neutrally charged particles that are created within the sun and when a cosmic ray strikes a normal atom. An earlier project called KamLAND in Japan found the first signs of possible geoneutrinos in 2005.*









This stainless steel sphere is part of a neutrino detector located nearly a mile below the surface at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics. Credit: Paolo Lombardi INFN-MI









This view shows the exterior of outer steel sphere on a neutrino detector buried underground at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics. Credit: LNGS-INFN

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

LHC smashes beam collision record.

*Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they have moved a step closer to their aim of unlocking the mysteries of the Universe.*









The CMS experiment will search for signs of new physics in collisions at the LHC



> The world's highest-energy particle accelerator has produced a record-breaking particle collision rate - about double the previous rate.
> 
> The collider is now generating around 10,000 particle collisions per second, according to physicist Andrei Golutvin.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Redshift in cosmic dust resolves the galaxy rotation problem without dark matter and MOND.

*Olbers paradox is explained by cosmic dust instead of the Big Bang*



> Dark matter halos are an important feature of the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model of the Universe, but dark matter lacks experimental verification, and remains an unsolved problem in physics. The question may be asked:
> 
> Is dark matter responsible for the difference between galaxy rotation velocities given by Newtonian mechanics and those observed, or is there another explanation?
> ...
> the failure of MOND to explain collapsing galaxies is not proof dark matter exists, as other explanations are possible.
> ...
> the redshift measurements by Hubble and interpreted by the Doppler shift were most likely caused by QED induced redshift and have nothing to do with the recession velocities of galaxies.
> ...
> Astronomers may want to consider abandoning the LCDM model in favor of a static Universe once proposed Einstein.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Quantum Entanglement Holds DNA Together, Say Physicists.

*A new theoretical model suggests that quantum entanglement helps prevent the molecules of life from breaking apart.*









Entangled DNA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Science historian cracks the 'Plato code'.

*A science historian at The University of Manchester has cracked "The Plato Code" - the long disputed secret messages hidden in the great philosopher's writings.*












> The decoded messages also open up a surprising way to unite science and religion. The awe and beauty we feel in nature, Plato says, shows that it is divine; discovering the scientific order of nature is getting closer to God. This could transform today's culture wars between science and religion.


Eureka!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The origin of life: putting chemistry inside a cell.

*The fact that RNA appears to play a role in the chemical reactions that take place at a ribosome was one of the pieces of evidence that helped point to our current model for the origin of life: the RNA world, in which RNA both carried genetic information and catalyzed basic metabolic reactions. Nobel Prize winning researcher Jack Szostak's background in RNA chemistry led him to questions about the next step: how did RNA find its way into something that we might recognize as a cell, with membranes surrounding a distinct chemical environment.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Garrett Lisi's New E8 Paper.

*"a companion" to the previous article, "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything".

The new article is titled "An Explicit Embedding of Gravity and the Standard Model in E8". In it, Lisi shows explicitly how the algebra of the gauge fields (the forces of Nature) acting on fermions (matter) can be described by real matrices (arrays of numbers) which relate with elements of the very special group called E8. Why is this relevant for theoretical physics?

The unification of the mathematical description of the forces of Nature in a single structure is a Holy Grail for theoretical physics, ever since the Standard Model was discovered. The observation that the different strength of the four forces may be an accident of our living in a cold universe brought theoreticians to speculate that we see these forces as distinct, while in reality they are different manifestation of the same "unified field".*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

'Galactic archaeologists' find origin of Milky Way's ancient stars.

*Many of the Milky Way's ancient stars are remnants of other smaller galaxies torn apart by violent galactic collisions around five billion years ago, according to researchers at Durham University.*









This simulation shows a Milky Way-like galaxy around five billion years ago when most satellite galaxy collisions were happening. Credit: Andrew Cooper/John Helly, Durham University









This simulation shows the stellar halo around the Milky Way in the present day. Credit: Andrew Cooper/Durham University

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

A short history of the history of the Universe.

*John Mather, along with George Smoot, won the Nobel Prize for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), the probe that first caught glimpses of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) left over from the big bang. Those fluctuations are the product of the tiny, random, quantum fluctuations in the Universe immediately after the big bang, which are now visible in the large scale structures of the current Universe, as they produced clusters of galaxies and filaments of dark matter. For his talk at the Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting, Mather took the audience on both a short history of the Universe, and a history of how we've come to understand it.*









NASA image is of the Soul Nebula (a.k.a. the Embryo Nebula, IC 1848, or W5)

Let's just call the "Big Bang" the "Horrendous Space Kablooie" - Calvin & Hobbs would approve!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Goce satellite views Earth's gravity in high definition.









GOCE Gravity Field Map









The 'standard' acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface is 9.8m per second squared
In reality the figure varies from 9.78 (minimum) at the equator to 9.83 (maximum) at the poles









1. Earth is a slightly flattened sphere - it is ellipsoidal in shape
2. Goce senses tiny variations in the pull of gravity over Earth
3. The data is used to construct an idealised surface, or geoid
4. It traces gravity of equal 'potential'; balls won't roll on its 'slopes'
5. It is the shape the oceans would take without winds and currents
6. So, comparing sea level and geoid data reveals ocean behaviour
7. Gravity changes can betray magma movements under volcanoes
8. A precise geoid underpins a universal height system for the world
9. Gravity data can also reveal how much mass is lost by ice sheets









The 1,100kg Goce is built from rigid materials and carries fixed solar wings. The gravity data must be clear of spacecraft 'noise'
The 5m-by-1m frame incorporates fins to stabilise the spacecraft as it flies through the residual air in the thermosphere
Goce's accelerometers measure accelerations that are as small as 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000 of the gravity experienced on Earth
The UK-built engine ejects xenon ions at velocities exceeding 40,000m/s; the engine throttles up and down to keep Goce at a steady altitude

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

'God particle' sounds like coins in a wine glass, scientists claim.

*Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they have replicated the noise that may be created when the Higgs Boson particle is made - the sound of coins spinning in a wine glass.*

-- Tom


----------



## franca

The Supersonic Green Machine:










The plane is designed to be far more fuel-efficient than Concorde with a greatly reduced sonic boom


----------



## lotuseclat79

A Black Hole Slingshot?.

*Evidence for a recoiling black hole has been found using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM-Newton, the Hubble Space Telescope, and several ground-based telescopes.*









Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Civano et al. Optical: NASA/STScI



> This black hole kickback was caused either by a slingshot effect produced in a triple black hole system, or from the effects of gravitational waves produced after two supermassive black holes merged a few million years earlier.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Discovery of a complex, multicellular life from over two billion years ago.

*The discovery in Gabon of more than 250 fossils in an excellent state of conservation has provided proof, for the first time, of the existence of multicellular organisms 2.1 billion years ago. This finding represents a major breakthrough: until now, the first complex life forms (made up of several cells) dated from around 600 million years ago.*









Virtual reconstruction (by microtomography) of the external morphology (on the left) and internal morphology (on the right) of a fossil specimen from the Gabonese site. © CNRS Photo Library / A. El Albani & A. Mazurier

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

How 'spooky' quantum mechanical laws may affect everyday objects (Update).

*In a study published in the July 1 issue of the journal Nature, Dartmouth researchers describe one example of the microscopic quantum world influencing--even dominating, they say--the behavior of something in the macroscopic classical world.*









An optical micrograph of one of the samples measured by the research team is shown here. The electrical contacts are at the top and bottom. The gold gates used to form the QPC tunnel barrier are also labeled. Credit: Joel Stettenheim, Dartmouth College



> And because these electrons have an electrical charge, they exert a piezoelectric force on the crystal, making it move. "The remarkable thing is that only 10,000 or so electrons are able to make all 1020 (100 quintillion) atoms in the crystal move at once," said Blencowe.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Unpeeling atoms and molecules from the inside out.

*The first published scientific results from the world's most powerful hard X-ray laser, located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, show its unique ability to control the behaviors of individual electrons within simple atoms and molecules by stripping them away, one by one-in some cases creating hollow atoms.*









The world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory started operation with a bang. First experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source stripped electrons one by one from neon atoms (illustrated above) and nitrogen molecules, in some cases removing only the innermost electrons to create "hollow atoms." Understanding how the machine's ultra-bright X-ray pulses interact with matter will be critical for making clear, atomic-scale images of biological molecules and movies of chemical processes. Credit: Artwork by Gregory Stewart, SLAC.



> "We just introduced molecules into the chamber and looked at what was coming out there, and we found surprising new science," said Matthias Hoener, a postdoctoral researcher in Berrah's group at WMU and visiting scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who was first author of the paper. "Now we know that by reducing the pulse length, the interaction with the molecule becomes less violent."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

A butterfly effect in the brain.

*Next time your brain plays tricks on you, you have an excuse: according to new research by UCL scientists published today in the journal Nature, the brain is intrinsically unreliable.*



> So now we know that the brain is truly noisy, but we still don't know why. The UCL researchers suggest that one possibility is that it's the price the brain pays for high connectivity among neurons (each neuron connects to about 10,000 others, resulting in over 8 million kilometres of wiring in the human brain). Presumably, that high connectivity is at least in part responsible for the brain's computational power. However, as the research shows, the higher the connectivity, the noisier the brain. Therefore, while noise may not be a useful feature, it is at least a by-product of a useful feature.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Cosmic bubble made cold spot in big bang afterglow.

*A bubble of space that expanded differently to the rest of the early universe could explain a strange "cold spot" in the afterglow of the big bang. Such bubbles might have formed just fractions of a second after the universe came into existence, when it grew dramatically in size.*









Behind the universe's odd spots (Image: Lawrence Lawry/SPL)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

So you want to be a scientist.

*Play hard. Learn to explain what you do to people who know nothing about science. Put your collaborators' needs first. A Thursday panel here at the 60th annual Nobel Laureate Lectures at Lindau gave young scientists tips-sometimes counterintuitive-about what it takes to succeed.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists Prove Cosmic Rays Are Made of Protons.

*Cosmic rays are made of protons, scientists found as they used a vast array of telescopes arranged across the Utah desert. Each telescope in the 67-unit arrangement sees the sky with a multifaceted eye. It's no wonder they call it Fly's Eye.*









Cosmic rays, originating outside our Milky Way galaxy, slam into our atmosphere, where they set up a shower of secondary particles. Credit: NASA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researchers Shed Light on Birth of the First Stars.

*In the beginning, there were hydrogen and helium. Created in the first three minutes after the Big Bang, these elements gave rise to all other elements in the universe. The factories that made this possible were stars. Through nuclear fusion, stars generated elements such as carbon, oxygen, magnesium, silicon and the other raw materials necessary for making planets and ultimately life.*









A computer-generated model showing what the first star looked like. Image credit: Ralf Kaehler and Tom Abel



> But how did the first stars come to be? New research from Columbia University shows that it all boils down to this simple reaction:
> 
> H- + H --> H2 + electron


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New US satellite to monitor debris in Earth orbit.

*A new U.S. Air Force satellite will provide the first full-time, space-based surveillance of hundreds of satellites and thousands of pieces of debris that could crash into American and allied assets circling the Earth.*









This 2009 photo provided by the Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., shows technicians working on the Space-Based Space Surveillance satellite in Boulder, Colo. The satellite is a $500 million U.S. Air Force spacecraft that will provide the first full-time, space-based eye on thousands of other satellites and pieces of debris that could crash into American assets circling the Earth. (AP Photo/Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp.)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Japanese probe yields insights into Moon's inner life.

*Japanese astronomers on Sunday said they had found traces of a mineral that adds an important piece of knowledge to the puzzle of the Moon's geological past.*









This illustration, released by the Japan Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2007, shows a lunar observation satellite Kaguya. Japanese astronomers on Sunday said they had found traces of a mineral that adds an important piece of knowledge to the puzzle of the Moon's geological past.

Who knew? The Moon has a mantle!

-- Tom


----------



## franca

Our Universe revealed:










The stunning all-sky image taken by Planck is dominated by the brightness from our own Milky Way galaxy


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicist Predicts Gravitational Analogue Of Electrical Transformers.

*The gravitational equivalent of an electrical transformer could reveal bizarre new properties of spacetime*









Gravitational Transformer



> In 1831, Michael Faraday wrapped two wires around opposite sides of an iron doughnut and found that if he passed a current through one, it immediately induced a current in the other. Faraday's law of induction has since became a fundamental principle of electromagnetism and the operating law behind electrical transformers.
> 
> That's of more than passing interest to physicists studying the properties of space time. It turns out that the equations of general relatively are formally analogous to Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism (at least, when they are studied in the weak, linear limit).
> 
> So all the results from classical electrodynamics can be equally applied to general relativity. This allows astrophysicists to define electrogravitic and gravitomagnetic fields that are analogous to electric and magnetic fields. And this kind of thinking has led to a number of predictions such as the well known frame-dragging effect in which space time is dragged by a massive spinning object.
> 
> But today, John Swain at Boston University points out that despite the extensive work in this area, nobody has translated the simple idea of Faraday's electrical transformer into the gravitational domain, an oversight that he now corrects.


-- Tom


----------



## franca

Rise and shine:










Good morning: Night-shining clouds captured by astronauts that are illuminated by the rising Sun


----------



## ekim68

Black hole blasts breaks bubble records

International astronomy teams report the largest jets ever seen from a star-sized black hole Wednesday, ones creating a bubble of hot gas about 1,000 light years across. The jets are twice as large as those from the the largest such "microquasar" previously observed.


----------



## lotuseclat79

Particle physics: 'Honey, I shrunk the proton'.

*Scientists lobbed a bombshell into the world of sub-atomic theory on Wednesday by reporting that a primary building block of the visible Universe, the proton, is smaller than previously thought.*









Image: PSI / F. Reiser



> More precisely, revised measurements shave four percent off the particle's radius, according to a study in Nature that is highlighted on the journal's cover.
> 
> That may not seem like much, especially given the proton's infinitesimally tiny size.
> 
> But if borne out in further experiments, the findings could challenge fundamental precepts of quantum electrodynamics, the theory of how quantum light and matter interact, say its authors.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

It's too late to worry that the aliens will find us.

*Although we have yet to detect an alien ping, improvements in technology have encouraged us to think that, if transmitting extraterrestrials are out there, we might soon find them. That would be revolutionary. But some, Stephen Hawking included, sense catastrophe.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Hubble sees spectacular star birth and death.

*Hubble is the gift that keeps on giving. Check this jaw-dropping stunner:*









NGC 3603









HST SHER25









SN87a

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mathematics + Supercomputers = Big Bang Explained.

*Mathematician Daniel Reynolds is using supercomputers to unravel the mysteries of the Big Bang.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

How Finely-Tuned is the Universe?.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Dark Matter May Be Building Up Inside the Sun.

*The sun could be a net for dark matter, a new study suggests. If dark matter happens to take a certain specific form, it could build up in our nearest star and alter how heat moves inside it in a way that would be observable from Earth.*









Image: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory



> Regular matter makes up 5 percent of the energy density of the universe, and dark matter makes up 25 percent (five times more than regular matter). The remaining 70 percent is dark energy.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researchers apply computing power to crack egg shell problem.

*Researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Sheffield have applied computing power to crack a problem in egg shell formation. The work may also give a partial answer to the age old question "what came first the chicken or the egg?"*









OC-17 binding to calcium carbonate



> The answer to the question in this context is "chicken" or - at least a particular chicken protein. There is however a further twist in that this particular chicken protein turns out to come both first and last. That neat trick it performs provides new insights into control of crystal growth which is key to egg shell production.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

A tour of the Large Hadron Collider (slideshow - 18).

*Take a tour of Cern's operations and control centres, both the underground and above-ground, that make up the LHC site in Geneva*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Stargazers in awe as total eclipse arcs across Pacific.

*A total solar eclipse drew an 11,000-kilometer (6,800-mile) arc over the Pacific, plunging remote isles into darkness in a heavenly display climaxing on mysterious Easter Island.*









The sun is seen partially covered by the moon on Easter Island, 3700 km off the Chilean coast in the Pacific Ocean. A total solar eclipse drew an 11,000-kilometer (6,800-mile) arc over the Pacific Sunday, plunging remote isles into darkness in a heavenly display climaxing on mysterious Easter Island.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Earth may be younger than previously believed.



> *"If correct, that would mean the Earth was about 100 million years in the making altogether," Dr Rudge said. "We estimate that makes it about 4.467 billion years old - a mere youngster compared with the 4.537 billion-year-old planet we had previously imagined."*


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Rosetta's Closest Asteroid Flyby Photos.

The Rosetta spacecraft took its first close-up images of the asteroid Lutetia today, revealing it to be a heavily cratered, elongated rock.

Rosetta got within 2,000 miles of the asteroid, which is about 80 miles long and 4.5 billion years old. The closest images got down to less than 200 feet in resolution.









Lutetia Asteroid

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Life on Earth gets wiped out every 27 million years, say boffins.

*'Nemesis' dark star theory poohpooh'd, though*









Call that a mass extinction? Rubbish. In the old days we had proper mass extinctions.



> The next dotted line is due in 16 million years, but the associated extinction could be as much as 10 million years early.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Why Our Universe Must Have Been Born Inside a Black Hole.

*A small change to the theory of gravity implies that our universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born.*









Black Hole



> "Accordingly, our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe." So concludes Nikodem Poplawski at Indiana University in a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Revised theory of gravity doesn't predict a Big Bang.

*The Big Bang theory has formed the basis of our understanding of the universe's origins since it was first proposed in 1927 by Georges Lemaitre. And for good reason: the theory is supported by scientists' latest observations and experiments, and is based on Einstein's widely accepted theory of general relativity. But scientists are always on the lookout for any evidence that might suggest an alternative to the Big Bang. The latest in this area of research comes from astrophysicists Maximo Banados and Pedro Ferreira, who have resurrected a theory of gravity from the early 20th century and discovered that a modified version of the theory may hold some surprises.*









Illustration: Time Line of the Universe Credit: NASA/WMAP

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Plant 'breathing' mechanism discovered.

*A tiny, little-understood plant pore has enormous implications for weather forecasting, climate change, agriculture, hydrology, and more. A study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, with colleagues from the Research Center Jülich in Germany, has now overturned the conventional belief about how these important structures called stomata regulate water vapor loss from the leaf-a process called transpiration. They found that radiation is the driving force of physical processes deep within the leaf.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

A Scientist Takes On Gravity.

*A string theorist is not tethered to the notion of gravity, saying the force is a consequence of thermodynamics.*



> Padmanabhan said that the connection to thermodynamics went deeper that just Einstein's equations to other theories of gravity. "Gravity," he said recently in a talk at the Perimeter Institute, "is the thermodynamic limit of the statistical mechanics of "atoms of space-time."
> ...
> His paper, posted to the physics archive in January, resembles Dr. Jacobson's in many ways, but Dr. Verlinde bristles when people say he has added nothing new to Dr. Jacobson's analysis. What is new, he said, is the idea that differences in entropy can be the driving mechanism behind gravity, that gravity is, as he puts it an "entropic force."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Physicist's blog post rumors Higgs discovery at Fermilab.

*A rumor that Fermilab's Tevatron may have discovered evidence of a light Higgs boson wouldn't be the first unsupported speculation from Tommaso Dorigo, a physicist at the University of Padua in Italy, on his lively blog, but it is probably one of the most intriguing. Even a slight possibility that the world's second largest accelerator has beaten the largest, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in finding the last particle in the Standard Model is enough to catch most people's attention.*









The CDF detector at Fermilab. Credit: Fermilab.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Professor shows the 'wonder-full' side of physics.

*The audience laughs and applauds as the performers on stage pull trick after trick from their sleeves: suspending a ball in midair, defying gravity, turning water into ice right before people's eyes. But this isn't a magic show - it's physics.*









Physics professor J. Clint Sprott demonstrates the effects of temperature causing a can to collapse during a Wonders of Physics event. Sprott puts on multiple shows in February each year and also does demonstrations around Wisconsin and beyond. The Wonders of Physics has been a popular program since 1984. Photo: Jeff Miller

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Neutrino mass less of a mystery thanks to deep space imaging.

*Researchers are getting closer to nailing down the actual mass of neutrinos by studying their interaction with the Universe as a whole. A paper published in Physics Review Letters this week describes how the history of galaxy formation indicates that the mass of neutrinos must be less than 0.28 electron volts. This lowers the mass ceiling by half, and researchers hope that technology will allow them to find the exact neutrino mass within the next decade. Knowing the exact mass would offer insight into particle physics and cosmology, among other things.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Unravelling the Mystery of Massive Star Birth: All Stars are Born the Same Way (w/ Video).

*Astronomers have obtained the first image of a dusty disc closely encircling a massive baby star, providing direct evidence that massive stars form in the same way as their smaller brethren. This discovery, made thanks to a combination of ESO's telescopes, is described in an article in this week's issue of Nature.*









Astronomers have been able to obtain the first image of a dusty disc closely encircling a massive baby star, providing direct evidence that massive stars do form in the same way as their smaller brethren - and closing an enduring debate. The flared disc extends to about 130 times the Earth-Sun distance - or astronomical units (AU) - and has a mass similar to that of the star, roughly twenty times the Sun. In addition, the inner parts of the disc are shown to be devoid of dust. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New superconductor research may solve key problem in physics.

*Binghamton University physicist Michael Lawler and his colleagues have made a breakthrough that could lead to advances in superconductors. Their findings will be published this week in the prestigious British journal Nature.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Maya Blue and the Secret of Longevity.

*Physicists have finally discovered why a blue pigment used by the Mayans lasts so long.*









Maya Blue

-- Tom


----------



## franca

Amazing ufo china july 2010


----------



## lotuseclat79

Dark Energy Measurement Sheds New Light on Universe's Expansion.

*Through observations of massive galaxy clusters, scientists have made the most precise measurements to date of the effects of dark energy and gravity on cosmological scales. This work is an important step toward understanding why the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Something is pushing our universe apart, faster and faster, with each passing moment, and future work using similar methods should determine whether that something is dark energy or a change in the way gravity works on cosmological scales.*









In this optical and X-ray image of galaxy cluster Abell 2219, X-ray brightness from the Chandra X-ray observatory (pink) is superimposed on an optical image showing the distribution of starlight and galaxies in the cluster. The very hot gas that fills the cluster shines brightly at X-ray wavelengths. (Image courtesy Anja von der Linden et al.)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

APOD: 2010 July 18 - The Antennae Galaxies in Collision.









Antennae Galaxies

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Space Weather Turns into an International Problem.

*"The problem is solar storms-figuring out how to predict them and stay safe from their effects," says ILWS Chairperson Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters. "We need to make progress on this before the next solar maximum arrives around 2013."*










-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Solar-Powered Spacecraft Speeding Through Space.

*The IKAROS solar-powered spacecraft launched by the Japanese space agency JAXA is officially propelling through space using only solar energy.*









Ikaros

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Quantum Time Machine Solves Grandfather Paradox.

*A new kind of time travel based on quantum teleportation gets around the paradoxes that have plagued other time machines, say physicists.*









Quantum Time Travel



> Fire up the Delorean!


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Black Holes: Peering Into the Heart of Darkness (w/ Video).

*A new infrared image has captured the center of our galaxy in never-before-seen detail--showing stars and gas swirling into the super massive black hole that lurks at the heart of our own Milky Way.*









Lowell Observatory astronomer Deidre Hunter and her team study small, diffuse galaxies to learn about star formation in those regions and, perhaps, shed light on the birth of the first stars after the Big Bang. Credit: Lowell Observatory

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Birds and Mammals Have Opposite Sex Systems.

*Some 300 million years ago, the living ancestor of humans was a reptile. Like turtles and alligators today, it let the temperature at which its eggs were incubated decide their sex.*









NESTING Ancient reptiles let the temperature at which their eggs were incubated determine the sex of their offspring.



> Birds and mammals, two groups that descended from the reptiles, put sex under the more reliable control of genes, not of temperature.
> 
> In humans, men have an X and a Y chromosome, and women two X's. In reptilian times, the X and the Y were an ordinary pair of chromosomes until the male-determining gene landed on the Y. Thereupon the Y started shedding the genes it held in common with the X and shriveled to a fraction of its former size.
> 
> Birds have evolved a similar system with a twist - it's the male that has two of the same chromosomes. Their sex chromosomes are called the Z and W, with males having two Z's and females a Z and a W. The Z and W are derived from a different pair of ancestral chromosomes than the X and Y, a team led by Daniel W. Bellott and Dr. Page report in the current issue of Nature. The Z's evolution has in several ways paralleled that of the X, even though each is associated with a different sex.


-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

Got a month to spare? 

http://www.msichicago.org/matm


----------



## lotuseclat79

Could dark baryons explain dark matter?.

*"The prevailing belief about dark matter particles is that they should be about 100 or more times heavier than protons," Subir Sarkar tells PhysOrg.com. "However, we were thinking about the possibility of lighter particles that can constitute dark matter, which may be more easily detectable with current experiments."*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researchers seeking the fourth property of electrons.

*Do electrons have a fourth property in addition to mass, charge and spin, as popular physics theories such as supersymmetry predict? Researchers from Germany, the Czech Republic and the USA want to find the answer to this fundamental question of physics. In order to improve the precision of previous measurements, they have created a new material with the aid of the Juelich supercomputer JUROPA. The scientists report on this in the current issue of Nature Materials.*









Juelich researchers want to demonstrate the electric dipole moment of the electron in cooperation with colleagues in the USA and the Czech Republic. Many physical theories presume its existence -- for example, some theories concerning the creation of the universe. In order to improve the precision of previous measurements, they have created a new ceramic material with the aid of the Juelich supercomputer JUROPA. Credit: Forschungszentrum Juelich

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Taking music seriously: How music training primes nervous system and boosts learning.

*Those ubiquitous wires connecting listeners to you-name-the-sounds from invisible MP3 players -- whether of Bach, Miles Davis or, more likely today, Lady Gaga -- only hint at music's effect on the soul throughout the ages.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New hypothesis for human evolution and human nature.

*It's no secret to any dog-lover or cat-lover that humans have a special connection with animals. But in a new journal article and forthcoming book, paleoanthropologist Pat Shipman of Penn State University argues that this human-animal connection goes well beyond simple affection. Shipman proposes that the interdependency of ancestral humans with other animal species -- "the animal connection" -- played a crucial and beneficial role in human evolution over the last 2.6 million years.*









These carvings are from ivory and have been dated to between 30,000-36,000 years old, making them the oldest artworks in Europe. Credit: Photo by H. Jensen. Copyright: University of Tubingen.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists find most massive star ever discovered.

*A huge ball of brightly burning gas drifting through a neighboring galaxy may be the heaviest star ever discovered - hundreds of times more massive than the sun, scientists said Wednesday after working out its weight for the first time.

Those behind the find say the star, called R136a1, may once have weighed as much as 320 solar masses. Astrophysicist Paul Crowther said the obese star - twice as heavy as any previously discovered - has already slimmed down considerably over its lifetime.

In fact, it's burning itself off with such intensity that it shines at nearly 10 million times the luminosity of the sun.*









This image provided by the European Southern Observatory shows a new near-infrared image of the R136 cluster, obtained at high resolution with the MAD adaptive optics instrument at the ESO's Very Large Telescope which provides unique details of its stellar content. At birth, the three brightest stars each weighed more than 150 times the mass of the Sun. The most massive star, known as R136a1 and located at the center of the image, has been found to have a current mass of 265 times that of the Sun. It also has the highest luminosity, close to ten million times greater than the Sun. AP Photo/ESO - P. Crowther/C.J.Evans)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

A Puzzling Collapse of Earth's Upper Atmosphere.

*NASA-funded researchers are monitoring a big event in our planet's atmosphere. High above Earth's surface where the atmosphere meets space, a rarefied layer of gas called "the thermosphere" recently collapsed and now is rebounding again.*









Layers of Earth's upper atmosphere. Credit: John Emmert/NRL.

-- Tom


----------



## franca

More than 100 'Earth-like' planets discovered in past few weeks

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ke-planets-just-past-weeks.html#ixzz0uRdyyxjz


----------



## lotuseclat79

Claims of 100 Earth-Like Planets Not True.

*Despite overzealous news headlines this week, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has not indentified more than 100 Earth-like planets in the galaxy.*



> The planet-hunting telescope, launched in April 2009, has so far confirmed only five alien planets beyond the solar system, mission scientists told SPACE.com.
> 
> The erroneous reports of new planets were generated in response to a recent videotaped speech Kepler co-investigator Dimitar Sasselov gave at a TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) conference in July.
> 
> "More than 100 'Earth-like' planets discovered in past few weeks," read the headline of a Wednesday article in the U.K.'s Daily Mail newspaper. The Observer, another U.K. paper, also reported the finding.
> 
> However, Sasselov was referencing only possible planets among the Kepler data, scientists said.
> 
> "What Dimitar presented was 'candidates,'" said David Koch, the mission's deputy principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "These have the apparent signature we are looking for, but then we must perform extensive follow-up observations to eliminate false positives, such as background eclipsing binaries. This requires substantial amounts of ground-based observing which is done primarily in the summer observing season."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Telescope Finds Elusive Buckyballs in Space for First Time (w/Video).

*Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as "buckyballs," in space for the first time.*









NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has at last found buckyballs in space, as illustrated by this artist's conception. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech









These data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show the signatures of buckyballs in space. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Western Ontario

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Hyperfast Star Was Booted from Milky Way.

*NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a hypervelocity star - a rare entity moving three times faster than our sun.*









In this illustration, the hot, blue star HE 0437-5439 has been tossed out of the center of our Milky Way galaxy with enough speed to escape the galaxy's gravitational clutches. The stellar outcast is rocketing through the Milky Way's distant outskirts at 1.6 million miles an hour, high above the galaxy's disk, about 200,000 light-years from the center. The star is destined to roam intergalactic space. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Quantum Mechanics Not In Jeopardy: Physicists Confirm Decades-Old Key Principle Experimentally.

*When waves -- regardless of whether light or sound -- collide, they overlap creating interferences. Austrian and Canadian quantum physicists have now been able to rule out the existence of higher-order interferences experimentally and thereby confirmed an axiom in quantum physics: Born's rule. They have published their findings in the scientific journal Science.*









Triple Slit Experiment: Copyright: IQC

Related article: Quantum mechanics survives triple-slit photon test.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Behind the Scenes: How Did Life Begin?.

*Chemist Nicholas Hud has been working on this problem at the Georgia Institute of Technology for more than a decade. He and his students have discovered that small molecules could have acted as "molecular midwives" in helping the building blocks of life's genetic material form long chains, and may have assisted in selecting the base pairs of the DNA double helix.*



> Recently, Hud and his team made a discovery that further advances their theory that certain molecules helped the first RNA and DNA molecules to form.
> 
> "We've found that the molecule ethidium can assist short polymers of nucleic acids, known as oligonucleotides, in forming longer polymers. Ethidium can also select the structure of the base pairs that hold together two strands of DNA."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mars camera yields best Red Planet map ever.

*The best Mars map ever made is now available online for planetary scientists and armchair astronauts alike. And citizen scientists are invited to help make it even better.*









Valles Marineris, the "Grand Canyon of Mars," sprawls wide enough to reach from Los Angeles to nearly New York City, if it were located on Earth. The red outline box shows the location of a second, full-resolution image. Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Every black hole may hold a hidden universe.

*We could be living inside a black hole. This head-spinning idea is one cosmologist's conclusion based on a modification of Einstein's equations of general relativity that changes our picture of what happens at the core of a black hole.*









Deep inside a black hole? (Image: Serge Brunier/Clemson/NASA)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

LHC closes in on massive particle.

*Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have seen several candidates for the heaviest elementary particle known to science.*









CMS is one of two "multi-purpose" experiments housed at the LHC

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Monday Math: The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.

A good read indeed!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Large Hadron Collider not large enough, say scientists who want a Humongous Hadron Collider.

*Large Hadron Collider: Scientists are proposing a particle accelerator that is even bigger than the mammoth Large Hadron Collider.*



> Researchers of Fermilab haven't found Higgs, but they have narrowed the range of masses in which the particle could exist, said the University of Chicago's Shochet.
> 
> "Your work represents the oldest dream of man since he tried to understand and transform what goes on around him," Sarkozy said. "Why is there something rather than nothing?"


Related articles: 
Teams of Physicists Closing in on the 'God Particle'.

*A thousand physicists working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., reported in Paris on Monday that they had not found the "God particle," yet. But they are beginning to figure out where it is not.*

LHC closes in on massive particle.

*Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have seen several candidates for the heaviest elementary particle known to science.*









CMS saw a potential top quark "decay" into two other particles

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Big Bang Abandoned In New Model of the Universe.

*A new cosmology successfully explains the accelerating expansion of the universe without dark energy; but only if the universe has no beginning and no end*









Big Bang Less



> Shu's idea is that time and space are not independent entities but can be converted back and forth between each other. In his formulation of the geometry of spacetime, the speed of light is simply the conversion factor between the two. Similarly, mass and length are interchangeable in a relationship in which the conversion factor depends on both the gravitational constant G and the speed of light, neither of which need be constant.
> 
> So as the Universe expands, mass and time are converted to length and space and vice versa as it contracts.
> 
> This universe has no beginning or end, just alternating periods of expansion and contraction. In fact, Shu shows that singularities cannot exist in this cosmos.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

More accurate than Heisenberg allows?

*Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle plays a central role in quantum computing, because it sets a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which a quantum state can be determined.*



> The teams at LMU and the ETH Zurich have now shown that the result of a measurement on a quantum particle can be predicted with greater accuracy if information about the particle is available in a quantum memory.


-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

This reminds me, in a way, of the movie 'Alien' when they all referred to the 'Company'...

Astronomer: Manned missions less likely



> LONDON, July 27 (UPI) -- Future manned space exploration will be the province of adventurers rather than state-backed missions, Britain's astronomer royal says.
> 
> In an interview 40 years after the first manned moon landing, Cambridge University Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics Martin Rees said most future space mission would likely be robotic, BBC News reported Tuesday.
> 
> Manned space exploration would become "a cut-price, high-risk program ... which would be an adventure more than anything practical," Rees said.
> 
> "Those walking on the surface of planets like Mars are likely to be adventurers of the sort who conquered Everest," he said.


----------



## lotuseclat79

Fermilab experiments narrow allowed mass range for Higgs boson.

*New constraints on the elusive Higgs particle are more stringent than ever before. Scientists of the CDF and DZero collider experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab revealed their latest Higgs search results today at the International Conference on High Energy Physics, held in Paris from July 22-28. Their results rule out a significant fraction of the allowed mass range established by earlier experiments.*









Scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations at DOE's Fermilab have combined Tevatron data from their two experiments to increase the sensitivity for their search for the Higgs boson. While no Higgs boson has been found yet, the results announced today exclude a mass for the Higgs between 158 and 175 GeV/c2 with 95 percent probability. Earlier experiments at the Large Electron-Positron Collider at CERN excluded a Higgs boson with a mass of less than 114 GeV/c2 at 95 percent probability. Calculations of quantum effects involving the Higgs boson require its mass to be less than 185 GeV/c2. The Fermilab experimenters will test more and more of the available mass range for the Higgs as their experiments record more collision data and as they continue to refine their experimental analyses.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Biologists find that red-blooded vertebrates evolved twice, independently.

*Nature, in all its glory, is nothing if not thrifty.*



> "The discovery that the hemoglobins of jawed and jawless vertebrates were invented independently provides powerful testimony to the ability of natural selection to cobble together similar design solutions using different starting materials."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scots engineers prove space pioneer's 25-year-old theory.

*When American space pioneer, Dr Robert L Forward, proposed in 1984 a way of greatly improving satellite telecommunications using a new family of orbits, some claimed it was impossible.*









This is a schematic of displaced geostationary orbit. Credit: Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory, University of Strathclyde

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Astronomy and particle physics race to replace Standard Model.









Data from the WMAP observatory confirmed predictions of inflationary cosmology WMAP

*If energy issues seem to be attracting the attention of a lot of physicists, the Large Hadron Collider seems to be drawing the attention of many of the rest of them, including people in fields like cosmology, which deals with items on the opposite end of the size scale. In turn, the people working on the LHC and other particle detectors are carefully paying attention to the latest astronomy results, hoping they'll put limits on the properties and identities of the zoo of theoretical particles that need to be considered.

There are two reasons for this newfound unity in physics. If cosmology has become a part of elementary particle physics, as Nobel Laureate George Smoot put it at the Lindau Meeting, it's because we've found that "it's a continuum from quantum mechanics to clumps of matter to galaxies." The properties of the tiniest particles should dictate what the Universe looks like, but all the cosmological data is telling us there must be something in addition to what we know about, dark matter particles that we haven't yet identified.

The second issue is that we know the Standard Model, which describes the properties of these particles, is wrong, but we're not sure what to replace it with yet, and it's entirely possible that astronomy and cosmology will provide key insights into this process.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Jellyfish Eyes Solve Optical Origin Mystery.

*Eyes are one of evolution's marvels, described by Darwin as "an organ of extreme perfection." But whether the animal kingdom's kaleidoscope of eyes evolved from a common structure, or separately in dozens of forms, is a nagging evolutionary question.

Now a study of optical genes in jellyfish, which are descended from creatures that swam Earth's ancient seas, long before vertebrates and invertebrates took their separate paths, suggests a common optical origin.

"Eyes have evolved in parallel many times, but they all go back to one prototype," said University of Basel cell biologist Walter Gehring.*









PAX Eyes: Eyes formed in fruit flies after the insertion of Pax genes from jellyfish./PNAS









Medusa: A Cladonema jellyfish; arrow points to an eye structure./PNAS.



> "Evolution is very conservative. It uses the things that function well," said Gehring.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

IceCube spies unexplained pattern of cosmic rays.

*Though still under construction, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole is already delivering scientific results - including an early finding about a phenomenon the telescope was not even designed to study.*









This "skymap," generated in 2009 from data collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, shows the relative intensity of cosmic rays directed toward the Earth's Southern Hemisphere. Researchers from UW-Madison and elsewhere identified an unusual pattern of cosmic rays, with an excess (warmer colors) detected in one part of the sky and a deficit (cooler colors) in another. Photo: courtesy IceCube collaboration

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end.

*By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.*

-- Tom :up: :up:


----------



## lotuseclat79

New theory of why midcontinent faults produce earthquakes.

*A new theory developed at Purdue University may solve the mystery of why the New Madrid fault, which lies in the middle of the continent and not along a tectonic plate boundary, produces large earthquakes such as the ones that shook the eastern United States in 1811 and 1812.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

On the path to quantum computers: Ultra-strong interaction between light and matter realized.

*Researchers around the world are working on the development of quantum computers that will be vastly superior to present-day computers. Here, the strong coupling of quantum bits with light quanta plays a pivotal role. Professor Rudolf Gross, a physicist at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany, and his team of researchers have now realized an extremely strong interaction between light and matter that may represent a first step in this direction.*









This is an impression of the interaction between a superconducting electrical circuit and a microwave photon. Credit: Dr. A. Marx, Technische Universitaet Muenchen









This is an electron microscopical picture of the superconducting circuit (red: Aluminum-Qubit, grey: Niob-Resonator, green: Silicon substrate). Credit: Thomasz Niemczyk, Technische Universitaet Muenchen

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Dark matter eldorado.

*Nearby galaxy holds record for densest concentration of mysterious mass*

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

Purple light means go, ultraviolet light means stop



> A new membrane developed at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics blocks gas from flowing through it when one color of light is shined on its surface, and permits gas to flow through when another color of light is used. It is the first time that scientists have developed a membrane that can be controlled in this way by light.


(They're getting better at managing energy...:up: )


----------



## lotuseclat79

Why Space Isn't Filled with White Holes.

*A new study explains why astronomers have never seen one of these weird objects*









A White Hole Space-Time: We impose the condition that past null infinity J−^wh is in the vacuum state - there is no incoming radiation from the far past. The dotted black line is the initial singularity, and the dashed blue line is the path of a null ray on the anti-horizon. The curved line indicates matter which explodes out of the hole. The dashed black lines refer to modes discussed in the text, which we can think of as originating from the white hole, its ejecta, or from the past, J−^wh . (where ^wh is an exponent power).

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

NASA: Space station cooling system fails; astronauts safe



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) - Half of the International Space Station's cooling system suddenly shut down during the weekend, forcing the astronauts to power down equipment and face the likelihood of urgent spacewalking repairs.
> 
> After huddling Sunday, NASA managers gave preliminary approval for a pair of spacewalks, the first of which would take place later this week. Two of the Americans on board were already scheduled to conduct a spacewalk Thursday for routine maintenance, though the repairs would supersede the original chores.
> 
> Officials stressed that the six occupants were in no danger, and that the orbiting complex was in a stable situation.


(Growing pains..)


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researchers find universal law for material evolution.

*It's a problem that materials scientists have considered for years: how does a material composed of more than one phase evolve when heated to a temperature that will allow atoms to move? In many cases, a rod-like phase embedded in another will break up into smaller domains very much like the droplets at the end of a stream of water, resulting in dramatic changes in the properties of the material.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A free MIT science education? Yup, and _Science_ loves it.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Space Weather Forecast - Aurorae Tomorrow?.









Sun

Related articles:
The sun sends a charged cloud hurtling our way.

Video: Sun Puts on a Spectacular Eruption Show.

Nasa scientists braced for 'solar tsunami' to hit earth.

*The earth could be hit by a wave of violent space weather as early as Tuesday after a massive explosion on the sun, scientists have warned.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Biomechanical Problem of Shot Putting Finally Solved.

*For more than 30 years, sports scientists have puzzled over why the optimum angle of release for a shot put is not 45 degrees.*









Shot Put: The setup for our calculations with the angle θ of the velocity v0 split into x and y direction
and the height of the throw h with the shoulder height hs of the athlete



> ...a model of shot putting that predicts that the optimum angle of release is between 37 and 38 degrees, which matches almost exactly the measurements from top athletes.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Undersea river discovered flowing on sea bed.

*Massive underwater rivers that flow along the bottom of the oceans have been discovered by scientists.*









A 3-D radar image, using false colour, of the undersea river channel where it enters the Black Sea from the Bosphorus Strait. Photo: University of Leeds

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists develop model that pushes limits of quantum theory, relativity.

*All of the matter in the universe -- everything we see, feel and smell -- has a certain predictable structure, thanks to the tiny electrons spinning around their atomic nuclei in a series of concentric shells or atomic levels. A fundamental tenet of this orderly structure is that no two electrons can occupy the same atomic level (quantum state) at the same time-a principle called the Pauli exclusion principle, which is based on Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum theory.*



> However, a team of Syracuse University physicists recently developed a new theoretical model to explain how the Pauli exclusion principle can be violated and how, under certain rare conditions, more than one electron can simultaneously occupy the same quantum state.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Culture wires the brain: A cognitive neuroscience perspective.

*Where you grow up can have a big impact on the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and even how your brain works. In a report in a special section on Culture and Psychology in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientists Denise C. Park from the University of Texas at Dallas and Chih-Mao Huang from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discuss ways in which brain structure and function may be influenced by culture.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Will sun storms destroy civilization?.

*The current "solar tsunami" may create a dazzling aurora in the night sky - but could it also mark the beginning of a long, dangerous cycle of sun storms?*









This ultraviolet image of the sun shows two flares. Photo: Corbis

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

For the First Time Ever, Scientists Watch an Atom's Electrons Moving in Real Time.

*An international team of scientists led by groups from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany, and from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has used ultrashort flashes of laser light to directly observe the movement of an atom's outer electrons for the first time.*









A classical diagram of a krypton atom (background) shows its 36 electrons arranged in shells. Researchers have measured oscillations of quantum states (foreground) in the outer orbitals of an ionized krypton atom, oscillations that drive electron motion. Credit: courtesy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists discover new method for regenerating heart muscle by direct reprogramming.

*Scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) have found a new way to make beating heart cells from the body's own cells that could help regenerate damaged hearts. Over 5 million Americans suffer from heart failure because the heart has virtually no ability to repair itself after a heart attack. Only 2,000 hearts become available for heart transplant annually in the United States, leaving limited therapeutic options for the remaining millions.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Image: A Galactic Spectacle.

*A beautiful new image of two colliding galaxies has been released by NASA's Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light-years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms," seen in wide-angle views of the system. These features were produced by tidal forces generated in the collision.*









Credit: NASA, ESA, SAO, CXC, JPL-Caltech, and STScI

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Japanese and US whizzes claim news record for pi calculation -- five trillion decimal places.

*A pair of Japanese and US computer whizzes claim to have calculated pi to five trillion decimal places -- a number which if verified eclipses the previous record set by a French software engineer.*









Our favorite numerical constant (ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter starting with 3.14159 in a string whose digits are believed to never repeat or end) in mathematics!

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

Wow, 5 trillion....I remember a high school math room had the number recorded on a banner that stretched all around the diameter of the classroom...And I don't think it hit 100 digits....


----------



## lotuseclat79

Quantum networks advance with entanglement of photons, solid-state qubits.

*A team of Harvard physicists led by Mikhail D. Lukin has achieved the first-ever quantum entanglement of photons and solid-state materials. The work marks a key advance toward practical quantum networks, as the first experimental demonstration of a means by which solid-state quantum bits, or "qubits," can communicate with one another over long distances.*









An impurity in a diamond is illuminated with a powerful laser beam after which it emits a single photon. The oscillations of the emitted photon are entangled with the spin of the electrons in the impurity and this entanglement can be used to send quantum information over long distances. (Illustration: Yiwen Chu, Harvard University).

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists provide a new angle on quantum cryptograph.

*An ultra-secure form of coded communication could be given a boost, thanks to scientists from the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde and Rochester.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Planets Align for the Perseid Meteor Shower.

*You know it's a good night when a beautiful alignment of planets is the second best thing that's going to happen. Thursday, August 12th, is such a night.*









Looking northeast around midnight on August 12th-13th. The red dot is the Perseid radiant. Although Perseid meteors can appear in any part of the sky, all of their tails will point back to the radiant.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

NASA Images Show Continuing Mexico Quake Deformation.

*New NASA airborne radar images of Southern California near the U.S.-Mexico border show Earth's surface is continuing to deform following the April 4 magnitude, 7.2 temblor and its many aftershocks that have rocked Mexico's state of Baja California and parts of the American Southwest.*









UAVSAR interferogram of Southern California near the Mexican border, created by combining data from flights on April 13, 2010, and July 1, 2010. Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS/California Geological Survey/Google

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Hawking: It's outer space or die for humans.

*Stephen Hawking says he's an optimist. Perhaps theoretical physicists have an idiosyncratic definition of the word.

For in an interview with BigThink, Hawking suggested that unless the human race begins to inhabit outer space, it will disappear.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Claimed Proof That P != NP.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Supercomputer application solves superconductor puzzle.

*Superconducting materials, which transmit power resistance-free, are found to perform optimally when high- and low-charge density varies on the nanoscale level, according to research performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

What makes a good egg and healthy embryo?.

*Scientists as well as fertility doctors have long tried to figure out what makes a good egg that will produce a healthy embryo. It's a particularly critical question for fertility doctors deciding which eggs isolated from a woman will produce the best embryos and, ultimately, babies.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists map all mammalian gene interactions.

*In one of the first efforts of its kind, UCLA researchers have taken mammalian genome maps, including human maps, one step further by showing not just the order in which genes fall in the genome but which genes actually interact.*









This map of subnetwork centered around the gene cyclooxygenase-1 (COX1 or PTGS1) involved in synthesis of prostaglandins, which control smooth muscle activity in the body along with many other physiological functions. Credit: UCLA

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time.

*Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory - inspired by pencil lead - that could make it all very simple*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Every Rubik's Cube can be solved in 20 moves or less.

*With about 35 CPU-years of idle computer time donated by Google, a team of researchers has essentially solved every position of the Rubik's Cube™, and shown that no position requires more than twenty moves.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

P ≠ NP? It's bad news for the power of computing.

*The P versus NP question concerns the speed at which a computer can accomplish a task such as factorising a number. Some tasks can be completed reasonably quickly - in technical terms, the running time is proportional to a polynomial function of the input size - and these tasks are in class P.

If the answer to a task can be checked quickly then it is in class NP.*

Related blog post: Issues In The Proof That P≠N.

*The community is working on deciding whether or not to accept his proof as a "proof." No one has yet had a chance to study his 102-page draft paper in full depth.*

Million dollar maths puzzle sparks row.

*A claim to have solved one of the most difficult riddles in mathematics has been challenged by scientists.*



> "P vs NP is asking - can creativity be automated?"
> 
> Dr Deolalikar claims that his proof shows that it cannot.
> 
> One way to test a mathematical proof, he said, is to ensure that it only proves things we know are true. "It had better not also prove something that we know to be false."
> 
> Other mathematicians have responded to Dr Deolikar's paper by asking him to show that his proof passes this test.
> 
> "Everyone agrees, said Dr Aaronson, "if he can't answer this, the proof is toast."


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Following protons on a trip to (and through) the LHC.

*All the focus on the LHC is generally on the enormous, 26km circumference of the main accelerator ring. But, according to Paul Collier, the head of CERN's Beams Department, the protons that form the main beams of the LHC travel roughly 6 million kilometers before even reaching the LHC, and these early steps are essential to making the LHC the highest energy, highest intensity particle collider ever built. And once inside the LHC, the proton beams still need to be accelerated and shaped even further before collisions can take place. To help you understand how it all works, we'll take a complete trip from the proton source to the detectors within the LHC, and explain how each step contributes to the final output.*









The full complex of accelerators that dumps protons into the LHC and other CERN experiments

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Perseid meteor shower makes impressive start.

*Perseid meteor shower promises to be one of the flashiest meteor displays of the year, if you can stay awake to watch them.*









A meteor enters the earth's atmosphere during the Perseid meteor shower early on August 13, 2009 in the northeastern village of Rotbuehl in Switzerland. Sebastian Derungs/AFP/Newscom

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Dark-matter search plunges physicists to new depths.

*This month physicist Juan Collar and his associates are taking their attempt to unmask the secret identity of dark matter into a Canadian mine more than a mile underground.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists Show There's Nothing Boring About Watching Paint Dry.

*It turns out that watching paint dry might not be as boring as the old adage claims. A team led by Yale University researchers has come up with a new technique to study the mechanics of coatings as they dry and peel, and has discovered that the process is far from mundane.*









Microscopic fluorescent tracking particles reveal a side view of the coating as it peels, with a plot of the stress exerted on the surface. (Credit: Graphic design by Wendolyn Hill with data from Ye Xu and Eric Dufresne)

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mystery of Honeycomb Cloud Formation Solved.

*Easily spotted by their honeycomb shape, open-cell clouds are one of the most common cloud formations, found on the backside of low pressure systems and skirting the edges of every continent. Yet for all their ubiquity, they are among the more mysterious cloud formations known, and rules guiding the formation of open-cell clouds have not been quantified - until now.*









Honeycomb Clouds over Peru









Honeycomb Cloud Simulation

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Dark matter is held together by 'attractors'.

*The universe consists of a large amount of invisible matter - dark matter. We do not know what it is, but we know that it is there and that without dark matter there would be no galaxies, and hence stars, planets and life as we know it. The universe is filled with large structures that are dominated by dark matter and in these dark matter spheres or 'halos' the light emitting particles form stars and gas clumps. Recent studies show that these dark matter halos have so-called attractors, which preserve their shape. The results are published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.*









The dark matter structures are simulated in a supercomputer. The figure shows that the density of the dark matter is greatest in the inner part and slowly decreases as one moves towards the surface.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Planets Align For Best Meteor Shower Of the Year Thursday Night.

*If you're looking for low-tech star gazing action, Thursday night is the time to grab a blanket and head outside.

Just after sunset Thursday evening, Venus, Saturn, Mars and the crescent moon will huddle very close together in the western sky after months of moving closer together. And as the moon sets and the sky darkens starting around 10:30 p.m. (local time), the annual Perseid meteor shower will put on its best performance of the year.*









Perseid Meteor Shower - August 2009 Photo by Adcuz's photostream on Flickr/adcuz.









Where and When to Look to View the Perseid Meteor Shower - NASA Science

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Star Birth Frenzy Revealed in New Photo.

*A frenzy of star birth has been captured in a new photo of a distant but extremely bright galaxy.

In the photo, stars in the Haro 11 galaxy are seen clumped together in more than 200 separate groups are seen hatching at a "monumental rate," one which converts the equivalent to 20 times the mass of the sun into new stars each year, astronomers with the European Southern Observatory said in a statement.*









New Haro 11 galaxy photo

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists investigate electron fractionalization into not two, but three components.

*One of the many intriguing puzzles in physics is the strange behavior of the electron as it fractionalizes into two separate quasiparticles. These quasiparticles, called spinons and chargons (or holons), carry the electron's spin and charge, respectively. In a new study, physicists Cenke Xu and Subir Sachdev of Harvard University have investigated this phenomenon, called spin-charge separation, and have developed a model that unifies two previous theories to propose a more complete electron fractionalization process.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

[email protected] 'citizen scientists' discover a new pulsar in Arecibo telescope data.

*Idle computers are the astronomers' playground: Three citizen scientists - a German and an American couple - have discovered a new radio pulsar hidden in data gathered by the Arecibo Observatory. This is the first deep-space discovery by [email protected], which uses donated time from the home and office computers of 250,000 volunteers from 192 different countries. (Science Express, Aug. 12, 2010.)*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Reference previous posts #467 and #473 on this webpage about this topic.

New proof unlocks answer to the P versus NP problemmaybe.



> Pre-prints of the paper are made available through Dr. Deolalikar's HP webpage.


And, according to Dr. Deolalikar's HP webpage, he expects to post a revised version with added material to the draft paper this weekend.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Evidence of new solar activity from observations of aurora in New Zealand.

*Scientists from Boston University's Center for Space Physics (CSP) announced that they have sub-visual evidence of the onset of a new cycle of solar-terrestrial activity. The key results being reported deal with the fact that recent auroral displays at high latitudes (ones visible to the naked eye) were accompanied by far less luminous glows in the atmosphere at lower latitudes.*









This is an all-sky view of the upper atmosphere as photographed in the red light (630.0 nm) of oxygen from the Mt. John Observatory in New Zealand. This fish-eye lens image displays emissions from a height of 400 km above the Earth's surface (features in upper left are buildings obstructing view to northwest). Just below the lower coast of South Island, the faint emission extending west-to-east is called a Stable Auroral Red (SAR) arc, a manifestation of oxygen atoms heated by hot electrons in the ionosphere. The brightness levels (about 300 Rayleigh units) are ten to twenty times fainter than can be seen by the naked eye. Further to the south, the area colored white is a brighter form of red emission called Diffuse Aurora, produced by in influx of electrons from the magnetosphere; it is still invisible to the unaided eye, but only by factors of two to three. Strong visible aurora, the familiar "curtains of red and green emission" would be still further toward the South Pole, beyond the field of view shown. This Boston University image of sub-visual aurora at mid-latitudes is the first unambiguous case of a SAR arc in the Southern Hemisphere during the new cycle of solar activity. Credit: Boston University Center for Space Physics

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

To Infiity and Beyond! - no, this is not about Buzz Lightyear. 

*Mathematicians are facing a stark choice - embrace monstrous infinite entities or admit the basic rules of arithmetic are broken*

Well, really incomplete and inconsistent ala Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem



> The most severe implications are philosophical. The result means that the rules we use to manipulate numbers cannot be assumed to represent the pure and perfect truth. Rather, they are something more akin to a scientific theory such as the "standard model" that particle physicists use to predict the workings of particles and forces: our best approximation to reality, well supported by experimental data, but at the same time manifestly incomplete and subject to continuous and possibly radical reappraisal as fresh information comes in.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Sun's 'quiet period' explained.

*Solar physicists may have discovered why the Sun recently experienced a prolonged period of weak activity.*









The Sun's conveyor transports plasma across its surface to the pole, where it sinks before rising at the equator

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Could thermodynamic fluctuations have led to the origins of life?.

*In the field of abiogenesis, scientists are currently investigating several ways in which life could have arisen from non-living matter. Generally, any theory of abiogenesis should account for two important aspects of life: replication (the ability to transmit mutations to offspring) and metabolism (the chemical reactions required for vital activities such as breaking down food). Although these two characteristics help to provide a working definition of life, more recently scientists have emphasized the importance of another key feature required for Darwinian evolution: selection, or the replication of mutations that provide an evolutionary advantage.*









(Left) Self-catalysis vs. (right) replication with inheritance in terms of kinetics: In the case of self-catalysis, all the initial states eventually lead to the same stationary state. In the case of replication with inheritance, the initial states lead to different stationary states on the stationary-state curve. The blue arrows show that the motion along the stationary-state curve is a drift pointing toward the increase of the most active replicase, R2. Image copyright: Doriano Brogioli. ©2010 The American Physical Society.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Telescope promises new look at universe - if NASA can get it into space.

*When it works, and if it works, the James Webb Space Telescope could revolutionize astronomy by peering so deep into space that scientists soon could study the dawn of time.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Experiments offer tantalizing clues as to why matter prevails in the universe.

*A large collaboration of physicists working at the Fermilab Tevatron particle collider has discovered evidence of an explanation for the prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe. They found that colliding protons in their experiment produced short-lived B meson particles that almost immediately broke down into debris that included slightly more matter than antimatter. The two types of matter annihilate each other, so most of the material coming from these sorts of decays would disappear, leaving an excess of regular matter behind.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Overlooked element could be part of dream team for quantum computing.

*A team of scientists based at the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the National High Magnetic Field Lab (NHMFL) in Florida has discovered a new and more efficient way to encode quantum information within silicon.*









A bismuth atom in one slice of a silicon crystal. The large light green cloud shows the possible positions of the bound electron's wave function, and the purple arrow is its spin. The bismuth nuclear spin (blue arrow) can tilt in ten different directions, shown in red and yellow. Artwork by Manuel Vögtli (LCN).

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Boring Universe: Is Inflation Incredibly Fast Or Painfully Slow?.



> *We all know the Big Bang is the start of the universe, the mysterious "point of creation". This is stated often still today, even by prominent physicists. It is also not true.*


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Reexamining nothing: is the vacuum of space really empty?.










-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Mother of all humans lived 200,000 years ago.

*Rice statisticians confirm date of 'mitochondrial Eve' with new method*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Doubts continue on claim to have solved P vs NP mathematical question.

*One of the most complex mathematical problems in the world is proving either that P ≠ NP or P=NP, a riddle that was first formulated in 1971 by mathematicians Leonid Levin and Stephen Cook. The question was one of seven millennium problems set by the Clay Mathematical Institute (CMI) in Cambridge, Massachusetts as being among the most difficult to solve.*

And that folks is how science proceeds, in fits and starts, at first received by skepticism - and rightly so - but, when all is said and done, the truth wins out. Oh, and God does play dice!

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Black hole mystery unveiled by magnetic star discovery.

*The discovery of a rare magnetic star - or magnetar - is challenging theories about the origin of black holes.*









The missing black hole might be explained if the original star lost mass to a neighbouring star

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Hidden star power revealed: Astronomers find ancient galaxy cluster still producing stars.

*Much like quiet, middle-aged baby boomers peacefully residing in some of the world's largest cities, families of some galaxies also have a hidden wild youth that they only now are revealing for the first time, according to research by astronomers at Texas A&M University.*









This sensitive exposure captures galaxies that are relatively local along side some that date back almost 10 billion years, soon after the Big Bang. The most distant galaxies stand out clearly in the infrared, rendered here in green and red. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Texas A&M

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

What Does 'P vs. NP' Mean for the Rest of Us? (2 web pages).

*A proposed "proof" is probably a bust--but even failed attempts can advance computer science.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Maslow's pyramid gets a much needed renovation.

*If you have ever felt that your children are your life's work, then you may in fact be recognizing a high-level psychological need. Caring for your children, feeding them, nurturing them, educating them and making sure they get off on the right foot in life - all of the things that make parenting successful - may actually be deep rooted psychological urges that we fulfill as part of being human.*









This is Maslow's pyramid of needs. Credit: Doug Kenrick, Arizona State University









This is the revised version of Maslow's pyramid of needs. Credit: Doug Kenrick, Arizona State University



> According to Maslow, if you are starving and craving food that will trump all other goals. But if you are satisfied on one level, you move to the next. So, once you are well fed, you worry about safety. Once you are safe, you worry about affection and esteem and so forth. Perhaps most famously, at the top of Maslow's pyramid sat the need for self-actualization - the desire to fulfill one's own unique creative potential.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Brain network links cognition, motivation.

*Whether it's sports, poker or the high-stakes world of business, there are those who always find a way to win when there's money on the table.*









Simply flashing a dollar-sign cue sparked immediate activation in a brain region that coordinates the interaction of cognitive control and motivational functions, effectively putting these areas on alert that there was money to be won in the challenge ahead, the study suggests.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Astronomers use galactic magnifying lens to probe elusive dark energy.

*A team of astronomers has used a massive galaxy cluster as a cosmic magnifying lens to study the nature of dark energy for the first time. When combined with existing techniques, their results significantly improve current measurements of the mass and energy content of the universe. The findings appear in the August 20 issue of the journal Science.*









The massive gravitational force of the dark matter (shown in blue) in giant galaxy cluster Abell 1689 bends the light from distant background galaxies, giving astronomers clues to the nature of dark energy. Credit: NASA, ESA, Eric Jullo/JPL, Priyamvada Natarajan/Yale, Jean-Paul Kneib/Université de Provence

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Space Photos This Week: Star Blob, Perseids, More. (7 Photos).

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Ghost-Like Nebula Revealed in Haunting Space Photo.









Iras Ghost

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists discover first new chlorophyll in 60 years.

*University of Sydney scientists have stumbled upon the first new chlorophyll to be discovered in over 60 years and have published their findings in the international journal Science.*









Differential interference contrast image of the cyanobacterial culture from which chlorophyll f was isolated. Image from Science, courtesy of American Association for the Advancement of Science.









Cross section of a Shark Bay stromatolite. The layers are different microbial communities, each with very different physiologies.



> "Discovering this new chlorophyll has completely overturned the traditional notion that photosynthesis needs high energy light," Dr Chen said.
> 
> "It is amazing that this new molecule, with a simple change to its chemical structure, can absorb extremely low energy light. This means that photosynthetic organisms can utilise a much larger portion of the solar spectrum than we previously thought and that the efficiency of photosynthesis is much greater than we ever imagined.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Researchers make magnetic fields breakthrough.

*Researchers at the University of Dundee have made a breakthrough in the study of magnetic fields, which enhances our understanding of how stars, including the Sun, work.*









Sun



> The team from the Magnetohydrodynamics research group in the School of Engineering, Physics and Mathematics used state-of-the-art computer simulations of evolving plasmas in the Sun's atmosphere.
> 
> By following how the magnetic field and the plasma interact, they have uncovered new rules that govern what evolutions are possible. Knowing the basic rules behind the apparently complex solar atmosphere gives the team hope of predicting how it will behave.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

German researchers take a look inside molecules.

*Looking at individual molecules through a microscope is part of nanotechnologists' everyday lives. However, it has so far been difficult to observe atomic structures inside organic molecules. In the renowned scientific journal Physical Review Letters, Juelich researchers explain their novel method, which enables them to take an "x-ray view" inside molecules. The method may facilitate the analysis of organic semiconductors and proteins.*









The Juelich method makes it possible to resolve molecule structure where only a blurred cloud was visible before. Credit: Forschungszentrum Jülich

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists try to harness super-winds that once carried bombs.

*The man from the Forest Service burst into the switchboard room with orders for the young operator. Keep quiet, he told Cora Conner, 16. Stay put.*



> It was May 5, 1945. Six people lay dead in the nearby Oregon woods, their bodies arrayed "like spokes in a wheel," victims of a bomb attached to a balloon.
> 
> Launched in Japan, the balloon had ridden ferocious high-altitude winds discovered by a Japanese scientist.


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

The Craig Venter Interview You Have to Read Gives a New Perspective on Genetics.

*"We have learned nothing from the genome." That's the grim message that J. Craig Venter recently gave Der Spiegel in an amazing interview. Venter, decoder of the human genome and creator of the world's first fully synthetic bacteria, doesn't pull any punches when describing the medical benefits we've derived from sequencing the human genome. They are "close to zero to put it precisely." The Der Spiegel interview catches Venter in a blunt mood and we're given a rare insight into how one of the foremost scientists in the field (probably the foremost scientist) see our progress thus far and our hopes for the future. To paraphrase: we haven't really accomplished anything yet, people don't want to believe that at all, and we're finally taking the first steps to really understanding things now. Some of Venter's juicier statements have me rethinking the current state of genomics. Check out the quotes below.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Cern gets ready to hunt for antimatter in space.

*The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a module that will go into space to conduct particle physics experiments, is set to leave Cern for the Kennedy Space Centre on Tuesday.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Solar System older than thought.

*The Solar System could be nearly two million years older than thought, according to a study published on Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Quantum Zeno Effect Allows "Interaction-free" Switching.

*Exploiting one of the quantum world's strangest effects should lead to a new generation of switches that can handle quantum information.*









Quantum Zeno Switch

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Raucous Active Galaxy Destroys Own Environment.









One of the best things about modern astronomy is that we can "see" with our instruments a whole lot that our eyes could never see. This very cool new image from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, along with a radio image from the Very Large Array, shows the galaxy-altering power of the active supermassive black hole in the center of M87.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Magnificent Marine Algae Blooms Seen From Space (10 Photos).

*When microscopic marine organisms known as phytoplankton multiply into a dense population at the ocean's surface, massive blooms can spread so far that they can only be seen from space. These algal blooms create beautiful patterns that can stretch for hundreds of miles and trace the ocean's swirling currents.*









Phytoplankton (as seen from Space from NASA's Earth Observatory) Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team/NASA. 2)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

One Idea Solves Dark Energy and Lithium Abundance Mysteries.

*A simple idea explains two of cosmology's biggest problems, but introduces a conundrum of its own.*









Lithium Abundance

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Peregrine's 'Solition' observed at last.

*An old mathematical solution proposed as a prototype of the infamous ocean rogue waves responsible for many maritime catastrophes has been observed in a continuous physical system for the first time.*









A figure showing a calculated Peregrine solition upon a distorted background. This illustrates how such extreme wave structures may appear as they emerge suddenly on an irregular surface such as the open ocean. The destructive power of such a steep nonlinear wave on the ocean can be easily imagined.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements.

*When researchers found an unusual linkage between solar flares and the inner life of radioactive elements on Earth, it touched off a scientific detective investigation that could end up protecting the lives of space-walking astronauts and maybe rewriting some of the assumptions of physics.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

People don't really like unselfish colleagues.

*You know those goody-two-shoes who volunteer for every task and thanklessly take on the annoying details nobody else wants to deal with?*



> Parks and Stone found that unselfish colleagues come to be resented because they "raise the bar" for what is expected of everyone. As a result, workers feel the new standard will make everyone else look bad.
> 
> It doesn't matter that the overall welfare of the group or the task at hand is better served by someone's unselfish behavior, Parks said.
> 
> "What is objectively good, you see as subjectively bad," he said.
> 
> The do-gooders are also seen as deviant rule breakers. It's as if they're giving away Monopoly money so someone can stay in the game, irking other players to no end.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A new source of CP violation?.



> *CP violation is one of the three "Sakharov conditions" [3] required to explain the baryon asymmetry of the universe-that is, the puzzle of why there is so much matter and so little antimatter.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How Much Is Left? The Limits of Earth's Resources, Made Interactive.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Planets Weighed Using Pulsar Flashes.

*The rotating corpses of massive stars can help scientists weigh the planets in the solar system. By carefully timing radio blips from spinning stellar leftovers called pulsars, astronomers have measured the masses of all the planets from Mercury to Saturn, plus all their moons and rings.*









Jupiter Mass

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Richest planetary system discovered (w/ Video).

*Astronomers using ESO's world-leading HARPS instrument have discovered a planetary system containing at least five planets, orbiting the Sun-like star HD 10180. The researchers also have tantalising evidence that two other planets may be present, one of which would have the lowest mass ever found. This would make the system similar to our Solar System in terms of the number of planets (seven as compared to the Solar System's eight planets). Furthermore, the team also found evidence that the distances of the planets from their star follow a regular pattern, as also seen in our Solar System.*









This artist's impression shows the remarkable planetary system around the Sun-like star HD 10180. Credit: ESO

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Secrets of the gecko foot help robot climb (w/ Video).

*The science behind gecko toes holds the answer to a dry adhesive that provides an ideal grip for robot feet. Stanford mechanical engineer Mark Cutkosky is using the new material, based on the structure of a gecko foot, to keep his robots climbing.*









Paul Day and Alan Asbeck worked on adhesives for the feet of the gecko-like Stickybot.

Find out the unique role the tail plays in allowing the stickybot to climb - read the article and/or just watch the video.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Paradox of Time: Why It Can't Stop, But Must ( Preview ).

*Yes. And no. For time to end seems both impossible and inevitable. Recent work in physics suggests a resolution to the paradox*



> Key Concepts
> 
> * Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts that time ends at moments called singularities, such as when matter reaches the center of a black hole or the universe collapses in a "big crunch." Yet the theory also predicts that singular*ities are physically impossible.
> * A way to resolve this paradox is to consider time's death as gradual rather than abrupt. Time might lose its many attributes one by one: its directionality, its notion of duration and its role in ordering events causally. Finally, time might give way to deeper, timeless physics.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Space-based detector could find anti-universe.

*A huge particle detector to be mounted on the International Space Station next year could find evidence for the anti-universe often evoked in science fiction, physicists said on Wednesday.

Speaking as the 8.5-tonne Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) machine was being loaded into a huge U.S. Air Force cargo plane at Geneva airport, they said the 20-year research program would bring a huge step forward in understanding the cosmos.

"If there is an anti-universe, perhaps out there beyond the edge of our universe, our space-based detector may well be able to bring us signs of its existence," U.S. scientist and Nobel laureate Samuel Ting told a news conference.

"The cosmos is the ultimate laboratory."*

Antimatter detector to catch last shuttle to space.

*A $2 billion machine that will jump-start the search for antimatter and other phenomena was loaded onto a massive U.S. Air Force plane Wednesday for the final leg of its journey on Earth before it catches the last scheduled shuttle flight into space.

Airmen struggled to stow the 8.3-ton (7.5 metric ton) Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer into a C-5M Super Galaxy at Geneva airport ahead of Thursday's takeoff to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.*









U.S. army personnel and employees of the Geneva airport load the giant Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) of the European Particle Physics laboratory (CERN) on board a US Air Force C-5 Galaxy transport plane at Geneva International Airport in Geneva, Switzerland, Wednesday Aug. 25, 2010. The 7.5-ton (8.3 U.S.-ton) device was built by scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, on the Swiss-French border. Lead scientist Sam Ting said Wednesday the device will be docked to the International Space Station for 20 years to collect evidence of antimatter, dark matter and other phenomena. (AP Photo/Keystone/Salvatore Di Nolfi)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New Computer Model Might Turn Theory Of Galaxy Formation On Its Head (w/Video).

*...the prevailing wisdom among astronomers has been that galaxies evolved hierarchically - gravity drew small bits of matter together first and then those small bits gradually came together to form larger structures.

A new model seeks to turn that idea on its head. And the researchers say the very large umbrella of 'dark matter' may be the explanation.*









The complexity of dynamical evolution in a typical collision between two equal-mass disk galaxies. The simulation follows dark matter, stars, gas, and supermassive black holes, but only the gas component is visualized. Brighter colors indicate regions of higher gas density and the time corresponding to each snapshot is given by the labels. The first 10 panel images measure 100 kpc on a side, roughly five times the diameter of the visible part of the Milky Way galaxy. The next five panels represent successive zooms on the central region. The final frame shows the inner 300 pc of the nuclear region at the end of the simulation. Credit: OSU

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Fine Structure Constant Varies With Direction in Space, Says New Data.

*A spatial variation in the fine structure constant has profound implications for cosmology*









VLT (Very Large Telescope in Chile) Fine Structure Constant

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Discovery could challenge established theory of the nucleus.

*By analyzing data from experiments performed earlier this decade at the Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator (ORELA), physicists have made observations that seem to conflict with the widely accepted theory of the nucleus.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

North American continent is a layer cake, scientists discover.

*The North American continent is not one thick, rigid slab, but a layer cake of ancient, 3 billion-year-old rock on top of much newer material probably less than 1 billion years old, according to a new study by seismologists at the University of California, Berkeley.*









This graphic shows the thickness (in kilometers) of the North American lithosphere. The blue area is about 250 km thick and, based on new findings reported in Nature, is composed of a 3-billion-year old craton underlain by younger lithosphere deposited as ocean floor subducted under the continent within the past billion years. The green, yellow and red areas are younger and thinner continental lithosphere added around the margins of the original craton, also by subducting sea floor. The thick broken line indicates the borders of the stable part of the continent. Credit: Barbara Romanowicz and Huaiyu Yuan, UC Berkeley









A diagram showing the three layers beneath North America. The top layer, the ancient craton, is chemically distinct from younger lithosphere below (the thermal root), which is separated from the asthenosphere by a boundary layer (LAB).(Barbara Romanowicz, UC Berkeley)

Related article: New view of tectonic plates.

*Computational scientists and geophysicists at the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology have developed new computer algorithms that for the first time allow for the simultaneous modeling of the earth's Earth's mantle flow, large-scale tectonic plate motions, and the behavior of individual fault zones, to produce an unprecedented view of plate tectonics and the forces that drive it.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Measuring the universe.

*A unique antenna which could help unveil a new window on the universe by observing thousands of gravitational waves should be one of NASA's next space missions according to a group of leading US experts.*









Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) - (с) AEIMildeMarketingExoze

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Mathematical Secret of Viking Jewellery.

*A long-standing puzzle over the craftsmanship behind Viking bracelets and necklaces has finally been solved--mathematically*









Viking Jewellery

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Scientists: We've cracked wheat's genetic code.

*British scientists have decoded the genetic sequence of wheat - one of the world's oldest and most important crops - a development they hope could help the global staple meet the challenges of climate change, disease and population growth.*









A close up view of wheat crop, in a field in Acomb, northeast England, Friday, Aug. 27, 2010. British scientists have decoded the genetic sequence of wheat, one of the world's oldest and most important crops, a development they hope could help breed better strains of the global food staple.… Read more »
(AP Photo/Scott Heppell)

-- Tom


----------



## ekim68

NASA scientists discover two giant planets



> NASA's Kepler spacecraft, whose powerful telescope is scanning the stars in the Milky Way, has discovered two giant planets with abruptly changing orbits around their star that could offer insights into the birth and history of solar systems everywhere in the galaxy, scientists say.


----------



## lotuseclat79

Image: A strange ring galaxy.

*Is this one galaxy or two? Astronomer Art Hoag first asked this question when he chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object.*









Image Credit: NASA, R. Lucas (STScI/AURA)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Black holes + dark matter = light.

*TWO of the darkest things in the universe may be making light - or at least, radiation. When jets spat out by a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy collide with dark matter, they could produce gamma rays detectable from Earth - possible evidence of the elusive dark stuff.*









Dark signs from Centaurus A (Image: NASA/CXC/SAO/M.Karovska et al)

Perhaps a better title would be: Black holes + dark matter = Gamma Ray Burst radiation?

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mathematicians Create Objective Quality of Life Index.

*The US comes second in a new quality of life index designed to be mathematically objective*

-- Tom


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## ekim68

Question: How many pieces of orbital debris float around the earth? Answer: 19,000 which are 10 cm or larger...Many, many more under that size...(Gonna need a hard hat just to leave the house.. )

http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html#3


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## lotuseclat79

The Sinister Link Between Infectious Agents, Bacteria and Protozoa.

*A new technique for studying the relationship between bacteria and protozoans could boost our understanding of how these organisms spread disease*









Bacterial coverage for days 2 (a) and 3 (b), respectively.

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Author Simon Singh Puts Up a Fight in the War on Science.



> *Singh spent more than two years and well over $200,000 of his own money battling the case in court, and this past April he finally prevailed. In the process, he became a hero to those challenging the pseudoscience surrounding everything from global warming to vaccines to evolution.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Origami Crease Pattern Design Proved NP-Hard.

*Origamists have long suspected their art is computationally hard. Now they've proved it.*









Origami

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

New study suggests researchers can now test the 'theory of everything'.

*Researchers describe how to carry out the first experimental test of string theory in a paper published tomorrow in Physical Review Letters.*



> String theory was originally developed to describe the fundamental particles and forces that make up our universe. The new research, led by a team from Imperial College London, describes the unexpected discovery that string theory also seems to predict the behaviour of entangled quantum particles. As this prediction can be tested in the laboratory, researchers can now test string theory.


And: Stephen Hawking says there's no theory of everything.

*Three decades ago, Stephen Hawking famously declared that a "theory of everything" was on the horizon, with a 50 per cent chance of its completion by 2000. Now it is 2010, and Hawking has given up. But it is not his fault, he says: there may not be a final theory to discover after all. No matter; he can explain the riddles of existence without it.*

The answer is: The Grand Design, written with Leonard Mlodinow, is Hawking's first popular book in almost a decade.

In other words, Hawking is hawking his new book!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Why Spacetime On The Tiniest Scale May Be 2-Dimensional.



> *The latest thinking about quantum gravity suggests that spacetime is 2-dimensional on the smallest scale. And there may be a way to prove it*











SpaceTime: A spatial slice and a typical history contributing to the causal dynamical trian-
gulations path integral (R. Kommu and M. Sachs, UC Davis)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Extreme X-rays may be signature of lame black hole.



> *Newly reported results, appearing in an upcoming edition of The Astrophysical Journal, confirm that HLX-1 is over 100 times brighter than typical objects in its class, and a factor of 10 times more luminous than its nearest peer.*











Artist's impression of HLX-1, appearing above and to the left of the galactic bulge. Credit: Heidi Sagerud

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Big Bang Detector Heads to Space (2 web pages).

*A unique particle physics detector will be attached to the space station to study the universe and its origins.*









Detector test: The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is being tested at CERN. It weighs about 7,000 kilograms and is 4.5 meters wide and equally tall. Credit: AMS Team

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Microwave-Powered Rocket Ascends without Fuel (w/short Video).

*A scale model is further proof that beamed-energy propulsion works.*

-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Eternal black holes.



> *If you wanted to hide something away for all eternity, where could you put it? Black holes might seem like a safe bet, but Stephen Hawking famously calculated that they leak radiation, and most physicists now think that this radiation contains information about their contents. Now, there may be a way to make an "eternal" black hole that would act as the ultimate cosmic lockbox.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers hear puzzling new physics from graphene quartet's quantum harmonies.

*Using a one-of-a-kind instrument designed and built at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an international team of researchers have "unveiled" a quartet of graphene's electron states and discovered that electrons in graphene can split up into an unexpected and tantalizing set of energy levels when exposed to extremely low temperatures and extremely high magnetic fields.*









The NIST scanning-probe microscope was used to study electron states in graphene under conditions of ultra-high vacuum, ultra-low temperatures, and large magnetic fields. Georgia Tech provided the epitaxial graphene samples studied.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Study adds new clue to how last ice age ended.

*As the last ice age was ending, about 13,000 years ago, a final blast of cold hit Europe, and for a thousand years or more, it felt like the ice age had returned. But oddly, despite bitter cold winters in the north, Antarctica was heating up. For the two decades since ice core records revealed that Europe was cooling at the same time Antarctica was warming over this thousand-year period, scientists have looked for an explanation.*









Thick ice once filled New Zealand's Irishman Basin. Credit: Aaron Putnam, University of Maine









Rock samples were flown out of Irishman Basin by helicopter and shipped to the US for analysis. Credit: Mike Kaplan.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Galileo revisited: How ribbons roll.

*Galileo Galilei's experiments on the motions of falling and rolling objects, described in his 1638 book, "Two New Sciences," are considered by many to be the beginning of modern science. Now researchers at MIT have conducted a variation on his experiments that has produced unexpected results.*









The MIT team made a variety of "ribbons" using polymers that have different degrees of flexibility. Image: Pascal Raux and Pedro Reis

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Non-Expanding Cosmology Attempts To Oust Big Bang Theory.

*A static universe better explains the properties of the cosmos than the Big Bang and avoids the nagging problems of dark matter and dark energy, according to a new cosmology*









Curvature Cosmology: Absolute magnitudes, MCC , (Bessel B-band) of type 1a supernovae verses widths of their light curves for Union data. The solid line (red) is the line of best fit. The data are divided into 6 redshift bins identical to the bins shown in Table 6. Note that the brightest supernovae are at the top.

See PDF download for Table 6. PDF abstract and PDF download link at bottom of above link.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Origin of magnetic fields may lie in special relativity's spacetime distortions.

*Magnetic fields play an important role on scales ranging from the sub-atomic to the cosmic, from particle spins to galaxy clusters. Although scientists know how to create and manipulate magnetic fields, as well as use them for a variety of applications from computers to credit cards, they still don't have a universal theory of how magnetic fields initially originated in astrophysical settings. In a new study, two scientists have proposed a new primary generation mechanism for the magnetic field that is based on the spacetime distortions caused by special relativity.*









Images of (left) the vector, (middle) the generated vorticity, and (right) the magnitude of the square of the vorticity of the new mechanism for the origin of magnetic fields. Image credit: S. M. Mahajan, et al. © 2010 The American Physical Society.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How can we use neutrinos to probe dark matter in the Sun?.

*The existence of Dark Matter particles in the Sun's interior seems inevitable, despite dark matter never having been observed (there or elsewhere), despite intensive ongoing searches. Once gravitationally captured by the Sun, these particles tend to accumulate in its core.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Random numbers game with quantum dice.



> *A simple device measures the quantum noise of vacuum fluctuations and generates true random numbers.*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A true game of chance: Max Planck researchers produce true random numbers by making the randomly varying intensity of the quantum noise visible. To do this, they use a strong laser (coming from the left), a beam splitter, two identical detectors and several electronic components. The statistical spread of the measured values follows a Gaussian bell-shaped curve (bottom). Individual values are assigned to sections of the bell-shaped curve that correspond to a number. Credit: Max Planck Institute


-- Tom


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## franca

Two natural bridges on the Moon (now with 3D!)


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists investigate fate of five-dimensional black strings.



> *While black holes in four-dimensional space-time are stable and can persist for a long time, their higher-dimensional analogues are usually unstable. One such theoretical analogue is a five-dimensional black string, which is unstable to perturbations and tends to decay into different forms. But like all unstable "black objects," it's difficult to determine what the end state of the perturbed system might be. Using a new computer code, physicists have been able to simulate the evolution of five-dimensional black strings well beyond earlier studies, leading them to predict that the strings eventually turn into five-dimensional black holes.*
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> This clip from the video below shows a five-dimensional black string evolving into a thinner string with a cascade of black holes. Eventually, the system will end in a naked singularity and finally become a five-dimensional black hole. Image credit: Frans Pretorius.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A well-known effect in breakfast cereal helps physicists understand the universe.



> *Have you ever noticed how the last bits of cereal in the bowl always seem to cling to one another, making it easy to spoon up the remaining stragglers? Physicists have -- and they've given it a name: the "Cheerios effect".*
> 
> But this effect isn't exclusive to breakfast cereals. It also reveals itself in the way particles move in the air, pollen floats on the surface of water and galaxies cluster throughout the universe.
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> A bowl of cereal and milk. Credit: Conrad.Irwin


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Stephen Hawking: What is Reality?.



> In our quest to find the laws that govern the universe we have formulated a number of theories or models, such as the four-element theory, the Ptolemaic model, the phlogiston theory, the big bang theory, and so on. Regarding the laws that govern the universe, what we can say is this: There seems to be no single mathematical model or theory that can describe every aspect of the universe. Instead, there seems to be the network of theories, With each theory or model, our concepts of reality and of the fundamental constituents of the universe have changed.
> 
> Excerpted from the book The Grand Design
> Copyright 2010 by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How Fast Are We Mutating?.



> *Different people may have different rates of mutation.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Comets may have brought life to Earth: new study.



> *Life on Earth as we know it really could be from out of this world. New research from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists shows that comets that crashed into Earth millions of years ago could have produced amino acids - the building blocks of life.*
> 
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> Computer simulations show that long chains containing carbon-nitrogen bonds can form during shock compression of a cometary ice. Upon expansion, the long chains break apart to form complexes containing the protein building amino acid glycine.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientist proves Braess paradox 'disappears' under high traffic demands.



> *In an urban area with a lot of traffic, adding a new road to distribute the traffic may seem like a sensible idea. But according to the Braess paradox, just the opposite occurs: a new route added in a transportation network increases the travel times of all individual travelers. Formulated in 1968 by Dietrich Braess, the paradox is not a true paradox, but rather a counter-intuitive finding regarding an everyday situation.*
> 
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> A new study shows that, under high enough traffic, an additional route will not increase traffic times because the route will not be used. Image credit: The Infrastructurist.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New Physics? Fundamental Cosmic Constant Now Seems Shifty.



> *A fundamental constant of the universe may not be so constant after all, according to a new study.
> 
> Recent observations of distant galaxies suggest that the strength of the electromagnetic force - the so-called fine-structure constant - actually varies throughout the universe. In one direction, the constant seemed to grow larger the farther astronomers looked; in another direction the constant took on smaller values with greater distance.*


-- Tom


----------



## franca

'Cannibal' star










The image on the left shows X-ray and optical data for BP Piscium (BP Psc), a more evolved version of our Sun. On the right is an artist's impression of what the star looks like close up


----------



## lotuseclat79

Sunspots could soon disappear for decades: study.



> *Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades. The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age.*
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> Photo Credit: NASA/TRACE


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Understanding behavioral patterns: Why bird flocks move in unison.



> *Animal flocks, be it honeybees, fish, ants or birds, often move in surprising synchronicity and seemingly make unanimous decisions at a moment's notice, a phenomenon which has remained puzzling to many researchers.*











Image Credit: Institute of Physics

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Possibility of Time Travel and Negative Energy, and Planning a Light Enabled Time Machine.

This is not science fiction folks - but does entail Theoretical Physics and experimentation into the Gravitational Faraday Effect.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Toward resolving Darwin's 'abominable mystery'.



> *What, in nature, drives the incredible diversity of flowers? This question has sparked debate since Darwin described flower diversification as an 'abominable mystery.' The answer has become a lot clearer, according to scientists at the University of Calgary whose research on the subject is published today in the on-line edition of the journal Ecology Letters.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientific understanding of T. rex revised by a decade of new research and discovery.



> *A new paper in Science highlights recent tyrannosaur discoveries and complex analyses of the biology of certain species. The paper includes a new family tree for T. rex and its relatives.*
> 
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> This is an adult Tyrannosaurus from the American Museum of Natural History Credit: AMNH


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

'Unexpectedly' Complex Molecule Found In Space.



> *What is really happening in apparently empty areas of the Galaxy? It may get a rethink because scientists have managed to find a molecule that has an unexpectedly complicated structure in interstellar clouds of extremely small density.*
> 
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> Diacetylene cation, a particle made up of two hydrogen atoms and four carbon atoms, has been discovered in transparent interstellar clouds. Credit: IPC PAS, NASA&C.R. O'Dell/Vanderbilt University


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First Observation Of A Macroscopic Quantum Jump.



> *Physicists have watched an artificial atom jump from one state to another using a monitoring technique that could have important implications for quantum computing*
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> 
> Experimental setup. In (a), readout photons (black arrow) enter from the input port and are directed through a
> microwave circulator to a 180◦ hybrid, which converts the single-ended microwave signal into a differential one. The photons interact with the readout cavity and the reflected signal (purple arrows) carries information about the qubit state toward the non-linear resonator through three circulators, which isolate the readout and qubit from the strong pump of the amplifier resonator. A directional coupler combines this signal with pump photons (green arrow) from the drive port. The pumped nonlinear resonator amplifies the readout signal, and the amplified signal (red arrows) is reflected and sent through the third circulator to the output port. The signal is further amplified by cryogenic and room temperature amplifiers before being mixed down to zero frequency, digitized, and stored in a computer. Qubit manipulation pulses enter on the same line as the readout pulses. (b) false-color optical image of the readout resonator, formed by a meander inductor (orange) shunted by an interdigitated capacitor (blue). The transmon qubit (yellow) is capacitively coupled to the resonator. The detail view shows the qubit loop. Scale bars are 100 μm (main view) and 10 μm (detail view). (c) false-color optical image of the amplifier resonator showing the superconducting loop (pink) and junctions (black), shunted by large parallel-plate capacitors (cyan) on a SiNx -coated Nb ground plane (brown). Scale bars are 100 μm (main view) and 5 μm (detail view).


-- Tom


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## franca

Scientists develop new 'photonic' chip










Quantum computers will be able to conduct far more complex calculations than current computers


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## lotuseclat79

Moon Crater Map Reveals Early Solar System History.



> *The first complete topographic map of the moon and its craters has revealed details of billions of years of bombardment by asteroids, and the early history of our solar system. Among other things, the map confirms theories of an onslaught of massive asteroids around 3.9 billion years ago that likely evaporated any water present on Earth at the time.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Jupiter making closest approach in nearly 50 years



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - Better catch Jupiter next week in the night sky. It won't be that big or bright again until 2022.
> 
> Jupiter will pass 368 million miles (592 million kilometers) from Earth late Monday, its closest approach since 1963.


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## lotuseclat79

Tying string theory together: A new book attempts to explain string theory to the masses.



> *Reality comes in layers. Everything we see in the world around us, scientists tell us, is made of atoms and combinations of atoms called molecules. Atoms are themselves made of tiny particles -- electrons, protons, and neutrons. Protons, in turn, are believed to be made of still tinier things called quarks. Is that the end of it? Probably not.*
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> Credit: quinet / via flickr


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New pi record exploits Yahoo's computers.



> *A Yahoo researcher has made a record-breaking calculation of the digits of pi using his company's computers. The feat comes hot on the heels of a breakthrough Rubik's cube result that used Google's computers. Together, the results highlight the growing power of internet search giants to make mathematical breakthroughs.
> 
> One way to show off computing power is to calculate pi to as many digits as possible, creating a string that starts with 3.14 and continues to the nth digit. The more digits one wants, the more computations it takes.
> 
> But it is also possible to skip ahead to the nth digit without calculating the preceding ones - for example, determining that the 10th digit is 3, without having to find the first 9 digits: 3.14159265. This is another way of testing computing power, since more computations are required to find higher values of n.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Large Hadron Collider cranks up the collisions.

*In our story about how protons find their way into the LHC, we spent a fair bit of time emphasizing the importance of the machine's luminosity, which is a rough measure of how many collisions it produces per unit of time. The greater the luminosity, the more data that physicists will have to work with, and the greater the chance that they'll catch a rare event that hints at some fundamentally new physics. The LHC was designed to have a very high luminosity, which is even more exciting to many physicists than the machine's record-setting 7TeV collision energies.*









LHC Total Luminosity

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How Gene Circuits Store Information.

*Certain types of gene circuits can store information over many cell generations, according to a theoretical study. That will trigger a frantic search to find these circuits in real cells*









Gene Memory: Response Characteristics of the Conditional Memory Circuit. Credit: Authors of Designing sequential transcription logic: a simple genetic circuit for conditional memory

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists find evidence of new state of matter in a simple oxide.

*Symmetry is a fundamental concept in physics. Our 'standard model' of particle physics, for example, predicts that matter and anti-matter should have been created in equal amounts at the big bang, yet our existing universe is mostly matter. Such a discrepancy between the symmetry of known physical laws, and what we actually observe, are often the inspiration for realizing that new interactions are important or that new phases of matter can exist.*









Schematic of the spin-ice structure of the oxide Pr2Ir2O7. Large quantum fluctuations of the spins (red arrows) are predicted to melt the spin-ice structure and form a new state of matter, called a chiral spin liquid. Copyright : Modified, with permission, from Ref. 1 © 2010 Yo Machida et al.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Large Hadron Collider spies hints of infant universe.



> *The big bang machine may already be living up to its nickname. Researchers on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, have seen hints of what may be the hot, dense state of matter thought to have filled the universe in its first nanoseconds.*
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> Possible hints of the infant universe (Image: CERN)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Universal, primordial magnetic fields discovered in deep space.



> *Scientists from the California Institute of Technology and UCLA have discovered evidence of "universal ubiquitous magnetic fields" that have permeated deep space between galaxies since the time of the Big Bang.*
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> NASA artist's conception of an "active galactic nucleus"


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Psychologist shows why we 'choke' under pressure -- and how to avoid it.



> *A star golfer misses a critical putt; a brilliant student fails to ace a test; a savvy salesperson blows a key presentation. Each of these people has suffered the same bump in mental processing: They have just choked under pressure.*
> 
> A person also can overcome anxiety by thinking about what to say, not what not to say, said Beilock, who added that staying positive is always a good idea.
> 
> "Think about the journey, not the outcome," Beilock advised. "Remind yourself that you have the background to succeed and that you are in control of the situation. This can be the confidence boost you need to ace your pitch or to succeed in other ways when facing life's challenges."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Earth to have closest encounter with Jupiter until 2022.



> *Been outside at midnight lately? There's something you really need to see. Jupiter is approaching Earth for the closest encounter between the two planets in more than a decade -- and it is dazzling.*
> 
> The night of closest approach is Sept. 20-21st. This is also called "the night of opposition" because Jupiter will be opposite the sun, rising at sunset and soaring overhead at midnight. Among all denizens of the midnight sky, only the moon itself will be brighter.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How Molecular Motors Drive Cellular Locomotion.

*A new model of the cytoskeleton behaviour reveals the secret of cellular motion*









Stiffening Cytoskeleton

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Black Strings: Black Holes With Extra Dimensions.



> *Meet the Bizarro universe version of a black hole: a black string.*
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> These hypothetical objects might form if our universe has hidden extra dimensions beyond the three of space and one of time that we can see, scientists say. A new study of five-dimensional black strings offers a glimpse into how these strange objects might evolve over time - if indeed they exist at all.
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> Five-dimensional black strings evolve into black holes connected by black string filaments, in this computer simulation. Credit: Pretorius/Lehner
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> Animation of a black string.
> A model of five-dimensional black strings shows how an initial perturbation would cause the object to break apart into black holes connected by thin black string segments. Smaller black holes would form on the segments and the process would repeat.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Einstein's Relativity Affects Aging on Earth (Slightly).



> *Like a vignette from The Twilight Zone, new research shows that you'll age slightly faster standing on a staircase than you do on the floor below.*
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> A winding staircase in Austria's Melk Abbey (file photo). Photograph by Keenpress/National Geographic Stock


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Solar storms can change directions, surprising forecasters.

*Solar storms don't always travel in a straight line. But once they start heading in our direction, they can accelerate rapidly, gathering steam for a harder hit on Earth's magnetic field.*









The magnetic field of a bar magnet.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Destroyer of worlds.

*Astronomers, in addition to discovering extrasolar planets (about 500 of them currently have known orbital parameters), have detected excess, warm infrared dust emission around many stars.*









An optical image of a ring of dust, possibly in the process of forming planets, around a nearby young star; the bright star itself has been masked out. New results from infrared studies suggest even old stars can generate dusty rings by triggering destructive collisions between bodies orbiting around them. Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Leonardo da Vinci's Human-Powered Flying Machine Flies! [VIDEO].



> *Leonardo da Vinci's Ornithopter Brought to Life, Flies in Canada*
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> [Note: You should definitely watch the video below and see the very natural-looking way the wings of this flying machine flap.]


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First Observation of Hawking Radiation.



> *Hawking predicted it in 1974. Now physicists say they've seen it for the first time*
> 
> Event horizons of astrophysical black holes and gravitational analogues have been predicted to excite the quantum vacuum and give rise to the emission of quanta, known as Hawking radiation. We experimentally create such a gravitational analogue using ultrashort laser pulse filaments and our measurements demonstrate a spontaneous emission of photons that confirms theoretical predictions.
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> Hawking Radiation From Ultrashort Laser Pulse Filaments: Experimental layout used for detecting analogue
> Hawking radiation. The input laser pulse is focused into a sample of fused silica (FS) using an axicon or lens (F). An
> imaging lens (I) collects the photons emitted at 90 deg and sends them to an imaging spectrometer coupled to a cooled CCD camera.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cosmic nudity.



> *Black Strings, Low Viscosity Fluids, and Violation of Cosmic Censorship*
> 
> Despite its long and proud history, classical general relativity contains many unresolved profound questions. For instance, black holes are known to be stable solutions of general relativity in four spacetime dimensions; however, how stable are they in higher dimensions? Another important example concerns the nature of gravitational singularities and the cosmic censorship conjecture, which posits that generic black hole singularities are "clothed" by an event horizon; that is, the event horizon prevents the black hole from being observed. These questions are of fundamental conceptual importance in the understanding of gravity in regimes relevant to the search for a quantum theory of gravity-an outstanding intellectual challenge in theoretical physics.
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> Relativity visualized: The theory of relativity holds a certain fascination for many people. At the same time it is often regarded as very abstract and difficult to understand.
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> Part of the difficulties in understanding relativity are due to the fact that relativistic effects contradict everyday experience. Motion, for example, is a familiar process and everybody "knows from experience" that it entails neither time dilation nor length contraction. A flight with half the speed of light could correct this misjudgement but is not on offer.
> 
> A possible alternative are simulations. Images, films and virtual reality let us in a sense experience relativistic flights, gravitational collapse, compact objects and other extreme conditions.
> Ref: Space Time Travel.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists develop new way to decipher hidden messages in symbols.



> *Almost all information, in a sense, can be represented by symbols. In order to extract this embedded information, the symbols and the rules governing their sequence formation need to be deciphered. There are many examples of information residing in symbols, although the most familiar is probably written language. In addition to the sequences of letters that make up words, and sequences of words that make up sentences, there are lexical and grammatical rules that govern how letters and words can be combined, respectively, so that not all sequences of letters and words are possible. In a recent study, a group of scientists from Italy has developed a generic method to extract information from any type of symbolic sequential data, even when a "dictionary" of symbol sequences is not known beforehand.*
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> A motif network of the human proteome can be used to extract functional protein domains. This network consists of recurrent strings of 3 letters, called 3-motifs. Each node belongs to one of 15 communities, which are labeled with different colors and numbers. Most of the communities can be associated with a functional domain. Image credit: Roberta Sinatra, et al.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Complexity not so costly after all, analysis shows.



> *The more complex a plant or animal, the more difficulty it should have adapting to changes in the environment. That's been a maxim of evolutionary theory since biologist Ronald Fisher put forth the idea in 1930.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Fundamental algorithm gets first improvement in 10 years.



> *The maximum-flow problem, or max flow, is one of the most basic problems in computer science: First solved during preparations for the Berlin airlift, it's a component of many logistical problems and a staple of introductory courses on algorithms. For decades it was a prominent research subject, with new algorithms that solved it more and more efficiently coming out once or twice a year. But as the problem became better understood, the pace of innovation slowed. Now, however, MIT researchers, together with colleagues at Yale and the University of Southern California, have demonstrated the first improvement of the max-flow algorithm in 10 years.*
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> Graphic: Christine Daniloff


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quarks 'swing' to the tones of random numbers.



> *At the Large Hadron Collider at CERN protons crash into each other at incredibly high energies in order to 'smash' the protons and to study the elementary particles of nature - including quarks. Quarks are found in each proton and are bound together by forces which cause all other known forces of nature to fade. To understand the effects of these strong forces between the quarks is one of the greatest challenges in modern particle physics. New theoretical results from the Niels Bohr Institute show that enormous quantities of random numbers can describe the way in which quarks 'swing' inside the protons. The results have been published in arXiv and will be published in the journal Physical Review Letters.*
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> A matrix is a rectangular array of numbers. A random matrix can be compared to a Sudoku filled with random numbers. Matrices are part of the equations governing the movements of the particles. In a random matrix there are numbers that are entered randomly, while there are still certain symmetries, for example, you can require that the numbers in the lower left should be a copy of the numbers above the diagonal. This is called a symmetrical matrix.
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> A particle made up of quarks is affected by the strong nuclear force, which is one of the four forces of nature. The force binds the quarks together and is approximately 1033 times stronger than gravity and 100 times stronger than the electro-magnetic force. But the range is small, equivalent to an atomic diameter of approximately 10-15 m.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Single electron reader opens path for quantum computing.



> *Researchers from University of New South Wales (Australia), University of Melbourne (Australia), and Aalto University (Finland) have succeeded in demonstrating a high-fidelity detection scheme for the magnetic state of a single electron, that is, the spin. The research results have just been published in Nature.*
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> Scanning electron micrograph of metallic electrodes on silicon oxide. The electrodes are isolated from each other so that there is no electric current flowing through them. A schematic illustration has been added to the figure representing the electron layer induced below the silicon oxide (source and drain) together with so-called quantum dot (SET island) which works as a charge detector. Furthermore, the dashed blue line shows a region where phosphorus donors have been placed in the silicon with the magnetic moment of the outermost electron pointing either up or down. The energy of spin-up state is higher than the energy of spin-down state in magnetic field. By controlling the voltage on a nearby plunger gate, the system can be brought at will into a working point where spin-up electron has enough energy to tunnel into the charge detector but the spin-down state of the same electron remains bound to the phosphorus. The detector is very sensitive to changes in the charge state of the phosphorus yielding noticeable current (ISET) after the spin-up electron moves. Thus the spin state of the electron can be measure by a single shot at any chosen time.
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> Artist's impression of a phosphorus atom (red sphere surrounded by a blue electron cloud, with spin) coupled to a silicon single-electron transistor, to achieve single-shot readout of the phosphorus electron spin. Credit: William Algar-Chuklin, College of Fine Arts, UNSW.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Time Likely To End Within Earth's Lifespan, Say Physicists.



> *There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new model of the universe*
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> End of Time: Causal Patch Cutoff: A multiverse populated by infinitely many observers (vertical line segments) who first see 1 o'clock (at events labeled "1") and then 2 o'clock ("2"). A geometric cutoff selects a finite set of events, whose relative frequency defines probabilities. Events that are not counted are indicated by dashed lines. (Not shown - left figure). The left figure shows a global cutoff: all events prior to the time t0 (curved line) are counted and all later events ignored. (The global time has nothing to do with the observers' clocks, which come into being at a rate dictated by the dynamics of eternal inflation.) The right figure shows the causal patch cutoff, which restricts to the causal past of a point on the future boundary. In both figures, the cutoff region contains observers who see 1 o'clock but not 2 o'clock. Their number, as a fraction of all observers who see 1 o'clock before the cutoff, defines the probability of reaching the end of time between 1 and 2 o'clock.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA team obtains the 'unobtainium' for next space observatory.



> *Imagine building a car chassis without a blueprint or even a list of recommended construction materials. In a sense, that's precisely what a team of engineers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., did when they designed a one-of-a-kind structure that is one of 9 key new technology systems of the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM). Just as a chassis supports the engine and other components in a car, the ISIM will hold four highly sensitive instruments, electronics, and other shared instrument systems flying on the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's next flagship observatory.*
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> Doug McGuffey is pictured here standing next to the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) Flight Structure. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Study: Wind May Have Helped Moses Part Red Sea.









This illustration shows how a strong wind from the east could push back waters from two ancient basins -- a lagoon (left) and a river (right) -- to create a temporary land bridge. New research suggests that such a physical process could have led to a parting of waters similar to the description in the biblical account of the Red Sea.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mathematics for Computer Science (Fall 2010, MIT).

Note: The above download link is for the PDF document (556 pages) which is 6.8MB.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How To Build A Warp Drive Using Metamaterials.



> *A "warp drive" built using metamaterials could reach a quarter light speed, suggests a new analysis*
> 
> Metamaterials are substances in which their ability to support electric and magnetic fields can be changed. Fiddle with these properties in just the right way and you can steer electromagnetic waves in all kinds of strange and exotic ways.
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> Warp Drive: Spatial distributions of ε, μ, and gx in the split-ring based metamaterial model of a warp drive gradually accelerated up to 1/4c.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA Spacecraft Error Makes Sun's Image Look Like Jupiter.



> SDO sits in a geosynchronous orbit directly above a research station near La Cruces, New Mexico, and transmits data on our local star non-stop to two large dishes on the ground. Usually, this position gives SDO a stellar view (so to speak). But near the spring and autumn equinoxes, Earth gets in the way. Once a day for about an hour, the spacecraft, Earth and the sun line up perfectly, and SDO is briefly blind.
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> Sunpiter - "Now we know what it would look like if Jupiter and the sun had a child,"


Not so much an error of NASA's Spacecraft as a matter of the spring and autumn equinoxes, and Earth getting in the way just as the sun emerges from blackout that it was not designed to accommodate in the software.

-- Tom


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## ekim68

Space race to build the world's first orbiting hotel



> The new space race is starting to look a lot like the old space race -- except this time it is U.S. and Russian businesses chasing each other down instead of the two countries' governments.
> 
> Moscow-based Orbital Technologies announced Wednesday that it is teaming with spacecraft manufacturer Rocket & Space Corp. Energia to build an orbiting outpost for space travelers. Dubbed the Commercial Space Station, or CSS, it's slated to be ready by 2016, a company spokeswoman said.
> 
> But that's one year after Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace plans to have its commercial station ready. The company, owned by Robert Bigelow, founder of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, has already built and launched prototypes of inflatable modules that could serve as orbital hotels and research labs.


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## lotuseclat79

Measuring Atomic Memory with Nano Precision (2 web pages).



> *Researchers at IBM now know how long a single atom can "remember" its state.*
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> Memory machine: IBM researcher Sebastian Loth operates the scanning tunneling microscope that his team used to measure how long a single atom can store information. Credit: IBM Research
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> "Every week someone demonstrates manipulating the qubit a little better."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Three tiny qubits, another big step toward quantum computing.



> *The rules that govern the world of the very small, quantum mechanics, are known for being bizarre. One of the strangest tenets is something called quantum entanglement, in which two or more objects (such as particles of light, called photons) become inextricably linked, so that measuring certain properties of one object reveals information about the other(s), even if they are separated by thousands of miles. Einstein found the consequences of entanglement so unpalatable he famously dubbed it "spooky action at a distance."*
> 
> Now a team led by Yale researchers has harnessed this counterintuitive aspect of quantum mechanics and achieved the entanglement of three solid-state qubits, or quantum bits, for the first time. Their accomplishment, described in the Sept. 30 issue of the journal Nature, is a first step towards quantum error correction, a crucial aspect of future quantum computing.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Species accumulate on Earth at slower rates than in the past: study.

*Computational biologists at the University of Pennsylvania say that species are still accumulating on Earth but at a slower rate than in the past.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists find potentially habitable planet near Earth.



> *A team of planet hunters led by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times the mass of Earth) orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's "habitable zone," where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one.*
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> This illustration released in 2009 by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) shows the planet Gliese 581e (blue). US astronomers said Wednesday they have discovered an Earth-sized planet that they think might be habitable, orbiting a nearby star, and believe there could be many more planets like it in space.


Related article: A Habitable Exoplanet - for Real This Time.



> ...because the star Gliese 581 is only about 1 percent as bright as the sun, temperatures on the new planet should be much more comfortable. Taking into account the presence of an atmosphere and how much starlight the planet probably reflects, astronomers calculated the average temperature ranges from minus 24 degrees to 10 degrees above zero Fahrenheit.
> 
> Another advantage for potential life on Gliese 581g is that its star is "effectively immortal," Butler said. "Our sun will go 10 billion years before it goes nova, and life here ceases to exist. But M dwarfs live for tens, hundreds of billions of years, many times the current age of the universe. So life has a long time to get a toehold."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A step closer to Big Bang conditions? More study is needed to confirm the latest LHC findings.



> *Since December, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been smashing particles together at record-setting energy levels. Physicists hope that those high-energy collisions could replicate the conditions seen immediately after the Big Bang, shedding light on how our universe came to be. Now, data from collisions that took place in July suggests that the LHC may have have taken a step toward that goal.*
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> Proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider produce hundreds of particles. Some of those particles form pairs that display an unexpected correlation. Image: CERN


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Unread correspondence of Francis Crick: New twists in double helix discovery story are uncovered.



> *The story of the double helix's discovery has a few new twists. A new primary source -- a never-before-read stack of letters to and from Francis Crick, and other historical materials dating from the years 1950-76 -- has been uncovered by two professors at the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Random numbers created out of nothing.



> *It's something from nothing. A random number generator that harnesses the quantum fluctuations in empty space could soon sit inside your computer.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists move objects across meter-scale distances using only light (w/ Video).



> *For more than 40 years, scientists have been using the radiation pressure of light to move and manipulate small objects in space. But until now, the movements have always been restricted to very small scales, typically across distances of a few hundred micrometers, and mostly in liquids. In a new study, scientists have demonstrated a technique that achieves giant optical manipulation in air using a new kind of optical trap that can move 100-micrometer-sized objects across meter-scale distances with an accuracy of about 10 micrometers.*
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> (A) The set-up for transporting particles using optical vortex pipelines. (B) Microspheres form the abbreviation for the Australian National University, having been remotely deposited over a distance of 0.5 meters with a positioning accuracy of 10 micrometers. The microspheres' diameters vary from 60 to 100 micrometers. Image credit: Vladlen G. Shvedov, et al. ©2010 The American Physical Society.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists Convert Information Into Energy.



> *The first demonstration of an information-heat engine could revolutionise the way nanomachines get their power.*
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> (Note: Fig 1a not shown)
> Schematic illustration of the experiment. a, A microscopic particle on a spiral-stairs-like potential with a step height
> comparable to kB T . The particle stochastically jumps between steps due to thermal fluctuations. Since the downward jumps along the gradient are more frequent than the upward ones, the particle falls down the stairs, on average. b, Feedback control. When an upward jump is observed, a block is placed behind the particle to prevent downward jumps. By repeating this cycle, the particle is expected to climb up the stairs without direct energy injection.


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## lotuseclat79

New insight into first life.



> *New genome research at Oxford University could change the way scientists view our evolution.*
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> The Archaea Thermococcus Gammatolerans by Wikimedia/Angels Tapias.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Powerful supercomputer peers into the origin of life.



> *Supercomputer simulations at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are helping scientists unravel how nucleic acids could have contributed to the origins of life.*
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> New research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory explains how a ribonucleic acid enzyme, or ribozyme (pictured), uses magnesium ions (seen as spheres) to accelerate a significant reaction in organic chemistry.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Post-Singularity Future Of Astronomy.

*Astronomy could be the first discipline in which the rate of discovery by machines outpaces humans' ability to interpret it*









Astronomy Future: The observational phase space of 20cm radio continuum surveys, adapted from [4], and originally generated by Isabella Prandoni. The most sensitive surveys are on the bottom left, and the largest area surveys on the top right. The dashed diagonal line shows the limiting envelope of existing surveys, which are largely limited by available telescope time. Next-generation SKA pathfinders such as the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) are able to survey the unexplored region of phase space to the top left by using innovative approaches such as focal plane arrays.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

After Big Bang Came Moment of Pure Chaos, Study Finds.



> *The universe was in chaos after the Big Bang kick-started the cosmos, a new study suggests.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Saturn's rings sprang from missing massive moon 



> A doomed giant moon losing its outer crust likely led to the creation of Saturn's rings, a planetary scientist proposed Monday.
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> At the ongoing Division for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, Calif., Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute looked at the mysterious origins of Saturn's rings. The rings are more than 90% water-ice, but smash-ups between moons -- the conventional explanation for the glittering arcs surrounding Saturn -- would have created a mixture of ice and rock, instead of their current composition, he notes.
> 
> Instead Canup suggests that a moon the size of Titan, Saturn's only large satellite at about 3,200 miles in diameter, may have shattered and swirled into the ringed planet, leaving the ring behind.


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## lotuseclat79

Hubble astronomers discover early universe was overheated.

*If you think global warming is bad, 11 billion years ago the entire universe underwent, well, universal warming.*









This diagram traces the evolution of the universe from the big bang to the present. Two watershed epochs are shown. Not long after the big bang, light from the first stars burned off a fog of cold hydrogen in a process called reionization. At a later epoch quasars, the black-hole-powered cores of active galaxies, pumped out enough ultraviolet light to reionize the primordial helium. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Gravity at Small Scales Remains a Mystery.



> *Scientists know how gravity works at big distances -- the inter-planetary or inter-stellar range -- but does it work the same way at the inter-atomic range?*
> 
> A variety of tabletop experiments are trying to explore this issue. Already some theorists say that a departure from conventional gravity behavior could hint at the existence of extra dimensions.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

lotuseclat79 said:


> Hubble astronomers discover early universe was overheated.
> 
> *If you think global warming is bad, 11 billion years ago the entire universe underwent, well, universal warming.*
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> This diagram traces the evolution of the universe from the big bang to the present. Two watershed epochs are shown. Not long after the big bang, light from the first stars burned off a fog of cold hydrogen in a process called reionization. At a later epoch quasars, the black-hole-powered cores of active galaxies, pumped out enough ultraviolet light to reionize the primordial helium. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)
> 
> -- Tom


A question: Since the big bang occurred in our particular universe, did it also occur in the multiverse? Of course you have to believe in it, but if it did indeed occur in one dimension, would it occur across the board?


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## ekim68

Maybe dimension isn't the right word...


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## lotuseclat79

ekim68 said:


> Maybe dimension isn't the right word...


Hi Mike,

I agree with your comment. Maybe multiverse is the proper word to use since dimension usually refers to time, space plus other dimensions in M-Theory postulates of our Universe.

-- Tom


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## franca

"Bouncing Water Droplet


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## lotuseclat79

What would happen if you stuck your hand into the Large Hadron Collider? (first 4 minutes).

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Big bounce cosmos makes inflation a sure thing.



> *IS OUR universe a recycled version of an earlier cosmos? The idea, which replaces the big bang with a "big bounce", has received a boost: this vision of the birth of the universe can explain why a subsequent process, called inflation, occurred.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Ghosts of the Future: First Giant Structures of the Universe Hold 800 Trillion Suns.



> Astronomers using the South Pole Telescope report that they have discovered the most massive galaxy cluster yet seen at a distance of 7 billion light-years. The cluster (designated SPT-CL J0546-5345) weighs in at around 800 trillion Suns, and holds hundreds of galaxies.
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> Galaxy Cluster: An infrared/optical representative-color image of a massive galaxy cluster located 7 billion light-years from Earth. This cluster weighs as much as 800 trillion Suns. Galaxies with "old" stellar populations, like modern-day ellipticals, are circled in yellow; galaxies with "young" stellar populations, like modern-day spirals, are circled in blue. Images taken with the Infrared Array Camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Mosaic-II camera on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The field of view is 4 x 4 arcminutes. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Brodwin (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA) Optical Image: CTIO Blanco 4-m telescope/J. Mohr (LMU Munich))


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Proving 0.999... Is Equal To 1.

Very simple!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Milky Way Is Square, According To New Galactic Map.

*Some of our galaxy's spiral arms are straight rather than curved, giving the Milky Way a distinctly square look, say astronomers.*









Milky Way

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists Count The Number of Atoms In 1kg of Silicon.



> *And, in case you're wondering, the answer is 6.02214084(18) × 10^23 (Corrected below)*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

UC Riverside physicists pave the way for graphene-based spin computer.



> *Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have taken an important step forward in developing a "spin computer" by successfully achieving "tunneling spin injection" into graphene.*
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> Atomically-thin insulating barriers greatly improve spin injection into graphene. Top image shows flow of electrons (dotted line) when no insulator is used. Flow of electron spin polarization is greatly improved (bottom image) when a magnesium oxide insulator is used as shown. Image credit: Kawakami lab, UC Riverside.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

LHC Breaks Into 10^32 Territory!.



> *Quite in advance with respect to the stated goals of its 2010 collider program, the Large Hadron Collider has produced yesterday night the instantaneous luminosity of 10^32 cm^-2 s^-1 in the core of the ATLAS and CMS detectors. This is great news for all of us: at such a collision rate, on average one top quark pair is produced every minute, and one 120 GeV Higgs boson (if the thing exists) every 10 minutes makes its apparition there!*
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> Total Integrated Luminosity vs Time


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Square Root Of The Universe.



> *Is energy conserved? ... The conservation of energy is an insight that stood the test of time. It was Julius von Mayer who first worded it in it's clearest form: "Energy can be neither created nor destroyed". That was nearly 170 years ago*.
> 
> So why question energy conservation? ... Energy is conserved also at cosmic scales, but one has to look at it from the right perspective. ... Key to this problem is that there is no such thing as 'the density of gravitational energy'. Gravitational energy is non-local. Or more precisely: it is holographic in nature.
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> To get a handle on the holographic nature of gravitational energy, we first need to understand the concept of space-time horizons.
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> A cosmological horizon bounds the universe observable to us. The closer an object is to this horizon, the more red-shifted it will be.
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> The all-too-familiar expanding balloon analogy explaining cosmological redshift: radiation stretches to larger wavelengths due to the expansion of the universe.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Benoit Mandelbrot, RIP.



> *Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, has died. He was 85.*
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> "Fractal geometry is not just a chapter of mathematics, but one that helps Everyman to see the same world differently." -Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Benoit Mandelbrot (R.I.P.) and the quest for a theory of really everything.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Secret Behind Formation of Volcanic 'Ring of Fire' Found.



> *A large chunk of Earth's earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in a narrow zone around the Pacific Ocean known as the "Ring of Fire." Scientists are only just beginning to understand why this tectonic explosivity is so confined.*
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> A new study has uncovered part of the answer for why the Ring of Fire, and other volcanic arcs around the world, occur in the narrow spaces that they do.
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> It has to do with the complicated and varying recipe of liquid, hot magma and cooling water that combine beneath the Earth's crust to cause a volcanic eruption.
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> "But while many models of this process have been put forward, none has been able to explain the location, and narrowness, of the volcanic arcs," England said.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

100-million-year-old mistake provides snapshot of evolution.



> *Research by University of Leeds plant scientists has uncovered a snapshot of evolution in progress, by tracing how a gene mutation over 100 million years ago led flowers to make male and female parts in different ways*


--- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Unexpected magnetism discovered.

*Theoretical work done at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has provided a key to understanding an unexpected magnetism between two dissimilar materials.*

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Geophysicists claim conventional understanding of Earth's deep water cycle needs revision.



> *A popular view among geophysicists is that large amounts of water are carried from the oceans to the deep mantle in "subduction zones," which are boundaries where the Earth's crustal plates converge, with one plate riding over the other.*
> 
> But now geophysicists led by the University of California, Riverside's Harry Green, a distinguished professor of geology and geophysics, present results that contradict this view. They compare seismic and experimental evidence to argue that subducting slabs do not carry water deeper than about 400 kilometers.
> 
> "The importance of this work is two-fold," Green said. "Firstly, if deep slabs are dry, it implies that they are strong, a major current question in geophysics that has implications for plate tectonic models. Secondly, even small amounts of water greatly reduce the viscosity of rocks; if water is not cycled deep into Earth, it means that mantle convection has not been as vigorous over time as it would have been with significant water."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Jail cell science.



> *You never know where you might find some intrepid scientists trying to unlock some of nature's mysteries. Forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni came up with an idea that brings science to a most unlikely place -- prison!*
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> Since 2004, Nalini Nadkarni of Evergreen State College has guided an unlikely but productive team of researchers--all are inmates at Cedar Creek Corrections Center, a medium security prison in Littlerock, Washington--as they conduct experiments to identify the best ways to cultivate slow-growing mosses. Read more in this news release. Credit: Nalini Nadkarni, Evergreen State College
> ...
> Other prisons across the country and around the world are now interested in bringing science and scientists behind bars as well.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Water's choice: A tale of two numbers and the order they predict.



> *Well-ordered structure or chaotic jumble? That's the choice when water is mixed with a salt and cooled down. Now, thanks to a rule discovered by scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Technical University of Munich, predicting the structure of a frozen mixture of various salts and water is as easy as comparing just two numbers.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists to discuss largest parity violation, other adventures in table-top physics.



> *Exploring the fundamental laws of physics has often required huge accelerators and particles colliding at high energies. But table-top experiments, usually employing exquisitely tuned lasers and sensitive detectors, have also achieved the precision necessary for exploring the basic laws of physics at the heart of relativity and quantum mechanics.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New research shows people are better at strategic reasoning than was thought.



> *When we make decisions based on what we think someone else will do, in anything from chess to warfare, we must use reason to infer the other's next move -- or next three or more moves -- to know what we must do. This so-called recursive reasoning ability in humans has been thought to be somewhat limited.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Why the leopard got its spots.



> *Why do leopards have rosette shaped markings but tigers have stripes? Rudyard Kipling suggested that it was because the leopard moved to an environment "full of trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows" but is there any truth in this just-so story?*
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> Patterns like the leopards rosettes evolve in cats which use forest habitats. Credit: Copyright is Cai Priestley 2008
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> The research also explains why, for example, black leopards are common but black cheetahs unknown.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

String theory tackles strange metals.



> *Link found between theoretical black holes and mysterious materials.*
> 
> String theory, which some physicists hope may be able to unify gravity and quantum mechanics, may have found a real-world application. A type of black hole predicted by string theory may help to explain the properties of a mysterious class of materials called 'strange metals'.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Metal Chunk Ditched for Silicon Sphere to Measure Kilogram.



> *The kilogram may finally get a break from its yo-yo diet. An international team of scientists is closer to redefining the unit of mass based on fundamental constants, instead of a piece of metal in France that loses weight only to put it back on again.[/B
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> Silicon Sphere: Avogadro Project]*


*

Related article: Accurate Avogadro constant may help redefine the kilogram




A new accurate determination of the Avogadro constant has used the method of "counting" the atoms in a 1 kg sample of an almost perfect silicon sphere highly enriched with the isotope 28Si. They used isotope dilution mass spectroscopy to determine the molar mass of the silicon with unprecedented accuracy, and this enabled them to obtain the most accurate value for the Avogadro constant ever obtained.









The float-zone 28Si crystal. To determine its density, two spheres were manufactured from the two bulges. To determine the lattice parameter, an X-ray interferometer was cut from the material between these spheres. Image credit: arxiv.org/abs/1010.2317

Click to expand...

-- Tom*


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## lotuseclat79

New space research settles years of scientific debate.



> *New space research published this week (Thursday 21 October) in the journal Nature, has settled decades of scientific debate. Researchers from the University of California (UCLA) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have found the final link between electrons trapped in space and the glow of light from the upper atmosphere known as the diffuse aurora. The research will help us understand 'space weather', with benefits for the satellite, power grid and aviation industries, and how space storms affect the Earth's atmosphere from the top down.*
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> The 'aurora australis' (known as the southern lights) seen in Antarctica. The 'aurora australis' look like fiery, moving curtains of colourful light and can be seen by the naked eye whereas the diffuse aurora is much fainter (viewed via satellite), but is more extensive.
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> Satellite image of 'diffuse aurora' seen over Antarctica in the southern hemisphere. Image Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

'Junk DNA' uncovers the nature of our ancient ancestors.



> *The key to solving one of the great puzzles in evolutionary biology, the origin of vertebrates -- animals with an internal skeleton made of bone -- has been revealed in new research from Dartmouth College and the University of Bristol.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Clearing the cosmic fog: The most distant galaxy ever measured (w/ Video) (5:41).



> *A European team of astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has measured the distance to the most remote galaxy so far. By carefully analysing the very faint glow of the galaxy they have found that they are seeing it when the Universe was only about 600 million years old (a redshift of 8.6). These are the first confirmed observations of a galaxy whose light is clearing the opaque hydrogen fog that filled the cosmos at this early time. It has taken 13.1 billion years, travelling at 300,000 kilometres (186,000 miles) per second, for this smudge of infant light to arrive.*
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> Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have measured the distance to the most remote galaxy so far, UDFy-38135539, existing when the Universe was only about 600 million years old (a redshift of 8.6). Image: M. Alvarez, R. Kaehler, and T. Abel


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Hogan's holometer: Testing the hypothesis of a holographic universe.



> *In 2008, Fermilab particle astrophysicist Craig Hogan made waves with a mind-boggling proposition: The 3D universe in which we appear to live is no more than a hologram.
> 
> Now he is building the most precise clock of all time to directly measure whether our reality is an illusion.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First All-Digital Science Textbook Will Be Free.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Taking a second look at evidence for the 'varying' fine-structure constant.



> *A few weeks ago, a group of scientists from Australia posted a study at arXiv.org that showed evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be a constant. If the fine-structure constant does vary throughout the universe as their data seems to show, it would mean that the laws of physics also vary throughout the universe, with huge implications. But over the past few weeks, a few blogs by physicists not involved in the study have offered some early criticism of the authors' results.*
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> In this full-sky illustration of the quasar measurements, squares represent quasars observed by the Very Large Telescope, circles represent observations by the Keck telescope, and triangles represent observations by both telescopes. The data suggest that the fine-structure constant seems to be larger in the southern direction. Image credit: Webb, et al.


Confirmation or contradiction - and that, my friends, is what criticism in Science is all about! Being able to replicate observations and duplicate results is only a part of the scientific method. Fundamental assumptions are everything!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mathematical model helps marathoners pace themselves to a strong finish.



> *Most marathon runners know they need to consume carbohydrates before and during a race, but many don't have a good fueling strategy. Now, one dedicated marathoner -- an MD/PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology -- has taken a more rigorous approach to calculating just how much carbohydrate a runner needs to fuel him or herself through 26.2 miles, and what pace that runner can reasonably expect to sustain.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Virtual Observatory Discovers New Cataclysmic Variable.



> *In my article two weeks ago, I discussed how data mining large surveys through online observatories would lead to new discoveries. Sure enough, a pair of astronomers, Ivan Zolotukhin and Igor Chilingarian using data from the Virtual Observatory, has announced the discovery of a cataclysmic variable (CV).*
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> Simulation of Intermediate Polar CV star (Dr Andy Beardmore, Keele University)
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> This discovery is an example of how discoveries are just waiting to happen with data that's already available and sitting in archives, waiting to be explored. Much of this data is even available to the public and can be mined by anyone with the proper computer programs and know-how. Undoubtedly, as organization of these storehouses of data becomes organized in more user friendly manners, additional discoveries will be made in such a manner.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Hawking versus God: What Did the Physicist Really Say about the Deity?.



> *The battle for eternity is fought on Larry King Live*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Geomagnetic Record To Reveal Sun's Route Through Galaxy.



> *The Sun's passage through interstellar clouds can explain a number of anomalies in the geomagnetic record, say astrophysicists*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Complex mathematical problem solved by bees.



> *Bumblebees can find the solution to a complex mathematical problem which keeps computers busy for days.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Signs of Destroyed Dark Matter Found in Milky Way's Core.



> *Cosmologists say they've found the most compelling evidence of dark matter particles to date, deep inside the Milky Way's core.
> 
> There, the thinking goes, the mysterious stuff is colliding to create cosmic rays more frequently than anywhere else in the celestial neighborhood.*
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> Fermi Telescope Gamma Ray Image: Credit NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mass Can Be 'Created' Inside Graphene, Say Physicists.



> *The amazing properties of graphene now include the ability to create mass, according to a new prediction.*
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> Mass Generation: The square potential barrier with a height larger than 2  R . The positive/negative energy oscillatory solution is represented by the light/dark grey area. The white area represents the bound state exponential solution. Fermions and anti-fermions are represented by the outlined arrows ( ) and solid arrows (), respectively. Image Credit: Authors:A. D. Alhaidari, A. Jellal, E. B. Choubabi and H. Bahlouli of "Dynamical mass generation via space compactification in graphene"


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Study says solar systems like ours may be common.



> *Nearly one in four stars like the sun could have Earth-size planets, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study of nearby solar-mass stars.*
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> The sizes of planets around 166 nearby, sun-like stars show a clear trend: small planets outnumber larger ones. Each bar on the chart represents the percentage of planets within a specific range of masses. Astronomers extrapolated from these data to estimate that nearly one in four sun-like stars 23 percent host close-in, Earth-size planets. (NASA/JPL & Caltech/UC Berkeley)
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> The W.M. Keck Observatory, atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, was used to survey 166 sun-like stars for planets of different sizes. (WMKO photo)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Computer scientists make progress on math puzzle.



> *Two UT Dallas computer scientists have made progress on a nearly 4-decade-old mathematical puzzle, producing a proof that renowned Stanford computer scientist Don Knuth called "amazing" in his communication back to them.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Holometer experiment to test if the universe is a hologram.



> *Many ideas in theoretical physics involve extra dimensions, but the possibility that the universe has only two dimensions could also have surprising implications. The idea is that space on the ultra-small Planck scale is two-dimensional, and the third dimension is inextricably linked with time. If this is the case, then our three-dimensional universe is nothing more than a hologram of a two-dimensional universe.*
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> A conceptual design of Fermilab's holometer. Image credit: symmetry magazine


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Halloween Special: The science behind Frankenstein.



> *It has all the makings of a great monster story: an attempt to draw lightning from the sky, a scientist passionate to show that electricity held the secret of life, body parts and, of course, reanimation of the dead.*
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> A photo of Boris Karloff from the film "The Bride of Frankenstein" as Frankenstein's monster. Credit: Universal Studios


Related article: Halloween Special: Why we love to scare ourselves; the anatomy of fright.



> *Dracula, Frankenstein, witches, ghosts and goblins are all around us at this time of year -- and Hollywood keeps them at our beck and call for the rest of the year as well. Scary movies allow us to experience the tonic of a good fright whenever we want one, but why do people seek out that experience?*


-- Tom Boo!


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## lotuseclat79

Trillions of Reasons to Be Excited (2 web pages).



> *It has been seven months and some six trillion collisions since physicists at CERN - as the European Organization for Nuclear Research is known - began running protons around their $10 billion, 18-mile electromagnetic racetrack underneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva and smashing them together in search of new particles and forces of nature. No new particles or forces have yet emerged, at least to the statistical satisfaction of the thousands of men and women now sifting through the debris from those collisions.
> 
> Nor, of course, has the world disappeared into a black hole.*
> 
> The proton collisions are scheduled to end on Wednesday. The machine will collide lead ions later in November and then shut down for the holidays. The collider will resume banging protons in February and run until the end of 2011.
> ...
> But for all the euphoria in Geneva these days, the collider is still operating under the cloud of Sept. 19, 2008. That is when the electrical connection between two of the collider's powerful superconducting electromagnets exploded, turning one sector of the collider ring into a car wreck and shutting down the newly inaugurated machine for more than a year.
> 
> As a result, the machine is operating at only half power, at 3.5 trillion electron volts per proton instead of the 7 trillion electron volts for which it was designed, so as not to blow out the delicate splices. At the end of 2011, all the CERN accelerators will shut down for 15 months, so that the suspect splices - some 10,000 of them - can be strengthened and an unknown number of magnets that have mysteriously lost the ability to handle the high currents and produce the high fields needed to run the collider at close to full strength can be "retrained."
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> The collider will start up again in 2013 with proton energies of 6.5 trillion electron volts, but it is not likely to reach full power until 2014, if ever.
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> SUPERPOWER Superconducting electromagnets power the Large Hadron Collider, 300 feet underground at the Swiss-French border outside Geneva.


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## lotuseclat79

Physics experiment suggests existence of new particle.



> *The results of a high-profile Fermilab physics experiment involving a University of Michigan professor appear to confirm strange 20-year-old findings that poke holes in the standard model, suggesting the existence of a new elementary particle: a fourth flavor of neutrino.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers find evidence of cosmic climate change.



> *Evidence of an intense warming period in the Universe's early history, described as a form of "cosmic climate change", has been found by an international team of astronomers*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

LHC researchers 'set to create a mini-Big Bang'.



> *Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are getting set to create the Big Bang on a miniature scale.*
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> Dr Evans is one of the scientists who will take part in the new experiment
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> "Although the tiny fireballs will only exist for a fleeting moment (less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second) the temperatures will reach over ten trillion degrees, a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun," said Dr Evans.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Galactic GPS Put Through Its Paces.



> *For the first time, astronomers have reconstructed Earth's trajectory through the cosmos using pulsar signals*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Purdue unveils 'Impact: Earth!' asteroid impact effects calculator.



> *Purdue University on Wednesday (Nov. 3) unveiled ''Impact: Earth!'' a new website that allows anyone to calculate the potential damage a comet or asteroid would cause if it hit the Earth.*
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> The parameters screen of the "Impact: Earth!" website allows users to input the diameter and density of the projectile, the impact angle and velocity, and whether the projectile will hit water or rock. (Information Technology at Purdue image/Michele Rund)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Invisibility cloak closer with flexible 'metamaterial'.



> *Scientists in the UK have demonstrated a flexible film that represents a big step toward the "invisibility cloak" made famous by Harry Potter.*
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> Metamaterials work by interrupting and channelling the flow of light


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Gravity eases its pull.



> *Ever since Galileo first dropped his balls off the top of the Tower of Pisa in the late 16th century, gravity has caused a major headache for mathematicians and physicists down the ages.*
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> Gravity is usually an obstacle to a theory of everything MEHAU KULYK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists create world's first 'super-twisted' light.



> *The research team at the University of Glasgow twisted the light like a corkscrew by using a polarising filter, before shining it onto a specially shaped piece of gold to create the world's first 'super twisting'.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New statistical model moves human evolution back 3 million years.



> *Evolutionary divergence of humans from chimpanzees likely occurred some 8 million years ago rather than the 5 million year estimate widely accepted by scientists, a new statistical model suggests.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mysteries of colour vision revealed as scientists map out eye's neural network.



> *Scientists, using sophisticated recording equipment, have mapped the neural circuitry involved in processing colour vision in humans for the first time.*
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> Tiny: The 519-electrode array developed by Dr Mathieson and Dr Gunning at the University of Glasgow's James Watt Nanofabrication Centre.


-- Tom


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## 1956brother

lotuseclat79 said:


> New statistical model moves human evolution back 3 million years.
> 
> -- Tom


the bible thumpers are going to love you


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## lotuseclat79

1956brother said:


> the bible thumpers are going to love you


Hi 1956brother,

I'm only the messenger, therefore, you must mean the "scientists whom did the research", eh?

-- Tom


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## Blackmirror

Sawfly makes first UK appearance


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## 1956brother

lotuseclat79 said:


> Hi 1956brother,
> 
> I'm only the messenger, therefore, you must mean the "scientists whom did the research", eh?
> 
> -- Tom


NO..it is because, you bring reality to the masses:up:

thanx from all of us....john


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## lotuseclat79

Missing Milky Way Dark Matter.



> *Although dark matter is inherently difficult to observe, an understanding of its properties (even if not its nature) allows astronomers to predict where its effects should be felt. The current understanding is that dark matter helped form the first galaxies by providing gravitational scaffolding in the early universe. These galaxies were small and collapsed to form the larger galaxies we see today. As galaxies grew large enough to shred incoming satellites and their dark matter, much of the dark matter should have been deposited in a flat structure in spiral galaxies which would allow such galaxies to form dark components similar to the disk and halo. However, a new study aimed at detecting the Milky Way's dark disk have come up empty.*
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> A composite image shows a dark matter disk in red. From images in the Two Micron All Sky Survey. Credit: Credit: J. Read & O. Agertz.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Simulating black hole radiation with lasers.



> *Hawking radiation from black holes is very dim, and unlikely to be detected any time soon. Now researchers have created a laboratory experiment that produces detectable Hawking radiation with a laser.*
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> This experimental layout produces a detectable analogue of Hawking radiation. The input laser pulse is focused into a sample of fused silica (FS) using an axicon or lens (F). An imaging lens (I) collects the photons emitted at 90 deg and sends them to an imaging spectrometer coupled to a cooled CCD camera. Credit: F. Belgiorno, S.L. Cacciatori, M. Clerici, V. Gorini, G. Ortenzi, L. Rizzi, E. Rubino, V.G. Sala, D. Faccio


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum computers may be much easier to build than previously thought: study.



> *Quantum computers should be much easier to build than previously thought, because they can still work with a large number of faulty or even missing components, according to a study published today in Physical Review Letters. This surprising discovery brings scientists one step closer to designing and building real-life quantum computing systems - devices that could have enormous potential across a wide range of fields, from drug design, electronics, and even code-breaking.*
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> Illustration of the error correcting code used to demonstrate robustness to loss errors. Each dot represents a single qubit. The qubits are arranged on a lattice in such a way that the encoded information is robust to losing up to 25 percent of the qubits. Credit: Sean Barrett and Thomas Stace


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Asteroid Impact Early Warning System Unveiled.



> *Astronomer reveals plans for a network of telescopes that could give up to three weeks' warning of a city-destroying impact.*
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> Abstract:
> Earth is bombarded by meteors, occasionally by one large enough to cause a significant explosion and possible loss of life. Although the odds of a deadly asteroid strike in the next century are low, the most likely impact is by a relatively small asteroid, and we suggest that the best mitigation strategy in the near term is simply to move people out of the way. We describe an "early warning" system that could provide a week's notice of most sizable asteroids or comets on track to hit the Earth. This system, dubbed "Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System" (ATLAS), comprises two observatories separated by about 100km that simultaneously scan the visible sky twice a night, and can be implemented immediately for relatively low cost. The sensitivity of ATLAS permits detection of 140m asteroids (100 Mton impact energy) three weeks before impact, and 50m asteroids a week before arrival. An ATLAS alarm, augmented by other observations, should result in a determination of impact location and time that is accurate to a few kilometers and a few seconds. In addition to detecting and warning of approaching asteroids, ATLAS will continuously monitor the changing universe around us: most of the variable stars in our galaxy, many micro-lensing events from stellar alignments, luminous stars and novae in nearby galaxies, thousands of supernovae, nearly a million quasars and active galactic nuclei, tens of millions of galaxies, and a billion stars. With two views per day ATLAS will make the variable universe as familiar to us as the sunrise and sunset.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Milky Way May Fizzle Out Sooner Than Expected.



> *A thick bar of stars, gas and dust spanning across the Milky Way's center could be speeding star formation and, as supplies run out, our host galaxy's eventual death.
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> Astronomers' best guess of what the Milky Way galaxy looks like from above. NASA/JPL-Caltech*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Galactic Core Spews Weird Radiation Bubbles.



> *Two colossal bubbles of high-energy radiation are careening out of the Milky Way's core, a new analysis of images from NASA's Fermi gamma-ray space telescope shows.*
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> Gamma X-ray Bubbles (purple) flanked by X-rays (blue) protrude 25,000 light-years each out of the Milky Way. NASA Goddard
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> The gamma-ray sky, as seen by NASA's Fermi space telescope. A dumbbell-shaped feature (yellow/orange) can be seen at galactic center extending out of the Milky Way's flat plane. NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT/D. Finkbeiner et al.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Epic Event: CERN's Large Hadron Collider Generates a 'Mini-Big Bang'.



> *CERN's enormous Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons on 7 November, creating temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun. The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near Geneva.*
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> Mini-Big Bang Credit; CERN


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA's new space telescope costs shoot the moon (Update).



> *The cost of NASA's replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope is giving new meaning to the word astronomical, growing another $1.5 billion, according to a new internal NASA study released Wednesday.*
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> The study says in the best case scenario it will now cost about $6.5 billion to launch and run the powerful, new telescope.
> ...
> Before now, the cost of the telescope had already ballooned from $3.5 billion to $5 billion.
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> The Webb telescope is already late. When first announced more than a dozen years ago, it was supposed to launch in 2007. That was eventually delayed until 2014. The new report, issued at the request of the Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., says the earliest launch date now would be September 2015.
> ...
> This follows the well-worn path of the Hubble telescope. In current dollars, it cost NASA $4.7 billion to build and launch Hubble and then another $1.1 billion to fix it in orbit.
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> Astronomer Garth Illingworth, a professor at University of California Santa Cruz and a member of the internal study team, said Webb will be worth the money.
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> He said the Webb "is hugely more powerful than Hubble, 100 times more powerful at least."
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> This is a photo of the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA


Looks like the Hubble will be in operation for another 5 years - if all goes well the rest of the way for Webb.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The One-Way Speed of Light Conundrum.



> *There's no dispute over the constancy of the speed of light when measured over a round trip. But what of its speed over a one-way trip? *
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> Speed of light


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Detailed dark matter map yields clues to galaxy cluster growth.



> *Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of a giant cosmic magnifying glass to create one of the sharpest and most detailed maps of dark matter in the universe. Dark matter is an invisible and unknown substance that makes up the bulk of the universe's mass.*
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> This is one of the most detailed maps of dark matter in our universe ever created. The location of the dark matter (tinted blue) was inferred through observations of magnified and distorted distant galaxies seen in this picture. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, University of Basque Country/JHU


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Youngest black hole evidence found in cosmic explosion aftermath.



> *Evidence of perhaps the youngest black hole in the galaxy has been found, following a cosmic explosion over 30 years ago.*
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> This composite image provided by NASA, created this month, taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, shows a galaxy where a recent supernova probably resulted in a black hole in the bright white dot near the bottom middle of the picture. NASA/AP Photo
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> This composite image shows a supernova within the galaxy M100 that may contain the youngest known black hole in our cosmic neighborhood. The black hole would be about 30 years old and was born from the supernova SN1976C. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/D.Patnaude et al, Optical: ESO/VLT, Infrared: NASA/JPL/Caltech


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Finding the Universe's 500 Million Light Year Yardstick.



> *Computer simulations back the idea that astronomers may have found a yardstick capable of measuring cosmic distances of up to 500 million light years*
> 
> Baryonic acoustic oscillations are sound waves that spread through the early universe. They were generated by the sudden clumping together of mass in the process that led to the formation of the first galaxies.
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> Baryonic acoustic oscillations: Thin (black) lines show the correlation function ξ(r) (scaled by r^2 ) in each of our 216 mocks. Solid (green) line shows the BAO model (the mean of the mocks). Short dashed (green) lines encompass 1-sigma errorbars from the mean (these are mock to mock errors, the error of the mean would be 1/√216 better). Long dashed (blue) line shows the no-BAO model. The (red) errorbars correspond to the real LRG data shifted as shown in Eq.1. To compare to simulations we have scaled the LRG data as: ξ(r) → A [ξ(r) + K] (1) with A = 1.2 and K = −0.005.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Black Holes Break Up During Star Collapse, Say Astrophysicists.



> *The latest simulations show that black holes can fragment into several pieces during a supernova, say astrophysicists*
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> Black Hole Fragmentation: Time evolution of the equatorial plane density for setup M1. Shown are isocontours of the logarithm of the rest-mass density. The four snapshots extend to 0.37re and are taken at t/tD = 0, 6.43, 7.14, and 7.45, respectively. They show the formation and collapse of the fragment produced by the m = 1 instability. The last slice contains an apparent horizon demarked by the thick white line. Note that the shades of grey used for illustration are adapted to the current maximal density at each time, and that darker shades denote higher densities.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Debunking and closing quantum entanglement 'loopholes'.



> *An international team of physicists, including a scientist based at The University of Queensland, has recently closed an additional 'loophole' in a test explaining one of science's strangest phenomena -- quantum entanglement*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Maxwell's demon demonstration turns information into energy.



> *Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the "Maxwell demon" thought experiment devised in 1867.*
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> Schematic illustration of the experiment. For more details, see the original publication. Image credit: Nature Physics, doi:10.1038/nphys1821


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers discover merging star systems that might explode (w/ Video).



> *Sometimes when you're looking for one thing, you find something completely different and unexpected. In the scientific endeavor, such serendipity can lead to new discoveries. Today, researchers who found the first hypervelocity stars escaping the Milky Way announced that their search also turned up a dozen double-star systems. Half of those are merging and might explode as supernovae in the astronomically near future.*
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> The binary star system J0923+3028 consists of two white dwarfs: a visible star weighing 23 percent as much as our Sun and about four times the diameter of Earth, and an unseen companion weighing 44 percent of the Sun and about one Earth-diameter in size. The stars are currently separated by about 220,000 miles and orbit each other once per hour. The stars will spiral in toward each other and merge in about 100 million years. Credit: Clayton Ellis (CfA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Image: To the rescue.



> *This unique, close-up view of the X-38 under the wing of NASA's B-52 mothership prior to launch of the lifting-body research vehicle was taken from the observation window of the B-52 bomber as it banked in flight.*
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> The X-38 Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) research project helped develop the technology for a prototype emergency crew return vehicle, or lifeboat, for the International Space Station.
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> Image Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How to see the best meteor showers of the year: Tools, tips and 'save the dates'.



> *There are several major meteor showers to enjoy every year at various times, with some more active than others. For example, April's Lyrids are expected to produce about 15 meteors an hour at their peak for observers viewing in good conditions. Now, if you put the same observer in the same good conditions during a higher-rate shower like August's Perseids or December's Geminids, that person could witness up to 80 meteors an hour during peak activity.*
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> A Geminid meteor. Image credit: Jimmy Westlake


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA goes to the set of CBS's 'The Big Bang Theory'.



> *It all started with a Big Bang. Well, actually, it all started with a beach ball. Not just any beach ball, but one that is printed with data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). This educational beach ball was developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and NASA's Blueshift team decided to blog about it. As a result, they ended up visiting the set of the popular CBS sitcom about geeky scientists, "The Big Bang Theory."*
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> "The Apology Insufficiency" -- Sheldon's answers during an FBI interview put Wolowitz's security clearance in jeopardy, on THE BIG BANG THEORY, Thursday, Nov. 4 (8:00-8:31 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Eliza Dushku, pictured here with Kunal Nayyar, guest stars as the agent interviewing Wolowitz's friends. Credit: Monty Brinton/CBS, ©2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

WISE image reveals strange specimen in starry sea.



> *A new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer shows what looks like a glowing jellyfish floating at the bottom of a dark, speckled sea. In reality, this critter belongs to the cosmos -- it's a dying star surrounded by fluorescing gas and two very unusual rings.*
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> This image composite shows two views of a puffy, dying star, or planetary nebula, known as NGC 1514. The view on the left is from a ground-based, visible-light telescope; the view on the right shows the object in infrared light, as seen by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Antihydrogen trapped for first time (w/ Video).



> *In the movie Angels and Demons, scientists have solved one of the most perplexing scientific problems: the capture and storage of antimatter. In real life, trapping atomic antimatter has never been accomplished, until now.*
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> An octupole magnet was critical to trapping antihydrogen atoms by using their small magnetic moments. This simplified version shows how the north and south poles of strategically arranged magnets can immobilize a neutral antihydrogen atom that has a magnetic moment equivalent to a tiny bar magnet. Credit: Katie Bertsche


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

570-Megapixel Camera Prepares to Hunt for Dark Energy w/Video of time-lapsed construction of it in 2:03 m/s + 10 additional images!



> *The world's largest dark energy-hunting device, also one of the biggest, heaviest and highest-resolution cameras in the world, is close to completion.
> 
> Construction of the 4-ton Dark Energy Camera is wrapping up next month at Fermilab in Illinois, where it's being tested on a mock-up telescope mount (above). The Dark Energy Survey hopes to open its $35 million camera for business at its final destination, in the Blanco telescope atop a Chilean mountain, by October 2012.
> 
> There, it will scan deep space for signs of dark energy, an invisible force that's pulling galaxies - and perhaps space itself - apart at faster and faster speeds.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Secret U.S. Space Plane May Be Too Mysterious.



> *Transparency. Openness. International cooperation. These are some of the principles the United States should embrace in order to "safeguard U.S. satellites and protect space," according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Problem is, one of America's latest and greatest space gizmos runs afoul of those noble ideas. With its secretive X-37B "space plane," the United States has been anything but transparent, open and cooperative.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cern hopes for proof of extra dimensions in 2011.



> *Scientists at the Cern laboratory in Switzerland have said that the Atlas research project may prove the existence of extra dimensions and the Higgs boson as early as next year.*
> 
> The Atlas experiment, which analyses the results of proton collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is designed to observe phenomena involving massive particles, such as the Higgs boson, extra dimensions, and particles that could make up 'dark matter' - all of which have previously been unobservable with lower-power particle accelerators.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Unrecorded Meteorite Crater Found On Mount Ararat?.



> *The discovery of an unrecorded crater raises the possibility that the biblical mountain was struck by a meteorite, say physicists*
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> Mt. Ararat crater - volcanic or meteorite origin?


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Light bending by a black hole may offer proof of extra dimensions.



> *Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania report that a new test for measuring the ability of gravity to bend light seen from distant stars around large objects like black holes may offer proof of the existence of extra dimensions in the universe.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Pitt physicist wins 2011 Einstein Prize for lifetime unraveling, reshaping general relativity theory.



> *During his 60 years in general relativity, the field of physics established by Albert Einstein, University of Pittsburgh Professor Emeritus of physics and astronomy Ezra T. Newman not only worked alongside some of Einstein's closest colleagues to revitalize the theory of general relativity, but he also helped reshape it by working out one of the most influential reformulations of the revered scientist's original theory, among other lasting solutions and insights to the Einstein equations.*
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> This is Ezra T. Newman of the University of Pittsburgh. Credit: University of Pittsburgh


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The enigma of the missing stars in space may be solved.



> *In the local group of galaxies, there are about 100 billion stars. According to astronomers' calculations, there should be many more. Now, physicists from the University of Bonn and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland may have found an explanation for this discrepancy. Their study will appear in the upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Spacecraft flew through 'snowstorm' on encounter with comet Hartley 2.



> *On its recent trip by comet Hartley 2, the Deep Impact spacecraft took the first pictures of, and flew through, a storm of fluffy particles of water ice being spewed out by carbon dioxide jets coming from the rough ends of the comet. The resulting images and data shed new light on the nature and composition of comets, according to the University of Maryland-led EPOXI science team, which today announced its latest findings and released the first images of this comet created snowstorm.*
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> This is one of the first images from spacecraft's large telescope. the HRI. It shows the cloud of water ice particles around the nucleus of the comet. Credit: NASA/UMD/JPL


Imagine that - it snows in space!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle sets limits on Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance,' new research finds.



> *Researchers have uncovered a fundamental link between the two defining properties of quantum physics. Stephanie Wehner of Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies and the National University of Singapore and Jonathan Oppenheim of the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge published their work today in the latest edition of the journal Science.*
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> Attaining strong than quantum non-locality would require us to break the uncertainty principle -- but then there is no telling what may be unleashed! Credit: Illustration by Frans Bartels, concept by Haw Jing Yan.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Gigantic gravity 'Lenses' magnify galaxies far, far away.



> *A chance alignment of galaxies, recently observed by a space observatory, presents the perfect opportunity for studying star-forming galaxies billions of light-years away.*
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> This diagram illustrates a cosmic phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, in which a nearby galaxy distorts, but also magnifies a second, more distant galaxy in the background, making it appear brighter and easier to study. Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New look at relativity: Electrons can't exceed the speed of light -- thanks to light itself, says biologist.



> *When resolving why electrons can never beat the speed limit set by light, it might be best to forget about time. Thanks to insight from studying movement inside a biological cell, it seems that light itself -- not the relativity of time -- may be the traffic cop, according to a Cornell University biologist.*


Paper (PDF): CHARGED PARTICLES ARE PREVENTED FROM GOING FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT BY LIGHT ITSELF: A BIOPHYSICAL CELL BIOLOGIST'S CONTRIBUTION TO PHYSICS.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Busy microbial world discovered in deepest ocean crust ever explored.



> *The first study to ever explore biological activity in the deepest layer of ocean crust has found bacteria with a remarkable range of capabilities, including eating hydrocarbons and natural gas, and "fixing" or storing carbon.*
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> Rock from deep beneath this undersea mountain in the Atlantic Ocean was recently studied to reveal some of the microbial life interactions going on in the deepest ocean crust ever explored. (Image courtesy of PLoS One)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New microscope reveals ultrastructure of cells.



> *German researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin have developed a new X-ray nanotomography microscope. Using their new system, they can reveal the structures on the smallest components of mammalian cells in three dimensions.*
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> This is a slice through the nucleus of a mouse adenocarcinoma cell showing the nucleolus and the membrane channels running across the nucleus; taken by X-ray nanotomography. Credit: HZB


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers follow the money to show complicated ways people connect (w/Video 5:04).



> *What are borders these days? When travel was local, borders and communities were easy to define, but now our connectivity is more complex. It's time to think of borders differently, according to Northwestern University researchers.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Perceptual changes - a key to our consciousness.



> *With his coat billowing behind him and his right eye tightly closed, Captain Blackbeard watches the endless sea with his telescope. Suddenly the sea disappears as the pirate opens his right eye. The only thing he sees is his hand holding the telescope. Then, a moment later, the sea is back again. What happened was a change in perception. Our brain usually combines the two slightly divergent images of our eyes into a single consistent perception.*
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> The test participants had a house projected on one eye and a face on the other eye. This triggered an alternating perception, since the brain could not reconcile the two pictures with each other. Image: Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Science podcast for kids, by a kid.



> *If you're looking for the very definition of "adorable", then look no farther than Aaron's World, a science podcast made by a six-year-old boy who loves science.*
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> Aaron - Host of Aaron's World


Science is for kids too - of all ages!

-- Tom :up: :up:


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## lotuseclat79

How hummingbirds fight the wind: Robotic device helps analyze hovering birds.



> *Hummingbirds rank among the world's largest and most accomplished hovering animals, but how do they manage it in gusty winds?*
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> In the presence of a strong gust (30 percent from left to right), both leading and trailing edge vortices were observed during downstroke at a Reynolds number of 1400 (Strouhal number = 0.28). Credit: Courtesy: New Mexico State University.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Jump rope aerodynamics.



> *Jump ropes are used by kids for fun and by athletes for training. But what about the underlying physics? How do jump ropes work? Can important engineering principles be studied?*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Early Universe was a liquid: First results from the Large Hadron Collider's ALICE experiment.



> *In an experiment to collide lead nuclei together at CERN's Large Hadron Collider physicists from the ALICE detector team including researchers from the University of Birmingham have discovered that the very early Universe was not only very hot and dense but behaved like a hot liquid.*
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> Real lead-lead collision in ALICE


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists glimpse universe before the Big Bang.



> *In general, asking what happened before the Big Bang is not really considered a science question. According to Big Bang theory, time did not even exist before this point roughly 13.7 billion years ago. But now, Oxford University physicist Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan from the Yerevan Physics Institute in Armenia have found an effect in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that allows them to "see through" the Big Bang into what came before.*
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> Black hole encounters would have repeated themselves several times, with the center of each event remaining at almost exactly the same point in the CMB sky, even when occurring in different aeons. The huge amounts of energy released would appear as spherical, low-variance radiation bursts in the CMB. Image credit: Gurzadyan and Penrose.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Pulsating star mystery solved.



> *By discovering the first double star where a pulsating Cepheid variable and another star pass in front of one another, an international team of astronomers has solved a decades-old mystery. The rare alignment of the orbits of the two stars in the double star system has allowed a measurement of the Cepheid mass with unprecedented accuracy. The new result shows that the prediction from stellar pulsation theory is spot on, while the prediction from stellar evolution theory is at odds with the new observations.*
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> This artist's impression shows the double star OGLE-LMC-CEP0227 in our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. The smaller of the two stars is a pulsating Cepheid variable and the orientation of the system is such that the stars eclipse each other during their orbits. Studies of this very rare system have allowed astronomers to measure the Cepheid mass with unprecedented accuracy. Credit: ESO


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

German physicists create a 'super-photon'.



> *Physicists from the University of Bonn have developed a completely new source of light, a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of photons. Until recently, expert had thought this impossible. This method may potentially be suitable for designing novel light sources resembling lasers that work in the X-ray range. Among other applications, they might allow building more powerful computer chips. The scientists are reporting on their discovery in the upcoming issue of the journal Nature.*
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> This is an illustration of the "super-photon." (c) Jan Klaers, University of Bonn


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Massive galaxies formed when universe was young.



> *Some of the universe's most massive galaxies may have formed billions of years earlier than current scientific models predict, according to surprising new research led by Tufts University. The findings appear in the Astrophysical Journal published online Nov. 24 in advance of print publication on Dec. 10, 2010.*
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> The massive galaxy circled above was formed when the universe was still young, according to surprising findings from Tufts' Danilo Marchesini.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

In Brief: Study backs Einstein notion on expanding universe.



> *Scientists have found new evidence that an idea Albert Einstein regretted ever having may be key to solving a big mystery: why the universe is expanding at an ever-faster clip.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The music of gravitational waves.



> *A team of scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has brought the world one step closer to "hearing" gravitational waves -- ripples in space and time predicted by Albert Einstein in the early 20th century.*
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> This artist's concept shows the proposed LISA mission, which would consist of three distinct spacecraft, each connected by laser beams. It would be the first space-based mission to attempt the detection of gravitational waves -- ripples in space-time that are emitted by exotic objects such as black holes. Image credit: ESA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Wrong Scientific Beliefs That Were Held for Long Periods of Time.

Read the comments at the above link for contributions to answer the question asked - What's your favorite dead theory?

The topic is very interesting!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Life Could Have Evolved in Armoured Clay Bubbles.



> *The discovery that natural clay forms a protective shell around tiny air bubbles has profound implications for our theories about the origin of life on Earth.*
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> Clay cells: Schematic (not to scale) of the proposed mechanism of formation.


-- Tom


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## Brigham

Has this Bose Einstein condensate discovery got us any closer to knowing more about the photon? Why does it behave like an electromagnetic wave, at the same time behaving as though it is corpuscular? This has always fascinated me.


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## ekim68

Earth Oceans Were Homegrown



> Where did Earth's oceans come from? Astronomers have long contended that icy comets and asteroids delivered the water for them during an epoch of heavy bombardment that ended about 3.9 billion years ago. But a new study suggests that Earth supplied its own water, leaching it from the rocks that formed the planet. The finding may help explain why life on Earth appeared so early, and it may indicate that other rocky worlds are also awash in vast seas.


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum entanglement, meet Heisenberg.



> *"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." That's what Richard Feynman said in 1965, and it is not getting any easier. Scientists are reporting in the journal Science that they have linked the uncertainty principle and "spooky" nonlocal interactions.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How are the ages of the Earth and universe calculated? How accurate are those figures?.



> *There is strong evidence that the Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old and the universe is roughly 14 billion years old. Here, we will look at the evidence supporting those claims.*1
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> 1. Several of the examples in this response come from Darrel Falk's book, Coming to Peace with Science: Bridging the Worlds between Faith and Biology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004).


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Magnetic Fields May Protect Exo-Earths After All[url].



> *Astronomers fear that Earth-like planets around dwarf stars cannot be protected by magnetic fields. Now they may be forced to change their minds*
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> Magnetosphere


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Recent news on the debate over Pluto's planethood.



> *Earlier this month, Eris -- the distant world first discovered by Caltech's Mike Brown and colleagues back in 2005, paving the way for the eventual demotion of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet -- passed fortuitously in front of a faint star in the constellation Cetus.*
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> Credit: NASA-JPL-Caltech


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

UBC physicists make atoms and dark matter add up.



> *Physicists at the University of British Columbia and TRIUMF have proposed a unified explanation for dark matter and the so-called baryon asymmetry -- the apparent imbalance of matter with positive baryon charge and antimatter with negative baryon charge in the Universe.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists close two loopholes while violating local realism.



> *The latest test in quantum mechanics provides even stronger support than before for the view that nature violates local realism and is thus in contradiction with a classical worldview. By performing an experiment in which photons were sent from one Canary Island to another, physicists have shown that two of three loopholes can be closed simultaneously in a test that violates Bell's inequality (and therefore local realism) by more than 16 standard deviations. Performing a Bell test that closes all three loopholes still remains a challenge, but the physicists predict that such an experiment might be "on the verge of being possible" with state-of-the-art technology.*
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> Physicists performed a Bell experiment between the islands of La Palma and Tenerife at an altitude of 2,400 m. Starting with an entangled pair of photons, one photon was sent 6 km away to Alice, and the other photon was sent 144 km away to Bob. The physicists took several steps to simultaneously close the locality loophole and freedom-of-choice loophole. Image credit: Thomas Scheidl, et al. and Google Earth, ©2008 Google, Map Data ©Tele Atlas.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA Finds New Life.



> *All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.
> ...this discovery does indeed change everything we know about biology.*


This life form is an exception to that rule!

Arsenic-loving bacteria may help in hunt for alien life.



> *The first organism able to substitute one of the six chemical elements crucial to life has been found.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How Many Stars? Three Times as Many as We Thought, Report Says.



> *Scientists said Wednesday that the number of stars in the universe had been seriously undercounted, and they estimated that there could be three times as many stars out there as had been thought.*
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> A photo taken in 2006 by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a cluster of diverse galaxies, including a bright elliptical galaxy.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Superheavy Element 111 Found in Gold.



> *Roentgenium-111 shouldn't exist on Earth. Now a group of nuclear physicists claims to have found an ultra-stable version of it in gold.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New type of nuclear fission discovered.



> *Nuclear fission, or the splitting of a heavy nucleus, usually results in symmetrical fragments of the same mass. Physicists attribute the few known examples of fission that is asymmetric to the formation in the resultant fragments of "magic" nuclei, which are extremely stable nuclei with all energy levels filled. Now, experiments at the European particle physics laboratory at the Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva in Switzerland have found the isotope mercury-180 splits asymmetrically into ruthenium-100 and krypton-80 rather than the expected zirconium-90.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Supercomputers and the mystery of IQ.



> *Scientists seek to unravel the mystery of IQ: Hong Kong supercomputers will power unique genetic study of students*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The 70 Online Databases that Define Our Planet



> *If you want to simulate the Earth, you'll need data on the climate, health, finance, economics, traffic and lots more. Here's where to find it.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Tracing the Spark of Creative Problem-Solving (2 web pages).



> The payoff of tackling a mental exercise: leaps of understanding that seem to come out of the blue, without the incremental drudgery of analysis.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Can we test inflationary expansion of the early universe?.



> *A set of proposed relations among observable quantities may allow strong tests of whether a rapid expansion of the very early universe produced the seeds of the large-scale structure we see today.*
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> A Viewpoint on: Testing Inflation: A Bootstrap Approach
> Latham Boyle and Paul J. Steinhardt
> Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 241301 (2010) - Published December 06, 2010
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> Download PDF (free)
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> (Left) Design drawing of the BICEP instrument that measures variations in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background at a level of one part in ten million. The 25-cm aperture telescope, with an angular resolution of around a half degree at a microwave frequency of 150 GHz, is designed to limit spurious polarization signals from the instrument at this stringent level. BICEP uses 100 polarization-sensitive bolometers cooled to a fraction of a degree Kelvin to detect the polarized radiation. (Right) Photo of the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP) experiment, which has given the current best limits on the tensor-scalar ratio r from measuring microwave background polarization alone [12]. Such experiments are working towards measurements of r with precision of 0.01 that are necessary for strong tests of the bootstrap relations proposed by Boyle and Steinhardt. The image shows the Dark Sector Lab at the South Pole, atop which sits BICEP behind the metal ground shield.


-- Tom


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## pyritechips

I apologize if this was already posted, but I have been lacking in following this thread.

A belated birthday to APOD (Astronomy Picture Of the Day), first posted in June 16 1995. To see the wonders of the Earth, Solar System and the Universe, click *here*


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## pyritechips

Here is an example from Nov. 30. A Supercell Thunderstorm Cloud Over Montana :


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists Solve Cloud Formation Puzzle.



> *Clouds sometimes form more quickly than the laws of physics seem to allow. Now atmospheric physicists think they know how*
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> Cloud formation; PDFs (Probability Density Functions) of the particle radius ap normalised by the initial average particle radius ap at different times
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> Essentially, ... micrometer scale turbulence accelerates cloud formation and triggers rain showers.
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> That's an interesting, although not entirely unexpected result that should lead to better weather forecasts. Perhaps more significantly, it could also have a big impact on climate models. Clouds have a big effect on the amount of light Earth reflects back into space. Being able to better calculate when they form is important.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Theoretical physics breakthrough: Generating matter and antimatter from the vacuum.



> *Under just the right conditions -- which involve an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator -- it could be possible to create something out of nothing, according to University of Michigan researchers.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A flow of heavy-ion results from the Large Hadron Collider.



> *The Large Hadron Collider shut down its proton beams on Nov. 4, 2010, and quickly began circulating beams of lead ions, a run scheduled to last a month. Within days, the first results from ALICE, the LHC experiment designed specifically to study heavy-ion collisions, were posted online. Two weeks after the start of the lead-lead run, CERN's press office announced what it called "new insight into the primordial universe" from three LHC experiments, ALICE plus ATLAS and CMS. The latter are broad-coverage detectors which also have programs for investigating heavy-ion collisions. Finally the ALICE collaboration posted two more results, shortly before the LHC ended its lead-ion run on Dec. 6.*
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> The ALICE experiment at CERN is designed to study the quark-gluon plasma produced in high-energy collisions of lead nuclei.
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> The protons and neutrons that constitute the nuclei of atoms are made of quarks bound by gluons (foreground, left). In a hot, dense quark-gluon plasma (background), quarks and gluons are unbound and free to move independently.
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> Particle tracks from some of the first collisions of lead nuclei in ALICE.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists demonstrate teleportation-based optical quantum entangling gate.



> *Taking a step toward the realization of futuristic quantum technologies, a team of physicists from China and Germany has demonstrated a key element - an entangling gate - of a quantum teleportation scheme proposed more than 10 years ago. The entangling gate serves as a fundamental building block for applications such as long-distance quantum communication and practical quantum computers.*
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> This diagram shows the experimental set-up of a quantum CNOT gate. Image credit: Wei-Bo Gao, et al. ©2010 PNAS.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Team develops 'logic gates' to program bacteria as computers.



> *A team of UCSF researchers has engineered E. coli with the key molecular circuitry that will enable genetic engineers to program cells to communicate and perform computations.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Geminids meteor shower to be 'lively' show.



> *Baby, it's cold outside -- but you can still enjoy the best meteor shower of the year. The 2010 Geminid meteor shower promises to be lively, with realistic viewing rates of 50-80 meteors per hour and potential peaks reaching 120 meteors per hour. Anytime between Dec. 12-16 is a valid window for Geminid-watching, but the night of Dec. 13-14 is the anticipated peak.*
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> False-color composite view of 2008 Geminid meteor shower. (NASA/MSFC/B. Cooke, NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Elegant New Theory Explains Origin Of Asteroid Belt.



> *The Solar System consists of distant gas giants and inner rocky planets separated by an asteroid belt. Now an elegant new theory explains how this structure arises*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists propose mechanism that explains the origins of both dark matter and 'normal' matter.



> *Through precise cosmological measurements, scientists know that about 4.6% of the energy of the Universe is made of baryonic matter (normal atoms), about 23% is made of dark matter, and the remaining 72% or so is dark energy. Scientists also know that almost all the baryonic matter in the observable Universe is matter (with a positive baryon charge) rather than antimatter (with a negative baryon charge). But exactly why this matter and energy came to be this way is still an open question. In a recent study, physicists have proposed a new mechanism that can generate both the baryon asymmetry and the dark matter density of the Universe simultaneously.*
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> This 3D map shows the large-scale distribution of dark matter, reconstructed from measurements of weak gravitational lensing with the Hubble Space Telescope. The field of view covers about nine times the size of the full moon. Image credit: NASA/ESA/Richard Massey.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Next generation of algorithms inspired by problem-solving ants.



> *An ant colony is the last place you'd expect to find a maths whiz, but University of Sydney researchers have shown that the humble ant is capable of solving difficult mathematical problems.*
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> The ants were able to find the shortest route from one end of the maze to the other in under an hour, then were able to adapt and find the second shortest route when obstacles were put in their path.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists give insight into 200-year-old riddle.



> *University of Manchester researchers have played a vital role in an international study that has revived the 200-year-old question: why do different species share similar stages of embryonic development?*
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-- Tom


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## Brigham

lotuseclat79 said:


> Scientists give insight into 200-year-old
> 
> Perhaps it is because man has so many genes in common with many of the so called lower orders of mammals.


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes.



> *Our cosmos was "bruised" in collisions with other universes. Now astronomers have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Invisibility Cloak Hides Objects Visible To The Naked Eye.



> *Physicists have cloaked a macroscopic object for the first time. And they've done it using conventional materials and techniques*
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> Macroscopic invisibility cloak: *a*, A light ray is incident on a flat ground plane and reflected back with the same angle. *b*, When an object is sitting on the ground plane, the reflected ray changes its angle. *c*, When another flat ground plane is put on top of the object, the reflected ray restores its angle but suffers a lateral shift. *d*, When a transformation-based anisotropic cloak is covering the object, the reflected ray restores both its angle and position. The anisotropic medium has two principal refractive indexes n1 and n2 along two orthogonal directions. The observer in all cases is assumed to have a fixed height of h. In *b* and *c*, the original position of the observer is indicated with a dotted eye.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New mathematics research proves there's plenty of time for evolution.



> *A new mathematical model developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has offered even more evidence of the correctness of evolutionary theory.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Hubble spots a celestial bauble (w/ Video).



> *The delicate shell, photographed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, appears to float serenely in the depths of space, but this apparent calm hides an inner turmoil. The gaseous envelope formed as the expanding blast wave and ejected material from a supernova tore through the nearby interstellar medium. Called SNR B0509-67.5 (or SNR 0509 for short), the bubble is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160 000 light-years from Earth.*
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> This delicate shell, photographed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, appears to float serenely in the depths of space, but this apparent calm hides an inner turmoil. The gaseous envelope formed as the expanding blast wave and ejected material from a supernova tore through the nearby interstellar medium. Called SNR B0509-67.5 (or SNR 0509 for short), the bubble is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160 000 light-years from Earth. Ripples in the shell's surface may be caused either by subtle variations in the density of the ambient interstellar gas, or possibly be driven from the interior by fragments from the initial explosion. The bubble-shaped shroud of gas is 23 light-years across and is expanding at more than 18 million km/h. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys observed the supernova remnant on Oct. 28, 2006, with a filter that isolates light from the glowing hydrogen seen in the expanding shell. These observations were then combined with visible-light images of the surrounding star field that were imaged with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on Nov. 4, 2010. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgement: J. Hughes (Rutgers University)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Global eruption rocks the sun.



> *On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.*
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> NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft surround the sun.


Watch the 11 second video of the eruption at the above link! Wow!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

No Black Holes Formed at Large Hadron Collider.



> *Upgrade likely to be delayed in bid to capture Higgs particle.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Atomic weight of 11 elements on what was a constant periodic table are changing.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How to Test What Really Happened After the Big Bang.



> *A new test that takes data from several realms of physics could explain what really happened in the first sliver of a second after the Big Bang.*
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> Cosmic Microwave Background Timeline: Image: A timeline of the universe, based on data from the WMAP probe. Credit: WMAP/NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Building blocks of life created in 'Impossible' place.



> *NASA-funded scientists have discovered amino acids, a fundamental building block of life, in a meteorite where none were expected.*
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> Infrared image taken by the Meteosat 8 satellite of asteroid 2008 TC3 exploding. The path of the asteroid is shown with a yellow arrow; red-yellow blob on arrow is infrared from the explosion. Credit: EUMESTAT
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> A typical example of a meteorite remnant linked to asteroid 2008 TC3, with a dark scruffy texture. Credit: Peter Jenniskens


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Topologist Predicts New Form of Matter.



> *A link between quantum mechanics and topology implies the existence of an entirely new state of matter. And physicists have already found the first example.*
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> Borromean rings to the left and Brunnian rings of type 1B(3) to the right
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> Back in 1970, a young physicist working in the Soviet Union made a counterintutive prediction. Vitaly Efimov, now at the University of Washington in the US, showed that quantum objects that cannot form into pairs could nevertheless form into triplets.
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> In 2006, a group in Austria found the first example of such a so-called Efimov state in a cold gas of cesium atoms.
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> New States of Matter Suggested by New Topological Structures (PDF: 3.6 MB)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Science's breakthrough of the year: The first quantum machine. (plus nine other groundbreaking achievements from 2010, and 10 of the scientific insights that have changed the face of science since the dawn of the new millennium)



> *Until this year, all human-made objects have moved according to the laws of classical mechanics. Back in March, however, a group of researchers designed a gadget that moves in ways that can only be described by quantum mechanics -- the set of rules that governs the behavior of tiny things like molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. In recognition of the conceptual ground their experiment breaks, the ingenuity behind it and its many potential applications, Science has called this discovery the most significant scientific advance of 2010.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

LHC spots no black holes, eliminates some versions of string theory.



> *The results continue to pour out of the LHC's first production run. This week, the folks behind the CMS detector have announced the submission of a paper to Physics Letters that describes a test of some forms of string theory. If this form of the theory were right, the LHC should have been able to produce small black holes that would instantly decay (and not, as some had feared, devour the Earth). But a look at the data obtained by CMS shows that a signature of the black holes' decay is notably absent.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cosmos Incognita: Voyager 1 Spacecraft Arrives at the Cusp of Interstellar Space.



> *Thirty-three years into its voyage, the solar wind speed around Voyager 1 has dropped to zero as the space-hardened craft nears a milestone in its journey out of the solar system*
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> VOYAGER UPDATE: The Voyager spacecraft carried a phonograph record--a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim. Image: NASA JPL
> 
> "Voyager 1 is the most remote human-made object," Stone says. "It's now 115 astronomical units from Earth," that is, 115 times farther than Earth is from the sun, or "a bit more than 10 billion miles [16 billion kilometers]." Voyager 2 has traveled somewhat slower and in a different direction and is now around 14 billion kilometers from Earth.
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> Both Voyagers are still within a "bubble" created by the solar wind, a stream of charged particles radiating outward from the sun at 1.6 million to 3.2 million kilometers per hour. This bubble, or heliosphere, exists, says Stone, because a magnetic field from outer space, likely resulting from the explosion of supernovae five million to 10 million years ago, is pushing back against the solar wind.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

lotuseclat79 said:


> Cosmos Incognita: Voyager 1 Spacecraft Arrives at the Cusp of Interstellar Space.
> 
> -- Tom


Wow, the little satellite that could...:up:


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## lotuseclat79

Theorists seek dark matter in hot neutron stars.

Dark matter is an enigma wrapped in a conundrum. We have lots of gravitational evidence for the presence of dark matter. In fact, the evidence is from so many different types of observations, and is all so consistent, that very few astronomers or cosmologists appear to doubt that some type of dark matter exists. That is the enigma: it is very likely to exist, but we know very little of the specific details about what exactly exists.



> *Going further than that has been a problem. The very nature of dark matter, which makes cosmologists so certain of its existence, means it has the very properties that make it so damn hard to find by any means other than gravity-something of a conundrum, really. A recent paper that looks at how dark matter might be detectable in neutron stars inadvertently makes this problem very clear.*
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-- Tom


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## 1956brother

thank you


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## ekim68

Time is a very curious thing, eh?


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## Brigham

A question that occurs to me, is, as apparently, matter can be created from energy, has gravity got a speed? Is gravity propagated from the moment matter is created, and how fast does it propagate? I have not kept up with the latest science, so bear with me if this is a stupid question.


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## lotuseclat79

Hi Brigham,

What is your source that matter can be created from energy?

Recommend you read: Matter, Energy, and Gravity.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A total lunar eclipse and winter solstice coincide on Dec. 21.



> *With frigid temperatures already blanketing much of the United States, the arrival of the winter solstice on December 21 may not be an occasion many people feel like celebrating. But a dazzling total lunar eclipse to start the day might just raise a few chilled spirits.*
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> Path of the Moon through Earth's umbral and penumbral shadows during the Total Lunar Eclipse of Dec. 21, 2010. Credit: Fred Espenak/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center


-- Tom


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## Brigham

Tom
I read your recommendations. So matter cannot be derived from energy. Except perhaps from the big bang. This answers my question. Gravity does not propagate. It is always there. I suppose it never runs out, but it must be so weak eventually, that it is not discernable. I suppose our whole universe is interactive, as far as gravity is concerned.


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## ekim68

As I understand it, gravity is THE universal constant...


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## franca

Total lunar eclipse 









Earth's shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. It takes about an hour for the 'bite' to expand and swallow the entire moon


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## lotuseclat79

Early Astronomer Described Coriolis Effect Centuries Before Coriolis.



> *The Coriolis effect appears in an ancient astronomical text published 200 years before Coriolis did his work, says an historian*
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> ...Riccioli's thinking was ahead of its time. One central Copernican hypothesis is that the Earth must rotate, to explain night and day. Riccioli dismisses this with the following line of thought.
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> Imagine a canon at the equator, firing canon balls towards the north pole. If the Earth rotates, the equator is moving faster than the pole. So any canon ball launched from the equator would pass over slower moving parts of the sphere to get to the pole. The result would be the canon ball veering off course.
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> That's a powerful argument. And Riccioli is entirely correct--the absence of this effect would be good evidence that the Earth is not rotating.
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> Illustration from the Almagestum Novum. A cannon with mouth at A is fired toward Eastern target B and Northern target E, both equally distant from A. While the cannon ball (I and F) is in flight, the diurnal rotation of the Earth carries the cannon mouth to C, the Eastern target to D, and the Northern target to N.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

A few close up pictures of Mars....:up:

http://www.universetoday.com/81884/...capes-ancient-lakebed-potential-landing-site/


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## 1956brother

happy holidays and best wishes to you in the new year. i raise my glass to you and say thank you for your help...john


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## lotuseclat79

Reliance on Indirect Evidence Fuels Dark Matter Doubts (2 web pages).



> *Pinning down the universe's missing mass remains one of cosmology's biggest challenges*
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> IN THE DARK? Studies of spiral galaxies such as Andromeda, pictured here in infrared wavelengths, have provided clues to dark matter's gravitational effects. But more immediate evidence for dark matter's existence, and clues to its true nature, has remained elusive. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Just in case anyone was preparing....

The Human Mission to Mars
Colonizing the Red Planet


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## lotuseclat79

Best Images from 2010.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2010.

Note: Click on 10 images below the first picture.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Milky Way's Galactic Neighbourhood Puzzles Astronomers.



> *It looks as if the Milky Way and its nearest neighbours make up one of the rarest configurations in the local Universe. Now astronomers are wondering why*
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> Large Magellanic Cloud


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Galleries / Beautifully Detailed Supercomputer Simulations.

Galleries / Beautifully Detailed Supercomputer Simulations, Pt II.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Experiment Confirms Viking Actually Did Find Organic Compounds on Mars 30 Years Ago.









Viking Lander

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Russian Physicists Solve Radio Black-Out Problem for Re-Entering Spacecraft.



> *Using a plasma sheath as a giant radio receiver should solve the communication problems that bedevil hypersonic planes and re-entering spacecraft, say Russian scientists*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Dark ages seen in new light.



> *Remnants of the first stars have helped astronomers get closer to unlocking the "dark ages" of the cosmos.*
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> Representation of the timeline of the universe over 13.7 billion years, from the Big Bang, through the cosmic dark ages and formation of the first stars, to the expansion in the universe that followed. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Evidence and theory collide with galactic proportions.









Selected galaxies from the COSMOS survey.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Plasma jets make Sun's corona so much hotter than the surface.



> *The Sun's core is millions of degrees, while the solar surface is a balmy 5800 kelvin. But travel to the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, and it heats up to millions of degrees again. The corona is a wispy plasma envelope extending millions of miles above the Sun's surface. Why the tenuous atmosphere above the sun is hotter than the actual surface has remained a mystery. One generic explanation has been that magnetic fields must be involved, but getting beyond this superficial understanding has required more detailed observations.*
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> First light: A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures. NASA/Goddard/SDO AIA Team


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NIST telescope calibration may help explain mystery of universe's expansion.



> *Is the expansion of the universe accelerating for some unknown reason? This is one of the mysteries plaguing astrophysics, and somewhere in distant galaxies are yet-unseen supernovae that may hold the key. Now, thanks to a telescope calibrated by scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Harvard University and the University of Hawaii, astrophysicists can be more certain of one day obtaining an accurate answer.*
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> Caption: NIST expertise helped calibrate the 1.4 billion pixels in the camera of the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii, whose observations may reveal details about the expansion of the universe. Credit: Rob Ratkowski, Copyright PS1SC


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The 'mad' Egyptian scholar who proved Aristotle wrong.



> *Ibn al-Haytham's 11th-century Book of Optics, which was published exactly 1000 years ago, is often cited alongside Newton's Principia as one of the most influential books in physics. Yet very little is known about the writer, considered by many to be the father of modern optics.*


- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Interstellar Travel Not Possible Before 2200AD, Suggests Study.



> *A new estimate of the amount of energy needed to visit the stars suggests we won't have enough for at least another two centuries*
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> Intersteller travel


-- Tom


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## LANMaster

lotuseclat79 said:


> Plasma jets make Sun's corona so much hotter than the surface.
> 
> -- Tom


If you are ever near Prescott Arizona, I must recommend that you visit the Kitt Peak Solar Observatory. It's really quite amazing. :up:

My Mom used to live there. My last visit to the top of Kitt Peak was about 5 years ago.


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## lotuseclat79

Hi LAN,

Yes, that's a great idea - if I ever get the opportunity to visit I will!

Thanks,

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How the sun gets its spots.



> *Sunspots are huge, dark, irregularly shaped--and yet, temporary--areas of intense magnetism on the sun that expand and contract as they move.*
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> One of the leading researchers studying the sun reveals the origins and lifecycles of sunspots. This high-resolution image of a sunspot was taken at the Sacramento Peak Observatory of the National Solar Observatory in New Mexico. The direction of the fringes around the sunspot indicate the direction of the sun's magnetic field. Credit: National Solar Observatory


-- Tom


----------



## lotuseclat79

Surprise: Dwarf galaxy harbors supermassive black hole.



> *The surprising discovery of a supermassive black hole in a small nearby galaxy has given astronomers a tantalizing look at how black holes and galaxies may have grown in the early history of the Universe. Finding a black hole a million times more massive than the Sun in a star-forming dwarf galaxy is a strong indication that supermassive black holes formed before the buildup of galaxies, the astronomers said.*
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> The dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10, seen in visible light by the Hubble Space Telescope. The central, light-pink region shows an area of radio emission, seen with the Very Large Array. This area indicates the presence of a supermassive black hole drawing in material from its surroundings. This also is indicated by strong X-ray emission from this region detected by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Credit: Reines, et al., David Nidever, NRAO/AUI/NSF, NASA


-- Tom


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## ekim68

To Boldly Go: What Made 400 People Volunteer for a One-Way Mission to Mars?



> An interplanetary trip to Mars could take as little as 10 months, but returning would be virtually impossible -- making the voyage a form of self-imposed exile from Earth unlike anything else in human history.
> 
> What would inspire someone to volunteer? We've just found out.
> 
> A special edition of the Journal of Cosmology details exactly how a privately-funded, one-way mission to Mars could depart as soon as 20 years from now -- and it prompted more than 400 readers to volunteer as colonists.


----------



## lotuseclat79

Probe finds 'planetary missing link'.



> *NASA's Kepler spacecraft has detected a rocky planet that's one of the closest analogs to Earth - except for the fact that it's way too close to its sun.*
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> An artist's conception shows the rocky planet Kepler-10b


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Thunderstorms proven to create antimatter.



> *Thunderstorms have been shown to create positrons and send them to space.*
> 
> Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash, a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. 'These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams,' said Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor team.
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> TGFs produce high-energy electrons and positrons. Moving near the speed of light, these particles travel into space along Earth's magnetic field. High Energy Electrons in yellow, positrons in green


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Asymmetry of life may have cosmic origin.



> *The asymmetry of biological molecules may have come from space, say French scientists.*
> 
> So-called chiral molecules, including amino acids and sugars, can exist in two forms which are mirror images of each other. However, here on Earth, they exist in only one form, either left-handed or right-handed.
> 
> For instance, the amino acids that make up proteins only exist in one of their two enantiomeric forms, the left-handed form. On the other hand, the sugars present in the DNA of living organisms are solely right-handed. The phenomeon is known as homochirality.
> 
> In a study, the team reproduced the conditions found in interstellar space and found that there, too, biological molecules tend towards one form or the other.


-- Tom


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## franca

Scientists find smallest planet


----------



## lotuseclat79

Tevatron atom smasher to close in September.



> *The 25-year-old Tevatron particle accelerator in the US will end its operations in September this year since no funds are available to extend its life for three more years.*
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> Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Main Ring and Main Injector as seen from the air. Image: Fermilab


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Planck unveils wonders of the Universe (w/ Video).



> *The first scientific results from ESA's Planck mission were released at a press briefing today in Paris. The findings focus on the coldest objects in the Universe, from within our Galaxy to the distant reaches of space.*
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> This image shows the location of the first six fields used to detect and study the Cosmic Infrared Background. The fields, named N1, AG, SP, LH2, Boötes 1 and Boötes 2, respectively, are all located at a relatively high galactic latitude, where the foreground contamination due to the Milky Way's diffuse emission is less dramatic. Credits: ESA/Planck Collaboration


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Study highlights flaw in common approach of public opinion surveys about science.



> *A new study from North Carolina State University highlights a major flaw in attempting to use a single survey question to assess public opinion on science issues. Researchers found that people who say that risks posed by new science fields outweigh benefits often actually perceive more benefits than risks when asked more detailed questions.*


-- Tom


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## franca

'Ball of fire':


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## lotuseclat79

Planck Space Observatory Begins To Reveal Its Secrets.



> *The first data from one of the most important space observatories is set to change the way we understand at the Universe*
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> Planck data set images
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> The Planck Collaboration has released its data in 23 papers placed on the arXiv this week. It's clear the data is beginning to throw new light on mysteries such as the strange emissions from dust in the Magellanic Clouds and the properties of the interstellar medium in our galaxy.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Remarkable Pattern Of Neuronal Activity In The Brain.



> *Asleep or awake, brain activity is delicately balanced between inactivity and runaway catastrophe, according to a new study*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Forget Planet X! New technique could pinpoint Galaxy X.



> *Planet X, an often-sought 10th planet, is so far a no-show, but Sukanya Chakrabarti has high hopes for finding what might be called Galaxy X - a dwarf galaxy that she predicts orbits our Milky Way Galaxy.*
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> The distribution of HI hydrogen in the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) as determined by the THINGS VLA survey extends far beyond the visible stars in the galaxy and its satellite companion (marked by cross), which is situated in the short arm of the spiral. Analysis of perturbations in the hydrogen distribution can be used to predict the location of such satellites, in particular, those satellites that are composed primarily of dark matter and are thus too faint to be detected easily. Credit: Sukanya Chakrabarti/UC Berkeley


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Fruit fly nervous system provides new solution to fundamental computer network problem.



> *The fruit fly has evolved a method for arranging the tiny, hair-like structures it uses to feel and hear the world that's so efficient a team of scientists in Israel and at Carnegie Mellon University says it could be used to more effectively deploy wireless sensor networks and other distributed computing applications.*
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> In this confocoal miscroscope image of the pupal stage of fruit fly development, nerve cells that self-select to become sensory organ precursors (SOPs) are identified by arrows. These cells send chemical signals to neighboring cells, blocking them from becoming SOPs and causing them to fluoresce red in the image.
> 
> ...the method used by the fly's nervous system to organize itself is much simpler and more robust than anything humans have concocted.
> 
> "It is such a simple and intuitive solution, I can't believe we did not think of this 25 years ago," said co-author Noga Alon, a mathematician and computer scientist at Tel Aviv University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The best way to measure dark energy just got better.



> *Dark energy is a mysterious force that pervades all space, acting as a "push" to accelerate the Universe's expansion. Despite being 70 percent of the Universe, dark energy was only discovered in 1998 by two teams observing Type Ia supernovae. A Type 1a supernova is a cataclysmic explosion of a white dwarf star.*
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> A Type Ia supernova occurs when a white dwarf accretes material from a companion star until it exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit and explodes. By studying these exploding stars, astronomers can measure dark energy and the expansion of the universe. CfA scientists have found a way to correct for small variations in the appearance of these supernovae, so that they become even better standard candles. The key is to sort the supernovae based on their color. Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

What is life? New answers to an age-old question in astrobiology.



> *Biologists have been unable to agree on a definition of the complex phenomenon known as "life." In a special collection of essays in Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., leaders in the fields of philosophy, science, and molecular evolution present a variety of perspectives on defining life. Tables of content and a free sample issue are available online.*
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> Astrobiology is the authoritative resource for the most up-to-date information and perspectives on exciting new research findings and discoveries emanating from interplanetary exploration and terrestrial field and laboratory research programs. The journal is published 10 times a year in print and online, and is the official journal of Astrobiology Society. Complete tables of content and a free sample issue may be viewed online. Credit: © Mary Ann Liebert Inc. publishers


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New Type Of Entanglement Allows "Teleportation in Time", Say Physicists.



> *Conventional entanglement links particles across space. Now physicists say a similar effect links particles through time*
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> Time teleportation: Three symmetrically paired sets of window functions, χF (η) = e−(η−x) and χP ( ̄) = e−( ̄−x) , plotted in Minkowski η time t, which produce identical entanglement between the detectors. As the window functions are shifted away from t = 0, the detector must remain active for far longer to achieve the same degree of entanglement.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Evidence Emerges That Laws of Physics Are Not Fine-Tuned For Life.



> *The value of the cosmological constant suggests that the laws of nature could not have been fine-tuned for life by an omnipotent being, says a cosmologist*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A Collection of Mathematical Blogs.

The following categories of blogs are grouped together:
Group Blogs
Individual Researchers
Teachers and Educators
Journalistic Writers
Communities
Institutions
Microblogging

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New math theories reveal the nature of numbers.



> *For centuries, some of the greatest names in math have tried to make sense of partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting. Many mathematicians added major pieces to the puzzle, but all of them fell short of a full theory to explain partitions. Instead, their work raised more questions about this fundamental area of math.*


Eureka!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum robins lead the way.



> *Did you know that the humble robin uses quantum physics?*
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> European robin. Photo: Wikimedia/Erik Vikne.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Which-way detector unlocks some mystery of the double-slit experiment.



> *One of the greatest puzzles of the double-slit experiment - and quantum physics in general - is why electrons seem to act differently when being observed. While electrons traveling through a barrier with two slits create interference patterns when unobserved, these interference patterns disappear when scientists detect which slit each electron travels through. By designing a modified version of the double-slit experiment with a new "which-way" electron detector at one of the slits, a team of scientists from Italy has found a clue as to why electron behavior appears to change when being observed.*
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> With a filter over the right slit, electrons are more likely to undergo inelastic scattering and act like a spherical wave. Electrons passing through an uncovered slit are more likely to undergo elastic scattering and act like a cylindrical wave. The two different waves do not have a phase correlation and so, even if an electron passed through both slits, it could not create an interference pattern. Image credit: Frabboni, et al. ©2011 American Institute of Physics.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

With cloud computing, the mathematics of evolution may get easier to learn.



> *An innovative, educational computing platform developed by University at Buffalo faculty members and hosted by the cloud (remote, high-capacity, scalable servers) is helping UB students understand parts of evolutionary biology on an entirely new level. Soon, high-school and middle-school students will benefit from the same tool as well.*
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> (From left) Bina Ramamurthy, Jessica Poulin and Katharina Dittmar say Pop! World's visual appeal makes the mathematical analysis of evolution more captivating for students than conventional representations. Credit: University at Buffalo


Evolutionary "Weather" Forecast: Mostly Cloudy!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Another Star Trek "technology" closer to reality: IBM Watson computer wins US quiz show round.



> *David Ferrucci, principal investigator of Watson DeepQA technology, said Watson can conduct self-assessments and learn. Naturally, Ferrucci was asked about whether Watson ran the risk of imitating Hal 9000. "That's science fiction," said Ferrucci. "We're not even close to that." He did, however, add that Watson is more like the computer on Star Trek than Hal.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

520-day flight simulation nears 'landing' on Mars



> MOSCOW (AP) - After 233 days in a locked steel capsule, six researchers on a 520-day mock flight to Mars are all feeling strong and ready to "land" on the Red Planet, the mission director said Friday.
> 
> The all-male crew of three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian-Colombian has been inside windowless capsules at a Moscow research center since June. Their mission aims to help real space crews in the future cope with the confinement and stress of interplanetary travel.
> 
> The researchers communicate with the outside world via emails and video messages - occasionally delayed to give them the feel of being farther than a few yards (meters) away from mission control. The crew members eat canned food similar to that eaten on the International Space Station and shower only once a week.


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## lotuseclat79

ekim68 said:


> 520-day flight simulation nears 'landing' on Mars


Perhaps the simulation of the trip to Mars will uncover some new data on long trips into Space, but as for the one-way trip - forget it!

What a waste this so-called (one-way trip to Mars) project is. Scientists already know that any human on Mars will get radiated by cosmic rays as Mars does not have both the atmosphere and magnetic field to protect human life like we have on Earth.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers Crowdsource the Definition of a Galaxy.



> *Nobody is quite sure how to define a galaxy. So astronomers are appealing to the wisdom of crowds to help.*
> 
> Defining a galaxy sounds so simple. We all know what a galaxy is, right? Well, not really. Surprisingly, there is no universally agreed upon definition and the ones generally bandied around leave a great deal of wriggle room.
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> Galaxy Definition


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Ancient puzzle gets new lease of 'geomagical' life.



> *An ancient mathematical puzzle that has fascinated mathematicians for centuries has found a new lease of life.*
> 
> The magic square is the basis for Sudoku, pops up in Chinese legend and provides a playful way to introduce children to arithmetic. But all this time it has been concealing a more complex geometrical form, says recreational mathematician Lee Sallows.
> 
> He has dubbed the new kind of structure the "geomagic square", and recently released dozens of examples online.
> 
> "To come up with this after thousands of years of study of magic squares is pretty amazing," blogged Alex Bellos, author of the book Alex's Adventures in Wonderland.
> 
> Peter Cameron, a mathematician at Queen Mary, University of London, believes that an even deeper structure may lie hidden beyond geomagic squares. "I can immediately see a lot of things I'd like to do with this," he says
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> See more geomagic squares in our gallery (Image: Lee Sallows)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomy without a telescope -- time freeze.



> *There is a story told about traveling at the speed of light in which you are asked to imagine that you begin by standing in front of a big clock - like Big Ben. You realize that your current perception of time is being informed by light reflected off the face of the clock - which is telling you it's 12:00. So if you then shoot away at the same speed as that light - all you will continue to see is that clock fixed at 12:00, since you are moving at the same speed that this information is moving. And so you discover that at the speed of light, time essentially stands still.*
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> At speeds of less than 10% of the speed of light (0.1c or 30,000 km/sec) time dilation is miniscule, but from 99% speed of light up it increases asymptotically towards infinite.
> 
> Link: Relativity Calculator.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists describe method to observe timelike entanglement.



> *In "ordinary" quantum entanglement, two particles possess properties that are inherently linked with each other, even though the particles may be spatially separated by a large distance. Now, physicists S. Jay Olson and Timothy C. Ralph from the University of Queensland have shown that it's possible to create entanglement between regions of spacetime that are separated in time but not in space, and then to convert the timelike entanglement into normal spacelike entanglement. They also discuss the possibility of using this timelike entanglement from the quantum vacuum for a process they call "teleportation in time."*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A solution that counts: Long-standing mathematical conjecture finally proved.



> *A conjecture presented in 1985 - the Andrews and Robbins conjecture - has recently been proved for the first time. It is thus clear that the structure which goes by the name of "totally symmetric plane partitions" can be described using a single formula. Producing the proof required vast computer resources and was only possible after the formula had been prepared for computer-assisted calculation. This finding by a Austrian Science Fund FWF supported research group based in Linz, Austria will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today. The proof means that the last of a long list of famous mathematical conjectures relating to plane partitions has finally been proved.*
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> Totally symmetric plane partitions posed for many years riddles for mathematicians. The last one has now been solved by a computer.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Science's 8 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries: Progress Report.



> *In the year 2000, PM asked how eight of the most profound questions in science might (optimistically) be answered before the dawn of the 22nd century. So where are we now, a decade later? Here's the skinny on some of science's greatest mysteries-from attaining immortality and the search for alien life to traveling through time.*
> 
> The advances in science made over the past hundred years have been nothing short of astounding: We've split the atom and gone to the moon, spliced open the genome and saved countless lives with medicines. Yet as far as we've come, we have a long way to go. We continue to grapple with realties beyond our understanding, from the inner workings of our bodies to the intrinsic mechanics of the universe.
> 
> In 2000, PM published an article pondering the great scientific challenges that we face this century: Will we finally cure cancer? Find the seat of consciousness, a "soul"? Might we even achieve immortality? Could we look beyond ourselves and create artificial life or find life elsewhere in the universe? Can we go faster than the speed of light or travel through time?
> 
> Will We Find a Cure for Cancer?
> Can We Achieve Immortality?
> Can We Create Life?
> Will We Find the Soul?
> Are We Alone?
> Is Light the Ultimate Speed Limit?
> Can We Travel Through Time?
> Will We Find Other Universes?


-- Tom


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## KMW

lotuseclat79 said:


> Astronomy without a telescope -- time freeze.
> 
> -- Tom


what happens if you travel towards rather than away? and what happens if you take the clock with you?

just curious


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## ekim68

KMW said:


> what happens if you travel towards rather than away? and what happens if you take the clock with you?
> 
> just curious


Actually a good experimental idea...:up: Two identical clocks, one with the traveler, and one where it left from...


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## KMW

lotuseclat79 said:


> Milky Way's Galactic Neighbourhood Puzzles Astronomers.
> 
> -- Tom


I can see a horse and rider of galactic dimensions in this one


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## lotuseclat79

KMW said:


> what happens if you travel towards rather than away? and what happens if you take the clock with you?
> 
> just curious


Hi KMW,

If you travel toward rather than away at the speed of light - there will be no difference in the time on the clock. If you take the clock with you, it will have slowed down the time it takes for the round trip - i.e. it will have ticked slower than an identical clock back on Earth.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New approach to invisibility cloaking gets much closer to the science-fiction version.



> *The idea of being able to become invisible, especially by simply covering up a person or an object with a special cloak, has a perennial appeal in science-fiction and fantasy literature. In recent years, researchers have found ways to make very exotic "metamaterials" that can perform a very crude version of this trick, keeping an object from being detected by a certain specific frequency of radiation, such as microwaves, and only working at microscopic scales. But a system that works in ordinary visible light and for objects big enough to be seen with the naked eye has remained elusive.*
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> This image shows a calcite crystal laid upon a paper, causing all the letters to show double refraction.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Runaway star plows through space.



> *A massive star flung away from its former companion is plowing through space dust. The result is a brilliant bow shock, seen here as a yellow arc in a new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.*
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> The blue star near the center of this image is Zeta Ophiuchi. When seen in visible light it appears as a relatively dim red star surrounded by other dim stars and no dust. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Linguists to re-think reason for short words.



> *Linguists have thought for many years the length of words is related to the frequency of use, with short words used more often than long ones. Now researchers in the US have shown the length is more closely related to the amount of information the words carry than their frequency of use.*
> ...
> They made the assumption that the more predictable a word is, the less information it conveys, and estimated the information content from information theory, which says the information content is proportional to the negative logarithm of the probability of a word occurring.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists take new look at the atom.



> *Measuring the attractive forces between atoms and surfaces with unprecedented precision, University of Arizona physicists have produced data that could refine our understanding of the structure of atoms and improve nanotechnology. The discovery has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.*
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> Graduate student Vincent Lonij (left), associate professor of physics Alex Cronin, research assistant Will Holmgren and undergraduate student Catherine Klauss perform maintenance on a chamber used to beam atoms through a grating to measure a tiny force that helps physicists better understand the structure of atoms. Credit: Norma Jean Gargasz/UANews


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First-ever solar sail a 'momentous achievement'.



> *In an unexpected reversal of fortune, NASA's NanoSail-D spacecraft has unfurled a gleaming sheet of space-age fabric 650 km above Earth, becoming the first-ever solar sail to circle our planet.*
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> An artist's concept of a solar sail in Earth orbit.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Does the Moon Have Military Value?



> Despite the fact that under President Barack Obama's space policy, Americans will not be going back to the moon any time soon, discussions are occurring about what if any military value the Earth nearest neighbor has.
> 
> Opinions, as can be expected, vary on the subject.
> 
> On the one side is Joe Pappalardo, who expressed skepticism that the moon would have any kind of military value in a recent article in Popular Mechanics. Papalardo points to a 1950s-era study, Project Horizon, which examined the use of the moon as a military base. The idea was abandoned due to the fact the expense of constructing such a base and the long flight times of missiles, nuclear or otherwise, makes a lunar military base of dubious value. The Outer Space Treaty, in any case, forecloses the use of the moon for offensive military purposes.


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## lotuseclat79

Hunt for dark matter closes in at Large Hadron Collider.



> *Physicists are closer than ever to finding the source of the Universe's mysterious dark matter, following a better than expected year of research at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) particle detector, part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva.*
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> One of the earliest CMS events found showing evidence of two jets. The blue and red columns represent energy deposited in the detector, while the yellow curved lines are measured tracks of particles.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Ancient body clock discovered that helps to keep all living things on time.



> *The mechanism that controls the internal 24-hour clock of all forms of life from human cells to algae has been identified by scientists.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New research stems from the sun.



> *Sometimes, you have to go back to go forward. Sounds strange, but it's what one National High Magnetic Field Laboratory physicist did when he harnessed the primal power of the sun to solve a perplexing, high-tech problem. And he had two unlikely candidates as his helpers: a rural elementary-school teacher and a college undergrad.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

"Galactic Flashes May Signal Transmissions By Other Civilizations": NASA/JPL.



> *"We'll be looking for the occasional celestial flash," said Joseph Lazio, a radio astronomer at JPL. "These flashes can be anything from explosions on surfaces of nearby stars, deaths of distant stars, exploding black holes, or even perhaps transmissions by other civilizations." JPL scientists are working with multi-institutional teams to explore this new area of astronomy.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Galaxy on the edge of space.



> *For your weekend eye candy pleasure, I have an unusual galaxy for you. Actually, it's an unusual picture of an unusual galaxy! Check out NGC 6503*
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> Galaxy NGC 6503: This picture is brought to you by the good folks of Hubble Space Telescope. Click it to get the galactinated 4000 x 2200 pixel version.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Frogs re-evolved lost lower teeth.



> *Frogs re-evolved "lost" bottom teeth after more than 200 million years, according to new research.*
> 
> Tree-dwelling Gastrotheca guentheri are the only frogs with teeth on both their upper and lower jaw.
> 
> The reappearance of these lower teeth after such a long time fuels debate about whether complex traits are lost in evolution or if they can resurface.
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> Scientists suggest this new evidence identifies a "loophole" in previous theories.
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> Commonly known as "marsupial frogs", the Gastrotheca genus carry their eggs in pouches.
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> Unlike marsupial mammals such as kangaroos however, the frogs' pouches are on their backs.
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> The Gastrotheca genus of frogs carry eggs on their backs


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

10 Scientific Laws and Theories You Really Should Know.



> 1: Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
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> Is it a particle, a wave or both?
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> 2: Theory of General Relativity
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> Einstein's theory of general relativity changed our understanding of the universe.
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> 3: Evolution and Natural Selection
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> A hypothetical (and simplified) example of how natural selection might play out amongst frogs
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> 4: Archimedes' Buoyancy Principle
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> Buoyancy keeps everything from rubber ducks to ocean liners afloat.
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> 5: Laws of Thermodynamics
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> The laws of thermodynamics in action
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> 6: Newton's Laws of Motion.
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> Newton's second law of motion
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> 7: Universal Law of Gravitation.
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> Thanks to Newton's universal law, we can figure out the gravitational force between any two objects.
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> 8: Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion.
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> Kepler's law of areas
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> 9: Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion.
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> Hubble and his famous law helped to quantify the movement of the universe's galaxies.
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> 10: Big Bang Theory
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> The big bang theory
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> Lots More Information


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Asteroid Once Seen As Danger Offers Chance For Close Study



> An asteroid that once was seen as a danger to the Earth may soon be a once-in-a-century opportunity to get a close look at one - and learn more about the ones that really are a hazard.
> 
> The asteroid is called Apophis. It's a near-Earth asteroid that is a type called a chondrite, essentially a stony body that has a high silicate content and few metals. It is about 330 meters across, and it's due to pass the Earth in 2029.


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists challenge classical world with quantum-mechanical implementation of 'shell game'.



> *Inspired by the popular confidence trick known as "shell game," researchers at UC Santa Barbara have demonstrated the ability to hide and shuffle "quantum-mechanical peas" -- microwave single photons -- under and between three microwave resonators, or "quantized shells."*
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> The photon shell game architecture: Two superconducting phase qubits (squares in the center of the image) are connected to three microwave resonators (three meander lines). Credit: Erik Lucero, Matteo Mariantoni, Dario Mariantoni


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Tracking the origins of speedy space particles (w/ Video).



> *NASA's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interaction during Substorms (THEMIS) spacecraft combined with computer models have helped track the origin of the energetic particles in Earth's magnetic atmosphere that appear during a kind of space weather called a substorm. Understanding the source of such particles and how they are shuttled through Earth's atmosphere is crucial to better understanding the Sun's complex space weather system and thus protect satellites or even humans in space.*
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> An artist's rendition of the five THEMIS space spacecraft traveling through the magnetic field lines around Earth. Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

CERN continues the hunt for the Higgs.



> *It has just been decided that CERN will run for the next two years without a break. The Higgs could be within reach sooner than previously thought so all researchers are keen to continue the experiments in the LHC accelerator.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cosmos At Least 250x Bigger Than Visible Universe, Say Cosmologists.



> *The universe is much bigger than it looks, according to a study of the latest observations*
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> Size of Universe


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Why Astrophysicists Need a Lightbulb in Orbit.



> *Astronomers measuring the most distant light sources need to know how much light the atmosphere absorbs. The answer is an orbiting lightbulb.*
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> Calipso: Fig 7. Anisotropy measurement of the CCD of the west camera. The horizontal axes show the x and y pixel position; the vertical axis is flux, in arbitrary units. The deviations from a flat dis-tribution on the vertical axis are magnified by a factor of 100. The other cameras have a similar degree of anisotropy (∼0.5%).


Download (PDF) Satellite-Mounted Light Sources as Photometric Calibration Standards for Ground-Based Telescopes.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Tricky Topic of Science on the International Space Station: A Case Study.



> *The trials and tribulations of a Japanese X-ray telescope on the ISS make for interesting reading*
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> Fig. 11. All sky image obtained by the SSC for 7 months taken by the MAXI-SSC (Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image/Single Slit Camera) in PDF article In Orbit Performance of the MAXI/SSC onboard the ISS.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA spots 54 potentially life-friendly planets.



> *An orbiting NASA telescope is finding whole new worlds of possibilities in the search for alien life, including more than 50 potential planets that appear to be in the habitable zone.*
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> This is an Jan. 2011 handout artist rendering provided by NASA. NASA's Kepler telescope is finding that relatively smaller planets _ still larger than Earth, but tinier than Jupiter _ are proving more common outside our solar system than once thought. This drawing is of one of the smallest planets that Kepler has found, a rocky planet called Kepler-10b, that measures 1.4 times the size of Earth and where the temperature is more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. (AP Photo/Dana Berry, SkyWorks Digital Inc., Kepler Mission, NASA Ames Research Center)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Six small planets orbiting a sun-like star amaze astronomers.



> *A remarkable planetary system discovered by NASA's Kepler mission has six planets around a Sun-like star, including five small planets in tightly packed orbits. Astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and their coauthors analyzed the orbital dynamics of the system, determined the sizes and masses of the planets, and figured out their likely compositions--all based on Kepler's measurements of the changing brightness of the host star (called Kepler-11) as the planets passed in front of it.*
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> An artist's conception of the newly discovered planetary system shows six planets around the Sun-like star Kepler-11. Credit: NASA/Tim Pyle.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02...ntum mechanics to melt glass at absolute zero.



> *Quantum mechanics, developed in the 1920s, has had an enormous impact in explaining how matter works. The elementary particles that make up different forms of matter -- such as electrons, protons, neutrons and photons -- are well understood within the model quantum physics provides. Even now, some 90 years later, new scientific principles in quantum physics are being described. The most recent gives the world a glimpse into the seemingly impossible.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First evidence for a spherical magnesium-32 nucleus.



> *Elements heavier than iron come into being only in powerful stellar explosions, supernovae. During nuclear reactions all kinds of short-lived atomic nuclei are formed, including more stable combinations - the so-called magic numbers - predicted by theory. Yet here, too, there are exceptions: the islands of inversion. Headed by physicists from the Excellence Cluster Universe at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (Germany), an international team of scientists has now taken a closer look at the island that was first discovered. They have now published their results in Physical Review Letters.*
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> A new discovery, and the questions it raises, could help explain in greater detail how elements are synthesized in stellar explosions -- such as the supernova that left behind the Crab Nebula. Credit: VLT/ESO


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Giant virus, tiny protein crystals show X-ray laser's power and potential.



> *Two studies published in the February 3 issue of Nature demonstrate how the unique capabilities of the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser -- the Linac Coherent Light Source, located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory -- could revolutionize the study of life.*
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> A three-dimensional rendering of X-ray data obtained from over 15,000 single nanocrystal diffraction snapshots recorded at the Linac Coherent Light Source, the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser, located at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The 3-D structure of proteins -- in this case Photosystem I, the biological factory in plant cells that converts sunlight to energy during photosynthesis -- can be determined from these diffraction patterns. Each nanocrystal was destroyed by the intense X-ray pulse, but not before information about its structure was revealed. Credit: Thomas White (DESY)
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> The experimentally measured X-ray diffraction pattern of a single Mimivirus particle, imaged at the Linac Coherent Light Source, the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser, located at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Very short and extremely bright X-ray pulses can be used to obtain a single diffraction pattern from a large macromolecule, a virus or a cell before the sample explodes and turns into plasma. The structure of the virus can be determined from such patterns. In this study, the X-ray pulse lasted a millionth of a billionth of a second and heated the virus to 100,000 degrees Celsius, but not before this image was obtained. Credit: Janos Hajdu (Uppsala University)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Tiny heat engine may be world's smallest.



> *Steam engines, combustion engines, and diesel engines are all different types of heat engines, which operate by converting heat energy into mechanical work. Although heat engines have existed for a long time, reducing their size down to the microscale is very difficult since both their efficiency and power density greatly decrease when their size decreases. In a new study, scientists have designed and built a miniature heat engine with a displacement volume of just 0.34 cubic micrometers, possibly making it the smallest heat engine ever built.*
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> (Left) This illustration shows the entire heat engine and its electrical connections. (Right) A modified electron-microscope image shows the heat engine in motion. The amplitude of the motion in the figure is exaggerated. Image credit: P. G. Steeneken, et al. ©2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Nano research fit for a king: Scientists test strength of composite bonds one nanotube at a time.



> *Arthur pulled a sword from a stone, proving to a kingdom that right beats might. Researchers at Rice University are making the same point in the nanoscale realm.*
> ...
> "Developing an ability to engineering nanocomposites with mechanical properties tailored for specific applications is the proverbial holy grail of all structural nanocomposite research," Ganesan said. "The technique essentially takes us one step closer to achieving this goal."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Fundamental Nature Of Light.



> *Did you ever wonder why both, Einstein's relativity theory and quantum physics, in theory as well as experiment, seem obsessed with the nature of light? The velocity of light, light clocks, entangled photons, and so on - why is it always light? This preoccupation is no coincidence. It comes directly from the fact that light does not actually exist. Think I am nuts yet?
> 
> Today, I will tell you why relativity theory makes the non-existence of light obvious. The next time, I will show that this odd seeming fact only confirms what is known from entirely unrelated quantum mechanics: classical relativity and non-relativistic quantum physics both agree on that light does not exist for entirely different reasons!*
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> Time Dilation Graph with Forumla


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Water Solves Protein Folding Problem.



> *The way water interacts with proteins explains one of the great mysteries of protein folding*
> 
> Abstract:
> First shells of hydration and bulk solvent plays a crucial role in the folding of proteins. Here, the role of water in the dynamics of proteins has been investigated using a theoretical protein-solvent model and a statistical physics approach. We formulate a hydration model where the hydrogen bonds between water molecules pertaining to the first shell of the protein conformation may be either mainly formed or broken. At thermal equilibrium, hydrogen bonds are formed at low temperature and are broken at high temperature. To explore the solvent effect, we follow the folding of a large sampling of protein chains, using a master-equation evolution. The dynamics shows a clear mechanism. Above the glass-transition temperature, a large ratio of chains fold very rapidly into the native structure irrespective of the temperature, following pathways of high transition rates through structures surrounded by the solvent with broken hydrogen bonds. Although these states have an infinitesimal probability, they act as strong dynamical attractors and fast folding proceeds along these routes rather than pathways with small transition rates between configurations of much higher equilibrium probabilities. At a given low temperature, a broad jump in the folding times is observed. Below this glass temperature, the pathways where hydrogen bonds are mainly formed become those of highest rates although with conformational changes of huge relaxation times. The present results reveal that folding obeys a double-funnel mechanism.
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> Protein Folding: The solvent around a chain conformation chosen at random. The unique solvent configuration where the hydrogen bonds between water molecules and between water and the chain are formed (shown in the left picture) is the non-degenerated ground state (GS) of the first shell and the other structures (one is shown in the right picture), where the hydrogen bonds are mostly broken, are grouped together in the highly degenerated excited state (ES). Only, the highly organized and highly disordered solvent configuration are taken into account. All the other cases are not considered in this
> two-state picture which only takes into account the lowest energy and largest entropy macro-states which are the most
> important contribution for the statistical physics approach.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum quirk: Scientists pack atoms together to prevent collisions in atomic clock.



> *In a paradox typical of the quantum world, JILA scientists have eliminated collisions between atoms in an atomic clock by packing the atoms closer together. The surprising discovery, described in the Feb. 3 issue of Science Express, can boost the performance of experimental atomic clocks made of thousands or tens of thousands of neutral atoms trapped by intersecting laser beams.*
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> Intersecting laser beams create "optical tubes" to pack atoms close together, enhancing their interaction and the performance of JILA's strontium atomic clock. Credit: Baxley/JILA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Same rules apply to some experimental systems regardless of scale.



> *New experiments show that common scientific rules can apply to significantly different phenomena operating on vastly different scales.*
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> In Cheng Chin's lab, a cloud of cesium atoms, shown as red balls, are confined on a horizontal plane and cooled to nano-Kelvin temperatures. An example of the measured atomic distribution is shown on the plane below the atoms, and reveals a universal scaling symmetry of physics in a two-dimensional quantum world. (Cheng Chin)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Defining life: the development of an artificial cell.



> *Last year's artificial cell was created by J. Craig Venter and colleagues using a "top-down" approach: they replaced the genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitallium, with a synthetic DNA sequence they designed to contain the minimum set of genes required for life. It was an amazing feat, but all of the machinery necessary to make the cell work was already present within the bacterial shell. They simply hijacked it with their synthetic genome.
> 
> This year, an artificial cell project launched, and it intends to use a "bottom up" approach; Libchaer et al. plan to synthesize a viable cell from its basic components. They define these as the cell membrane, the border delineating the cell; the apparatus needed to coordinate metabolic activity; and finally the DNA, which acts as a both an information program driving metabolism and a code for remembering said program, much like a Turing tape. The hardest part, they think, will be getting these components to work with one another, as they describe in a progress report.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists suggest protocol for messaging to aliens.



> *In 1974, humans broadcast the first message targeted at extraterrestrial life using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. The message, which was aimed at the globular star cluster M13 located 25,000 light years away, consisted of binary digits that encoded information about our DNA, as well as graphics of a human, our Solar System, and the Arecibo telescope. Since then, humans have sent three other messages to nearby stars and planets (20-69 light-years away). These messages have become more complex and anthropocentric, with music, photographs, and drawings submitted by the public.*
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> The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. NAIC - Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First stars in universe were not alone.



> *The first stars in the universe were not as solitary as previously thought. In fact, they could have formed alongside numerous companions when the gas disks that surrounded them broke up during formation, giving birth to sibling stars in the fragments. These are the findings of studies performed with the aid of computer simulations by researchers at Heidelberg University's Centre for Astronomy together with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching and the University of Texas at Austin.*
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> View of the gas disk surrounding a newly formed central star.
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> Time evolution of the accretion disk around the first star.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Is that a singularity in your dimension or are you just happy to see me?.



> *The idea of extra dimensions is, of course, nothing new in physics. But we know that these dimensions have to be small. It's not just the fact that we only perceive four dimensions directly; forces like gravity and electromagnetism see their strength fall off as the square of distance, so they would change strength at rates faster than the square if there were other dimensions around. The role of these extra dimensions, though, is thought to be quite important. There is a huge disparity between the strength of the electroweak force and gravity, one that needs to resolved before unification of the forces can take place. (There's also the matter of the masses of the different particles, which we can measure but not explain.)
> 
> At some scale (called the Planck scale) the forces have to link up, which is where the extra dimension can play a role. The idea, as I understand it, is that, by curving an extra dimension, the strength of gravity is reduced. My guess is that energy from the gravitational field is used to maintain the curvature, thereby reducing the apparent strength of gravity observed by objects in the other three spatial dimensions. So, warp enough dimensions and the strength of gravity seen in the remaining dimensions falls off a lot, but its native strength is comparable to the electroweak force-everyone is ready to unify.
> 
> Another important consideration is the observation of different particle masses.*
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> Singularity Dimension


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First Ever STEREO Images of the Entire Sun.



> *
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> Latest image of the far side of the Sun based on high resolution STEREO data, taken on February 2, 2011 at 23:56 UT when there was still a small gap between the STEREO Ahead and Behind data. This gap will start to close on February 6, 2011, when the spacecraft achieve 180 degree separation, and will completely close over the next several days. Credit: NASA
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> An artist's concept of STEREO surrounding the sun. Credit: NASA*


-- Tom


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## sepala

*How to make a glowing tomato *


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## sepala

*Cheapy Lighter Laser Burner! *


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## lotuseclat79

Clay-armored bubbles may have formed first protocells.



> *A team of applied physicists at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Princeton, and Brandeis have demonstrated the formation of semipermeable vesicles from inorganic clay.*
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> Fatty-acid liposomes compartmentalize inside a clay vesicle. Credit: Photo courtesy of Anand Bala Subramaniam, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Words help people form mathematical concepts (w/ Video).



> *Language may play an important role in learning the meanings of numbers, scholars at the University of Chicago report.*
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> University of Chicago researchers tested deaf people in Nicaragua who communicate with a self-developed signing system to see if they understood the value of numbers. (iStockphoto.com)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Climate phenomenon La Nina to blame for global extreme weather events.



> *Recent extreme weather events as far as Australia and Africa are being fueled by a climate phenomenon known as La Nina -- or "the girl" in Spanish. La Nina has also played a minor role in the recent cold weather in the Northeast U.S.*
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> Cyclone Yasi over Australia in February 2011. Image credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## sepala

*Make Glow Sticks - The Science *


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## lotuseclat79

Black Holes Not Affected by Dark Matter, Say Astrophysicists.



> *The supermassive black holes that sit at the center of most galaxies appear to be unaffected by dark matter, according to a new study.*
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> Galaxy 20NGC


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Eggs are now naturally lower in cholesterol.



> *According to new nutrition data from the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), eggs are lower in cholesterol than previously thought. The USDA-ARS recently reviewed the nutrient composition of standard large eggs, and results show the average amount of cholesterol in one large egg is 185 mg, 14 percent lower than previously recorded. The analysis also revealed that large eggs now contain 41 IU of vitamin D, an increase of 64 percent.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Controversy Over NASA's Next Heavy-Lift Rocket.



> *What congress wants, NASA says it can't do, but why?*


Congress should listen to NASA before it issues a mandate in an area few of its ranks, if any, are qualified to understand!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Kepler spacecraft recovered from safe mode.



> *The Kepler project team has recovered spacecraft from its Safe Mode event that occurred on Feb. 1, 2011.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

'COSmIC' simulator fingerprints unknown matter in space.



> *Who are we? Where do we come from? These are questions that scientists hope to find clues to by better understanding the composition and evolution of the universe.*
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> Ames engineers and scientists have equipped COSmIC with a custom-built time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFS), an ultra-sensitive device that detects the mass of matter at the molecular level. Credit: Farid Salama


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researcher says the next large central US earthquake may not be in New Madrid.



> *This December marks the bicentennial of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12, which are the biggest earthquakes known to have occurred in the central U.S.*
> 
> Now, based on the earthquake record in China, a University of Missouri researcher says that mid-continent earthquakes tend to move among fault systems, so the next big earthquake in the central U.S. may actually occur someplace else other than along the New Madrid faults.
> 
> Mian Liu, professor of geological sciences in the College of Arts and Science at MU, examined records from China, where earthquakes have been recorded and described for the past 2,000 years. Surprisingly, he found that during this time period big earthquakes have never occurred twice in the same place.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cometary rendezvous set for Valentine's Day.



> *In the beginning, both couples seemed meant for each other.*
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> The Stardust spacecraft would be redirected to pass within 200 kilometers of comet Tempel 1 in February 2011 -- close enough to provide a first look at the crater caused by the Deep Impact collision (bull's eye) and a large piece of previously unmapped territory (blue). (NASA/JPL/Cornell)


-- Tom


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## sepala

*Birth of the Solar System *


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## sepala

*How To Time Travel *


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## sepala

*Before Time and Space *


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## sepala

*Before the Big Bang*


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## Brigham

The theory of wormholes is fine. I understand that a wormhole is space between two black holes. The problem as far as I can see, is getting the first black hole in the spot required, and the second one the same. The second problem is how to avoid being torn to pieces as one passes the event horizon. Frank Herbert, and others of the same ilk, have postulated space folding in their stories, but nobody has the least idea of how to do it. Neither the scientists or the story tellers. I do think it is a lovely idea though.


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## lotuseclat79

lotuseclat79 said:


> The Fundamental Nature Of Light.
> 
> -- Tom


Quantum Perspective On The Non-Existence Of Light.



> *Einsteins relativity theory and quantum physics, in theory as well as experiment, are extremely concerned with light. This comes directly from the fact that light does not exist as an independent entity  it is plain interaction.*
> 
> I explained already how relativity makes lights non-existence obvious. Today, I will tell you why that odd seeming fact only confirms what is known from entirely unrelated quantum mechanics: non-quantum relativity and non-relativistic quantum physics both agree on that light itself does not exist for entirely different reasons!


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Riemann Hypothesis - A Journey Through The Prime Num3ers.



> *Math quote: The more abstract and difficult math becomes, the more useful it is.
> 
> The Riemann Hypothesis is currently the most famous unsolved problem in mathematics.*
> 
> A simple explanation for non-math people.


See Riemann hypothesis for more information.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Hinode looks into a hole on the Sun.



> *On Feb. 1, 2011, the Hinode satellite captured this breathtaking image of a coronal hole, seen in the top center of the image. A polar coronal hole can also be seen at the bottom of the image*
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> Image credit: Hinode/XRT


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The 'new' kilogram is approaching: Avogadro constant determined with enriched silicon-28.



> *A milestone in the international Avogadro project coordinated by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) has been reached: With the aid of a single crystal of highly enriched 28Si, the Avogadro constant has now been measured as exactly as never before with a relative overall uncertainty of 3 • 10-8. Within the scope of the redefinition of the kilogram, the value NA = 6.02214078(18) • 1023 mol-1 permits the currently most exact realization of this unit. The results have been published in the most recent edition of the journal Physical Review Letters.*
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> The high-purity silicon sphere of the Avogadro experiment reflects a copy of the international kilogram prototype - the last embodiment of a unit via a physical body. The sphere, in contrast, stands for the definition on the basis of atomic properties or fundamental constants. Credit: PTB


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

44-year-old mystery of how fleas jump resolved.



> *Fleas jump by pushing off with the toes instead of knees*
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> This image shows the anatomy of a flea showing sections of the leg. Credit: Gregory Sutton


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Through the wormhole.



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Note: NEC is an acronym for Null Energy Condition.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Giant ring of black holes (w/Video 00:19)



> *Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a new image of a ring -- not of jewels -- but of black holes.*
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> X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/S.Rappaport et al, Optical: NASA/STScI


Note: The video shows Optical, X-ray-Optical, X-ray, Infrared, Ultraviolet and Composite images.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Taste.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Life in the North American nebula provides new view.



> *Stars at all stages of development, from dusty little tots to young adults, are on display in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.*
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> This swirling landscape of stars is known as the North American nebula. In visible light, the region resembles North America, but in this new infrared view from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the continent disappears. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mathematics teachers learn to inspire students by encouraging pattern hunting.



> *Standing at the head of a classroom in a building with humming supercomputers making background music, Reinhard Laubenbacher told a group of grade-school teachers, "The language of patterns is mathematics. Math underlies absolutely everything."*
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> Miranda Draper works on fractals during the recent teacher workshop.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Particles That Flock: Strange Synchronization Behavior at the Large Hadron Collider.



> *Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are trying to solve a puzzle of their own making: why particles sometimes fly in sync*
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> Image: Copyright CERn, for the benefit of the CMS Collaboration


-- Tom


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## ekim68

More on Post #907



> Japanese scientists have spotted two huge holes on the sun's magnetic field, and it appears there is some reason to be concerned about.
> 
> The holes, called coronal holes, are gateways for solar material and gas to spill out into space, according to space.com. The gaps in the sun's magnetic field make a hole through its atmosphere, letting gas out, NASA has said.


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## ekim68

The science of kissing explained



> Some consider it humanity's most intimate exchange. Yes, even more intimate than sex.
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> Most of us have done it, and will do it many more times in our lifetimes: It's kissing.
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> Sheril Kirshenbaum, a research scientist at the University of Texas, decided to take the kiss and put it under a microscope, in a way. She wanted to take the universal act and examine it from various scientific angles. The result of her research is her new book, "The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling" (Grand Central Publishing, 2011).


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## sepala

Brigham said:


> The second problem is how to avoid being torn to pieces as one passes the event horizon.


That is a question which may have no answer. Someone in the future may answer it. Lets leave that to the time.


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## ekim68

Just finished watching Jeopardy with Watson....As Spock would say, "Fascinating".....


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## lotuseclat79

A visual feast of galaxies.



> *A unique new atlas of 35 galaxies has been compiled by Swinburne astronomer Dr. Glen Mackie.*
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> Messier 51, NGC5194 the Whirlpool galaxy in X-rays (purple), Ultraviolet (blue), Optical (green) and Infrared (red). Companion galaxy NGC5195 is also shown to the north. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Wesleyan U./R. Kilgard et al.; UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/ESA/S. Beckwith, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ U. of Az./R. Kennicutt.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Why infertility will stop humans colonising space



> Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking once remarked that humankind would need to colonise space within the next century if it was to survive as a species.
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> "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next 100 years, let alone the next thousand or million," he said somewhat pessimistically last year. "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."
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> The prospect of long-term space travel has led scientists to consider, increasingly seriously, the following conundrum: if traveling to a new home might take thousands of years, would humans be able to successfully procreate along the way? The early indications from Nasa are not encouraging. Space, it seems, is simply not a good place to have sex.


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## lotuseclat79

The lock shapes the key: Mystery about recognition of unfolded proteins solved.



> Proteins normally recognize each other by their specific 3-D structure. If the key fits in the lock, a reaction can take place. However there are reactions at the onset of which the key does not really have a shape. German chemists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the Max Planck Research Unit for Enzymology of Protein Folding (Halle/Saale) have now shown how this might work. Their results will appear in PNAS this week.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Volcano study lays foundations for ancient maps.



> *Research into submarine volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean will lay the groundwork for scientists to map the Earth as it was millions of years ago.*
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> JOIDES Resolution, the flagship of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA spacecraft unravels comet mystery.



> *A NASA spacecraft's flyby with a comet showed erosion on the Tempel 1's surface since it skimmed by the Sun in 2005, and revealed Tuesday the first clear pictures of the crater made by a Deep Impact probe.*
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> NASA's Stardust-NExT mission took this image of comet Tempel 1 at 8:39 p.m. PST (11:39 p.m. EST) on Feb 14, 2011. The comet was first visited by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A tour of the multiverses.



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> Multiverse. (Image: Sipa Press / Rex Features)*


The image above is a depiction, nodoubt of a Mirrored Multiverse, eh?

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA releases images of man-made crater on comet.



> *NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus.*
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> This pair of images shows the before-and-after comparison of the part of comet Tempel 1 that was hit by the impactor from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland/Cornell


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Periodic table of shapes to give a new dimension to maths (w/ Video).



> *Mathematicians are creating their own version of the periodic table that will provide a vast directory of all the possible shapes in the universe across three, four and five dimensions, linking shapes together in the same way as the periodic table links groups of chemical elements.*
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> slices of the Fano variety V6
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> slices of the quadric threefold


--Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Solar flare eruptions set to reach Earth.



> *Scientists around the world will be watching closely as three eruptions from the Sun reach the Earth over Thursday and Friday.*
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> Time lapse image of the solar flare as seen by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory
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> Scientists will have around half an hour's notice that the wave of charged particles is about to hit the Earth's magnetic shield.
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> This is taken from the point at which a Nasa satellite called Ace (the Advanced Composition Explorer) registers the solar radiation on its instruments: "We're sitting waiting for that event to happen," said Dr Thomson.


Note: Visit above link to play time lapse image of the solar flare.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Busting the 8-Hour Sleep Myth: Why You Should Wake Up in the Night.



> *More than one-third of American adults wake up in the middle of the night on a regular basis. Of those who experience "nocturnal awakenings," nearly half are unable to fall back asleep right away. Doctors frequently diagnose this condition as a sleep disorder called "middle-of-the-night insomnia," and prescribe medication to treat it.
> 
> Mounting evidence suggests, however, that nocturnal awakenings aren't abnormal at all; they are the natural rhythm that your body gravitates toward. According to historians and psychiatrists alike, it is the compressed, continuous eight-hour sleep routine to which everyone aspires today that is unprecedented in human history. We've been sleeping all wrong lately - so if you have "insomnia," you may actually be doing things right.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

About that giant planet possibly hiding in the outer solar system….



> *An old story got new legs this week as word went viral of a possible new 9th planet in our solar system - a gas giant bigger than Jupiter - which could be hiding somewhere in the Oort Cloud, just waiting to be found.*
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> Siding Spring Comet found by the WISE spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists build bigger 'bottles' of antimatter to unlock nature's secrets.



> *Once regarded as the stuff of science fiction, antimatter-the mirror image of the ordinary matter in our observable universe-is now the focus of laboratory studies around the world.*
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> UCSD physicists James Danielson, Clifford Surko and Craig Schallhorn (left to right) inspect the apparatus they are using to develop the world's largest trap for low-energy positrons, planned to hold a trillion or more antiparticles. Credit: Kim McDonald, UCSD


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Are We One of Many Universes? MIT Physicist Says "Yes".



> *
> Srvr Modern cosmology theory holds that our universe may be just one in a vast collection of universes known as the multiverse. MIT physicist Alan Guth has suggested that new universes (known as "pocket universes") are constantly being created, but they cannot be seen from our universe.
> *


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Where's all the water in our Solar System?.



> *We've also begun to learn that liquid water, once thought confined to the Earth, may be plentiful throughout the system. Caleb Scharf goes to work on this in a recent post in Life Unbounded, noting what our models are telling us about internal oceans on a variety of objects*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cosmic census finds crowd of planets in our galaxy.



> *Cosmologists say new calculations lead to questions about life elsewhere*
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> This photo shows the Milky Way above wind turbines near Lake Benton and Hendricks, Minn. Scientists have estimated the first cosmic census of planets in our galaxy and the numbers are astronomical: at least 50 billion planets in the Milky Way.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Rewrite the textbooks: Findings challenge conventional wisdom of how neurons operate.



> *Neurons are complicated, but the basic functional concept is that synapses transmit electrical signals to the dendrites and cell body (input), and axons carry signals away (output). In one of many surprise findings, Northwestern University scientists have discovered that axons can operate in reverse: they can send signals to the cell body, too.*
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> Brain diagram. Credit: dwp.gov.uk


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA picks Thursday for Discovery's final launch dated February 19, 2011 (Saturday).



> *NASA will try next week to launch space shuttle Discovery on its final voyage following a four-month delay for fuel tank repairs.*
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> The space shuttle Discovery at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2010. The space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to launch on February 24 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, its last flight before being retired as the US shuttle program winds down, NASA said Friday.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Super-sharp radio 'eye' remeasuring the universe.



> *Using the super-sharp radio "vision" of astronomy's most precise telescope, scientists have extended a directly-measured "yardstick" three times farther into the cosmos than ever before, an achievement with important implications for numerous areas of astrophysics, including determining the nature of Dark Energy, which constitutes 70 percent of the Universe. The continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) also is redrawing the map of our home Galaxy and is poised to yield tantalizing new information about extrasolar planets, among many other cutting-edge research projects.*
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> Artist's conception of Milky Way, showing locations of star-forming regions whose distances were recently measured. CREDIT: M. Reid, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA; R. Hurt, SSC/JPL/Caltech, NRAO/AUI/NSF


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How many will we be? Are population estimates off the mark?.



> *In 2011 the Earth's population will reach 7 billion. The United Nations (UN) reports that the total number of people will climb to 9 billion in 2050, peak at 9.5 billion, stabilize temporarily, and then decline. Despite the confidence with which these projections are presented, in an American Association for the Advancement of Science press briefing and presentation today the Population Council's John Bongaarts presents evidence that the actual population trajectory is highly uncertain.*
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> "Almost all of the growth in world population will occur in poor countries, particularly in Africa and South Asia," says the Population Council's John Bongaarts. "But larger investments in family planning right now would have a very beneficial impact on human welfare and any environmental issue we care about." Credit: The Population Council Inc.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Earth's core rotating faster than rest of the planet but slower than previously believed.



> *New research gives the first accurate estimate of how much faster the Earth's core is rotating compared to the rest of the planet.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Twisted Physics: 7 Mind-Blowing Findings.



> *Spooky science: From bizarre antimatter to experiments that tie light up in knots, physics has revealed some spooky sides of our world. Here are seven of the most mind-blowing recent discoveries.*
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> Spooky entanglement.
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Image: A solar system family portrait, from the inside out.



> *NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has constructed the first portrait of our solar system by combining 34 images taken by the spacecraft's Wide Angle Camera on Nov. 3 and 16, 2010.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding.



> *Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Why Earth And Titan Share Twin Atmospheres.



> *Earth and Titan have thick, nitrogen-rich atmospheres. That's because both formed from the leftovers of cometary impacts, say planetary geologists*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Model shows how scientific paradigms rise and fall.



> *Scientific concepts such as climate change, nanotechnology, and chaos theory can sometimes spring up and capture the attention of both the scientific and public communities, only to be replaced by new ideas later on. Although many factors influence the emergence and decline of such scientific paradigms, a new model has captured how these ideas spread, providing a better understanding of paradigm shifts and the culture of innovation.*
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> This figure shows 12 consecutive states of a system driven by the model, with one unit of time equaling one update for every agent. In the first picture, a new idea is dominating but small specks of color represent a finite innovation rate. A new state dominates between the third and fourth pictures, and in the fourth, fifth, and sixth pictures, two coherent states coexist. New individual dominant states arise in pictures nine and twelve. Image credit: S. Bornholdt, et al. ©2011 American Physical Society.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA clears shuttle Discovery for Thursday launch.



> *NASA has given a unanimous "go" for Thursday's planned launch of space shuttle Discovery.*
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> Liftoff is scheduled for 4:50 p.m. Thursday. There's an 80 percent chance of good weather.
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> A U.S. Coat Guard boat patrols the water near the space shuttle Discovery in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011. The space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to lift off Thursday afternoon on on its final voyage, an 11-day mission to the international space station. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)


The end of an era is nigh upon us!

Note: Launch at 4:50 PM today is EST.

P.S. The penultimate launch, Endeavor launches in April, and Atlantis (the last) sometime this summer.

--Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Large Hadron Collider powers up to unravel mysteries of nature w/Video.



> *Outside the small village of Meyrin, Switzerland, horses graze quietly in fields lined by the Jura mountains. You'd never know it by the idyllic landscape, but 300 feet below the Swiss-French border, the Large Hadron Collider is searching for the secrets of the universe. A 17-mile circular tunnel houses the world's largest atom smasher that is once again firing high-energy proton beams.*
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> Physicists at CERN rob hydrogen atoms of their protons, compact them into bunches and inject them into the series of four accelerator rings. Each ring in the sequence amplifies the energy of the protons and guides the subatomic particles with powerful magnets. Finally, two proton beams are flung in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light and smashed together at one of four detectors. Then the sparks fly. Credit: Justin Eure/MEDILL
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> The sections of beam tube that make up the main ring of the LHC are surrounded superconducting magnets that each weigh 27 tons. Credit: Justin Eure/MEDILL


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quasar's belch solves longstanding mystery (w/ Video).



> *When two galaxies merge to form a giant, the central supermassive black hole in the new galaxy develops an insatiable appetite. However, this ferocious appetite is unsustainable.*
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> Artist's conceptualization of the environment around the supermassive black hole at the center of Mrk 231. The broad outflow seen in the Gemini data is shown as the fan-shaped wedge at the top of the accretion disk around the black hole. This side-view is not what is seen from the Earth where we see it 'looking down the throat' of the outflow. A similar outflow is probably present under the disk as well and is hinted at in this illustration. The total amount of material entrained in the broad flow is at least 400 times the mass of the Sun per year. Note that a more localized, narrower jet is shown, this jet was known prior to the Gemini discovery of the broader outflow featured here. Credit:Gemini Observatory/AURA, artwork by Lynette Cook


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA'S Chandra Finds Superfluid in Neutron Star's Core.



> *NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered the first direct evidence for a superfluid, a bizarre, friction-free state of matter, at the core of a neutron star. Superfluids created in laboratories on Earth exhibit remarkable properties, such as the ability to climb upward and escape airtight containers. The finding has important implications for understanding nuclear interactions in matter at the highest known densities.*
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> This composite image shows a beautiful X-ray and optical view of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), a supernova remnant located in our Galaxy about 11,000 light years away. These are the remains of a massive star that exploded about 330 years ago, as measured in Earth's time frame. X-rays from Chandra are shown in red, green and blue along with optical data from Hubble in gold. Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/xx; Optical: NASA/STScI; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Fibonacci Series: When Math Turns Golden (w/Video 3:44).



> *Fibonacci Goes Gold in Art and Architecture:
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> The Parthenon incorporates a number of Golden Rectangles into its structure and decoration. What's more, the Pyramids have their own Divine Proportions. If the base of the Pyramids is considered one unit, the sloping sides are 1.618 units, and the height is the square root of 1.618 units high.
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> Since these spirals have the Divine Proportion of 1.618 seeds per turn, counting the seeds any spiral will result in getting a Fibonacci Number. The Fibonacci Series is also seen in plants that put out leaves from one stalk. As the plant grows upwards, the number of leaves per completed by the end of each 'turn' around the stem will be a Fibonacci number.*


-- Tom


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## LANMaster

Hey, while I am here waiting for tech support, I have to tell you that where I live is a low-city light area. I have incredible star view here.

I can see the meat of our galaxy ... or at least the meaty arm. You see, the Scientists don't seem to want us to know that the Milky Way Galaxy that we see with our eyes is merely the arm of our galaxy in which we are in. But that's okay. It is still beautiful. 

Hey ... I can see Beetlegeuce almost every night. It is amazing. I need to find the Canus Majorus (Big Dog) star. Anyone care to help?


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## LANMaster

lotuseclat79 said:


> NASA'S Chandra Finds Superfluid in Neutron Star's Core.
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> -- Tom


Keep em coming Tom. I love these! :up:


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## lotuseclat79

Two planets found sharing one orbit.



> *Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster a theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a Mars-sized body that later crashed into it, resulting in the moon's formation.
> 
> The two planets are part of a four-planet system dubbed KOI-730. They circle their sun-like parent star every 9.8 days at exactly the same orbital distance, one permanently about 60 degrees ahead of the other. In the night sky of one planet, the other world must appear as a constant, blazing light, never fading or brightening.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Parts of brain can switch functions: study.



> When your brain encounters sensory stimuli, such as the scent of your morning coffee or the sound of a honking car, that input gets shuttled to the appropriate brain region for analysis. The coffee aroma goes to the olfactory cortex, while sounds are processed in the auditory cortex.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

String Theory Made Easy.



> *Two books tackle one of the most complex theories known to man'with surprisingly satisfactory results*


Note: This article reviews the books: String Theory for Dummies, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Time travel experiment demonstrates how to avoid the grandfather paradox (Update).



> *Among the many intriguing concepts in Einstein's relativity theories is the idea of closed timelike curves (CTCs), which are paths in spacetime that return to their starting points. As such, CTCs offer the possibility of traveling back in time. But, as many science fiction films have addressed, time travel is full of potential paradoxes. Perhaps the most notable of these is the grandfather paradox, in which a time traveler goes back in time and kills her grandfather, preventing her own birth.*
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> This graph shows that, as the accuracy of the quantum gun increases (from 0 to 180 degrees) so that it is more likely to flip a qubit's state, the probability of successful self-consistent teleportation (red dots) decreases. While the theoretical probability of teleportation of qubits in opposite states is zero, the experimental probability of qubits in opposite states (blue diamonds) is about 0.01. Image caption: Seth Lloyd, et al. ©2011 American Physical Society.


-- Tom


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## franca

Is this the solution


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## lotuseclat79

Beautiful theory collides with smashing particle data.



> *Latest results from the LHC are casting doubt on the theory of supersymmetry.*
> 
> "Wonderful, beautiful and unique" is how Gordon Kane describes supersymmetry theory. Kane, a theoretical physicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has spent about 30 years working on supersymmetry, a theory that he and many others believe solves a host of problems with our understanding of the subatomic world.
> 
> Yet there is growing anxiety that the theory, however elegant it might be, is wrong. Data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-kilometer proton smasher that straddles the French-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland, have shown no sign of the "super particles" that the theory predicts. "We're painting supersymmetry into a corner," says Chris Lester, a particle physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who works with the LHC's ATLAS detector. Along with the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, ATLAS has spent the past year hunting for super particles, and is now set to gather more data when the LHC begins a high-power run in the next few weeks. If the detectors fail to find any super particles by the end of the year, the theory could be in serious trouble.
> 
> Supersymmetry (known as SUSY and pronounced "Susie") emerged in the 1970s as a way to solve a major shortcoming of the standard model of particle physics, which describes the behavior of the fundamental particles that make up normal matter (see "The bestiary"). Researchers have now found every particle predicted by the model, save one: the Higgs boson, theorized to help endow other particles with mass.
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists unravel the mysterious mechanics of spider silk.



> *Scientists now have a better understanding of why spider silk fibers are so incredibly strong. Recent research, published by Cell Press on February 15th in Biophysical Journal, describes the architecture of silk fibers from the atomic level up and reveals new information about the molecular structure that underlies the amazing mechanical characteristics of this fascinating natural material.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Missing sunspots: Solar mystery solved



> *The Sun has been in the news a lot lately because it's beginning to send out more flares and solar storms. Its recent turmoil is particularly newsworthy because the Sun was very quiet for an unusually long time. Astronomers had a tough time explaining the extended solar minimum. New computer simulations imply that the Sun's long quiet spell resulted from changing flows of hot plasma within it.*
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> This visible-light photograph, taken in 2008 by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, shows the sun's face free of sunspots. The sun experienced 780 spotless days during the unusually long solar minimum that just ended. New computer simulations imply that the sun's long quiet spell resulted from changing flows of hot plasma within it. Credit: NASA/SOHO


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Trek-like tractor beam is possible.



> *In Star Trek, the starship Enterprise often dragged objects towards it with its glowing tractor beam. Now there's a way to do this in real life - at least for very small particles.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

BOK Globules & Black Holes: Could They Be Prime Habitats of Advanced ET Civilizations?.



> *If AI-powered machines evolved, we would be more likely to spot signals from them than from the "biological" life that invented them.*
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> "But having now looked for signals for 50 years, we are going through a process of realizing the way our technology is advancing is probably a good indicator of how other civilizations - if they're out there - would've progressed. Certainly what we're looking at out there is an evolutionary moving target," according to SETI Chief Astroniomer, Seth Shostak.
> Shostak believes that artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy - the only things he says would be of interest to the machines - would be in plentiful supply. That means the Seti hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centers of galaxies.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mathematicians Reinvent The Beer Widget.



> *Paper could replace the plastic widgets that give canned beers a better head, according to a new mathematical analysis*
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> Ref PDF link: Bubble Nucleation In Stout Beers.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Air Force launches space plane 1 day after delay.



> *The Air Force has launched a second experimental space plane that resembles a small shuttle.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA scientist finds 'alien life' fossils.



> *A NASA scientist's claim that he found tiny fossils of alien life in the remnants of a meteorite has stirred both excitement and skepticism, and is being closely reviewed by 100 experts.*
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Note: The article contains a link to the original paper in the Journal of Cosmology which is available free online.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Black Holes Point Way to Leap Existing Barriers in Physics.



> *Black holes are some of the heaviest objects in the universe. Electrons are some of the lightest. Now physicists at Illinois have discovered how charged black holes can be used to model the behavior of interacting electrons in unconventional superconductors.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The search for sparticles.



> *One of the key theories underpinning modern physics is being tested by the latest results from the LHC's ATLAS experiment.*
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> Visualisation of a recent collision captured by the ATLAS detector. Credit: ATLAS team.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The brain engineer: Shining a light on consciousness (2 web pages).



> *Neuroengineer Ed Boyden is best known for his pioneering work on optogenetics, which allows brain cells to be controlled using light. A speaker at the TED2011 conference this week, his vision, he tells Rowan Hooper, is nothing less than to understand the brain, treat neural conditions and figure out the basis of human existence.*


-- Tom


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## franca

Could 'supermoon'


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## lotuseclat79

Now you see him.



> *Imagine if Harry Potter's cloak were real , or that you could blot out the sight of something as easily as pressing a mute button to eliminate sound. To some, this seems like "pi in the sky" - fantastic dreams shared by science fiction writers and mathematicians alike.*
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> But UC Irvine's newly arrived Excellence in Teaching Chair in Mathematics says breakthrough equations show that it can be done.
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> "Just as sound waves can be redirected, light waves could too," said Gunther Uhlmann at a recent physical sciences breakfast lecture, demonstrating the teaching skills that have won him numerous awards. Using H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man, the cartoon character Invisible Woman, dolphins, CT scans and even the occasional math theorem, he introduced himself and his work.
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> Chilean native Gunther Uhlmann is a pioneer in "transformation optics," which involves the distortion of space to control the trajectories of light waves. Credit: Steve Zylius and Hoang X. Pham / University Communications


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Theory of Everything: Holy Grail or Fruitless Pursuit?.



> *Einstein died before completing his dream of creating a unified theory of everything. Since then, physicists have carried on his torch, continuing the quest for one theory to rule them all.*
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> But will they ever get there? That was the topic of debate when seven leading physicists gathered here at the American Museum of Natural History for the 11th annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate.
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> The quest for a theory of everything arises because two of the most celebrated, successful theories in physics are contradictory.
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> The theory that describes very big things - general relativity - and the theory that describes very small things - quantum mechanics - each work amazingly well in their own realms, but when combined, break down. They can't both be right.
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> Astronomers using data from ESO's Very Large Telescope created this composite photo of the nebula Messier 17, also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula. The image shows vast clouds of gas and dust illuminated by the intense radiation from young stars.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

The end of an era.....

Shuttle Discovery makes final landing



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., March 9 (UPI) -- Space Shuttle Discovery made a successful landing at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, ending its last mission before retirement, NASA said.





> Discovery's final mission in a flight career spanning 27 years included delivering a 21,817-pound Permanent Multipurpose Module, nicknamed "Leonardo," to the $100 billion International Space Station being assembled 220 miles above Earth. The module, now permanently docked to one of the station's ports, came loaded with supplies and equipment and will be used for storage of spares, supplies and waste, NASA said.
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> The crew also brought tons of equipment, experiment samples and a humanoid robot dubbed "Robonaut," as well as 853 pounds of water, 112 pounds of nitrogen and 182 pounds of oxygen.





> NASA has two more shuttle launches set after Discovery. Endeavour -- whose crew includes Kelly's twin brother, astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot Jan. 8 -- is scheduled for liftoff April 19 and Atlantis is scheduled for a June 28 launch.


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## lotuseclat79

Voyager seeks the answer blowin' in the wind.



> *In which direction is the sun's stream of charged particles banking when it nears the edge of the solar system? The answer, scientists know, is blowing in the wind. It's just a matter of getting NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft in the right orientation to detect it.*
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> This artist's concept shows NASA's two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New study proves the brain has three layers of working memory.



> *Researchers from Rice University and Georgia Institute of Technology have found support for the theory that the brain has three concentric layers of working memory where it stores readily available items. Memory researchers have long debated whether there are two or three layers and what the capacity and function of each layer is.*


-- Tom


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## franca

Amateur astronomer


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## lotuseclat79

String Query: Physicists Prove to Be of Many Minds about a Unified Theory of the Universe.



> *Is there a theory of everything? If so, is it possible to verify via experimentation? These and other questions energized a panel of physicists and their audience at this year's Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate at the American Museum of Natural History*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Rare observation of cosmic explosion.



> *Gamma ray bursts, which are the most powerful bursts of radiation in the universe, have now been observed in direct connection with an exploding giant star - a supernova. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen are among those who have studied the rare event. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.*
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> Image from the Hubble Space Telescope, where you see the Gamma Ray Burst and the supernova as a bright point in the irregular galaxy located approximately 820 million light years from the Earth.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Speed demon creates a shock.



> *Just as some drivers obey the speed limit while others treat every road as if it were the Autobahn, some stars move through space faster than others. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, captured this image of the star Alpha Camelopardalis, or Alpha Cam, in astronomer-speak, speeding through the sky like a motorcyclist zipping through rush-hour traffic. The supergiant star Alpha Cam is the bright star in the middle of this image, surrounded on one side by an arc-shaped cloud of dust and gas -- a bow shock -- which is colored red in this infrared view.*
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> NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, captured this image of the star Alpha Camelopardalis, or Alpha Cam, in astronomer-speak, speeding through the sky like a motorcyclist zipping through rush-hour traffic. The big red arc is a bow shock, similar to the wake in front of the bow of a ship in water. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


-- Tom


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## ekim68

40th anniversary of the computer virus



> This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world's first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010.


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## lotuseclat79

Hubble rules out one alternative to dark energy.



> *Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have ruled out an alternate theory on the nature of dark energy after recalculating the expansion rate of the universe to unprecedented accuracy.*
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> The brilliant, blue glow of young stars trace the graceful spiral arms of galaxy NGC 5584 in this Hubble Space Telescope image. Thin, dark dust lanes appear to be flowing from the yellowish core, where older stars reside. The reddish dots sprinkled throughout the image are largely background galaxies. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Riess (STScI/JHU), L. Macri (Texas A&M University), and Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
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> Cepheids in Spiral Galaxy NGC 5584. This illustration shows the location of Cepheid variables found in the spiral galaxy NGC 5584. Ultraviolet, visible, and infrared data taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in 2010 reveals Cepheids of varying periods. Those stars with periods of less than 30 days and between 30 and 60 days are marked with blue and green circles, respectively. A small number of Cepheids, with periods larger than 60 days, are marked in red. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Riess (STScI/JHU), and L. Macri (Texas A&M University)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Simple matter, complex antimatter, and added strangeness.



> *Having reported on ways to store and use large amounts of simple antimatter-positrons-we'll now turn our attention to more complex forms of antimatter. While creating positrons is a fairly straightforward process, creating more complex interactions between antiparticles in a controlled fashion is a much more complicated task.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Missing Link Between Air Density And Wind Power Production.



> *Accounting for changes in the density of air can significantly improve the way wind power production is calculated, according to a new study*
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> It's the kind of simple but effective science that can sometimes make a difference .


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Large Hadron Collider could be world's first time machine.



> If the latest theory of Tom Weiler and Chui Man Ho is right, the Large Hadron Collider - the world's largest atom smasher that started regular operation last year - could be the first machine capable causing matter to travel backwards in time.
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> These are theoretical physicists Thomas Weiler, right, and Chui Man Ho. Credit: John Russell / Vanderbilt University
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> "Our theory is a long shot," admitted Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University, "but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints."


-- Tom


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## Brigham

lotuseclat79 said:


> Large Hadron Collider could be world's first time machine.
> 
> -- Tom


We should put out a large pot labelled Higgs singlets, and let it fill up from the future.


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## lotuseclat79

The drama of starbirth (w/ video).



> *A new image from ESO's Very Large Telescope gives a close-up view of the dramatic effects newborn stars have on the gas and dust from which they formed. Although the stars themselves are not visible, material they have ejected is colliding with the surrounding gas and dust clouds and creating a surreal landscape of glowing arcs, blobs and streaks.*
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> This very detailed false-colour image from ESO's Very Large Telescope shows the dramatic effects of very young stars on the dust and gas from which they were born in the star-forming region NGC 6729. The baby stars are invisible in this picture, being hidden behind dust clouds at the upper left of the picture, but material they are ejecting is crashing into the surroundings at speeds of that can be as high as one million kilometers per second. This picture was taken by the FORS1 instrument and records the scene in the light of glowing hydrogen and sulfur. Credit: ESO


Watch the video at the above link - Wow!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Super full moon (w/video).



> *Mark your calendar. On March 19th, a full Moon of rare size and beauty will rise in the east at sunset. It's a super "perigee moon"--the biggest in almost 20 years.*
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> The Moon looks extra-big when it is beaming through foreground objects--a.k.a. "the Moon illusion." Credit: NASA
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> Full Moons vary in size because of the oval shape of the Moon's orbit. It is an ellipse with one side (perigee) about 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other (apogee).


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Could Higgs Particle be a Time-Traveling Assassin?.



> Image: A simulation of how a Higgs event might look inside the ATLAS detector (CERN/LHC/ATLAS)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Saturn's Odd, Baffling Moon, Pan.



> Pan


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Research overturns oldest evidence of life on Earth.



> *It appears that the supposed oldest examples of life on our planet -- 3.5 billion-year-old bacteria fossils found in Australian rock called Apex Chert -- are nothing more than tiny gaps in the rock that are packed with minerals.*
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> Photomicrograph of clast in rock showing features under discussion (arrows point to some of these) Credit: Julienne Emry


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

What Lies Beyond the Observable Hubble Universe? (Today's Most Popular).



> *Few theories qualify for Nobel laureate Niels Bohr's famous question more than the current Big Bang Theory of the origin of the Universe: "We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct."*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists investigate lower dimensions of the universe.



> Several speculative theories in physics involve extra dimensions beyond our well-known four (which are broken down into three dimensions of space and one of time). Some theories have suggested 5, 10, 26, or more, with the extra spatial dimensions "hiding" within our observable three dimensions. One thing that all of these extra dimensions have in common is that none has ever been experimentally detected; they are all mathematical predictions.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

"There are Possibly Trillions of Earths Orbiting Red Dwarfs".



> *Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum says that the red dwarfs they have discovered are over 10 billion years old, which means they've had enough time for complex life to develop and evolve, summarizing about research recently conducted at Hawaii's Keck Observatory that discovered that the number of stars in the universe is triple what was previously thought.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Milky Way Over Chile's 'Very Large Telescope' Yields a Secret Hidden Since the Big Bang.



> *Billions of years ago the intensity of the electromagnetic interaction was different at opposite ends of universe. That's the fascinating conclusion of a group of physicists in Australia, who have studied light from ancient quasars and discovered that the fine-structure constant, known as α, has changed in both space and time since the Big Bang.*
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> The team has so far studied hundreds of quasars in the northern sky and concluded that billions of years ago α was about one part in 100,000 smaller than it is today. This, however, remains a controversial result that is not accepted by all physicists.
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> Now, Webb and colleagues have analysed 153 additional quasars in the southern sky using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile (above) and have made an even more startling discovery. They found that in the southern sky, α was about one part in 100,000 larger 10 billion years ago than it is today. The value in the northern sky was still smaller, as found before.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mercury-bound Goddard Instruments Aboard MESSENGER Arrive at Target.



> *As the MESSENGER spacecraft begins its science operations above the surface of Mercury, Goddard instruments are gearing up to help unveil the planet's mysteries. Goddard leads or co-leads two of the spacecraft's instruments and a science investigation aboard the spacecraft.*
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> A three-axis, ring-core fluxgate detector, MAG characterizes Mercury's magnetic field in detail, helping scientists determine the field's precise strength and how it varies with position and altitude. Credit: JHUAPL
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> MLA maps Mercury's landforms and other surface characteristics using an infrared laser transmitter and a receiver that measures the round-trip time of individual laser pulses. Credit: JHUAPL
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> Artist concept of the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around planet Mercury. Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Biology's 'dark matter' hints at fourth domain of life.



> *Step far enough back from the tree of life and it begins to look quite simple. At its heart are just three stout branches, representing the three domains of life: bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. But that's too simple, according to a band of biologists who believe we may be on the verge of discovering the fourth domain of life.
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> The bold statement is the result of an analysis of water samples collected from the world's seas. Jonathan Eisen at the University of California, Davis, Genome Center has identified gene sequences hidden within these samples that are so unusual they seem to have come from organisms that are only distantly related to cellular life as we know it. So distantly related, in fact, that they may belong to an organism that sits in an entirely new domain.
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> Most species on the planet look like tiny single cells, and to work out where they fit on the tree of life biologists need to be able to grow them in the lab. Colonies like this give them enough DNA to run their genetic analyses. The problem is, the vast majority of these cells species - 99 per cent of them is a reasonable bet - refuse to be cultured in this way. "They really are the dark matter of the biological universe," says Eisen.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Do-it-yourself quantum spooky action.



> *How cool would it be not just to read about the craziness of quantum mechanics, but to see it-even better, do it-for yourself? Several years ago I asked virtuoso experimental physicist Paul Kwiat whether he could develop a simple demonstration anyone could do at home, and he and his undergraduate student Rachel Killmer came up with a "quantum eraser". This week I got to see another big step toward the era of quantum homebrewers. Tucked away in a booth in the exhibit tent at the German Physical Society conference, Munich-based start-up company qutools showed off the world's cheapest kit for seeing quantum entanglement: spooky action at a distance. Though still out of reach of a DIYer (20,000 euros, or $28,000), the kit is cheap enough to become standard equipment in Physics 101 courses, and when you consider what physicists had to go through in the 1970s to see spooky action for the first time, it's a marvel of miniaturization. "I'm so excited by what they're doing," says physics education innovator David Van Baak of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. "We're past the stage where entanglement is a research-university-only affair. It's getting out to the masses."*
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High School Physics won't be the same. That's a good thing - progress in our understanding of the Universe!

-- Tom


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## franca

Fly me to the moon:


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## lotuseclat79

Is space like a chessboard?.



> *Physicists at UCLA set out to design a better transistor and ended up discovering a new way to think about the structure of space.*
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> Electrons are thought to spin, even though they are pure point particles with no surface that can possibly rotate. Recent work on graphene shows that the electron's spin might arise because space at very small distances is not smooth, but rather segmented like a chessboard. The standard cartoon of an electron shows a spinning sphere with positive or negative angular momentum, as illustrated in blue or gold above. However, such cartoons are fundamentally misleading: compelling experimental evidence indicates that electrons are ideal point particles, with no finite radius or internal structure that could possibly "spin". A quantum mechanical model of electron transport in graphene, a single layer of graphite (shown as a black honeycomb), presents a possible resolution to this puzzle. An electron in graphene hops from carbon atom to carbon atom as if moving on a chessboard with triangular tiles. At low energies the individual tiles are unresolved, but the electron acquires an "internal" spin quantum number which reflects whether it is on the blue or the gold tiles. Thus the electron's spin could arise not from rotational motion of its substructure, but rather from the discrete, chessboard-like structure of space. (Image: Chris Regan/CNSI)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Once Upon a Time, the Universe Was Really Weird (w/Carl Sagan Video).



> *Today, looking out across a seemingly boundless cosmos filled with an unimaginable variety of exotic objects, it's easy to forget that the Universe we currently admire is the product of a violent event that occurred 13.75 billion years ago.*
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> According to an interview with PhysOrg.com, Mureika and Stojkovic have calculated that the early universe didn't only possess a hot, energetic primordial state of matter, but it also had a primordial state of dimensions.
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Reference: Was the Early Universe 2 Dimensional Spacetime?.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

'Lost' samples from famous origin of life researcher could send search for first life in new direction.



> *Stanley Miller gained fame with his 1953 experiment showing the synthesis of organic compounds thought to be important in setting the origin of life in motion. Five years later, he produced samples from a similar experiment, shelved them and, as far as friends and colleagues know, never returned to them in his lifetime.*
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> Scripps Oceanography professor of Marine Chemistry Jeffrey Bada holds a preserved sample from a 1958 experiment done by "primordial soup" pioneer Stanley Miller. The residue in the sample contains amino acids created by the experiment. The samples had not undergone analysis until recently when Bada and colleagues discovered a wide range of amino acids using modern detection methods. Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How the lily blooms: A mathematical perspective (w/ 2 videos).



> *The "lily white" has inspired centuries' worth of rich poetry and art, but when it comes to the science of how and why those delicately curved petals burst from the bud, surprisingly little is known.*
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> The findings contradict common assumptions about the lily, but they do seem to vindicate one unlikely theorist: German literary master Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
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> In a 1790 essay, "Metamorphosis of Plants," Goethe proposed that petals and leaves could be homologous, meaning that they are both derived from one ancestral form.
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The importance of being magnetized.



> *Despite its magnetic field, Earth is losing its atmosphere to space at about the same rate as planets that lack this protective barrier against the solar wind. Scientists now are beginning to question whether magnetic fields really are vital to helping a planet hold on to its atmosphere.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Doubly special relativity.



> *General relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity, gives us a useful basis for mathematically modeling the large scale universe - while quantum theory gives us a useful basis for modeling sub-atomic particle physics and the likely small-scale, high-energy-density physics of the early universe - nanoseconds after the Big Bang - which general relativity just models as a singularity and has nothing else to say on the matter.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A zero sum game.



> *New light has been shed on the 150-year-old math puzzle known as the Riemann hypothesis, say mathematical physicists at the University of Sydney.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Monster Black Holes Beyond Comprehension Grew from Quasi-Stars in Early Universe.



> *Monster black holes in the early universe could have formed deep within giant star-like objects. The most detailed models yet of this scenario could help explain how black holes with a mass of a billion or more suns were created in the first billion years of the universe.*
> 
> Models developed in 2006 by Mitchell Begelman of the University of Colorado in Boulder suggested that when a massive gas cloud collapses under gravity, it could form a small black hole at its core, giving rise to an object called a quasi-star. The black hole could quickly grow to 1000 times the sun's mass by feeding on the gas shrouding it, until steady growth would eventually turn it into a supermassive black hole. Warrick Ball of the University of Cambridge and colleagues have corroborated Begelman's original findings.
> 
> Ball found that the existence of bright quasars at high redshifts implies that supermassive black holes were able to form in the early Universe.
> 
> "It's good to see that another group is independently working on this and getting a similar answer," says Begelman.


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## franca

Unveiled: 










Daring mission: Two Orion spacecraft could be used to support a mission to an asteroid as early as 2019


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## lotuseclat79

First Observation of Antihelium.



> *The creation of 18 nuclei of antihelium-4 is a milestone in high-energy physics.*
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> Antihelium-4


Related article: Physicists observe antihelium-4 nucleus, the heaviest antinucleus yet.



> *In 1932, scientists observed the first antimatter particle, a positron (or antielectron). Since then, scientists have observed heavier and heavier states of antimatter: antiprotons and antineutrons in 1955, followed by antideuterons, antitritons, and antihelium-3 during the next two decades. Advances in accelerator and detector technology led to the first production of antihydrogen in 1995 and antihypertriton (strange antimatter) in 2010. Now, scientists with the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory have observed another state of antimatter for the first time: the antimatter helium-4 nucleus, which is the heaviest antinucleus observed so far.*
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> This 3D illustration of the STAR Time Projection Chamber shows the track of an antihelium-4 nucleus (red). Image credit: STAR Collaboration, RHIC, Brookhaven National Laboratory.


-- Tom


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## Brigham

(Unlinked quote removed re. copyright guidelines).

I see that religion is on the way out. Because of the census data they had collected, these countries appear to be on the way to being secular. I suppose it is inevitable, due to all the trouble that seems to be caused by religion lately. (Jihad, catholic v protestants in Ireland, Paedophile priests, etc. etc.)


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## lotuseclat79

Brigham said:


> I see that religion is on the way out. Because of the census data they had collected, these countries appear to be on the way to being secular. I suppose it is inevitable, due to all the trouble that seems to be caused by religion lately. (Jihad, catholic v protestants in Ireland, Paedophile priests, etc. etc.)


Please post the link to the article from physorg.com that you read. Then the readers will be able to tell that what you have posted is actually a mathematical study. Indeed mathematics is the Queen of Sciences.

-- Tom


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## Brigham

lotuseclat79 said:


> Please post the link to the article from physorg.com that you read. Then the readers will be able to tell that what you have posted is actually a mathematical study. Indeed mathematics is the Queen of Sciences.
> 
> -- Tom


I thought that the religious readers would be so up in arms with my post, that they would move heaven and earth (pun intended) to find out all about it. That is why I didn't post a link.


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## lotuseclat79

The Universe is expanding at 73.8 +/- 2.4 km/sec/megaparsec! So there..



> In 1998, two teams of astronomers independently reported amazing and bizarre news: the Universal expansion known for decades was not slowing down as expected, but was speeding up. Something was accelerating the Universe.
> 
> Since then, the existence of this something was fiercely debated, but time after time it fought with and overcame objections. Almost all professional astronomers now accept it's real, but we still don't know what the heck is causing it. So scientists keep going back to the telescopes and try to figure it out.
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-- Tom


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## ekim68

Journey to the mantle of the Earth by 2020



> SYDNEY: A half-century after the first attempt to drill through the ocean crust into the Earth's mantle, a new campaign armed with improved technology is underway that could reach the mantle by the end of the decade, researchers say.
> 
> By extracting samples of the mantle, which is nearly 3,000 km thick and contains roughly 68% of the planet's mass, researchers hope to unearth valuable information about its composition that could yield clues about the evolution of the planet. It could also contribute to our understanding of how the ocean crust is formed, the nature of the crust-mantle boundary and the limits of microbial life under the Earth's surface.


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## lotuseclat79

Laser Space Telescope Could Test for Vanishing Dimensions.



> *The universe may have started out with fewer dimensions than the three we live in, and could still collapse down to one dimension at extremely high energies.
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> The idea could solve some of the thorniest problems in particle physics and, unlike more popular models like string theory, can be tested with the next generation of space telescopes, according to a new study March 11 in Physical Review Letters.*
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> LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna): Image: An artist's conception of LISA. Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Are you a Martian? We all could be, scientists say -- and new instrument might provide proof.



> *Are we all Martians? According to many planetary scientists, it's conceivable that all life on Earth is descended from organisms that originated on Mars and were carried here aboard meteorites. If that's the case, an instrument being developed by researchers at MIT and Harvard could provide the clinching evidence.*
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> Graphic: Christine Daniloff


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cascadia: The West Coast Fault Line That Is "Nine Months Pregnant".



> *Ever since the massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan, I've been thinking a lot about my friends in Oregon. Why? Because the impending "Big One" that Californians are nervous about is actually a lot more likely to occur off the coast of Oregon-and would be an even "Bigger One" there.*
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> The Cascadia Subduction Zone, which sits off the coast of Oregon, was the site of the largest known earthquake to have ever struck the Lower 48 American states: a magnitude 9 megathrust in early 1700 that sent a tsunami crashing into the Pacific coast, and across the ocean to Japan.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Journey to the Earth's Mantle to Go Deeper than Ever Before.



> *A journey to the Earth's mantle layer could begin within the next decade, drilling deeper into the planet than anyone has ever delved before.
> 
> The Earth-shattering project is aiming to be the first to pull samples up directly from the mantle - the layer of solid but hot rock that flows below the planet's crust - potentially unearthing a trove of insights into the origins and evolution of our planet.
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> Understanding the overall dynamics of the Earth is essential, as its workings can have devastating consequences on humanity - "the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami is the best illustration," geologist Benoît Ildefonse at Montpellier 2 University in France told OurAmazingPlanet.*


-- Tom


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## Cookiegal

Brigham said:


> I see that religion is on the way out. Because of the census data they had collected, these countries appear to be on the way to being secular. I suppose it is inevitable, due to all the trouble that seems to be caused by religion lately. (Jihad, catholic v protestants in Ireland, Paedophile priests, etc. etc.)


Since you are quoting from an article on another web site, please post a link in compliance with our copyright guidelines. The way it appears now, it's not clear which words are yours and which are from another source. Thanks for udnerstanding. 

http://forums.techguy.org/civilized-debate/407778-warning-about-posting-articles.html


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## lotuseclat79

High-temperature superconductor spills secret: A new phase of matter.



> *Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have joined with researchers at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to mount a three-pronged attack on one of the most obstinate puzzles in materials sciences: what is the pseudogap?*
> 
> Now the three experimental approaches have all been applied to the same material. All yielded consistent results and all point to the same conclusion: there is a phase transition at the pseudogap phase boundary - the three techniques put it precisely at T*. The electronic states dominating the pseudogap phase do not include Cooper pairs, but nevertheless intrude into the lower-lying superconducting phase and directly influence the motion of Cooper pairs in a way previously overlooked.
> 
> "Instead of pairing up, the electrons in the pseudogap phase organize themselves in some very different way," says He. "We currently don't know what exactly it is, and we don't know whether it helps superconductivity or hurts it. But we know the direction to take to move forward."
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> An unprecedented three-pronged study has found that one type of high-temperature superconductor may exhibit a new phase of matter. As in all superconductors, electrons pair off (bottom) to conduct electricity with no resistance when the material is cooled below a certain temperature. But in this particular copper-based superconductor, many of the electrons in the material don't pair off; instead they form a distinct, elusive order (orange plumes) that had not been seen before. Scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and institutions in Japan and Thailand report their findings in the March 25 issue of Science. Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC
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> In this phase diagram common to many cuprate superconductors, the insulating phase typical of undoped cuprate compounds appears at the far left (black). Other phases appear with increased hole doping -- the dome-shaped superconducting phase below Tc (blue), the mysterious pseudogap below T* (red), and a "normal metallic" phase (white). New evidence from studies of Bi2201 (crystal structure inset) along the temperature range shown in greeen strongly supports the idea that the pseudogap is in fact a distinct phase of matter that persists into the superconducting phase. If so the T* phase transition must terminate in a quantum critical point (Xc) at zero temperature. Credit: Ruihua He, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Einstein's theory fights off challengers.



> *Two new studies have put Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to the test like never before, using observations of galaxy clusters to study the properties of gravity on cosmic scales.*
> 
> These results, made using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, show Einstein's theory is still the best game in town.
> 
> Chandra observations of galaxy clusters have previously been used to show that dark energy has stifled the growth of these massive structures over the last 5 billion years and to provide independent evidence for the existence of dark energy by offering a different way to measure cosmic distances.
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> This composite image of the Abell 3376 galaxy cluster shows X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope in gold, an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey in red, green and blue, and a radio image from the VLA in blue. The bullet-like appearance of the X-ray data is caused by a merger, as material flows into the galaxy cluster from the right side. The giant radio arcs on the left side of the image may be caused by shock waves generated by this merger.
> Image Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Vikhlinin; ROSAT), Optical (DSS), Radio (NSF/NRAO/VLA/IUCAA/J.Bagchi)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Image of the Day: The Universe Reveals Milky Way's Twin.



>


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Sunspot Cycle Is Double-Peaked, Say Astronomers.



> *The famous 11-year solar cycle often has two peaks rather than one and now one astronomer says she knows why*
> 
> Many sunspot cycles are double peaked. In 1967 Gnevyshev suggested that actually all cycles have two peaks generated by different physical mechanisms, but sometimes the gap between them is too short for the maxima to be distinguished in indices of the total sunspot activity.
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> Here we show that indeed all cycles have two peaks easily identified in sunspot activity in different latitudinal bands.
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> Sunspot twin peaks: Total global sunspot area with the Gnevyshev gap seen in some of the cycles


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Comet-hunting spacecraft shuts down after 12 years.



> *With the click of a mouse, Sandy Freund Kasper sent a command to NASA's comet-hunting Stardust space probe to burn all its fuel, starting a sequence that would shut the spacecraft down after a 12-year run.*
> 
> "Like saying goodbye to a friend," said Allan Cheuvront, the Stardust program manager for Lockheed Martin, who has worked on the probe since 1996, when it was still in the design stage.
> 
> "It's been an amazing spacecraft," he said Thursday. "It's done everything we asked, it's done it perfectly."
> 
> Launched in 1999, Stardust finished its main mission in 2006, sending a tiny sample of particles from the Wild 2 comet to Earth via a parachute-equipped canister. NASA then recycled the probe, sending it past a comet last month to photograph a crater left by a projectile launched by another space probe.
> 
> It accomplished one last experiment on Thursday, firing its thrusters until its last hydrazine fuel was gone. The length of that burn, a little under 2 1/2 minutes, will tell engineers exactly how much fuel was left so they can see how accurate their calculations were.
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> That in turn will help with the design and operation of future probes.
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> AP - FILE - This file artist rendering of the Stardust spacecraft encountering the bright halo of dust and gas surrounding a shimmering comet released by NASA. After eyeing a comet for the past four years, a NASA spacecraft will finally make its move. NASA on Thursday, March 24, 2011 ordered its comet-hunting Stardust probe to burn its remaining fuel, setting off a series of events that will shut down the spacecraft after a 12-year career … Read more »
> (AP Photo/NASA, File)


-- Tom


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## Cookiegal

Cookiegal said:


> Since you are quoting from an article on another web site, please post a link in compliance with our copyright guidelines. The way it appears now, it's not clear which words are yours and which are from another source. Thanks for udnerstanding.
> 
> http://forums.techguy.org/civilized-debate/407778-warning-about-posting-articles.html


Brigham, since it's too late for you to edit it please post the link here and I will edit it for you.


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## ekim68

First student-developed mission in which satellites orbit and communicate led by UT students



> Two satellites designed and constructed by students at the Cockrell School of Engineering successfully separated in space March 22, completing the most crucial goal of the mission since its Nov. 19 launch and making them the first student-developed mission in the world in which satellites orbit and communicate with each other in real-time.


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## lotuseclat79

Best-ever quantum measurement breaks Heisenberg limit.



> *Physicists have made the most accurate quantum measurement yet, breaking a theoretical limit named for Werner Heisenberg.
> 
> The most accurate quantum measurements possible are made using an interferometer, which exploits the wave nature of matter and light. In this method, two identical beams of particles are sent along different paths to a detector, with one interacting with an object of interest along the way. Recombining the beams afterwards creates an interference pattern that reflects how much the interacting beam was disturbed - providing details about the object's properties.
> 
> Assuming that the particles interact with the object, but not with one another, the accuracy of such measurements grows in proportion to the number of particles in the beams, N. By allowing such particle interactions, Mario Napolitano of the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues have now demonstrated a way to break this so-called Heisenberg limit.*


-- Tom


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## Brigham

Cookiegal said:


> Brigham, since it's too late for you to edit it please post the link here and I will edit it for you.


couldn't find it. If you don't like the post delete it.


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## Cookiegal

Brigham said:


> couldn't find it. If you don't like the post delete it.


It's not a question of me liking the post, it's a matter of complying with the site's copyright guidelines. Next time I suggest you look harder (I found it in two seconds) and drop the attitude. Your account is disabled for 24 hours.


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## lotuseclat79

List of Solar System objects by size.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Math meets music (w/Video 3:38).



> *Geometry is the force that shapes both the sound of music and the novel research of Florida State University composer-theorist Clifton Callender, whose work explores and maps the mathematics of musical harmony.*


Neat!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

From candy floss to rock: Study provides new evidence about beginnings of the solar system.



> *The earliest rocks in our Solar System were more like candy floss than the hard rock that we know today, according to research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.*
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> The candy floss-like rocks were formed billions of years ago in the massive disc of gas and dust called the Solar Nebula, before the birth of our Solar System


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Research shows not only the fittest survive.



> *Darwin's notion that only the fittest survive has been called into question by new research published today in Nature.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum explanation for how we smell gets new support.



> *Since 1996, when biophysicist Luca Turin first suggested that quantum mechanics may help explain how we smell various odors, the idea has met with controversy. In the past 15 years, some studies have found evidence supporting the theory, while other studies have found problems with it. Now Turin - who is currently at MIT and the Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Centre in Vari, Greece - along with his colleagues, has published a study that provides further evidence for the vibration theory of smell, and may make the theory a bit less controversial.*
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> Scientists are trying to find out if, in addition to a molecule's shape, its vibrational energy also plays a role in how we distinguish smells. Image is part of an 1895 painting by John William Waterhouse.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

When cells divide.



> *For two independent daughter cells to emerge from a cell division, the membrane of the dividing cell must be severed. In the latest issue of Science, a team led by Daniel Gerlich, Professor at the Institute of Biochemistry at ETH Zurich, presents a model illustrating this last step in the division of human cells.*
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> Green: the helical filament structures that constrict the intercellular bridges. Red: microtubules. Yellow: cell membrane. Credit: Daniel Gerlich / ETH Zurich


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists first to observe rare particles produced at the Large Hadron Collider.



> *Shortly after experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland began yielding scientific data last fall, a group of scientists led by a Syracuse University physicist became the first to observe the decays of a rare particle that was present right after the Big Bang. By studying this particle, scientists hope to solve the mystery of why the universe evolved with more matter than antimatter.*
> ...
> "We know when the universe formed from the Big Bang, it had just as much matter as antimatter," Stone says. "But we live in a world predominantly made of matter, therefore, there had to be differences in the decaying of both matter and antimatter in order to end up with a surplus of matter."
> 
> All matter is composed of atoms, which are composed of protons (positive charge), electrons (negative charge) and neutrons (neutral). The protons and neutrons are composed, in turn, of even smaller particles called quarks. Antimatter is composed of antiprotons, positrons (the opposite of electrons), antineutrons, and thus anti-quarks. While antimatter generally refers to sub-atomic particles, it can also include larger elements, such as hydrogen or helium. It is generally believed that the same rules of physics should apply to both matter and antimatter and that both should occur in equal amounts in the universe. That they don't play by the same rules or occur in equal amounts are among the greatest unsolved problems in physics today.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First Conservation Laws Derived For A Virtual Universe.



> *Symmetry is intimately linked to conservation laws in the real Universe. Now physicists have worked out how to use the same approach in a virtual one*
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> Noether theorem: Figure 1: (a) Spacetime spin grid (y not shown). (b) Detail of full grid, with both x and y.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Ancient Subatomic Signature Discovered Spanning the Universe (A 'Galaxy' Most Popular).



> *An ancient subatomic signature extends across the universe. It seems that some subatomic particles, invisible and untouchable effects of the very creation of reality, might exist simultaneously across all of space.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

'Virus-eater' discovered in Antarctic lake.



> *First of the parasitic parasites to be discovered in a natural environment points to hidden diversity.*
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> Viruses from Organic lake, including the virophage (bottom left) and its prey (top). Credit: Yau, S. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA advance online publication doi: 10.1073/pnas.1018221108 (2011).


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First shot of Mercury from orbit.



> *MESSENGER has radioed to Earth a new look at the first rock from the sun*
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> HOT SHOT: The first image of Mercury ever taken from an orbiting craft shows the large rayed crater Debussy (upper portion of photo) and a smaller crater called Matabei. The lower part of the image shows part of Mercury's south polar region not previously seen by any craft. Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science


Pock marked like the moon, eh?

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists unlock mystery of how the 22nd amino acid is produced.



> *The most recently discovered amino acid, pyrrolysine, is produced by a series of just three chemical reactions with a single precursor - the amino acid lysine, according to new research.*
> ...
> The finding that lysine was the only precursor was a surprise because the production process ended up being so simple - even though arriving at it was not a simple task, partly because some of the chemical reactions had never been observed before.


What a great example of the law of parsimony (lex parsimoniae) - i.e. often Occam's razor


> is inaccurately stated as "the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one"


, whereas, parsimony


> is the use of the simplest or most frugal route of explanation available.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

More possible branches to the domain of life.



> *When it comes to the current domain of life, we are familiar with the three branches: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. However, Jonathan Eisen of UC Davis and his team have published possible evidence in PLOS One that shows the possibility of a fourth branch.*
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> Phylogenetic tree of the RecA superfamily. Image credit: Plos One, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018011


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Kepler spacecraft gives astronomers a look inside red giant stars.



> *NASA's Kepler Mission is giving astronomers such a clear view of changes in star brightness that they can now see clues about what's happening inside red giant stars.*
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> This image zooms in on a small portion of the Kepler spacecraft's field of view. It shows hundreds of stars in the constellation Lyra. Brighter stars appear white and fainter stars appear red. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers make the leap to whole-cell simulations.



> *Researchers have built a computer model of the crowded interior of a bacterial cell that - in a test of its response to sugar in its environment - accurately simulates the behavior of living cells.*
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> Using data supplied by researchers at the Max Planck Institute, University of Illinois postdoctoral researcher Elijah Roberts and chemistry professor Zaida Luthey-Schulten built a computer model of a bacterial cell that accurately simulates the behavior of living cells. Credit: L. Brian Stauffer


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Amazing image: Kepler's transiting exoplanets.



> *Wow. This remarkable visualization shows every Kepler planetary candidate host star with its transiting companion in silhouette. Jason Rowe from the Kepler science team created the image, and the sizes of the stars and transiting companions are properly scaled.*
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> Visualization of Kepler's planet candidates shown in transit with their parent stars. Credit: Jason Rowe/Kepler Mission/NASA


Can you pick out our sun and Jupiter? Click the link above to find out!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

When is an asteroid not an asteroid?.



> *On March 29, 1807, German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers spotted Vesta as a pinprick of light in the sky. Two hundred and four years later, as NASA's Dawn spacecraft prepares to begin orbiting this intriguing world, scientists now know how special this world is, even if there has been some debate on how to classify it.*
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> This image shows a model of the protoplanet Vesta, using scientists' best guess to date of what the surface of the protoplanet might look like. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/PSI


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Gravity satellite yields 'Potato Earth' view (w/Video).



> *It looks like a giant potato in space.*
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> How gravity differs across Planet Earth.
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> Goce flies lower than any other scientific satellite
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> * 1. Earth is a slightly flattened sphere - it is ellipsoidal in shape
> * 2. Goce senses tiny variations in the pull of gravity over Earth
> * 3. The data is used to construct an idealised surface, or geoid
> * 4. It traces gravity of equal 'potential'; balls won't roll on its 'slopes'
> * 5. It is the shape the oceans would take without winds and currents
> * 6. So, comparing sea level and geoid data reveals ocean behaviour
> * 7. Gravity changes can betray magma movements under volcanoes
> * 8. A precise geoid underpins a universal height system for the world
> * 9. Gravity data can also reveal how much mass is lost by ice sheets


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Pioneer Anomaly Solved By 1970s Computer Graphics Technique.



> *A new computer model of the way heat is emitted by various parts of the Pioneer spacecraft, and reflected off others, finally solves one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics*
> 
> The problem is this. The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft were launched towards Jupiter and Saturn in the early 1970s. After their respective flybys, they continued on escape trajectories out of the Solar System, both decelerating under the force of the Sun's gravity. But careful measuremenrs show that the spacecraft are slowing faster than they ought to, as if being pulled by an extra unseen force towards the Sun.
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> This deceleration is tiny: just (8.74±1.33)×10^−10 ms^−2. The big question is where does it come from.
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> Now Frederico Francisco at the Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear in Lisbon Portugal, and a few pals, say they've worked out where the thermal calculations went wrong.
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> These guys have redone the calculations using a computer model of not only how the heat is emitted but how it is reflected off the various parts of the spacecraft too. The reflections turn out to be crucial.
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> Previous calculations have only estimated the effect of reflections. So Francisco and co used a computer modeling technique called Phong shading to work out exactly how the the emitted heat is reflected and in which direction it ends up travelling.
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> Phong shading was dreamt up in the 1970s and is now widely used in many rendering packages to model reflections in three dimensions. It was originally developed to handle the reflections of visible light from 3D objects but it works just as well for infrared light, say Francisco and co.
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> Pioneer anomaly: Schematics of the configuration of Lambertian sources used to model the back wall of the main equipment compartment and the first reflection on the main antenna dish.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Dark Matter Heat Could Make Exoplanets Habitable.



> *Dark matter collecting inside exoplanets could heat some cold worlds enough to support life, even without the warm glow of starlight.*
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> In many models, dark matter particles can elastically scatter with nuclei in planets, causing those particles to become gravitationally bound. While the energy expected to be released through the subsequent annihilations of dark matter particles in the interior of the Earth is negligibly small (a few megawatts in the most optimistic models), larger planets that reside in regions with higher densities of slow moving dark matter could plausibly capture and annihilate dark matter at a rate high enough to maintain liquid water on their surfaces, even in the absence of additional energy from starlight or other sources. On these rare planets, it may be dark matter rather than light from a host star that makes it possible for life to emerge, evolve, and survive.
> Reference: Dark Matter And The Habitability of Planets.
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> Image: An artist's rendition of the planetary system around the star 55 Cancri. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Click to expand...

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Getting to know the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of the universe.



> *In new work, high-energy physicists have observed two long-sought quantum states in the bottomonium family of sub-atomic particles. The result will help researchers better understand one of the four fundamental forces of the universe - the strong force - that helps govern the interactions of matter.*
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> Each of these eight peaks represents a different particle, going from smaller on the left to larger on the right. The two peaks labeled hb are newly identified particles that can help us understand what makes the universe tick.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists isolate mysterious 'ribbon' of energy and particles that wraps around heliosphere.



> *In a paper to be published in the April 10, 2011, issue of The Astrophysical Journal, scientists on NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, including lead author Nathan Schwadron and others from the University of New Hampshire, isolate and resolve the mysterious "ribbon" of energy and particles the spacecraft discovered in the heliosphere - the huge bubble that surrounds our solar system and protects us from galactic cosmic rays.*
> 
> The finding, which overturns 40 years of theory, provides insight into the fundamental structure of the heliosphere, which in turn helps scientists understand similar structures or "astrospheres" that surround other star systems throughout the cosmos.
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> The ribbon of energy was captured using ultra-high sensitive cameras that image energetic neutral atoms (instead of photons of light) to create maps of the boundary region between our solar system and the rest of our galaxy.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NJIT professor uses math analytics to project 2011 Major League Baseball winners.



> *Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants should win their divisions, while the Atlanta Braves will take the wild card slot in the National League (NL), according to NJIT's baseball guru Bruce Bukiet. For over a decade, Bukiet, an associate professor and associate dean, has applied mathematical analysis to compute winning games for each Major League Baseball Team.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Misty Martian volcano caught on camera



> The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a fetching composite image of a couple of Martian volcanoes, one of them caught with "icy clouds" drifting past its summit.


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## lotuseclat79

14 quantum bits: Physicists go beyond the limits of what is currently possible in quantum computation.



> *Quantum physicists from the University of Innsbruck (Austria) have set another world record: They have achieved controlled entanglement of 14 quantum bits (qubits) and, thus, realized the largest quantum register that has ever been produced. With this experiment the scientists have not only come closer to the realization of a quantum computer but they also show surprising results for the quantum mechanical phenomenon of entanglement.*
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> Up to 14 quantum bits were entangled in an ion trap.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Why Does the Sun Look So Weird and Beautiful In this Photo?.



> *This is a solar eclipse. One like you have probably never seen before, taken by NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory in space. It looks really weird, as if the Sun is fizzling away, fading into the darkness of space. Why is the edge of the shadow fuzzy?*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Search for advanced materials aided by discovery of hidden symmetries in nature.



> *A new way of understanding the structure of proteins, polymers, minerals, and engineered materials will be published in the May 2011 issue of the journal Nature Materials. The discovery by two Penn State University researchers is a new type of symmetry in the structure of materials, which the researchers say greatly expands the possibilities for discovering or designing materials with desired properties. The research is expected to have broad relevance in many development efforts involving physical, chemical, biological, or engineering disciplines including, for example, the search for advanced ferroelectric ferromagnet materials for next-generation ultrasound devices and computers. The paper describing the research will be posted early online by the journal on 3 April 2011, prior to its publication in the journal's May 2011 print edition.*
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> This 3-D image illustrates a lattice composed of columns of squares that represent repeating molecular structures, one rotated clockwise (colored blue) and another counterclockwise (colored orange) with respect to each other. Such structures have many more symmetries than had been recognized before a new way of understanding the structure of proteins, polymers, minerals, and engineered materials was discovered by Venkatraman Gopalan and Daniel B. Litvin at Penn State Unviersity (to be published in May 2011 in Nature Materials). The discovery, a new type of symmetry in the structure of materials, greatly expands the possibilities for discovering or designing materials with desired properties. The research is expected to have broad relevance in many development efforts involving physical, chemical, biological, or engineering disciplines including; for example, the search for advanced ferroelectric ferromagnet materials for next-generation ultrasound devices and computers. Credit: Penn State University, Gopalan lab, Ryan Haislmaier


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Live human heart grown in lab using stem cells in potential transplant breakthrough.



> *Scientists are growing human hearts in laboratories, offering hope for millions of cardiac patients. American researchers believe the artificial organs could start beating within weeks.*
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> Breakthrough: Scientists are hopeful their artificial heart will be beating within days
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> This can increase the risk of high blood pressure, kidney failure and diabetes.
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> If new hearts could be made using a patient's own stem cells, it is less likely they would be rejected.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

April fool? No foolin'....



> *If you fell victim to an April Fool's prank, then consider that life can play some of the most ironic jokes of all. On April 1, 2011 the Mercury MESSENGER was taking some of its first images from Mercury's orbit when it accidentally captured the totally unexpected… the ancient Mariner 10.*
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> The ancient spacecraft is locked into an orbit that swings it by Mercury once every Earth year, on April 1st.
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> There's no joke like a cosmic one!
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> Mariner 10. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington. And also thanks to H. Levenson!


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Overturned scientific explanation may be good news for nuclear fusion.



> *Flat out wrong. That's what a team of Duke researchers has discovered, much to its surprise, about a long-accepted explanation of how nuclei collide to produce charged particles for electricity - a process receiving intense interest lately from scientists, entrepreneurs and policy makers in the wake of Japan's nuclear crisis.*
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> The unexpected finding appears to confirm a long-forgotten observation from physicists at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England. In 1936, they made crude, but apparently correct, estimates of the two higher-energy alphas.
> 
> Their results were "buried in history" until now, Ahmed says.
> 
> Now, 75 years later, the new insight makes the boron-fusion reaction even more interesting as a possible alternative to the nuclear fission process used in reactors in Japan and other parts of the world. A reactor based on this process could produce electricity without radioactive wastes. It also would not produce the carbon dioxide and other gases emitted by coal-powered plants.
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> A hydrogen atom slams into boron to make three alpha particles. Credit: Focus Fusion Society. Click "Enlarge" for animation.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

LHC Locking In on New Elementary Particle.



> *The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful atom smasher, may be only months away from finding a new elementary particle - a sign of a new force in nature - recent studies suggest.*
> 
> The studies focus on the top quark, the heaviest of the six quarks, which are the fundamental building blocks of nature. Top quarks appear to behave badly when they are produced during proton-antiproton collisions at a lower-energy particle accelerator, the Fermilab's Tevatron in Batavia, Illinois.
> 
> Compared with what the standard model of particle physics predicts, these quarks fly off too often in the direction of the proton beam and not enough in the antiproton direction.
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> Assuming the effect is real, the directional preference suggests the existence of a new elementary particle, not predicted by the standard model. The particle could be the messenger of a new type of force that interacts with top quarks - along with their antiparticles - in such a way as to cause the asymmetry.
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> Finding such a particle, Schulze says, "would be a beautiful and delicate signal of physics beyond the standard model."
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> "Particle physicists know that the standard model is incomplete," Gresham says. "We've been waiting a long time to get some more concrete hints."
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> Top Quarks Art


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Earth-Companion Asteroid Discovered in Horseshoe-Shaped Orbit.



> *Earth shares its orbit around the Sun with an asteroid in an exotic horseshoe-shaped orbit, say astronomers*
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> The guiding centre trajectory of NEO 2010 SO16 in a cartesian ecliptic heliocentric frame co-rotating with the Earth from an integration of the asteroid's nominal orbit solution (Table 1) and for an interval of 2 × 105 yr centred on 2000 Jan 1.5 UT. The radial extent of the horseshoe has been exaggerated by a factor of 20 for clarity. The positions of the Sun and
> the Earth are denoted by the letters 'S' and 'E' respectively. The diamond indicates the position of the asteroid at 2010 Jan 1..5 UT.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

SpaceX Sets Launch Date for Heavy-Lift Rocket (Video: 1:24).



> *The company has announced a final design, and launch schedule, for a massive new rocket.*


Related articles: 
Falcon Heavy Rocket gets unveiled by SpaceX (Update).



> *Private spaceflight company, SpaceX, unveiled their massive 22 story big Falcon Heavy rocket capable of carrying a cargo capacity of 117,000 pounds. The 27-enginge Falcon Heavy is aimed to carry large commercial and government payloads into Earth orbit.*
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> This undated artist rendering provided by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), shows Space Exploration Technology's new rocket Falcon Heavy. On Tuesday, Elon Musk, CEO and chief rocket designer of (SpaceX) unveiled plans to launch the world's most powerful rocket since man went to the moon. (AP Photo/Space Exploration Technologies)


SpaceX Promises Biggest Rocket Since Saturn V.



> *The Falcon Heavy will be used for cargo missions at first, but Musk said it is designed to meet NASA's human-rating standards - opening the door to missions to the moon or even Mars.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Atom and its quantum mirror image.



> *A team of physicists experimentally produces quantum-superpositions, simply using a mirror.*
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> Towards the mirror or away from the mirror? Physicists create atoms in quantum superposition states.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The 'molecular octopus': A little brother of 'Schroedinger's cat'.



> *For the first time - as presented in Nature Communications - the quantum behaviour of molecules consisting of more than 400 atoms was demonstrated by quantum physicists based at the University of Vienna in collaboration with chemists from Basel and Delaware.*
> 
> A new record
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> The use of specifically synthesized organic molecules consisting of complexes of up to 430 atoms enabled the researchers to demonstrate the quantum wave nature in mass and size regimes that hitherto had been experimentally inaccessible.
> 
> These particles are comparable in size, mass and complexity to Insulin molecules and exhibit many features of classical objects. Nevertheless, in the current experiment the tailor-made molecules can exist in a superposition of clearly distinguishable positions and therefore - similar to 'Schroedinger's cat' - in a state that is excluded in classical physics.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Explaining the mystery of the missing sunspots.



> *Sunspots have been observed for about four centuries, since they were first reported by Galileo. Appearing in roughly eleven-year cycles of activity, sunspots are regions of strong and complex magnetic fields which are also home to large releases of energy and furious solar storms. These storms modulate winds of energetic charged particles that cause significant disruption to communications and power grids when they reach the Earth.*
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> The "naked" sun, free of sunspots, as seen during its recent solar minimum. Credit: NASA/SOHO


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists discover a way to kill off tumors in cancer treatment breakthrough.



> *Scientists from the School of Pharmacy at Queen's University Belfast and Almac Discovery Ltd have developed a new treatment for cancer which rather than attacking tumours directly, prevents the growth of new blood vessels in tumours, starving them of oxygen and nutrients, thereby preventing their growth.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Metamaterial Reveals Nature of Time and the Impossibility of Time Machines.



> *By recreating the Big Bang inside a metamaterial for the first time, physicists have shown why the cosmological arrow of time points in the same direction as the thermodynamic arrow of time*
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> Time and the Big Bang: Experimental demonstration of straight "world lines" in a hyperbolic metamaterial: (a) Image of the plasmonic hyperbolic metamaterial obtained using optical microscope under white light illumination. The defect used as a plasmon source is shown by an arrow. (b) AFM image of the metamaterial shows stripes of PMMA formed on the gold film surface using E-beam lithography. (c) Straight plasmonic ray or "world line" is emitted from the defect under illumination with 532 nm laser light. The ray direction is indicated by the arrow. For the sake of clarity, light scattering by the edges of the PMMA pattern is partially blocked by semi-transparent rectangles. (d) Schematic view of a particle world line in a (2+1) dimensional Minkowski spacetime.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How Cosmic Inflation Creates an Infinity of Universes [Video].

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The following is related to post# 1057 in this thread:

US atom smasher may have found new force of nature (Update 4).



> *Data from a major US atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature that could expand our knowledge of the properties of matter, physicists say.*
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> A monitor showing ultra high-energy collisions of protons. US physicists are to announce that data from a major atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Two dying stars reborn as one (w/ video).



> *White dwarfs are dead stars that pack a Sun's-worth of matter into an Earth-sized ball. Astronomers have just discovered an amazing pair of white dwarfs whirling around each other once every 39 minutes. This is the shortest-period pair of white dwarfs now known. Moreover, in a few million years they will collide and merge to create a single star.*
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> CfA astronomers have found a pair of white dwarf stars orbiting each other once every 39 minutes. In a few million years, they will merge and reignite as a helium-burning star. In this artist's conception, the reborn star is shown with a hypothetical world. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Kepler helps astronomers update census of sun-like stars.



> *NASA's Kepler Mission has detected changes in brightness in 500 sun-like stars, giving astronomers a much better idea about the nature and evolution of the stars.*
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> A star like our sun is shown with an orbiting planet in the foreground. NASA's Kepler Mission is studying sun-like stars by tracking changes in their brightness, or their oscillations. Credit: Illustration by Gabriel Perez Diaz, Instituto de Aastrofisica de Canarias (MultiMedia Service).


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Breakthrough study confirms cause of short gamma-ray bursts.



> *A new supercomputer simulation shows the collision of two neutron stars can naturally produce the magnetic structures thought to power the high-speed particle jets associated with short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The study provides the most detailed glimpse of the forces driving some of the universe's most energetic explosions.*
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> These images show the merger of two neutron stars recently simulated using a new supercomputer model. Redder colors indicate lower densities. Green and white ribbons and lines represent magnetic fields. The orbiting neutron stars rapidly lose energy by emitting gravitational waves and merge after about three orbits, or in less than 8 milliseconds. The merger amplifies and scrambles the merged magnetic field. A black hole forms and the magnetic field becomes more organized, eventually producing structures capable of supporting the jets that power short gamma-ray bursts. Credit: NASA/AEI/ZIB/M. Koppitz and L. Rezzolla


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Interstellar Predation Could Explain Fermi Paradox.



> *If alien civilisations compete for scarce resources, the process of evolution may ensure that the survivors keep as quiet as possible*
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> War of the Worlds poster


Reference: Too Damned Quiet?. <- Original title at arxiv.org


> See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo message
> [5] See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager Golden Record
> [6] See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer plaque
> [7] See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence#Cosmic Call Messag
> and http://www.matessa.org/∼mike/dutil-dumas.html
> [8] The British astronomer and Nobel laureate Martin Ryle, protested forcefully against the
> Arecibo message, and lobbied the International Astronomical Union (of which he was a past
> president) to pass a resolution in condemnation. The distinguished Australian palaeontologist
> and evolutionary biologist Michael Archer has advanced similar arguments and warnings. The
> American diplomat Michael Michaud also queried the wisdom of sending the Arecibo message,
> arguing (correctly in my opinion) that the message was fundamentally a political act rather
> than a scientific experiment, and required political consideration.
> Potted summaries of these objections, and of some responses, can be found, for example, at
> http://www.planetary.org/html/UPDATES/seti/Contact /RespondingToAliens.html, and in
> Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life, S. Shostak and F. Drake, (Berkeley
> Hills Books, 1998).


-- Tom


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## franca

Cosmic blast










Not a quitter: This image of an extraordinary gamma-ray explosion was taken on March 28 - it has left scientists puzzled because it continues to burn


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## lotuseclat79

New tech shows Einstein wrong: we can watch Brownian motion.



> *The seemingly random movement of Brownian motion just got a little more classical. Scientists have been able to image the ultrafast motions of a trapped particle, revealing the underlining trajectories causing Brownian motion. This is the first time inertial Brownian motion of a particle in a fluid have been measured.*


Technically, Einstein was right - in his day when the resolution for measurement was not as good as it is today.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers discover Kepler's trinity.



> *NASA's revolutionary Kepler satellite has discovered a unique triply eclipsing triple star, reports an international team of astronomers.*
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> What was a seemingly single star is in reality a complex triple system in which three stars reside in a very special geometry.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

lotuseclat79 said:


> Interstellar Predation Could Explain Fermi Paradox.
> 
> Reference: Too Damned Quiet?. <- Original title at arxiv.org
> 
> -- Tom


This brings to mind what Stephen Hawking said about any alien life. Something to the effect that they would be looking for resources and we shouldn't be in a hurry to attract their attention.


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## ekim68

Plasmons Create Beautiful Full-Color Holograms



> By harnessing the power of tiny waves dancing in an electron sea, Japanese physicists have developed a novel way to project holograms that don't change color when you move your head.


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## lotuseclat79

Planets Could Orbit Singularities Inside Black Holes.



> *The discovery of stable orbits inside certain kinds of black hole implies that planets and perhaps even life could survive inside these weird objects, says one cosmologist*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New genetic study helps to solve Darwin's mystery about the ancient evolution of flowering plants.



> *The evolution and diversification of the more than 300,000 living species of flowering plants may have been "jump started" much earlier than previously calculated, a new study indicates. According to Claude dePamphilis, a professor of biology at Penn State University and the lead author of the study, which includes scientists at six universities, two major upheavals in the plant genome occurred hundreds of millions of years ago -- nearly 200 million years earlier than the events that other research groups had described. The research also indicates that these upheavals produced thousands of new genes that may have helped drive the evolutionary explosion that led to the rich diversity of present-day flowering plants.*
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> The evolution and diversification of the more than 300,000 living species of flowering plants may have been "jump started" much earlier than previously calculated, according to a new study led by Penn State University scientist Claude dePamphilis. The study provides a wealth of new genetic data and is expected to change the way biologists view the family trees of plants in general and flowering plants in particular. This image shows the leaves and a flower of the yellow poplar tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), a basal angiosperm included in the study led by Penn State scientist Claude dePamphilis. This plant was included in the Ancestral Angiosperm Genome Project. Credit: Hong Ma Laboratory, Penn State University, Yi Hu


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists settle centuries-old debate on perception.



> *Researchers said Sunday they had solved a conundrum about human perception that has stumped philosophers and scientists alike since it was first articulated 323 years ago by an Irish politician in a letter to John Locke.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Solar System's "Nose" Found; Aimed at Constellation Scorpius.



> *A NASA spacecraft has uncovered the solar system's "nose," which points in the direction our sun is moving through the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers say.*
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> An illustration based on IBEX data shows the heliopshers's "nose" (red "x") near Scorpius.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists view a quantum jump in real time.



> *For more than two decades, scientists have been "watching" electrons in atoms make the jump between energy levels in real time. "Atoms have energy levels, and when electrons 'jump' from one level to another, you can detect this optically. You can encode information in real atoms to make a quantum bit, or qubit," Irfan Siddiqi tells PhysOrg.com.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists discover new way to visualize warped space and time.



> *When black holes slam into each other, the surrounding space and time surge and undulate like a heaving sea during a storm. This warping of space and time is so complicated that physicists haven't been able to understand the details of what goes on -- until now.*
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> Two doughnut-shaped vortexes ejected by a pulsating black hole. Also shown at the center are two red and two blue vortex lines attached to the hole, which will be ejected as a third doughnut-shaped vortex in the next pulsation. Credit: The Caltech/Cornell SXS Collaboration
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> These are two spiral-shaped vortexes (yellow) of whirling space sticking out of a black hole, and the vortex lines (red curves) that form the vortexes. Credit: The Caltech/Cornell SXS Collaboration


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists flex their muscles to solve an old problem.



> *In a famous experiment first performed more than 220 years ago, Italian physician Luigi Galvani discovered that the muscles of a frog's leg twitch when an electric voltage is applied. An international group of scientists from Italy, the UK and France has now brought this textbook classic into the era of nanoscience. They used a powerful new synchrotron X-ray technique to observe for the first time at the molecular scale how muscle proteins change form and structure inside an intact and contracting muscle cell. The results are published in the 11 April 2011 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).*
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> This is a view at the movable detector in the ESRF beamline ID02 for small-angle scattering studies. The detector is at the far end of the long, hollow tube. Beamline scientist Theyencheri Narayanan watches from the left. Credit: P. Ginter/ESRF
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> This is a composite image made from two low-angle diffraction data sets, one taken with muscle fibers at rest (left), and the other with muscle fibers under isometric contraction (right). The color corresponds to the intensity of the X-rays scattered elastically at a very small angle. From the changes, the conformation of the molecular motors is computed. Credit: V. Lombardi, Florence University
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> This is the set-up of the experiment at the ESRF where a powerful synchrotron X-ray technique was used to observe for the first time at the molecular scale how muscle proteins change form and structure inside an intact and contracting muscle cell. Credit: V. Lombardi, Florence University


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientific solutions to sin?.



> *Most people are familiar with the seven deadly sins - pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed and sloth - but could there be molecular solutions for this daily struggle between good and evil?*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First galaxies were born much earlier than expected (w/ video).



> *Using the amplifying power of a cosmic gravitational lens, astronomers have discovered a distant galaxy whose stars were born unexpectedly early in cosmic history. This result sheds new light on the formation of the first galaxies, as well as on the early evolution of the Universe.*
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> The giant cluster of elliptical galaxies in the centre of this image contains so much dark matter mass that its gravity bends light. This means that for very distant galaxies in the background, the cluster's gravitational field acts as a sort of magnifying glass, bending and concentrating the distant object's light towards Hubble. These gravitational lenses are one tool astronomers can use to extend Hubble's vision beyond what it would normally be capable of observing. Using Abell 383, a team of astronomers have identified and studied a galaxy so far away we see it as it was less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Viewing this galaxy through the gravitational lens meant that the scientists were able to discern many intriguing features that would otherwise have remained hidden, including that its stars were unexpectedly old for a galaxy this close in time to the beginning of the Universe. This has profound implications for our understanding of how and when the first galaxies formed, and how the diffuse fog of neutral hydrogen that filled the early Universe was cleared. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Richard (CRAL) and J.-P. Kneib (LAM). Acknowledgement: Marc Postman (STScI)


-- Tom


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## ekim68

The world is today paying tribute to Yuri Gagarin, who 50 years ago became the first man in space.



> Gagarin departed Kazakhstan's Tyuratam missile range (later renamed Baikonur Cosmodrome) at 07:08 GMT on 12 April, 1961. The 27-year-old famously shouted "Poyekhali! (Let's go!)" before the launch, although his apparent enthusiasm masked personal doubts that he'd survive the mission.
> 
> During the historic 108-minute flight of his Vostok 1 spacecraft, Gagarin passed east over the Soviet Union and the Pacific, skimmed over the Straits of Magellan before crossing the Atlantic, Africa and the Middle East.
> 
> He parachuted down in Russia's central Saratov region, to be met by an amazed farmworker who offered the cosmonaut bread and milk.


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## lotuseclat79

Antimatter gravity could explain Universe's expansion.



> *In 1998, scientists discovered that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Currently, the most widely accepted explanation for this observation is the presence of an unidentified dark energy, although several other possibilities have been proposed. One of these alternatives is that some kind of repulsive gravity - or antigravity - is pushing the Universe apart. As a new study shows, general relativity predicts that the gravitational interaction between matter and antimatter is mutually repulsive, and could potentially explain the observed expansion of the Universe without the need for dark energy.*
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> It's possible that antimatter could exist in the voids between galaxy clusters and superclusters. Image credit: NASA and ESA.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Evidence of Big Bang May Disappear in 1 Trillion Years.



> *While astronomers are largely baffled by the question of how the universe began, they should probably hurry up and figure it out. In the far future, most of the evidence will be long gone, a new study suggests.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Another universe tugging on ours? Maybe not, researchers say.



> *A new study from the University at Buffalo contradicts the dark flow theory, showing that exploding stars in different parts of the universe do not appear to be moving in sync. Working with data on 557 such stars, called supernovae, UB scientists deduced that while the supernovae closest to Earth all shared a common motion in one direction, supernovae further out were heading somewhere else. An article announcing the research results will appear in a forthcoming edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Beam me up ... Quantum teleporter breakthrough.



> *Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in quantum communications and computing using a teleporter and a paradoxical cat.*
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> Beam me up ... the teleporter in the lab of Professor Akira Furusawa at the University of Tokyo


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Search for dark matter moves one step closer to detecting elusive particle.



> *Dark matter, the mysterious substance that may account for nearly 25 percent of the universe, has so far evaded direct observation. But researchers from UCLA, Columbia University and other institutions participating in the international XENON collaboration say they are now closer than ever before.*
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> Seven QUPIDs (QUartz Photon Intensifying Detectors), a new photon-detector technology that emits no radiation and will greatly reduce background noise in future dark matter searches. (Credit: Katsushi Arisaka)
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> The XENON100 experiment is located deep underground at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy to reduce contaminating signals from cosmic radiation. (Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Neutrons could test Newton's gravity and string theory.



> *A pioneering technique using subatomic particles known as neutrons could give microscopic hints of extra dimensions or even dark matter, researchers say.*
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> Neutrons produced at the ILL can be used to probe fundamental aspects of physics


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Zoom-up star photos poke holes in century-old astronomical theory.



> *The hottest stars in the universe spin so fast that they get a bit squished at their poles and dimmer around their middle. The 90-year-old theory that predicts the extent of this "gravity darkening" phenomenon has major flaws, according to a new study led by University of Michigan astronomers.*
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> An image of the star Regulus, which University of Michigan astronomers and their colleagues were able to "zoom in" on using a technique called interferometry. Zooming in allowed them to measure the temperature of the star's poles separately from its equator, which enabled them to find flaws in a century-old astronomical theory about hot, fast-spinning stars. Credit: Xiao Che


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How Solitons Explain the Puzzling Behavior of Phages.



> *Bacterial viruses sometimes switch themselves off, a process that has always puzzled biologists. Now physicists think they know what's going on.*
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> Enterobacteria Lambda phage: The seven solitons for the first monomer of 1LMB, with their respective residue numbers. The black line denotes the distance between soliton and corresponding PDB configuration. The red line denotes the Debye-Waller distance that is computed form the B-factors in PDB. The grey area describes the estimated 0.15 A zero point fluctuation distance of the soliton.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Primordial weirdness: Did the early universe have 1 dimension?.



> *Did the early universe have just one spatial dimension? That's the mind-boggling concept at the heart of a theory that University at Buffalo physicist Dejan Stojkovic and colleagues proposed in 2010.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Nature's elegant solution to repairing DNA in cancer, other conditions.



> *A major discovery about an enzyme's structure has opened a window on understanding DNA repair. Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have determined the structure of a nuclease that will help scientists to understand several DNA repair pathways, a welcome development for cancer research.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Bacteria Divide People Into 3 Types, Scientists Say.



> *In the early 1900s, scientists discovered that each person belonged to one of four blood types. Now they have discovered a new way to classify humanity: by bacteria. Each human being is host to thousands of different species of microbes. Yet a group of scientists now report just three distinct ecosystems in the guts of people they have studied.*


-- Tom


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## franca

Happy birthday from the Hubble!


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## lotuseclat79

Primordial beryllium could reveal insights into the Big Bang.



> *Some chemical elements appear much more abundantly in nature than others, which is partly due to how the elements originally formed. Scientists know that the light elements (hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and traces of lithium) were produced by fusion in the early Universe. Today, lithium, beryllium, and boron are constantly being produced in cosmic rays, while the heavier elements (up to iron) are formed by fusion in stars. Elements heavier than iron are formed by supernovae.*
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> Scientists have proposed a method in which beryllium could have been produced in the first few minutes of the Universe. Beryllium is not generally thought to have been produced until much later. Image credit: Alchemist-hp. CC BY-SA, Wikimedia.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Lifelong pursuit of the secrets of the cosmos.



> *In a small room at Caltech, space physicist Ed Stone and four of his colleagues puzzle over a trove of data that has just arrived from the bulbous edge of the solar system.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Timid and shy or bold and welcoming, water behaves in unexpected ways on surfaces.



> *It's ubiquitous. It's universal. And it's understood-not! Water's choices in a given situation often defy scientific predictions. When expected to bond with other water molecules, it shuns them. When expected to ignore a surface, it becomes deeply attached. However, research at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has revealed why one of the simplest and most important molecules on the planet makes some of the decisions it does.*
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> (a) Top view. The two-layer ice has hexagonal symmetry. (b) Side view. Two flat layers of molecules with hydrogen bonds connecting the layers. (c) Side view of normal, puckered hexagonal ice.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cracks In The Fundaments Of Quantum Physics.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Did the universe begin as a slender thread?.



> *A new framework for the universe's formation suggests that it began as a single thready line, then evolved into a plane, and only then the three-dimensional space we now inhabit. This could simplify sticky cosmological questions, including dark matter and gravity waves.*
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> Hubble's deep view of the sky showed myriad galaxies, reaching back to the early history of the universe. The image was assembled from several different exposures taken over 10 days in December 1995. A new proposal suggests that the universe evolves dimensions over time, and that so-called 'dark energy' may be a result of the new fourth dimension.
> Robert Williams and the Hubble Deep Field Team / NASA / File


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NewsFlash: Rumor Sweeping World's Science Community that CERN's LHC has Detected the Higgs Boson -The "God Particle".



> *A rumor has gone viral in the physics community that the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle," based on an anonymous commentor posted an abstract of a leaked note on Columbia University physicist, Peter Woit's blog, Not Even Wrong.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists ask: Is the kilo losing weight?.



> *Ensuring a pound of butter is indeed a pound, or a gallon of milk a full gallon, has long been the province of government agencies that deal with weights and measures. But now it seems scientists are having a little trouble with the golf-ball-size piece of metal that is used to set the standard weight for a kilogram, or kilo.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

US scientists get glimpse of antihelium.



> *Heaviest particles of antimatter seen in a lab survive for about 10 billionths of a second before crashing into collider's detector*
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> The antihelium research was carried out at the Brookhaven national laboratory in New York. Photograph: Jeff Geissler/AP


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

SETI Institute suspends search for aliens.



> *If E.T. phones Earth, he'll get a "disconnect" signal.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Tycho's supernova remnant: New evidence on origin of supernovas found.



> *Astronomers may now know the cause of an historic supernova explosion that is an important type of object for investigating dark energy in the universe. The discovery, made using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, also provides strong evidence that a star can survive the explosive impact generated when a companion star goes supernova.*
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> This Chandra image of the Tycho supernova remnant contains new evidence for what triggered the original supernova explosion. Tycho was formed by a Type Ia supernova, a category of stellar explosion used in measuring astronomical distances because of their reliable brightness. In the lower left region of Tycho is a blue arc of X-ray emission. Several lines of evidence support the conclusion that this arc is due to a shock wave created when a white dwarf exploded and blew material off the surface of a nearby companion star. This supports one popular scenario for the trigger of a Type Ia supernova. Understanding the origin of Type Ia supernovas is important because they have been used to determine that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Credit: NASA/CXC/Chinese Academy of Sciences/F. Lu et al
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> This is an artist's impression showing an explanation from scientists for the origin of an X-ray arc in Tycho's supernova remnant. It is believed that material was stripped off the companion star by the explosion of the white dwarf in the Type Ia supernova explosion, forming the shock wave seen in the arc. The arc has blocked debris from the explosion, creating a "shadow" behind the arc. The force of the explosion imparted a kick to the companion star, and this combined with the orbital velocity of the companion before the explosion to give the "observed" motion of the companion. Previously, studies with optical telescopes have revealed a star within the remnant that is moving much more quickly than its neighbors, showing that it could be the companion to the supernova. The size of the companion's orbit is not shown to scale here: the separation between it and the white dwarf before the explosion is estimated to have only been about a millionth of a light year, while the full scale of the illustration is over 10 light years. Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
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> This image shows iron debris in Tycho's supernova remnant. The site of the supernova explosion is shown, as inferred from the motion of the possible companion to the exploded white dwarf. The position of material stripped off the companion star by the explosion, and forming an X-ray arc, is shown by the white dotted line. This structure is most easily seen in an image showing X-rays from the arc's shock wave. Finally, the arc has blocked debris from the explosion creating a "shadow" in the debris between the red dotted lines, extending from the arc to the edge of the remnant. Credit: Credit: NASA/CXC/Chinese Academy of Sciences/F. Lu et al


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Planets party in the morning April 28-May 1.



> *Set your alarm clocks for an early treat about a half an hour before sunrise on Thursday April 28 through Sunday, May 1, 2011, as there will be a planetary delight in store! Go out and with either a pair of binoculars, a small telescope, or just use your naked eyes and find an unobscured view of the Eastern horizon to see a conjunction (objects near each other in the sky) of the planets Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, below and to the left of the thin crescent moon.*
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> April's Morning Conjunction Credit: Adrian West


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

"Spacetime has No Time Dimension" -- New Theory Claims that Time is Not the 4th Dimension.



> *Einstein never interpreted time "t" as a fourth dimension of space. Space is not 3D + T, space is 4D. With clocks we measure numerical order of material change. This numerical order is the only time that exists in a physical world. With this approach all immediate information transfers of quantum physics are explained in a more appropriate way. 4D space is a medium of quantum information transfers.*
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> The Quantum Point-of-View


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How Small Are We?.










Note: This image makes an awesome Desktop background!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A Star as Old as the Universe Found in Milky Way -- A Galactic Mystery.



> *Astronomers have discovered a relic from the early universe -- a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star has a remarkably similar chemical make-up to the Milky Way's oldest stars. Its presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks.*
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> "This star likely is almost as old as the universe itself." Anna Frebel, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

"Monster Dark Stars Spawned the Supermassive Black Holes of the Universe's Trillion Galaxies" (Today's Most Popular)



> *Dark matter not only had a role to play in fueling early stars, it may have created "dark stars" so massive that they went on to spawn supermassive black holes found at the cores of the one trillion galaxies estimated to populate the universe.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Study: First stars were massive, fast-spinning.



> *The first stars that dotted the universe were not only immense, but probably also fast-spinning, according to a new study that sheds light on the nature of stellar evolution.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Replacing Time with Numerical Order of Material Change Resolves Zeno Problems of Motion.



> *With clocks, we measure the numerical order of a material change, i.e., motion running in space. There is no experimental evidence that clocks measure time. It is convenient to replace the concept of time with the numerical order of material change. This view corresponds more adequately to the physical world and resolves Zeno problems of motion.
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> Zeno's paradoxes of motion at wikipedia.
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> Achilles and the tortoise - In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.
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> The dichotomy paradox - That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Antimatter-Hunting Experiment Ready for Space Mission.



> *A cutting-edge experiment hunting for antimatter galaxies and signs of dark matter that was very nearly cancelled is finally poised to voyage into orbit aboard the next-to-last space shuttle mission.*
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> The ambitious Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a more than 15,000-pound (6,900-kilogram) device searching for cosmic- rays - high-energy charged particles from outer space. The nearly $2 billion experiment will ride up to the International Space Station on the shuttle Endeavour on Friday (April 29).
> 
> The instrument will employ a nearly 4,200-pound (1,900 kg) permanent magnet to generate a strong, uniform magnetic field more than 3,000 times more intense than Earth's. This deflects cosmic rays so that a battery of detectors can analyze their properties, such as charge and velocity, and beam their findings to Earth. [Video: Sifting Through the Cosmic Sand for Dark Matter]
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> Technicians examine the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer instrument in a work stand ahead of its planned launch on NASA's space shuttle Endeavour. The AMS instrument will search for cosmic rays from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Glenn Benson


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Food and science fun.



> *Peter Barham's presentation at the MG seminar in Copenhagen focused on how food can be used to make students interested in physics and chemistry (not a bad thing, especially since 2011 is the International Year of Chemistry) -Most people think science is boring and difficult, he said. But demos can help bring science to life, and believe it or not - experiments are much better when they go wrong. Using balloons, champagne, potatoes and liquid nitrogen Peter Barham proved his point. As an example he asked the audience how much air weighs. He first filled a balloon with a few milliliters of water, then squeezed out all the air, tied a knot and heated the water in the microwave until all had evaporated. The first balloon exploded since he used to much water (this shows that water expands when boiled and that balloons are not infinitely stretchable!). Using a little less water for the second balloon, everything worked fine. Assuming that steam has approximately the same density as air, the size of the balloon can be measured and from this the weight of air be calculated. One finds that the volume of the water increases by a factor of approximately 800x.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Voyager set to enter interstellar space.



> *More than 30 years after they left Earth, NASA's twin Voyager probes are now at the edge of the solar system. Not only that, they're still working. And with each passing day they are beaming back a message that, to scientists, is both unsettling and thrilling.*
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> This graphic shows the relative positions of NASA's most distant spacecraft in early 2011, looking at the solar system from the side. Voyager 1 is the most distant spacecraft, about 17.5 billion kilometers (10.9 billion miles) away from the sun at a northward angle. Pioneer 10, the next most distant, is about 15.4 billion kilometers (9.6 billion miles) away from the sun on the opposite side of the solar system. Voyager 2 is about 14.2 billion kilometers (8.8 billion miles) away from the sun on a southward trajectory, on the same side of the solar system as Voyager 1. Pioneer 11 is about 12.4 billion kilometers (7.8 billion miles) away from the sun. New Horizons is about 3 billion kilometers (2 billion miles) away from the sun, on its way to Pluto.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Measuring the distant universe in 3-D: BOSS proves it can do the job with quasars.



> *The biggest 3-D map of the distant universe ever made, using light from 14,000 quasars - supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies billions of light years away - has been constructed by scientists with the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III).*
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> Zooming in on a slice of the BOSS map shows areas with more (red) and less (blue) intergalactic gas, as revealed by correlations of the Lyman-alpha forest data from the spectra of thousands of quasars. A distance of one billion light years is indicated by the scale bar. Credit: (Anže Slosar and BOSS Lyman-alpha cosmology working group
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> BOSS is extending the existing Sloan Digital Sky Survey map of the universe based on galaxies, center, into the realm of intergalactic gas in the distant universe, universe, using the light from bright quasars (blue dots). Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey
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> A 2-D slice through BOSS's full 3-D map of the universe to date. The black dots going out to about 7 billion light years are relatively nearby galaxies. The colored region beginning at about 10 billion light years is intergalactic hydrogen gas; red areas have more gas and blue areas have less. The blank region between is inaccessible to the Sloan Telescope, but the proposed BigBOSS survey would be able to observe it. Credit: Anže Slosar and BOSS Lyman-alpha cosmology working group


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cosmic magnetic fields.



> *The mention of cosmic-scale magnetic fields is still likely to met with an uncomfortable silence in some astronomical circles - and after a bit of foot-shuffling and throat-clearing, the discussion will be moved on to safer topics. But look, they're out there. They probably do play a role in galaxy evolution, if not galaxy formation - and are certainly a feature of the interstellar medium and the intergalactic medium.*
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> Magnetic field data from the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. Credit: MPIfR Bonn.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Looking into the sound of music.



> *By breaking down traditional barriers between disciplines, two University of Alberta researchers say opportunities could develop that may change how we experience music. And that's just the start of possibilities.*


This article explores the compatibility between creating and listening to music - very interesting!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Single atom stores quantum information.



> *A data memory can hardly be any smaller: researchers working with Gerhard Rempe at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have stored quantum information in a single atom. The researchers wrote the quantum state of single photons, i.e. particles of light, into a rubidium atom and read it out again after a certain storage time. This technique can be used in principle to design powerful quantum computers and to network them with each other across large distances.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Some Black Holes May Pre-Date The Big Bang, Say Cosmologists.



> *If the Universe expands and contracts in cycles of Big Bangs and Crunches, some black holes may survive from one era to the next, according to a new analysis*
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> This shows the domain in which black holes of mass M containing a fraction f0
> of the present density can form in the big crunch or avoid merging if they exist before then.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Dawn probe reaches milestone approaching asteroid Vesta.



> *NASA's Dawn spacecraft has reached its official approach phase to the asteroid Vesta and will begin using cameras for the first time to aid navigation for an expected July 16 orbital encounter. The large asteroid is known as a protoplanet - a celestial body that almost formed into a planet.*
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> NASA's Dawn spacecraft, illustrated in this artist's concept, is propelled by ion engines. Image credit: NASA/JPL


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Spacecraft Earth to perform asteroid 'flyby' this fall.



> *Since the dawn of the space age, humanity has sent 16 robotic emissaries to fly by some of the solar system's most intriguing and nomadic occupants -- comets and asteroids. The data and imagery collected on these deep-space missions of exploration have helped redefine our understanding of how Earth and our part of the galaxy came to be. But this fall, Mother Nature is giving scientists around the world a close-up view of one of her good-sized space rocks -- no rocket required.*
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> Animation (click Enlarge) of the trajectory for asteroid 2005 YU55 - November 8-9, 2011. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Swimming led to flying, physicists say.



> *Like a fish paddles its pectoral fins to swim through water, flying insects use the same physics laws to "paddle" through the air, say Cornell physicists.*
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> A fruit fly in mid flight.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Gravity Probe B confirms two Einstein theories.



> *Stanford and NASA researchers have confirmed two predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, concluding one of the space agency's longest-running projects.*
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> Einstein's predicted geodetic and frame- dragging effects, and the Schiff Equation for calculating them.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mini Black Holes Could Form Gravitational Atoms.



> *Tiny black holes may be capable of capturing particles around them, forming the gravitational equivalent of atoms*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Gravity Probe B Confirms the Existence of Gravitomagnetism.



> *Does gravity have a magnetic counterpart? Spin any electric charge and you get a magnetic field. Spin any mass and, according to Einstein, you should get a very slight effect that acts something like magnetism. This effect is expected to be so small that it is beyond practical experience and ground laboratory measurement. In a bold attempt to directly measure gravitomagnetism, NASA launched in 2004 the smoothest spheres ever manufactured into space to see how they spin. These four spheres, each roughly the size of a ping-pong ball, are the key to the ultra-precise gyroscopes at the core of Gravity Probe B. Last week, after accounting for persistent background signals, the results were announced -- the gyroscopes precessed at a rate consistent with the gravitational predictions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The results, which bolster existing findings, may have untold long term benefits as well as shorter term benefits such as better clocks and global positioning trackers.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mystery force may be due to mirrors.



> *Portuguese physicists report that they have identified the unknown force whose influence on outward bound interplanetary space probes has puzzled scientists since 1998.*
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> Both Pioneer 10 & 11 have a length of 9 1/2 feet and a 9-foot diameter at their widest point -- the high gain antenna. Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Forecast calls for nanoflowers to help return eyesight.



> *University of Oregon researcher Richard Taylor is on a quest to grow flowers that will help people who've lost their sight, such as those suffering from macular degeneration, to see again.*
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> These flowers are not roses, tulips or columbines. They will be nanoflowers seeded from nano-sized particles of metals that grow, or self assemble, in a natural process -- diffusion limited aggregation. They will be fractals that mimic and communicate efficiently with neurons.
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> Fractals are "a trademark building block of nature," Taylor says. Fractals are objects with irregular curves or shapes, of which any one component seen under magnification is also the same shape. In math, that property is self-similarity. Trees, clouds, rivers, galaxies, lungs and neurons are fractals, Taylor says. Today's commercial electronic chips are not fractals, he adds.
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> Richard Taylor, physics professor and director of the University of Oregon Material Science Institute, is leading an effort to design a fractal-based retinal implant to help return vision to the blind. Credit: Photo by Jim Barlow


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Proposal for optical transistor uses light to control light.



> *By using one light pulse to control another, researchers have proposed a design for an optical transistor that fulfills the most challenging criteria set forth in a study last year. An optical transistor has long been sought by physicists because it could be used for optical computing, in which photons rather than electrons are used to perform digital computations.*
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> Researchers have proposed a method in which one light pulse can modify the properties of another light pulse by interacting at an optical event horizon. Image credit: A. Demircan, et al. ©2011 American Physical Society.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Measurement of 'hot' electrons could have solar energy payoff.



> *Basic scientific curiosity paid off in unexpected ways when Rice University researchers investigating the fundamental physics of nanomaterials discovered a new technology that could dramatically improve solar energy panels.*
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> An optical antenna-diode for photodetection. Representation of a single Au resonant antenna on an n-type silicon substrate. For more information, please see Figure 1 in the manuscript. Credit: Science/AAAS


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual.



> *More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea - one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery - for "spiritual atheist" scientists.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New calculations on blackbody energy set the stage for clocks with unprecedented accuracy.



> *A team of physicists from the United States and Russia announced today* that it has developed a means for computing, with unprecedented accuracy, a tiny, temperature-dependent source of error in atomic clocks. Although small, the correction could represent a big step towards atomic timekeepers' longstanding goal of a clock with a precision equivalent to one second of error every 32 billion years-longer than the age of the universe.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers Solve the Mystery of the Ridge around Iapetus.



> *The mysterious ridge around the equator of Iapetus is probably an ancient ring that settled onto the surface of the moon, say planetary geologists.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Carbon, carbon everywhere, but not from the Big Bang.



> *As Star Trek is so fond of reminding us, we're carbon-based life forms. But the event that jump-started the universe, the Big Bang, didn't actually produce any carbon, so where the heck did it - and we - come from? An NC State researcher has helped create supercomputer simulations that demonstrate how carbon is produced in stars, proving an old theory correct.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A new branch found in the fungal tree of life.



> *The fungus kingdom contains diverse eukaryotic organisms, including the yeast that we add in fermentation to make beer, the mold that grows on old bread, and the mushrooms that we eat. While we are familiar with many types of fungi, scientists are still trying to fill out the fungal tree of life. Mainly, researchers are unsure about the limits of fungal diversity and how different fungi relate to one another evolutionarily.
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> A recent paper in Nature suggests that scientists have been unaware of a large fraction of organisms in the fungus kingdom. Lead author Meredith Jones and her colleagues report the discovery of a new clade, an entirely new branch on the fungal tree of life. They named this new clade cryptomycota, which roughly translates to "hidden from the kingdom Fungi." The new group appears to be extremely diverse; the authors estimate that the biodiversity of the cryptomycota clade might be similar to that of the entire known fungus kingdom.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Antimatter caught streaming from thunderstorms on Earth.



> *A space telescope has accidentally spotted thunderstorms on Earth producing beams of antimatter.*
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> Electrons racing up electric field lines give rise to light, then particles, then light


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Push-and-Pull of Rocket Science.



> *A new type of escape system will alter the iconic look of the next generation of space rockets.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How to control complex networks.



> *At first glance, a diagram of the complex network of genes that regulate cellular metabolism might seem hopelessly complex, and efforts to control such a system futile.*
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> MIT and Northeastern University researchers devised a computer algorithm that can generate a controllability structure for any complex network. The red points are 'driver nodes,' which can control the rest of the nodes (green). Image: Mauro Martino


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Find the DNA in a Banana (2 web pages).



> *Bring Science Home: Activity 9*
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> Image: Kagen McLeod


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Flipping hot Jupiters: Why some planets orbit the wrong way.



> *In the last few years astronomers have observed that in some extrasolar systems the star is spinning one way and the planet, a "hot Jupiter," is orbiting the star in the opposite direction. A Northwestern University research team is the first to model how these huge planets got so close to their stars -- thanks to gravitational perturbations by a much more distant planet -- and how the planets' orbits can flip in the process.*
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> The transiting giant planet orbits very close to the star and in a direction opposite to the stellar rotation. This peculiar configuration results from gravitational perturbations by another much more distant planet (upper left). Credit: Credit: Lynette Cook


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cosmic Quirk of Physics Now Discovered in a Molecule.



> *Scientists have detected the Doppler effect - a quirk of physics that makes an ambulance's siren change pitch as it drives by - on the scale of a single molecule.*
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> A phenomenon called the Doppler effect causes the frequency of sound waves to shift when their source is moving. Now this effect has been seen on a smaller scale than ever before. CREDIT: © Chrisharvey | Dreamstime.com


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

As time goes by, it gets tougher to 'just remember this'.



> *The older we get, the more difficulty we seem to have remembering things. We reassure ourselves that our brains' "hard drives" are too full to handle the new information that comes in daily. But a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist suggests that our aging brains are unable to process this information as "new" because the brain pathways leading to the hippocampus become degraded over time. As a result, our brains cannot accurately "file" new information.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Why space shuttle fleet is retiring, what's next.



> *As the space shuttle program winds down, questions are flying about what's happening and why. The launch countdown began Friday for the second-to-last flight. Some answers about the end of the space shuttle:*
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> In this April 29, 2011 file photo, space shuttle Endeavour is seen on Pad 39A moments after launch was scrubbed because of technical problems at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. NASA will try again next Monday, May 16. 2011 to launch Endeavour on the next-to-last space shuttle flight, after replacing a switch box and plugging in new electrical wiring. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

When the speed of light depends on its direction.



> *Light does not travel at the same speed in all directions under the effect of an electromagnetic field. Although predicted by theory, this counter-intuitive effect has for the first time been demonstrated experimentally in a gas by a French team from the Laboratoire 'Collisions Agregats Reactivite' at CNRS. The researchers measured with extreme precision, of around one billionth m/s, the difference between the light propagation speeds in one direction and in the opposite direction. These results open the way to more in-depth research aimed at improving the model that describes elementary particle interactions. Published on the 11 May 2011 in the journal Physical Review Letters, they point to novel applications in optics.*
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> The optical cavity used in the experiment. Credit: Cécile Robilliard / CNRS


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Toward faster transistors: New physical phenomenon could lead to increases in computers' clock speed.



> *In the 1980s and '90s, competition in the computer industry was all about "clock speed" - how many megahertz, and ultimately gigahertz, a chip could boast. But clock speeds stalled out almost 10 years ago: Chips that run faster also run hotter, and with existing technology, there seems to be no way to increase clock speed without causing chips to overheat.*
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> MIT researchers and colleagues at the University of Augsburg, in Germany, investigated the curious electrical properties of a material produced by stacking layers of lanthanum aluminate on layers of strontium titanate.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Theory of Recycled Universe Called Into Question.



> *In November, cosmologists claimed to see echoes of violent collisions that happened before the Big Bang in the form of circular patterns in the early universe's relic radiation. But two new analyses of the same data, which are the first papers on the subject to be published in peer-reviewed journals, assert that those circles are nothing special.*
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> WMAP rings: A map of concentric rings on the actual sky, as measured by WMAP
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> A map of concentric rings on a simulated sky. arXiv/V.G. Gurzadyan and R. Penrose


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Cosmic Fireworks: How to Watch Ultra High-Energy Cosmic Rays Hitting Earth.



> *The best place to watch ultra high-energy cosmic rays hitting the Earth is from space. But building an observatory that can do the trick will be hard, warn physicists*
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> UHECR


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Solid Hydrogen Ice May Explain Interstellar Glow, Say Chemists.



> *Astronomers have never been able to explain the weak glow they can see in interstellar space. Now new evidence suggests that solid hydrogen ice may be responsible*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Nanosatellite Will Look for Alien Worlds.



> *The first tiny satellite to search for Earthlike planets is scheduled to launch in 2012.*
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> *Planet hunter:* A new nanosatellite, called ExoPlanetSat, will search for Earthlike planets using novel optics, navigation, and control technology. It's about the size of a loaf of bread. Credit: Technology Review


Related video: Nanosatellite Ready to Search for Another Earth (3:13) Video by Brittany Sauser.



> *Researchers at Draper Laboratory and MIT discuss and display the small satellite they have built. It will detect Earthlike planets outside our solar system. *


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story'.



> *In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the cosmologist shares his thoughts on death, M-theory, human purpose and our chance existence*
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> Stephen Hawking dismisses belief in God in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. Photograph: Solar & Heliospheric Observatory/Discovery Channel


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

What's 96 Percent of the Universe Made Of? Astronomers Don't Know.



> *All the stars, planets and galaxies that can be seen today make up just 4 percent of the universe. The other 96 percent is made of stuff astronomers can't see, detect or even comprehend.*
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> This Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 1275, the galaxy located in the center of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster. The red threadlike filaments are composed of cool gas suspended by a magnetic field. CREDIT: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration


-- Tom


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## ekim68

I have to tell you that I'm disappointed that the shuttle missions are coming to a close. It's been a real joy watching their flights for the past years...:up:

Shuttle Endeavour begins final mission


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## lotuseclat79

Exploring space.



> *One of the most powerful and ambitious astronomical satellites designed to provide the best view yet of the Universe at far-infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths is living up to its illustrious name, according to Cardiff astronomers.*


Related article: Herschel lives up to the family name.



> *The Herschel Space Observatory has been observing the sky at infrared wavelengths since shortly after its launch two years ago, on 14th May 2009. But the name Herschel has a much longer legacy than that. The observatory is named after Sir William Herschel, a leading astronomer, for discovering infrared light around two hundred years ago. The Herschel family was a particularly astronomical one, with both his sister, Caroline, and son, John, playing important roles in the history of astronomy.*
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> Herschel image of Uranus, taken with the SPIRE camera, which is seen as a bright point of light. The six-pointed star is due to the construction of the telescope itself, while the red "rosette" in the centre is due to the optics of the Herschel telescope and the camera. The background objects are distant galaxies, all tens of thousands of times fainter than Uranus. Click on the image for more information. Credit: ESA / Herschel / SPIRE


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

SETI Turns Radio Telescopes Toward Kepler Candidate Planets, Listening for Signs of Life.



> *Listening to places where conditions are right for life*
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> Is There Anybody Out There? The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope, is listening to 86 Kepler candidate Earth-like planets in the hopes of hearing from alien life. Wikimedia Commons


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Hunting Antimatter: Space Shuttle Endeavour's Biggest Science Experiment.



> *When the space shuttle Endeavour lifts off one last time Monday morning, it won't just be the culmination of the orbiter's career. It will also bring to fruition a 15-year, $2 billion quest to launch a device called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to space.*
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> Technicians examine the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer instrument in a work stand ahead of its planned launch on NASA's space shuttle Endeavour. The AMS instrument will search for cosmic rays from the International Space Station. NASA/Glenn Benson


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Riddle of 'God particle' could be solved by 2012: CERN (Update).



> *Physicists said on Tuesday they believed that by the end of 2012 they could determine whether a theorised particle called the Higgs boson, which has unleashed a gruelling decades-long hunt, exists or not.*
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> The Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator operated by European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva. Physicists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) say they believe that by the end of 2012 they will be able to determine whether a theorised particle called the Higgs boson, which has unleashed a gruelling decades-long hunt, exists or not.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Contaminants Can Flow Up Waterfalls, Say Physicists.



> *Physicists have discovered an entirely new process of upstream contamination--by studying the behaviour tea leaves*
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> Water contamination


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Entropy Is Universal Rule of Language.

-- Tom


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## franca

Free-floating










Mysterious: An artist's impression of a planet that wanders freely or follows very loose orbits. Scientists have found a new class of 'lonely planets' floating on their own in space


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## lotuseclat79

Earth's inner core is melting... and freezing.



> *The inner core of the Earth is simultaneously melting and freezing due to circulation of heat in the overlying rocky mantle, according to new research from the University of Leeds, UC San Diego and the Indian Institute of Technology.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Resolving water's electrical properties.



> *An old confusion about the electrical properties of water's surface has ended, thanks to scientists at Pacific Northwest and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. The conflict arose because two types of measurements gave two radically different interpretations of what was happening at the surface of water. The team showed, through careful analysis, that the measurements weren't wrong, but rather the behavior of water's electrons influenced one measurement more than the other. The team's results provided a consistent interpretation of the different measurements and grace The Journal of Physical Chemistry B cover.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Dark Energy is real: WiggleZ galaxy project proves Einstein was right again.



> *An Australian-based astronomy team, co-led by Professor Michael Drinkwater from the School of Mathematics and Physics (SMP) at The University of Queensland (UQ), has shown that the mysterious 'dark energy' is indeed real and not a mistake in Einstein's theory of gravity.*
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> New results from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Anglo-Australian Telescope atop Siding Spring Mountain in Australia confirm that dark energy (represented by purple grid) is a smooth, uniform force that now dominates over the effects of gravity (green grid). The observations follow from careful measurements of the separations between pairs of galaxies (examples of such pairs are illustrated here). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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> This diagram illustrates two ways to measure how fast the universe is expanding. In the past, distant supernovae, or exploded stars, have been used as "standard candles" to measure distances in the universe, and to determine that its expansion is actually speeding up. The supernovae glow with the same instrinsic brightness, so by measuring how bright they appear on the sky, astronomers can tell how far away they are. This is similar to a standard candle appearing fainter at greater distances (left-hand illustration). In a new survey from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Anglo-Australian Telescope atop Siding Spring Mountain in Australia the distances to galaxies were measured using a "standard ruler" (right-hand illustration). This method is based on the preference for pairs of galaxies to be separated by a distance of 490 million light-years today. The separation appears to get smaller as the galaxies move farther away, just like a ruler of fixed length (right-hand illustration). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How you think about death may affect how you act.



> *How you think about death affects how you behave in life.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Super Storm on Saturn



> Cassini's radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected the large disturbance in December 2010, and amateur astronomers have been watching it ever since through backyard telescopes. As it rapidly expanded, the storm's core developed into a giant, powerful thunderstorm, producing a 3,000-mile-wide (5,000-kilometer-wide) dark vortex possibly similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot.


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## lotuseclat79

Simplifying the process of detecting genuine multiparticle entanglement.



> *The ability to entangle particles is considered essential for a number of experiments and applications. While we have seen evidence for quantum entanglement, it is still difficult to detect unambiguously. Multiparticle quantum correlations are especially important for work with optical lattices, superconducting qubits and quantum information processing. "Entanglement in large qubit systems is becoming more important," Bastian Jungnitsch tells PhysOrg.com. "Unfortunately, the characterization of multiparticle entanglement is difficult."*
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> The structure of multiparticle entanglement for three particles. The team approximates the set of unentangled states (shown in blue) by a larger set (shown with a thick, red border), which has the advantage that the latter is much easier to handle theoretically. This idea leads to an efficient, easily implementable criterion for multiparticle entanglement. The figure was drawn by Bastian Jungnitsch.


-- Tom


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## franca

Astronauts carry out inspection


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## lotuseclat79

Radio telescopes capture best-ever snapshot of black hole jets (w/ video).



> *An international team, including NASA-funded researchers, using radio telescopes located throughout the Southern Hemisphere has produced the most detailed image of particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy.*
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> Merging X-ray data (blue) from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with microwave (orange) and visible images reveals the jets and radio-emitting lobes emanating from Centaurus A's central black hole. Credit: ESO/WFI (visible); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (microwave); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray)
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> Left: The giant elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 is the radio source known as Centaurus A. Vast radio-emitting lobes (shown as orange in this optical/radio composite) extend nearly a million light-years from the galaxy. Credit: Capella Observatory (optical), with radio data from Ilana Feain, Tim Cornwell, and Ron Ekers (CSIRO/ATNF), R. Morganti (ASTRON), and N. Junkes (MPIfR). Right: The radio image from the TANAMI project provides the sharpest-ever view of a supermassive black hole's jets. This view reveals the inner 4.16 light-years of the jet and counterjet, a span less than the distance between our sun and the nearest star. The image resolves details as small as 15 light-days across. Undetected between the jets is the galaxy's 55-million-solar-mass black hole. Credit: Credit: NASA/TANAMI/Müller et al.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Multiverse = Many Worlds, Say Physicists.



> *Two of the most bizarre ideas in modern physics are different sides of the same coin, say string theorists*
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> The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is the idea that all possible alternate histories of the universe actually exist. At every point in time, the universe splits into a multitude of existences in which every possible outcome of each quantum process actually happens.
> ...
> The reason many physicists love the many worlds idea is that it explains away all the strange paradoxes of quantum mechanics.
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> Multiverse Intrepretation of Quantum Mechanics: Construction of a global spacetime from decoherent causal diamond histories.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Hubble views the star that changed the universe.



> *Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.*
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> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been trained on a single variable star that in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. V1 is a special class of pulsating star called a Cepheid variable that can be used to make reliable measurements of large cosmic distances. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Single molecule performs multiple logic operations simultaneously.



> *While molecules have already been used to perform individual logic operations, scientists have now shown that a single molecule can perform 13 logic operations, some of them in parallel. The molecule, which consists of three chromophores, is operated by different wavelengths of light. The scientists predict that this system, with its unprecedented level of complexity, could serve as a building block of molecular computing, in which molecules rather than electrons are used for processing and manipulating information.*
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> (Left) The structure of the FG-DTE molecule, which is made of three photochromes that can switch between two different states when irradiated with light of different wavelengths. (Right) A checklist of some of the features of the all-photonic molecular logic device. Image credit: Joakim Andréasson, et al. ©2011 American Chemical Society.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Just four percent of galaxies have neighbors like the Milky Way (w/Video: 1:46).



> *How unique is the Milky Way? To find out, a group of researchers led by Stanford University astrophysicist Risa Wechsler compared the Milky Way to similar galaxies and found that just four percent are like the galaxy Earth calls home.*
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> This image, taken from a visualization created by the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), shows the formation of the Milky Way galaxy at 16 million to 13.7 billion years old. Brian O'Shea of Michigan State University (formerly of Los Alamos National Laboratory) and Michael Norman of the University of California at San Diego collaborated on this research. Credit: National Center for Supercomputing Applications


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Universe's not-so-missing mass.



> *Monash University student finds Universe's missing mass*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA Names Spacecraft for Deep Space Missions.



> *Amid uncertainty over its future, the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle gives NASA some direction.*
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> MPCV being tested and assembled at Lockheed Martin's facility in Colorado. Credit: Lockheed Martin
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> A cutaway view of the MPCV. Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How to learn a star's true age.



> *For many movie stars, their age is a well-kept secret. In space, the same is true of the actual stars. Like our Sun, most stars look almost the same for most of their lives. So how can we tell if a star is one billion or 10 billion years old? Astronomers may have found a solution - measuring the star's spin.*
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> Using the unique capabilities of NASA's Kepler space telescope, Soren Meibom (CfA) and his collaborators measured the rotation rates for stars in a 1-billion-year-old cluster called NGC 6811. They found rotation periods ranging from 1 to 11 days (with hotter, more massive stars spinning faster), compared to the 30-day spin rate of our Sun. More importantly, they found a strong relationship between stellar mass and rotation rate, with little scatter. This result confirms that gyrochronology is a promising new method to learn the ages of isolated stars. Credit: Anthony Ayiomamitis


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA hangs up on silent Mars rover Spirit (Update).



> *Shortly after midnight, NASA sent one last plea to the rover Spirit, mired in a sand trap on the surface of Mars.*
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> In this Jan. 28, 2004 photo provided by NASA/JPL of a photo shot by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. NASA is ending efforts to revive the sand-trapped rover Spirit, which has been silent for more than a year. Project manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the last commands will be sent up Wednesday, May 25. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL,File)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New insights into DNA under the influence of strong forces.



> *Researchers in biophysics, including members from the Niels Bohr Institute, have discovered new properties of DNA and observed a number of phenomena of great importance for cellular mechanisms. By studying how DNA behaves under the influence of a force they have discovered that DNA melts and that the melting bubbles depend on the sequence of the base pairs in the DNA strand. These discoveries are brand new and contrary to what was previously believed, but the discoveries are based on very reliable and precise measurements. The results have just been published in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature Physics.*
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> The figure shows a double-stranded DNA molecule, which is held suspended between to optical tweezers. When the tweezers pull at the molecule it will first stretch, twist and finally melt into 'bubbles'.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Electrons Are Near-Perfect Spheres.



> *A 10-year study has revealed that the electron is very spherical indeed.
> 
> To be precise, the electron differs from being perfectly round by less than 0.000000000000000000000000001 cm. To put that in context; if an electron was the size of the solar system, it would be out from being perfectly round by less than the width of a human hair.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Farthest-ever explosion found at edge of cosmos?.



> *A group of researchers claim they've found the most distant explosion ever detected, a pulse of high energy radiation sent by a disintegrating star near the very edge of the observable universe.
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> The stellar blast was first spotted by a NASA satellite in April 2009, but researchers announced Wednesday that they have since gathered data placing it more than 13 billion light years away - meaning that the event took place when the universe was still in its infancy.
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> Andrew Levan, one of the scientists behind the discovery, said this blast from the past blew open a window onto the universe's early years, showing that massive stars were already dying within the first few hundred million years of the birth of the universe.
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> This particular explosion wasn't a supernova but a gamma ray burst, the name given to a short but powerful pulse of high energy radiation. Such bursts, thought to result from the collapse of massive stars into black holes, shoot jets of energy across the universe.
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> Charles Meegan, a researcher in gamma ray astronomy, said that a typical burst "puts out in a few seconds the same energy expended the sun in its whole 10 billion year life span."*
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> This undated handout picture released by Warwick University on Thursday May 26, 2011 which shows the corner of sky where a team of astronomers say they found the most distant explosion ever detected. The little red dot at the center is the gamma ray burst, estimated by the researchers to be more than 13 billion light years away. (AP Photo/Levan/Tanvir/Cucchiara/Warwick University , Ho)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First Observation of the Dynamical Casimir Effect.



> *A rapidly moving mirror that turns virtual photons into real ones is the first experimental evidence of the dynamical Casimir effect.*
> 
> One of the most surprising predictions of modern quantum theory is that the vacuum of space is not empty. In fact, quantum theory predicts that it teems with virtual particles flitting in and out of existence. While initially a curiosity, it was quickly realized that these vacuum fluctuations had measurable consequences, for instance producing the Lamb shift of atomic spectra and modifying the magnetic moment for the electron. This type of renormalization due to vacuum fluctuations is now central to our understanding of nature. However, these effects provide indirect evidence for the existence of vacuum fluctuations. From early on, it was discussed if it might instead be possible to more directly observe the virtual particles that compose the quantum vacuum. 40 years ago, Moore suggested that a mirror undergoing relativistic motion could convert virtual photons into directly observable real photons. This effect was later named the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE). Using a superconducting circuit, we have observed the DCE for the first time. The circuit consists of a coplanar transmission line with an electrical length that can be changed at a few percent of the speed of light. The length is changed by modulating the inductance of a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) at high frequencies (~11 GHz). In addition to observing the creation of real photons, we observe two-mode squeezing of the emitted radiation, which is a signature of the quantum character of the generation process.
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> Dynamical Casimir: a) Optical micrograph of the device. Light parts are Al while dark parts are the Si substrate. The output line is labeled "CPW" and the drive line enters from the top. Both lines converge near the SQUID. b) A scanning-electron micrograph of the SQUID. The SQUID has a normal state resistance of 218 Ω implying a Josephson inductance at zero field of LJ (0) = 0.23 nH. c) A simplified schematic of the measurement setup. In addition to the driving line, a small external coil is used to apply a dc flux bias. The driving line has 36 dB of cold attenuation along with an 8.4 to 12 GHz bandpass filter. The filter ensures that no thermal radiation couples to the transmission line in the frequency region were we expect DCE radiation. The outgoing field of the CPW is coupled through two circulators to a cryogenic HEMT amplifier (LNA) with a system noise temperature of TN ∼ 6 K. The signal is further amplified at room temperature before being captured by two vector RF digitizers which use heterodyne mixing followed by digitization of the intermediate frequency signal. d) Measured phase shift of a microwave probe signal reflected from the SQUID, as it is tuned with a static flux. The probe frequency is 6.18 GHz.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists explain the long, useful lifetime of carbon-14.



> *The long, slow decay of carbon-14 allows archaeologists to accurately date the relics of history back to 60,000 years.*
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> And now they say there are more puzzles to solve:
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> "Everybody now knows about these three-nucleon forces," Vary said. "But what about four-nucleon forces? This does open the door for more study."
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> Iowa State University physicists, left to right, Pieter Maris and James Vary have used supercomputing power to solve the puzzle of the long, slow decay of carbon-14. That long half-life makes carbon-14 a useful tool to determine the ages of skeletons and other artifacts. Credit: Photo by Bob Elbert/Iowa State University


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

WISE mission offers a taste of galaxies to come.



> *An assorted mix of colorful galaxies is being released today by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission, or WISE. The nine galaxies are a taste of what's to come. The mission plans to release similar images for the 1,000 largest galaxies that appear in our sky, and possibly more.*
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> A new, colorful collection of galaxy specimens has been released by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, mission. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Parts of moon interior contains as much water as Earth's upper mantle.



> *Parts of the moon's interior contains as much water as the upper mantle of the Earth - 100 times more of the precious liquid than measured before - research from Case Western Reserve University, Carnegie Institution for Science, and Brown University shows.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA scientists on the trail of mystery molecules.



> *Space scientists working to solve one cosmic mystery at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., now have the capability to better understand unidentified matter in deep space. Using a new facility so sensitive that it can recognize the molecular structure of particles in space, researchers now are able to track unidentified matter seen for the last century absorbing certain wavelengths of light from distant stars.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Is it possible we've found the first white hole?.



> *White holes are the opposite of black holes, objects into which nothing can enter but are constantly spewing out matter. They were thought to be completely hypothetical, more a mathematical oddity than a real thing...but we may have seen one*
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> Mysterious cosmic explosion might be the first ever proof of white holes (aka Small Bangs)


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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Chameleon magnets: ability to switch magnets 'on' or 'off' could revolutionize computing.



> *What causes a magnet to be a magnet, and how can we control a magnet's behavior? These are the questions that University at Buffalo researcher Igor Zutic, a theoretical physicist, has been exploring over many years.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientist instils new hope of detecting gravitational waves.



> *Direct evidence of the existence of gravitational waves is something that has long eluded researchers, however new research has suggested that adding just one of the proposed detectors in Japan, Australia and India will drastically increase the expected rate of detection.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Bring in the (nano) noise.



> *At the forefront of nanotechnology, researchers design miniature machines to do big jobs, from treating diseases to harnessing sunlight for energy. But as they push the limits of this technology, devices are becoming so small and sensitive that the behavior of individual atoms starts to get in the way. Now Caltech researchers have, for the first time, measured and characterized these atomic fluctuations-which cause statistical noise-in a nanoscale device.*
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> Left: an illustration of the nozzle spraying diffuse xenon gas onto the device. Middle: a close-up image of the bridgelike resonator. Right: an illustration of the atoms sticking, unsticking, and sliding off the device surface. Credit: Philip Feng. Modified image reprinted with permsision from Nano Lett., 2011, 11 (4), pp. 1753-1759. Copyright 2011 American Chemical Society.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

"Black Holes are the Engines that Create New Universes" (Today's Most Popular).



> *"Our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe." In a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time, Nikodem Poplawski, a physicist at Indiana University, suggests that a small change to the theory of gravity implies that our Universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Shock wave from trombone filmed (w/short Video).



> *Shock waves emanating from a trombone have been caught on video for the first time, researchers say.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New synchrotron X-ray technique could see hidden building blocks of life.



> *Scientists from Finland and France have developed a new synchrotron X-ray technique that may revolutionize the chemical analysis of rare materials like meteoric rock samples or fossils. The results have been published on 29 May 2011 in Nature Materials as an advance online publication.*
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> The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is located in Grenoble, France. The experiments were performed using beams of X-rays provided by one of the world's most brilliant light sources. Credit: ESRF


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The longest cell in the history of life.



> *One of my favorite "proofs" of evolution is the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN)-the nerve that innervates the larynx from the brain, helping us speak and swallow. It takes a very circuitous course, looping from the brainstem down around the aorta and then back up to the larynx.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Why it is not recommended to take medications with grapefruit juice?.

-- Tom


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## ekim68

Space station ranks as an engineering marvel



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Spacewalking astronauts wound up 12 years of International Space Station assembly this past week, putting the finishing touches on a legitimate contender for the greatest engineering achievement of all time.
> 
> The Apollo moon landings, the Panama Canal, the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Giza all rank among the top engineering endeavors in human history.
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> But many think the $100 billion space station -a project involving 100,000 people in 15 nations on three continents - deserves consideration, too.


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## lotuseclat79

'Dead' galaxies are not so dead after all.



> *University of Michigan astronomers examined old galaxies and were surprised to discover that they are still making new stars. The results provide insights into how galaxies evolve with time.*
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> Individual young stars and star clusters in the 'dead' elliptical galaxy, Messier 105, detected using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Messier 105 can be seen in the top, left corner, in an image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; Data Release 8). The outlined region in the center of Messier 105 is expanded to reveal Hubble's unique view of the inner region of Messier 105, which is further expanded to unveil several individual young stars and star clusters (denoted by dashed circles; top, right). These signposts of recent star formation are unexpected in old, 'dead' galaxies. Data from HST's WFC3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) were used in the creation of these HST images."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

James Webb space telescope ISIM on 'spin cycle' (w/Video).



> *Prior to taking a new telescope into space, engineers must put the spacecraft and its instruments through a "spin cycle" test for durability to ensure they'll still work after experiencing the forces of a rocket launch. Finding out they don't work once they're in orbit is too late. The structure that houses the science instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope is undergoing that cycle of tests during the weeks of May 23 and 30 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. This structure is called the Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM.*
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> In this photograph the ISIM structure is in the process of being loaded onto the centrifuge at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Credit: NASA/Katie Lilly
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> During the testing process, as the ISIM structure is being spun and shaken, engineers take measurements to compare with their computer models. If there are discrepancies, the engineers hunt for the reasons so they can address them. The huge centrifuge will spin at speeds close to 11 rpm, exposing the ISIM structure to about 10 times the force of gravity.
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> The centrifuge in action, carrying the Webb telescope's ISIM structure. Credit: NASA/Maggie Masetti


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Science, truth, and language: Communicating with non-science and public audiences.



> *How many times do we hear that some scientific view is "only theory" or that it is "not proven"? The hidden implication is that if we have not "proven" the case, then we do not know anything for certain about it, and any idea is as good as any other. A recent and vivid example of this problem is the ongoing argument in the popular media about global warming. Do we need to be absolutely certain before we take action?*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Evolution: Life on Earth is one Big Extended Family.










-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA looks for antimatter. It's not just some sci-fi idea?.



> *Astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour recently attached the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS, to the International Space Station. It will attempt to detect the presence of antimatter in outer space. Since the device has the potential to change the way we think about the universe, this is a good time to brush up on what, exactly, antimatter is.*
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> Scientists hope to use the newly installed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, visible at the center of the International Space Station's starboard truss, to detect the presence of antimatter in outer space. AFP/GETTY IMAGES


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Evidence for a new particle gets stronger.



> *It may have been a holiday weekend in the US and UK, but physics never takes the day off. A conference entitled Particle Physics and Cosmology took place in France, and featured a talk by Giovanni Punzi, a member of Fermilab's CDF collaboration. Although the talk primarily focused on the search for the Higgs boson at Fermi and CERN, he managed to slip in five slides on a result we discussed just a month ago: the prospect that the Tevatron has spotted a previously unknown particle with a mass of 150GeV. The slide makes clear that the CDF detector team has continued crunching its way through its data, and the case for a new particle has gotten stronger.*
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> The peak in the Tevatron data that hints at a new particle. Fermilab
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> Standard model (particle physics).
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> *The standard model of particle physics dictates that the world is made up of sixteen types of particles divided into two types: fermions and bosons. The way these particles behave with each other shows that there are four possible kinds of interactions: electromagnetic, strong, weak, and gravitational.*
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> ...
Click to expand...

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Finally, a real scientific controversy: arsenic in DNA.



> *We spend so much time discussing manufactured controversies about science that it's a bit refreshing to be able to report on a real one. And one has been brewing since late last year, when Science released a report that suggested that researchers had forced bacteria to evolve to the point where they no longer simply tolerated arsenic, but incorporated it into their DNA. The publication quickly attracted criticism on a few blogs that were written by scientists, leading mainstream reporters to dig into matters. Now, the scientific community is having its say in the pages of Science, with eight separate technical comments on the work.*
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> In any case, the authors have announced they'll mail out the bacteria to anybody who wants to independently check their work. For a case like this, where the claims in a paper are truly radical, getting more of the scientific community involved and letting them reach a consensus is the obvious route to clarity.


-- Tom


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## franca

The end of Endeavour:


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## lotuseclat79

Faint Young Sun Paradox Not Solved, Says NASA.



> *Last year, scientists claimed to have solved the faint young Sun paradox. They were wrong. Now the paradox is back and more puzzling than ever.*
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> Liquid water has flowed on Earth for some 3.8 billion years, since not long after the planet formed. The evidence comes from rocks that date from that period which seem to have formed under the action of water.
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> But this presents palaeontologists and geologists with a problem. At that time, the Sun was some 30 per cent dimmer than it is today and would not have provided enough heat to keep water liquid on the surface.
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> This is known as the faint young Sun paradox and it has puzzled scientists since the 1970s when astronomers first pointed it out.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First Observation Of 8 Entangled Photons Smashes Entanglement Record.



> *An 8-photon "Schrodinger's Cat" is among the first of the new quantum objects that the breakthrough makes possible, say physicists*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Discovery opens the door to electricity from microbes.



> *Using bacteria to generate energy is a signifiant step closer following a breakthrough discovery by scientists from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Jaw-Dropping Similarity Found in Whales and Pelicans.



> *One of the more surprising features of nature is the ability of two unrelated animals to independently evolve extremely similar body parts. In a new study, scientists demonstrate that rorqual whales - whose members include the largest animal on Earth, the blue whale - have come to share very similar feeding mechanisms and jaw structures with pelicans, despite clearly independent pathways of evolution.*
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> Action shots of engulfment feeding in a Bryde's whale (A) and a Brown Pelican (B).
> CREDIT: whale: Doug Perrine (www.seapics.com); pelican: Schreiber et al. (1975)/The Auk/The American Ornithologists' Union.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Long live the qubit!.



> *A quantum computer is a device -- still largely theoretical -- that could perform some types of calculations much more rapidly than classical computers. While a bit in a classical computer can represent either 0 or 1, a quantum bit, or qubit, can be in "superposition," representing 0 and 1 at the same time. In experiments, however, keeping qubits in superposition long enough to do anything useful with them has proven very hard.*
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> A superconducting circuit (small square, center) fits snugly into a housing that enables it to receive electrical signals inside a cooling tank. Credit: Melanie Gonick


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Non-independent mutations present new path to evolutionary success.



> *Mutations of DNA that lead to one base being replaced by another don't have to happen as single, independent events in humans and other eukaryotes, a group of Indiana University Bloomington biologists has learned after surveying several creatures' genomes.*
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> If mutations only happened one-at-a-time, three separate mutation events would be required to convert ACT to GGA (top). Multi-nucleotide mutation, facilitated by error-prone polymerases, can allow for 2 to 9 simultaneous mutations, opening up whole new considerations for protein evolution. Credit: Image by Dan Schrider


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Revamped college science course improves student performance -- in spite of cuts.



> *Students overall performed better - and educationally disadvantaged students generally made even greater strides than everyone else - in an introductory biology course at a university where recent budget woes doubled class sizes for the course, cut lab times and reduced the number of graduate teaching assistants.*
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> The keys to success are instructors who guide learning rather than lecture, and who structure courses so students are more likely to come to class having read assignments and where they undergo intensive practice to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills.
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> "We show that a highly structured course design, based on daily and weekly practice with problem solving, data analysis and other higher-order cognitive skills, improved the performance of all students in a college-level introductory biology class and reduced the achievement gap between disadvantaged and nondisadvantaged students - without increased expenditures,"


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum physics first: Researchers observe single photons in two-slit interferometer experiment.



> *Quantum mechanics is famous for saying that a tree falling in a forest when there's no one there doesn't make a sound. Quantum mechanics also says that if anyone is listening, it interferes with and changes the tree. And so the famous paradox: how can we know reality if we cannot measure it without distorting it?*


Related article: Quantum mechanics rule 'bent' in classic experiment.



> *Researchers have bent one of the most basic rules of quantum mechanics, a counterintuitive branch of physics that deals with atomic-scale interactions.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists calculate how to make atomic clocks super-accurate.



> *When it comes to atomic clocks, every second counts. In fact, according to Marianna Safronova, every quintillionth of a second counts.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Measuring evolution's waistline.



> *Nearly 150 years ago, noted German biologist Ernst Haeckel made the bold assertion that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny': in other words, morphological changes that occur during an organism's embryonic development mirror its evolutionary history.*
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> Figure 1: The funnel-like model (left) and the hourglass model (right) are two competing theories that explain how developmental processes are conserved during evolution. In the funnel-like model, conservation occurs at the earliest embryonic stage (bottom) but in the hourglass model it occurs during the middle. Credit: 2011 Naoki Irie and Shigeru Kuratani


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Opportunity Surpasses 30 KM Driving and Snaps Skylab Crater in 3 D



> With her most recent drive of 482 feet (146.8 meters) on June 1, 2011 (Sol 2614), NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover has zoomed past the unimaginable 30 kilometer (18,64 miles) mark in total odometry since safely landing on Mars nearly seven and one half years ago on Jan 24, 2004. *That's 50 times beyond the roughly quarter mile of roving distance initially forseen.*


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## lotuseclat79

"Will Life Beyond Earth Have DNA Roots?" World's Leading Authorities Say "Maybe Not".



> *"To the best of our knowledge, the twenty-one original chemicals chosen by known life do not constitute a unique set; other choices could have been made, and maybe were made if life started elsewhere many times."*
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> A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality. DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids - the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can.
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> it seems that physics can assemble the organic jigsaw all by itself, thank you very much, and has probably done so throughout space since the beginning of everything.
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> The study indicates that you don't need a miracle to arrive at the chemical cocktail for early life, just a decently large asteroid with the right components. That's all.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers Map, Measure Brain's Neural Connections.



> *Computer scientists at Brown University have created software to examine neural circuitry in the human brain. The 2-D neural maps combine visual clarity with a Web-based digital map interface, and users can view 2-D maps together with 3-D images. The program aims to better understand myelinated axons, which have been linked to pathologies such as autism.*
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> Two-dimensional brain Researchers at Brown University have created a computer program to advance analysis of the neural connections in the human brain. The program's special features include a linked view for users to view both the 3-D image (top) and 2-D closeups of the neural bundles. (Credit: Radu Jianu/Brown University)


-- Tom


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## franca

Shuttle Remembered:


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## lotuseclat79

Do Matter And Antimatter Obey The Same Laws Of Physics?.



> *The creation, trapping and storage of antihydrogen atoms for up to 1,000 seconds not only represents the longest time period so far that antihydrogen has been captured, but it also brings us closer to answering the question, do matter and antimatter obey the same laws of physics?*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Two New Elements Join the Periodic Table.



> *On Wednesday, two new elements were officially welcomed to the periodic table.
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> The newcomers are elements 114 and 116, and they've just passed a three-year deliberation by the Joint Working Party on Discovery of Elements, a team of chemists and other scientists who sort through the evidence behind claims of newly discovered elements. These two don't have official names yet, and for now they are going by the placeholders ununquadium and ununhexium, which refer to the number of protons in their nuclei.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Four Ways Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out Dark Matter and Dark Energy.



> *Ninety-six percent of the universe is unknown to humans-scientists can see the effects of dark matter and dark energy, but not directly detect either one. Last night at the World Science Festival in New York, some of the most interesting minds studying these puzzling phenomena gathered to discuss how they're trying to get a handle on the vast majority of the universe that's invisible to the naked eye.*


Hopefully, they now know about the exciting new discovery of missing mass. See Post# 1174 in this thread: Universe's not-so-missing mass.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

If A Primordial Black Hole Hits The Sun....



> *...we should be able to see the oscillations generated by the collision, say astrophysicists*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

CERN physicists trap antihydrogen atoms for more than 16 minutes (w/ video) (2:20).



> *Trapping antihydrogen atoms at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has become so routine that physicists are confident that they can soon begin experiments on this rare antimatter equivalent of the hydrogen atom, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.*
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> This is an artistic representation of the ALPHA neutral antimatter trap, suggesting the nature of the ALPHA apparatus as a container for antihydrogen. Credit: Chukman So, copyright © 2011 Wurtele Research Group. All rights reserved.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows.



> *Do the principles of quantum mechanics apply to biological systems? Until now, says Prof. Ron Naaman of the Institute's Chemical Physics Department (Faculty of Chemistry), both biologists and physicists have considered quantum systems and biological molecules to be like apples and oranges. But research he conducted together with scientists in Germany, which appeared recently in Science, shows that a biological molecule -- DNA -- can discern between quantum states known as spin.*
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> New research shows that a biological molecule -- DNA -- can discern between quantum states known as spin. (Credit: © Rodolfo Clix / Fotolia)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Radio Telescope Array To Reveal Cosmic Magnetic Fields.



> *An upgrade to one of the world's great radio telescope arrays is set to transform our view of the radio frequency universe*
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> One of the great work-horses of modern astronomy is the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, a Y-shaped network of 27 radio telescopes, each one with a diameter of 25 metres.
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> Since it was built in the 1970s, the VLA has helped to transform our view of the universe. The array has created radio frequency images of everything from the Sun and planets to quasers, pulsars and supernova remnants.
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> Very Large Array in New Mexico, USA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Nothing, not anything and zero.



> *Space and time are inextricably linked, which is why astrophysicists speak of them in the same breath.*
> 
> A thing, Gilmore stresses, is also defined by the space it occupies. "By saying there is 'nothing here', I am saying that there is still a space and time here, even though there is nothing," he explained. So "nothing" is not the same as "not anything". "Not anything" only happens when you take the space and time away. "Once you get your head round that little distinction, you're away," Gilmore added.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers create light from 'almost nothing'.



> *A group of physicists working out of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, have succeeded in proving what was until now, just theory; and that is, that visible photons could be produced from the virtual particles that have been thought to exist in a quantum vacuum. In a paper published on arXiv, the team describes how they used a specially created circuit called a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to modulate a bit of wire length at a roughly five percent of the speed of light, to produce visible "sparks" from the nothingness of a vacuum.*
> 
> The experiment shows that the Casimir effect is not just theory; named after Dutch physicist Hendrik B. G. Casimir who along with Dirk Polderfirst first proposed back in the late 1940's, the idea of a force that existed in a vacuum; a force that should, if manipulated just right between two plates, or mirrors, result in the creation of photons.
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> a) Optical micrograph of the device. Light parts are Al while dark parts are the Si substrate. The output line is labeled "CPW" and the drive line enters from the top. Both lines converge near the SQUID. b) A scanning-electron micrograph of the SQUID. Image credit: arXiv:1105.4714v1


Read the previous post if you are confused about producing something from nothing and what it means.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA sees the sun having a solar blast (w/ video).



> *The Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare, an S1-class (minor) radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) on June 7, 2011 from sunspot complex 1226-1227. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface.*
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> The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed the flare's peak at 1:41a.m. ET (0641 UT). SDO recorded these images (above) in extreme ultraviolet light that show a very large eruption of cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material -- at temperatures less than 80,000 K.
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> When viewed in Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) coronagraphs (right), the event shows bright plasma and high-energy particles roaring from the Sun. This not-squarely Earth-directed CME is moving at 1400 km/s according to NASA models.
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> This is a Coronal Mass Ejection as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 7, 2011. Credit: Credit: NASA/SDO


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Reaching for the stars: It's alive out there! Scientists seek out the evidence.



> *All around the world - from the deep gold mines of South Africa to the far-seeing telescopes in Chile's Atacama Desert, from the frigid glaciers of Antarctica to the halls of the world's best universities and research institutions - scientists are on a quest unlike anything we've seen before. Tens of thousands of researchers are involved in the effort, one which three years of reporting has convinced me will be - or certainly could be - the big idea of our era.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New class of stellar explosions discovered.



> *They're bright and blue-and a bit strange. They're a new type of stellar explosion that was recently discovered by a team of astronomers led by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Among the most luminous in the cosmos, these new kinds of supernovae could help researchers better understand star formation, distant galaxies, and what the early universe might have been like.*
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> The 1.2-meter Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory that was used to discover four supernovae of a new class. Inset: one of the newly discovered supernovae, PTF09cnd. Credit: Caltech/Scott Kardel/Robert Quimby/modified from Nature


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers discover 'superatoms' with magnetic shells.



> *A team of Virginia Commonwealth University scientists has discovered a new class of 'superatoms' - a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table - with unusual magnetic characteristics.*
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> A proposed assembly of FeMg8 magnetic superatoms where the directions of magnetic moment is indicated by arrows. Image courtesy of Victor Medel/VCU.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Fossils from the Yukon reveal protective plates for microscopic organisms.



> *In summer 2007, two geologists armed with rock hammers and a shotgun hiked through the Yukon, looking for fossils. For two weeks, Phoebe Cohen, a postdoc in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and Francis Macdonald, an assistant professor of geology at Harvard University, set up camp along the Alaska-Canada border in a remote mountain range accessible only via helicopter.*
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> An image of the microfossil Characodictyon taken with a scanning electron microscope.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A brief introduction to infinity.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists hit on mathematical description of superfluid dynamics.



> *It has been 100 years since the discovery of superconductivity, a state achieved when mercury was cooled, with the help of liquid helium, to nearly the coldest temperature achievable to form a superfluid that provides no resistance to electrons as they flow through it.*
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> A 2001 photo from the space shuttle shows a phenomenon called von Karman vortices in clouds downwind from Rashiri Island in the northern Sea of Japan. The vortices are similar to those that form in superfluids. (NASA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Meteorite holds clues to organic chemistry of the early Earth: study.



> *Carbonaceous chondrites are a type of organic-rich meteorite that contain samples of the materials that took part in the creation of our planets nearly 4.6 billion years ago, including materials that were likely formed before our solar system was created and may have been crucial to the formation of life on Earth. The complex suite of organic materials found in carbonaceous chondrites can vary substantially from meteorite to meteorite. New research from Carnegie's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and Geophysical Laboratory, published June 10 in Science, shows that most of these variations are the result of hydrothermal activity that took place within a few million years of the formation of the solar system, when the meteorites were still part of larger parent bodies, likely asteroids.*
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> This is one of the Tagish Lake meteorite fragments. Credit: Michael Holly, Creative Services, University of Alberta.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Centuries-old math formula helps map galaxy clusters.



> *Across the universe, galaxies band together in clusters so huge it can take 10 million years for light to travel from one end of a galaxy cluster to the other. Probing these metropolises is no easy task. But Assistant Professor of Astronomy Andisheh Mahdavi has found a centuries-old math formula that could help scientists map the shape and size of galaxy clusters.*
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> A galaxy cluster called The Bullet Cluster with hot gas shown in pink, dark matter shown in blue and individual galaxies shown in orange and white. Credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.; NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.; NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A big surprise from the edge of the solar system: magnetic bubbles (w/ video) (Video: 2.44).



> *NASA's Voyager probes are truly going where no one has gone before. Gliding silently toward the stars, 9 billion miles from Earth, they are beaming back news from the most distant, unexplored reaches of the solar system.*
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> Old and new views of the heliosheath. Red and blue spirals are the gracefully curving magnetic field lines of orthodox models. New data from Voyager add a magnetic froth (inset) to the mix. Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The pirouette effect in the chaos of turbulence.



> *The quick mixing of coffee and milk after stirring or the formation of raindrops in clouds: these are just two of many phenomena in which turbulent flows play a decisive role. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon have now discovered that the seemingly random turbulent flows actually have an astonishingly uniform structure. According to the findings, vortices are a basic ingredient of turbulent flows and they behave similarly to an ice-skater performing a pirouette - a technique whereby the skater bends his or her arms to increase the speed of rotation. The researchers monitored this pirouette effect in vortices of various sizes in a turbulent liquid. In doing so, they unravelled a mystery that has confounded turbulence researchers for decades - namely the question of how energy flows from large to ever-smaller vortices, and how it is ultimately converted to heat in the smallest vortices.*
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> Sight set on turbulences: Physicists of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization used several cameras to observe particles which are whirled around in a turbulent water flow and illuminated by a very bright laser. Analysing the motion of four particles, the researchers could observe that the local alignment of turbulent rotation conserves angular momentum, similar to an ice-skater performing a pirouette. Credit: Eberhard Bodenschatz/Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Better insulation makes phase-change memory work faster, more efficiently.



> *The perfect data storage solution should offer fast access to data, maintain data in the absence of external power, and be able to withstand large numbers of read-write cycles. Phase-change random access memory (PCRAM), a type of non-volatile memory that uses the amorphous and crystalline states of phase-change materials for encoding data, can satisfy all of these criteria. Unfortunately, PCRAM also tends to have impractically high power requirements that have impeded its application in many devices. Desmond Loke and co-workers at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute have now demonstrated a technology that could help reduce the power requirements of PCRAM.*
> 
> A schematic illustration of a phase-change memory element incorporating a superlattice-like dielectric.


-- Tom


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## Cookiegal

Tom,

Please be mindful of the forum and thread flooding rule.



> *Forum Flooding* - (Applies only to Community Forums, not to technical forums.) While we do not want to discourage members from participating in discussions, to be fair to all members *we must limit the number of new threads and posts created by the same member *to prevent "forum flooding." As a rule of thumb, you should strive to limit starting new threads on average to no more than 3 or 4 new threads per week. *You should also try to avoid replying excessively to the same thread when no other member is participating in the discussion*. We will enforce the "spirit" rather than the "letter" of the rule. As an example, you may want to post 6 good threads in a week and only one or two the next week. Please be considerate of other members when deciding to start a new thread. Do a search of threads that already existchances are you will find one that covers your "new" topic.


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## lotuseclat79

"Molecular Machines" -- Proof of Evolution at Cellular Level.



> *An international team of biochemists have discovered evidence at the molecular level in support of one of the key tenets of Darwin's theory of evolution that provides a blueprint for a general understanding of the evolution of the "machinery" of our cells. *
> 
> "Our research shows that these machines although complete and complex, were a result of evolution. Simple ''core'' machines were established in the first eukaryotes by drawing on pre-existing proteins that had previously provided distinct, simplistic functions" -proof that Darwin's theory of evolution is valid at the molecular level, Professor Lithgow added refuting non-Darwinian explanations of Intelligent Design that propose that these complex machines to be so "irreducibly complex" that they must have been designed by an intelligent entity.
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> "Our cells, and the cells of all organisms, are composed of molecular machines. These machines are built of component parts, each of which contributes a partial function or structural element to the machine. How such sophisticated, multi-component machines could evolve has been somewhat mysterious, and highly controversial."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Making Sense of a Visible Quantum Object (Video: 7:52).



> *Physicists are used to the idea that subatomic particles behave according to the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics. In a breakthrough experiment, Aaron O'Connell has blurred that distinction by creating an object that is visible to the unaided eye, but provably in two places at the same time.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

DZero weighs in on unexpected CDF result.

Essentially, this is a setback in the effort to discover the Higgs-Boson (aka The God Particle hypothesized to give mass to all other particles).

-- Tom


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## ekim68

Asteroid Served Up "Custom Orders" of Life's Ingredients



> Some asteroids may have been like "molecular factories" cranking out life's ingredients and shipping them to Earth via meteorite impacts, according to scientists who've made discoveries of molecules essential for life in material from certain kinds of asteroids and comets. Now it appears that at least one may have been less like a rigid assembly line and more like a flexible diner that doesn't mind making changes to the menu.
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> In January, 2000, a large meteoroid exploded in the atmosphere over northern British Columbia, Canada, and rained fragments across the frozen surface of Tagish Lake. Because many people witnessed the fireball, pieces were collected within days and kept preserved in their frozen state. This ensured that there was very little contamination from terrestrial life.





> The Tagish Lake meteorites are rich in carbon and, like other meteorites of this type, the team discovered the fragments contained an assortment of organic matter including amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Proteins are used by life to build structures like hair and nails, and to speed up or regulate chemical reactions. What's new is that the team found different pieces had greatly differing amounts of amino acids.


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## lotuseclat79

Mathematics Reveals New Approach To The Perfect Putt.



> *A mathematical analysis of golf ball trajectories along a flat gradient reveals a new and simple strategy for judging the perfect putt*
> 
> With a creak of the knees, you bend a fraction closer to the ball. You identify the gradient of the green, size up the distance to the hole and estimate the length and grade of the grass. Following a couple of finely judged practice swings, you're ready to sink the perfectly judged putt.
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> That may be the time honoured way. But it turns out you've got it all wrong. According to Robert Grober, a physicist at Yale University in New Haven and a world expert on the science of golf, there's a much better way to line up a putt.
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> Grober's new insight comes from a simple mathematical analysis of the problem. To understand this insight, imagine a flat green with a small drop (ie at a small gradient to the horizontal. Now imagine a ball sitting a few feet from the hole on a line that is perpendicular to the fall.
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> Obviously, the place to aim for is slightly above the hole, so that the fall steers the ball to its target. And that's about as far as golfers have got with this problem. But Grober has gone further. He places other imaginary balls on an equidistant arc around the hole and then plots the targets to aim for for each one.
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> Now here's the the surprise: it turns out that each of these targets lies within a small diamond-shaped area just above the hole. And for longer putts against steeper gradients, the smaller and further away from the whole this diamond becomes.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Black holes there from the start in the Universe's first galaxies.



> *A letter published in Nature today announces the first observations of developing black holes in the early Universe. The discovery answers a long-standing question in astronomy: how early on were black holes forming, and what were the earliest ones like? The observations required a clever technique which stretched the capabilities of modern instruments.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists discover solar storms caused by giant 'magnetic rope'.



> *Storms release plasma across the solar system which can affect the Earth's telecommunication technologies in space.*
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> A giant "magnetic rope" made up of twisting magnetic field lines could produce the strong electric currents that trigger solar storms, a new study finds.
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> ROPING THE SUN: On the left, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the magnetic rope as the thick looped structure extending above the edge of the sun. On the right, SDO observes as the surrounding cool magnetic field lines are pushed away by the intruding magnetic rope seen on the left. Both images are taken almost simultaneously (within three seconds of each other). (Photo: NASA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers discover that galaxies are either asleep or awake.



> *Astronomers have probed into the distant universe and discovered that galaxies display one of two distinct behaviors: they are either awake or asleep, actively forming stars or are not forming any new stars at all.*
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> Bluer galaxies are actively "awake" and forming stars, while redder galaxies have shut down and are "asleep." (Image: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF team)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Is Dark Matter Rather Than Light a Basic for Organic Life?.



> *The NASA Hubble Space Telescope image above shows the distribution of dark matter in the center of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 1689, containing about 1,000 galaxies and trillions of stars. A new study suggests that mysterious, invisible dark matter could warm millions of starless planets in regions such as Abell 1689 and make them habitable.
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> Scientists think the invisible, as-yet-unidentified dark matter which we know exists because of the gravitational effects it has on galaxies, makes up about 85 percent of all matter in the universe.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Harvard-Smithsonian Confirms Black Hole after 40 Years; Proves Hawking Wrong.



> *According to an article in Physics World today, Stephen Hawking was officially proven wrong in his belief that a well known galactic mass, Cygnus X-1, was not a black hole.*
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> (Cygnus X-1 artist image courtesy of Martin Kornmesser, ESA/ECF)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Tau day: What tau sounds like (w/Video: 3:39).



> *If you missed Pi day, you're just in time to celebrate the day that honours its nemesis. Tau is the double of pi, corresponding to the date 6/28 or June 28, and to help mark the occasion, musician Michael Blake has created a musical interpretation of the constant (see video above). It maps tau, up to 126 decimal places, to musical notes. Earlier this year, Blake created a similar rendition for pi, that became popular online. Somehow, the melody of tau seems to be even more pleasing to the ear though.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Space News this Week: An ESA Spacecraft, New Moon Images, and Solar-Electric Propulsion.



> *A new European re-entry vehicle, unprecedented moon images, and a call for solar electric propulsion systems.*
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> ESA's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle. Credit: ESA
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> Now NASA is seeking proposals for mission concepts of solar electric propulsion systems. The systems use solar panels to generate electricity that gives a positive charge to atoms inside a chamber, which are pulled by magnetism towards the back of the spacecraft and pushed out. The stream of atoms going out of the spacecraft gives it the thrust it needs to move through space. (The agency tested an ion-propulsion system it developed in 2009 and expects it to launch in 2013.)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Jackson Pollock, artist and physicist?.



> *At a glance, a painting by Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956) can look deceptively accidental: just a quick flick of color on a canvas.*
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> Untitled, ca. 1948-49


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA Sets July 8 for Mandatory Space Shuttle Grand Finale.



> NASA officially set July 8 to launch Space Shuttle Atlantis on the Grand Finale of the shuttle program. This photo shows Atlantis at Launch Pad 39A prior to installation of the cargo into the payload bay. Blastoff of the STS-135 mission is scheduled for 11:26 a.m. EDT from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
> Credit: Ken Kremer


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Inkjet Printing Could Change the Face of Solar Energy Industry



> ScienceDaily (June 28, 2011) - Inkjet printers, a low-cost technology that in recent decades has revolutionized home and small office printing, may soon offer similar benefits for the future of solar energy.





> One of the most promising compounds and the focus of the current study is called chalcopyrite, or "CIGS" for the copper, indium, gallium and selenium elements of which it's composed. CIGS has extraordinary solar efficiency -- a layer of chalcopyrite one or two microns thick has the ability to capture the energy from photons about as efficiently as a 50-micron-thick layer made with silicon.


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## lotuseclat79

Rubik's cubes of any size can now be solved.



> *Only the most hardcore puzzle-solvers ever go beyond the standard 3x3x3 Rubik's cube, attempting much larger ones such as those pictured on the right. Now an algorithm has been developed that can solve a Rubik's cube of any size. It might offer clues to humans trying to deal with these tricky beasts.*
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> Every single one cracked (Image: Dominick Reuter)


Related article: The math of the Rubik's cube.



> *Last August, 30 years after the Rubik's cube first appeared, an international team of researchers proved that no matter how scrambled a cube got, it could be solved in no more than 20 moves. Although the researchers used some clever tricks to avoid evaluating all 43 quintillion of the cube's possible starting positions, their proof still relied on the equivalent of 35 years' worth of number crunching on a good modern computer.*
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> Erik Demaine's collection of Rubik's-cube-type puzzles includes cubes with five, six, and seven squares to a row, as well as one of the original cubes, signed by its inventor (close-up below).Photo: Dominick Reuter


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New Discoveries About the Early Galaxies of the Universe.



> *Astronomers have discovered that galaxies in the distant, early universe continuously ingested their star-making fuel over long periods of time. This goes against previous theories that the galaxies devoured their fuel in quick bursts after run-ins with other galaxies.*
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> "If you could visit a planet in one of these galaxies, the sky would be a crazy place, with tons of bright stars, and fairly frequent supernova explosions." Ranga-Ram Chary --NASA's Spitzer Science Center
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> Chary is the principal investigator of the research, appearing in the Aug. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. According to his findings, these grazing galaxies fed steadily over periods of hundreds of millions of years and created an unusual amount of plump stars, up to 100 times the mass of our sun.
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> "This is the first time that we have identified galaxies that supersized themselves by grazing," said Hyunjin Shim, also of the Spitzer Science Center and lead author of the paper. "They have many more massive stars than our Milky Way galaxy."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Antimatter Tevatron mystery gains ground.



> *US particle physicists are inching closer to determining why the Universe exists in its current form, made overwhelmingly of matter.*
> 
> Physics suggests equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been made in the Big Bang.
> Each of the fundamental particles known has an antimatter cousin, with identical properties but opposite electric charge.
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> When a particle encounters its antiparticle, they "annihilate" each other, disappearing in a high-energy flash of light.
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> The question remains: why did this not occur in the early Universe with the equal amounts of matter and antimatter, resulting in a Universe devoid of both?
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> The Dzero team is also part of a mystery about a potential new particle


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA's Final 4: Fate grants them farewell flight.



> *America's longest space-flying streak ends this week with the smallest crew in decades - three men and a woman who were in high school and college when the first space shuttle soared 30 years ago.*
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> In this Wednesday, June 22, 2011 file picture, the crew of space shuttle Atlantis, from left, mission specialist Rex Walhiem, mission specialist Sandy Magnus, pilot Doug Hurley and commander Chris Ferguson attend a news conference at Pad 39A during the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The launch of Atlantis, the final space shuttle mission, is scheduled for July 8. (AP Photo/John Raoux)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

US lawmakers vote to kill Hubble successor.



> *In a fresh blow to NASA's post-shuttle aspirations, key US lawmakers voted Thursday to kill off funding for the successor to the vastly successful space-gazing Hubble telescope.*
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> Artist impression of the James Webb telescope. Credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Watch the Final Shuttle Launch Live.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The universe may have been born spinning, according to new findings on the symmetry of the cosmos.



> *Physicists and astronomers have long believed that the universe has mirror symmetry, like a basketball. But recent findings from the University of Michigan suggest that the shape of the Big Bang might be more complicated than previously thought, and that the early universe spun on an axis.*
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> A new study found an excess of counter-clockwise rotating or "left-handed" spiral galaxies like this one, compared to their right-handed counterparts. This provides evidence that the universe does not have mirror symmetry. Credit: NASA, ESA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Supernovas Discovered to be the 'Creation-Machines' of the Cosmos.



> *"The Earth on which we stand is made almost entirely of material created inside a star. Now we have a direct measurement of how supernovae enrich space with the elements that condense into the dust that is needed for stars, planets and life."
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> --Margaret Meixner of the Space Telescope Science Institute*
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> The image compares two pictures of a supernova remnant called SN 1987A -- the left image was taken by the Herschel Space Observatory, and the right is an enlarged view of the circled region at left, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

lotuseclat79 said:


> US lawmakers vote to kill Hubble successor.
> 
> -- Tom


What We Could Lose if the James Webb Telescope Is Killed.



> *NASA's next space-based observatory is on the chopping block due to budget cuts. If it dies, a whole universe of discovery could die with it.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

The end of an era.....

Atlantis docks at space station



> The 11:07 a.m. ET docking followed a series of maneuvering rocket firings that raised the shuttle to the station's 240-mile altitude, and included a nine-minute inspection back flip by the spacecraft that allowed station cameras to view its underside for damage to its heat shield tiles.
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> "Atlantis, welcome to station for the final time," space station astronaut Ron Garun, as the docking was confirmed.
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> "It's great to be here station, we'll see you shortly," Ferguson replied. It was the 12th docking of Atlantis to the station and the 37th, and final docking, of a space shuttle there.


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## ekim68

Atlantis space shuttle



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The International Space Station got a year's worth of groceries in a giant shopping cart on Monday, courtesy of the astronauts on NASA's final shuttle flight.Astronauts Sandra Magnus and Douglas Hurley used the space station's hulking robot arm to hoist the bus-size container out of Atlantis' payload bay and attach it to the orbiting outpost.
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> The canister - 21 feet (6 1/2 meters) long and 15 feet (4 1/2 meters) across - is jammed with nearly 5 tons of household goods, enough to keep the 245-mile-high (395-kilometer-high) station and its inhabitants going for another year. Food alone accounted for more than 1 ton. Clothes also were stuffed inside the Italian-built cylinder, named Raffaello, as well as spare parts for the station.


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers Publish New Map of Galactic Habitable Zone.



> *The new map suggests that around 1.2 percent of all stars may have been capable of supporting complex life at some point in the history of the galaxy.*
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> Galactic habitable zone: Model 1 is plotted. Top Left panel: The number of planets that are habitable (tidally-locked and non-locked) as a function of radial distance and time. We trace the history of each habitable planet to determine in which periods they remainhabitable. It is clear, given the assumptions made in our model, that the number of habitable planets is greatest in the inner Galaxy, at all epochs. Top right panel: The fraction of stars with a habitable planet as a function of time and radial distance. We trace the history of each habitable planet to determine in which periods they remain habitable. Given the assumptions made in the model, the inner region of the Galaxy exhibits the highest probability of having habitable planets at the present day. At R∼5-11 kpc, at the present day, the entire range has roughly the same probability of having habitable planets. Lower Left panel: The number of habitable planets integrated over all epochs as a function of radial distance and height above the midplane. We predict that the position in the Galaxy with the greatest number of habitable planets is located in and around the midplane in the inner Galaxy. Lower Right panel: The fraction of habitable planets integrated over all epochs as a function of radial distance and height above the midplane. The region with the greatest fraction of habitable planets exists above the midplane in the inner Galaxy. The high metallicity that produces a high planet formation rate and the lower stellar density that exists well above the midplane at this radial position permits a greater fraction of habitable planets to form.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Watch Live: Final Spacewalk of Space Shuttle Program.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Galaxy sized twist in time pulls violating particles back into line.



> *University of Warwick physicist has produced a galaxy sized solution which explains one of the outstanding puzzles of particle physics, while leaving the door open to the related conundrum of why different amounts of matter and antimatter seem to have survived the birth of our Universe.*
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> Physicists would like a neat universe where the laws of physics are so universal that every particle and its antiparticle behave in the same way. However in recent years experimental observations of particles known as Kaons and B Mesons have revealed significant differences in how their matter and anti matter versions decay. This "Charge Parity violation" or "CP violation" is an awkward anomaly for some researchers but is a useful phenomenon for others as it may open up a way of explaining why more matter than anti matter appears to have survived the birth of our universe.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Confirmed! Dawn is Orbiting Asteroid Vesta



> Mission managers of NASA's Dawn asteroid probe had a long Saturday, waiting for news from the asteroid belt. Eventually they got the news they were hoping for: Dawn had entered Vesta orbit. *This is the first time in history that an object in the asteroid belt has been orbited by an artificial satellite.*


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## ekim68

Well, a last treat from the Shuttle era, a job packed full of things....:up: 

Atlantis astronauts bid farewell to space station



> Among their deliveries:
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> • Ten mice for a 12-day look at bone loss in spaceflight, common in astronauts, and two drugs designed to lessen the problem.
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> • Equipment for a Defense Department study of how outer skin tissues heal in space so that scientists can understand why wounds repair slower in orbit and look for similar effects underlying slow-healing wounds on Earth.
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> • Filters designed to convert sweat and urine into drinking water, which might be added to the space station's plumbing or future "long-duration" spacesuits.
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> The shuttle also delivered a "robotic refueling" experiment, installed last week during a spacewalk. Equipped with a variety of refueling caps, and a half-gallon of ethanol, the experiment will allow the test of a robotic arm to remotely refuel or service satellites already in orbit.
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> On their way home, the shuttle crew will release a small satellite designed to test new solar-powered cells in space.


:up:


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## lotuseclat79

With the final launch of the Shuttle Atlantis on Friday, July 8th, I thought you would enjoy seeing what the interior of a Shuttle looks like.

A 360-degree panorama of the Discovery crew cabin flight deck -- the controls, etc. that the commander and pilot monitored and dealt with during their final mission. (filmed during decommissioning in the Orbiter Processing Facility).

Space Shuttle Discovery - 360VR Images - June 22, 2011.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Last Chance to See a Space Shuttle in Night Sky … Ever.



> Another view of NASA's space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station as they streak across the sky in this time-lapsed image as they fly over Leiden, The Netherlands, just before the two spacecraft docked on March 17, 2009 during the STS-119 mission. The shuttle is the object slightly fainter and lower in the sky. Movement is from right to left. CREDIT: Marco Langbroek


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Thanks for the links Tom. I'm gonna miss the shuttles....


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## lotuseclat79

Could the Big Bang have been a quick conversion of antimatter into matter?.



> *Suppose at some point the universe ceases to expand, and instead begins collapsing in on itself (as in the "Big Crunch" scenario), and eventually becomes a supermassive black hole. The black hole's extreme mass produces an extremely strong gravitational field. Through a gravitational version of the so-called Schwinger mechanism, this gravitational field converts virtual particle-antiparticle pairs from the surrounding quantum vacuum into real particle-antiparticle pairs. If the black hole is made from matter (antimatter), it could violently repel billions and billions of antiparticles (particles) out into space in a fraction of a second, creating an ejection event that would look quite similar to a Big Bang.*
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> If matter and antimatter repel each other, the quick conversion of one into the other inside a supermassive black hole may look like a Big Bang. Image credit: NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

"Death Dance" Stars Found-May Help Prove Einstein Right.



> *Exotic pair may allow scientists to "probe for extreme gravity." A pair of aging stars discovered 3,000 light-years away is locked in a "dance" of death-a union that will end in their collision and a possible supernova, astronomers say.*
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> Two orbiting white dwarfs radiate gravitational waves, as seen in an artist's conception.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Hubble discovers another moon around Pluto.



> *Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite, temporarily designated P4, was uncovered in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet.*
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> These two images, taken about a week apart by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, show four moons orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto. The green circle in both snapshots marks the newly discovered moon, temporarily dubbed P4, found by Hubble in June. P4 is the smallest moon yet found around Pluto, with an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Pluto's largest moon Charon is 648 miles (1,043 km) across. Nix and Hydra are roughly 20 to 70 miles (32 to 113 km) wide. The new moon lies between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, two satellites discovered by Hubble in 2005. It completes an orbit around Pluto roughly every 31 days. The moon was first seen in a photo taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on June 28, 2011. The sighting was confirmed in follow-up Hubble observations taken July 3 and July 18. P4, Nix, and Hydra are so small and so faint that scientists combined short and long exposures to create this image of Pluto and its entire moon system. The speckled background is camera "noise" produced during the long exposures. The linear features are imaging artifacts. The tiny satellite was uncovered in a Hubble survey to search for rings around the frigid dwarf planet. The observations will help NASA's New Horizons mission, scheduled to fly through the Pluto system in 2015. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists Discover New Subatomic Particle.



> *High-speed collisions at a giant atom smasher have produced what physicists say is a new particle, a heavier relative of the familiar neutron.
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> The particle is called the neutral Xi-sub-b. When it's formed in the Fermilab Tevatron particle accelerator in Batavia, Ill., the neutral Xi-sub-b lasts just a mere instant before decaying into lighter particles. Scientists at Fermilab uncover these ephemeral particles by racing particles around a 4-mile (6.3 km) ring at near light speed. When the particles collide, the outpouring of energy disintegrates them into other particles.*
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> CREDIT: Fermilab


Note: The Fermilab is due to close later this year due to funding shortages - and they still keep making discoveries!

-- Tom :up: :up:


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## lotuseclat79

Tevatron experiments close in on favored Higgs mass range.



> *Experiments at the Department of Energy's Fermilab are close to reaching the critical sensitivity that is necessary to look for the existence of a light Higgs particle. Scientists from both the CDF and DZero collider experiments at Fermilab will present their new Higgs search results at the EPS High-Energy Physics conference, held in Grenoble, France, from July 21-27.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NASA's Dawn spacecraft beams back new photo.



> *Dawn took this image during its current orbit of Vesta, traveling from the day side to the night side.*
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> NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 18, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 6,500 miles (10,500 kilometers) away from the protoplanet Vesta. The smallest detail visible is about 1.2 miles (2.0 km). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists find hints of a light Higgs boson in LHC data.



> *During Ars' trip to Fermilab earlier this spring, the staff was excitedly talking about their expectations for the summer. That's when the high-energy physics community has many of their meetings, and the expectation was that all of the major players-DZero and CDF at Fermi, and ATLAS and CMS at the LHC-would process as much data as they could and update the community on the search for things like supersymmetry and the Higgs boson, a particle that helps give all others mass. Right now, the Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics is happening in Grenoble, France, and the folks from Fermi will not be disappointed. The first results from the LHC have greatly expanded the mass range in which the Higgs won't be found, and left open the possibility that it might eventually turn up in the area of 140GeV.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Astronomers spot cosmic reservoir of water



> PASADENA, Calif., July 22 (UPI) -- Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology say they have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe.
> 
> The researchers have found a mass of water vapor that's at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in all the Earth's oceans in a quasar -- one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos -- 30 billion trillion miles away, a Caltech release said Friday.


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## lotuseclat79

Time Travel Impossible, Say Scientists.



> *By showing a single photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light, scientists prove time travel is impossible.*
> 
> "The study, which showed that single photons also obey the speed limit c, confirms Einstein's causality; that is, an effect cannot occur before its cause," the university said.
> 
> "By showing that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, our results bring a closure to the debate on the true speed of information carried by a single photon," said Du, assistant professor of physics.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Existence: Where did we come from?.

Existence: Why is there a universe? (2 web pages).

Existence: Are we alone in the universe?.



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> What are the chances of being alone? (Image: SPL)*


Note: Look for the Read Next Article Link at the bottom of the article to continue reading more articles in the Series.

-- Tom


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## ekim68

Trojan asteroid tags along on Earth's orbit



> Turns out the moon's not the Earth's only traveling companion. Space scientists have discovered an asteroid that's been following our fair planet for thousands of years, at least - and there may be many more where it came from, according to a recent study.





> The problem was this: In order for an asteroid to attain a stable position in a planet's orbit, it must find the spot where the gravitational pull of the planet and that of the sun cancel each other out. Two of these spots, called Lagrangian points, lie along a planet's orbit - one ahead of the planet and one behind it. Drawing straight lines between the Earth, the sun and a Lagrangian point produces a triangle whose sides are equal in length. An asteroid there would hover in the sky at a 60-degree angle from the sun.


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## ekim68

Sun-free photovoltaics



> A new photovoltaic energy-conversion system developed at MIT can be powered solely by heat, generating electricity with no sunlight at all. While the principle involved is not new, a novel way of engineering the surface of a material to convert heat into precisely tuned wavelengths of light - selected to match the wavelengths that photovoltaic cells can best convert to electricity - makes the new system much more efficient than previous versions.


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## lotuseclat79

How an argument with Hawking suggested the Universe is a hologram.



> *The proponents of string theory seem to think they can provide a more elegant description of the Universe by adding additional dimensions. But some other theoreticians think they've found a way to view the Universe as having one less dimension. The work sprung out of a long argument with Stephen Hawking about the nature of black holes, which was eventually solved by the realization that the event horizon could act as a hologram, preserving information about the material that's gotten sucked inside. The same sort of math, it turns out, can actually describe any point in the Universe, meaning that the entire content Universe can be viewed as a giant hologram, one that resides on the surface of whatever two-dimensional shape will enclose it.*
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> Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Timeline


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

What is the Higgs boson and why is it important to science? (w/Video: 3.27)



> *If you've paid any attention to physics or physical science research in the past few years, you've heard about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. The LHC was built partially with the hopes of finding the elusive Higgs boson, a theorized but undiscovered particle which, if found, would sew up nicely our understanding of the relationship between mass and energy.
> 
> The Higgs boson is the only particle left in our understanding of particle physics (called the Standard Model) that we haven't discovered. We think it exists - there's math that postulates it does - it simply has never been observed. This is why it's called the "God Particle," because it's the particle that would explain the difference between objects with mass and objects that have only energy - objects with form and objects without.*
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> Higgs Boson Search Status: March 2011


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

'Multiverse' theory suggested by microwave background.



> *The idea that other universes - as well as our own - lie within "bubbles" of space and time has received a boost.*
> 
> Dr Peiris said that data from the Planck telescope - a next-generation space telescope designed to study the CMB with far greater sensitivity - would put the idea on a firmer footing, or refute it. However, the data from Planck cannot be discussed publicly before January 2013.
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> The team has located possible "bubble universe" evidence in WMAP data
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> Data from the Planck telescope should resolve the question once and for all


-- Tom


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## franca

Piece of shuttle Columbia


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## lotuseclat79

Solar storm heading our way (w/Video: 00:15) from Solar Dynamics Observatory.



> *Early yesterday, (Aug 3, 2011) two active regions on the Sun, sunspot 1261 and 1263 unleashed solar flares, which was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The video shows an M6 class flare from 1261 in a couple of different wavelengths. SolarstormWatch, a citizen science project through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England predicts the solar storm from the larger flare to reach Earth at 15:00 UTC on August 5, 2011, and also predict direct hit on Earth.*
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> This plot shows 3-days of 5-minute solar x-ray flux values measured on the SWPC primary GOES satellite. Credit: NOAA/SWPC


Note: 15:00 UTC on August 5, 2011 is today at 11:00 AM EDT!

-- Tom


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## ekim68

NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars



> Observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars. "NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, "and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration."


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## ekim68

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Launches to Jupiter



> NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:25 a.m. PDT (12:25 p.m. EDT), Aug. 5, 2011 to begin a five-year journey to Jupiter.





> Juno will cover the distance from Earth to the moon (about 250,000 miles or 402,336 kilometers) in less than one day's time. It will take another five years and 1,740 million miles (2,800 million kilometers) to complete the journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft will orbit the planet's poles 33 times and use its collection of eight science instruments to probe beneath the gas giant's obscuring cloud cover to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere, and look for a potential solid planetary core.
> 
> With four large moons and many smaller moons, Jupiter forms its own miniature solar system. Its composition resembles that of a star, and if it had been about 80 times more massive, the planet could have become a star instead.


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## lotuseclat79

Beyond space-time: Welcome to phase space.



> *A theory of reality beyond Einstein's universe is taking shape - and a mysterious cosmic signal could soon fill in the blanks*
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> Does some deeper level of reality lurk beneath? (Image: Luke Brookes)
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> Fabrics of Reality
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> Where's the supernova?


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Building Blocks of DNA Found in Meteorites from Space



> The components of DNA have now been confirmed to exist in extraterrestrial meteorites, researchers announced.
> 
> A different team of scientists also discovered a number of molecules linked with a vital ancient biological process, adding weight to the idea that the earliest forms of life on Earth may have been made up in part from materials delivered to Earth the planet by from space.
> 
> Past research had revealed a range of building blocks of life in meteorites, such as the amino acids that make up proteins. Space rocks just like these may have been a vital source of the organic compounds that gave rise to life on Earth.


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers Predict that Pluto Has a Ring.



> *Dust from Pluto's satellites ought to form a faint ring around the dwarf planet, according to new calculations.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Perseid Meteor Shower: Best Times to Spot 'Shooting Stars' This Week.



> *For Northern Hemisphere observers, August is usually regarded as "meteor month" with one of the best displays of the year reaching its peak near midmonth. That display is, of course, the annual Perseid Meteor Shower beloved by everyone from meteor enthusiasts to summer campers.
> 
> But sky watchers beware: You will be facing a major obstacle in your attempt to observe this year's Perseid performance, namely, the moon.
> 
> This year, the moon will be full on Aug. 13just in time to seriously hamper, if not all but prevent, observation of the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower, which is predicted peak overnight on Aug. 12 and 13. Bright moonlight will flood the sky all through that entire night and will certainly play havoc with any serious attempts to observe these meteors.*
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> This table offers prime viewing times for the 2011 Perseid Meteor Shower for selected cities for the days of Aug. 9, 10 and 11, in 2011. All times are for local time zones only. Dawn is the start of twilight conditions. Window is the number of minutes between moonset and twilight conditions.
> CREDIT: Joe Rao/SPACE.com


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Evidence Found For Space-Created DNA Building Blocks (Video:2:39).



> *Its been speculated for years that the molecules found in meteorites that carry genetic instructions - the building blocks for life - were created during their epic flight to their new home, Earth. Recent scientific analysis supports the claims. Credit: NASA/GSFC*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How the Sun works, from the inside out.

-- Tom


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## ekim68

Chinese space lab set to soar



> China looks ready to launch a small space lab into orbit, space policy experts report, perhaps as soon as this month.
> 
> The 8.5-ton Tiangong I space lab, the next step in China's manned space program, follows three successful launches of Chinese astronauts, or Taikonauts, into orbit in the last decade.


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## lotuseclat79

Magnetic Fields Turn The Vacuum Into A Superconducting Superlens, Says Physicist.



> *...but if the vacuum of space behaves like a metamaterial, this effect ought to have left its mark in the Universe's earliest light*
> 
> The vacuum as the ultimate nothingness is an idea that quantum physicists have long proved wrong. Instead, they've shown that the vacuum is filled with virtual quantum particles leaping in and out of existence in a maelstrom of quantum activity.
> 
> Sometimes, these virtual particles can become real. For example, a powerful electric field can generate electron-positron pairs in a vacuum. And there are other ways of making something out of this nothingness.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Study: Oxygen appeared earlier on Earth



> CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 16 (UPI) -- New research suggests oxygen was being produced on Earth hundreds of millions of years before any traces of it appeared in our atmosphere, U.S. scientists say.
> 
> Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology indicate that early oxygen kept a low profile in "oxygen oases" in the oceans where tiny aerobic organisms may have evolved to survive on extremely low levels of the gas in these undersea pockets.
> 
> It wasn't until the "Great Oxidation Event" nearly 2.3 billion years ago that oxygen appeared in any measurable quantity in the atmosphere, stimulating the evolution of air-breathing organisms and, ultimately, the complex life of the Earth today, an MIT release said Tuesday.


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## ekim68

13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough



> An anonymous reader tips news of 7th grader Aidan Dwyer, who used phyllotaxis - the way leaves are arranged on plant stems in nature - as inspiration to arrange an array of solar panels in a way that generates 20-50% more energy than a uniform, flat panel array.


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## ekim68

Experimental antenna-clothing outperforms regular antennas



> In the recent past, we've seen outfits that incorporate bio-sensors and batteries, and even a bikini with integrated solar cells. One of the latest innovations in smart fabrics, however, allows a person's clothing to act as multiple antennas. Developed at Ohio State University (OSU), the system could prove particularly useful to soldiers, who don't want to be encumbered by a protruding whip antenna.
> 
> While this is not the first time that clothing has been used to send and receive radio signals, the OSU technology is unique in that it uses a computer control device to facilitate several antennas within one piece of fabric.


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## Gabriel

Can someone explain to me why we wouldn't get really dizzy from the earth rotating if we were exactly on one of the poles. I get it that we are rotating at a constant, and so can't feel it anywhere else...but come on..we can't feel it at the pole tops??? either.


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## Gabriel

Is the answer because I am spinning slower


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## lotuseclat79

Hi Gabriel,

Imagine yourself at either pole, just standing there for a straight 24 hours - looking out into the Universe and not moving. Now, Imagine either another person or a clone of yourself standing at the Equator, and another instance of anyone standing at the opposite pole. The Earth takes 24 hours to rotate one complete time - from any one spot on the Earth.

The answer is it is all relative to size of the Earth. On Earth, a person can rotate faster with their arms held closer to their bodies like an ice skater, and slower with there arms held outward from their bodies. We rotate with the Earth as we are fixed points on it's surface - the Earth is a lot larger and slower to rotate than we are standing still on it's surface - and thus so are we - i.e. the locus of our rotation around a point on the surface of the Earth is relative to that point, not to the surface of the Earth if we are rotating with the Earth instead of around our own local spinning pole at a single point on the Earth's surface.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Dark Matter Is an Illusion, New Antigravity Theory Says.



> *Boiling sea of particles in space may create repulsive gravity.*
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> The Bullet cluster (above) is considered to be among the best pieces of evidence for dark matter. Image courtesy STScI, U. Arizona, CfA, CXC, NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How to See a Supernova This Weekend From Your Backyard (w/Video: 1:23)



> *Starting this weekend, the closest supernova found in at least 25 years will be visible from your backyard with just binoculars or a small telescope. The exploding white dwarf star is currently brightening in the Pinwheel Galaxy, nestled, from our perspective, within the Big Dipper.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Eyes on the Solar System



(Check out the Intro..)


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## ekim68

Novel Alloy Could Produce Hydrogen Fuel from Sunlight



> ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2011) - Scientists from the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville have determined that an inexpensive semiconductor material can be "tweaked" to generate hydrogen from water using sunlight.


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## lotuseclat79

More Evidence for a Preferred Direction in Spacetime.



> *The evidence is growing that some parts of the Universe are more special than others.*


-- Tom


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## Blacqwolf

No space core? That's disappointing.


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## ekim68

The sky is falling, well in October, eh?

Huge Defunct Satellite to Plunge to Earth Soon, NASA Says


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## ekim68

Twin NASA craft launched to study insides of moon



> A pair of spacecraft rocketed toward the moon Saturday on the first mission dedicated to measuring lunar gravity and determining what's inside Earth's orbiting companion - all the way down to the core.


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## ekim68

Jelly batteries: Safer, cheaper, smaller, more powerful



> A new polymer jelly could be the next big step forward for lithium batteries.
> 
> The jelly replaces the volatile and hazardous liquid electrolyte currently used in most lithium batteries.
> 
> Researchers from the University of Leeds hope their development leads to smaller, cheaper and safer gadgets.
> 
> Once on the market, the lithium jelly batteries could allow lighter laptop computers, and more efficient electric cars.


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## lotuseclat79

Timeline from Big Bang to Heat Death.



>


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Dark matter packs a punch: Milky Way's spiral arms formed by intergalactic collision.



> *UC Irvine astronomers have shown how the Milky Way galaxy's iconic spiral arms form, according to research published today in the journal Nature.*
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> Barred Spiral Milky Way. Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

'God particle' goes missing: Higgs boson 'may not exist' say Hadron Collider scientists.



> *Signals reported in July seemed to indicate that the Higgs boson - a long-theorised particle seen as a missing link in our current understanding of physics - might have been detected among data the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva.
> 
> But since then, those signals - hinting that the theoretical 'God' particle might have a mass between 120 and 140GeV - looked much less conclusive among new statistics received from the experiment.*
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> The ATLAS particle beam detector, whose director said that the 'range' of masses where the elusive Higgs particle might be found was diminishing
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> A scientist reacts at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) analyses results at the particle detector. Its director said this week that if the Higgs boson does not exist, it would open up a 'new physics'


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The watershed moment for JWST.









JWST artistic rendition

The Senate has "saved" JWST? Hang on a sec, folks….

Note: JWST stands for the James Webb Space Telescope, successor to Hubble.

-- Tom


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## ekim68

NASA: Satellite pieces to hit Earth in a week



> WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. space officials say they expect a dead satellite to fall to Earth in about a week.
> 
> NASA has been watching the 6-ton satellite closely. On Friday officials moved up their prediction for its arrival to Sept. 23, give or take a day.
> 
> NASA scientists have calculated the satellite will break into 26 pieces as it gets closer to Earth. The odds of it hitting someone anywhere on the planet are 1 in 3,200.


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## lotuseclat79

Are Genes Our Destiny? Scientists Discover 'Hidden' Code in DNA Evolves More Rapidly Than Genetic Code.



> *A "hidden" code linked to the DNA of plants allows them to develop and pass down new biological traits far more rapidly than previously thought, according to the findings of a groundbreaking study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
> 
> The study, published September 16 in the journal Science, provides the first evidence that an organism's "epigenetic" code -- an extra layer of biochemical instructions in DNA -- can evolve more quickly than the genetic code and can strongly influence biological traits.
> 
> While the study was limited to a single plant species called Arabidopsis thaliana, the equivalent of the laboratory rat of the plant world, the findings hint that the traits of other organisms, including humans, might also be dramatically influenced by biological mechanisms that scientists are just beginning to understand.*
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> Generational inheritance of DNA methylation. Although spontaneous rates of genetic mutations are well understood, the rates of epigenetic variation in DNA methylation have remained a mystery until now. Using the plant Arabidopsis thaliana (depicted in the center), generational variation in DNA methylation was identified in five lineages separated by 30 generations of growth as indicated by the methylated pink Cs and the unmethylated green Cs. (Credit: Concept/artwork/ image design: Robert Schmitz, Joseph R. Ecker, Salk Institute for Biological Studies)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers sequence 'dark matter of life'.



> *Researchers have developed a new method to sequence and analyze the dark matter of life-the genomes of thousands of bacteria species previously beyond scientists' reach, from microorganisms that produce antibiotics and biofuels to microbes living in the human body.*
> 
> Bacteria play a vital role in human health. They make up about 10 percent of the weight of the human body and can be found anywhere from the stomach to the mouth. Some, like E. coli, can wreak havoc. Others help us digest. Yet others, recent studies have found, can change the way we behave by, for example, tricking us into eating more than we need. That's why it is crucial to analyze bacteria's genomes, which in turn help scientists understand bacteria's behavior.
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> Microscope image of the glass capillary being used to capture a bacterial cell during micromanipulation. Credit: T. Ishoey, courtesy of Roger Lasken


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Thin Film Transforms Any Surface Into a Massive Multitouch Screen



> Open up a cardboard tube, roll out a transparent film just millimeters thick, apply it on a flat object and *tada* you've got an interactive touch surface. Cambridge-based Visual Planet just launched its new massive-sized multitouch thin film drivers so you can create touchscreens from 30 to 167 inches in size! Their touchfoil is a transparent nanowire embedded polymer capable of sensing the touch of a finger, or even pressure from wind and translating that to a computer interface. It works on glass, wood, and other non-conductive surfaces.


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## lotuseclat79

Could primordial black holes be dark matter?.



> *"We know that about 25% of the matter in the universe is dark matter, but we don't know what it is," Michael Kesden tells PhysOrg.com. "There are a number of different theories about what dark matter could be, but we think one alternative might be very small primordial black holes."*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

CERN claims faster-than-light particle measured.



> *Scientists at the world's largest physics lab say they have clocked subatomic particles traveling faster than light, a feat that - if true - would break a fundamental pillar of science.*
> 
> Scientists agree if the results are confirmed, that it would force a fundamental rethink of the laws of nature, starting with the special theory of relativity proposed by Einstein in 1905.
> 
> Special relativity, which helps explain everything from black holes to the Big Bang theory about the origins of the universe, underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics," Ellis said. "It has worked perfectly up until now."
> 
> He cautioned that the neutrino researchers would also have to explain why similar results weren't detected before, such as when an exploding star - or supernova - was observed in 1987.


Roll over Einstein: Pillar of physics challenged (3 web pages).



> *A startling find at one of the world's foremost laboratories that a subatomic particle seemed to move faster than the speed of light has scientists around the world rethinking Albert Einstein and one of the foundations of physics.*
> 
> "This is ridiculous what they're putting out," Baden said. "Until this is verified by another group, it's flying carpets. It's cool, but..."
> 
> So if the neutrinos are pulling this fast one on Einstein, how can it happen?
> 
> Stephen Parke, head theoretician at the Fermilab, said there could be a cosmic shortcut through another dimension - physics theory is full of unseen dimensions - that allows the neutrinos to beat the speed of light.


-- Tom


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## 1956brother

i hope 0.0025 of second will improve our daily lives. we can use it


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## lotuseclat79

More details on the "faster than the speed of light" neutrinos.

-- Tom


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## ekim68

Edible Carbon Dioxide Sponge: All-Natural Nanostructures Could Address Pressing Environmental Problem



> "We are able to take molecules that are themselves sourced from atmospheric carbon, through photosynthesis, and use them to capture even more carbon dioxide," said Ross S. Forgan, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart's laboratory. "By preparing our MOFs from naturally derived ingredients, we are not only making materials that are entirely nontoxic, but we are also cutting down on the carbon dioxide emissions associated with their manufacture."
> 
> The main component, gamma-cyclodextrin, is a naturally occurring biorenewable sugar molecule that is derived from cornstarch.


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## lotuseclat79

Faster Than Light Neutrinos Do Not Time Travel To Spoil Your Date.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers discover new way to measure Universe.



> Astronomers at Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute have found a new way to measure distances. This may not sound like much, but working out how far away something is, is one of the toughest fundamental problems in astrophysics and is central to cosmology as it allows scientists to work out the age of the Universe and what it's fundamental properties are. Because their new method uses quasars, some of the brightest objects known, scientists say they will be able to determine distances much further than achieved to date, paving the way to a better understanding of dark energy.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

SpaceX to Develop a Fully Reusable Launch System - and Elon Musk Wants to Send Humans to Mars



> At a speech at the National Press Club on Thursday, SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk rolled out SpaceX's latest leap into the future: Musk and his teams are developing a fully reusable space transportation system.


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## ekim68

The Bolshoi Simulation



> The Bolshoi simulation is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet made ("bolshoi" is the Russian word for "great" or "grand"). The first two of a series of research papers describing Bolshoi and its implications have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The first data release of Bolshoi outputs, including output from Bolshoi and also the BigBolshoi or MultiDark simulation of a volume 64 times bigger than Bolshoi, has just been made publicly available to the world's astronomers and astrophysicists.


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## lotuseclat79

Galaxy clusters back Einstein, leave Newton's descendants in the cold.



> *Relativity is the reigning theory of gravity. In situations where we can measure it directly, such as binary neutron stars, its predictions match the real world with remarkable precision. And, when supplemented with inflation and dark matter, relativity nicely reproduces the large-scale structure of the Universe. But this reliance on other models like dark matter means that we don't have a direct, large-scale test of relativity. Now, scientists have measured the redshifting of light by galaxy clusters to give use the biggest test of relativity yet. Their results show that relativity passes muster, while modified forms of Newtownian gravity fall short.
> 
> Light emitted by distant objects rarely makes it to Earth at the same wavelength that it started out at. The fabric of the Universe is expanding, which causes a redshift. Most objects are also moving relative to the Earth, which adds a Doppler shift to the light. Finally, light that has to climb out of a large gravity well on its way to Earth also gets red-shifted.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Fremilab shutdown as of September 30, 2011 (mostly).



> *Fermilab scientists are saying goodbye to the Tevatron, a particle accelerator that led global high energy energy physics for more than 28 years.
> The Tevatron, which is still the highest-energy proton-antiproton collider will be closed down permanently today as CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has become the go-to-source for particle physicists, even if the LHC is targeting a different kind of experiments (proton-proton collisions). The shutdown will affect both main experiments at the Tevatron, CDF and DZero.
> ...
> Fermilab stresses that it will remain active in particle physics, especially in neutrino research. The research facility is expanding its horizon and is, for now, focusing on particle intensity research and not on high-energy physics.*
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> Fermilab in Batavia. Wilson Hall.
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> Inside the Tevatron tunnel


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How to spot a multiverse.



> *How can we tell if another universe has collided with our own? Physicists in Canada and the US believe they have the answer - it would leave "a unique and highly characteristic" imprint in the microwave background that pervades the cosmos. The physicists claim that the prediction can be tested using existing and future space telescopes, which contradicts a widespread view that the existence of a multiverse is untestable.*
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> Cosmic Microwave Background: Is evidence for a multiverse lurking in Planck data?


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Dark Energy FAQ.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers find elusive planets in decade-old Hubble data.



> *In a painstaking re-analysis of Hubble Space Telescope images from 1998, astronomers have found visual evidence for two extrasolar planets that went undetected back then.*
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> The left image shows the star HR 8799 as seen by Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) in 1998. The center image shows recent processing of the NICMOS data with newer, sophisticated software. The processing removes most of the scattered starlight to reveal three planets orbiting HR 8799. Based on the reanalysis of NICMOS data and ground-based observations, the illustration on the right shows the positions of the star and the orbits of its four known planets. (Credit: NASA; ESA; STScI, R. Soummer)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

LHSee - Large Hadron Collider app - Big bang science in your pocket.



> *Want to find out how to Hunt the Higgs Boson using your phone? Ever wondered how the Large Hadron Collider experiments work, and what the collisions look like?*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Time reversal: A simple particle could reveal new physics.



> *A simple atomic nucleus could reveal properties associated with the mysterious phenomenon known as time reversal and lead to an explanation for one of the greatest mysteries of physics: the imbalance of matter and antimatter in the universe.*
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> UA theoretical physicist Bira van Kolck has found that experimenting with a deuteron, a simple atomic nucleus, could lead to understanding a mysterious phenomenon of subatomic physics known as time reversal violation. (Photo by Daniel Stolte/UANews)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity.



> *The relativistic motion of clocks on board GPS satellites exactly accounts for the superluminal effect, says physicist*
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> OPERA Experiment


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Self-Replication Process Holds Promise for Production of New Materials



> ScienceDaily (Oct. 12, 2011) - New York University scientists have developed artificial structures that can self-replicate, a process that has the potential to yield new types of materials. In the natural world, self-replication is ubiquitous in all living entities, but artificial self-replication has been elusive. The new discovery is the first steps toward a general process for self-replication of a wide variety of arbitrarily designed seeds. The seeds are made from DNA tile motifs that serve as letters arranged to spell out a particular word. The replication process preserves the letter sequence and the shape of the seed and hence the information required to produce further generations.


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## lotuseclat79

Why Einstein was wrong about being wrong.



> *If you want to get your mind around the research that won three astronomers the Nobel Prize in physics last week, it helps to think of the universe as a lump of dough - raisin-bread dough, to be precise - mixed, kneaded and ready to rise. Hold that thought.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Galaxies swarm and light bends under dark matter's sway.



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> Hubble image of the galaxy cluster MACS J1206, which lies at the mind-numbing distance of 4.5 billion light years from Earth*
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> The cluster has thousands of galaxies in it, and a total mass of something like a quadrillion - that's 1,000,000,000,000,000 - times the mass of our Sun!
> 
> The image was taken as part of a program called CLASH, for Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble. A large group of astronomers from ten different countries are observing more than two dozen such distant clusters to look for many interesting things, including exploding stars (which help us gauge the expansion rate of the Universe), very distant galaxies (to help us understand the early Universe), and to look for dark matter.
> 
> Dark matter is stuff that doesn't emit light, but has mass. Careful observations over the years have ruled out pretty much every form of normal matter we can think of, from simple hydrogen clouds to black holes. Whatever this stuff is, it's weird, not matter as we know it.
> 
> But we do know it's there. Its gravity affects how spiral galaxies rotate, how clusters like MACS 1206 stay together, and can even bend light from more distant galaxies as it passes through. That last bit is the big deal here.
> 
> Take a look at the cluster again. See those bright, weirdly drawn-out smears, as if someone grabbed a galaxy at both ends and stretched? Those are galaxies on the other side of the cluster from us, farther away. As the light from those galaxies passes through the cluster on the way to Earth, it gets distorted by the gravity of the galaxies in the cluster, and so we see the shape distorted. This is called gravitational lensing, and by carefully mapping that distortion, the distribution and amount of dark matter in MACS 1206 can be determined!
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> And that's the whole point.
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> Now take another look at the picture. See how so many of the galaxies appear to lie perpendicular to the galaxy center? That's another effect of the dark matter distortion; the smearing is tangential to the direction to the cluster center. So a lot of those distorted galaxies aren't just smeared out, they look like little arcs, centered on the cluster center. Again, by measuring this, we can figure out a lot about the dark matter in the cluster.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Subtly Shaded Map of Moon Reveals Titanium Treasure Troves



> A map of the Moon combining observations in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths shows a treasure trove of areas rich in Titanium ores. Not only is titanium a valuable element, it is key to helping scientists unravel the mysteries of the Moon's interior.


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## ekim68

Future phones may rewire and reinvent themselves



> Future mobile devices may be able to reconfigure themselves to meet new demands, *according to researchers that have developed a nanomaterial that can "steer" electrical currents. The discovery could lead to the development of smartphones and devices that can reconfigure their internal 'wiring' and evolve into an entirely different and new device, to reflect the changing needs of consumers.


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## ekim68

Billion Tonne Comet May Have Missed Earth By A Few Hundred Kilometres in 1883



> A re-analysis of historical observations suggest Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago


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## lotuseclat79

Dark matter mystery deepens.



> *Like all galaxies, our Milky Way is home to a strange substance called dark matter. Dark matter is invisible, betraying its presence only through its gravitational pull. Without dark matter holding them together, our galaxy's speedy stars would fly off in all directions. The nature of dark matter is a mystery -- a mystery that a new study has only deepened.*
> ...
> Cosmologists use powerful computers to simulate this process. Their simulations show that dark matter should be densely packed in the centers of galaxies. Instead, new measurements of two dwarf galaxies show that they contain a smooth distribution of dark matter. This suggests that the standard cosmological model may be wrong.
> 
> "Our measurements contradict a basic prediction about the structure of cold dark matter in dwarf galaxies. Unless or until theorists can modify that prediction, cold dark matter is inconsistent with our observational data," Walker stated.
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> Dwarf galaxies are composed of up to 99 percent dark matter and only one percent normal matter like stars. This disparity makes dwarf galaxies ideal targets for astronomers seeking to understand dark matter.
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> This artist's conception shows a dwarf galaxy seen from the surface of a hypothetical exoplanet. A new study finds that the dark matter in dwarf galaxies is distributed smoothly rather than being clumped at their centers. This contradicts simulations using the standard cosmological model known as lambda-CDM. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

One-Minute Physics: Why there is no pink light (w/Video: 00:59/mm:ss).

I did not know that white light - green = pink (all the wave lengths that reside between red and blue)!

-- Tom


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## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> Billion Tonne Comet May Have Missed Earth By A Few Hundred Kilometres in 1883


Maybe not


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum-Locked Superconducting Floating Discs (3 short videos).

-- Tom very (-185ºC)


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## ekim68

Meteor shower alert: 2011 Orionids are on their way



> Sky watchers, mark your calendars: The 2011 Orionid meteor shower is on its way, and scientists say it's expected to peak just before dawn on Oct. 21 and 22, otherwise known as Friday and Saturday of this week.
> 
> The Orionids occur each October as the Earth passes through a trail of dust left by Halley's comet. When one of those dust particles - about the size of a grain of sand - enters Earth's atmosphere, it excites the air molecules through which it passes, causing them to give off light.
> 
> The annual shower has been dubbed the Orionids because the meteors appear to be emanating from the constellation Orion.


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## lotuseclat79

The Big Bang: What Really Happened at Our Universe's Birth?.



> *It took quite a bit more than seven days to create the universe as we know it today. Over eight weekdays, SPACE.com looks at the mysteries of the heavens in our series: The History & Future of the Cosmos. This is Part 5 in that series.
> 
> Our universe was born about 13.7 billion years ago in a massive expansion that blew space up like a gigantic balloon.
> 
> That, in a nutshell, is the Big Bang theory, which virtually all cosmologists and theoretical physicists endorse. The evidence supporting the idea is extensive and convincing. We know, for example, that the universe is still expanding even now, at an ever-accelerating rate.*
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> Shown here is the Hubble Space Telescope's photo of a candidate galaxy that existed 480 million years after the Big Bang (the z~10 galaxy) and the position in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) where it was found. The galaxy is touted as the oldest, most distant one yet seen by Hubble. This field -- called HUDF09 - is the deepest infrared image ever taken of the universe. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, Garth Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Rychard Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz and Leiden University) and the HUDF09 Team.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A second look at supernovae light: Universe's expansion may be understood without dark energy.



> *The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics, awarded just a few weeks ago, went to research on the light from Type 1a supernovae, which shows that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The well-known problem resulting from these observations is that this expansion seems to be occurring even faster than all known forms of energy could allow. While there is no shortage of proposed explanations - from dark energy to modified theories of gravity - it's less common that someone questions the interpretation of the supernovae data itself.*
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> Light disperses from a supernova explosion (yellow) to a site of detection (blue). As the universe expands, the light energy becomes diluted as it travels from its past, dense surroundings to its present, sparse surroundings. The light's wavelength increases as a result of the decrease in surrounding energy density. Image credit: Annila. ©2011 Royal Astronomical Society


Related article: Telescopes help solve ancient supernova mystery.



> *A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.*
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> This image combines data from four different space telescopes to create a multi-wavelength view of all that remains of the oldest documented example of a supernova, called RCW 86. Image credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/CXC/SAO


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Strange tales from the Royal Society



> The world's oldest scientific academy, the Royal Society, has made its historical journal, which includes about 60,000 scientific papers, permanently free to access online.
> 
> The plague, the Great Fire of London and even the imprisonment of its editor - just a few of the early setbacks that hit the Royal Society's early editions of the Philosophical Transactions. But against the odds the publication, which first appeared in 1665, survived. Its archives offer a fascinating window on the history of scientific progress over the last few centuries.
> 
> Nestling amongst illustrious papers by Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin are some undiscovered gems from the dawn of the scientific revolution, including gruesome tales of students being struck by lightning and experimental blood transfusions.


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers discover complex organic matter in the universe.



> *In today's issue of the journal Nature, astronomers report that organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the Universe. The results suggest that complex organic compounds are not the sole domain of life but can be made naturally by stars.*
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> This is a spectrum from the Infrared Space Observatory superimposed on an image of the Orion Nebula where these complex organics are found. Credit: NASA, C.R. O'Dell and S.K. Wong (Rice University)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers pin down galaxy collision rate.



> *A new analysis of images from the Hubble Space Telescope combined with supercomputer simulations of galaxy collisions has cleared up years of confusion about the rate at which smaller galaxies merge to form bigger ones. This paper, led by Jennifer Lotz of Space Telescope Science Institute, is about to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.*
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> These images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show four examples of interacting galaxies far away from Earth. The galaxies, beginning at far left, are shown at various stages of the merger process. The top row displays merging galaxies found in different regions of a large survey known as the All-Wavelength Extended Groth Strip International Survey (AEGIS). The images were taken in 2004 and 2005 by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Lotz (STScI), M. Davis (University of California, Berkeley), and A. Koekemoer (STScI)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Universe Today: What It All Looks Like Now.



> *It took quite a bit more than seven days to create the universe as we know it today. SPACE.com looks at the mysteries of the heavens in our eight-part series: The History & Future of the Cosmos. This is Part 7 in that series.
> 
> In the 1920s, astronomer Georges Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory, which is the most widely accepted model to explain the formation of the universe.
> 
> In the decades since, theoretical physicists have scoured the cosmos for evidence to support the Big Bang theory. While they have shed light on many long-standing mysteries, some of the most groundbreaking discoveries have also given rise to even more perplexing puzzles that remain to be solved.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

First ever iPADS IN SPAAAACE



> NASA will be streaming the live launch of a Russian Progress cargo spaceship this Saturday at 11pm BST, which will be carrying the precious cargo of food, oxygen, water and Apple iPads.
> 
> The launch is scheduled for 5:11am CDT from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and will be broadcast on NASA TV, which you can find here.
> 
> In amongst all the necessary stuff the current International Space Station crew needs will be the first fondleslabs in space.
> 
> "The Russians are flying two iPads on the next Progress. They're going to be used for entertainment purposes only," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries told collectspace.com on Tuesday.
> 
> Astronauts and cosmonauts already have Apple iPods and an iPhone on board the space station, as well as laptops, but these will be the first tablets.


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## lotuseclat79

Nature's laws may vary across the Universe.



> *One of the laws of nature may vary across the Universe, according to a study published today in the journal Physical Review Letters.*
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> How a galaxy imprints a "barcode" of metallic absorption lines onto the spectrum of a background quasar. We read this barcode after recording the quasar spectrum with telescopes on the Earth. The barcode encodes the laws of physics in the distant, absorbing galaxy, so we can tell whether the laws of physics change throughout the universe, or really stay constant like is currently assumed. IMAGE CREDITs: Quasar spectrum: Michael Murphy, Swinburne University of Technology; Hubble Ultra Deep Field: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

'Cambridge Nights': a late night show for scientists.



> *While it's not uncommon to see scientists on TV, most of the time it's just for a few minutes on the news to comment on a recent event or major discovery. A new late night show called "Cambridge Nights" coming out of MIT's Media Lab is changing that by providing an outlet for researchers to talk about their work in a slower paced, conversational setting. The first episodes of the show are being posted at http://cambridgenights.media.mit.edu. *


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

November 2011 Skywatching Events.



> *A meteor shower, a partial solar eclipse and some planet sightings are just some of the amazing things in the night sky this month. Check out the most tantalizing skywatching targets for November 2011 ...*
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> Comet Garradd continues to be a nice object in binoculars or a small telescope, an 8th magnitude comet slowly crossing Hercules. CREDIT: Starry Night Software


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum Vacuum: How To Balance Nothingness.



> *What is nothingness? It's a philosophical question, to be sure, but in physics the ground state of the universe can't be described by the absence of all matter, contend some theoretical physicists. There must be a 'quantum vacuum'.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Asteroid 2005 YU55 will zip by Earth next week



> A close encounter of the harmless kind comes next Tuesday when an aircraft-carrier-size asteroid races past Earth.
> 
> The asteroid, dubbed 2005 YU55, will come within 202,000 miles of Earth, closer than the moon, before zipping farther into space. Carbon-colored and dark, the asteroid measures some 1,300 feet wide. It will be the closest visit by a space rock this size in more than three decades.


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## lotuseclat79

Anyone see the Nova program on PBS local stations last night - The Fabric of the Cosmos - showing every Wednesday night (9 PM locally in the Boston area, so check your local program schedules). It will run for 4 weeks with a new program every week. You can see the series (webcast) at Fabric of the Cosmos if you missed the TV show from last night.

After watching the first show, it should clear up any doubt about the meaning of Nothingness, i.e. the question of the Big Bang occuring (seemingly) out of "nothing". Doubters are free to continue doubting, but scientists, in order to believe must be skeptical from the get-go!

-- Tom :up: :up:


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## ekim68

NASA: If there was life on Mars, it was likely underground



> NASA issued a study today that said if life ever existed on Mars, the longest lasting environments were most likely below the planet's surface.
> 
> The hypothesis comes from analyzing tons of mineral data gathered over the years from more than 350 sites on Mars gathered by NASA and European Space Agency Mars space probes.


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## ekim68

Welcome back and thank you, Mars500



> The record-breaking simulated mission to Mars has ended with smiling faces after 17 months. Mars500's six brave volunteers stepped out of their 'spacecraft' today to be welcomed by the waiting scientists - happy that the venture had worked even better than expected.
> 
> Mars500, the first full-length, high-fidelity simulation of a human mission to our neighbouring planet, started 520 days ago, on 3 June 2010, at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow.
> 
> The international crew were isolated in their interplanetary spacecraft mock-up, faithfully following the phases of a real mission: a long flight to Mars, insertion into orbit around the planet, landing, surface exploration, return to orbit, a monotonous return flight and arrival at Earth.
> 
> During the 'flight', the crew performed more than 100 experiments, all linked to the problems of long-duration missions in deep space.


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## ekim68

Ginormous sunspot spews solar guts towards Earth



> Our own star has developed an astonishingly huge case of hyperactive acne, with one blemish so large you could plop 18 or 19 earths onto it, and still have room to spare.
> 
> That is, of course, if you could maneuver them close enough without the planets melting, or being sucked into that big ol' ball-o-plasma's guts.
> 
> At 1900 universal time on Thursday, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed an exceptionally large sunspot as it rotated into view. It's a biggie: sun-boffins estimate it to be about *80,000 kilometers long and 50,000 kilometers wide* - easily one of the largest such magnetic disturbances to speckle the sun in many a year.


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## ekim68

More on post #1363 and it's happening today, tomorrow, and the next day....

Asteroid Flyby


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## lotuseclat79

Out There Are There Mysterious Forces Lurking in Our Atoms and Galaxies? (2 web pages).



> *Physicists stalk a delicate "fifth force" of nature, hidden within the interstices of the other four. What they have not found is even more amazing.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Seeing Relativity: Mind-bending tour of the solar system (Video: 3:05 mm:ss).

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Proof the Universe is Fine-Tuned for Life? Scientists Find Antarctica Meteorites Contain Essential Building Block of DNA.



> *NASA-funded researchers found evidence this past summer that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a "kit" of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life.
> 
> "People have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960's, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life," said Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space."*
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> Image credit: micropore.wordpress.com


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

City lights could reveal E.T. civilization.



> *In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights.*
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> If an alien civilization builds brightly-lit cities like those shown in this artist's conception, future generations of telescopes might allow us to detect them. This would offer a new method of searching for extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in our Galaxy. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

NIST physicists chip away at mystery of antimatter imbalance.



> *Why there is stuff in the universe-more properly, why there is an imbalance between matter and antimatter-is one of the long-standing mysteries of cosmology. A team of researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has just concluded a 10-year-long study of the fate of neutrons in an attempt to resolve the question, the most sensitive such measurement ever made. The universe, they concede, has managed to keep its secret for the time being, but they've succeeded in significantly narrowing the number of possible answers.*
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> Two types of neutron decay produce a proton, an electron and an electron antineutrino but eject them in different configurations, The experiments at NIST detected no imbalance, but the improved sensitivity could help place limits on competing theories about the matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe. Credit: emiT team


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Was the real discovery of the expanding universe lost in translation?.



> *The greatest astronomical discovery of the 20th century may have been credited to the wrong person. But it turns out to have been nobody's fault except for that of the actual original discoverer himself.*
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> This illustration shows American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) on the right and Belgian priest and cosmologist Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) on the left. Based on new evidence, both scientists should share credit for independently uncovering evidence for the expanding universe in the late 1920s. Lemaître is also credited with proposing a theory for the origin of the universe that would later be called the "big bang." The telescope on the left is the 100-inch Hooker Telescope on Mt. Wilson in California. The Hubble Space Telescope is on the right. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Discovery of two types of neutron stars points to two different classes of supernovae.



> *Astronomers at the universities of Southampton and Oxford have found evidence that neutron stars, which are produced when massive stars explode as supernovae, actually come in two distinct varieties. Their finding also suggests that each variety is produced by a different kind of supernova event.*
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> This is a supernova star-field. Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/ STScI/ NASA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers shed light on early stars in cosmos.



> *After decades of scouring the universe, astronomers finally have found two immense clouds of gas that are pristine - free of the metals fired out into the cosmos by stars.*
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> This computer simulation image made available by Science Express on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011 shows gas around a forming galaxy for a paper by Dr. Michele Fumagalli and colleagues. After decades of scouring the universe, astronomers finally have found two immense clouds of gas that are pristine - free of the metals fired out into the cosmos by stars. The findings, published in Thursday's Science journal, provide the first solid detection of primitive, uncontaminated gas and support the long-standing theory as to how the chemical elements were formed in the early universe. It is these types of pure gas clouds that formed the first stars. The pristine gas detected by astronomers could lie in one of the filamentary regions. (AP Photo/Science Express, Ceverino, Dekel and Primack)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New Particle Born Inside Helium White Dwarf Stars, Say Physicists.



> *The prediction could help explain some unexpected properties of helium white dwarfs*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mysterious Dark Energy Played No More Than Bit Part in Early Universe.



> *Scientists trying to understand dark energy, one of the weirdest things in the universe, have made a step forward in determining how much of it could have existed shortly after the Big Bang.
> 
> Dark energy is the mysterious force scientists think is responsible for pulling space apart at the seams, causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. No one knows what dark energy is, and it hasn't been detected directly.
> 
> In the new study, researchers used the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica to observe the cosmic microwave background, the pervasive light left over from the Big Bang that is believed to have kick-started the universe. This radiation holds a record of many properties of the early universe, allowing scientists to deduce the maximum amount of dark energy that could have been present at the time.
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> Based on their measurements, the researchers found that dark energy could not have accounted for more than 1.8 percent of the total density of the universe. By contrast, dark energy dominates space today, accounting for about 74 percent of all the matter and energy in the universe.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Flowing along in four dimensions.



> *In 1988, John Cardy asked if there was a c-theorem in four dimensions. At the time, he reasonably expected his work on theories of quantum particles and fields to be professionally put to the test… But it never happened. Now - a quarter of a century later - it seems he was right.*
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> The a-theorem could help to explain the theory that describes quarks, fundamental particles seen here in a three-dimensional computer-generated simulation. Credit: PASIEKA/SPL


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Charming surprise: First evidence for CP violation in charm decays.



> *The LHCb Collaboration has presented today at the Hadron Collider Particle Symposium in Paris possible first evidence for CP violation, the difference between behaviour of matter (particles) and antimatter (antiparticles), in charm decays.*
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> The figure shows the invariant mass distribution of the K-K+ (around 1.4 million) pairs. The distribution is centered at the D meson mass of 1865 MeV.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Huge potentially inhabited water lake found on Jupiter moon



> _Europa ice-cap now best known prospect for alien life[_
> 
> In major extra-terrestrial news, scientists have announced the first discovery of at least one huge body of liquid water beyond planet Earth, offering confirmation at last of a potential offworld habitat for alien life.


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## lotuseclat79

LHC May Have Found Crack in Modern Physics.



> *In late 2008, a few onlookers believed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would bring the end of the world. Three years later, our planet remains intact, but the European particle smasher may have made its first crack in modern physics.
> 
> If this crack turns out to be real, it might help explain an enduring mystery of the universe: why there's lots of normal matter, but hardly any of the opposite-antimatter. "If it holds up, it's exciting," says particle physicist Robert Roser of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists create light from vacuum.



> *Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in creating light from vacuum - observing an effect first predicted over 40 years ago. The results will be published tomorrow (Wednesday) in the journal Nature. In an innovative experiment, the scientists have managed to capture some of the photons that are constantly appearing and disappearing in the vacuum.*
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> In the Chalmers scientists' experiments, virtual photons bounce off a "mirror" that vibrates at a speed that is almost as high as the speed of light. The round mirror in the picture is a symbol, and under that is the quantum electronic component (referred to as a SQUID), which acts as a mirror. This makes real photons appear (in pairs) in vacuum. Credit: Philip Krantz, Chalmers


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Hubble confirms: galaxies are ultimate recyclers.



> *New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are expanding astronomers' understanding of the ways in which galaxies continuously recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy elements. This process allows galaxies to build successive generations of stars stretching over billions of years.*
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> Distant quasars shine through the gas-rich "fog" of hot plasma encircling galaxies. At ultraviolet wavelengths, Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is sensitive to absorption from many ionized heavy elements, such as nitrogen, oxygen, and neon. COS's high sensitivity allows many galaxies that happen to lie in front of the much more distant quasars. The ionized heavy elements serve as proxies for estimating how much mass is in a galaxy's halo. (Credit: NASA; ESA; A. Feild, STScI)
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> The color and shape of a galaxy is largely controlled by gas flowing through an extended halo around it. All modern simulations of galaxy formation find that they cannot explain the observed properties of galaxies without modeling the complex accretion and "feedback" processes by which galaxies acquire gas and then later expel it after chemical processing by stars. Hubble spectroscopic observations show that galaxies like our Milky Way recycle gas while galaxies undergoing a rapid starburst of activity will lose gas into intergalactic space and become "red and dead." (Credit: NASA; ESA; A. Feild, STScI)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result.



> *The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and confirmed the result.*
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> Neutrinos travel through 700km of rock before reaching Gran Sasso's underground laboratories


-- Tom


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## pyritechips

I am very pleased to say that my 2 1/2 year-old Liam knows all his planets! All the way from Mercury to Neptune.


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## ekim68

Not Pluto, eh?


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## lotuseclat79

LRO Camera Team Releases High Resolution Global Topographic Map of Moon.



> *The science team that oversees the imaging system on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has released the highest resolution near-global topographic map of the moon ever created.
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> This new topographic map, from Arizona State University in Tempe, shows the surface shape and features over nearly the entire moon with a pixel scale close to 100 meters (328 feet). A single measure of elevation (one pixel) is about the size of two football fields placed side-by-side.*
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> LROC WAC color shaded relief of the lunar farside. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/DLR/ASU)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Contested 'faster-than-light' experiment yields results.



> *A fiercely contested experiment that appears to show the accepted speed limit of the Universe can be broken has yielded the same results in a re-run, European physicists said.*


Related article: Study rejects "faster than light" particle finding.



> *An international team of scientists in Italy studying the same neutrino particles colleagues say appear to have travelled faster than light rejected the startling finding this weekend, saying their tests had shown it must be wrong.*
> ...
> Other experiments are being prepared -- at Fermilab and at the KEK laboratory in Japan -- to try to replicate OPERA's findings. Only confirmation from one of these would open the way for a full scientific discovery to be declared.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Mass is energy.



> *Some say that the reason you can't travel faster than light is that your mass will increase as your speed approaches light speed - so, regardless of how much energy your star drive can generate, you reach a point where no amount of energy can further accelerate your spacecraft because its mass is approaching infinite.*
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> As the ratio of your velocity to light speed approaches 1, the ratio of your relativistic mass to your rest mass grows asymptotically - i.e. it approaches infinite.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Blocked holes can enhance rather than stop light going through.



> *Conventional wisdom would say that blocking a hole would prevent light from going through it, but Princeton University engineers have discovered the opposite to be true. A research team has found that placing a metal cap over a small hole in a metal film does not stop the light at all, but rather enhances its transmission.*
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> These electron microscope images show an experiment in which Princeton electrical engineer Stephen Chou showed that blocking a hole in a thin metal film could cause more light to pass through the hole than leaving the hole unblocked. The top image shows an array of holes with gold caps, each of which is 40 percent bigger than the hole on which it sits. The bottom image shows a cross-section view of one hole with the cap sitting on top. The hole covered with the cap surprisingly allows more light to be transmitted through the film than a hole without the cap, Chou's research team found. Credit: Stephen Chou/Princeton University


Very interesting: metal transmits rather than blocks light!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The insanely weird quantum wave function might be "real" after all.



> *Quantum mechanics has a concept called a "wave function." It's incredibly important because it holds all the measurable information about a particle (or group of particles) within it. In practice, the wave function describes a set of probabilities that change in time. When we make a measurement, we are really poking at the wave function, causing these probabilities to collapse and take on a definite value. The value that the wave function predicts is determined by the relative probabilities of all the possible measurement results.
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> But physically, the wave function is problematic. It is often possible to figure out the physical meaning of a symbol in an equation by looking at the physical units you would use to measure it. A quick examination of the wave function shows that the units of the wave function don't make a great deal of sense. To avoid a mental hernia, physicists tell each other that the wave function is a useful calculation tool, but only has physical relevance in terms of statistics, rather than having some concrete existence. In other words, it's not really "real."
> 
> Until now, we have taken comfort from the idea that, real or not, the results from the wave function would be the same. So no worries, right? Quite possibly wrong. In a paper posted on the arXiv, a trio of researchers has shown that you can't have it both ways; a purely statistical wave function will not always give the same results as a wave function with real physical significance.*
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> Quantum Wave Function Photograph by LBL.gov


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists set strongest limit on mass of dark matter.



> *Brown University physicists have set the strongest limit for the mass of dark matter, the mysterious particles believed to make up nearly a quarter of the universe. The researchers report in Physical Review Letters that dark matter must have a mass greater than 40 giga-electron volts. The distinction is important because it casts doubt on recent results from underground experiments that have reported detecting dark matter.*
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> Brown University physicists studied seven dwarf galaxies, circled in white (click to enlarge). Observations indicate the dwarf galaxies are full of dark matter because their stars' motion cannot be fully explained by their mass alone, making them ideal places to search for dark matter annihilation signals. Credit: Koushiappas and Geringer-Sameth, Brown University


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Signal of Destroyed Dark Matter Seen in Space Telescope's Data.



> *In 2008, the Italian satellite PAMELA picked up an unusual signal: a spike in antimatter particles whizzing through space. The discovery, controversial at the time, hinted that physicists might be coming close to detecting dark matter, an enigmatic substance thought to account for 85% of the matter in the universe. Now, new data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope confirm the spike. Alas, they also undermine its interpretation as a sign of dark energy.*
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> mage: The Fermi telescope (illustration) has confirmed an anomalous antimatter signal in the cosmic ray spectrum. (NASA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

One promising puzzle piece for confirming dark matter now seems unlikely fit.



> *Like jazz musicians who make up a melody as they go along, scientists often improvise even after an experiment is underway. One recent example of this comes from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Launched by NASA in June 2008, the $690 million telescope has since been working as advertised, providing scientists with the most complete look yet at gamma rays, the highest energy forms of light. But just two months after the launch, a tantalizing finding from a European experiment hinting at evidence of dark matter had Stefan Funk and Justin Vandenbroucke wondering if the telescope could be used to look at something for which it wasn't intended -- specifically, electrons and their antimatter twins, positrons, that are streaming across the universe in cosmic rays.*
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> By finding a clever way to use the Earth itself as a scientific instrument, researchers turned the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope into a positron detector - and confirmed a startling discovery from 2009 that found an excess of these antimatter particles in cosmic rays, a possible sign of dark matter.


Related article: Four reasons why the quantum vacuum may explain dark matter.



> *Earlier this year, PhysOrg reported on a new idea that suggested that gravitational charges in the quantum vacuum could provide an alternative to dark matter. The idea rests on the hypothesis that particles and antiparticles have gravitational charges of opposite sign. As a consequence, virtual particle-antiparticle pairs in the quantum vacuum form gravitational dipoles (having both a positive and negative gravitational charge) that can interact with baryonic matter to produce phenomena usually attributed to dark matter. Although CERN physicist Dragan Slavkov Hajdukovic, who proposed the idea, mathematically demonstrated that these gravitational dipoles could explain the observed rotational curves of galaxies without dark matter in his initial study, he noted that much more work needed to be done.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers make the case that modern life sprang from early mega-organism.



> *A lot of work has been done over the years to nail down the origins of life, with much speculation given to whatever first bit of "life" appeared from what was before, nothing but non-living material. Unfortunately, evidence of such life has long vanished leaving researchers to try to piece together what might have happened afterwards by rewinding the genetic tape so to speak.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists propose search for fourth neutrino.



> *Physicists know that neutrinos (and antineutrinos) come in three flavors: electron, muon, and tau. In several experiments, researchers have detected each of the neutrino flavors and even watched them "oscillate" back and forth between flavors. But starting in the early '90s, some experiments have also revealed a nagging anomaly: muon antineutrinos oscillate into electron antineutrinos at a 3% higher rate than predicted. Physicists can reconcile this discrepancy by adding a fourth neutrino with a specific mass, although such a move would require modifying the Standard Model, the theory of subatomic particles that has taken decades to build. In a new study, a team of physicists thinks it's time to put the question of the fourth neutrino's existence to the test.*
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> In the proposed test for a fourth neutrino, a small electron antineutrino source (blue) located at the center of a large liquid scintillator detector would be used to bombard a target. The red curve represents the oscillation of the antineutrino rate as a function of the distance within the detector. If the bombardment involves sterile neutrinos, interactions of the electron antineutrinos would show a spatial modulation of a few percent over a few meters. Image credit: L. Scola (CEA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Uncovering Da Vinci's rule of the trees.



> *As trees shed their foliage this fall, they reveal a mysterious, nearly universal growth pattern first observed by Leonardo da Vinci 500 years ago: a simple yet startling relationship that always holds between the size of a tree's trunk and sizes of its branches. A new paper has reignited the debate over why trees grow this way, asserting that they may be protecting themselves from wind damage.*
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> Credit: Image Courtesy Christophe Eloy, University of Provence


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New exhibition, website guide visitors through the evolving universe.



> *The cosmos constantly changes. Stars are born, live out their lives, and die - sometimes calmly, sometimes explosively. Galaxies form, grow, and collide dramatically. A new exhibition and website, developed jointly by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, reveal the dynamic and evolving universe through breathtaking photographs and informative captions.*
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> Most stars form close together in nebulae - large cosmic clouds of gas and dust that act as stellar nurseries. The nebula IC 410 is located 13,000 light-years from Earth and spans 15 light-years. This visible-light photograph was taken with the Megacam instrument on the MMT telescope atop Mount Hopkins, Arizona. Credit: Harvard-Smithsonian CfA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

New planet -- Kepler-21b -- discovered.



> *The NASA Kepler Mission is designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way Galaxy to discover Earth-size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist, and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. It now has another planet to add to its growing list.*
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> Figure 1: The Kepler field as seen in the sky over Kitt Peak National Observatory. The approximate position of HD 179070 is indicated by the circle (sky imaged using a diffraction grating to show spectra of brighter stars, credit J. Glaspey; telescopes imaged separately and combined, credit P. Marenfeld)


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Fire Burns Differently in Space, Space Station Experiment Shows



> NASA is playing with fire on the International Space Station - literally.
> 
> Since March 2009, the space agency's Flame Extinguishment Experiment, or FLEX, has conducted more than 200 tests to better understand how fire behaves in microgravity, which is still not well understood. The research could lead to improved fire suppression systems aboard future spaceships, and it could also have practical benefits here on Earth, scientists said.


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## lotuseclat79

Livermore and Russian scientists propose new names for elements 114 and 116.



> *The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) today recommended new proposed names for elements 114 and 116, the latest heavy elements to be added to the periodic table.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Strange new 'species' of ultra-red galaxy discovered.



> *In the distant reaches of the universe, almost 13 billion light-years from Earth, a strange species of galaxy lay hidden. Cloaked in dust and dimmed by the intervening distance, even the Hubble Space Telescope couldn't spy it. It took the revealing power of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to uncover not one, but four remarkably red galaxies. And while astronomers can describe the members of this new "species," they can't explain what makes them so ruddy.*
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> This artist's conception portrays four extremely red galaxies that lie almost 13 billion light-years from Earth. Discovered using the Spitzer Space Telescope, these galaxies appear to be physically associated and may be interacting. One galaxy shows signs of an active galactic nucleus, shown here as twin jets streaming out from a central black hole. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Voyagers travel far enough to see our own galaxy without the Sun's interference.



> *Hydrogen is the most abundant gas in the Universe, and provides important clues about its properties. The cosmic microwave background was created through interactions with ionized hydrogen, and emissions from hydrogen ions help us identify energetic events like star formation. They do, that is, if the events are far enough away. Ironically, the Universe conspires to keep us from seeing events in our own galaxy. Or, more accurately, the Sun has kept us from seeing them until very recently, when the Voyager probes finally got far enough from the Sun to see what our galaxy is up to.*
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> Photograph by nasa.gov


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Quantum entanglement demonstrated in macroscopic objects.



> *A pair of diamond crystals, large enough to be seen by the naked eye, have been linked together by quantum entanglement. The diamonds are entangled such that manipulating one affects the other, even though they are physically separated. In this case, the crystals were 3 millimeters wide and 15 centimeters apart. (One of the diamond wafers is pictured below.) Indeed, Einstein called this phenomenon "spooky action at a distance," and scientists still don't understand how it's possible. The University of Oxford physicists published their work today in the journal Science.*
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> Entangled diamonds
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> Coin and diamond wafer


-- Tom


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## ekim68

The Little Spacecraft that could: (They don't make computers like that anymore..)

Voyager Probes Give Us ET's View



> When NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, the mission was to study the outer planets of the solar system. Now the probes are so far away, they are able to make measurements of our galaxy from an outsider's perspective.
> 
> For the first time, scientists have been able to measure a type of radiation streaming out from the Milky Way that in other galaxies has been linked to the birthplaces of young, hot stars.


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## lotuseclat79

The Discovery of Dolphin Language.



> *Researchers in the United States and Great Britain have made a significant breakthrough in deciphering dolphin language in which a series of eight objects have been sonically identified by dolphins. Team leader, Jack Kassewitz of SpeakDolphin.com, 'spoke' to dolphins with the dolphin's own sound picture words. Dolphins in two separate research centers understood the words, presenting convincing evidence that dolphins employ a universal "sono-pictorial" language of communication.*
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-- Tom


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## ekim68

Kepler 22-b: Earth-like planet confirmed



> The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.
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> It is the closest confirmed planet yet to one like ours - an "Earth 2.0".
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> However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid.


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## lotuseclat79

More evidence found for quantum physics in photosynthesis.



> *Physicists have found the strongest evidence yet of quantum effects fueling photosynthesis.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

A limerick for the Higgs boson.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Geminid meteor shower 2011.



> *Its the finale of this year's meteor showers: The Geminids will start appearing on Dec. 7 and should reach peak activity around the 13th and 14th. This shower could put on a display of up to 100+ meteors (shooting stars) per hour under good viewing conditions.*
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> However, conditions this year are not ideal with the presence of a waning gibbous Moon (which will be up from mid-evening until morning). But seeing meteors every few minutes is quite possible. Geminid meteors are often slow and bright with persistent colored trails which can linger for a while after the meteor has burned up.
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> Geminid meteor: Credit: Wally Pacholka


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Last full lunar eclipse for 3 years this weekend.



> *The last total lunar eclipse of the year is Saturday. And there won't be another one for three years.*
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> In this Thursday June 16, 2011 file photo, the moon exhibits a deep orange glow as the Earth casts its shadow in a total lunar eclipse as seen in Manila, Philippines, before dawn. The last total lunar eclipse of the year is Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011. And there won't be another one for three years. Viewers in the western half of the United States will have the best views Saturday well before dawn, Pacific and Mountain Standard Time. The farther west the better. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

LHC to narrow search for Higgs boson.



> *Scientists at the world's largest atom smasher have new data that shows with greater certainty where to find a long-sought theoretical particle that would help explain the origins of the universe.*


Stay tuned for Next Tuesday's announcement about where they will look in next year's upcoming experiments.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The birth of a telescope 30 times larger than Earth.



> *On 15 November 2011, the Effelsberg 100-meter radio telescope, together with three Russian and one Ukrainian telescope, took part in the first interferometric observations with the orbiting 10-meter antenna Spektr-R of the Russian RadioAstron project. The observations were made at a wavelength of 18 centimeters, targeting the distant, bright, and very compact quasar 0212+735. Interferometric signals have been successfully detected by the RadioAstron team between Spektr-R and the ground antennas, setting a new world record for the size of a radio interferometer and opening a new era in interferometric studies of cosmic radio emission.*
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> Artist's impression of Spektr-R, the 10-meter space-borne antenna of the RadioAstron project. Credit: Lavochkin Association


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Researchers link patterns seen in spider silk, melodies.



> *Using a new mathematical methodology, researchers at MIT have created a scientifically rigorous analogy that shows the similarities between the physical structure of spider silk and the sonic structure of a melody, proving that the structure of each relates to its function in an equivalent way.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Watch a Live Feed of Saturday's Lunar Eclipse.



> *The moon will be turning a vivid red to viewers in western North America during a total lunar eclipse on Saturday, Dec. 10.*
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> Those in the Pacific Time zone will be able to catch the event starting at 6:05 am and lasting until 6:57 am, which means only those who wake up early (or go to bed very late) will manage to glimpse the blood-red moon before the sun rises. Unfortunately, both sunrise and moonset will prevent those in the eastern U.S. from watching the eclipse.
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Multi-purpose photonic chip paves the way to programmable quantum processors.



> *The fundamental resource that drives a quantum computer is entanglement-the connection between two distant particles which Einstein famously called 'spooky action at a distance'. The Bristol researchers have, for the first time, shown that this remarkable phenomenon can be generated, manipulated and measured entirely on a tiny silica chip. They have also used the same chip to measure mixture-an often unwanted effect from the environment, but a phenomenon which can now be controlled and used to characterize quantum circuits, as well as being of fundamental interest to physicists.*
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> Artist's impression of the quantum photonic chip, showing the waveguide circuit (in white), and the voltage-controlled phase shifters (metal contacts on the surface). Photon pairs become entangled as they pass through the circuit.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Life Possible On 'Large Regions' of Mars



> With higher pressures and warmer temperatures beneath the Martian surface, Earth-like microorganisms could thrive.


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## lotuseclat79

Cambridge University puts Newton's papers online.



> *In a project that has long been overdue, Cambridge University, thanks to a hefty gift from the Polonsky Foundation (supporter of education and arts) and a grant from Britain's Joint Information Services Committee (JISC), has put some of Isaac Newton's original papers online for any and all to see. Of particular interest to most will be Newton's own annotated copy of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, considered by many to be one of the greatest published works by any scientist ever. For those looking for a little behind the scenes work, the University has also published Newton's so-called "Waste Book," a diary of sorts that Newton inherited from his step-father which he took along with him and used for jotting notes about such things as his ideas on calculus while away from school due to the Great Plague in 1665.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Book explores discoveries in cosmology and how our universe could have come from nothing.



> *The earliest philosophers argued that out of nothing, nothing comes (ex nihilo, nihil fit). This ignited intense philosophical and theological debates and invoked challenging questions over the coming centuries. How could our universe in all its complexity come into existence from absolute nothingness, if nothing comes from nothing? In his new book, "A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (Free Press; January 10, 2012; Hardcover; $24.99)," Arizona State University professor Lawrence M. Krauss explains how recent revolutions in our understanding of physics and cosmology allow modern science to address the question of why there is something rather than nothing, and more importantly, why this is a scientific question rather than a philosophical or theological one.*
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> In his new book, "A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (Free Press; January 10, 2012; Hardcover; $24.99)," Arizona State University professor Lawrence M. Krauss explains how recent revolutions in our understanding of physics and cosmology allow modern science to address the question of why there is something rather than nothing, and more importantly, why this is a scientific question rather than a philosophical or theological one. Credit: -


Related article: How supermassive black holes came into existence shortly after the Big Bang.



> *Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Bruce and Astrid McWilliams Center for Cosmology have discovered what caused the rapid growth of early supermassive black holes - a steady diet of cold, fast food.*
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> Pictured is the large scale cosmological mass distribution in the the MassiveBlack simulation. The projected gas density over the whole volume ("unwrapped" into 2-D) is shown in the background image. The two images on top show two close-ups of the regions where the most massive black hole is formed. The black hole is at the center of the image and is being fed by cold gas streams. Credit: Yu Feng


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

LHC: Higgs boson 'may have been glimpsed'.



> *The most coveted prize in particle physics - the Higgs boson - may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.*
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Related article: Scientists excited over hints of finding an elusive particle.



> *Scientists are quivering with anticipation - flying halfway around the world for a close-up view of the action and devouring the latest updates from the blogosphere the way some girls track the doings of Justin Bieber.*


CERN Press Release: ATLAS and CMS experiments present Higgs search status.



> *The main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 116-130 GeV by the ATLAS experiment, and 115-127 GeV by CMS. Tantalising hints have been seen by both experiments in this mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery.*


Reference Info from Large Hadron Collider results excite scientists dated 23 July 2011.



> *Physicists think the Higgs will most probably be found in the low-mass region - between 114 GeV (gigaelectronvolts) and 140 GeV. While the gigaelectronvolt is a unit of energy, in particle physics, mass and energy can be interchanged because of Einstein's equivalence idea (E=MC2).
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> Professor Heuer said that searches at low masses had picked up small fluctuations "here and there", but that this was expected because physicists were analysing small numbers across a number of different "channels".
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> Statistics of a 'discovery':
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> * Particle physics has an accepted definition for a "discovery": a five-sigma level of certainty
> * The number of standard deviations, or sigmas, is a measure of how unlikely it is that an experimental result is simply down to chance rather than a real effect
> * Similarly, tossing a coin and getting a number of heads in a row may just be chance, rather than a sign of a "loaded" coin
> * The "three sigma" level represents about the same likelihood of tossing more than eight heads in a row
> * Five sigma, on the other hand, would correspond to tossing more than 20 in a row
> * A five-sigma result is highly unlikely to happen by chance, and thus an experimental result becomes an accepted discovery
> *


Possible signs of the Higgs remain in latest analyses (Update) (w/2 Videos: What is a Higgs Boson? and How do you search for it?).



> *Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have nearly eliminated the space in which the Higgs boson could dwell, scientists announced in a seminar held at CERN today. However, the ATLAS and CMS experiments see modest excesses in their data that could soon uncover the famous missing piece of the physics puzzle.*
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> This Thursday, March 22, 2007 file photo shows the magnet core of the world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet (CMS, Compact Muon Solenoid) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)'s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particule accelerator in Geneva Switzerland. Scientists at CERN will hold a public seminar Tuesday Dec. 13, 2011 to present their latest findings from the search for an elusive sub-atomic particle known as the Higgs boson. Physicists are increasingly confident that they have narrowed down the place where it will be found and may even already have hints at its existence hidden away in reams of data. (AP Photo/KEYSTONE/Martial Trezzini, File)


Glimpsing the God Particle.



> *Large Hadron Collider results suggest that one of most eagerly awaited scientific discoveries is within reach.*
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> The Large Hadron Collider's Compact Muon Solenoid. Credit: CERN


3 Questions About the LHC's Higgs Boson Announcement.



> *Today scientists from CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced that they are ever closer to discovering the elusive Higgs boson, a fundamental particle of nature they've been hoping for decades to find. Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli of the ATLAS and CMS experiments, respectively, each presented exciting new developments in particle physics. Here's what it means.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The 2011 Geminid meteor shower.



> *The 2011 Geminid meteor shower peaks on the night of Dec. 13-14, and despite the glare of a nearly-full Moon, it might be a good show.*
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> "Observers with clear skies could see as many as 40 Geminids per hour," predicts Bill Cooke of the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office. "Our all-sky network of meteor cameras has captured several early Geminid fireballs. They were so bright, we could see them despite the moonlight."
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

String theory researchers simulate big-bang on supercomputer.



> *A trio of Japanese physicists have applied a reformulation of string theory, called IIB, whereby matrices are used to describe the properties of the physical universe, on a supercomputer, to effectively show that the universe spontaneously ballooned in three directions, leaving the other six dimensions tightly wrapped, as string theory has predicted all along. Their work, as described in a paper pre-published on the arXiv server and soon to appear in Physical Review Letters, in effect, describes the birth of the universe.*


-- Tom


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## franca

Is this an alien spacecraft










Is this proof we're not alone? A bright object suddenly appears to the right of Mercury


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## lotuseclat79

A new 'lens' for looking at quantum behavior.



> *In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, researchers Daniel Terno (Macquarie University, Australia) and Radu Ionicioiu (Institute of Quantum Computing, Canada) provide a new perspective on fundamental notions of quantum physics.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

franca said:


> Is this an alien spacecraft
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> Is this proof we're not alone? A bright object suddenly appears to the right of Mercury


Obviously, the answer is No - as stated in the article!

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Closest Type Ia supernova in decades solves a cosmic mystery.



> *Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia's) are the extraordinarily bright and remarkably similar "standard candles" astronomers use to measure cosmic growth, a technique that in 1998 led to the discovery of dark energy  and 13 years later to a Nobel Prize, "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe." The light from thousands of SN Ia's has been studied, but until now their physics  how they detonate and what the star systems that produce them actually look like before they explode  has been educated guesswork.*
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> The Palomar Transient Factory caught SN 2011fe in the Pinwheel Galaxy in the vicinity of the Big Dipper on Aug. 24, 2011. Found just hours after it exploded and only 21 million light years away, the discovery triggered the closest-ever look at a young Type Ia supernova. Credit: Image by B. J. Fulton, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Decades-old conclusion about energy-making pathway of cyanobacteria is corrected.



> *A generally accepted 44-year-old assumption about how certain kinds of bacteria make energy and synthesize cell materials has been shown to be incorrect by a team of scientists led by Donald Bryant, the Ernest C. Pollard Professor of Biotechnology at Penn State University and a research professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Montana State University.*
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> Research expected to help scientists to discover new ways of genetically engineering bacteria to manufacture biofuels overturns a generally accepted 44-year-old assumption about how certain kinds of bacteria make energy and synthesize cell materials. Donald Bryant, at Penn State University, performed biochemical and genetic analyses on a cyanobacterium called Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002, scouring its genome for genes that might be responsible for making alternative energy-cycle enzymes.With this new understaning of how cyanobacteria make energy, it might be possible to genetically engineer a cyanobacterial strain to synthesize 1,3-butanediol -- an organic compound that is the precursor for making not only biofuels but also plastics. Credit: Bryant lab, Penn State University


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists report first solar cell producing more electrons in photocurrent than solar photons entering cell.



> *Researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have reported the first solar cell that produces a photocurrent that has an external quantum efficiency greater than 100 percent when photoexcited with photons from the high energy region of the solar spectrum.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Less knowledge, more power: Uninformed can be vital to democracy, study finds (Social Sciences related topic).



> *Contrary to the ideal of a completely engaged electorate, individuals who have the least interest in a specific outcome can actually be vital to achieving a democratic consensus. These individuals dilute the influence of powerful minority factions who would otherwise dominate everyone else, according to new research published in the journal Science.*
> 
> Princeton University-led researchers found that uninformed individuals -- those with no strong opinion or prior knowledge -- promote democratic consensus by diluting the power of a strongly opinionated minority that would otherwise dominate group decisions. Because uninformed individuals have no feelings on a situation's outcome, they side with and embolden the numerical majority.


-- Tom


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## franca

Comet survives


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## lotuseclat79

Supernova research challenges cosmic "dark flow" mystery.



> *New research contradicts the finding that everything in the visible universe is moving in the same direction.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physics World Picks Top ten breakthroughs for 2011.



> *The two physics stories that dominated the news in 2011 were questions rather than solid scientific results, namely "Do neutrinos travel faster than light?" and "Has the Higgs boson been found?". However, there have also been some fantastic bona fide research discoveries over the last 12 months, which made it difficult to decide on the Physics World 2011 Breakthrough of the Year.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Is Jupiter Eating Its Own Heart?



> Jupiter is the victim of its own success. Sophisticated new calculations indicate that our solar system's largest planet, which weighs more than twice as much as all of the others put together, has destroyed part of its central core. Ironically, the culprit is the very hydrogen and helium that made Jupiter a gas giant, when the core's gravity attracted these elements as the planet formed. The finding suggests that the most massive extrasolar planets have no cores at all.
> 
> Astronomers call Jupiter a gas giant because it consists mostly of hydrogen and helium, which are gases on Earth. On Jupiter, however, enormous pressure from the planet's gravity squeezes most of the hydrogen into a metallic fluid that conducts electricity. The hydrogen and helium surround a central core made of iron, rock, and ice. The core, which weighs roughly 10 times as much as Earth, is a small component in a planet that weighs 318 Earths.


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## ekim68

Rare, last look inside space shuttle Atlantis


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## lotuseclat79

The earliest stars in the Universe.



> *Matter in the universe after the big bang consisted almost entirely of hydrogen and helium atoms. Only later, after undergoing fusion reactions in the nuclear furnaces of stars, did these light elements transform into all the other (so-called "heavy") elements that are found in the cosmos today. But astronomers know that the process of making stars, at least today, includes important roles for these heavy elements, for example helping the pre-stellar cloud collapse until the first nuclear reactions can ignite. How, then, did the first stars form, and what did subsequent generations of stars look like?*
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> A faint star in the southern Milky Way has been found to consist virtually only of hydrogen and helium, with only 1/200,000 of the heavier elements seen in the sun. Credit: ESO VLT


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Special relativity from first principles.



> *Einstein's explanation of special relativity, delivered in his 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies focuses on demolishing the idea of 'absolute rest', exemplified by the theoretical luminiferous aether. He achieved this very successfully, but many hearing that argument today are left puzzled as to why everything seems to depend upon the speed of light in a vacuum.*
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> There's hope for us all if a mild-mannered patent office clerk can become Person Of The 20th Century.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

How can growing galaxies stay silent?.



> *Beginning around 2005, astronomers began discovering the presence of very large galaxies at a distance of around 10 billion lightyears. But while these galaxies were large, they didn't appear to have a similarly large number of formed stars. Given that astronomers expect galaxies to grow through mergers and mergers tend to trigger star formation, the presence of such large, undeveloped galaxies seemed odd. How could galaxies grow so much, yet have so few stars?*
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> The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) with minor satellite galaxy M32


-- Tom


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## franca

Nasa space telescope finds 'twin' of Earth orbiting a distant Sun-like star










Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...telescope-finds-twin-Earth.html#ixzz1h6Lz9ZHz


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## lotuseclat79

Earth Must Have Another Moon, Say Astronomers.



> *A study of the way our planet temporarily captures asteroids suggests that Earth should have at least one extra moon at any one time*
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> Back in 2006, the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona noticed that a mysterious body had begun orbiting the Earth. This object had a spectrum that was remarkably similar to the titanium white paint used on Saturn V rocket stages and, indeed, a number of rocket stages are known to orbit the Sun close to Earth.
> 
> But this was not an object of ours. Instead, 2006 RH120, as it became known, turned out to be a tiny asteroid just a few metres across--a natural satellite like the Moon. It was captured by Earth's gravity in September 2006 and orbited us until June 2007 when it wandered off into the Solar System in search of a more interesting neighbour.
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> 2006 RH120 was the first reliably documented example of a temporary moon.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

2011's biggest science stories, and why they'll be back in 2012.



> ...instead of simply running down the list of the top stories of the past year, we're going to spend some time explaining why they were big in the first place, and why they could get even bigger in the coming year.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

cb(3P): New particle at the Large Hadron Collider discovered by ATLAS experiment.



> *Researchers from the University of Birmingham and Lancaster University, analysing data taken by the ATLAS experiment, have been at the centre of what is believed to be the first clear observation of a new particle at the Large Hadron Collider. The research is published today on the online repository arXiv.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Like monkeys, pigeons can put numbers in order.



> *Pigeons are on par with primates in their numerical abilities, according to new University of Otago research appearing in the leading international journal Science.*
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> Pigeon participating in Dr Scarf's research. Photo by William van der Vliet


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Study resolves century-long debate over how to describe electromagnetic momentum density in matter.



> *Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the University of British Columbia have shown that the interaction between a light pulse and a light-absorbing object, including the momentum transfer and resulting movement of the object, can be calculated for any positive index of refraction using a few, well-established physical principles combined with a new model for mass transfer from light to matter.*


-- Tom


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## ekim68

First of Nasa's Grail gravity twins enters Moon orbit



> Nasa has succeeded in putting the first of two gravity mapping satellites in orbit around the Moon.
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> The Grail-A spacecraft fired its main engine late on Saturday (GMT) to slow itself sufficiently to take up an elliptical path around the lunar body.
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> Its twin, Grail-B, will attempt exactly the same manoeuvre on Sunday.
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> Together, the satellites will make measurements that are expected to give scientists remarkable new insights into the internal structure of the Moon.
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> This new data should clarify ideas about the Moon's formation and resolve many questions, such as why its near and far sides look so different.


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## pyritechips

Here is a neat online Planisphere for those of you that like astronomy:

http://www.astronomy.com/stardome.aspx


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## ekim68

Thanks Jim. I've got it bookmarked...:up:


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## lotuseclat79

Little galaxies are big on dark matter.



> *Dark matter... It came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. Within its confines, galaxies formed and evolved. If you add up all the parts contained within any given galaxy you derive its mass, yet its gravitational effects can only be explained by the presence of this mysterious subatomic particle. It would be easy to believe that the larger the galaxy, the larger the amount of dark matter should be present, but new research shows that isn't so. Dwarf galaxies have even higher proportions of dark matter than their larger counterparts. Although the dwarfs are the most common of all, we know very little about them -- even when they consume each other. Enter the star stream...*
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> The stellar stream in the halo of the nearby dwarf starburst galaxy NGC 4449 is resolved into its individual starry constituents in this exquisite image taken with the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope and Suprime-Cam. Image credit: R. Jay GaBany and Aaron J. Romanowsky (UCSC) in collaboration with David Martinez-Delgado (MPIA) and NAOJ. Image processed by R. Jay GaBany


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Faster-than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity.



> *The relativistic motion of clocks on board GPS satellites exactly accounts for the superluminal effect, says physicist.*
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> OPERA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

GalaxyAlert: Gigantic Gas Cloud on Collision Course with Milky Way ("A 2011 Most Popular").



> *"We might be witnessing the final stages of the formation process of our galaxy, " says W. Butler Burton, radio astronomer. A giant cloud of hydrogen gas, clocked at more than 150 miles per second per second, is closing in very fast on the Milky Way, likely setting off a huge burst of star formation. At its current speed, the cloud will collide with interstellar gas in the Milky Way's disk in less than 40 million years, condensing into tens of thousands of bright, massive stars that will explode as supernovas within a couple of million years.*
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> The Daily Galaxy via nrao.edu


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Bizarre Crystal Hitched Ride on Meteorite.



> *A rock fragment containing a previously unidentified natural quasicrystal may be the remnant of a meteorite that originated in the early solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago before Earth even existed.*
> 
> Until now, researchers had assumed such quasicrystals, whose atoms are arranged in a quasi-regular pattern rather than the regular arrangement of atoms inside a crystal, were not feasible in nature. In fact, until now the only known quasicrystals were synthetic, formed in a laboratory under carefully controlled conditions. (This year's Nobel Prize in chemistry honored Dan Shechtman for his 1982 discovery of quasicrystals, which at the time were thought to break the laws of nature.)
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> A rock sample containing quasicrystals unearthed in the Koryak Mountains in Russia.
> CREDIT: Paul Steinhardt, Princeton University


-- Tom


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## franca

British scientists










Searchlight: The eight-week mission unearthed many new species using a deep sea rover controlled from a nearby vessel


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## lotuseclat79

Faster-than-light neutrinos dealt another blow.



> *Faster-than-light neutrinos can't catch a break. If they exist they would not only flout special relativity but also the fundamental tenet that energy is conserved in the universe. This suggests that either the speedy neutrino claim is wrong or that new physics is needed to account for it.*
> ...
> Now a team including Shmuel Nussinov of Tel Aviv University in Israel says it could also put a dent in the principle of the conservation of energy. "This is such a holy principle that has been verified in so many ways," he says.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Physicists propose test for loop quantum gravity.



> *As a quantum theory of gravity, loop quantum gravity could potentially solve one of the biggest problems in physics: reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics. But like all tentative theories of quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity has never been experimentally tested. Now in a new study, scientists have found that, when black holes evaporate, the radiation they emit could potentially reveal "footprints" of loop quantum gravity, distinct from the usual Hawking radiation that black holes are expected to emit.*
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> ...black holes are not the only possible probe of loop quantum gravity, and he's currently investigating whether loop quantum gravity might have signatures in the universe's background radiation.
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> "I am now working on the cosmological side of loop quantum gravity," Barrau said. "This is the other way to try to test the theory: some specific footprints in the cosmic microwave background might be detected in the future."
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> Artist's illustration of loop quantum gravity (signature).


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Ready Your Watch: The Leap Second Is Coming.



> *The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) in Paris - the grand arbiters of time on our big blue marble - has declared that a leap second will be introduced on 30 June, 2012.*
> 
> From January 2009 to July 2012 UTC and TAI (aka International Atomic Time) are 34 seconds apart (because of the various leap seconds added). From July 2012 onwards, they'll be 35 seconds apart.
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> You will probably not notice the change, but people running complicated infrastructure like telecommunications, GPS, air traffic control and the internet are going to have a headache getting everything back in sync.
> ...
> What will you do with your bonus second this coming June?


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Higgs result means elegant universe is back in vogue.



> *AFTER a short spell on the rocks, a mathematically elegant view of the universe is back in vogue. Recent hints of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider help explain why we have not seen evidence for the beautiful theory of supersymmetry yet - and point to fresh ways to focus the search.*
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> Recent hints of the Higgs boson help explain why we have not seen evidence of supersymmetry yet (Image: Mehau Kulyk/Science Photo Library)
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> Supersymmetric Particles


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Down to the Wire for Silicon: Researchers Create a Wire Four Atoms Wide, One Atom Tall



> The smallest wires ever developed in silicon -- just one atom tall and four atoms wide -- have been shown by a team of researchers from the University of New South Wales, Melbourne University and Purdue University to have the same current-carrying capability as copper wires.


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## lotuseclat79

Stephen Hawking: "We Should Look for Evidence of a Collision with Another Universe in Our Distant Past".



> *Some people hypothesise that what we call the universe may only be one of many. Is there any conceivable way that we could ever detect and study other universes if they exist? Is it even falsifiable? This was a key question the world's leading expert on the physics of the Universe was was asked in an interview with the BBC.
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> "Our best bet for a theory of everything is M-theory --an extension of string theory," Hawking continued. "One prediction of M-theory is that there are many different universes, with different values for the physical constants. This might explain why the physical constants we measure seem fine-tuned to the values required for life to exist."
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> It is no surprise that we observe the physical constants to be finely-tuned. If they weren't, we wouldn't be here to observe them. One way of testing the theory that we may be one of many universes would be to look for features in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) which would indicate the collision of another universe with ours in the distant past.
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> The circular patterns within the cosmic microwave background suggest that space and time did not come into being at the Big Bang but that our universe in fact continually cycles through a series of "aeons," according to University of Oxford theoretical physicist Roger Penrose, who says that data collected by NASA's WMAP satellite supports his idea of "conformal cyclic cosmology".*
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> Do these concentric circles shown below offer a glimpse of before the Big Bang? What do you think?


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

If them neutrinos are faster than light, physicists have a lot of work to do.



> *The story of the faster-than-light neutrinos is a rather unusual one. The good folks at Gran Sasso seem embarrassed by their own results. They had checked, rechecked, and re-rechecked their data, and investigated all the sources of systematic error they could think of, eliminating them all. Yet those pesky neutrinos were still arriving 60ns too soon. You might think this would be a cause for celebration-after all, finding exciting new physics on the horizon is supposed to be every physicist's dream, right?
> 
> The truth is that they knew they were not just getting close to a fire, but standing in the flames while taking a gasoline shower. The literature was going to fill up with papers that, in one way or another, stated they were wrong-very wrong. Two such papers have now come out, and they show just how hot the fire is going to get.*
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> A neutrino event captured by Japan's T2K experiment.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Stephen Hawking turns 70 years old

An amazing man who contracted Lou Gehrig's Disease at the age of 21 and has made it this far....:up:


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists recreate evolution of complexity using 'molecular time travel'.

Note: This article is Biology: Cell & Microbiology related.



> *Much of what living cells do is carried out by "molecular machines" - physical complexes of specialized proteins working together to carry out some biological function. How the minute steps of evolution produced these constructions has long puzzled scientists, and provided a favorite target for creationists.*
> 
> In a study published early online on January 8, in Nature, a team of scientists from the University of Chicago and the University of Oregon demonstrate how just a few small, high-probability mutations increased the complexity of a molecular machine more than 800 million years ago. By biochemically resurrecting ancient genes and testing their functions in modern organisms, the researchers showed that a new component was incorporated into the machine due to selective losses of function rather than the sudden appearance of new capabilities.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Clearest Picture Yet of Dark Matter Points the Way to Better Understanding of Dark Energy



> The teams' measurements look for tiny distortions in the images of distant galaxies, called "cosmic shear," caused by the gravitational influence of massive, invisible dark matter structures in the foreground. Accurately mapping out these dark-matter structures and their evolution over time is likely to be the most sensitive of the few tools available to physicists in their ongoing effort to understand the mysterious space-stretching effects of dark energy.


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomers map the universe's dark matter at unprecedented scale.



> *For the first time, astronomers have mapped dark matter on the largest scale ever observed. The results, presented by Dr Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Associate Professor Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, are being presented today to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. Their findings reveal a Universe comprised of an intricate cosmic web of dark matter and galaxies that spans more than one billion light years.*
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> The observations show that dark matter in the Universe is distributed as a network of gigantic dense (white) and empty (dark) regions, where the largest white regions are about the size of several Earth moons on the sky. Credit: Van Waerbeke, Heymans, and CFHTLens collaboration.
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> The observations show that dark matter in the Universe is distributed as a network of gigantic dense (light) and empty (dark) regions, where the largest dense regions are about the size of several Earth moons on the sky. Credit: Van Waerbeke, Heymans, and CFHTLens collaboration.
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> The densest regions of the dark matter cosmic web host massive clusters of galaxies. Credit: Van Waerbeke, Heymans, and CFHTLens collaboration.
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> The ubiquitous dark matter cosmic web is seen in all four directions surveyed by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope during each season of the year. The central colour inset shows the previous largest COSMOS Dark Matter map (credit: NASA, ESA, P. Simon and T. Schrabback) and the full moon to scale. Credit: Van Waerbeke, Heymans, and CFHTLens


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Not all who wander are lost.



> *Some stars have orbits that take them to interesting places, and they have interesting stories to tell about how they were formed. For more than a decade, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has been mapping the stars in our galaxy. At today's meeting of the American Astronomical Society, astronomers Judy Cheng and and Connie Rockosi (University of California, Santa Cruz) presented new evidence that will help answer long-standing questions about the history of disk of our galaxy.*
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> Measurements of the metal content of stars in the disk of our Galaxy, using stars observed by SDSS-III's SEGUE-2 survey. Horizontal lines describe where SEGUE data measure the chemical composition of stars near and above the plane of the disk. The bottom panel shows the decrease in metal content as the distance from the Galactic center increases for stars near the plane of the Milky Way disk. In contrast, the metal content for stars far above the plane, shown in the upper panel, is nearly constant at all distances from the center of the Galaxy. The image of the Milky Way is from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey. Image Credit: Judy Cheng and Connie Rockosi (University of California, Santa Cruz) and the 2MASS Survey


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

First Map of Universe's Earliest Stars Unveiled.



> *The new map shows how the universe might have looked when it was just 30 million years old.*
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> The evolution of galaxies is one of the the great outstanding mysteries of astrophysics. And in recent years, astronomers have taken great strides in tackling the problem.
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> The latest generation of telescopes peer back in time to within a few hundred million years of creation. They clearly show the first galaxies shining brightly only 600 million years after the Big Bang. These galaxies form clusters which themselves stretch out across the cosmos in a vast filamentary-type structure known as the cosmic web.
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> This structure corresponds more or less exactly to the differences in the density of matter that must have arisen in the instants after creation. Cosmologists think they understand this structure well and have accurately simulated how it came into being.
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> The only wrinkle in their models is the stars from which galaxies are made, which must obviously have formed earlier.
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> Although this is only a simulation, we're likely to find out soon how good it is. The first stars produced light that we ought to be able to see today and a global effort to spot it is currently underway.
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Belle discovers new heavy 'exotic hadrons'.



> *Two unexpected new hadrons containing bottom quarks have been discovered by the Belle Experiment using the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)'s B Factory (KEKB), a highly-luminous, electron-positron collider. These new particles have electric charge and are thought to be "exotic" hadrons -- non-standard hadrons, containing at least four quarks. Previously, a series of new and unexpected exotic hadrons containing charm and anti-charm quarks have been observed. This latest discovery from Belle demonstrates the existence of exotic hadrons containing at least four quarks in a particle system including bottom quarks.*
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> Figure 1. Existing standard hadrons and exotic hadrons. At the B Factory experiment, a series of new exotic mesons containing charm quarks (c) have been discovered. Unlike these exotic mesons, the newly discovered Zb particles contain bottom quarks (b) and have an electric charge. If only one bottom quark and one anti-bottom quark ( b ) are contained, the resulting particle is electrically neutral. Thus, the Zb must also contain at least two more quarks (e.g., one up quark (u) and one anti-down quark ( d )).
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> Figure 2. Production of Zb in an electron-positron collision. Immediately after being produced, the Zb decays into a bottomonium ( Υ or hb) and a charged pi meson (π±). The bottomonium then decays into a pair of muons (μ±), which are subsequently measured with a detector.
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> Figure 3. Mass distributions of parent particles, which are calculated from the momenta and energy of measured bottomonium and charged pi meson for the cases when bottomonium is Υ (left) and hb (right). Peaks corresponding to the mass values of 10610 MeV/c2 and 10650 MeV/c2 can be observed for both cases.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astronomy related news from Jan 10, 2012:

Before they were stars: New image shows space nursery.



> *The stars we see today weren't always as serene as they appear, floating alone in the dark of night. Most stars, likely including our sun, grew up in cosmic turmoil - as illustrated in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.*
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> The Cygnus-X star-forming region is located 4,600 light-years from Earth and spans more than 600 light-years. It contains 10 times as much gas as the Orion Nebula -- enough to make over three million suns. This infrared photograph from the Spitzer Space Telescope reveals more than a thousand protostars in the earliest stages of forming. Light of 3.6 microns is color-coded blue: 4.5-micron light is blue-green; 8.0-micron light is green; and 24-micron light is red. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / J. Hora (CfA)


Hubble pinpoints furthest protocluster of galaxies ever seen.



> *Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development, making it the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early Universe.*
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> The composite image at left, taken in visible and near-infrared light, reveals the location of five galaxies clustered together just 600 million years after the Universe's birth in the Big Bang. The circles pinpoint the galaxies. The sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spied the galaxies in a random sky survey. The developing cluster is the most distant ever observed. The average distance between them is comparable to that of the galaxies in the Local Group, consisting of two large spiral galaxies, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy, and a few dozen small dwarf galaxies. The close-up images at right, taken in near-infrared light, show the galaxies. Simulations show that the galaxies will eventually merge and form the brightest central galaxy in the cluster, a giant elliptical similar to the Virgo cluster's Messier 87. Galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the Universe, comprising hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. The developing cluster presumably will grow into a massive galactic city, similar in size to the nearby Virgo Cluster, a collection of more than 2000 galaxies. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Trenti (University of Cambridge, UK and University of Colorado, Boulder, USA), L. Bradley (STScI), and the BoRG team


Chandra finds largest galaxy cluster in early universe.



> *An exceptional galaxy cluster, the largest seen in the distant universe, has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation-funded Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile.*
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> Composite image of the El Gordo galaxy cluster. (X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J. Hughes et al; Optical: ESO/VLT & SOAR/Rutgers/F. Menanteau; IR: NASA/JPL/Rutgers/F. Menanteau )


Fermi telescope explores new energy extremes.



> *After more than three years in space, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is extending its view of the high-energy sky into a largely unexplored electromagnetic range. Today, the Fermi team announced its first census of energy sources in this new realm.*
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> New sources emerge and old sources fade as the LAT's view extends into higher energies. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration and A. Neronov et al.
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> More than half of the sources above 10 GeV are black-hole-powered active galaxies. More than a third of the sources are completely unknown, having no identified counterpart detected in other parts of the spectrum. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Rice's 'quantum critical' theory gets experimental boost.



> *New evidence this week supports a theory developed five years ago at Rice University to explain the electrical properties of several classes of materials -- including unconventional superconductors -- that have long vexed physicists.*
> ...
> "We now have a materials-based global phase diagram for heavy-fermion systems -- a kind of road map that helps relate the predicted behavior of several different classes of materials," Si said. "This is an important step on the road to a unified theory."
> 
> High-temperature superconductivity is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of modern physics.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Are you scientifically literate? Take the Christian Science Monitor's (50 question) quiz at the link below to find out:

Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz.



> *You may have an opinion on climate change, evolution education, stem-cell research, and science funding. But do you have the facts to back up your opinion? This quiz will test your basic scientific literacy.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

The Einstein Expansion Paradox.



> *The universe expands. The galaxies, as they depart ever further from one another, are classically and even in Einstein's special theory of relativity, described as dust particles: The universe as a cloud of dust expanding through space. However, in Einstein's general theory of relativity, this same expansion is described as the universe itself expanding. There is no locally observable difference between these descriptions whatsoever - at least as far as we know. Classical expansion through space and Einstein's general relativity describing expansion of space both fit together seamlessly.
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> This conspiracy-like symmetry is paradoxical: in the Newtonian and special relativistic descriptions, the underlying space stays the same, uninvolved stage, while in the generally relativistic picture, space expands in the concrete sense that there is more of it than before (true even in infinite universes!). This is the "expansion-paradox" [1]:
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> Space expands globally although it nowhere expands.
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> The orthodox relativistic view likes to resolve this with help of space-time not being space in time: The four dimensional whole is one unchanging consistent arrangement, the "block universe". The smaller space in the past is simply a different region of the whole. It did not grow into the larger space of today; it is still in the past.*
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> Future Universe


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Hubble spots cluster forming 13 billion years ago



> Astronomers peering far back in time through the eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope have detected a group of infant galaxies being thrust together by the power of mysterious dark matter when the universe was young.
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> That "protocluster" is the most distant galactic event astronomers have ever seen, they say.
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> An international team of stargazers spotted the five bright galaxies moving together during a routine sky survey, and determined that the clustering they were seeing occurred more than 13 billion years ago.


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## ekim68

Failed Russia Mars probe set for Sunday crash



> Russia's space agency on Sunday called off all predictions of the likely crash site of its ill-fated Mars probe only hours before the 13.5-tonne spacecraft was due to begin its fatal descent.
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> Roscosmos said on its website that fragments of the stranded Phobos-Grunt voyager would probably fall to Earth on Sunday between 1436 GMT and 2224 GMT.
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> But it cancelled its Saturday forecast of the debris splashing down in the Pacific off the western coast of Chile. Two earlier updates had the fragments falling into the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists gear up to take a picture of a black hole.



> *On Wednesday, Jan. 18, astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields will convene in Tucson, Ariz. from across the world to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous. The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, and Daniel Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory.*
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> General Relativity predicts that the bright outline defining the black hole's shadow must be a perfect circle. According to Psaltis, whose research group specializes in Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, this provides an important test.
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> "If we find the black hole's shadow to be oblate instead of circular, it means Einstein's Theory of General Relativity must be flawed," he said. "But even if we find no deviation from general relativity, all these processes will help us understand the fundamental aspects of the theory much better."


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientists replicate key evolutionary step in life on earth [Cell & Microbiology related]



> *More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth's surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.*
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> Green cells are undergoing cell death, a cellular division-of-labor--fostering new life. Credit: Will Ratcliff and Mike Travisano


Related article: Evolution: The Rise of Complexity.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Exploring space burps.



> *Forget the Big Bang theory on the origins of the universe. University of Alberta physicist Greg Sivakoff is looking to find the secrets of the Big Burp theory.*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Decoding cosmological data could shed light on neutrinos, modified gravity.



> *Today's most powerful telescopes collect huge amounts of data from the most distant locations of the universe - yet much of the information is simply discarded because it involves small length scales that are difficult to model. In an effort to waste less data from cosmological surveys, a team of scientists has developed a new technique that allows researchers to use otherwise unusable data by "clipping" some of the highest density peaks, which present the greatest challenge to models. This data could provide a way to address some unsolved problems in physics, including estimating the neutrino mass and investigating theories of modified gravity.*
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> This Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image of the distant universe contains approximately 10,000 galaxies. Image credit: NASA and the ESA


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Metamaterials Generate Gecko-Like Adhesive Force.



> *Physicists predict that metamaterials ought to generate an entirely new kind of force that can be turned on and off with the flick of a switch*
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Why Does Our Universe Have Three Dimensions?.



> *Why does our universe look the way it does? In particular, why do we only experience three spatial dimensions in our universe, when superstring theory, for instance, claims that there are ten dimensions -- nine spatial dimensions and a tenth dimension of time?*
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-- Tom


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## ekim68

Biggest solar storm since 2005 underway, will peak Tuesday



> Fast on the heels of a solar storm that delivered a glancing blow over the weekend - triggering bright auroras in Canada and Scandinavia - the sun released an even more energetic blast of radiation and charged plasma overnight that could disrupt GPS signals and the electrical grid Tuesday, especially at high latitudes, space weather experts warned Monday morning.


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## ekim68

Russia and NASA plan to COLONISE the Moon



> Russian, American and European space agencies are in talks to create a human colony on the Moon, according to Russian news source Rianovosti.
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> Russia wants to build either a space base on the surface of the Moon itself or a space station that closely orbits the heavenly body - and has planned talks with NASA and the European Space Agency about creating the manned base. It has been 40 years since humans visited the Moon and Russia cosmo-bosses want to go further this time.


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## ekim68

NASA Probe Discovers 'Alien' Matter From Beyond Our Solar System



> For the very first time, a NASA spacecraft has detected matter from outside our solar system - material that came from elsewhere in the galaxy, researchers announced today (Jan. 31).
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> This so-called interstellar material was spotted by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a spacecraft that is studying the edge of the solar system from its orbit about 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) above Earth.
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> "This alien interstellar material is really the stuff that stars and planets and people are made of - it's really important to be measuring it," David McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a news briefing today from NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.


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## ekim68

Self-Assembling Nanorods:



> A relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods - rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals - to self-assemble into one-, two- and even three-dimensional macroscopic structures has been developed by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). This technique should enable more effective use of nanorods in solar cells, magnetic storage devices and sensors. It should also help boost the electrical and mechanical properties of nanorod-polymer composites.


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## lotuseclat79

Repulsive gravity as an alternative to dark energy (Part 2: In the quantum vacuum).



> *During the past few years, CERN physicist Dragan Hajdukovic has been investigating what he thinks may be a widely overlooked part of the cosmos: the quantum vacuum. He suggests that the quantum vacuum has a gravitational charge stemming from the gravitational repulsion of virtual particles and antiparticles. Previously, he has theoretically shown that this repulsive gravity can explain several observations, including effects usually attributed to dark matter. Additionally, this additional gravity suggests that we live in a cyclic Universe (with no Big Bang) and may provide insight into the nature of black holes and an estimate of the neutrino mass. In his most recent paper, published in Astrophysics and Space Science, he shows that the quantum vacuum could explain one more observation: the Universe's accelerating expansion, without the need for dark energy.*


Repulsive gravity as an alternative to dark energy (Part 1: In voids).



> *When scientists discovered in 1998 that the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the possibility that dark energy could explain the observation was intriguing. But because there has been little progress in figuring out exactly what dark energy is, the idea has since become more of a problem than a solution for some scientists. One physicist, Massimo Villata of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Pino Torinese, Italy, describes dark energy as "embarrassing," saying that the concept is an ad hoc element to standard cosmology and is devoid of any physical meaning. Villata is one of many scientists who are looking for new explanations of the Universe's accelerating expansion that involve some form of repulsive gravity. In this case, the repulsive gravity could stem from antimatter hiding in voids.*
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> The Local Sheet, which includes the Local Galactic Group and other nearby galaxies, has a peculiar velocity that can theoretically be explained by the repulsive gravity of antimatter in a large void, among other components. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

GRAIL returns first video from moon's far side.



> *A camera aboard one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.*
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> South pole of the far side of the moon as seen from the GRAIL mission's Ebb spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/Caltech-JPL


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Air Guns Shake Up Earthquake Monitoring



> Petroleum geologists have long used air guns in their search for oil and gas deposits. Sudden blasts from the devices generate seismic waves that they use to map underground rock formations. Could the same technique be used to study earthquakes? A team of Chinese scientists thinks so. The researchers have designed an air gun that could be useful in monitoring changes in stress buildup along fault zones.


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## lotuseclat79

Higgs Boson Signal Gains Strength.



> *The latest analyses from the Large Hadron Collider boosts the case for the particle's existence*
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> Reanalyses of existing data have pushed the overall Higgs signal up to 4.3σ. Image: CMS


--- Tom


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## franca

Even Martians are feeling the chill:










Fine ice and dust cascades over a martian polar cliff in March 2010 in another picture captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera


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## ekim68

Battery Desalinates Seawater



> For the first time, researchers have designed an electrochemical cell that can desalinate seawater (Nano Lett., DOI: 10.1021/nl203889e). They think that its cost and efficiency eventually could improve on standard techniques of purifying seawater.
> 
> Worldwide demand for freshwater is skyrocketing as the population increases. Many of today's desalination plants use reverse osmosis or evaporation, both of which require enormous amounts of energy to supply heaters or high-pressure pumps. To find cheaper, room-temperature, energy-efficient solutions, many researchers are looking to nanomaterials and electrochemistry.
> 
> The new system uses both. It first draws ions from seawater into a pair of electrodes. As the researchers pass current through the electrodes, electrochemical reactions drive chloride ions into a silver electrode and sodium ions to an electrode made from manganese oxide nanorods. Next, the researchers remove the desalinated water and release the trapped ions into a separate stream of waste seawater by reversing the direction of the electrical current. Although the pilot experiments were not automated, the researchers say that a pump could automate the process.


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## lotuseclat79

The Pillars of Creation Were Actually Destroyed Before We Discovered Them.



> *
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> They were destroyed, blasted by a supernova that happened 6,000 years ago.* With our telescopes, we can see the supernova advancing, unstoppable, destroying everything it touches. From that same vantage point, the shockwave has not reached the Pillars of Creation yet. For our senses, they are still there.
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> In one thousand years, there will be a hell of a show. The shockwave will arrive to the Pillars of Creation and, just like they were created, they will be destroyed once again, obliterated by the force of a dead star. Except that the show really happened a very long time ago.
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-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Scientific American article: A Universe from Nothing: Einstein, the Belgian Priest and the Puzzle of the Big Bang (5 web pages).



> *An excerpt from physicist Lawrence M. Krauss's new book explains why we are not the center of the universe*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Planck mission steps closer to the cosmic blueprint.



> *ESA's Planck mission has revealed that our Galaxy contains previously undiscovered islands of cold gas and a mysterious haze of microwaves. These results give scientists new treasure to mine and take them closer to revealing the blueprint of cosmic structure.*
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> This all-sky image shows the distribution of carbon monoxide (CO), a molecule used by astronomers to trace molecular clouds across the sky, as seen by Planck (blue). A compilation of previous surveys (Dame et al. (2001)), which left large areas of the sky unobserved, has been superimposed for comparison (red). The outlines identify the portions of the sky covered by these surveys. Credits: ESA/Planck Collaboration; T. Dame et al., 2001
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> This all-sky image shows the distribution of carbon monoxide (CO), a molecule used by astronomers to trace molecular clouds across the sky, as seen by Planck. The inserts provide a zoomed-in view onto three individual regions on the sky where Planck has detected concentrations of CO: Cepheus, Taurus and Pegasus, respectively. Credits: ESA/Planck Collaboration


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Leading the quest to crack cosmological mysteries.



> *Sometimes a scientist can only laugh in the face of a seemingly insurmountable challenge.*
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> Since 2007 UChicago researchers have used the South Pole Telescope in their attempt to help solve the cosmological mystery of dark energy. Little is known about this force, other than that it works against gravity and appears to have sped up the expansion of the universe. Credit: Keith Vanderline
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> The South Pole Telescope uses a phenomenon called the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect to pinpoint when dark energy became important in the history of the universe. The SPT measures the slight temperature difference associated with the SZ effect to produce an image of the gas in a galaxy cluster. The deep dark spot in the middle of the images is the SZ effect from a cluster of galaxies. Credit: John Carlstrom/South Pole Collaboration
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> This still from a computer simulation illustrates the formation of galaxy clusters and large-scale filaments in a model of the universe, which includes cold dark matter and dark energy. Credit: Andrey Kravtsov and Anatoly Klypin


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Swiss craft janitor satellites to grab space junk.



> *Swiss scientists said Wednesday they plan to launch a "janitor satellite" specially designed to get rid of space junk, the orbiting debris that can do serious and costly damage to valuable satellites or even manned space ships.
> *
> The 10-million-franc ($11-million) satellite called CleanSpace One - the prototype for a family of such satellites - is being built by the Swiss Space Center at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL.
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> Its launch would come within three to five years and its first tasks will be to grab two Swiss satellites that were launched in 2009 and 2010 but will be phased out of use, EPFL said.
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> The U.S. space agency NASA says over 500,000 pieces of spent rocket stages, broken satellites and other debris are orbiting Earth. The debris travels at speeds approaching 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour), fast enough to destroy or inflict expensive and time-draining damage on a satellite or spacecraft. Collisions, in turn, generate more fragments floating in space.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

Odd Black Hole Is Last Survivor of Its Galaxy



> The Hubble space telescope has spotted a supermassive black hole floating on the outskirts of a large galaxy.
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> The location is odd because black holes of this size generally form in the centers of galaxies, not at their edges. This suggests the black hole is the lone survivor of a now-disintegrated dwarf galaxy.
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> The black hole - named HLX-1 - is 20,000 times more massive than the sun, and is situated 290 million light-years away at the edge of the spiral galaxy ESO 243-49.


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## lotuseclat79

Dark matter, apparently, is midichlorians (i.e. The Force!)



> *Dark matter, to re-interpret Obi Wan Kenobi, surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.*
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> ... this is a model, and not an actual map. It does show concentrations of dark matter along galaxies and clusters of galaxies, but also shows how even "empty" space well outside of galaxies has pervasive dark matter in it.
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> In this illustration, imagine a bunch of background galaxies depicted by the points on the left. Plop a galaxy with dark matter between us and them, and the galaxy's gravity warps the light from those more distant objects, bending the grid and also magnifying the background galaxies. All of this information can be used to map out the location and density of the dark matter doing the lensing.


-- Tom


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## ekim68

John Glenn chats with space station on 50th anniversary of orbit



> Fifty years ago, John Glenn -- former Marine Corps pilot and astronaut -- flew into history as the first American to orbit the Earth. On Monday, Glenn celebrated the anniversary of his Friendship 7 flight by calling the International Space Station and discussing gravity and combustion experiments.


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## lotuseclat79

There's More to Nothing Than We Knew.



> *Cosmologists Try to Explain a Universe Springing From Nothing*
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> MULTIVERSE PROPONENT The cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Faster-than-light neutrino result reportedly a mistake caused by loose cable - UPDATED.



> *Since September, scientists have been scratching their head over results that appear to show neutrinos traveling between Switzerland and Italy faster than light would. As far as anyone could tell, the team behind the results had done everything they could to eliminate errors, and had even released some preliminary data that had strengthened their results. But the results remained difficult to square with everything else we know about how the Universe operates.*


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

World's best measurement of W boson mass tests Standard Model, Higgs boson limits.



> *Just as firemen use different methods to narrow the location of a person trapped in a building, scientists employ two techniques to find the hiding place of the theorized Higgs particle: direct searches for Higgs interactions and precision measurements of other particles and forces.*
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> Today, scientists from the CDF collaboration have unveiled the world's most precise measurement of the W boson mass, based on data gathered at the Tevatron accelerator. The precision of this measurement surpasses all previous measurements combined and restricts the space in which the Higgs particle should reside according to the Standard Model, the theoretical framework that describes all known subatomic particles and forces.
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> The new CDF result for the W boson mass, combined with the world's best value for the top quark mass, restricts the Higgs mass to the green area, requiring it to be less than 145 GeV/c2. Direct searches have narrowed the allowed Higgs mass range to 115-127 GeV/c2.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Astrophysicist team suggests axions could explain dearth of lithium-7 in dark matter theory.



> *In trying to understand how everything came to be as it appears today, astrophysicists have put together theories that seek to explain how events transpired from the time of the Big Bang, till now. In so doing, they have come up with some ideas that cannot yet be proven. One is the concept of dark matter, which is what many researchers believe makes up to eighty percent of all matter in the universe. The problem with the theory though, is that one particular isotope, lithium-7, should be more abundant if the model is to hold true.*
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> Strong gravitational lensing observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in Abell 1689. Image: NASA.


-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Watch a Live Feed of This Weekend's Spectacular Planetary Alignment.

-- Tom


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## lotuseclat79

Stephen Hawking on "Time Travel to the Future".

-- Tom


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## ekim68

Oxygen Detected in Atmosphere of Saturn's Moon Dione: Discovery Could Mean Ingredients for Life Are Abundant On Icy Space Bodies



> "The concentration of oxygen in Dione's atmosphere is roughly similar to what you would find in Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of about 300 miles," Tokar said. "It's not enough to sustain life, but -- together with similar observations of other moons around Saturn and Jupiter -- these are definitive examples of a process by which a lot of oxygen can be produced in icy celestial bodies that are bombarded by charged particles or photons from the Sun or whatever light source happens to be nearby."


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## ekim68

The blistering hot exoplanet where it snows



> Today's weather on HD 189733 b: It will be hazy with high wispy clouds. The wind will be steady from the east at speeds approaching 6,000 miles per hour (9,656 km/h). Daytime temperatures will average a balmy 800ºC (1,472ºF), while the equatorial hot spot at 30 degrees longitude is expected to top 900ºC (1,652ºF). But, there is a high chance of silicate snow showers, with accumulations expected except in the vicinity of the hot spot.


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## ekim68

Surprise: Protons Bypass Hydrogen Bonds but Still Change Molecules



> ScienceDaily (Mar. 18, 2012) - When a proton -- the bare nucleus of a hydrogen atom -- transfers from one molecule to another, or moves within a molecule, the result is a hydrogen bond, in which the proton and another atom like nitrogen or oxygen share electrons. Conventional wisdom has it that proton transfers can only happen using hydrogen bonds as conduits, "proton wires" of hydrogen-bonded networks that can connect and reconnect to alter molecular properties.
> 
> Hydrogen bonds are found everywhere in chemistry and biology and are critical in DNA and RNA, where they bond the base pairs that encode genes and map protein structures. Recently a team of researchers using the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) *discovered to their surprise that in special cases protons can find ways to transfer even when hydrogen bonds are blocked.* The team's results appear in Nature Chemistry.


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## ekim68

SpaceX gets astronauts to try out its Dragon crew cabin



> With the space shuttle program now officially over, the United States needs a new reusable vehicle for getting supplies to and from the International Space Station. NASA is considering the Dragon spacecraft, designed by California-based SpaceX Exploration Technologies, to take over that role. The Dragon's scheduled late March/early April test flight to the ISS will be unmanned, utilizing a cargo configuration of the spacecraft. Last Friday, however, SpaceX released photographs of an engineering model of of its planned seven-passenger crew cabin, complete with a crew that included real live astronauts.


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## ekim68

Strange cloud formations on Mars, a mystery



> Mars has returned to our evening skies as it does every two years. This time it is getting even more attention and buzz than it normally would. Amateur astronomer Wayne Jaeschke of West Chester Pennsylvania noticed an unusual protrusion in the planet's southern hemisphere, preceding the sunrise terminator.


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## ekim68

10 Billion Earth-Like Planets May Exist in Our Galaxy

About 40 percent of red dwarf stars may have Earth-sized planets orbiting them that have the right conditions for life.



> Red dwarfs - which are smaller and cooler than our sun - are extremely common, making up 80 percent of stars in the galaxy. Their ubiquity suggests that there are tens of billions of possible places to look for life beyond Earth, with at least 100 such planets located nearby.


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## ekim68

Monster Solar Tornadoes Discovered



> For the first time, huge solar tornadoes have been filmed swirling deep inside the solar corona -- the sun's superheated atmosphere. But if you're imagining the pedestrian tornadoes that we experience on Earth, think again.
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> These solar monsters, measuring the width of several Earths and swirling at speeds of up to 300,000 kilometers (190,000 miles) per hour, aren't only fascinating structures; they may also trigger violent magnetic eruptions that can have drastic effects on our planet.


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## ekim68

New rocket thruster can travel to the moon on 1/10th of a litre of fuel



> A tiny satellite thruster which can journey to the Moon on just a tenth of a litre of fuel could usher in a new low-cost space age, its creators hope.
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> The mini-motor weights just a few hundred grams and runs on an ionic chemical compound, using electricity to expel ions and generate thrust.
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> The tiny motor isn't built to blast satellites into orbit - instead, it's to help spacecraft manouevre once they're in space, which previously required bulky, expensive engines.


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## ekim68

A quantum network built with two atoms and fiber optic cable



> In an ordinary computer network, data in the form of binary numbers are transferred from one machine (node) to another via some sort of electronic signal, either electrical or optical. The success of this transfer comes when the recipient has precisely the same set of binary figures that were sent. In a quantum network, the "data" is a quantum state-the particular configuration of an atom's energy, spin, etc.-and the transfer of information is successful if the state is reproduced in a separate quantum system some distance away.
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> Extant quantum networks are capable of either receiving or sending signals, but not both simultaneously. A new experiment reported by Stephan Ritter et al. in Nature has achieved a simple two-node quantum network, in which a single photon successfully transferred the spin state of one rubidium atom to a second atom 21 meters away. Since the nodes are identical, both being rubidium atoms, signals are bi-directional. This type of quantum network should be scalable to encompass more than two nodes, leading to the possibility of larger networks with full communication between arbitrary nodes within them.


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## 1956brother

sir,

you have not posted in a while. the problem is that we can not read but, we can not write about what we are trying to understand


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## ekim68

Nanoscientists find long-sought Majorana particle



> Scientists at TU Delft's Kavli Institute and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM Foundation) have succeeded for the first time in detecting a Majorana particle. In the 1930s, the brilliant Italian physicist Ettore Majorana deduced from quantum theory the possibility of the existence of a very special particle, a particle that is its own anti-particle: the Majorana fermion. That 'Majorana' would be right on the border between matter and anti-matter.


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## ekim68

Spectacular Solar Flare Erupts From the Sun




> The sun erupted in an amazing solar flare today (April 16), unleashing an intense eruption of super-heated plasma that arced high above the star's surface before blasting out into space.
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> The powerful solar flare occurred at 1:45 p.m. EDT (1745 GMT) and registered as a moderate M1.7-class on the scale of sun storms, placing it firmly in the middle of the scale used by scientists to measure flare strength. The storm is not the strongest this year from the sun, but photos and video of the solar flare captured by NASA spacecraft revealed it to be an eye-popping display of magnetic plasma.


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## ekim68

Hubble spots early galaxy using gravitational lens



> We haven't yet been able to make a lens powerful enough to spot objects on the far edges of the visible Universe. Fortunately, the Universe itself has provided us with some gravitational lenses that might do the trick. Clusters of galaxies contain enough dark matter for their gravity to distort space significantly, curving it in a way that forms a lens and magnifying more distant objects. The Hubble Space Telescope has now been used to peer into a gravitational lens, and may have spotted the oldest, most distant galaxy yet observed.


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## ekim68

Not-quite-so elementary, my dear electron



> In a feat of technical mastery, condensed-matter physicists have managed to detect the elusive third constituent of an electron - its 'orbiton'. The achievement could help to resolve a long-standing mystery about the origin of high-temperature superconductivity, and aid in the construction of quantum computers.
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> Isolated electrons cannot be split into smaller components, earning them the designation of a fundamental particle. But in the 1980s, physicists predicted that electrons in a one-dimensional chain of atoms could be split into three quasiparticles: a 'holon' carrying the electron's charge, a 'spinon' carrying its spin (an intrinsic quantum property related to magnetism) and an 'orbiton' carrying its orbital location1.


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## ekim68

Weekend Lyrid Meteor Shower Visible From Earth, Space and ... Balloon?



> The annual Lyrid meteor shower will hit its peak this weekend and promises to put on an eye-catching display. So much so, NASA is pulling out all the stops.
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> NASA scientists plan to track the Lyrid meteor shower using a network of all-sky cameras on Earth, as well as from a student-launched balloon in California. Meanwhile, an astronaut on the International Space Station will attempt to photograph the meteors from space.


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## ekim68

Venus to Appear in Once-In-A-Lifetime Event



> ScienceDaily (May 1, 2012) - On 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
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> It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun's surface, in an event that will not happen again until 2117.


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## ekim68

Researchers use diamonds to boost computer memory



> Computerworld - Johns Hopkins University engineers are using diamonds to change the properties of an alloy used in phase-change memory, a change that could lead to the development higher capacity storage systems that retain data more quickly and last longer than current media.
> 
> The process, explained this month in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), focused on changes to the inexpensive GST phase-change memory alloy that's composed of germanium, antimony and tellurium.
> 
> "This phase-change memory is more stable than the material used in current flash drives. It works 100 times faster and is rewritable millions of times," said the study's lead author, Ming Xu, a doctoral student at the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers find a galactic nursery 12.7 billion light years away



> Galaxy clusters are collections of galaxies held together by their own gravity. We see clusters all over the place, and they're among the largest structures in the Universe. We can find them at large distances, which means we see them as they (and the Universe) were young - it takes light a long time to travel across the cosmos. Astronomers went looking to find extremely distant clusters of galaxies, and *found one at a staggering distance: 12.7 billion light years away!*


----------



## ekim68

Gamma-Ray Bending Opens New Door for Optics



> Lenses are a part of everyday life-they help us focus words on a page, the light from stars, and the tiniest details of microorganisms. But making a lens for highly energetic light known as gamma rays had been thought impossible. Now, physicists have created such a lens, and they believe it will open up a new field of gamma-ray optics for medical imaging, detecting illicit nuclear material, and getting rid of nuclear waste.
> 
> Glass is the material of choice for conventional lenses, and like other materials, it contains atoms which are orbited by electrons. In an opaque material, these electrons would absorb or reflect light. But in glass, the electrons respond to incoming light by shaking about, pushing away the light in a different direction. Physicists describe the amount of bending as the glass's "refractive index": A refractive index equal to one results in no bending, while anything more or less results in bending one way or the other.
> 
> Refraction works well with visible light, a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, because the light waves have a frequency that chimes well with the oscillations of orbiting electrons. But for higher energy electromagnetic radiation-ultraviolet and beyond-the frequencies are too high for the electrons to respond, and lenses become less and less effective. It was only toward the end of last century that physicists found they could create lenses for x-rays, the part of the electromagnetic spectrum just beyond the ultraviolet, by stacking together numerous layers of patterned material. Such lenses opened up the field of x-ray optics which, with x-rays' short wavelengths, allowed imaging at a nanoscale resolution.


----------



## ekim68

Nanosheet Catalyst Discovered to Sustainably Split Hydrogen from Water



> UPTON, NY - Hydrogen gas offers one of the most promising sustainable energy alternatives to limited fossil fuels. But traditional methods of producing pure hydrogen face significant challenges in unlocking its full potential, either by releasing harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere or requiring rare and expensive chemical elements such as platinum.
> 
> Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new electrocatalyst that addresses one of these problems by generating hydrogen gas from water cleanly and with much more affordable materials. The novel form of catalytic nickel-molybdenum-nitride - described in a paper published online May 8, 2012 in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition - surprised scientists with its high-performing nanosheet structure, introducing a new model for effective hydrogen catalysis.


----------



## ekim68

Chinese Physicists Smash Distance Record For Teleportation



> _The ability to teleport photons through 100 kilometres of free space opens the way for satellite-based quantum communications, say researchers_





> However, physicists have had more success teleporting photons through the atmosphere. In 2010, a Chinese team announced that it had teleported single photons over a distance of 16 kilometres. Handy but not exactly Earth-shattering.
> 
> Now the same team says it has smashed this record. Juan Yin at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai, and a bunch of mates say they have teleported entangled photons over a distance of 97 kilometres across a lake in China.
> 
> That's an impressive feat for several reasons. The trick these guys have perfected is to find a way to use a 1.3 Watt laser and some fancy optics to beam the light and receive it.
> 
> Inevitably photons get lost and entanglement is destroyed in such a process. Imperfections in the optics and air turbulence account for some of these losses but the biggest problem is beam widening (they did the experiment at an altitude of about 4000 metres). Since the beam spreads out as it travels, many of the photons simply miss the target altogether.
> 
> So the most important advance these guys have made is to develop a steering mechanism using a guide laser that keeps the beam precisely on target. As a result, they were able to teleport more than 1100 photons in 4 hours over a distance of 97 kilometres.


----------



## ekim68

Russia and Japan aim for the Moon



> It was a rare confluence - the heads of the space agencies for Europe, Canada and Russia, along with senior representatives from the space agencies of India and Japan - all up on the dais together at a hotel in Washington DC, where they were on hand on 22 May to talk about the benefits of international collaboration at the Global Space Exploration Conference.





> Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, said that Russia will pursue extensive, long-lived operations at the Moon's surface. "We're not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago," Popovkin said, through a translator. "We're talking about establishing permanent bases." Similarly, JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, issued a clear pronouncement about targeting the Moon. "We are looking at the Moon as our next target for human exploration," said Yuichi Yamaura, an associate executive director at JAXA.


----------



## ekim68

Opening the hatch with SpaceX Dragon attached to the ISS.........

Here


----------



## ekim68

Sound increases the efficiency of boiling



> Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology achieved a 17-percent increase in boiling efficiency by using an acoustic field to enhance heat transfer. The acoustic field does this by efficiently removing vapor bubbles from the heated surface and suppressing the formation of an insulating vapor film.


----------



## ekim68

Everything you need to know about next week's Transit of Venus



> On Tuesday/Wednesday June 5/6, Earth will have the best seat - the only seat - for a great show: the Transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. This is a relatively rare event, and the next one won't happen until December 10, 2117, so I'm guessing this will be the last time you'll be able to see it.


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## ekim68

Full moon affects Large Hadron Collider operations



> Biologists often have to do some very technically difficult experiments that, for one or another mysterious reason, will sometimes fail and fail badly. It's not unheard of for the victims of these failures to jokingly blame the phase of the Moon. But it was a bit of a surprise to find out that the physicists running the LHC actually do see odd behavior caused by the phase of the Moon.
> 
> As the LHC's Pauline Gagnon describes at the Quantum Diaries, the changing force exerted by the Moon as it orbits-the same thing that drives the tides-creates subtle differences in the position of the hardware within the LHC. The differences are tiny for any individual piece of hardware, but they add up when it comes to something as big as the LHC, which has a circumference of nearly 27km. Plus, the LHC hardware is very, very sensitive to being out of alignment, given that it has to accurately direct bunches of protons that are moving at nearly the speed of light.


----------



## ekim68

Finally a use for quantum computers: Finding LOL-cats faster



> Boffins at the University of Southern California have been looking at applications for quantum computing, and discovered that it's going to make for some serious search engine tech.
> 
> Not that quantum computing is practical yet - the first quantum circuits are experimental devices at best - but it is possible to emulate a basic quantum computer. Using such an emulation, the researchers managed to create PageRank numbers for a "few thousand" web pages, at a rate which scaled much more slowly than traditional computing, and got a paper into the Physical Review Letters journal too.
> 
> That's important, as poor Google has to deal with an ever-increasing number of web pages, resulting in what the University tells us "is rumoured to be the largest numerical calculation carried out anywhere in the world" which has to be updated daily. Quantum computing creates PageRank scores at a rate which scales polylogarithmically with the number of pages being ranked, as opposed to a linear scale, and we're assured that this is a good thing.


----------



## ekim68

Data From NASA's Voyager 1 Point to Interstellar Future



> Data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased. Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion - that humanity's first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system.


The Little Satellites that could....:up: 



> Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 are in good health. Voyager 2 is more than 9.1 billion miles (14.7 billion kilometers) away from the sun. Both are operating as part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission, an extended mission to explore the solar system outside the neighborhood of the outer planets and beyond. NASA's Voyagers are the two most distant active representatives of humanity and its desire to explore.


----------



## ekim68

Chinese spacecraft docks with orbiting module



> BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese spacecraft carrying three astronauts docked with an orbiting module Monday, another first for the country as it strives to match American and Russian exploits in space.
> 
> The Shenzhou 9 capsule completed the maneuver with the Tiangong 1 module shortly after 2 p.m. (0600 GMT), 343 kilometers (213 miles) above Earth. The docking was shown live on national television.
> 
> Astronauts will live and work in the module for several days as part of preparations for manning a permanent space station. The crew includes 33-year-old Liu Yang, an air force pilot and China's first female space traveler.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers Estimate Ice Content of Crater at Moon's South Pole



> NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole.
> 
> The team of NASA and university scientists using laser light from LRO's laser altimeter examined the floor of Shackleton crater. They found the crater's floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice. This information will help researchers understand crater formation and study other uncharted areas of the moon. The findings are published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.


----------



## ekim68

Infinite-capacity wireless vortex beams carry 2.5 terabits per second



> American and Israeli researchers have used twisted, vortex beams to transmit data at 2.5 terabits per second. As far as we can discern, this is the fastest wireless network ever created - by some margin. This technique is likely to be used in the next few years to vastly increase the throughput of both wireless and fiber-optic networks.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers Discover Galaxy They Thought Couldn't Exist



> Astronomers have spotted one of the rarest and most extreme galaxy clusters in the universe and, behind it, an object that shouldn't exist.
> 
> Galaxy clusters are collections of galaxies that orbit one another and are the most massive objects in the universe. The newly discovered cluster, first detected by the Hubble space telescope, is over 500 trillion times the mass of the sun. It is located approximately 10 billion light-years away. Because looking out into the distant cosmos means also looking back in time, the cluster formed during an era when the universe was a quarter its present age.
> 
> The cluster, named IDCS J1426.5+3508, is extreme because during this period in cosmic history, massive collections of galaxies were just beginning to form. Only one other cluster of comparable size has been seen at this distance and it is a lightweight compared to IDCS J1426.5+3508.
> 
> Adding to the object's strangeness, a mysterious arc of blue light was seen just behind the galaxy cluster. Astronomers think this indicates another massive star-forming galaxy located even further away at an even earlier epoch.
> 
> Light from this more distant - and yet unnamed - galaxy has been highly distorted by an effect known as gravitational lensing. The gargantuan mass of the galaxy cluster bends and twists light coming from the distant galaxy, creating the strange blue arc.


The Universal Constant, IMHO..... Gravity, that is....


----------



## ekim68

Meteorite Hunter Discovers New Mineral



> Hidden within a rock from space is a mineral previously unknown to science: panguite.
> 
> The new mineral was found embedded in the Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969. Since 2007, geologist Chi Ma of Caltech has been probing the meteorite with a scanning electron microscope, discovering nine new materials, including panguite.
> 
> Ma and his team have determined that panguite was one of the first solid materials to coalesce in our solar system, roughly 4.567 billion years ago. The mineral's name is a reference to Pan Gu, a primitive, hairy giant from Chinese mythology who separated yin and yang with a swing of his enormous axe, thereby creating the Earth and sky.


----------



## ekim68

Tidal massaging reveals a hidden ocean on Saturn's moon, Titan



> Saturn's moon Titan is shrouded in a thick atmosphere. But thanks to detailed observations by the Cassini-Huygens mission, a great deal is now known about both the atmosphere and the surface. What lies beneath the surface is what remains mysterious. Both the excess of atmospheric methane and the recently announced discovery of a possible desert oasis hint at a subsurface supply of methane, but the nature of the source is unknown.
> 
> However, Titan's gravitational interaction with Saturn indicates the possibility of a global subsurface ocean.


----------



## ekim68

Privately and publicly looking for Earth-threatening asteroids



> The B612 Foundation is a group of scientists, astronauts, astronomers, and engineers who have come together to do nothing less than literally save the world: they want to find and deflect asteroids that can potentially hit the Earth. While really big asteroids are rare - after all, the one 10 km (6 miles) across that wiped out the dinosaurs only hits Earth every few hundred million years - smaller ones in the 100 meter range are far more common and can still do devastating damage. Even one just 50 meters across (smaller than a football field) can impact and explode with the yield of millions of tons of TNT. That's in the range of the biggest nuclear weapons ever detonated.
> 
> Finding these asteroids is notoriously difficult. They're small and dim, and sometimes only discovered once they've already passed us! The best way to find them in large numbers is to launch a space telescope to survey the sky, tuned to the infrared where these asteroids are far brighter and easier to spot.
> 
> Today, B612 made a big announcement: they want to build just such a mission.


----------



## ekim68

'Paint-on' batteries demonstrated



> Researchers have shown off a means to spray-paint batteries onto any surface.


----------



## ekim68

Newly Discovered Particle Appears to Be Long-Awaited Higgs Boson



> Prepare the fireworks: The discovery of the Higgs boson is finally here. Early in the morning on July 4, physicists with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN announced they have found a new particle that behaves similarly to what is expected from the Higgs.
> 
> "As a layman, I would now say, I think we have it," said CERN director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer. "It's a historic milestone today. I think we can all be proud, all be happy." Both CMS and ATLAS, the two main LHC Higgs-hunting experiments, are reporting a boson that has Higgs-like properties at a mass of 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) with a 5-sigma significance, meaning they are 99.999 percent confident of its existence.


----------



## Sins

Just think how nice it would be if the politicians would go ahead and finish the half-completed super-collider in Waco, TX. Then we too could pursue cutting edge physics right here at home, not to mention having a "shovel ready" project that would promote both employment and science in America.:up:


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## ekim68

I agree and am disappointed that they didn't follow through with the Texas project...:up: But then again, politicians screw up a lot of things like our Infrastructure which is falling apart at the seams because they use the Transportation Bills as Political Fodder....:down: Now back to Science and Space....


----------



## ekim68

Hubble discovers new Pluto moon



> The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a fifth moon circling the dwarf planet Pluto.
> 
> The new moon, visible as a speck of light in Hubble images, is estimated to be irregular in shape and between 10km and 25km across.
> 
> Scientists are intrigued that such a small world can have such a complex collection of satellites.


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## ekim68

Is Dark Energy Anti-Matter?


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## ekim68

Record-setting 500 trillion-watt laser shot achieved



> Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) have achieved a laser shot which boggles the mind: 192 beams delivered an excess of 500 trillion-watts (TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to a target of just two millimeters in diameter. To put those numbers into perspective, 500 TW is more than one thousand times the power that the entire United States uses at any instant in time. Pew-Pew indeed ...


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## ekim68

A Hole in Mars


----------



## ekim68

Artificial jellyfish built from rat cells



> Bioengineers have made an artificial jellyfish using silicone and muscle cells from a rat's heart. The synthetic creature, dubbed a medusoid, looks like a flower with eight petals. When placed in an electric field, it pulses and swims exactly like its living counterpart.


----------



## ekim68

Diamond in the rough: Half-century puzzle solved



> A Yale-led team of mineral physicists has for the first time confirmed through high-pressure experiments the structure of cold-compressed graphite, a form of carbon that is comparable in hardness to its cousin, diamond, but only requires pressure to synthesize. The researchers believe their findings could open the way for a super hard material that can withstand great force and can be used - as diamond-based materials are now - for many electronic and industrial applications. The study appears in Scientific Reports, a Nature journal.


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## ekim68

Researchers control reactions between just two atoms



> The types of chemical reactions we typically learn in school take place on a Cecil B. deMille, cast-of-thousands scale. They involve huge numbers of atoms or molecules, making it extremely difficult to study exactly what is happening on the quantum level between the individual players. Many of them won't even take place at cold temperatures, where the rate of reaction is slow enough to observe the details. All this makes it very difficult to understand the quantum mechanics of chemical reactions between individual pairs of atoms.
> 
> In a new Nature Physics paper, researchers with the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge were able to measure the chemical interactions between individual, ultracold ytterbium ions and rubidium atoms. Lothar Ratschbacher, Christoph Zipkes, Carlo Sias, and Michael Köhl studied inelastic collisions between the atoms and ions, in which some of the energy in the system is converted to light or motion. In doing so, they obtained the first low-level analysis of charge exchange, the chemical reaction in which an electron is passed between an atom and an ion.


----------



## ekim68

Wireless Electric Car Charger Trial Launched In London



> _Induction system charges cars - but might fry cats!_
> 
> On Tuesday, US wireless technology giant Qualcomm launched the London trial of its Halo wireless charger for electric vehicles (EVs).
> 
> Halo is a deceptively simple system, consisting of a charging terminal, a flat pad and a receiving pad on the car that can transmit several kilowatts of electricity over the air. According to Antony Thompson, VP of business development and marketing at Qualcomm, the company aims to make EV charging "as easy and widespread as Wi-Fi".
> 
> On a sunny afternoon in Wimbledon, TechWeekEurope had a chance to see Halo in action, and we were very impressed.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's first new spacesuit in 20 years is its own airlock



> The "Z-1 Prototype Spacesuit and Portable Life Support System (PLSS) 2.0," to give it its proper name, is what is called a "rear-entry space suit" made up of a combination of several hard elements mounted on a suit of fabric that's flexible when uninflated. To get in, the astronaut uses a "suitport." This is a combined hatch and life support pack on the back of the suit's torso. The neat thing about the Z-1 is that the hatch allows it to latch onto a spaceship, rover or habitat.
> 
> Once docked, the suit's hatch can open inside the craft and the astronaut can get in and out of the suit without using an airlock. This means that the wearer can get in and out much faster, less air is wasted than with an airlock and the astronaut doesn't have to do so much "Prebreathing." That is, inhaling pure oxygen to avoid getting the bends in the lower pressure of the suit. The Z-1 makes this less necessary because it operates at the same pressure as a spaceship. It has to or the hatch wouldn't open because of the pressure difference.
> 
> In addition to the hatch, the Z-1 also boasts improved bearings in the waist, hips, upper legs and ankles for greater freedom of movement, and new urethane-coated nylon and polyester layers to maintain pressure and control the suit from billowing.


----------



## ekim68

WIDESPREAD SOLAR: Berkeley lab develops technology to make photovoltaics out of any semiconductor



> A technology that would enable low-cost, high efficiency solar cells to be made from virtually any semiconductor material has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. This technology allows for plentiful, relatively inexpensive semiconductors, such as metal oxides, sulfides and phosphides that had previously been considered unsuitable for solar cells because of the difficulty in tailoring their properties by chemical means.
> 
> "It's time we put bad materials to good use," says physicist Alex Zettl, who led the research along with colleague Feng Wang. "Our technology allows us to sidestep the difficulty in chemically tailoring many earth abundant, non-toxic semiconductors and instead tailor these materials simply by applying an electric field."


----------



## ekim68

On Monday the rover Curiosity will land on Mars and Here are some places where you can watch it...


----------



## ekim68

Signs Changing Fast for Voyager at Solar System Edge



> The levels of high-energy cosmic ray particles have been increasing for years, but more slowly than they are now. The last jump -- of five percent -- took one week in May. The levels of lower-energy particles from inside our solar system have been slowly decreasing for the last two years. Scientists expect that the lower-energy particles will drop close to zero when Voyager 1 finally crosses into interstellar space.
> 
> "The increase and the decrease are sharper than we've seen before, but that's also what we said about the May data," Stone said. "The data are changing in ways that we didn't expect, but Voyager has always surprised us with new discoveries."
> 
> Voyager 1, which launched on Sept. 5, 1977, is 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun. Voyager 2, which launched on Aug. 20, 1977, is close behind, at 9.3 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) from the sun.


Are these the best machines ever made?


----------



## thebeginner

The latest Marsian rover just landed perfectly a day or two ago.


----------



## ekim68

And more about that....

Mars rover Curiosity ready for its driver's license



> (Reuters) - After flying more than 350 million miles (563 million km) from Earth, the Mars rover Curiosity is about to get its driver's license.
> 
> Mission control engineers in California will spend the next four days remotely installing new computer software in Curiosity that essentially reorients the brains of the six-wheeled vehicle for maneuvering around the surface of the Red Planet.
> 
> The nuclear-powered rover, about the size of a small sports car, can only store so much pre-programmed information in its computer module at once, having less on-board memory capacity than a typical cell phone.
> 
> Its previous flight-control software was tailored for the complex tasks of atmospheric entry, descent and landing that brought the mobile science lab to a historic touchdown on the floor of a vast, ancient impact basin called Gale Crater earlier this week.
> 
> A new version of the software, uploaded to Curiosity while it was still en route to Mars, is instead specially designed to let NASA engineers safely drive the rover, operate its robot arm, use its power drill, collect samples, sweep away dust and perform other functions as it goes about its science mission.


----------



## ekim68

Hot stuff: CERN physicists create record-breaking subatomic soup



> Get Guinness. Physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, have achieved the hottest manmade temperatures ever, by colliding lead ions to momentarily create a quark-gluon plasma, a subatomic soup and unique state of matter that is thought to have existed just moments after the Big Bang.
> 
> The results come from the ALICE heavy-ion experiment (at right) - a lesser-known sibling to ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid, which produced the data that led to the announcement in July that the Higgs boson had been discovered. ALICE physicists, presenting on Monday at Quark Matter 2012 in Washington DC, say that they have achieved a quark-gluon plasma 38% hotter than a record 4-trillion-degree plasma achieved in 2010 by a similar experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, which had been anointed the Guinness record holder.


----------



## ekim68

Rover's Laser Instrument Zaps First Martian Rock



> PASADENA, Calif. - Today, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity fired its laser for the first time on Mars, using the beam from a science instrument to interrogate a fist-size rock called "Coronation."
> 
> The mission's Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam, hit the fist-sized rock with 30 pulses of its laser during a 10-second period. Each pulse delivers more than a million watts of power for about five one-billionths of a second.
> 
> The energy from the laser excites atoms in the rock into an ionized, glowing plasma. ChemCam catches the light from that spark with a telescope and analyzes it with three spectrometers for information about what elements are in the target.


----------



## ekim68

Complete MSL Curiosity Descent - Full Quality Enhanced 1080p + Heat Shield impact


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## ekim68

Stanford researchers discover the 'anternet'



> On the surface, ants and the Internet don't seem to have much in common. But two Stanford researchers have discovered that a species of harvester ants determine how many foragers to send out of the nest in much the same way that Internet protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for the transfer of data. The researchers are calling it the "anternet."


----------



## ekim68

Is your iPad keeping you up at night?



> Researchers have discovered that relatively little exposure to tablets and other electronics with backlit displays can keep people up at night by messing with their circadian rhythms.
> 
> The study from the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute showed that a 2-hour exposure to electronic devices with such displays causes suppression of the melatonin hormone and could make it especially tough for teens to fall asleep. The study, funded by Sharp Laboratories of America, simulated usage of such devices among 13 people using special glasses/goggles and light meters


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## ekim68

Sweet building blocks of life found around young star



> Life is made up of a series of complex organic molecules, including sugars. A team of astronomers led by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, have now observed a simple sugar molecule in the gas surrounding a young star and this discovery proves that the building blocks of life were already present during planet formation. The results have been published in the scientific journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's WISE Survey Uncovers Millions of Black Holes



> PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies.
> 
> Images from the telescope have revealed millions of dusty black hole candidates across the universe and about 1,000 even dustier objects thought to be among the brightest galaxies ever found. These powerful galaxies, which burn brightly with infrared light, are nicknamed hot DOGs.
> 
> "WISE has exposed a menagerie of hidden objects," said Hashima Hasan, WISE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We've found an asteroid dancing ahead of Earth in its orbit, the coldest star-like orbs known and now, supermassive black holes and galaxies hiding behind cloaks of dust."


----------



## ekim68

How to catch a tumbling, aging satellite



> How do you catch a speeding, tumbling, aging satellite? Very carefully.
> 
> Levity aside, the question is central to the plan scientists at DARPA have for catching up to and grabbing old satellites in an effort to ultimately refurbish and reuse the systems.
> 
> Scientists at DARPA say there are some 1,300 satellites worth over $300B sitting out in Earth's geostationary orbit (GEO) that could be retrofitted or harvested for new communications roles and it designed a program called Phoenix which it says would use a squadron "satlets" and a larger tender craft to grab out-of-commission satellites and retrofit or retrieve them for parts or reuse.


----------



## ekim68

35 years later, Voyager 1 is heading for the stars



> Wednesday marks the 35th anniversary of Voyager 1's launch to Jupiter and Saturn. It is now flitting around the fringes of the solar system, which is enveloped in a giant plasma bubble. This hot and turbulent area is created by a stream of charged particles from the sun.
> 
> Outside the bubble is a new frontier in the Milky Way - the space between stars. Once it plows through, scientists expect a calmer environment by comparison.
> 
> When that would happen is anyone's guess. Voyager 1 is in uncharted celestial territory. One thing is clear: The boundary that separates the solar system and interstellar space is near, but it could take days, months or years to cross that milestone.
> 
> Voyager 1 is currently more than 11 billion miles from the sun. Twin Voyager 2, which celebrated its launch anniversary two weeks ago, trails behind at 9 billion miles from the sun.
> 
> They're still ticking despite being relics of the early Space Age.
> 
> *Each only has 68 kilobytes of computer memory. To put that in perspective, the smallest iPod - an 8-gigabyte iPod Nano - is 100,000 times more powerful. Each also has an eight-track tape recorder. Today's spacecraft use digital memory.*


----------



## ekim68

Toothbrush used for vital space station repairs



> Two spacewalking astronauts successfully replaced a vital power unit on the International Space Station today (Sept. 5), defeating a stubborn bolt that originally delayed the fix with the help of some improvised tools made of spare parts and a toothbrush.
> 
> NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide performed today's spacewalk repair. The fix-it job in space was actually an extra spacewalk tacked on to their mission after the stuck space station bolt prevented the astronauts from properly installing the power unit on the outpost's backbone-like truss last week on Aug. 30.


----------



## ekim68

CERN's Higgs boson discovery passes peer review, becomes actual science



> CERN's announcement on July 4 - that experiments performed by the Large Hadron Collider had discovered a particle that was consistent with the Higgs boson - has passed a key step towards becoming ratified science: Its findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Physics Letters B.
> 
> Back in July, both the CMS and ATLAS teams - teams of scientists tasked with analyzing the data produced by the CMS and ATLAS detectors - announced that they'd discovered a new elementary particle. CERN did not say that this was the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle, but as the Standard Model of particle physics only has one undiscovered particle remaining, it probably is the Higgs boson. Following CERN's announcement, both the CMS and ATLAS teams submitted their findings to Physics Letters B - and today, both of their research papers have passed peer review by the scientific community, effectively becoming… science.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity Rover Captures Martian Eclipse



> NASA's Curiosity rover snapped an elegant sequence of images showing Mars' moon, Phobos, passing in front of the sun on Sept. 13. Because the tiny moon moves so fast through the Martian sky, the alien eclipse lasted only a few seconds.


----------



## ekim68

Dark energy camera snaps first images ahead of survey



> The highest-resolution camera ever built has begun its quest to pin down the mysterious stuff that makes up nearly three-quarters of our Universe.
> 
> The Dark Energy Survey's 570-million-pixel camera will scan some 300 million galaxies in the coming five years.
> 
> The goal is to discover the nature of dark energy, which is theorised to be responsible for the ever-faster expansion of the Universe.


----------



## ekim68

Australian researchers create world's first working quantum bit



> Researchers at the University of New South Wales have created the world's first working quantum bit based on a single atom in silicon, which they claim will lead to the development of ultra-powerful computers in the future.
> 
> In a paper published in scientific journal Nature, the research team described how it was able to both read and write information using the spin, or magnetic orientation, of an electron bound to a single phosphorous atom embedded in a silicon chip.


----------



## ekim68

First images of particle jets at edge of a supermassive black hole



> Supermassive black holes appear to occupy the center of almost all galaxies. When they are actively swallowing matter, these black holes can power energetic jets that shine brighter than the entire rest of the galaxy, and can shoot matter free of it. Despite the mass and energy involved, however, the origin of these jets has been extremely hard to image, both because they're relatively compact, and because they're situated in the crowded centers of distant galaxies.
> 
> Now, however, researchers are putting together an array of telescopes stretched across the globe with the specific goal of imaging the environment near these supermassive black holes. The team behind the Event Horizon Telescope has now used it to image the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, and returned the first details of the disk of matter that is being sucked into that galaxy's central black hole.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity finds ancient stream bed on Mars



> The science team behind the Mars Curiosity rover has announced that some of the images it has taken reveal signs of a significant water flow at some point in the planet's past. Although there have been numerous indications of water in Mars' past, the discovery provides a unique opportunity to understand the precise environment in which the watery deposits formed.
> 
> The deposits look strikingly similar to some found on Earth, in which rounded rocks, carried by currents, settle into a stream bed and are locked into a conglomerate. The rounded shapes show that the rocks were worn by transport over long distances, while the size of the rocks is too large for them to have been brought there by wind. The flows seem to have been sizable, too. "From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep," said Berkeley's William Dietrich in the JPL's release.


----------



## ekim68

TALISE aquatic rover may explore a lake on Titan



> Titan is Saturn's largest moon, and it's said to be one of the most Earth-like celestial bodies in the Solar System. It has a thick atmosphere, and is covered with a network of seas, lakes and rivers - albeit ones made up of liquid hydrocarbons instead of water. Now, a team of scientists are proposing sending a boat-like probe to Titan, that would travel across its largest lake.


----------



## ekim68

Ice may lurk in shadows beyond Moon's poles



> Water ice on the moon may be more widespread than previously thought. Permanent shadows have been spotted far from the lunar poles, expanding the number of sites that would be good candidates for exploration by robotic rovers - or even for the locations of lunar bases.


----------



## ekim68

UK design to 'harpoon' old satellites



> UK engineers are developing a system to harpoon rogue or redundant satellites and pull them out of the sky.
> 
> It is a response to the ever growing problem of orbital junk - old pieces of hardware that continue to circle the Earth and which now pose a collision threat to operational spacecraft.
> 
> The harpoon would be fired at the hapless satellite from close range.
> 
> A propulsion pack tethered to the projectile would then pull the junk downwards, to burn up in the atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

Superman-strength bacteria produce gold



> EAST LANSING, Mich. - At a time when the value of gold has reached an all-time high, Michigan State University researchers have discovered a bacterium's ability to withstand incredible amounts of toxicity is key to creating 24-karat gold.
> 
> "Microbial alchemy is what we're doing - transforming gold from something that has no value into a solid, precious metal that's valuable," said Kazem Kashefi, assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics.
> 
> He and Adam Brown, associate professor of electronic art and intermedia, found the metal-tolerant bacteria Cupriavidus metallidurans can grow on massive concentrations of gold chloride - or liquid gold, a toxic chemical compound found in nature.
> 
> In fact, the bacteria are at least 25 times stronger than previously reported among scientists, the researchers determined in their art installation, "The Great Work of the Metal Lover," which uses a combination of biotechnology, art and alchemy to turn liquid gold into 24-karat gold.


----------



## ekim68

Expansion of the universe measured



> PASADENA, Calif., Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Astronomers using a NASA space telescope say they've made the most precise measurement yet of the Hubble constant, the rate at which the universe is expanding.
> 
> The Hubble constant is named for astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who in the 1920s confirmed the universe has been expanding since it exploded into being in the big bang 13.7 billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Scottish Scientists Develop World's Smallest Antenna



> Scientists from Edinburgh-based Sofant Technologies have unveiled a design for a miniature antenna that could transform the performance of smartphones and tablets.
> 
> Calling it the "world's smallest smart antenna", Sofant team hopes the technology will make poor reception, dropped calls and short battery life things of the past. the new antenna operates more efficiently, finding signals and extending battery life.


----------



## ekim68

Artist's project to blast gold-plated artifact disc into orbit



> Computerworld - The problem: You want to send images into space and you want them to last 5 billion years. The solution: A gold-plated disc.
> 
> That's the idea behind The Last Pictures project, which is scheduled to blast off in the next few months.
> 
> The project involves attaching a silicon disc encased in gold to the outside of a communications satellite. The disc will include just 100 etched photos, which are meant to be a cultural artifact for aliens to find if mankind is no longer here when they come knocking.


----------



## ekim68

Nobel Prize in Physics 2012: Particle Control in a Quantum World



> ScienceDaily (Oct. 9, 2012) - The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2012 to Serge Haroche Collège de France and Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France and David J. Wineland National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems."
> 
> Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland have independently invented and developed methods for measuring and manipulating individual particles while preserving their quantum-mechanical nature, in ways that were previously thought unattainable.


----------



## ekim68

Space surgery possible with zero-gravity tool 



> DRAINING an infected abscess on Earth is a straightforward procedure. On a spaceship travelling to the moon or Mars, it could kill everyone on board.
> 
> Blood and bodily fluids cannot be contained in zero gravity, which means there is currently no way to perform surgery in space without contaminating the cabin. This makes an extended stay problematic, says James Antaki at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
> 
> "Based on statistical probability, there is a high likelihood of trauma or a medical emergency on a deep space mission," he says.
> 
> Antaki is part of a team of US researchers developing an astro-surgical tool that could help.
> 
> The Aqueous Immersion Surgical System, or AISS, is a transparent box that creates a watertight seal when it is placed over a wound and pumped full of sterile saline solution, says George Pantalos at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.


----------



## ekim68

Dragon captured: SpaceX's first ISS supply mission is a success


----------



## ekim68

The Moon Was Created by a Massive Collision of Earth and a Mars-Sized Planet



> The idea that the Moon was once part of Earth was suggested as far back as 1898, but it wasn't until the mid-70s that the giant impact hypothesis - which suggests that the Moon was formed via the massive collision between Earth and another Mars-sized body - first gained favor. In 2001, Canup and Asphaug published solid calculations in support of the hypothesis, but physical proof of the impact has yet to be found. But according to new research published today in Nature, that may have changed.


----------



## ekim68

Exclusive: Pioneering scientists turn fresh air into petrol in massive boost in fight against energy crisis



> A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
> 
> Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.


----------



## ekim68

NASA working on refueling satellites



> Geostationary satellites cost a fortune and, despite their sophistication, they break down or eventually run out of propellant to keep them oriented. This is unfortunate when the nearest garage is back on Earth, so NASA wants to remedy this with an orbital version of roadside service. The space agency is developing a service robot that can visit ailing satellites and refuel or even repair them on the spot.


----------



## ekim68

NuSTAR catches a black hole's hot belch



> Our Milky Way galaxy is a sprawling collection of gas, dust, and hundreds of billions of stars, arrayed in a more-or-less flat disk. In the very center of the galaxy - just as in countless other large galaxies like ours - lies a hidden monster: a black hole. And not just any black hole, but one with four million times the Sun's mass.
> 
> It's called a supermassive black hole for a reason.
> 
> Usually, it's not doing a whole lot except sitting there being black and holey. But sometimes it gets a little snack, and when it does it can let out a cosmic-sized belch. *A very, very, very hot belch.* Like it did in July 2012:


----------



## ekim68

Chilling Brain Scans Show the Impact of a Mother's Love on a Child's Brain Size



> A shocking comparison of brain scans from two three-year-old children reveals new evidence of the remarkable impact a mother's love has on a child's brain development.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity completes first soil analysis, finds volcanic soils



> NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has completed its first soil analysis of the Red Planet. The unmanned explorer used an advanced, miniaturized X-ray diffraction instrument that is part of the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) of its internal laboratory. The soil, collected at a site designated "Rocknest" in Gale Crater, reveals that Martian soil is a weathered volcanic type similar to soils found in the Hawaiian Islands.


----------



## ekim68

Solar panel breaks "third of a sun" efficiency barrier



> Embattled photovoltaic solar power manufacturer Amonix announced on Tuesday that it has broken the solar module efficiency record, becoming the first manufacturer to convert more than a third of incoming light energy into electricity - a goal once branded "one third of a sun" in a Department of Energy initiative. The Amonix module clocked an efficiency rating of 33.5 percent.
> 
> During a period of testing by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory back in May, a peak efficiency of 34.2 percent was achieved, which Amonix claims is the highest ever reached by a PV module under real-world conditions. However, Amonix is only now drawing attention to the breakthrough, which saw its own record of 30.3 percent efficiency broken.


----------



## ekim68

Duke University creates perfect, centimeter-scale invisibility cloak



> Scientists at Duke University have created the first invisibility cloak that perfectly hides centimeter-scale objects. While invisibility cloaks have been created before, they have all reflected some of the incident light, ruining the illusion. In this case, the incident light is perfectly channeled around the object, creating perfect invisibility.


----------



## ekim68

Total Solar Eclipse, November 2012: Images and Video



> Here are some images and video from the total solar eclipse from today, November 13/14, 2012 (depending on where you were), which was visible only from the northern part of Australia. The image above comes from Camilla_SDO, the mascot of the Solar Dynamics Observatory mission.


----------



## ekim68

NASA discovers most distant galaxy in known universe



> NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have discovered the most distant galaxy identified so far in the universe.
> 
> Appearing in images as a diminutive blob, the galaxy is 13.3 billion light years away and only a tiny fraction of the size of the Milky Way. Due to the time it takes light to travel through space, the images seen from Earth now show what the galaxy looked like when the universe was just 420 million years old, according to a press statement released from NASA.


----------



## ekim68

Tour of the ISS


----------



## ekim68

Staring into Saturn's baleful eye


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## ekim68

Seems as though our Solar System is pretty much a heliosphere.....

NASA Voyager 1 Encounters New Region in Deep Space



> ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2012) - NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space.


----------



## 1956brother

ekim68 said:


> Seems as though our Solar System is pretty much a heliosphere.....
> 
> NASA Voyager 1 Encounters New Region in Deep Space


it's hard to believe this project is still going on..talk about money well spent:up:


----------



## ekim68

1956brother said:


> it's hard to believe this project is still going on..talk about money well spent:up:


Yeah and with only 64K for memory...Good stuff and it's still phoning home....


----------



## ekim68

Data teleportation: The quantum space race



> Three years ago, Jian-Wei Pan brought a bit of Star Trek to the Great Wall of China. From a site near the base of the wall in the hills north of Beijing, he and his team of physicists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei aimed a laser at a detector on a rooftop 16 kilometres away, then used the quantum properties of the laser's photons to 'teleport' information across the intervening space1. At the time, it was a world distance record for quantum teleportation, and a major step towards the team's ultimate aim of teleporting photons to a satellite.


----------



## ekim68

Controversial Moon Origin Theory Rewrites History



> The moon may have been adopted by our planet instead of descended from it.
> 
> If a new twist on a decades-old theory is right, conditions in the early solar system suggest the moon formed inside Mercury's orbit and migrated out until it was roped into orbit around Earth.
> 
> The idea flies in the face of scientific consensus, known as the giant impact hypothesis, which holds that the moon formed from red-hot debris left over after a Mars-sized object collided with Earth around 4.5 billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Smartphones to see through walls?



> PASADENA, Calif., Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Smartphones may soon have the capability of seeing through walls courtesy of a tiny, low-cost imaging chip, U.S. researchers say.
> 
> Two electrical engineers at the California Institute of Technology have invented tiny inexpensive silicon microchips that generate and radiate high-frequency electromagnetic waves, called terahertz waves.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble census finds galaxies at redshifts 9 to 12



> Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered seven primitive galaxies from a distant population that formed more than 13 billion years ago. In the process, their observations have put forward a candidate for the record for the most distant galaxy found to date (at redshift 11.9), and have shed new light on the earliest years of cosmic history. *The galaxies are seen as they were when the Universe was less than 4 percent of its present age.*


----------



## ekim68

Track North Korea's Terror Death Satellite Live in Space



> North Korea's satellite is wobbling out of control, and might rain down fiery death debris at any moment. Want to make sure you're not underneath when the sky falls? Track the thing in realtime right here.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini's Christmas Gift: In the Shadow of Saturn


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## ekim68

Another Earth Just 12 Light-Years Away?



> Astronomers have discovered what may be five planets orbiting Tau Ceti, the closest single star beyond our solar system whose temperature and luminosity nearly match the sun's. If the planets are there, one of them is about the right distance from the star to sport mild temperatures, oceans of liquid water, and even life. Don't pack your bags just yet, though: The discovery still needs to be confirmed.


----------



## ekim68

Property Rights in Space



> Ever since space travel began in the 1950s, space enthusiasts have dreamed that the exploration of space would lead to the colonization of space by human beings. From Arthur C. Clarke's visions of colonies on the Moon to the plans of the Mars Society today, the goal of human settlements on celestial bodies has inspired scientists and science fiction writers, and to a lesser extent politicians and entrepreneurs. But progress toward a permanent human presence in space has stalled. Scientific research conducted by people in orbiting labs like the International Space Station has contributed modestly to our knowledge of living in space. Unmanned satellites for telecommunications, defense, weather monitoring, scientific research, and other applications have proliferated over the last half-century. However, practical, economic development of space - treating it not as a mere borderland of Earth, but a new frontier in its own right - has not materialized. Still, the promise is as great as it ever was, and, contrary to popular opinion, is eminently achievable - but only if the current legal framework and attitude toward space can be shifted toward seeing it as a realm not just of human exploration, but also of human enterprise.


----------



## ekim68

NASA plans to `lasso' asteroid and turn it into space station



> LONDON: NASA scientists are planning to capture a 500 ton asteroid, relocate it and turn it into a space station for astronauts to refuel at on their way to Mars.


----------



## ekim68

Best Space Photos of the Year 2012


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## ekim68

Ion Thruster Sets World Record



> The NEXT ion thruster has been operated for over 43,000 hours, which for rocket scientists means that the thruster has processed over 770 kilograms of xenon propellant and can provide 30 million-newton-seconds of total impulse to the spacecraft. This demonstrated performance permits future science spacecraft to travel to varied destinations, such as extended tours of multi-asteroids, comets, and outer planets and their moons.


----------



## ekim68

You think they didn't quite calculate the Power Problems?  Imagine the Physical Stress...

CERN's LHC to Shut Down for 2 Years for Repair & Upgrades


----------



## ekim68

Our Galaxy Is Crammed Full of Planets



> For example, you can use some statistics to extrapolate how many planets there must be in our galaxy. A new study has done just that, and the number they get is stunning: they calculate there may be a hundred billion planets in the Milky Way, with 17 billion of them the size of Earth!


----------



## ekim68

Galactic Pile-Up May Point to Mysterious New Dark Force in the Universe



> LONG BEACH, California - By closely mapping the mass of an enormous galactic collision, astronomers may have uncovered a type of force that only affects dark matter.
> 
> The results come from observations of the Musket Ball Cluster, a vast celestial object located about 5.23 billion light-years away in the constellation Cancer. Galaxies are usually gravitationally bound to other galaxies, creating massive galactic clusters. The Musket Ball Cluster is an example of what happens when two such galactic clusters - each composed of hundreds of individual galaxies - crash into one another.


(Think about this: Detective Work from 5.23 billion light years away...  :up: )


----------



## ekim68

International Space Station set to receive blow-up extension



> NASA has awarded $17.8 million to an aerospace contractor to add a new habitat module to the International Space Station, according to a press release issued by the agency on Monday. Bigelow Aerospace will develop the addition to help humans "thrive in space safely and affordably." The details aren't yet clear, but Bigelow has designed modules that would triple the size of the ISS.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists build first bendable battery



> A group of Korean scientists has developed the world's first bendable lithium-ion batteries that will aid in the development of flexible mobile devices and the efficiency of rechargeable batteries.
> 
> According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology yesterday, a joint research team led by Professor Lee Sang-young of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology and researchers from nine other institutes succeeded in developing imprintable, fluid-like polymer electrolytes that are used for lithium-ion batteries.


----------



## ekim68

Track Curiosity Rovers Entire Mission With This Incredible Image From Space



> The entire story of the Curiosity rovers travels are on spectacular display in this new picture from Martian orbit by the HiRISE camera aboard NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
> 
> Since it landed in August, NASAs awesome rover has traversed about half a kilometer from its landing site. Along the way, it has scooped dirt, shot its laser beam, and snapped hundreds of amazing pictures.


----------



## ekim68

Novel Solar Photovoltaic Cells Achieve Record Efficiency Using Nanoscale Structures 



> Here's how to make a powerful solar cell from indium and phosphorus: First, arrange microscopic flecks of gold on a semiconductor background. Using the gold as seeds, grow precisely arranged wires roughly 1.5 micrometers tall out of chemically tweaked compounds of indium and phosphorus. Keep the nanowires in line by etching them clean with hydrochloric acid and confining their diameter to 180 nanometers. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.) Exposed to the sun, a solar cell employing such nanowires can turn nearly 14 percent of the incoming light into electricity-a new record that opens up more possibilities for cheap and effective solar power.


----------



## ekim68

Chipmaker Races to Save Stephen Hawking's Speech as His Condition Deteriorates 



> Intel is developing communication technology that can quickly process and respond to signals Hawking sends from the few muscles in his body that he can still control.


I hope they do it and quick, that Man's a Treasure...


----------



## ekim68

Did an 8th century gamma ray burst irradiate the Earth?



> A nearby short duration gamma-ray burst may be the cause of an intense blast of high-energy radiation that hit the Earth in the 8th century, according to new research led by astronomers Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph Neuhӓuser. The two scientists, based at the Astrophysics Institute of the University of Jena in Germany, publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
> 
> In 2012 scientist Fusa Miyake announced the detection of high levels of the isotope Carbon-14 and Beryllium-10 in tree rings formed in 775 CE, suggesting that a burst of radiation struck the Earth in the year 774 or 775. Carbon-14 and Beryllium-10 form when radiation from space collides with nitrogen atoms, which then decay to these heavier forms of carbon and beryllium. The earlier research ruled out the nearby explosion of a massive star (a supernova) as nothing was recorded in observations at the time and no remnant has been found.


----------



## ekim68

I am so amazed at the pictures being taken of the Sun over the last twenty years and the fact that the Sun's atmosphere, if it can be called that, is being studied and even projected....:up:

Corona


----------



## ekim68

NASA and CSA begin testing satellite refueling on the ISS



> NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) have begun practicing satellite refueling in space on a test bed outside the International Space Station (ISS). In a series of tests that started on January 14 and are scheduled to continue until the 25th, the two space agencies are using the Robotic Refueling Module (RRM) and Canada's Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, or Dextre, robot to carry out simulated refueling operations. The purpose of these tests is to develop refueling methods aimed at extending the life of satellites and reducing the amount of space debris orbiting the Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Magnetic 'Braids' May Cook the Sun's Corona



> Scientists have long puzzled over why the surface of the sun is cooler than its corona, the outer hazy atmosphere visible during a solar eclipse. Now thanks to a five-minute observation by a small, but very high-resolution ultraviolet telescope they have some answers.
> 
> Even before the July 2012 launch of the High-resolution Coronal Imager, nicknamed Hi-C, scientists suspected that magnetic fields on the sun were responsible for ramping up its energy, resulting in a flaring corona that can reach 7 million degrees Fahrenheit, compared to a visible solar surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees.


----------



## ekim68

The little robot that could....It's original mission was for 92 days and it keeps on going....:up: 

The older, smaller cousin of NASA's huge Mars rover Curiosity is quietly celebrating a big milestone Thursday - nine years on the surface of the Red Planet.

A little info


----------



## ekim68

Record Setting Asteroid Flyby



> Jan. 28, 2013: Talk about a close shave. On Feb. 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football field will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our planet's surface. There's no danger of a collision, but the space rock, designated 2012 DA14, has NASA's attention.
> 
> "This is a record-setting close approach," says Don Yeomans of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at JPL. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth."


----------



## ekim68

DARPA wants battlefield electronics that self destruct by dissolving



> Technology has become a major asset on the battlefield and is used extensively across all areas and agencies within the Department of Defense. But that technology also forms a major problem if it gets into the wrong hands.
> 
> Electronic devices are built to last, which make them very reliable. However, if during a hostile situation such a device has to be left behind or gets dropped, it will continue to function and could end up giving the enemy an advantage. With that in mind, DARPA has set about creating electronics that work for as long as necessary, but can be destroyed at a moment's notice.


----------



## ekim68

Microchip Moves Information Around in 3-D



> Jan. 30, 2013 - Scientists from the University of Cambridge have created, for the first time, a new type of microchip which allows information to travel in three dimensions. Currently, microchips can only pass digital information in a very limited way -- from either left to right or front to back.


----------



## ekim68

Transparent Transistors, Printed On Paper



> To make light-weight, inexpensive electronics using renewable materials, scientists have turned to a technology that is almost 2,000 years old: paper. In an important step toward paper-based devices, researchers report fabricating transistors on transparent, exceptionally smooth paper (ACS Nano, DOI: 10.1021/nn304407r).
> 
> Over the past five years, materials scientists have made electronic devices such as batteries and light-emitting diodes from paper. In these electronics, paper takes the place of conventional materials such as glass or plastic. Unlike those materials, paper comes from a renewable source.


----------



## ekim68

ScienceShot: Electricity Gives Bubbles Super Strength



> Any kid can blow a soap bubble, but only a physicist would think to electrify one. Left to its own devices, a bubble will weaken and pop as the fluid sandwiched between two thin layers of soap succumbs to gravity and drains toward the floor. But when researchers trapped a bubble between two platinum electrodes (pictured) and cranked up the voltage, the fluid reversed direction and actually flowed up, against the force of gravity.


----------



## ekim68

Mystery Mini Moons: How Many Does Earth Have?



> Earth's gravity may not have the gravitas of Jupiter, but the planet regularly plucks small asteroids passing by and pins them into orbit. The mini-moons don't stay for long. Within a year or so they resume their looping, twisting paths like crazy straws around the sun. But others arrive to take their place.


----------



## ekim68

Earth-buzzing asteroid could be worth big bucks: $195B if we could catch it



> The asteroid NASA say is about the half the size of a football field that will blow past Earth on Feb 15 could be worth up to $195 billion in metals and propellant.
> 
> That's what the scientists at Deep Space Industries, a company that wants to mine these flashing hunks of space materials, thinks the asteroid known as 2012 DA14 is worth - if they could catch it.


----------



## ekim68

California Scientists Propose System to Vaporize Asteroids That Threaten Earth 



> Described as a "directed energy orbital defense system," DE-STAR is designed to harness some of the power of the sun and convert it into a massive phased array of laser beams that can destroy, or evaporate, asteroids posing a potential threat to Earth. It is equally capable of changing an asteroid's orbit -- deflecting it away from Earth, or into the Sun -- and may also prove to be a valuable tool for assessing an asteroid's composition, enabling lucrative, rare-element mining. And it's entirely based on current essential technology.


----------



## ekim68

Brand-new black hole found in supernova remnant



> NASA has released images from the Chandra X-Ray observatory which appear to show a distorted supernova remnant harbouring the youngest black hole ever observed.
> 
> Careful with the dates: NASA says it's a thousand years old as seen from Earth - which means something slightly different to "it happened in 1013". The remnant, W49B, is actually 26,000 light-years distant.
> 
> What's unusual about W49B is that when its star went supernova, it didn't explode in a nice, neat sphere: instead, the material ejected in the explosion was moving much faster at its poles.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini Sheds Light On Cosmic Particle Accelerators



> During a chance encounter with what appears to be an unusually strong blast of solar wind at Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies. This is similar to the acceleration that takes place around distant supernovas.


----------



## ekim68

Efforts to Protect Earth From Asteroids Are Under Way. But Will They Be Enough?



> Certain scientists and members of the spaceflight community have long and vocally advocated for better methods to track potentially dangerous objects and more funding for mitigation research. But the odds have always been small and attention to this potential natural disaster has mostly been on the back burner. The probability remains the same - Chelyabinsk-like events tend to occur between once every 10 years to once every century - yet now people's attention has been refocused.


----------



## ekim68

Exotic but useful metals such as tantalum and titanium are about to become cheap and plentiful



> ALUMINIUM was once more costly than gold. Napoleon III, emperor of France, reserved cutlery made from it for his most favoured guests, and the Washington monument, in America's capital, was capped with it not because the builders were cheapskates but because they wanted to show off. How times change. And in aluminium's case they changed because, in the late 1880s, Charles Hall and Paul Héroult worked out how to separate the stuff from its oxide using electricity rather than chemical reducing agents. Now, the founders of Metalysis, a small British firm, hope to do much the same with tantalum, titanium and a host of other recherché and expensive metallic elements including neodymium, tungsten and vanadium.
> 
> The effect could be profound. Tantalum is an ingredient of the best electronic capacitors. At the moment it is so expensive ($500-2,000 a kilogram) that it is worth using only in things where size and weight matter a lot, such as mobile phones. Drop that price and it could be deployed more widely. Neodymium is used in the magnets of motors in electric cars. Vanadium and tungsten give strength to steel, but at great expense. And the strength, lightness, high melting point and ability to resist corrosion of titanium make it an ideal material for building aircraft parts, supercars and medical implants-but it can cost 50 times as much as steel. *Guppy Dhariwal, Metalysis's boss, thinks however that the company can make titanium powder (the product of its new process) for less than a tenth of such powder's current price.*


----------



## ekim68

Man-Made Material Pushes the Bounds of Superconductivity



> A multi-university team of researchers has artificially engineered a unique multilayer material that could lead to breakthroughs in both superconductivity research and in real-world applications.
> 
> The researchers can tailor the material, which seamlessly alternates between metal and oxide layers, to achieve extraordinary superconducting properties - in particular, the ability to transport much more electrical current than non-engineered materials.


----------



## ekim68

Universe Measured More Accurately Than Ever Before: New Results Pin Down Distance to Galaxy Next Door



> Astronomers survey the scale of the Universe by first measuring the distances to close-by objects and then using them as standard candles [1] to pin down distances further and further out into the cosmos. But this chain is only as accurate as its weakest link. Up to now finding an accurate distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way, has proved elusive. As stars in this galaxy are used to fix the distance scale for more remote galaxies, it is crucially important.
> 
> But careful observations of a rare class of double star have now allowed a team of astronomers to deduce a much more precise value for the LMC distance: 163 000 light-years.


----------



## ekim68

Engineers build Self-healing Chips Capable of Repairing Themselves



> Team of researchers and engineers at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has developed 'self-healing' chips that would heal themselves within a few microseconds and recover from faults that may range from less battery power to complete transistor failure.
> 
> The engineers demonstrated the self-healing capabilities through tiny amplifiers; a total of 76 of them alongside everything else that is needed to carry out self-healing - all of it able to fit on a penny. The team went to the extremes in testing if their work actually yielded results for which they damaged the amplifiers at several places by zapping them with high-power lasers. Within a second, the chips were able to develop work-around thereby healing themselves.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity Rover Finds Evidence That Mars Could Have Hosted Life



> NASA's Curiosity rover has hit pay dirt: strong evidence that ancient Mars could have been a great place for organisms to thrive. The rover's engineers and scientists are extremely excited about these results, which are basically the findings that it was designed and built to discover.
> 
> It's been a bit more than seven months since Curiosity touched down at Gale crater, an area that was identified as a potentially habitable environment based on data from satellites orbiting the planet. Almost immediately, the rover uncovered evidence that the place was an ancient riverbed, with a long and complex history of flowing water. In recent weeks, Curiosity drilled into a rock nicknamed John Klein and recovered a sample of powder representing the environment at Gale crater billions of years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Mars One Contracts Paragon for Mars Life Support Systems



> AMERSFOORT, THE NETHERLANDS, MARCH 11th, 2013 - Mars One has taken a bold step toward their goal of establishing a human settlement on Mars in 2023 by contracting with its first aerospace supplier, Paragon Space Development Corporation(R). As required by the U.S. Department of State, a Technical Assistant Agreement was successfully executed and Paragon began work on February 25th, 2013. Under the contract, Paragon will perform a conceptual design study as the first step towards developing life support and space suit systems for the Mars One mission.


----------



## ekim68

Comet during Daytime


----------



## ekim68

Voyager over the "heliocliff," but Solar System transition mysterious



> Where does our Solar System end? If you define it in terms of the Sun's gravitational influence, then it's the edge of the Oort cloud, a collection icy bodies that stretches over two light years from the Sun. You could also place it at the orbit of the last dwarf planet that roams the Kuiper belt. But if you want to define it where the Sun's energy directly affects the environment, then you'd place it at the edge of the heliosheath, where the solar wind and the Sun's magnetic field fall off, and the environment is dominated by the energetic particles of the interstellar medium.


----------



## ekim68

Universe is older than previously thought, new study shows



> (Reuters) - Closer scrutiny of radiation left over from the creation of the universe shows the Big Bang took place about 13.8 billion years ago, 100 million years earlier than previous estimates, scientists said on Thursday.


----------



## ekim68

Saturn Is Like an Antiques Shop, Cassini Suggests; Moons and Rings Date Back to Solar System's Birth



> Mar. 27, 2013 - A new analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggests that Saturn's moons and rings are gently worn vintage goods from around the time of our solar system's birth.


----------



## ekim68

Collision Course? A Comet Heads for Mars



> March 27, 2013: Over the years, the spacefaring nations of Earth have sent dozens of probes and rovers to explore Mars. Today there are three active satellites circling the red planet while two rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity, wheel across the red sands below. Mars is dry, barren, and apparently lifeless.
> 
> Soon, those assets could find themselves exploring a very different kind of world.
> 
> "There is a small but non-negligible chance that Comet 2013 A1 will strike Mars next year in October of 2014," says Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program at JPL. "Current solutions put the odds of impact at 1 in 2000."


----------



## ekim68

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama From Curiosity Rover Brings Mars to Your Computer Screen



> Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images.
> 
> After several technical glitches shut down operations for a while, Curiosity resumed its science investigations earlier this week. Before the shutdown, the rover had been hard at work drilling into the Martian surface and discovering excellent evidence that the planet was once a place that could have hosted life. Though the probe is back up and running, it will be ceasing operations for a while beginning in April, when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun, which can mess with communications.


----------



## ekim68

Green Meteorite May Be from Mercury, a First 



> Scientists may have discovered the first meteorite from Mercury.
> 
> The green rock found in Morocco last year may be the first known visitor from the solar system's innermost planet, according to meteorite scientist Anthony Irving, who unveiled the new findings this month at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The study suggests that a space rock called NWA 7325 came from Mercury, and not an asteroid or Mars.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Find Signal in Space That Could Be Dark Matter



> Though they rarely interact, scientists think dark matter particles should occasionally hit one another, annihilating into positrons and electrons, which AMS detects. A dark matter signal would see the ratio of positrons relative to electrons rise at higher energies and then sharply drop off. The problem is that the universe is complex and full of other sources that could produce almost exactly the same signal.


----------



## ekim68

Wow, a visual Spacetime Warp.....

Kepler Watches White Dwarf Warp Spacetime



> The Kepler space telescope's prime objective is to hunt for small worlds orbiting distant stars, but that doesn't mean it's not going to detect some extreme relativistic phenomena along the way.
> 
> While monitoring a red dwarf star - designated KOI-256 - astronomers detected a dip in starlight in the Kepler data. The NASA space telescope is constantly on the lookout for these dips as they can be an indicator of an extrasolar planet passing in front of the star's disk. This event is known as a "transit" and Kepler has the unprecedented sensitivity to detect sub-Earth-sized worlds drift in front of their host stars.
> 
> When a transit was detected in the KOI-256 system, researchers led by Caltech's Phil Muirhead thought they'd just witnessed a massive planet orbiting the star. However, something was very strange about this particular transit.
> 
> *"We saw what appeared to be huge dips in the light from the star, and suspected it was from a giant planet, roughly the size of Jupiter, passing in front," said Muirhead.*


----------



## ekim68

European scientists propose world's largest quantum network, between Earth and the ISS



> A group of European researchers has proposed the largest quantum network yet: Between Earth and the International Space Station. Such a network would see entangled photons transmitted over a distance of 250 miles - two or three times greater than previous quantum communication experiments. Not only will this be the first quantum experiment in space, but it will allow the scientists to see if entanglement really is instantaneous over long distances, and whether it's affected by gravity.


----------



## ekim68

Mars orbiter finds remains of pioneering Soviet Mars 3 probe



> A crowdsourcing effort by Russian space enthusiasts appears to have found the remains of the first probe to successfully land on Mars, using images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
> 
> The Mars 3 mission, consisting of a satellite and landing vehicle, was sent to the Red Planet by the then-Soviet Union in 1971 and reached orbit by the end of the year. The Mars 3 lander, carrying a small rover intended to explore the surface, successfully touched down using a parachute and retro-rockets, but only survived 14.5 seconds before failure.
> 
> It was the Soviet Union's second shot at a Mars landing.


----------



## ekim68

Harvard global grid computing project will help create printable solar cells



> Computerworld - In June, Harvard's Clean Energy Project (CEP) plans to release to solar power developers a list of the top 20,000 organic compounds that could be used to make cheap, printable photovoltaic cells (PVCs).
> 
> The list, culled from about seven million organic molecules that a crowdsourcing-style project has been crunching over the past two-plus years, could lead to PVCs that cost about as much as paint to cover a one-meter square wall.


:up:


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Captures Comet ISON



> April 23, 2013: Comet ISON is potentially the "comet of the century" because around the time the comet makes its closest approach to the Sun, on November 28, it may briefly become brighter than the full Moon. Right now the comet is far below naked-eye visibility, and so Hubble was used to snap the view of the approaching comet, which is presently hurtling toward the Sun at approximately 47,000 miles per hour. When the Hubble picture was taken on April 10, the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter's orbit at a distance of 386 million miles from the Sun.


----------



## ekim68

Three Years of SDO Images



> During the course of the video, the sun subtly increases and decreases in apparent size. This is because the distance between the SDO spacecraft and the sun varies over time. The image is, however, remarkably consistent and stable despite the fact that SDO orbits Earth at 6,876 mph and Earth orbits the sun at 67,062 mph.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists in Antarctica Find Invading Neutrinos from Another Galaxy!



> I don't get to write hyperbolic science fiction titles very often, but I couldn't resist this one. Even if it's not entirely accurate; in reality the experiment only most likely saw invading neutrinos from another galaxy. But it seems like they probably did. And they used faster-than-light travel to find them!


----------



## ekim68

Earth's core far hotter than thought



> New measurements suggest the Earth's inner core is far hotter than prior experiments suggested, putting it at 6,000C - as hot as the Sun's surface.


----------



## ekim68

Private Asteroid-Mining Project Launching Tiny Satellites in 2014



> A billionaire-backed asteroid-mining company aims to start putting its big plans into action soon, launching its first hardware into space by this time next year.
> 
> Planetary Resources, which counts Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt among its investors, plans to loft a set of tiny "cubesats" to Earth orbit in early 2014, to test out gear for its first line of asteroid-prospecting spacecraft.


(I'm gonna need an umbrella... )


----------



## ekim68

Global experts agree action needed on space debris



> There is an urgent need to remove orbiting space debris and to fly satellites in the future without creating new fragments, Europe's largest-ever space-debris conference announced today.
> 
> The findings from the 6th European Conference on Space Debris were released during the concluding press briefing at ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.


----------



## ekim68

The Rose


----------



## ekim68

Tiny Toon: IBM Makes a Movie Out of Atoms


----------



## ekim68

New Camera Inspired by Insect Eyes



> An insect's compound eye is an engineering marvel: high resolution, wide field of view, and incredible sensitivity to motion, all in a compact package. Now, a new digital camera provides the best-ever imitation of a bug's vision, using new optical materials and techniques. This technology could someday give patrolling surveillance drones the same exquisite vision as a dragonfly on the hunt.


----------



## ekim68

Fermi and Swift see 'shockingly bright' burst



> A record-setting blast of gamma rays from a dying star in a distant galaxy has wowed astronomers around the world. The eruption, which is classified as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, and designated GRB 130427A, produced the highest-energy light ever detected from such an event.





> Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) recorded one gamma ray with an energy of at least 94 billion electron volts (GeV), or some 35 billion times the energy of visible light, and about three times greater than the LAT's previous record. The GeV emission from the burst lasted for hours, and it remained detectable by the LAT for the better part of a day, setting a new record for the longest gamma-ray emission from a GRB.


----------



## ekim68

Our Solar System: Rare Species in Cosmic Zoo



> Pulling from 20 years of research since the first discoveries of planets beyond our solar system, scientists have concluded that Earth and its sibling worlds comprise what appears to be a relatively rare breed in a diverse cosmic zoo that includes a huge variety of planet sizes, orbits and parent stars.
> 
> The most common systems contain one or more planets one to three times bigger than Earth, all orbiting much closer to their parent stars than Earth circles the sun, says astronomer Andrew Howard, with the University of Hawaii.


----------



## ekim68

Los Alamos has been running a demo quantum key distribution system



> The basic idea behind the Los Alamos solution is that creating single photons for use in the key distribution has become relatively easy, and it can be done on inexpensive hardware. So the team built a bit of hardware slightly larger than a house key. It contains a true random number generator to set the bits it transmits and a single-photon source to produce them and send them directly into an optical fiber.
> 
> In contrast, detectors sensitive enough to measure individual photons tend to be expensive and bulky, so the authors used only one set of receivers, hooked up to a trusted server that, in traditional encryption speak, gets a name (Trent, in this case). That setup measured the individual bits coming in from the receiver and then publicly disclosed which ones it had measured. If there were no signs of interference with the transmission (caused by an eavesdropper), Trent used the bits to build a key, which it and the transmitter could then use to encrypt data broadcast over normal channels.
> 
> The best part is that it all works.


----------



## ekim68

Water on the Moon and Earth Came From The Same Primitive Meteorites



> The water found on the moon, like that on Earth, came from small meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites in the first 100 million years or so after the solar system formed, researchers from Brown and Case Western Reserve universities and Carnegie Institution of Washington have found.
> 
> Evidence discovered within samples of moon dust returned by lunar crews of Apollo 15 and 17 dispels the theory that comets delivered the molecules.
> 
> The research is published online in Science Express today.
> 
> The discovery's telltale sign is found in the ratio of an isotopic form of hydrogen, called deuterium, to standard hydrogen. The ratio in the Earth's water and in water from specks of volcanic glass trapped in crystals within moon dust match the ratio found in the chondrites. The proportions are far different from those in comet water.


----------



## ekim68

NASA asks: Could 3-D-printed food fuel a mission to Mars?



> NASA can send robots to Mars, no problem. But if it's ever going to put humans on the Red Planet, it has to figure out how to feed them over the course of a years-long mission.
> 
> So the space agency has funded research for what could be the ultimate nerd solution: a 3-D printer that creates entrees or desserts at the touch of a button.
> 
> Yes, it's another case of life imitating "Star Trek" (remember the food replicator?). In this case, though, the creators hope there is an application beyond deep-space pizza parties. The technology could also be used to feed hungry populations here on Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Merger of ancient galaxies could explain the origin of today's giants



> The largest galaxies in the Universe aren't beautiful spirals like our Milky Way; they are enormous egg-shaped structures known as giant elliptical galaxies. We don't know how they formed, but observations of very distant and bright galaxies revealed information about the formation of smaller elliptical galaxies. The giants remained mysterious.
> 
> Where one galaxy is insufficient, two may do instead. A new set of observations caught two bright elliptical galaxies right before the act of merging into one that would have a combined mass large enough to make the equivalent of 400 billion Suns. Hai Fu and colleagues determined that these galaxies collided more than 10 billion years ago and that the merger was driving extremely rapid star formation, at least ten times the rate seen in ordinary galaxies. Based on these observations, the researchers concluded that such collisions could be responsible for the birth of the largest galaxies, allowing for most of them to finish forming by 9.5 billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Daily Life on a Space Station



> The concept of a "day" aboard an orbiting spacecraft is a little abstract: every 24 hours, astronauts on board the ISS will experience 15 dawns as the station speeds around the world. But human beings have been conditioned by millions of years of evolution to a 24-hour daily cycle, and so-called circadian rhythms of waking and sleeping are hard-wired into our brains and bodies. So astronauts work and sleep to fixed schedules that match these ancient rhythms. Any other arrangement would soon have crews living in a state of permanent jet lag.


----------



## ekim68

A Snapshot of the Inside of an Atom



> Talk about taking a tough shot. Physicists have, for the first time, been able to image the quantum workings of electrons in hydrogen atoms, an advance that could open the door to a deeper understanding of the quantum world.





> "It's an interesting experiment, mostly because it's investigating hydrogen," an element that is both a textbook example in undergraduate physics classes and also makes up three-quarters of the universe, says Jeff Lundeen, a physicist at the University of Ottawa in Canada who's performed related experiments on photon wave functions. Stodolna's team "basically developed a new technique" for observing wave functions, Lundeen says, though it's not yet clear whether it applies to more complicated atoms that physicists understand less well than hydrogen. "If it ends up being fairly universal … then it would be a very useful tool" for studying those atoms in the lab, improving physicists' understanding of the atomic physics underlying chemical reactions and nanotechnology.


----------



## ekim68

Even Boring Weather Is Stunning Through a Satellite's Eyes


----------



## ekim68

Star Trek, anyone? 

Ultrashort laser pulses squeezed out of graphene



> Graphene, hailed as one of the thinnest, strongest and most conductive materials ever found, seems to have bagged one more amazing property. Experiments suggest that it can be used to create ultrashort laser pulses of any colour, owing to an ability to absorb light over a broad range of wavelengths.
> 
> The discovery could help researchers to build small, cheap and highly versatile ultrashort-pulse lasers, with potential applications ranging from micro-machinery to medicine.


----------



## ekim68

ET Detection Method Calls for World's Largest Telescope



> Rather than looking for radio waves, the team suggests searching for the heat signatures of nearby planets, which requires a giant telescope that could detect infrared radiation directly from an exoplanet, thus revealing the presence of a civilization.


----------



## ekim68

Nuking Dangerous Asteroids Might Be the Best Protection, Expert Says



> If a dangerous asteroid appears to be on a collision course for Earth, one option is to send a spacecraft to destroy it with a nuclear warhead. Such a mission, which would cost about $1 billion, could be developed from work NASA is already funding, a prominent asteroid defense expert says.


----------



## ekim68

A Space Shuttle Picture


----------



## ekim68

Proxima Centauri to Bend Starlight for Planet Hunt



> Scientists looking for planets around the star nearest to the solar system will soon get a helping hand from Mother Nature.
> 
> Our neighbor star, Proxima Centauri, will line up very closely with a background star in October 2014 and then again with another star in February 2016, relative to Earth's line of sight.
> 
> The geometry will enable astronomers to take advantage of a fanciful but practical ramification of Einstein's general relatively theory, which explains how gravity curves space (and time - but that's another story.)


----------



## ekim68

Moon, Venus and Mercury Meet in Night Sky Monday



> Stargazers will get an interesting chance to see a celestial configuration between the moon and two bright planets on Monday (June 10) evening.
> 
> Looking low toward the west-northwest horizon, you'll first notice the skinny lunar crescent, just 5 percent illuminated and just a little more than two days past new phase.
> 
> Next, look about 9 degrees to the right of the crescent and you'll pick out the brighter of the two planets, Venus. Nine degrees is a rather wide gap and is nearly equivalent to the width of your fist held out at arm's length.
> 
> Look roughly midway between the moon and Venus for Mercury, the innermost planet to the sun.


----------



## ekim68

Huge Asteroid's Earth Flyby Captured in New Video



> A newly released video of a giant asteroid's Earth flyby last week reveals key details about the enigmatic space rock and its attendant moon.
> 
> The enormous asteroid 1998 QE2 sailed past our planet at a distance of 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) on May 31, making its closest approach for at least the next two centuries.


----------



## ekim68

Toxic Mars: Astronauts Must Deal with Perchlorate on the Red Planet



> The pervading carpet of perchlorate chemicals found on Mars may boost the chances that microbial life exists on the Red Planet - but perchlorates are also perilous to the health of future crews destined to explore that way-off world.
> 
> Perchlorates are reactive chemicals first detected in arctic Martian soil by NASA's Phoenix lander that plopped down on Mars over five years ago in May 2008.


----------



## ekim68

NASA finds "unprecedented" black hole cluster near Andromeda's central bulge



> NASA has discovered an unprecedentedly large cluster of black holes in our nearest galactic neighbor, Andromeda.
> 
> The 26 black hole candidates were spotted with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which made more than 150 observations spread over 13 years.
> 
> Each of the black holes was formed after a star collapsed in on itself. Now, as they suck in material from other stars that orbit or pass nearby, the material gives off X-rays as it is consumed. These X-rays are what Chandra has spotted.


----------



## ekim68

Surgeon Uses Google Glass and iPad To Capture Live Procedure and Streams It To a Hangout



> Google and many tech manufacturers for that matter lately, have been evangelizing the mantra that technology is here to enhance and improve our lives, not get in the way; in the truest sense to "serve humanity." Recent events and breakthroughs in the healthcare industry, which make use of leading-edge technology, illustrate this vision better than any marketing or ad campaign could ever possibly hope to. A 3D-Printed Tracheal Splint that saves a baby's life is a pretty wonderful advancement; and now a surgeon from the New England area has taken Google Glass into the operating room to record and stream a procedure, in an effort to show it can be done and showcase the possible benefits of "Telemedicine."


----------



## ekim68

NASA's NEXT ion thruster runs five and a half years nonstop to set new record



> On Monday, NASA announced that its advanced ion propulsion engine operated for 48,000 hours, or five and a half years - and that's without stops for fuel or coffee. Developed under NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) project, the engine now holds the record for the longest test duration of any type of space propulsion system.


----------



## ekim68

Mini magnetospheres



> On the International Space Station there is a special thick-walled room to which the astronauts have had to retreat during times of increased solar radiation. However on longer missions the astronauts cannot live within shielded rooms, since such shielding would add significantly to the mass of the spacecraft, making them much more expensive and difficult to launch. It is also now known that the 'drip-drip' of even lower levels of radiation can be as dangerous as acute bursts from the sun.
> 
> On the surface of the Earth we are protected from radiation by the thick layers of the atmosphere. And the terrestrial magnetic field extends far into space, acting as a natural 'force field' to further protect our planet and deflecting the worst of the energetic particles from the Sun by creating a 'plasma barrier'.
> 
> Now an international team of scientists lead by members from RALSpace plan to mimic nature. They will build a miniature magnetosphere in a laboratory to see if a deflector shield can be used to protect humans living on space craft and in bases on the Moon or Mars.


Star Trek, anyone?


----------



## ekim68

Europe prepares spacecraft to observe a billion stars



> PARIS, June 27 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency say preparations are complete for a billion-star survey spacecraft ready to depart for its launch site in French Guiana.
> 
> The main goal of the Gaia space telescope during a five-year mission is to create a highly accurate 3D map of our Milky Way Galaxy by repeatedly observing a billion stars to determine their precise positions in space and their motions through it, a release from the Paris headquarters of ESA said Thursday.


----------



## ekim68

Large-scale quantum chip validated



> The team demonstrated that the D-Wave processor housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics has a functional role in the way it works. The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip's 128 qubits. In other words, the device appears to be operating as a quantum processor - something that scientists had hoped for but have needed extensive testing to verify.


----------



## ekim68

Mouse cloned from drop of blood



> Scientists in Japan have cloned a mouse from a single drop of blood.
> 
> Circulating blood cells collected from the tail of a donor mouse were used to produce the clone, a team at the Riken BioResource Center reports in the journal Biology of Reproduction.
> 
> The female mouse lived a normal lifespan and could give birth to young, say the researchers.
> 
> Scientists at a linked institute recently created nearly 600 exact genetic copies of one mouse.


----------



## ekim68

The Satellites that Could: :up:

Voyager 1's journey to solar system's edge upends theories



> As the Voyager 1 spacecraft speeds toward interstellar space at a rate of about a million miles a day, the NASA probe is causing scientists to jettison some long-standing theories on the nature of our solar system and life along its cold, dark edge.
> 
> In three studies published Thursday in the journal Science, Voyager researchers provided the most detailed view yet of a mysterious region more than 11 billion miles from Earth, where the sun's ferocious solar winds slow to a whisper and pieces of atoms blasted across the galaxy by ancient supernovae drift into the solar system.
> 
> The area, which has been dubbed the "magnetic highway," is a newly discovered area of the heliosphere, the vast bubble of magnetism that surrounds the planets and is inflated by gusting solar winds. Like Earth's magnetosphere, which shields us from radioactive solar winds, the heliosphere shields the solar system from many of the cosmic rays that fill interstellar space.


----------



## ekim68

Seismic Data Set Could Improve Earthquake Forecasting



> Geoscientists still can't predict when a major quake will strike, and many have given up trying. But many do try to issue more general forecasts of hazards and potential damage. This week, researchers added a potentially powerful new tool to their kit: the largest seismic database of its kind ever constructed, based on tens of thousands of earthquake records stretching back more than 1000 years. Together with a new global map of strain accumulation at plate boundaries, the data sets will form the core of an international public-private partnership intended to reshape the science of earthquake forecasting.





> To develop the new maps, researchers refigured the magnitudes and locations of nearly a thousand historic earthquakes dating back to 1000 C.E. according to strict, uniform new criteria. Using modern algorithms, they also recalculated seismogram records of 20,000 earthquakes over the past 100 years at a cost of €1 million. To get a handle on the driving force behind most earthquakes, other geoscientists reappraised the movements of Earth's tectonic plates to estimate the rate of deformation at plate boundaries. In all, they deduced 20,000 velocities from measurements at 70,000 stations around the world. GEM says that the software used to analyze the data, known as OpenQuake, will be publicly released next year to set a uniform and open standard in hazard calculations.


----------



## eggplant43

> In a brain that people love to describe as awash with chemicals, one chemical always seems to stand out. Dopamine: the molecule behind all our most sinful behaviors and secret cravings. Dopamine is love. Dopamine is lust. Dopamine is adultery. Dopamine is motivation. Dopamine is attention. Dopamine is feminism. Dopamine is addiction.


http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...sex_addiction_gambling_motivation_reward.html


----------



## ekim68

How NASA steers the International Space Station around space junk



> Orbiting about 250 miles (400-ish km) above our heads is one of the most complex and expensive engineering projects that the human race has ever put together: the International Space Station (ISS). The station masses around 450 tons (400 metric tons) and is a bit larger than an American football field. Its assembly required dozens and dozens of launches by Russia and the US (including 37 space shuttle flights), and it took astronauts and cosmonauts 155 spacewalks to get the whole thing bolted together-2.5 times more spacewalks than had previously occurred since the beginning of space flight.


----------



## Sins

In recent years there has been an upsurge of allegations of ET being present for the lunar landings, movies and a host of fuzzy photos showing "mining operations" on the back side of the moon. I've also seen reports of scrambled transmissions from NASA to the spaceflights which were again reputedly deciphered and contain some rather direct comments about someone else being on the moon. These are presented with current day reputed statements from various astronauts regarding confirmation of ET vehicles. As you are much more attuned to the science world than I, have you seen anything to lend credence to such allegations?


----------



## ekim68

You've peaked my interest... I'd heard a little about this and I think I'll do some checking around...:up:


----------



## ekim68

What really happened to the software on the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft? 



> It's the 4th of July. Exactly sixteen years ago today the Mars Pathfinder landed to a media fanfare and began to transmit data back to Earth. Days later and the flow of information and images was interrupted by a series of total systems resets. How this problem was a) diagnosed and b) resolved still makes for a fascinating tale for software engineers.[1]


Good read....


----------



## ekim68

New Space Engine Could Turn Tiny CubeSats into Interplanetary Explorers



> Researchers plan to launch a tiny spacecraft to Earth orbit and beyond within the next 18 months, in a key test of new propulsion technology that could help cut the cost of planetary exploration by a factor of 1,000.
> 
> The scientists and engineers are developing a new plasma propulsion system designed for ultrasmall CubeSats. If all goes well, they say, it may be possible to launch a life-detection mission to Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa or other intriguing worlds for as little as $1 million in the not-too-distant future.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Finds New Neptune Moon



> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting the distant blue-green planet Neptune. This brings the number of known satellites circling the giant planet to 14.
> 
> The body is estimated to be no more than 12 miles across, making it the smallest known moon in the Neptunian system. It's so small that it escaped detection by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew by Neptune in 1989 and surveyed the planet's system of moons and rings.


----------



## valis

http://www.nature.com/news/cosmologist-claims-universe-may-not-be-expanding-1.13379

veddy eenterestink.....


----------



## ekim68

Wow, good read Tim....Kind of bends Mathematics, eh?


----------



## valis

math? dude, bent my _mind_. That's the fun part, though.


----------



## ekim68

Red Planet Riviera: Ancient Mars Ocean Found?



> With the help of rover Curiosity, we now know that ancient Mars had large quantities of liquid water flowing across its surface. However, evidence for large bodies of water - i.e. oceans - has been hard to come by. But using high-resolution orbital data, Caltech scientists now think they've found a long-dry river delta that once flowed into a very large body of water. Welcome to the Aeolis Riviera - the strongest evidence yet for a Martian coastline.


----------



## valis

this oughta keep everyone busy for a bit......

http://gizmodo.com/7-graphics-of-earths-coolest-phenomena-from-rainbows-805237667


----------



## ekim68

Pale Blue Dot: Distant Spacecraft Photograph Earth



> July 23, 2013: Color and black-and-white images of Earth taken by two NASA interplanetary spacecraft on July 19 show our planet and its moon as bright beacons from millions of miles away in space.
> 
> NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the color images of Earth and the moon from its perch in the Saturn system nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away. MESSENGER, the first probe to orbit Mercury, took a black-and-white image from a distance of 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) as part of a campaign to search for natural satellites of the planet.


----------



## ekim68

Enceladus' icy jets pulse to the rhythm of its orbit



> NASA's Cassini probe, which is orbiting Saturn, has provided some of the most beautiful imagery we've seen transmitted from beyond the confines of our terrestrial home. (And its images sometimes include our terrestrial home.) Sure, Saturn itself is great and all, but the gas giant's rings and moons are simply fantastic. There's Titan, with its thick, hazy atmosphere and methane cycle-complete with rivers, lakes, and precipitation. And then there's Enceladus-the smooth, icy wonder that might harbor a liquid water ocean beneath its surface.
> 
> Enceladus is best known for the geysers near its south pole, which shoot water vapor and microscopic particles of water ice high above the surface. Some falls back to Enceladus and the rest escapes, forming one of Saturn's rings. The geysers have attracted attention for good reason. Simple organic compounds like methane, propane, and formaldehyde have been detected in the plumes of water, as has ammonia. That gets people excited about what kind of chemistry could be going on beneath the surface-and whether it might even include biochemistry. *And then there's the most basic question: why is the interior of Enceladus so warm, anyway?*


----------



## valis

tectonic activity, mon ami.......


----------



## ekim68

See the Curiosity Rover's 1st Year On Mars in 2 Minutes (Video)



> NASA's Mars rover Curiosity will celebrate its one-year anniversary on the Red Planet next week, and to celebrate the occasion, the space agency released a two-minute time-lapse video of the robot's first year of exploration.


----------



## ekim68

The Sun's Magnetic Field Is About to Flip



> Aug. 6, 2013 - Something big is about to happen on the sun. According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to flip.
> 
> "It looks like we're no more than three to four months away from a complete field reversal," said solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. "This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system."
> 
> The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of "solar max" will be behind us, with half yet to come.


----------



## ekim68

IBM Research unveils new chip architecture inspired by the human brain



> Summary: The long-term goal is to build a chip with 10 billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses -- all while only consuming roughly a kilowatt of power and taking up less than two liters in volume.


----------



## ekim68

More than 100,000 want to go to Mars and not return, project says



> (CNN) -- More than 100,000 people are eager to make themselves at home on another planet. They've applied for a one-way trip to Mars, hoping to be chosen to spend the rest of their lives on uncharted territory, according to an organization planning the manned missions.


----------



## poochee

ekim68 said:


> More than 100,000 want to go to Mars and not return, project says


They are braver than I am!


----------



## ekim68

Scientists are arguing about whether Voyager has left the Solar System



> Has Voyager 1 reached interstellar space or not? That question was first asked about a year ago, when the probe first started seeing a drop-off in the levels of energetic particles emitted by the Sun, accompanied by a rise in cosmic rays from interstellar space. But the models of the Solar System's edge had suggested that there should be a corresponding change in the magnetic field's orientation as the Sun's field is overwhelmed by that of the galaxy as a whole. And Voyager 1 is seeing nothing of the sort; even as particle levels flip-flopped several times, the magnetic field remained largely stable.


A Good Read...:up:


----------



## ekim68

RINGS propels satellites without propellants



> Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are testing a new propulsion system ... inside the station. While this might seem like the height of recklessness, this particular system doesn't use rockets or propellants. Developed in the University of Maryland's Space Power and Propulsion Laboratory, this new electromagnetic propulsion technology called the Resonant Inductive Near-field Generation System (RINGS) uses magnetic fields to move spacecraft as a way to increase service life and make satellite formation flying more practical.


----------



## ekim68

Sun Unleashes Another Solar Storm Aimed at Earth



> The sun fired off an intense solar storm at Earth Wednesday (Aug. 21) - the second in two days - hurtling billions of tons of charged particles at our planet, but should not pose a threat to people on the ground, NASA says.
> 
> The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred yesterday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h). The solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach Earth within the next three days.


----------



## ekim68

poochee said:


> They are braver than I am!


Me too and I wish them well....:up: When compared to things like Time and Universe, our lives are very small and very short, so get what adventures you can, eh?


----------



## ekim68

Scientists are arguing about whether Voyager has left the Solar System



> Has Voyager 1 reached interstellar space or not? That question was first asked about a year ago, when the probe first started seeing a drop-off in the levels of energetic particles emitted by the Sun, accompanied by a rise in cosmic rays from interstellar space. But the models of the Solar System's edge had suggested that there should be a corresponding change in the magnetic field's orientation as the Sun's field is overwhelmed by that of the galaxy as a whole. And Voyager 1 is seeing nothing of the sort; even as particle levels flip-flopped several times, the magnetic field remained largely stable.


----------



## ekim68

Pulsars make a GPS for the cosmos



> CSIRO scientists have written software that could guide spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, show that the planet Nibiru doesn't exist … and prove that the Earth goes around the Sun. Dr George Hobbs (CSIRO) and his colleagues study pulsars - small spinning stars that deliver regular 'blips' or 'pulses' of radio waves and, sometimes, X-rays.
> 
> Usually the astronomers are interested in measuring, very precisely, when the pulsar pulses arrive in the solar system. Slight deviations from the expected arrival times can give clues about the behaviour of a pulsar itself, or whether it is orbiting another star, for instance.
> 
> "But we can also work backwards," said Dr Hobbs. "We can use information from pulsars to very precisely determine the position of our telescopes."
> 
> "If the telescopes were on board a spacecraft, then we could get the position of the spacecraft."


----------



## ekim68

University of St Andrews scientists create 'fastest man-made spinning object'



> A team of researchers claims to have created the world's fastest spinning man-made object.
> 
> They were able to levitate and spin a microscopic sphere at speeds of up to 600 million revolutions per minute.
> 
> This spin speed is half a million times faster than a domestic washing machine and more than a thousand times faster than a dental drill.


----------



## valis

read that this morning......quit when I got to the dentist drill part.....


----------



## ekim68

Neutron stars in the computer cloud



> The combined computing power of 200,000 private PCs helps astronomers take an inventory of the Milky Way. The [email protected] project connects home and office PCs of volunteers from around the world to a global supercomputer. Using this computer cloud, an international team lead by scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Gravitational Physics and for Radio Astronomy analysed archival data from the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Using new search methods, the global computer network discovered 24 pulsars - extraordinary stellar remnants with extreme physical properties. These can be used as testbeds for Einstein's general theory of relativity and could help to complete our picture of the pulsar population.


I have several friends who are involved with that...:up:


----------



## valis

very nice......where at, if I may ask?


----------



## ekim68

Hold on now, I got it confused with the SETI Thing although it's probably similar...


----------



## ekim68

Neil deGrasse Tyson says that private business will not open the space frontier



> According to an August 29, 2013 story in Business Insider, Neil degrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist and media personality offered something of a reality check on the potential of commercial enterprises to open the space frontier without the aid of governments.
> 
> Specifically referencing SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk's boast that he would establish a Mars colony, Tyson said on a recent video podcast, "It's not possible. Space is dangerous. It's expensive. There are unquantified risks. Combine all of those under one umbrella; you cannot establish a free market capitalization of that enterprise."
> 
> Tyson went on to suggest that the history of exploration shows that it is government that mitigates those dangers and quantifies those risks by undertaking voyages of discovery that show the shape of new worlds.


----------



## valis

I respectfully disagree.....privatization is the best thing that HAS happened to space flight......it gives joe schmo the dream of actually moving the species....

Is he correct on Mars? Absolutely.

Tyson's error is that he is relying on government funding of the waaaay past, a la de Leon or Columbus. Yes, it does _now_ lessen the dangers.....and I've heard more than one Apollo astronaut state that if they were to launch the Sat V today, it would never get off the ground due to safety regs......

Again, IMO, privatization is the way to go....


----------



## ekim68

Well I respectfully disagree, too. Privatization has always relied on Governments for Insurance Purposes, just look at the latest three or four Financial Transgressions that caused the Recessions....And who bailed out who?  However, I don't rule out a dual-purpose kind of thing....


----------



## valis

maybe we are looking at it from different ends......I think privatization is solid in that we (the public) can move forward with OUR agendas, as opposed to waiting for the government to issue THEIR agenda......


----------



## valis

excellent read here on the collapse of nasa........

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2013/09/apollo-legend-on-nasa-its-a-tragedy-it-really-is/?cmpid=hpbn


----------



## ekim68

Cassini Sees Saturn Storm's Explosive Power



> A monster storm that erupted on Saturn in late 2010 - as large as any storm ever observed on the ringed planet -- has already impressed researchers with its intensity and long-lived turbulence. A new paper in the journal Icarus reveals another facet of the storm's explosive power: its ability to churn up water ice from great depths. This finding, derived from near-infrared measurements by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, is the first detection at Saturn of water ice. The water originates from deep in Saturn's atmosphere.
> 
> "The new finding from Cassini shows that Saturn can dredge up material from more than 100 miles [160 kilometers]," said Kevin Baines, a co-author of the paper who works at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It demonstrates in a very real sense that typically demure-looking Saturn can be just as explosive or even more so than typically stormy Jupiter." Water ice, which originates from deep in the atmosphere of gas giants, doesn't appear to be lofted as high at Jupiter.


----------



## valis

oh, wow....beautiful shots.

http://io9.com/the-southern-pole-of-mars-is-more-beautiful-than-we-eve-1250573387


----------



## valis

pretty cool site, plus it's got McCandless for the splash page.

http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Well I respectfully disagree, too. Privatization has always relied on Governments for Insurance Purposes, just look at the latest three or four Financial Transgressions that caused the Recessions....And who bailed out who?  However, I don't rule out a dual-purpose kind of thing....


Heyya Mike, check this out......

man, I would pay a lot of money to have dinner with that dude.....not that he needs it, so I'd pay it to myself, but you get the idea.....


----------



## ekim68

Wow, that's cool, thanks Tim....


----------



## ekim68

NASA-funded Program Helps Amateur Astronomers Detect Alien Worlds



> A new program will let amateur astronomers detect exoplanets - worlds outside our solar system - by observing nearby bright stars and recording faint dips in their brightness caused by transits from planets in orbit around them.
> 
> The program is called Open Source Differential Photometry Code for Amateur Astronomy Research (OSCAAR) and was developed in part with NASA funding. It is available for free online


----------



## ekim68

Interstellar Winds Buffeting Our Solar System Have Shifted Direction



> Additionally, scientists now gain deeper insight into the dynamic nature of the interstellar winds, which has major implications on the size, structure, and nature of our sun's heliosphere -- the gigantic bubble that surrounds our solar system and helps shield us from dangerous incoming galactic radiation.


----------



## ekim68

Mystery Alignment of 'Butterfly' Nebulae Discovered




> Planetary nebulae are caused by the death of red giant stars. During their final years, long after the hydrogen fuel has run out in their cores, these puffed up stars begin to shed their outer layers, blasting huge quantities of material into space. At the end of its life the sun will also enter into a red giant phase, swallowing up the inner solar system planets (possibly even Earth), eventually creating its own planetary nebula.
> 
> The resulting nebulous clouds can take on many beautiful shapes, but bipolar planetary nebulae can be the most striking, generating two lobes of material expanding in opposite directions. These nebulae often resemble butterfly wings.


----------



## ekim68

The Moon in 1910



> In most fields of science hobbyists dominated the scene until the 19th century, with scientific papers largely coming from country gentlemen's houses, not university labs. Those days are long gone in most disciplines, but in astronomy there has always been a place for amateurs.
> 
> While consumer-grade telescopes are obviously no match for the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope, amateur astronomers have made real contributions to modern science, through, for example, carrying out long-term monitoring of the planets in our Solar System. Time on high-end telescopes is a precious commodity, and they are rarely given over to a single observation for more than a few hours at a time, so an amateur who can observe Jupiter every night for months still has a big contribution to make.
> 
> Buried in the archives of the Centre for Planetary Science at UCL/Birkbeck is a glimpse into the role of the amateur, a century ago: a 1910 map of the Moon by Walter Goodacre, reproduced here as a huge 400 megapixel image:


----------



## valis

sweet, mike........got one for you as well.......


----------



## valis

now then, what is unique about this shot?


----------



## ekim68

Several things come to mind. Like maybe an eclipse of the Earth by the Moon from the Sun. And, is it Earth Rise or Earth Set?


----------



## valis

think about it, Mike........how many humans are in that picture?

Hint: all but one......


----------



## ekim68

"Voyager is in interstellar space - the space between the stars."



> Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space. The NASA spacecraft, which rose from Earth on a September morning 36 years ago, has traveled farther than anyone, or anything, in history. Now Voyager 1 is in the space between the stars.


(The Little Spaceship that Could...:up: )


----------



## valis

all hail spacetoad!


----------



## valis

this is kinda neat.....

http://io9.com/the-sound-of-interstellar-space-is-actually-kind-of-ter-1302701737


----------



## ekim68

An interesting theory....

Did a hyper-black hole spawn the Universe?



> Big Bang was mirage from collapsing higher-dimensional star, theorists propose.


----------



## ekim68

Plasmonic nanostructures could prove a boon to solar cell technology



> Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a way to harvest energy from sunlight more efficiently, with the help of so-called plasmonic nanostructures. The new findings suggest that plasmonic components can enhance and direct optical scattering, creating a mechanism that is more efficient than the photoexcitation that drives solar cells. The development could therefore provide a real boost to solar cell efficiency and lead to faster optical communication.


----------



## valis

probably could be in YT, but this dude's work was SO worth it, I felt it deserved to be here. 

enjoy. Lord knows I did.


----------



## ekim68

Graphene Turns Light Into Electricity For Faster Circuits



> Welcome to another episode of "Cool Science Stuff That Probably Will Have Some Effect On Our Lives Later But We Probably Won't Realize It." In this week's installment we present graphene photosensors.
> 
> While the vast majority of high speed data is transmitted via fiber optic cables, there is always a "last nanometer" problem where the light signals must be converted into electrical impulses. This works using a photodetector that "sees" the light and converts the signal. Enter graphene.
> 
> Using a single layer of hexagonally arranged carbon atoms, researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have created an ultra-small, ultra-fast, and ultra-efficient method for turning photons into electrons.


----------



## ekim68

Watch Out for the Harvest Moon



> According to folklore, every full Moon has a special name. There's the Wolf Moon, the Snow Moon, the Worm Moon, the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Flower Moon, the Strawberry Moon, the Thunder Moon, the Sturgeon Moon, the Harvest Moon, the Hunter's Moon, the Beaver Moon, and the Long Night's Moon. Each name tells us something about the season or month in which the full Moon appears.
> 
> This month's full Moon is the Harvest Moon.
> 
> The Harvest Moon is the full Moon that falls closest to the autumnal equinox, the beginning of northern autumn. In 2013 the Moon is full on Sept. 19th (the night of Sept. 18-19 in North America) while the equinox follows close behind on Sept. 22nd. The coincidence sets the stage for a nice display of Harvest moonlight.


----------



## ekim68

A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics



> Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.
> 
> "This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before," said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.
> 
> The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like *"amplituhedron,"* which yields an equivalent one-term expression.


----------



## ekim68

NASA looks to post-2020 International Space Station operations



> Barring a catastrophic malfunction or damaging impacts from space debris, NASA should be able to keep the International Space Station (ISS) in operation at least through 2020 and, with steady funding, careful planning and a bit of luck, through 2028 -- the 30th anniversary of the first module's launch -- officials say.
> 
> But reduced power from degraded solar arrays and other crippling consequences of decades spent in the extreme environment of space will slowly but surely take their toll and the cost-benefit ratio eventually will tilt in favor of abandonment and a fiery controlled re-entry.


----------



## ekim68

A good read about the 'Little-Satellite-That-Could'....

3 Design Strategies That Let Voyager 1 Survive Interstellar Space



> The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the farthest man-made object from Earth--ever. NASA recently confirmed that the 36-year-old space probe, currently hurtling 18.7 billion kilometers away from us, has officially left the solar system and entered interstellar space. How did NASA design a piece of technology that could survive such a mind-bendingly long journey? Suzanne Dodd, project manager for the Voyager mission, explained three strategies that give the Voyager probes (yes, there are two) their staying power.


----------



## valis

that's just awesome......thanks, Mike.......wonder how long we will get signals back.


----------



## ekim68

Where and when can I see Comet ISON?



> So, we can't tell you for sure yet. Despite everyone's hopes, it's entirely possible that Comet ISON will disintegrate when it approaches the Sun, or that it won't be visible to the naked eye. For ISON to become a spectacle, it would have to survive its approach to the Sun and develop a long tail as it becomes exposed to the Sun's heat. And there are a lot of factors that go into that, including the size and composition of the comet's nucleus.


----------



## valis

'wow' moment on mars........


> NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has found that surface soil on the Red Planet contains 2 percent water by weight. That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter) of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up, scientists said.


if this is true, and someone didn't divide by pickle or something, this is an astonishing find.....surprised it took this long.....


----------



## valis

well, one missing link may have been found......
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ssil-fish-writes-history-human-evolution.html


----------



## valis

sweeeet.

http://io9.com/we-have-seen-clouds-on-a-giant-planet-beyond-our-solar-1430361014


----------



## ekim68

Cassini probe sees plastic ingredient on Titan moon



> The Cassini probe has detected propene, or propylene, on Saturn's moon Titan.
> 
> On Earth, this molecule, which comprises three carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms, is a constituent of many plastics.
> 
> It is the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet, other than our home world, says the US space agency (Nasa).


----------



## valis

read that yesterday......what a week for space, eh? water on mars, plastic on titan......


----------



## ekim68

Ancient supervolcanoes revealed on Mars



> A series of Martian craters assumed to have been formed by meteorites may actually be extinct volcanoes so massive that, when they were active billions of years ago, they could have buried Mars in ash.
> 
> The craters pepper the surface of Arabia Terra, a geologically ancient region of northern Mars. They appear as several huge circular pits that resemble Earth's calderas, in which magma beneath a volcano drains after a volcanic eruption, causing the ground above the magma chamber to collapse.


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> read that yesterday......what a week for space, eh? water on mars, plastic on titan......


You got that right...:up: And don't forget our little dudes entering interstellar space....


----------



## ekim68

New shape-shifting metals discovered



> A new shape-changing metal crystal is reported in the journal Nature, by scientists at University of Minnesota.
> 
> It is the prototype of a new family of smart materials that could be used in applications ranging from space vehicles to electronics to jet engines.
> 
> Called a "martensite", the crystal has two different arrangements of atoms, switching seamlessly between them.
> 
> It can change shape tens of thousands of times when heated and cooled without degrading, unlike existing technology.
> 
> Currently, martensite metals are made of an alloyed mixture of nickel and titanium.
> 
> They have the remarkable ability to "remember" their shape and even after being bent will return to their original form. For this, they are called "shape memory" metals.


----------



## ekim68

US scientists boycott Nasa conference over China ban



> In an email sent to the conference organisers, Marcy said: "In good conscience, I cannot attend a meeting that discriminates in this way. The meeting is about planets located trillions of miles away, with no national security implications," he wrote.
> 
> "It is completely unethical for the United States of America to exclude certain countries from pure science research," Marcy told the Guardian. "It's an ethical breach that is unacceptable. You have to draw the line."


----------



## ekim68

Russian Meteor Explosion Might Mean Earth Gets Hit More Often Than We Think



> The latest analysis of the bollide that burst over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February suggests that the risk from such airbursts - which occur when friction in our atmosphere heats up a meteor - may be greater than previously thought.


----------



## ekim68

Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab



> Researchers at a US lab have passed a crucial milestone on the way to their ultimate goal of achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion.
> 
> Harnessing fusion - the process that powers the Sun - could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy.
> 
> But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.
> 
> Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion.
> 
> NIF, based at Livermore in California, uses 192 beams from the world's most powerful laser to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place.
> 
> The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - *the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.*


----------



## ekim68

A Strange Lonely Planet Found Without a Star



> An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young planet that is not orbiting a star. This free-floating planet, dubbed PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter. The planet formed a mere 12 million years ago -- a newborn in planet lifetimes.


----------



## ekim68

Scientific Data Has Become So Complex, We Have to Invent New Math to Deal With It



> "In physics, you typically have one kind of data and you know the system really well," said DeDeo. "Now we have this new multimodal data [gleaned] from biological systems and human social systems, and the data is gathered before we even have a hypothesis." The data is there in all its messy, multi-dimensional glory, waiting to be queried, but how does one know which questions to ask when the scientific method has been turned on its head?


----------



## valis

penny on mars for a year?

http://io9.com/this-is-what-a-penny-looks-like-after-being-on-mars-for-1443381050


----------



## valis

say what?

http://io9.com/5935742/its-official-the-sun-is-the-most-perfect-natural-sphere-ever-measured/@nak



> the Sun is actually the most perfectly round natural object* in the known Universe.* That's pretty big news, especially because (prior to the publication of this study) astronomers had presumed that the shape of the Sun was changing all the time, squishing and un-squishing into and out of a spherical shape throughout its 11-year solar cycles. But the shape of the Sun, note the researchers in the paper recounting their findings, is actually "remarkably constant."


----------



## valis

wow......stunning photos.......

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Martian_scars


----------



## ekim68

Wow is right, thanks for that Tim...:up:


----------



## ekim68

Zombie star caught feasting on a soggy asteroid



> The remains of a water-rich asteroid have been found splattered across the face of a white dwarf star about 150 light years away. The discovery marks the first time that we have seen chemical evidence for water on rocky worlds orbiting other stars, supporting the idea that the galaxy hosts many life-friendly exoplanets akin to Earth.
> 
> The find was made on a stellar corpse similar to what our sun will become when it dies. That hints that some watery rocks in our solar system could survive the sun's end and be a resource for space-faring humans of the future.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's All Sky Fireball Network

Thanks NASA....


----------



## valis

thanks, Mike, that's a pretty sweet site.....can't wait to use it.


----------



## ekim68

World Space Walk simultaneously puts three Mars-capable spacesuits to the test



> On October 8, three teams in various parts of the world participated in an unprecedented simultaneous test of three experimental spacesuits. Coordinated from a mission control center in Innsbruck, Austria run by the Austrian Space Forum (OeWF), World Space Walk 2013 aims at setting standards for developing suits for the future exploration of the planet Mars.


----------



## valis

words fail me....all I can say, god bless engineers.

http://gizmodo.com/a-first-person-account-of-debugging-a-live-saturn-v-roc-1449074528


----------



## ekim68

Wow, good stuff....:up:


----------



## ekim68

Battling Space Junk With a Tractor Beam of Static Electricity



> The growing problem of space junk around Earth could be cleaned up in part using the same forces that give you a static shock when you touch a doorknob on a windy day. By shooting space debris with an electron beam, a charged spacecraft could tug them to higher orbit and then fling them away.
> 
> This solution relies on what are known as electrostatic forces, which occur whenever electrons build up on something. Bombarding a piece of space junk with electrons could give it a modest negative charge of a few tens of kilovolts, roughly the equivalent charge stored in a car spark plug. An unmanned space probe with a positive charge could then tow it in a tractor-beam-like fashion.


----------



## valis

sweet.

http://gizmodo.com/japan-just-successfully-tested-its-asteroid-shattering-1451371986


----------



## ekim68

Researchers tout electricity storage technology that could recharge devices in minutes



> Vanderbilt University researchers say they have come up with a way to store electricity on a silicon-based supercapacitor that would let mobile phones recharge in seconds and let them continue to operate for weeks without recharging.
> 
> The researchers said in a paper that instead of storing energy in chemical reactions the way batteries do, silicon supercapacitors store electricity by assembling ions on the surface of a porous material. As a result, they tend to charge and discharge in minutes, instead of hours, and operate for a few million cycles, instead of a few thousand cycles like batteries, the researchers stated.


----------



## valis

Mike, have you heard of KERS from F1?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KERS

sounds sorta similar.


----------



## ekim68

Thanks Tim. I've bookmarked that and will read about it. I have also heard of something like this...


----------



## valis

it's the basic laws of thermodynamics...energy in, not all used, take that stuff and toss it at the engine.


----------



## valis

never, never ever, will I get tired of Apollo.

http://www.space.com/23334-apollo-14-eva-view.html


----------



## ekim68

UN plans international body to help defend earth from asteroids



> The United Nations plans to establish an international body to coordinate efforts to defend Earth from dangerous space rocks, asteroids and comets, should scientists find any heading toward our planet.
> 
> The U.N. passed a resolution last week calling for the establishment of an "International Asteroid Warning Group," tasked with scanning the skies for extraterrestrial objects, the Scientific American reported Monday.
> 
> Another U.N. body, the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, established at the height of the Cold War in 1959, will help the group devise ways to deflect or destroy such cosmic threats.


----------



## valis

happy halloween indeed. 

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131031.html


----------



## ekim68

NASA releases never-before-seen images as part of archive month


----------



## ekim68

10-year-old Canadian youngest ever to discover supernova



> For amateur astronomers, discovering a supernova is a significant and rare feat. For a 10-year-old amateur to do it - well, that's astronomical.
> 
> Kathryn Aurora Gray of Fredericton, N.B. is basking in the spotlight after noticing what was later determined to be a magnitude 17 supernova, or exploding star, on New Year's Eve.
> 
> It's in the distant galaxy UGC 3378, about 240 million light years away, in the constellation of Camelopardalis.
> 
> The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada says Kathryn is the youngest person to make such a discovery, which was soon verified by amateur astronomers in Illinois and Arizona.


:up:


----------



## ekim68

Dramatic Witch Head nebula, birthplace of stars, seen in new image



> PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 5 (UPI) -- A new image from a spacecraft surveying the cosmos in infrared shows baby stars being born in a distinctively shaped nebula known as the Witch Head, NASA says.
> 
> The Witch Head nebula, named after its resemblance to the profile of a wicked witch -- with an exaggerated nose, mouth and chin -- is hundreds of light-years away in the Orion constellation.


----------



## ekim68

ESA satellite falling to Earth, no one knows where



> A European satellite is falling out of orbit and will crash to Earth in the next few days, but scientists aren't sure were the spacecraft will land.
> 
> During its time in space, the European Space Agency's Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer, or GOCE, has mapped Earth's gravitational field in great detail.
> 
> But GOCE ran out of propellant last month and has been slowly dropping 2.5 miles a day. As of Wednesday, the satellite was 113 miles up as it circled the Earth every 88 minutes.
> 
> About 25 to 45 fragments of the spacecraft are expected to make it all the way to Earth's surface after the fall. The biggest fragment could weigh up to 200 pounds.


----------



## valis

whoa.....that could make an impact.

Did you see the video of the 'garbage' can that jettisoned from the ISS last week? Talk about a streak in the sky......


----------



## ekim68

There is so much stuff up in orbit right now that I'm surprised they haven't been knocking themselves about and showering Good Old Earth...

(Missed the video of the 'garbage can'..)


----------



## valis

I'm sure you've seen the animations of man-made space junk? Ludicrous. And then if a couple DO collide, well, now instead of two pieces you have about 10 billion.


----------



## valis

Just as I'm sure you remember Skylab.


----------



## DaveBurnett

It won't be long before someone has to send up a hoover to clear up the mess. I wonder if it could be made profitable to bring stuff back down relatively slowly and recover it.


----------



## valis

that's been discussed....the vast majority of them will completely disintegrate upon re-entry, but you gotta remember; something the size of a marble moving at however many miles/sec is going to cause a LOT of issues to whatever it hits.....


----------



## ekim68

It would probably be worth salvaging as many as possible just for the gold wiring.... Kind of like Recycling....


----------



## DaveBurnett

Gold and Plutonium


----------



## valis

DaveBurnett said:


> It won't be long before someone has to send up a hoover to clear up the mess. I wonder if it could be made profitable to bring stuff back down relatively slowly and recover it.


found the link:

http://www.zmescience.com/space/space-janitor-clean-space-junk-321334/


----------



## DaveBurnett

I knew I'd read it somewhere. I thought it was Wired.com


----------



## valis

probably was.....those sites are all link farmers anyhow, but every now and again one can find a good nugget there.


----------



## ekim68

Wireless Device Converts "Lost" Energy into Electric Power



> Using inexpensive materials configured and tuned to capture microwave signals, researchers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have designed a power-harvesting device with efficiency similar to that of modern solar panels.
> 
> The device wirelessly converts the microwave signal to direct current voltage capable of recharging a cell phone battery or other small electronic device, according to a report appearing in the journal Applied Physics Letters in December 2013. (It is now available online.)
> 
> It operates on a similar principle to solar panels, which convert light energy into electrical current. But this versatile energy harvester could be tuned to harvest the signal from other energy sources, including satellite signals, sound signals or Wi-Fi signals, the researchers say.


(I've always wondered how many radio waves are traveling through me at any one time....It's good to see another use..)


----------



## DaveBurnett

The amount of power is EXTREMELY low. You'd have to get it pretty near the source to be useful.


----------



## ekim68

DaveBurnett said:


> The amount of power is EXTREMELY low. You'd have to get it pretty near the source to be useful.


It's part of the process Dave....Things develop and then progress from there.... And there's this:

Georgia Tech develops inkjet-based circuits at fraction of time and cost



> (Phys.org) Researchers from Georgia Tech, the University of Tokyo and Microsoft Research have developed a novel method to rapidly and cheaply make electrical circuits by printing them with commodity inkjet printers and off-the-shelf materials. For about $300 in equipment costs, anyone can produce working electrical circuits in the 60 seconds it takes to print them.
> 
> The technique, called instant inkjet circuits, allows the printing of arbitrary-shaped conductors onto rigid or flexible materials and could advance the prototyping skills of non-technical enthusiasts and novice hackers.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Only 2D though; so if any tracks need to cross.......... ?


----------



## ekim68

So you're a Hardware Guy, eh?  What amazes me is how surface components have been reduced so much on both sides of a Board, or as it seems to be going nowadays, 3D...(I know I got off the track, but that's the low-end unit..)


----------



## ekim68

Motorola patent uses neck tattoo as microphone



> A Motorola Mobility patent application has proposed using an "electronic skin tattoo" as a smartphone microphone and wireless transceiver.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Get the patent in there first, even if it doesn't work yet.


----------



## valis

gorgeous pic of saturn, with some if it's neighbors.......

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131113.html


----------



## valis

http://io9.com/the-surface-of-pluto-like-youve-never-seen-it-before-1464316546

still fuzzy, but tons better than last year.


----------



## valis

oh wow......

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/listening...ecording-of-einstein-will-1464557213/@barrett


----------



## ekim68

Mars probe to sniff atmosphere and scout safer landings



> After decades of robots scouring the surface, a Mars explorer is about to get its head in the clouds. NASA's next mission to the Red Planet will be the first to extensively explore Mars's upper atmosphere. The orbiter will search for clues to when and why the planet went from a warm, wet world to the cold, dry desert we see today.
> 
> The probe could also fill a looming break in our ability to communicate with rovers on the planet's surface, and it could provide valuable data for future missions hoping to land humans on Mars.
> 
> Due to launch next week, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission will swoop through the atmosphere to take deep breaths and analyse the alien gases. It is part of a growing international effort to understand the Martian climate and to use its atmosphere to determine whether the planet is or ever was friendly to life.


----------



## valis

this is pretty cool. Had no idea the sun did this:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131115.html


----------



## valis

whoa......

http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/natu...-was-507-years-old-when-killed-by-scientists/


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers Discover Largest Structure in the Universe



> What's the largest structure in the Universe? That's a question that has intrigued scientists for centuries. Today, they get an answer thanks to astronomers who say they've discovered the largest structure ever observed and one that dwarfs the previous record-holder by billions of light years.
> 
> Astronomer's ideas about the universe's largest structures have changed dramatically in the last 100 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, they began to suspect that stars were clustered together to form "island universes" or galaxies which themselves were separated by vast distances.
> 
> The question was eventually settled in the 1920s by Edwin Hubble and others who measured the distance to different galaxies, thereby proving that they were much further away than stars . These galaxies, they thought, were the largest structures in the universe and distributed more or less uniformly throughout space.


----------



## ekim68

Why Not Fund the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence with a Lottery Bond?



> SETI's biggest challenge is in generating the funds required to scour the skies for signs of intelligent life. Now one astrobiologist says a novel crowdfunding approach could relieve the financial strain.


----------



## ekim68

Rediscovered Apollo data gives first measure of how fast Moon dust piles up



> Washington, D.C. - When Neil Armstrong took humanity's first otherworldly steps in 1969, he didn't know what a nuisance the lunar soil beneath his feet would prove to be. The scratchy dust clung to everything it touched, causing scientific instruments to overheat and, for Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a sort of lunar dust hay fever. The annoying particles even prompted a scientific experiment to figure out how fast they collect, but NASA's data got lost.
> 
> Or, so NASA thought. Now, more than 40 years later, scientists have used the rediscovered data to make the first determination of how fast lunar dust accumulates. It builds up unbelievably slowly by the standards of any Earth-bound housekeeper, their calculations show - just fast enough to form a layer about a millimeter (0.04 inches) thick every 1,000 years. Yet, that rate is 10 times previous estimates. It's also more than speedy enough to pose a serious problem for the solar cells that serve as critical power sources for space exploration missions.


----------



## DaveBurnett

I would have thought the fact that it is very fine and extremely subject to static attraction might be more of a problem.


----------



## valis

what I've always found sorta neat is that the dust microwaves very easily.........and very rapidly. Be easy to make, say, roads.


----------



## valis

huh......rather interesting.

http://io9.com/new-bacteria-discovered-in-two-completely-different-cle-1468275909



> In fact, in 2007, despite scientists' best efforts to zap them into oblivion with intense heat, chemical cleaning, and UV radiation, samples collected from three different NASA cleanrooms turned up close to 100 different kinds of bacteria,* about half of which were new to science.*


wonder if anyone has figured out the effect on mammalian life the new microbes could have.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Next Frontier: Growing Plants On The Moon



> The Lunar Plant Growth Habitat team, a group of NASA scientists, contractors, students and volunteers, is finally bringing to life an idea that has been discussed and debated for decades. They will try to grow arabidopsis, basil, sunflowers, and turnips in coffee-can-sized aluminum cylinders that will serve as plant habitats. But these are no ordinary containers - they're packed to the brim with cameras, sensors, and electronics that will allow the team to receive image broadcasts of the plants as they grow. These habitats will have to be able to successfully regulate their own temperature, water intake, and power supply in order to brave the harsh lunar climate.
> 
> However, it won't just be NASA scientists who are watching the results closely - the success of this experiment will require the assistance of schools and citizen scientists.


----------



## ekim68

Will icy comet survive close encounter with sun?



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - For months, all eyes in the sky have pointed at the comet that's zooming toward a blisteringly close encounter with the sun.
> 
> The moment of truth comes Thursday - Thanksgiving Day.
> 
> The sun-grazing Comet ISON, now thought to be less than a mile wide, will either fry and shatter, victim of the sun's incredible power, or endure and quite possibly put on one fabulous celestial show.
> 
> Talk about an astronomical cliffhanger.


----------



## ekim68

Computer uses images to teach itself common sense



> A computer program is trying to learn common sense by analysing images 24 hours a day.
> 
> The aim is to see if computers can learn, in the same way a human would, what links images, to help them better understand the visual world.


----------



## ekim68

Quantum World Record Smashed: Quantum State Survives at Room Temperature for 39 Minutes



> A normally fragile quantum state has been shown to survive at room temperature for a world record 39 minutes, overcoming a key barrier towards building ultrafast quantum computers.
> 
> An international team including Stephanie Simmons of Oxford University, UK, report in this week's Science a test performed by Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University, Canada, and colleagues. In conventional computers data is stored as a string of 1s and 0s. In the experiment quantum bits of information, 'qubits', were put into a 'superposition' state in which they can be both 1s and 0 at the same time -- enabling them to perform multiple calculations simultaneously.


----------



## ekim68

Micron Exposes the Double Life of Memory with Automata Processor



> In a nutshell, the Automata processor is a programmable silicon device that lends itself to handling high speed search and analysis across massive, complex, unstructured data. As an alternate processing engine for targeted areas, it taps into the inner parallelism inherent to memory to provide a robust and absolutely remarkable (if early benchmarks are to be believed) option for certain types of processing.


----------



## ekim68

Wow, Micron is relevant again?


----------



## ekim68

Neutrino Detector Finds Elusive Extraterrestrial Particles in 'Major Breakthrough'



> For decades, scientists have been searching for ghostly neutrino particles from outer space, and now they have finally found them.
> 
> Using the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, researchers found the first evidence of neutrinos from outside the solar system since 1987. The findings open the door for a new era of astronomy that could reveal secrets of the strangest phenomena in the universe, scientists say.


----------



## ekim68

In the footsteps of the US: Why next man on Moon will be Chinese



> A Chinese Long March rocket is scheduled to blast off to the Moon on Sunday evening at about 6pm British time carrying a small robotic rover that will touch down on to the lunar surface in about two weeks' time - the first soft landing on the Earth's only natural satellite since 1976.
> 
> The take-off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan Province marks the latest stage in China's grand ambitions not just to put a man on Moon by the end of the next decade, but to build a permanent lunar base from which it can plan missions to Mars and beyond.


----------



## ekim68

And it was launched today and they're on their way..........


----------



## ekim68

Milky Way Galaxy's Oldest Brown Dwarfs Discovered



> WISE 0013+0634 and WISE 0833+0052 lie in the Pisces and Hydra constellations respectively. They are moving at speeds of 100-200 km per second, much faster than normal stars and other brown dwarfs and are thought to have formed when our Galaxy was very young, more than 10 billion years ago.
> 
> The astronomers studied the infrared light emitted from these objects, which are unusual compared to typical slower moving brown dwarfs. The spectral signatures of their light reflects their ancient atmospheres, which are almost entirely made up of hydrogen rather than having the more abundant heavier elements seen in younger stars.


----------



## ekim68

Tin-based stanene could conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency



> A team of theoretical physicists from the US Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University is predicting that stanene, a single layer of tin atoms laid out in a two-dimensional structure, could conduct electricity with one hundred percent efficiency at room temperature. If the findings are confirmed they could pave the way for building computer chips that are faster, consume less power, and won't heat up nearly as much.


----------



## ekim68

ISRO successfully sends Mars orbiter into sun-centric orbit



> India's spacecraft to Mars has bid adieu to its Earth-bound orbit and is cruising in its sun-centric orbit. In a remarkably successful execution of a complex manoeuvre, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) fired the propulsion system on board the spacecraft for a prolonged duration of 23 minutes from 0049 hours on Sunday.
> 
> In space parlance, the manoeuvre is called Trans-Mars Injection (TMI). ISRO called it "the mother of all slingshots."


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Traces Subtle Signals of Water on Hazy Worlds



> Using the powerful eye of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, two teams of scientists have found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets.
> 
> The presence of atmospheric water was reported previously on a few exoplanets orbiting stars beyond our solar system, but this is the first study to conclusively measure and compare the profiles and intensities of these signatures on multiple worlds.


----------



## valis

whoa.....

http://io9.com/new-hi-res-footage-shows-saturns-mysterious-hexagon-li-1477023365


----------



## ekim68

Wow, the North Pole of Saturn...That's cool... Don't you just love the technology that provides this....:up:


----------



## ekim68

Toyota Licenses Wireless Battery Charging Tech from WiTricity



> Toyota is getting more serious about wireless charging for its electric cars, and a Boston-area company is benefitting.
> 
> The world's largest car-maker says it is licensing patents from Watertown, MA-based WiTricity, an MIT spinout that has developed technology to recharge batteries without using wires.


----------



## ekim68

Two black holes in distant galaxy seen entwined in death spiral



> U.S. astronomers report they've spotted two supermassive black holes at the heart of a remote galaxy, apparently circling each other in a death spiral.
> 
> The sighting of what is being termed a rare phenomenon was made with the help of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported Tuesday.
> 
> Follow-up observations by ground telescopes have revealed unusual features in the galaxy, including a lumpy jet thought to be the result of one black hole causing the jet of the other to sway, astronomers said.


----------



## ekim68

Private Mars mission beams Lockheed Martin onboard to build spacecraft



> Private Mars mission planners said today that Lockheed Martin is onboard to build the spacecraft that would land a technology demonstration robot on the Red Planet by 2018. The Mars One group ultimately wants to establish a human outpost on Mars.
> 
> The lander robot would use technology Lockheed previously built for NASA's Phoenix lander which touched down on Mars in 2008. The Mars One lander will evaluate the use of the Phoenix design for the Mars One mission and identify any modifications that are necessary to meet future requirements. In addition, the mission would go a long way toward determining the cost and schedule of future missions.


----------



## valis

for those boring days:

http://gizmodo.com/22-awesome-science-infrastructure-webcams-from-around-1477886609


----------



## ekim68

DARPA ready to deliver telescope to watch the skies for space debris



> In order to dodge something, you need to see it. If that something is space debris then sometimes the best thing to use is an old-fashioned telescope - or, in the case of the US Department of Defense, a state-of-the-art telescope capable of searching an area larger than the United States in seconds. That's why DARPA is preparing to deliver the new Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) to Western Australia, where it will help track small satellites and space debris orbiting the Earth when it becomes operational in 2016.


(Well, Chicken Little might have had it right after all... )


----------



## ekim68

China ready to land robot rover on Moon



> On Saturday afternoon (GMT), a landing module will undergo a powered descent, using thrusters to perform the first soft landing on the Moon in 37 years.
> 
> Several hours later, the lander will deploy a robotic rover called Yutu, which translates as "Jade Rabbit".
> 
> The touchdown will take place on a flat plain called the Bay of Rainbows.
> 
> The Chang'e-3 mission launched on a Chinese-developed Long March 3B rocket on 1 December from Xichang in the country's south.


(It's sad to me that our Congress has decided not to fund NASA like they used to...}


----------



## ekim68

Pulsar Gets the Munchies, Snacks on an Asteroid



> The researchers calculated that a mass of a billion tons dropped into the pulsar's magnetosphere, the effects of which can be observed today. As the mass, presumably a moderately-sized asteroid, fell into the pulsar's magnetosphere, getting shredded and material ionized - akin to a magnetic blender. The highly-charged particles from the ex-asteroid then got trapped in the pulsar's magnetic field, blasting out energy and bleeding the spinning stellar husk of its angular momentum, or spin, causing the observed slowdown in pulses.


----------



## ekim68

China's Jade Rabbit Moon rover sends back first photos



> The first robot to land on the Moon in nearly 40 years, China's Jade Rabbit rover, has begun sending back photos, with shots of its lunar lander.
> 
> Jade Rabbit rolled down a ramp lowered by the lander and on to the volcanic plain known as Sinus Iridum at 04:35 Beijing time on Saturday (20:35 GMT).
> 
> It moved to a spot a few metres away, its historic short journey recorded by the lander.
> 
> On Sunday evening the two machines began photographing each other.


----------



## ekim68

Programming smart molecules



> In a new paper presented at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference on December 7, Ryan P. Adams and Nils Napp have shown that an important class of artificial intelligence algorithms could be implemented using chemical reactions.
> 
> These algorithms, which use a technique called "message passing inference on factor graphs," are a mathematical coupling of ideas from graph theory and probability. They represent the state of the art in machine learning and are already critical components of everyday tools ranging from search engines and fraud detection to error correction in mobile phones.
> 
> Adams' and Napp's work demonstrates that some aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) could be implemented at microscopic scales using molecules. In the long term, the researchers say, such theoretical developments could open the door for "smart drugs" that can automatically detect, diagnose, and treat a variety of diseases using a cocktail of chemicals that can perform AI-type reasoning.


----------



## valis

china's yutu rover descent:

http://io9.com/watch-chinas-change-3-land-on-the-moon-1484147236


----------



## valis

rather interesting read:

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/darpa-tried-to-build-skynet-in-the-1980s-1451000652/@maxread


----------



## ekim68

Direct measurements of the wave nature of matter



> The heart of quantum mechanics is the wave-particle duality: matter and light possess both wave-like and particle-like attributes. Typically, the wave-like properties are inferred indirectly from the behavior of many electrons or photons, though it's sometimes possible to study them directly. However, there are fundamental limitations to those experiments-namely information about the wave properties of matter that is inherently inaccessible.
> 
> And therein lies a loophole: two groups used indirect experiments to reconstruct the wave structure of electrons. A.S. Stodolna and colleagues manipulated hydrogen atoms to measure their electron's wave structure, validating more than 30 years of theoretical work on the phenomenon known as the Stark effect. A second experiment by Daniel Lüftner and collaborators reconstructed the electronic structure of individual organic molecules through repeated scanning, with each step providing a higher resolution. In both cases, the researchers were able to match theoretical predictions to their results, verifying some previously challenging aspects of quantum mechanics.


----------



## ekim68

"Nebulae", my new favorite word.....

Hubble Pictures


----------



## valis

that has my all-time favorite photo in it, the Pillars Of Creation......


----------



## valis

holy cow...surprised I'd never heard of this dude......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski


----------



## valis

agree with most of these as well; hate to billboard, but I had 'forgotten' about about 3 or 5 of these....reckoned in that case I should share.

http://gizmodo.com/the-biggest-science-stories-of-2013-1482569219


----------



## ekim68

Will the Moon be carved-up?



> Experts forecast that the Moon will become sort of the seventh continent of Earth by the middle of the 21st century. People will reclaim the polar regions and build residential areas there. In this context it may happen that many countries' interests will clash on the Moon.
> 
> Part of the scientific community draws a parallel between the Arctic shelf and the Moon, believing that competitive struggle is likely to start in both places.





> According to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the Moon is the province of all mankind. One could stake a claim there but this would carry no legal weight. Planting flags on the Moon by astronauts or interplanetary stations is purely symbolic, so it is not quite correct to draw parallels between the Moon and the Arctic.


----------



## ekim68

Gaia 'billion-star surveyor' lifts off



> Europe has launched the Gaia satellite - one of the most ambitious space missions in history.
> 
> The 740m-euro (£620m) observatory lifted off from the Sinnamary complex in French Guiana at 06:12 local time (09:12 GMT).
> 
> Gaia is going to map the precise positions and distances to more than a billion stars.
> 
> This should give us the first realistic picture of how our Milky Way galaxy is constructed.


----------



## ekim68

Taking the ISS to the garage....

Watch NASA make critical ISS repairs during 6.5-hour spacewalk


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers perplexed: Was mysterious Iowa 'fireball' a meteor or space debris?



> Astronomers say they are still working to determine whether an Iowa "fireball" was a meteor or space debris.
> 
> The massive fireball was seen in the early morning hours in Iowa on Thursday night. At least 700 people have reported a sighting and the fireball was reported by people across the Midwest, including Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Nebraska.


----------



## ekim68

Chang'e 3 Lander and Rover From Above


----------



## valis

niiiice.....happy new year, Mike, and be safe and prosperous, my friend......


----------



## ekim68

Back at you Tim....Let's have a good 2014, eh?


----------



## valis

gonna try, boss, gonna try....it HAS to be better than 2013....


----------



## ekim68

China: The Next Space Superpower



> For the opening ceremony of the 64th International Astronautical Congress in Beijing this past September, the Chinese hosts pulled out all the stops. Acrobats bounded against a backdrop of starry skies, dancers in bulky spacesuits lumbered across the stage, and opera singers sang songs of love under a glowing neon moon.
> 
> Throughout the weeklong conference, Chinese officials spoke proudly of developing their lunar exploration program, building a heavy-lift rocket, constructing a spaceport, and planning an orbital space station. As 2014 dawns, China has the most active and ambitious space program in the world.


----------



## valis

total, and I mean total, agreeance......but I'm damn proud that we went private, and ultimately, I think that will keep us on top....


----------



## ekim68

And I still think it will be a combination of both as it has through history, eh?


----------



## valis

weyalll......primarily it's been subsidized....not since Goddard has it been private and never has it occurred that private services gubmint, at least space-wise.....this is why I'm so stoked. IMO, the gateway to the stars lies in putting the cash in the people's hands, not whoever thinks what our best interests are.......


----------



## ekim68

A big shout out to Stephen Hawking on his birthday today. He's 72 and lived far beyond what earlier diagnosis predicted....:up:


----------



## valis

oh wow......had no clue it was his birthday.....my favorite pic of him...and yes, that is Mr. Carrey....


----------



## DaveBurnett

My wife's mother was diagnosed with the same disease as Prof. Hawking on the same day he was. She didn't make 50.


----------



## ekim68

Elvis Equation' Estimates Number of Asteroids Worth Mining (Spoiler: Not Very Many)



> The possibility of mining asteroids for valuable resources has long captured the imaginations of science fiction writers, entrepreneurs and rocket scientists. Indeed in 2012, Richard Branson, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt among others, announced that they had invested in a start up called Planetary Resources. The goal: to cost-effectively mine resources in space.
> 
> That raises an interesting question. How many asteroids are there that can be mined in a commercially viable way?
> 
> Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Martin Elvis at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. He has developed a "Drake-like" equation that estimates the number of commercially-viable asteroids in the Solar System that are worth mining for materials such as platinum and water. (The famous Drake equation takes a similar approach to estimate the number of advanced civilisations in the galaxy)
> 
> The answer is likely to disappoint all the Bransons, the Pages and the Schmidts out there. In a paper in press at the journal Planetary and Space Science, the "Elvis equation" predicts that *there are probably about ten asteroids with commercially viable veins of platinum group metals.*


----------



## ekim68

Ok, a little Brain exercise.....

Timeline of the far future


----------



## DaveBurnett

Curiously that site, even though it is a BBC site, is not available in the the UK. That is even more of a brain exercise.


----------



## ekim68

Obama Administration Extends International Space Station Until at Least 2024



> The extension of ISS operation will allow NASA and the international space community to accomplish a number of important goals.


----------



## valis

privatized launch broadcast today: http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html


----------



## ekim68

Hubble images become tactile 3D experience for the blind



> Three-dimensional (3D) printers are transforming the business, medical, and consumer landscape by creating a vast variety of objects, including aeroplane parts, lamps, jewellery, and even artificial human bones.
> 
> Now astronomers Carol Christian (STScI, Baltimore) and Antonella Nota (ESA and STScI, Baltimore) are experimenting with the technology to transform astronomy education, turning images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope into tactile 3D pictures for people who cannot explore celestial wonders visually. Nota and Christian present their 3D representations at a press conference today, 7 January 2014, at the American Astronomical meeting in Washington, DC, USA.


----------



## ekim68

Milky Way Galaxy Has Four Spiral Arms, New Study Confirms



> In 2008, scientists using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope scoured our Galaxy for infrared light emitted by stars. They revealed about 110 million stars, but only evidence of two spiral arms.
> 
> The astronomers behind the new study used several radio telescopes to individually observe about 1,650 massive stars in the Galaxy. The distances and luminosities of these stars were calculated, revealing a distribution across four spiral arms.


----------



## valis

sweet....http://offworld.gizmodo.com/these-c...y-its-unseen-m-1500153449/@kcampbelldollaghan


----------



## ekim68

Natural 3-D Counterpart to Graphene Discovered:



> The discovery of what is essentially a 3D version of graphene -- the 2D sheets of carbon through which electrons race at many times the speed at which they move through silicon -- promises exciting new things to come for the high-tech industry, including much faster transistors and far more compact hard drives. A collaboration of researchers at the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has discovered that sodium bismuthate can exist as a form of quantum matter called a three-dimensional topological Dirac semi-metal (3DTDS). This is the first experimental confirmation of 3D Dirac fermions in the interior or bulk of a material, a novel state that was only recently proposed by theorists.


----------



## valis

Wow....humbling



http://imgur.com/KDrhh


----------



## ekim68

Wow, good find Tim....:up:


----------



## valis

thanks Mike. Put that on twitter and it just blew up......


----------



## ekim68

Cosmic 'web' seen for first time



> The hidden tendrils of dark matter that underlie the visible Universe may have been traced out for the first time.
> 
> Cosmology theory predicts that galaxies are embedded in a cosmic web of "stuff", most of which is dark matter.
> 
> Astronomers obtained the first direct images of a part of this network, by exploiting the fact that a luminous object called a quasar can act as a natural "cosmic flashlight".


----------



## ekim68

Sleeping Rosetta Spacecraft Wakes Up for Historic Comet Rendezvous and Landing



> A European probe awoke from a deep sleep Monday (Jan. 20) to gear up for an unprecedented comet rendezvous and landing this year that will cap a 10-year voyage across the solar system.
> 
> After two and a half years in hibernation, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft emerged from its slumber while cruising nearly 418 million miles (673 million kilometers) from the sun. The wakeup call, which was due to begin at 5 a.m. EST (1000 GMT), took hours as Rosetta switched on heaters to warm itself after its long night in the cold depths of space.


----------



## ekim68

Antimatter experiment produces first beam of antihydrogen



> The ASACUSA experiment at CERN has succeeded for the first time in producing a beam of antihydrogen atoms. In a paper published today in Nature Communications, the ASACUSA collaboration reports the unambiguous detection of 80 antihydrogen atoms 2.7 metres downstream of their production, where the perturbing influence of the magnetic fields used initially to produce the antiatoms is small. This result is a significant step towards precise hyperfine spectroscopy of antihydrogen atoms.





> The spectra of hydrogen and antihydrogen are predicted to be identical, so any tiny difference between them would immediately open a window to new physics, and could help in solving the antimatter mystery. With its single proton accompanied by just one electron, hydrogen is the simplest existing atom, and one of the most precisely investigated and best understood systems in modern physics. Thus comparisons of hydrogen and antihydrogen atoms constitute one of the best ways to perform highly precise tests of matter/antimatter symmetry.


----------



## ekim68

Water Plumes Discovered on the Solar System's Largest Asteroid



> The largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres, is shooting out wisps of water at a prodigious rate. This unexpected finding allows Ceres to join other small bodies in the solar system, including Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa, as an icy world with gushing jets.
> 
> Because of its mass, Ceres is classified as a dwarf planet, so it's more like frozen Pluto and less like the lumpy potato-shaped objects that we typically think of as hanging out in the asteroid belt. Scientists have long suspected that the object contains an abundance of frozen water, roughly the same amount as all the fresh water on Earth. Recent observations with the European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory showed for the first time unmistakable signatures of water vapor shooting out from Ceres.


----------



## ekim68

Opportunity still rocking and roving on Mar



> Even for a robot, persistence pays off.
> 
> On Jan. 24, 2004, the little rover known as Opportunity touched down on the Martian surface, to start a career that was expected to last only a few months. Ten years later, the senior-citizen rover is still going strong - and after many frustrating years scouting sites far too acidic to host life, Opportunity has finally spotted a place where the conditions were once hospitable to living organisms. The first such site, a complex of lake beds and streams, was revealed by NASA's Curiosity rover, a Johnny-come-lately that landed on Mars in mid-2012.


(The Little Rover That Could..:up: )


----------



## valis

10 years.......i remember exactly where I was watching the NASA broadcast......

and a selfie from Mars, btw...

http://regmedia.co.uk/2014/01/23/opportunity_selfie.jpg

dusty little bugger. Hard to believe that the internals haven't gotten stuffed yet.


----------



## valis

huh....this is sorta neat....answers how the stars keep replenishing themselves, more or less.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/20....through.space.seen.with.green.bank.telescope


----------



## ekim68

Another nice find Tim....:up:


----------



## ekim68

US lab developing technology for space traffic control



> Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say they have tested technology that could eventually help them monitor and control space traffic.
> 
> The driving idea behind the project is to help keep satellites and other spacecraft from colliding with each other or other debris in Low Earth Orbit.


----------



## ekim68

Is NASA overlooking life on Mars? Court filing demands closer look



> The saga of the jelly doughnut-shaped rock on Mars has taken a strange turn -- to a federal court.
> 
> On Monday, Rhawn Joseph, who describes himself as a neuroscientist and astrobiologist, filed court papers demanding that NASA do more to investigate the mysterious rock.
> 
> "NASA's rover team inexplicably failed to perform the basic demands of science, which is re-search, look again," he wrote in a petition for a writ of mandamus filed with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. "The refusal to release high resolution photos is inexplicable, recklessly negligent and bizarre."
> 
> He asks the judge to order NASA to closely photograph the rock from several angles, thoroughly examine it, and share that information with the public.
> 
> The rock is mysterious for a few reasons. It has a depressed, bright red center and a white exterior (hence the comparisons to a jelly doughnut). More important, scientists working with the Opportunity rover have acknowledged that its chemical composition is unlike anything else they have seen on Mars -- lots of sulfur, manganese, and magnesium.


----------



## valis

this......this is pretty dang cool. This has also always fascinated me as well. But the awe in Tyson's voice just gives me chills.

http://io9.com/5890874/neil-degrasse-tyson-shares-the-most-astounding-fact-about-the-universe


----------



## valis

whoa.....some big numbers here.....gots me a headache......

http://www.universetoday.com/108768/how-much-stuff-is-in-a-light-year/#more-108768


----------



## valis

Mike, you hear about this? Sea star die off on the NW coasts?

http://earthfix.info/water/article/northwest-starfish-experiments-give-scientists-clu/

bizarre, and quite disgusting....



> Within a few hours, the sick stars started ripping themselves apart. The arms crawled in opposite directions tearing away from the body. While starfish have the ability to lose their arms as a form of defense, these starfish were too sick to regenerate their arms. Their innards spilled out and they died within 24 hours.


obviously starfish have a huge impact on the ecosystem; they are trying to figure out what is causing this. My bet is going to be anthropogenic in some sort.


----------



## ekim68

Yep, I heard about it and posted an article back in December in the Animal Extinction thread. Thanks for the recent post, though, because it shows a lot more is being done about it..


----------



## valis

huh....interesting theory about the origins of the universe......

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/slow-cold-start-universe-suggested


----------



## ekim68

Argonne lab grows Chia pet style hairy electronic fibers



> Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory say they have created "hairy" electronic materials that grow like Chia pets.
> 
> The Argonne researchers said they are interested in the tiny fibers for use in technologies like batteries, photovoltaic cells or sensors.
> 
> "'Hairy" materials offer up a lot of surface area. Many chemical reactions depend on two surfaces making contact with one another, so a structure that exposes a lot of surface area will speed the process along. (For example, grinding coffee beans gives the coffee more flavor than soaking whole beans in water.)


----------



## valis

whoa.....think I found my new desktop image......stunning.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140204.html


----------



## ekim68

Wow, natural Art...:up: (Or is Space part of Nature? )


----------



## valis

sure it is.....IMO, anything man didn't create is 'nature'....


----------



## ekim68

NASA pondering two public contests to build small space exploration satellites



> NASA today said it was looking into developing two new Centennial Challenge competitions that would let the public design, build and deliver small satellites known as Cubesats capable of operations and experiments near the moon and beyond.
> 
> Centennial Challenges typically dare public and private partnerships to come up with a unique solution to a very tough problem, usually with prize money attached for the winner.


----------



## valis

what a beautiful read about such a technical subject.....and one that, frankly, I've never given any thought to. Shame on me.

http://nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/the-unique-merger-that-made-you-and-ewe-and-yew

as the author puts it, 


> The transition from the classic prokaryotic model to the deluxe eukaryotic one* is arguably the most important event in the history of life on Earth.* And in more than 3 billion years of existence, it happened exactly once.


----------



## valis

Earth, Martian perspective. Image is _huge_, link is here.


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> what a beautiful read about such a technical subject.....and one that, frankly, I've never given any thought to. Shame on me.
> 
> http://nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/the-unique-merger-that-made-you-and-ewe-and-yew
> 
> as the author puts it,


Thanks Tim, I've bookmarked this and it looks cool...:up:


----------



## ekim68

In a Mars kind of mood....

Spectacular new Martian impact crater spotted from orbit



> Yesterday, the team that runs the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released the photo shown above. It's a new impact crater on Mars, formed sometime early this decade. The crater at the center is about 30 meters in diameter, and the material ejected during its formation extends out as far as 15 kilometers.


----------



## valis

wow.......15 kilos....wonder how big it was.....love the blue, btw......


----------



## ekim68

Graphene conducts electricity ten times better than expected



> Physicists have produced nanoribbons of graphene - the single-atom-thick carbon - that conduct electrons better than theory predicted even for the most idealized form of the material. The finding could help graphene realize its promise in high-end electronics, where researchers have long hoped it could outperform traditional materials such as silicon.


----------



## Phantom010

Just found out about this thread. Very interesting!

I'm somewhat passionate about astronomy myself.

What's your opinion on Mars One?

http://www.mars-one.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One

I personally think it's never gonna "take off", for many many reasons; financial feasibility, radiation, weightlessness, psychological effects, landing on Mars, lack of energy for such a demand on Mars (ridiculous solar panels on a very dusty planet further from the sun than Earth), etc.

Do you think Bas Lansdorp is only out to make a bundle$ and "crash" the project in 2018 or so, or even before, from "lack of funding"? 200 000 applicants, which, in my opinion, had very little knowledge about the actual risks and feasibility of such a plan... They were driven by a childhood fantasy...


----------



## valis

Phantom010 said:


> Just found out about this thread. Very interesting!
> 
> I'm somewhat passionate about astronomy myself.
> 
> What's your opinion on Mars One?
> 
> http://www.mars-one.com/
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One
> 
> I personally think it's never gonna "take off", for many many reasons; financial feasibility, radiation, weightlessness, psychological effects, landing on Mars, lack of energy for such a demand on Mars (ridiculous solar panels on a very dusty planet further from the sun than Earth), etc.
> 
> Do you think Bas Lansdorp is only out to make a bundle$ and "crash" the project in 2018 or so, or even before, from "lack of funding"? 200 000 applicants, which, in my opinion, had very little knowledge about the actual risks and feasibility of such a plan... They were driven by a childhood fantasy...


gotta remember, have to start somewhere. I agree it's currently unfeasible, but then again, so was Apollo.....this is just a MUCH larger step.

Burt Rutan really forwarded spaceflight when Spaceship One launched successfully; now it's fully privatized spaceflight, and while still in it's infancy, I think that that will greatly increase the chances of landing on Mars.

At least I hope so.


----------



## Phantom010

I'm sure we'll eventually make it to Mars, but 10 years is a bit short, especially for permanent settlers, even if Elon Musk believes it can be done (with his future colony of 80 000 settlers ). Nobody so far has found a truly effective way of blocking radiation for that 7-8 month trip, or even on Mars. Water in the hull may block some of it, but I surely would not bet my life on it... A few feet of Martian dirt... maybe if they were buried 100 feet down... but they'll have to go outside on a regular basis... They'll be sending people to die from cancer in a short time.

NASA might do it by 2035 or so. However, they're having more and more trouble justifying the massive budget needed for space exploration. Sending humans mostly symbolically (to be the first to set foot, like on the Moon), is quite questionable for some. And frankly, so far, probes and robots have served us pretty well.


----------



## valis

agreeance.....you ever read Red Mars? If not, pick it up.....worth the read. Heck, all of his books are worth the read. Antarctica is one of my top 20 books period. Covers quite a bit of what you are discussing right there, Phantom.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> agreeance.....you ever read Red Mars? If not, pick it up.....worth the read. Heck, all of his books are worth the read. Antarctica is one of my top 20 books period. Covers quite a bit of what you are discussing right there, Phantom.


I haven't read it, but seems interesting. I'm a real sci-fi fan! 

Even if terraforming Mars could be theoretically possible, it's still pure science-fiction to me. Us humans have more of a tendency to de-terraform planets... We should be concentrating on re-terraforming Earth and solving our difficulties right here on our home planet instead of fleeing to another one. It would surely be more feasible. Not easy, but a lot more feasible. Besides, our "human nature" would be likely to mess it all up again on Mars... 

And, this thing about saving or spreading humanity throughout the galaxy... We're killing hundreds of animal or plant species every single day on Earth... Aren't we a tad pretentious when it comes to our importance in the universe... 

If I had NASA's space budget, I'd dump that dead red rock and concentrate on sending a probe equipped to drill a super hole through Europa's ice. It's considered the most likely planet (or moon) in our solar system that might just hold life in its alleged oceans beneath Europa's tick ice crust.


----------



## valis

agreed on all points.....

Must remember that it is called 'speculative fiction' for a reason..KSR posits some fantastic ideas about ecological sustainability....something which IMO us humans can stand to learn a thing or three from......

he's a fantastic author, and really does his homework on what he writes about. One of the better authors out there, IMO.

and of course we are a tad pretentious; that said, we are still apex universe, as far as we know. Are we alone? Impossible, again IMO. Space is just too dang big for us to be a one-off. But that's another debate for another time.


----------



## valis

If I had NASA's budget? Or even Branson's? 

I'd spend a ton of it exploring the ocean depths. The fact that we have explored more of Mars than we have our own ocean's floor strikes a large gong of dissonance in me.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> If I had NASA's budget? Or even Branson's?
> 
> I'd spend a ton of it exploring the ocean depths. The fact that we have explored more of Mars than we have our own ocean's floor strikes a large gong of dissonance in me.


Agreed on that as well.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Are we alone? Impossible, again IMO. Space is just too dang big for us to be a one-off. But that's another debate for another time.


Personally, I'm 100% sure we're not alone in the universe. Other intelligent life forms? I just don't know. However, I truly believe we have never been visited, I'm certain of it.

300 000 km/s, the speed of light, is the universal speed limit. Unless Einstein miscalculated the whole thing, that speed cannot be reached. Faster than that, we're talking about Star Trek, wormholes, parallel universes, multiple dimensions and Stargate SG1... 

SETI hasn't picked up any ET radio waves in more than 50 years of research... Earth has been sending its own waves for roughly the past 100 years. If ET was to pick them up tomorrow and send us a signal, it would take it roughly 100 years to get back to us. It's very likely nobody even knows we exist!

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure we're not alone, but distances in the universe simply make it almost impossible for us to ever find out.


----------



## valis

Phantom, ol bean, you may want to take a gander at this......great minds and all that......


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Phantom, ol bean, you may want to take a gander at this......great minds and all that......


Hey, thanks for the link, man! I didn't know you were so interested in that stuff! 

So that pretty much sums it up for ET!


----------



## DaveBurnett

There's a typo in "this" link.
"the New Horizons mission (the mission to Pluto) took about 8 hours to get there, but then again, it didn't have any organic matter that it had to keep alive"
Should be 8 years........


----------



## valis

'twas talking about luna....



> By far the fastest mission to fly past the Moon was NASA's New Horizons Pluto mission. This mission had a speedy launch, rockets powering the probe to over 58,000 km/hr to give it a good start on its long trip to the outer Solar System and Pluto. Although this is impressive, it's worth keeping in mind that New Horizons was not slowing down to enter lunar orbit (like the Moon-specific missions above), it was probably still accelerating as the Moon was a dot in its rear view window. Still, it took eight hours and thirty-five minutes to cover the 380,000 km distance.


link

and I think it's 9.5 or 6 or some such to get to Pluto.....what really fascinates me is that when it was launched, Pluto was still a planet.....no longer. Wonder if New Horizons is disappointed about that......

thanks for reading that btw, Dave....I need to start writing more again.


----------



## valis

Phantom010 said:


> Hey, thanks for the link, man! I didn't know you were so interested in that stuff!
> 
> So that pretty much sums it up for ET!


to say I was sorta freaked out by what you wrote is another understatement....but don't be readin' me mind between 4 and 5!

(said in best Willie the Scotsman voice)


----------



## valis

sweet....kepler came back from the dead......

http://www.newscientist.com/article...hunter-sees-its-first-world.html#.UvUs80JdVAE


----------



## Phantom010

China and other countries, including the US and Russia are racing to the moon for helium-3.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.c...quest-for-a-new-energy-source-heads-to-space/

Controlled nuclear fusion still hasn't been mastered and they're already after the moon's helium-3. 

That would be quite an undertaking, and cost more billions...

Furthermore, not only they are years away from commercial operation of a deuterium-tritium reactor, an helium-3 - helium-3 reaction would pose an even greater challenge.

Or maybe they know something we don't know...


----------



## valis

isn't that what Sam Rockwell was mining in the flick 'Moon'?

**edit** yup, sure was.....knew I liked that flick.....


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> isn't that what Sam Rockwell was mining in the flick 'Moon'?
> 
> **edit** yup, sure was.....knew I liked that flick.....


I did see that movie. Poor Sam, or may I say, poor clones!  It was interesting.

Actually, helium-3 is a very valuable gas used on Earth as we speak. It's used for much more than possible future nuclear fusion reactors. Hospitals use the gas for MRIs, especially for the lungs. The military also use it to detect "dirty bombs". Its scarcity on Earth makes it so expensive.

http://www.gaite-lyrique.net/en/gai...the-conquest-of-the-energy-resources-of-space


----------



## valis

twas a great flick...but then again, Rockwell doesn't make many bad ones......at least IMO.


----------



## Phantom010

I just finished watching *After Earth* with Will Smith. It was OK, but not the same type.


----------



## valis

pretty sure I'm going to skip that one........heard horrible things about it......


----------



## Phantom010

Last week, I watched *Mission to Mars* (I don't care about the negative critics, I liked it) and *Europa Report*.


----------



## valis

Europa Report I want to see.....I understand it was either influenced by or at least spawned into genesis by 2010, the book.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Europa Report I want to see.....I understand it was either influenced by or at least spawned into genesis by 2010, the book.


Exactly.


----------



## valis

excellent read on Georges Lemaitre; proof positive that even men of the cloth can be unbelievably great scientists/cosmologists.

http://gizmodo.com/georges-lemaitre-the-greatest-scientist-you-ve-never-h-1519769080


----------



## Phantom010

Excellent read indeed. :up:


----------



## valis

curiosity over the dingo gap......

tell you what.......the folks who built those two little buggers have my undying respect....10 years and still rolling along.....


----------



## Phantom010

*Australian astronomers discover oldest known star in universe*

At 13.6 billion years, it's almost the age of the universe (13.8 billion years).


----------



## ekim68

It's absolutely amazing what they can do with Telescopes and Math these days...:up:


----------



## valis

whoa.....that is pretty cool....

every time I see something like that, I wonder, what is that physical thing that emitted that light up to now?


----------



## valis

interesting....._something_ is apparently flowing on Mars. As in currently.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14472

and

http://io9.com/are-these-pictures-of-water-flowing-on-mars-right-now-1520115138


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> whoa.....that is pretty cool....
> 
> every time I see something like that, I wonder, what is that physical thing that emitted that light up to now?


6,000 light years from Earth. It could already be dead for all we know. Isn't our sun supposed to die in another 4.57 billion years...... (at roughly 9.14 billions years old)?


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> interesting....._something_ is apparently flowing on Mars. As in currently.
> 
> http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14472
> 
> and
> 
> http://io9.com/are-these-pictures-of-water-flowing-on-mars-right-now-1520115138


IMHO, this is a load of BS.

Those streaks have been seen for years and have a lot more plausible causes. Why the sudden interest?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_slope_streak


----------



## valis

because the orbiter snapped those pictures over the course of a Martian year....as opposed to seeing them change over the course of Martian decades.....


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> because the orbiter snapped those pictures over the course of a Martian year....as opposed to seeing them change over the course of Martian decades.....


Again, IMHO, the dream of a habitable Mars is clouding some people's judgment. The rock is dead.

But of course, I'm no expert. They'll have to send a robot (or humans) at those exact spots when the streaks appear, and take samples. It'll be the only way to know for sure.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> because the orbiter snapped those pictures over the course of a Martian year....as opposed to seeing them change over the course of Martian decades.....


Still, the same explanations can apply.


----------



## valis

Phantom010 said:


> Again, IMHO, the dream of a habitable Mars is clouding some people's judgment. The rock is dead.
> 
> But of course, I'm no expert. They'll have to send a robot (or humans) at those exact spots when the streaks appear, and take samples. It'll be the only way to know for sure.


I'm definitely not disagreeing on that one. The atmosphere was cooked however many millions of years ago, there is no doubt of that (no magnetosphere to protect it from ol' Sol).

But the fact that _something_ is making those flows, and it corresponds to when Mars heats up during the spring, is, IMHO, pretty dang fascinating stuff.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> I'm definitely not disagreeing on that one. The atmosphere was cooked however many millions of years ago, there is no doubt of that (no magnetosphere to protect it from ol' Sol).
> 
> But the fact that _something_ is making those flows, and it corresponds to when Mars heats up during the spring, is, IMHO, pretty dang fascinating stuff.


Yeah but, it's still not spring like in Mexico...


----------



## Phantom010

By the way, don't we have at least one rover in the vicinity of some of those streaks? Maybe it's time for a little traveling...


----------



## Phantom010

I do have to admit that I'm intrigued though...


----------



## valis

yup, rather intriguing to say the least. I've no clue if we have a rover in that area, but should be easy enough to find out. 

I've got several meetings today, so will be bouncing on and off.


----------



## Phantom010

We're still a tad far from the Niagara falls though... 










Maybe in a few thousand years, after terraforming Mars, it'll be a great source for hydroelectricity instead of stupid inefficient solar panels...


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> It's absolutely amazing what they can do with Telescopes and Math these days...:up:


Yeah, telescopes! Makes me sometimes wonder how accurate or how wrong they all might be... 

But hey, what do I know! I'm not a scientist.


----------



## ekim68

I'm gonna upgrade my Telescope this year...:up:


----------



## Phantom010

It's not a very good day for China...

http://www.newscientist.com/article...pronounced-dead-on-the-moon.html#.UvvBavu9a0o


----------



## valis

yup....those tweets they sent out were just flat-out bizarre....


----------



## Phantom010

They're still planning on a manned mission though. The person in charge of the Chinese space agency will probably be the first Chinese to walk on the Moon... without a space suit.......


----------



## valis

whoa......

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/hubble-captures-spectacular-star-birth-1521513658


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> whoa......
> 
> http://sploid.gizmodo.com/hubble-captures-spectacular-star-birth-1521513658





> 500 light years away from Earth


Well, technically, it wasn't born yesterday... 

But still pretty young, astronomically speaking...


----------



## valis

that's one of the earliest proto-stars I've ever seen.....that the Hubble is still tossing back these picks is testimony to the engineers that built it....mad kudos from this guy.


----------



## ekim68

Inside the Google Earth satellite factory



> Behind a long rectangular window, in a high white room tended by ghostly figures in masks and hats, a new satellite is taking shape. Once in orbit later this year, WorldView-3 will be one of the most powerful Earth observation satellites ever sent into space by a private company. Spinning around the planet some 600 kilometres (370 miles) above us, it will cover every part of the Earth's surface every couple of days.
> 
> Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado is building WorldView-3 for commercial satellite operator DigitalGlobe. It is the latest in a series of spacecraft designed to beam back high-resolution pictures of our planet, images that most of us will eventually see on Google Maps or Google Earth.


----------



## valis

one very interesting read by Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal....surprised I missed it when it came out....

http://io9.com/5924448/the-astronomer-royal-tells-io9-how-he-plans-to-save-humanity-from-extinction


----------



## Phantom010

*Chinese moon rover Yutu is awake!* But not out of the woods yet...

The person in charge of the Chinese space agency might have a slight chance after all.....


----------



## ekim68

Scientists count whales from space



> Scientists have demonstrated a new method for counting whales from space.
> 
> It uses very high-resolution satellite pictures and image-processing software to automatically detect the great mammals at or near the ocean surface.
> 
> A test count, reported in the journal Plos One, was conducted on southern right whales in the Golfo Nuevo on the coast of Argentina.
> 
> The automated system found about 90% of creatures pinpointed in a manual search of the imagery.


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> Scientists count whales from space


Now, if those satellites could only zap Japanese whalers with powerful lasers from space...


----------



## ekim68

Phantom010 said:


> Now, if those satellites could only zap Japanese whalers with powerful lasers from space...


That could be a powerful incentive to be able to blast and govern from Space, eh? A little enforcement of International Laws perhaps?


----------



## ekim68

Mathematics: Why the brain sees maths as beauty



> Brain scans show a complex string of numbers and letters in mathematical formulae can evoke the same sense of beauty as artistic masterpieces and music from the greatest composers.
> 
> Mathematicians were shown "ugly" and "beautiful" equations while in a brain scanner at University College London.
> 
> The same emotional brain centres used to appreciate art were being activated by "beautiful" maths.
> 
> The researchers suggest there may be a neurobiological basis to beauty.
> 
> The likes of Euler's identity or the Pythagorean identity are rarely mentioned in the same breath as the best of Mozart, Shakespeare and Van Gogh.


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> A little enforcement of International Laws perhaps?


And we've seen what good that does... 

Seems a lot of commercial fishermen would rather see species disappear than having to cut down on quotas. 

As for the whales, what a waste for such a noble animal with a population rapidly declining, especially for what they're slaughtered for...


----------



## ekim68

If we Humans are supposed to be Stewards of our Planet, then we're doing a very Bad Job...


----------



## Phantom010

*NASA solves mystery of 'jelly donut' on Mars*

Conspiracy theorists and UFO freaks can now relax.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Now there is a better use for all those drones.
Poachers


----------



## Phantom010

DaveBurnett said:


> Now there is a better use for all those drones.
> Poachers


 Yup. It would surely be more effective than ridiculous fines...  

In certain African countries, they simply execute them on the spot, but that's another story...

Prison would be my most logical and humane alternative, for ALL countries...


----------



## valis

thought this was pretty neat........as did Le Twit......

http://htwins.net/scale2/


----------



## ekim68

Very cool Tim...I'm spreading the word/link...


----------



## Phantom010

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...s-believe-real-science-new-report-claims.html

If that's really true, it's disturbing to say the least...


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> thought this was pretty neat........as did Le Twit......
> 
> http://htwins.net/scale2/


Nice one, valis. :up:


----------



## Phantom010

Phantom010 said:


> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...s-believe-real-science-new-report-claims.html
> 
> If that's really true, it's disturbing to say the least...


Unfortunately, this is the perfect example of our intellectual differences. I'm sure that study doesn't reflect reality. You'd probably get similar results in France, Canada, Britain, Russia....

We managed to make this country a great nation, but education, like in most countries, must be a priority.


----------



## DaveBurnett

2201 (more than 2200) is a large sample? And from where? 
You could pick a backward (back wood?) area from any country and only a small sample and get worse results than that.
Don't forget there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Also the Daily Mail is not exactly the most accurate publication, nor the first to let the truth get in the way of a good story.


----------



## Phantom010

DaveBurnett said:


> 2201 (more than 2200) is a large sample? And from where?
> You could pick a backward (back wood?) area from any country and only a small sample and get worse results than that.
> Don't forget there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
> 
> Also the Daily Mail is not exactly the most accurate publication, nor the first to let the truth get in the way of a good story.


I agree with you, but I've seen similar articles coming from various countries.


----------



## Phantom010

DaveBurnett said:


> 2201 (more than 2200) is a large sample? And from where?
> You could pick a backward (back wood?) area from any country and only a small sample and get worse results than that.
> Don't forget there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
> 
> Also the Daily Mail is not exactly the most accurate publication, nor the first to let the truth get in the way of a good story.


Nothing I hate more than surveys and statistics. They can be interpreted or manipulated in many different ways...


----------



## valis

statistics can be useful.....but too many people read into the whole 'everyone who has eaten a pickle has died or will die, ergo pickles are fatal' argument...


----------



## DaveBurnett

Even conceding that the Mail is reporting the figures correctly, it doesn't alter the fact that the figures mean little with that size sample and no indication of who the sample were.


----------



## Phantom010

DaveBurnett said:


> Even conceding that the Mail is reporting the figures correctly, it doesn't alter the fact that the figures mean little with that size sample and no indication of who the sample were.


Always found those samples ridiculous. 2200 representing more than 300 million people...


----------



## DaveBurnett

Maybe the sample came from congress, who are, after all, supposed to represent the people of the USA. In which case the results might be more believable.........  

I'll leave now!


----------



## Phantom010

DaveBurnett said:


> Maybe the sample came from congress, who are, after all, supposed to represent the people of the USA. In which case the results might be more believable.........
> 
> I'll leave now!


Can't argue with that...


----------



## valis

hmmm.....you guys here about this?

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/how-nasas...teroid-is-crucial-to-hu-1523615950/@jesusdiaz


----------



## Phantom010

That's not how Bruce Willis would do it!


----------



## valis

jeeze, that was a terrible, terrible movie......

but that is a very interesting idea, IMO.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Did I miss the point there?
They justify the expense by saying the Asteroids contain crucial stuff not available on Earth but they are capturing them to find out what they are made of?


----------



## Phantom010

DaveBurnett said:


> Did I miss the point there?
> They justify the expense by saying the Asteroids contain crucial stuff not available on Earth but they are capturing them to find out what they are made of?


I must admit the article is a little vague in explaining why the whole fuss over asteroids, but I think by capturing and analyzing them, they're hoping to find ways to either destroy them or divert their path in case they were to pose a threat for Earth.


----------



## ekim68

I'm glad and continually amazed at what cameras can do these days. Especially Space cameras. And I think it's a good idea for the whole International community to get involved in trying to keep things from dropping in on us...:up:
I check in on this place to see some of the NEA's, (Near Earth Asteroids), and some of them look to close for comfort.


----------



## DaveBurnett

> I must admit the article is a little vague in explaining why the whole fuss over asteroids, but I think by capturing and analyzing them, they're hoping to find ways to either destroy them or divert their path in case they were to pose a threat for Earth.


I did realise that that was the true reason, I was being a bit sarcastic about the drama queen type reporting, or perhaps just playing Devil's Advocate.

Another thing is, if they can do this with asteroids so "easily"? why is it so difficult to clear up all the junk that is already in Earth orbit and its location known? Perhaps that is not "sexy" enough because it damn sure is critical to the future of space travel, and costing a fortune in insurance and avoidance.


----------



## valis

Dave, have you heard of the Japanese plan to begin to collect the space junk? Sound interesting, to say the least.

http://www.space.com/24325-japan-space-junk-tether.html


----------



## DaveBurnett

Yes I saw that.
Now if you could combine selling space flights to passengers and collecting rubbish while you're up there! MMmmm!

*MR BRANSON* I've had an idea!


----------



## valis

Love that guy.......the gent I was talking about in the radiation thread reminds me quite a bit of him, actually; comes across as someone with their head in the clouds, but that's just a cover for a deceptively brilliant and analytical mind.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Branson should be running the country not some megalomaniacs with delusions of having any skill.
At least he has _proven_ his skills and loves a bit of tom foolery like the rest of us.

Shame I don't agree with his political affiliations


----------



## valis

don't even know what his affiliations are, and quite frankly could care less.....he is doing great things for privatized space flight, and _that_ I am behind 100%.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Dave, have you heard of the Japanese plan to begin to collect the space junk? Sound interesting, to say the least.
> 
> http://www.space.com/24325-japan-space-junk-tether.html


That is absolutely INSANE! 










I knew that there had to be a lot of debris from all our activities in space since the 60's, but I had absolutely NO IDEA how bad it was!!!  Surely someone, at some time, had to have thought it would be a problem some day??? 

Like it wasn't enough that we're polluting our whole planet like idiots, we also have to do it in space. Man just can't keep himself from leaving traces wherever he goes, even on other planets in our solar system. 

Can you imagine wanting to spread mankind throughout the galaxy!?! The universe would become a giant trash can! 

*I now have an announcement to make!* I have officially solved one of the universe's greatest mysteries. I know why the universe is expanding and when it began. It started when mankind appeared on Earth, and the acceleration started from the twentieth century. Heck, the universe is freaking running away from us!  It will continue to accelerate until Hubble and Kepler go completely dark!

*Valis*, my friend, I couldn't have done it without you. Thanks for sharing that link. So I'm taking you with me to collect my Nobel prize... splitting it 70/30... alright let's make it 60 for me and 40 for you.


----------



## valis

they knew it would be a problem, Phantom, but a few untimely upper stage explosions, a truckload of dead satellites, and the missing nut and/or bolt have significantly added to them.

Oh yeah, and Ed White's glove.


----------



## Phantom010

Can't help thinking sometimes... one minute you're quietly sipping your piña colada on the beach, the next, you're being crushed like an ant by a falling satellite...


----------



## valis

seeing as how the vast majority of those things will burn up on re-entry, I'd say your chances of finishing your pina colada are entirely dependent upon the neighborhood your beach resides in....


----------



## ekim68

Nanomotors controlled inside living human cells for the first time



> Scientists at Penn State University have successfully controlled tiny nanomotors inside living human cells. Consisting of tiny, rocket-shaped bits of metal, the nanomotors were propelled by ultrasonic waves and steered with magnets. Researcher Tom Mallouk wasn't afraid to talk up potential future applications, saying that the technology could one day be used "to treat cancer and other diseases by mechanically manipulating cells from the inside."


----------



## DaveBurnett

Talking about the Nobel prize..........
If you want a chuckle, look up the IG Nobel prize!


----------



## Phantom010

DaveBurnett said:


> Talking about the Nobel prize..........
> If you want a chuckle, look up the IG Nobel prize!


Nah, I'll only settle for the real thing.


----------



## ekim68

My hope for the new Cosmos



> In only a few weeks, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, will air, nearly 34 years after Carl Sagan's original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage brought the joys and wonders of the Universe to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.


----------



## ekim68

Monday night viewing: close encounter with enormous asteroid



> Feb 17 (Reuters) - An asteroid estimated to be the size of three football fields is set for its close-up on a live webcast as it whizzes by Earth on Monday, roughly a year after one exploded over Russia and injured 1,200 people.
> 
> Slooh Space Camera plans to track the close approach of Asteroid 2000 EM26 as it races past the planet at approximately 27,000 miles per hour (43,000 km/h), starting at 9 p.m. EST (2 a.m. GMT, Feb. 18), the robotic telescope service said in a statement on Slooh.com.


In only a few hours from now...


----------



## valis

was _just_ coming here to post that.....got my countdown timer set for ~90 minutes from now.....

be odd if it hit....get to watch our own demise in real time.....


----------



## Phantom010

A few amazing astronomy Android apps I've recently tried on my SmartPhone. I'm sure there are plenty others, but these are the ones I liked :

*Star Chart Infinite* (probably the greatest, but doesn't work properly on my phone  )

*Star Walk*

*Mobile Observatory - Astronomy*

*SkEye*

*Satellite AR*


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> was _just_ coming here to post that.....got my countdown timer set for ~90 minutes from now.....
> 
> be odd if it hit....get to watch our own demise in real time.....


Any recent news on that asteroid? How close did it come from Earth?


----------



## valis

Phantom010 said:


> Any recent news on that asteroid? How close did it come to Earth?


Oddly I've not seen anything on the news feeds.....obviously it didn't hit, which is a good thing..I was watching the live feed for a bit last night, but had to head out to rotate some tapes, and when I got back never even thought about it...


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Oddly I've not seen anything on the news feeds.....obviously it didn't hit, which is a good thing..I was watching the live feed for a bit last night, but had to head out to rotate some tapes, and when I got back never even thought about it...


At 8.8 lunar distances from Earth, I guess it wasn't close enough to panic...


----------



## Phantom010

One day, we'll surely be needing Bruce Willis though...


----------



## valis

in that case, we're all toast.


----------



## valis

Phantom010 said:


> Any recent news on that asteroid? How close did it come from Earth?


well, apparently it just up and......._disappeared._

hmph......lousy no show asteroid....probably waiting for us to drop our guard or something......or call Bruce......

http://io9.com/the-mammoth-asteroid-set-to-fly-by-earth-last-night-jus-1525397161


----------



## ekim68

Remember the meteor that exploded above Russia last year? It seems it came from the direction of the Sun and nobody had any telescopes watching that area for meteors...

What Exploded over Russia?


----------



## ekim68

And more about the darn things...

List Of The Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs)


----------



## ekim68

Neutron star spotted moving 5 million mph, trailing particle jet



> Neutron stars are formed in supernova explosions, which are typically symmetrical. As a result, many of them never leave the supernova remnant in which they form. In some cases, however, asymmetries in the explosion give the neutron star a nudge and send it traveling from the site where the exploding star sat. In the case of IGR J11014-6103, the nudge was anything but gentle; preliminary estimates of its speed place it at between four and eight million kilometers an hour, making it one of the fastest moving neutron stars ever spotted.


----------



## Phantom010

I could see Mars (looked orange) last night in the sky, near the Moon, as well as Spica, all through the naked eye. There was a triple conjunction. I'm glad I got those apps to confirm what I was seeing. :up:

Found this article this morning as well:

http://www.space.com/24734-moon-mars-star-celestial-triangle-wednesday.html


----------



## valis

Dead satellite could trigger a Kesseler field.....

more on space junk, I guess.


----------



## ekim68

Some lofty ambitions methinks....

Japanese company proposes to build solar power cells on the Moon to provide clean energy to Earth. 



> Harnessing the suns power is nothing new on Earth, but if a Japanese company has it's way it will build a solar strip across the 11,000 mile Lunar equator that could supply our world with clean and unlimited solar energy for generations.
> 
> The Shimizu Corporation has set it's sights high, 238,900 miles to be exact. Their plan is to build a sustainable source of renewable energy on the Moon's surface.


----------



## Phantom010

They're not saying how they're planning to finance such a utopian project... 

The Moon will certainly have an interesting look...


----------



## ekim68

Yep, it'll look like it's wearing a belt...

And then there's this.....

Space Rock Smacks Moon, Creating Biggest Lunar Explosion Ever Seen



> Pow! That would be the sound of a giant rock smacking into the moon (if the moon had any atmosphere to carry the sound, of course). But you can imagine the burst coming from the explosion in the video above, the biggest lunar impact ever observed from Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Couldn't resist....

The Higgs Boson explained in comics


----------



## valis

hmmm....interesting read on arstechnica about a possibility of 'rescuing' the astronauts on board Columbia...IMO, _completely_ improbable, but still a pretty solid read.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014...that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/


----------



## Phantom010

*NASA's Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza, 715 New Worlds*

Really impressive, that Kepler!


----------



## ekim68

Good find Phantom. That satellite/telescope/camera thing is a technical marvel...:up:


----------



## ekim68

Just had to post this....

Fusion vs. Fission


----------



## Phantom010

China has more pressing matters than the Moon to address, right here and now on Earth... Unless they have mastered helium-3 nuclear fusion... 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/25/china-toxic-air-pollution-nuclear-winter-scientists

http://youtu.be/6wRy5OTneAE


----------



## ekim68

Battery-free technology brings gesture recognition to all devices



> Mute the song playing on your smartphone in your pocket by flicking your index finger in the air, or pause your "This American Life" podcast with a small wave of the hand. This kind of gesture control for electronics could soon become an alternative to touchscreens and sensing technologies that consume a lot of power and only work when users can see their smartphones and tablets.
> 
> University of Washington computer scientists have built a low-cost gesture recognition system that runs without batteries and lets users control their electronic devices hidden from sight with simple hand movements. The prototype, called "AllSee," uses existing TV signals as both a power source and the means for detecting a user's gesture command.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Well I suppose it is one way to get people communicating in the street.........


----------



## ekim68

Isro's mission to probe Sun before 2020



> CHENNAI: Indian Space Research Organization has lined up over a dozen missions, including its first probe on the Sun, Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan said on Friday.
> 
> Though, the mission to probe the Sun was already on the cards, the agency now has a clear picture of its plan and had put a timeframe within which it hoped to undertake it, Radhakrishnan said, while addressing students at a private University here.
> 
> He said the "Aditya" mission to the Sun had been planned between 2017 and 2020.


----------



## Phantom010

Hasn't the sun been pretty much covered by NASA already........?

Some countries should revise their priorities, more than others.......


----------



## ekim68

Antimatter experiment produces first beam of antihydrogen



> The ASACUSA experiment at CERN has succeeded for the first time in producing a beam of antihydrogen atoms. In a paper published today in Nature Communications, the ASACUSA collaboration reports the unambiguous detection of 80 antihydrogen atoms 2.7 metres downstream of their production, where the perturbing influence of the magnetic fields used initially to produce the antiatoms is small. This result is a significant step towards precise hyperfine spectroscopy of antihydrogen atoms.


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> Antimatter experiment produces first beam of antihydrogen


One step closer to the antimatter propulsion engine....


----------



## ekim68

New magnetic material could boost electronics



> A highly sensitive magnetic material that could transform computer hard drives and energy storage devices has been discovered.
> 
> The metal bilayer needs only a small shift in temperature to dramatically alter its magnetism - a tremendously useful property in electronic engineering.
> 
> "No other material known to man can do this. It's a huge effect. And we can engineer it," said Ivan Schuller, of the University of California, San Diego.


----------



## ekim68

Live From Space


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Live From Space


:up:


----------



## valis

asteroid fly-by today:

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/asteroid/asteroid-2014-DX110-20140304/#.UxbHXdxvk1E


----------



## ekim68

Europa Mission Gets Boost From President's New NASA Budget



> A dedicated mission to Jupiter's icy moon Europa, one of the best bets for life beyond Earth in our solar system, has inched a little closer to reality today.
> 
> The Obama Administration's 2015 NASA budget request (.pdf) asks for $17.5 billion for the agency, a slight drop from last year and more than a billion less than its 2010 peak of $18.7 billion. The request represents the things that the White House would like to see NASA pursue and includes funding for "pre-formulation work" on a mission that would fly by Europa, make detailed observations, and perhaps sample its interior ocean.


----------



## valis

read about that......(fingers crossed)....

Man, would that ACC would be able to see that, eh?


----------



## ekim68

Yep....:up: Amazing how much insight Science Fiction Writers have....


----------



## valis

excellent read here......where it all began, internet-wise.

http://gizmodo.com/this-is-the-room-where-the-internet-was-born-1527205592


----------



## ekim68

6-billion-year-old quasar spinning nearly as fast as physically possible



> The present study involved measuring the amount of light reflected off the matter orbiting very quickly near a quasar 200 million times more massive than the Sun. This quasar, known as RX J1131-1231, is about 6.1 billion light-years away, much too far to be studied at high resolution under ordinary circumstances.
> 
> However, a galaxy happens to be directly in line between us and the quasar, creating a gravitational lens. According to general relativity, gravity bends the paths of photons, meaning that a sufficiently massive object can focus light. The strongest gravitational lenses create multiple magnified images of more distant objects. In this case, the galaxy's gravity split the quasar's light into four separate images, each of which was comparable to the size of the galaxy-much larger than it would appear unmagnified.


(Einstein was right back in 1905...:up:  )


----------



## ekim68

Starts Sunday night folks....

9 Stunning Images From the First Two Episodes of Cosmos


----------



## valis

and I'm all OVER that......


----------



## ekim68

Me too...:up:


----------



## ekim68

Well I have to say that I was disappointed in the Cosmos show last night in that it seemed to be dumbed down for the viewer. Maybe that was why it was on Fox.  Hopefully the next show will be better...


----------



## Phantom010

*Mars One Way*

One is a father with young children, another one is a hairdresser, another one is simply bored on Earth, and another one looks like an antisocial who doesn't like people... Would you go to Mars with such a team? I hope Mars One has a good screening process...


----------



## ekim68

Take that, space junk! Australian scientists to zap debris with lasers



> It may sound like science fiction but an Australian team is working on a project to zap orbital debris with lasers from Earth to reduce the growing amount of space junk that threatens to knock out satellites with a "cascade of collisions".
> 
> The project is very realistic and likely to be working in the next 10 years, Matthew Colless, director of Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, told Reuters.





> Scientists believe there are more than 300,000 pieces of debris in space, made up of everything from tiny screws and bolts to large parts of rockets, mostly moving in low orbits around Earth at tremendous speed.


----------



## ekim68

Neil deGrasse Tyson tells CNN: Stop giving 'equal time to the flat Earthers'



> Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of Fox's documentary series Cosmos, said on Sunday that the news media should stop trying to "balance" the debate on scientific issues by hosting people who deny science.
> 
> In an interview on CNN's Reliable Sourcs, host Brian Stelter asked Tyson how to go about brokering a peace in the "war on science."
> 
> "Our civilization is built on the innovation of scientists and technologists and engineers who have shaped everything that we so take for granted today," Tyson pointed out. "So some of the science deniers or science haters, these are people who are telling that to you while they are on their *mobile phone."*


----------



## ekim68

Be an Asteroid Hunter in NASA's First Asteroid Grand Challenge Contest Series 



> NASA's Asteroid Data Hunter contest series will offer $35,000 in awards over the next six months to citizen scientists who develop improved algorithms that can be used to identify asteroids.
> 
> This contest series is being conducted in partnership with Planetary Resources Inc. of Bellevue, Wash. The first contest in the series will kick off on March 17. Prior to the kick off, competitors can create an account on the contest series website and learn more about the rules and different phases of the contest series by going to:
> 
> http://bit.ly/AsteroidHunters


----------



## ekim68

Scientists catch brain damage in the act



> Scientists have uncovered how inflammation and lack of oxygen conspire to cause brain damage in conditions such as stroke and Alzheimer's disease.
> 
> The discovery, published today in Neuron, brings researchers a step closer to finding potential targets to treat neurodegenerative disorders.
> 
> Chronic inflammation and hypoxia, or oxygen deficiency, are hallmarks of several brain diseases, but little was known about how they contribute to symptoms such as memory loss.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Have I missed something? but aren't those finding a little obvious?
Given that 25% of the oxygen used by the body is consumed by the brain, it seems pretty clear that ANY disruption of the supply is going to cause damage very rapidly.


----------



## ekim68

ESO's Very Large Telescope spots hypergiant yellow star



> The European Space Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has spotted a massive yellow star with a diameter of more than 1,300 times the size of the Sun. The star is also a part of a binary system, with a companion star orbiting so close that it is actually in physical contact with the giant.


(It's amazing to me how far into the Universe we can see now...) :up:


----------



## DaveBurnett

> (It's amazing to me how far into the Universe we can see now...)


Shouldn't that be THEN as we are seeing the past.


----------



## ekim68

ScienceShot: Honey, I Shrunk the Planet



> Measuring just 4880 kilometers across, Mercury is a small world. The planet became slightly smaller as its interior cooled, which caused Mercury to shrink, buckling its surface and creating numerous cliffs and ridges. Now, after studying 5934 of these features, researchers report online today in Nature Geoscience that Mercury's contraction was much greater than previously thought:


----------



## ekim68

Big Bang's Smoking Gun Found



> For the first time, scientists have found direct evidence of the expansion of the universe, a previously theoretical event that took place a fraction of a second after the Big Bang explosion nearly 14 billion years ago.
> 
> The clue is encoded in the primordial cosmic microwave background radiation that continues to spread through space to this day.
> 
> Scientists found and measured a key polarization, or orientation, of the microwaves caused by gravitational waves, which are miniature ripples in the fabric of space.


----------



## help4me

ekim68 said:


> Big Bang's Smoking Gun Found


I was fascinated by the article I read about this!


----------



## ekim68

Astrophysics is fascinating to me. You can learn something new everyday...


----------



## ekim68

'Waves' detected on Titan moon's lakes



> Scientists believe they have detected the first liquid waves on the surface of another world.
> 
> The signature of isolated ripples was observed in a sea called Punga Mare on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.
> 
> However, these seas are filled not with water, but with hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.
> 
> These exist in their liquid state on Titan, where the surface temperature averages about -180C.


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> Astrophysics is fascinating to me. You can learn something new everyday...


I'm also fascinated by astrophysics and astronomy in general, however, not being an expert, I'm sometimes a little skeptical, especially when we're getting interpretations from objects thousands of light-years away. We're even confident we'll be able to find if life can exist on exoplanets which we can barely see, hundreds of light-years away. I can respect the expressions "we think", "we believe", "maybe", "our interpretation of it", but I just don't dig "we know", "we're sure", "we have proof", "great accuracy", and it's the same for all of what they assume about dinosaurs, how they lived, what they ate, what were their habits, why were they so big, they disappeared after a 10 km meteorite hit the Yucatán Peninsula...... For me, they are all hypotheses. Interpretations tend to change through time, when another genius has a revelation... So, everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt, especially since we're interpreting things with a telescope...

That being said, I am passionate about Space and always eager to learn new things, as long as we're not taking these things as absolute truths... I've learned a long time ago, that there aren't many absolute truths in life...


----------



## Phantom010

By the way, any specific reason why I cannot Edit a comment on this particular forum anymore when there is Quote inside? When I click *Edit*, my post goes completely blank! But, I can Edit this post without problem (no Quote).


----------



## Phantom010

*Syria Creates 'Space Agency' Amid Deadly Conflict*

Is it me, or their timing kinda sucks big time?


----------



## ekim68

That is weird. Talk about your priorities.....


----------



## ekim68

Scientists say destructive solar blasts narrowly missed Earth in 2012



> Fierce solar blasts that could have badly damaged electrical grids and disabled satellites in space narrowly missed Earth in 2012, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
> 
> The bursts would have wreaked havoc on the Earth's magnetic field, matching the severity of the 1859 Carrington event, the largest solar magnetic storm ever reported on the planet. That blast knocked out the telegraph system across the United States, according to University of California, Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann.


----------



## ekim68

How the Biggest Scientific Discovery of the Year Was Kept a Secret



> Great surprises in science don't just happen-they're engineered.
> 
> When researchers announced earlier this week that they might have made what is essentially the scientific breakthrough of the year-echoes from the earliest fraction of a second after the Big Bang known as primordial B-mode polarizations-it seemed to come out of left field. Similarly large announcements, like the discovery of the Higgs boson, generally have followed months of speculation, rumors, and even leaks.
> 
> It's standard practice for researchers to keep tight-lipped about their results. No one wants to cavalierly mention half-finished data to a colleague and give them the wrong impression or worse, tip off a rival project. Yet scientists are human, and humans love to gossip. *In this world of science blogs and Twitter, the BICEP2 collaboration maintaining secrecy so well is almost unheard of.*


----------



## help4me

http://m.cnet.com.au/tour-the-milky-way-in-20-billion-pixels-339346904.htm?redir=1


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> How the Biggest Scientific Discovery of the Year Was Kept a Secret
> 
> *In this world of science blogs and Twitter, the BICEP2 collaboration maintaining secrecy so well is almost unheard of.*


So THAT'S how they did it at Roswell! We learn something new every day!


----------



## ekim68

NASA Releases First Interactive Mosaic of Lunar North Pole



> Scientists, using cameras aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), have created the largest high resolution mosaic of our moon's north polar region. The six-and-a-half feet (two-meters)-per-pixel images cover an area equal to more than one-quarter of the United States.
> 
> Web viewers can zoom in and out, and pan around an area. Constructed from 10,581 pictures, the mosaic provides enough detail to see textures and subtle shading of the lunar terrain. Consistent lighting throughout the images makes it easy to compare different regions.


----------



## Phantom010

Why go to the ISS to conduct zero gravity experiments when you can do it for a small fraction of the cost, without leaving the atmosphere... 

http://www.space-affairs.com/index.php?wohin=zerog_airbus


----------



## DaveBurnett

Yeah a total of 5 minutes spread over 15 "falls".
Not a lot of good mixed with >1G stuff between times. 
I think the experiments need days of 0G and ONLY 0G


----------



## Phantom010

Sure looks like fun, well, after you're finished puking all over the place...


----------



## ekim68

Experiment opens the door to multi-party quantum communication



> In the world of quantum science, Alice and Bob have been talking to one another for years. Charlie joined the conversation a few years ago, but now with spacelike separation, scientists have measured that their communication occurs faster than the speed of light. For the first time, physicists have demonstrated the distribution of three entangled photons at three different locations (Alice, Bob and Charlie) several hundreds of meters apart, proving quantum nonlocality for more than two entangled photons.


----------



## Phantom010

I didn't understand much, but I guess it must be good news...


----------



## ekim68

Quantum phenomena is fascinating to me even though I'm trying to connect to it...I'm a curious person and I believe that the more I read about it, the more I will absorb...When you think about it, it almost has a space/time correlation...


----------



## Phantom010

OK, concretely now, will this have any potential applications? Will this speed up conversations between astronauts on Mars and Mission Control?


----------



## ekim68

It appears to be over a short distance for now, but they got to start somewhere...:up: If they can lengthen the distance then it just might be beneficial to those Martian astronauts...


----------



## DaveBurnett

Science fiction's Dirac Transmitter??


----------



## ekim68

Well I had to go look up the Dirac Transmitter....


----------



## ekim68

Getting ready for those Mars astronauts.....

NASA's Z-2 Spacesuit in Pictures: Futuristic Astronaut Suit Design Photos


----------



## ekim68

The Quantum D-Wave 2 Is 3,600 Times Faster than a Super Computer



> Quantum computing is being hailed as the future of data processing, with promises of performing calculations thousands of times faster than modern supercomputers while consuming magnitudes less electricity. And in the span of just two years the only commercially available quantum computer, the D-Wave One, has already doubled its computational power. Kiss your law goodbye, Mr. Moore.





> But in order to take full advantage quantum effects, the DW2 requires very specific, extreme conditions. For one, it operates at 0.02 Kelvin-150 times colder than the depths of interstellar space and just two degrees above absolute zero-in a vacuum 10 billion times lower than standard atmospheric pressure and experiences 50,000 times less magnetic interference thanks to its heavy shielding. Surprisingly, achieving these temperatures consumes just 15.5kW and takes up just ten square meters of floor space, compared to the thousands of kilowatts and warehouses of space that traditional super computers require.


----------



## help4me

ekim68 said:


> Experiment opens the door to multi-party quantum communication


I just read something about this in relation to time travel I think. I will see if I can find the article.


----------



## ekim68

Neurosurgeons successfully implant 3D printed skull



> A 22-year-old woman from the Netherlands who suffers from a chronic bone disorder -- which has increased the thickness of her skull from 1.5cm to 5cm, causing reduced eyesight and severe headaches -- has had the top section of her skull removed and replaced with a 3D printed implant.
> 
> The operation was performed by a team of neurosurgeons at the University Medical Centre Utrecht and the university claims this is this first instance of a successful 3D printed cranium that has not been rejected by the patient.


----------



## ekim68

Could Earth's infrared emissions be a new renewable energy source?



> Could it one day be possible to generate electricity from the loss of heat from Earth to outer space? A group of Harvard engineers believe so and have theorized something of a reverse photovoltaic cell to do just this. The key is using the flow of energy away from our planet to generate voltage, rather than using incoming energy as in existing solar technologies.
> 
> Federico Capasso, a professor of applied physics, is leading a project that is counter-intuitive and challenges commonly-held physical conventions, yet puts to work findings from almost half a century ago.


----------



## valis

life on enceladus?

http://io9.com/weve-found-a-hidden-ocean-on-enceladus-that-may-harbor-1557622077


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> life on enceladus?
> 
> http://io9.com/weve-found-a-hidden-ocean-on-enceladus-that-may-harbor-1557622077


Very interesting read, valis! :up:


----------



## ekim68

Wow thanks for that Tim.


----------



## ekim68

Single-Celled Organism Converted Into Electronic Oscillator For Bio-Computing



> One of the great puzzles for computer scientists is how relatively simple biological systems can outperform powerful computers in certain tasks. Just how biological systems do this isn't well understood. But there is a great deal of interest in studying biological computing systems and exploiting their unconventional abilities.
> 
> One of the more extraordinary unconventional computing systems is slime mould or Physarum polycephalum. This is a single-celled organism, visible to the naked eye, that explores its world by extending protoplasmic tubes into its surroundings in search of food.
> 
> Various computer scientists have used slime mould to perform tasks such as solving mazes and optimising routes between different locations. They argue that in performing these search tasks, slime mould gathers and processes information in a way that is equivalent to a computation, albeit of a highly unconventional variety.


----------



## ekim68

Will Living on Mars Drive Us Crazy?



> What could life on Mars do to that that other cosmic mystery: the human emotional state?
> 
> NASA is hoping to find out. This week, in partnership with the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the agency launched the latest version of its Mars simulation experiment, the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation mission. On Hawaii's Big Island, 8,200 feet above sea level, conditions are as Martian as they can be on Earth: Mauna Loa's volcanic soil is quite similar to the volcanic regolith that can be found on Mars. HI-SEAS in general aims to replicate, as closely as is possible on Earth, what life would be like on Mars-and its latest iteration will put human emotions to the test.


----------



## Phantom010

Excellent time to watch Mars in the night sky. Too bad I don't have a telescope, but I did enjoy looking at that nice orange glow in the sky during March. After Jupiter, it's the brightest thing in the sky.

http://news.discovery.com/space/ast...lose-encounter-with-the-red-planet-140403.htm


----------



## ekim68

Nice Phantom.. :up: A telescope is definitely on my wish list...


----------



## ekim68

Spacecraft Returns Seven Particles From Birth of the Solar System



> THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS-After a massive, years-long search, researchers have recovered seven interstellar dust particles returned to Earth by the Stardust spacecraft. The whole sample, reported here this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, weighs just a few trillionths of a gram, but it's the first time scientists have laid their hands on primordial material unaltered by the violent birth of the solar system.
> 
> The Stardust spacecraft, launched in 1999, has already accomplished its prime objective: collecting dust particles in the tail of comet Wild 2 and returning them in a reentry capsule ejected as Stardust passed by Earth in 2006. NASA went to all that trouble because comets were supposed to be the repository of the primordial ice and rock-the product of eons of star birth and death-that went into building the solar system.


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> Spacecraft Returns Seven Particles From Birth of the Solar System


Wow, seven particles! Weighing in at 3.1 trillionths of a gram! What are they gonna do with all that!?!  

Billions of $ for 7 lousy particles!   

I really hope they'll be able to get something out of them...


----------



## ekim68

Here you go Phantom....

SpaceHabs: One man's architectural vision for colonizing Mars



> With a projected settlement date of 2025, the Mars One project has received over 200,000 applications for the one way trip to the Red Planet. But creating a living, sustainable community on the distant planet for the select inhabitants will require not only unique technological and engineering solutions, but also novel architectural systems. Bryan Versteeg is a conceptual designer who's been working with the Mars One team in anticipation of the planet's eventual colonization.


----------



## Phantom010

Been following the Mars One circus for a while now. They're even planning a reality tv show with Lionsgate Television.

Although amusing in its own way, I still think the adventure is completely ridiculous and unrealistic.  Even NASA won't be ready until the mid-2030's, if ever...


----------



## Phantom010

If they had first seen this video, do you think the 200 000 applicants would have all applied for Mars One? 






Most probably yes. They all know they can change their minds in 10 years when it's time to go... Until then, they'll just enjoy the free lunches, the reality show, the fame... 

The faith of the project will be decided in 2018 with the first mission to send a satellite and a probe to Mars' surface. If that fails, or the probe misses its target or the planet itself (oops!), then the mission will end there...


----------



## Phantom010

I'm sure NASA never intended to create such a commotion among UFO freaks... 

Sometimes, I think NASA has the maturity of a pimpled face teenager... 

http://news.discovery.com/space/mystery-light-on-mars-spotted-by-curiosity-140408.htm



> Most of the time these cosmic ray hits look just like cosmic ray hits and even UFO enthusiasts can tell the difference. But in this case, the cosmic ray hit is positioned just on the brow of the undulating Martian landscape, providing a fertile scene for our brains to think there are aliens using flashlights on Mars.


----------



## valis

pretty sure they determined that the cosmic ray hit was on the camera itself, not on the land......


----------



## Phantom010

I think it's E.T. with a forehead lamp...


----------



## DaveBurnett

Its the camera crew setting up the lights to record "Life on Mars"


----------



## Phantom010

DaveBurnett said:


> Its the camera crew setting up the lights to record "Life on Mars"


Yeah, the sequel.


----------



## ekim68

This could be something to follow...


Life on Mars
A biologist's journey to the Red Planet


----------



## valis

Do you think Mars1 will _ever_ turn out as reality? I'd love it to, but I'm not getting my hopes up.


----------



## ekim68

I think that it will one day happen, even if it doesn't resemble the same plan as now. The fact that they're talking about it and preparing for it is a start although I probably won't see it in my lifetime. The technology for getting there is already in place and getting better. :up: Just look at where we've come in the last 100 years to show what mankind is capable of...


----------



## Phantom010

I do believe humans will walk on Mars one day, but I don't believe it'll be Mars One...


----------



## valis

Agree with both of you. I'm not even sure it will occur in my son's life, and he's all of 9.....


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Do you think Mars1 will _ever_ turn out as reality?


Well, kinda, a reality show?


----------



## Phantom010

*NASA: Human landing on Mars is on track for 2030s

*


> WASHINGTON - A human landing on Mars is still about 20 years away, but NASA's mission to the Red Planet appears to be steadily moving forward.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/09/mission-to-mars-still-on-track/7519019/

The asteroid thing though... hmmm... not sure why they'd wanna do that for...







As long as they don't miss their target and throw it towards Earth...


----------



## DaveBurnett

Somebody will use inches instead of centimetres!


----------



## valis

that's happened before, you know....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure


----------



## DaveBurnett

I knew, that's why I mentioned it.
Twice in fact with Mars missions.


----------



## Phantom010

This is gonna be particularly important for Mars One, assuming they're really going to leave the ground...

"Houston, it's been 10 months now, aren't we supposed to be there by now?" Oops!!! 

"......Mars One, this is Houston, hmmmmmmmmmmmm, hold on for a minute, I mean 40 minutes, we'll get back to you......."


----------



## Phantom010

How they're testing parachutes to hopefully make a "smooth" landing on Mars...

http://www.universetoday.com/111113/jpl-tests-big-with-a-supersonic-parachute-for-mars/


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Hubble Extends Stellar Tape Measure 10 Times Farther Into Space 



> Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers now can precisely measure the distance of stars up to 10,000 light-years away -- 10 times farther than previously possible.
> 
> Astronomers have developed yet another novel way to use the 24-year-old space telescope by employing a technique called spatial scanning, which dramatically improves Hubble's accuracy for making angular measurements. The technique, when applied to the age-old method for gauging distances called astronomical parallax, extends Hubble's tape measure 10 times farther into space.


----------



## ekim68

NASA setting up $250,000 Mars lander competition



> NASA this week said it is exploring setting up one of its iconic Centennial Challenge competitions for companies to build a robotic Mars landing spacecraft
> 
> NASA said it would expect to have about $250,000 worth of prize money for a robotic spacecraft that could land on the Red Planet, retrieve a sample and return it to orbit.


----------



## DaveBurnett

"cause that's many times cheaper than we could POSSIBLY do it"


----------



## ekim68

Total lunar eclipse, 'blood moon' to be showstoppers in sky



> In ancient times, people wielded pots and pans during a lunar eclipse, banging on them to scare away the monster eating their moon.
> 
> But when the eclipse begins late Monday and stretches into the early hours of Tuesday, astronomers say Bay Area sky watchers need only bring their eyes.


----------



## ekim68

Speaking of eclipses.....

Realtime Eclipse Gallery


----------



## ekim68

And yet again, more on Eclipses....

A Tetrad of Lunar Eclipses 



> For people in the United States, an extraordinary series of lunar eclipses is about to begin.
> 
> The action starts on April 15th when the full Moon passes through the amber shadow of Earth, producing a midnight eclipse visible across North America. So begins a lunar eclipse tetrad-a series of 4 consecutive total eclipses occurring at approximately six month intervals.


----------



## ekim68

Astronauts to get green thumbs with NASA sending veggie garden to the ISS



> The International Space Station (ISS) may be a remarkable piece of engineering, but it's so drab that it needs a window box to brighten things up. That isn't possible in the vacuum of space, but NASA is doing the next best thing on Monday as it sends its Vegetable Production System (Veggie) to the space station aboard the SpaceX Dragon CRS-3 mission. However, this plant-growing chamber will be more than a horticultural experiment, it's also a bit more culinary as it lets astronauts put fresh salad on the menu.


----------



## ekim68

Vascular self-healing system allows composite materials to repair multiple times



> We've seen numerous examples of self-healing polymers that allow materials to repair themselves after being damaged. One of the more common approaches involves the use of embedded microcapsules that release a healing agent when damaged. Researchers have expanded on this idea to develop a new technique that brings self-healing capabilities to fiber-reinforced composite materials, like those used in airplanes and automobiles.
> 
> The new self-healing system developed by researchers at the Beckman Institute's Autonomous Materials Systems (AMS) Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign replaces the microcapsules used in other self-healing technologies with separate microchannels, one filled with an epoxy resin and the other filled with hardener. When the fiber-reinforced composite material is damaged, these 3D vascular networks are ruptured, releasing the two liquid healing agents that mix together and polymerize to repair the material. The researchers say this technique allows materials to autonomously repair multiple times.


----------



## valis

whoa........

http://gizmodo.com/this-new-hubble-pic-takes-us-halfway-to-the-edge-of-the-1563909584


----------



## Phantom010

Impressive!


----------



## valis

Earth-size planet found in the Goldilocks zone.....

http://io9.com/astronomers-have-found-the-first-earth-sized-habitable-1564345380


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Earth-size planet found in the Goldilocks zone.....
> 
> http://io9.com/astronomers-have-found-the-first-earth-sized-habitable-1564345380


Interesting find. :up:

Now, we only have to figure out how to get there...


----------



## Phantom010

*How can we possibly guess what an exoplanet's atmosphere is like?*

Been asking myself that question for quite some time...

The following link features an educational video on the subject.

Very interesting. :up:

http://io9.com/how-can-we-possibly-guess-what-an-exoplanets-atmospher-1476625104


----------



## ekim68

Cassini may be witnessing the birth (or death) of a moon of Saturn



> "Saturn's rings are a conveniently located dynamical laboratory," says the opening sentence of a new paper. The convenient part may be debatable, but the dynamism isn't. The rings are filled with gaps and wiggles, created by interactions among their particles and a collection of small moons that act as shepherds, their gravity ushering the rings' particles into distinctive orbits.
> 
> Now researchers have identified a series of bright objects embedded in the outer edge of Saturn's A Ring. The largest of these, which has been nicknamed "Peggy," may be as much as a kilometer across. The objects may represent a moon that is disintegrating after contact with the outer edge of the A Ring. But it could also be one in the process of formation-a process that may have played out many times in Saturn's past.


----------



## ekim68

Nanoelectronic circuits reach speeds of 245 THz



> Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have designed and manufactured circuits that can reach speeds of up to 245 THz, tens of thousands of times faster than contemporary microprocessors. The results open up possible new design routes for plasmonic-electronics, that combine nano-electronics with the fast operating speed of optics.
> 
> When light interacts with some metals, it can be captured in the form of collective, extremely fast oscillations of electrons called plasmons. If harnessed, the interaction of photons and electrons could be used to build ultra-fast computers (among other things). But these phenomena occur at a scale so small that we don't yet have the tools to investigate them, let alone harness them.
> 
> Assistant Professor Christian A. Nijhuis and his team have now found a way to harness quantum-plasmonic effects even with the current generation of electronics, using a process called "quantum plasmonic tunneling."


----------



## valis

asteroid strikes (and size) in the past 13 years.....few more than I thought, to say the least.

http://io9.com/a-visualization-showing-where-asteroids-have-hit-the-ea-1566181287


----------



## Phantom010

Good read. I didn't know that. Guess we're luckier than we know...


----------



## ekim68

Mission to Mars is necessary for 'survival of human race'



> A manned mission to Mars is necessary for our 'species to survive', says Nasa chief Charles Bolden as he plots a three-step plan to land humans on the red planet by 2030.
> 
> To achieve this stellar ambition, Mr Bolden, head of the US space programme and a veteran space shuttle pilot, outlined a series of 'stepping stones' to Mars that include 'lassoing' an asteroid and bringing it into the Moon's orbit by 2015, growing plants in space and using 3D printers for onboard repairs.


----------



## ekim68

Video of Falcon 9 Reusable (F9R) taking its first test flight at our rocket development facility.



> F9R lifts off from a launch mount to a height of approximately 250m, hovers and then returns for landing just next to the launch stand.


----------



## ekim68

Under Light, Chameleon-Like Material Changes Color And Shape



> Humans are good at making things that are one color. But if you want to really blend into your surroundings, it would be best to have a material that can change its appearance based on its surroundings--like a chameleon. University of Michigan researchers have created a material imbued with a special type of crystal that can change its shape and color when different wavelengths of light are shone on it, that could be used in the future to create active camouflage.


----------



## ekim68

Sunset on Mars


----------



## valis

that's actually been my desktop for a year or so......get a LOT of questions on it.


----------



## valis

don't hear about this everyday......

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-27215788


----------



## ekim68

The Sky is falling...................


----------



## Phantom010

Surely could have killed a few people when it fell...


----------



## valis

the consensus is that it hit water and floated to Brazil.....but yeah, something that big would definitely leave a mark....Mike, I know you and I are old enough to remember Skylab, howzabout you Phantom?


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Mike, I know you and I are old enough to remember Skylab, howzabout you Phantom?


I remember vaguely. I was a kid.


----------



## valis

as was I, but my pop worked at Martin-Marietta at the time.....interesting read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab#Re-entry


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> interesting read.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab#Re-entry


Indeed. :up:


----------



## ekim68

Government backs UK launch site plan for space tourism



> The government has backed plans for a four-fold expansion of the UK space industry to £40bn by 2030.
> 
> It is also considering developing the necessary legal framework to permit a spaceport to be set up in the UK.
> 
> It is hoped that this might see the growth of new space tourism companies to start operating services in Britain.


----------



## ekim68

I know a little politics, but maybe that's the way it will always be....

Space: Where America and Russia Are Stuck With Each Other



> There's no Crimea in low Earth orbit. That happy fact is one reason that, for now, at least, U.S.-Russian cooperation in space will go on, including a planned launch today from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome, which will ferry two cosmonauts and one astronaut up to the International Space Station (ISS). It's something of an irony that during the early years of the Cold War, the race to the Moon was the very soul and symbol of the rivalry between the two countries, and now space is the only place America and Russia can stand to be in each other's company. But it's not exploratory good-fellowship at work. It's hard reality-not to mention hard currency.


----------



## Phantom010

*Why Is Mars So Much Smaller Than Earth?

*http://www.space.com/25710-mars-size-planet-formation-theories.html



> Models show that the Red Planet should be about as big as Venus and Earth if gas and dust were distributed relatively smoothly throughout the protoplanetary disk that surrounded the newborn sun 4.5 billion years ago. But Mars is just 10 percent as massive as these two other worlds, suggesting that it formed in a region relatively depleted of planet-forming material.


----------



## Phantom010

*World's First Mother's Day Gifts Available on Mars

*http://www.uwingu.com/2014/05/worlds-first-mothers-day-gifts-available-on-mars-from-uwingu/



> Uwingu, a company helping people personally connect with space exploration and astronomy, today announced a world-wide, first-ever opportunity to honor moms on Mother's Day from Mars- by naming a feature for her on Uwingu's new Mars map.





> Thanks to the sale of almost 10,000 crater names to date, the Uwingu Fund has already funded grants to projects and organizations including the Astronomers Without Borders, Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, *Mars One* mission, the Galileo Teacher Training Program, Explore Mars and the Allen Telescope Array at SETI.


----------



## ekim68

Phantom010 said:


> *Why Is Mars So Much Smaller Than Earth?
> 
> *http://www.space.com/25710-mars-size-planet-formation-theories.html


Could the Universal Constant, that is Gravity, supply an answer to the Proximity to the Sun?

Or, is the Dust less Dense than in the Inner Planets?


----------



## Phantom010

Good question. I'll have to take out my pocket calculator for this one. Will get back to you...


----------



## ekim68

Not enough hours in the day? At least you're not on planet Beta Pictoris b



> According to NASA, 1,703 planets orbiting 1,033 stars have been found so far, but very little is known about these planets beyond some deductions based on their orbits. That veil is lifting though, as demonstrated by Dutch astronomers who have for the first time measured the length of an exoplanet's day. Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile's Atacama desert, the team has learned that the young extrasolar gas giant Beta Pictoris b has an eight-hour day and spins faster than any planet in the Solar System.
> 
> Beta Pictoris b was discovered six years ago orbiting the naked-eye star Beta Pictoris, some 63 light years away in the constellation of Pictor.


----------



## Phantom010

Interesting read. That's a mighty big gas giant!


----------



## ekim68

Cool stuff....

Live_ISS_Stream



> Live video from the International Space Station includes internal views when the crew is on-duty and Earth views at other times. The video is accompanied by audio of conversations between the crew and Mission Control. This video is only available when the space station is in contact with the ground. During "loss of signal" periods, viewers will see a blue screen.


----------



## ekim68

I'm continually amazed at space photography these days and here's a good example....

NASA captures huge explosion on the surface of the sun


----------



## Phantom010

Is Dennis Hope for real?

If presidents like Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush went along with this scam, what does it say about the type of government managing the country...



> In monetizing peoples obsession with living on Mars, Lansdorps project is not uniqueand faces some competitive pricing. Dennis Hope of Gardnerville, Arizona, is the founder of Lunar Embassy, which sells deeds to land on the Red Planet as well as Venus, the Earths moon and several other cosmic commoditiesall for a price that would appeal to even the most budget-conscious investor: just $19.99 to $22.49 per acre. (Hell also sell you all of Pluto for $250,000.)
> 
> Hope says he has made more than $11 million since 1980, when he launched the company by asserting ownership of these interstellar bodies via a letter to a claims officea move he maintains is legal thanks to a loophole in the United Nationss outer space legislation. He added Mars deeds to his roster in the late 1990s, and despite taking a hit from the 2008 financial crisis, business has increased steadily since, he says.
> 
> Im honest as the day is long, and if I didnt believe I actually owned these lands, I wouldnt be selling them, Hope, 66, tells Newsweek. A lot of our customers are vehement about claiming their property someday. They ask us to place that property in some sort of a trust because they want to be able to pass it on to their heirs.
> 
> Hope also says his landholders have run the gamut of professions and incomes, from janitors to Hollywood stars, and include former presidents Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. (Hope maintains that Reagan and Carter had property purchased for them by aides, but that Bush had land bestowed on him by an undisclosed buyer, an act that suggests previously unknown levels of interstellar passive-aggression.)
> 
> Mars is a particularly hot commodity for Hopes Web- and phone-based business; he says he sells 30 to 40 plots daily and has moved over 325 million acres on the Red Planet overall, for $4 million in profit. The companys customers appear to be a satisfied bunch; the lone complaint on the Lunar Embassys Better Business Bureau page is for a delivery issue. However, legal issues have swirled around the company for years. In 2004, one Canadian partner, Lisa Fulkerson, skipped town amid charges of defrauding a local bank and her individual moon property investors; she was eventually sentenced to two years in jail. The following year, authorities in Beijing suspended the business license of another partner, Li Jie, on charges of speculation and profiteering; Lis stellar property-sales branch eventually sold its office to repay a bank loan.
> 
> Nevertheless, Hope maintains brusquely that his deeds are more than mere gag itemsthough small print at the bottom of Lunar Embassy deeds states: This is a novel gift. He also claims to be self-financing the development of a privately manufactured rocket that will be able ferry his customers to Mars and the moon.


http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/16/mars-needs-brokers-250228.html


----------



## valis

interesting little read on space junk here.


----------



## Phantom010

*NASA May Put Greenhouse on Mars in 2021

*They might actually be serious in establishing a base there some day... ?

http://www.space.com/25767-nasa-mars-greenhouse-rover-plant-experiment.html


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff....

Science Just Made the Most Massive, In-Depth Universe Simulation Ever



> Ever wanted to see what our universe looked like moments after the Big Bang? Good luck-it would take your desktop computer more than 2,000 years to complete. Luckily, researchers just published findings from the first ultra-realistic simulation of our universe's growth. And it covers 13 billion years.
> 
> Led by Mark Vogelsberger at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the researchers created a system called Illustris that simulates a cube-shaped chunk of the universe 350 million light-years long on each side. As the simulation progresses, it uses 12 billion 3D pixels to show the evolution of both normal and dark matter.


----------



## valis

excellent read, Mike.....:up:


----------



## valis

Sol's long-lost sibling found.

http://io9.com/weve-finally-found-our-suns-long-lost-sister-1573952952


----------



## ekim68

Never thought about the Sun having a Sister, but then again, we're all related, eh?


----------



## valis

all stardust, baby.....


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> all stardust, baby.....


Those guys sure snorted a lot of it!


----------



## Phantom010

*Blasting Mars with Missiles Is the Latest Hope for Finding Martian Life

*If it works, it could prove useful for other planets...



> There's a plan to drop bunker busters on Mars-in an attempt to find whatever life might still exist underground.
> 
> The Exolance mission, being planned by Explore Mars, a nonprofit group that supports manned missions to Mars, calls for launching a series of small bunker buster probes attached with life-detecting payloads deep into the Martian surface. Testing is supposed to start on Earth later this year, according to group president Artemis Westenberg, who told me about the project at the group'sHumans to Mars conference in Washington, DC earlier this week.


http://exploremars.org/exolance/bla...-is-the-latest-hope-for-finding-martian-life/

*Fire missiles at Mars to find deeply buried life

*


> On Mars, preserved traces of microbes could lurk in deep subsurface ice, where they would be shielded from harsh cosmic radiation. NASA's Curiosity rover has a drill, but it only penetrates a few centimetres. "Curiosity doesn't go very deep - it is literally scratching the surface," says Chris Carberry, executive director of the non-profit group Explore Mars, based in Beverly, Massachusetts.
> 
> Future missions will go deeper but will have limited capabilities. NASA'sInSight lander mission, set for 2016, features a "mole" designed to dig down 5 metres, but it won't be searching for life. The European Space Agency's ExoMars rover, due to launch in 2018, will drill down 2 metres in search of traces of life, but it can only explore a single Martian region.


It's about time someone focuses on searching for life on Mars, which NASA is taking a little too lightly by only scratching the surface...


----------



## Phantom010

* Mars colonization a 'suicide mission,' says Canadian astronaut

*


> CALGARY - Sending humans to colonize Mars would be a suicide mission, former Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk said Friday.
> 
> Thirsk, who holds the Canadian space endurance record with 204 days in orbit, said a private Netherlands-based group's plan to send 24 people to settle the red planet in a decade is a death wish.


http://www.torontosun.com/2014/05/10/mars-colonization-a-suicide-mission-says-canadian-astronaut

I think this guy has a little bit more mileage than Bas Lansdorp in the field...


----------



## Phantom010

*NASA Hosts Exploration Forum to Showcase Human Path to Mars.*



> An April 29 exploration forum aired on NASA Television from NASA headquarters, featured Administrator Charles Bolden and other agency leadership showcasing NASA's human exploration path to Mars. NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s.


http://spaceref.com/mars/nasa-hosts-exploration-forum-to-showcase-human-path-to-mars.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14t5I5wvvQc#t=6815


----------



## ekim68

I think it's cool that NASA is concentrating on Mars while Russia, China, India, and maybe even Kentucky are concentrating on the Moon...:up: Space Race Baby!


----------



## valis

wait...Kentucky?


----------



## ekim68

(Just seeing if anyone would catch that... )


----------



## valis

gotcha......

I must have read that a dozen times before it registered that something was not quite right there.....


----------



## Phantom010

Hey, if they can make Kentucky Fried Chicken, they can certainly make it (not the chicken) to the Moon!


----------



## ekim68

The little telescope that could....

A Look at the Numbers as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Enters its 25th Year



> Hubble has reinvigorated and reshaped our perception of space and uncovered a universe where almost anything seems possible within the laws of physics. Hubble has revealed properties of space and time that for most of human history were only probed in the imaginations of scientists and philosophers alike. Today, Hubble continues to provide views of cosmic wonders never before seen and is at the forefront of many new discoveries.


----------



## ekim68

Corn Grown in Space Caves Could Be the Future of Farming



> A new discovery could take corn farming to perhaps the last place you'd expect to see it: in underground mines and caves. Perhaps, eventually, even to other planets. It sounds like science fiction, but it's real, and it could drastically change the future of food production as we know it.
> 
> It all started when researchers at Purdue University tried growing corn in an abandoned limestone mine. Despite the seemingly non-ideal conditions of the mine (specifically, higher concentrations of carbon dioxide and artificial light), the crops actually thrived. "We coddled the plants with such luxurious conditions that the corn was touching the lamps before it had even tasseled," then-postdoctoral student Yang Yang said.


----------



## ekim68

The Beauty of Space Photography



> In this short film from PBS, scientists explain how we get those beautiful color photos from space -- despite much of the data coming back in black and white. In short: it involves a good deal of Photoshop manipulation, but is based on real data gathered from space telescopes.


----------



## valis

Great Red Spot shrinking?

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1410/


----------



## ekim68

Wow, I wonder if it will come to an end? I still can't quite wrap my mind around a Gas Planet, seeings how I've been on solid ground for my life...


----------



## valis

ain't a lot of that stuff on Jupiter, mon ami......


----------



## ekim68

HDEV allows us detailed views of our planet from space



> As of April 30, NASA has been running its High Definition Earth Viewing Experiment (HDEV) which, as well as testing certain aspects such as a camera's ability to survive the radiation levels present in low-Earth orbit, is giving viewers the breathtaking experience of observing their planet in exquisite detail from space.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Discover First New Polymers in 20 Years



> The world welcomed two new polymers on Thursday, codenamed Titan and Hydro, both of which came from the same reaction. One is rigid; it could become part of the next generation of computers. The other is a gel, so it it could be included in water-soluble nail polish.
> 
> IBM researcher Jeannette M. Garcia was among a team of nearly a dozen scientists and researchers who worked for more than a year on this discovery, and they are now submitting their findings to the peer review journal Science.


----------



## ekim68

Venus Express prepares for plunge into atmosphere



> After eight years of study of the second planet in our Solar System, ESA's Venus Express orbiter is winding up its science program in anticipation of a plunge into the Venusian atmosphere sometime in the next two months. The space agency says that the unmanned orbiter's service life is coming to an end because its propellant is running low, so ESA is sending the probe to take a very close look at the Venusian atmosphere by flying straight through it.


----------



## ekim68

Earth organisms survive under Martian conditions: Methanogens stay alive in extreme heat and cold



> New research suggests that methanogens -- among the simplest and oldest organisms on Earth -- could survive on Mars. Methanogens, microorganisms in the domain Archaea, use hydrogen as their energy source and carbon dioxide as their carbon source, to metabolize and produce methane, also known as natural gas. Methanogens live in swamps and marshes, but can also be found in the gut of cattle, termites and other herbivores as well as in dead and decaying matter.


----------



## valis

have a funny feeling this is going to end up on the wall of my office soon.......

http://space.io9.com/all-the-robotic-space-explorers-since-1958-1579018353


----------



## ekim68

Groundbreaking experiment aims to create matter from light



> In what could be a landmark moment in the history of science, physicists working at the Blackett Physics Laboratory in Imperial College London have designed an experiment to validate one of the most tantalizing hypotheses in quantum electrodynamics: the theory that matter could be created using nothing more than pure light.
> 
> Premised on a discussion that they had over one day and a few cups of coffee, the three physicists - two from Imperial College and one visiting from the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany - recognized that their work on fusion energy also offered possibilities in the theory of light to matter creation, suggested in a theory 80 years ago by two American physicists, Breit and Wheeler. These two physicists had premised the idea that because annihilating electron-positron pairs produce two or more photons, then colliding photons should, in turn, produce electron-positron (or "Breit-Wheeler") pairs.


Replicator anyone?


----------



## valis

no kidding.....


----------



## ekim68

The Birth of a Meteor Shower



> A comet that's never crossed Earth's orbit might lead to the most spectacular sky show in years!


(I've got to get a decent telescope...)


----------



## ekim68

NASA hands space enthusiasts the keys to a 1970s-era spacecraft



> NASA felt it had gotten its money's worth out of the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 mission back in the 1980s. Its last scientific mission ended in 1997, and contact was suspended in 1998. But time and a fortuitous orbit mean that ISEE-3 is now catching up with Earth and will make a close pass this summer. When we first noted this story last year, some enthusiasts were suggesting that the probe should be revived and returned to scientific duty, but the perpetually tight budgets at NASA made that outcome unlikely.
> 
> Yesterday, NASA announced that it found a solution: it would hand the keys to the probe over to those enthusiasts.


----------



## valis

hopefully this pans out........

http://gizmodo.com/a-senate-panel-just-set-aside-100-million-to-build-a-p-1580652604


----------



## ekim68

Hopefully it does. After years of defunding NASA, Congress has allowed Russia, China, and India to pass the USA by in Space exploration....

Here's something to look for tomorrow...

Ready for May's Surprise Meteor Shower?



> The dim, obscure periodic comet 209P/LINEAR is about to pass close by Earth - and bring with it a trail of debris that could make for an exciting meteor shower during the predawn hours of Saturday May 24th for North America.


----------



## valis

yup.......got a quandary on my hands there.....meteor shower from 1-3, or sleep and get up for Monaco?


(like there's even a question there; Monaco will always win out...... )


----------



## ekim68

The clouds have decided it for me. It's raining right now and my blueberry bushes are smiling...


----------



## ekim68

Chelyabinsk asteroid crashed in space before hitting Earth



> An asteroid that exploded last year over Chelyabinsk, Russia, leaving more than 1,000 people injured by flying glass and debris, collided with another asteroid before hitting Earth, new research by scientists shows.
> 
> Analysis of a mineral called jadeite that was embedded in fragments recovered after the explosion show that the asteroid's parent body struck a larger asteroid at a relative speed of some 3,000 mph (4,800 kph).
> 
> "This impact might have separated the Chelyabinsk asteroid from its parent body and delivered it to the Earth," lead researcher Shin Ozawa, with the University of Tohoku in Japan, wrote in a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports.
> 
> The discovery is expected to give scientists more insight into how an asteroid may end up on a collision course with Earth. Scientists suspect the collision happened about 290 million years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Laser Demonstration Reveals Bright Future for Space Communication



> The completion of the 30-day Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration or LLCD mission has revealed that the possibility of expanding broadband capabilities in space using laser communications is as bright as expected.
> 
> Hosted aboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer known as LADEE, for its ride to lunar orbit, the LLCD was designed to confirm laser communication capabilities from a distance of almost a quarter-of-a-million miles. In addition to demonstrating record-breaking data download and upload speeds to the moon at 622 megabits per second (Mbps) and 20 Mbps, respectively, LLCD also showed that it could operate as well as any NASA radio system. "Throughout our testing we did not see anything that would prevent the operational use of this technology in the immediate future," said Don Cornwell, LLCD mission manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.


----------



## ekim68

British MoD works on 'quantum compass' technology to replace GPS



> UK scientists say they are three to five years away from creating a new navigation system that would not rely on space-based technologies. A "quantum compass" might replace the US's widely-used GPS, first in military and then on smartphones.
> 
> The British Ministry of Defense is investing millions of pounds into the "earth-based" technology, which they hope may become an alternative to space-based GPS on board nuclear submarines and ships.
> 
> Part of the reason the MoD is so keen to develop a "quantum compass" is that GPS doesn't work underwater.


----------



## valis

interesting little read here on wormholes:

http://news.discovery.com/space/galaxies/is-our-galaxys-monster-black-hole-a-wormhole-140527.htm


----------



## valis

Dragon v2.....looks dang promising.

Only thing that bothers me is that getting weight up to orbit is easily the biggest concern for _any_ space program. It seems to me that by carrying the fuel for the landing rockets that they are compromising that; unless they know something I don't about their take-off thrust, which is stating the obvious.


----------



## valis

two-way communication with ISEE established.

dunno about you guys, but I am very stoked about the way that the privatization of space exploration is going....


----------



## ekim68

I'm glad that the private sector got involved and continued it. However, I still think that a Collaboration works best...


----------



## ekim68

New 'Godzilla of Earths' planet discovered about 560 light-years from Earth



> BOSTON, June 2 (UPI) --Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a new planet about 560 light-years away in the Draco constellation that weighs 17 times as much as Earth.
> 
> Exoplanet Kepler-10c, which has been dubbed the "Godzilla of Earths" and "mega-Earth," has a rocky surface and it circles a star which resembles the sun.


----------



## valis

whoa.......

remnants of Theia found.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers Solve Puzzle Of Mysterious Glowing Trails In Radio Images Of The Sky



> Here's an interesting mystery. Back in 2012, astronomers finished the construction of an array of 256 radio antennas in the high deserts of New Mexico called the Long Wavelength Array. The array is designed to listen for radio waves with frequencies of between 25 and 75 MHz produced by gamma ray bursts, one of the most energetic phenomena in universe and thought to be associated with the collapse of a rapidly rotating stars to form neutron stars and black holes.
> 
> Gamma ray bursts are usually followed by an afterglow of radiation at longer wavelengths, from x-rays through to radio waves. But of these, the radio component is the least well observed. So there is significant interest in the data from the Long Wavelength Array, which produces images of the whole sky as it appears in the radio part of the spectrum.
> 
> Earlier this year, this data threw up something of a mystery.


----------



## ekim68

"Hello, World" - Video beamed from ISS using laser-based communications



> While the International Space Station (ISS) may be mankind's outpost for the conquest of space, it still leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to a decent YouTube connection. That's because, for all its sophistication, the station's communications system is still based on 1960s radio technology and has all the bandwidth of a soda straw. This changed on Thursday as NASA took a step into the video age with the test of its Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) demonstrator, which used a laser to beam a video to Earth in seconds instead of the usual minutes.


----------



## valis

supernova time lapse.....REAL time......whoa.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/star-expl...-awesome-thing-i-have-e-1589138376/+caseychan


----------



## ekim68

A Size Chart Of The Cold Worlds That Orbit Our Sun Beyond Neptune



> As many as 1,400 icy objects inhabit a region of our solar system some 2.9 to 4.7 billion miles from the sun. The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory has studied 132 of them, revealing a striking diversity of shapes, sizes and colors.
> 
> These trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs )- which include worlds such as Pluto, Eris, Haumea and Makemake - are extremely cold, at around -382 Fahrenheit. But these low temperatures lend themselves to observations by Herschel, which collects long-wavelength infrared radiation from some of the coldest and most distant objects in the universe.


----------



## ekim68

We got the Earth's birthday wrong by 60M years



> The planet we're living on is about 60 million years older than previously thought.
> 
> So say scientists in France who studied quartz from Australia and South Africa that dates back about 3 billion years, reports Phys.org.
> 
> The ratio of gases in the quartz compared to today's ratios suggest both the Earth and the moon were created about 40 million years after the formation of the solar system, rather than the previous estimate of 100 million years afterward. That's likely when a collision happened that left behind Earth as we know it-and formed the moon.


----------



## ekim68

Giant telescopes pair up to image near-Earth asteroid



> NASA scientists using Earth-based radar have produced sharp views of a recently discovered asteroid as it slid silently past our planet. Captured on June 8, 2014, the new views of the object designated 2014 HQ124 are some of the most detailed radar images of a near-Earth asteroid ever obtained.


----------



## ekim68

Draper Labs develops low cost probe to orbit, land on Europa for NASA



> According to a Wednesday story in the Atlantic, some researchers at Draper Labs have come up with a cheap way to do a Europa orbiter and land instruments on its icy surface.
> 
> The first stage is to orbit a cubesat, a tiny, coffee can sized satellite that would contain two highly accurate accelerometers that would go into orbit around Europa and measure its gravity field. In this way the location of Europa's subsurface oceans would be mapped. Indeed it is possible that the probe might find an opening through the ice crust to the ocean, warmed it is thought by tidal forces.
> 
> The second stage is to deploy even smaller probes called chipsats, tiny devices that contain sensors, a microchip, and an antenna. Hundreds of these probes, the size of human fingernails, would float down on Europa's atmosphere to be scattered about its surface. While some might be lost, enough will land over a wide enough area to do an extensive chemical analysis of the surface of Europa, which would then be transmitted to the cubesat mothership and then beamed to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

What Happened to the Flags on the Moon?



> On July 10, 1969, Apollo 11 touched down on the moon. At 10:56 pm eastern standard time, Neil Armstrong accomplished another first. With the immortal words, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," (or something like that) Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on a major celestial object. Soon after, Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the alien surface. The two of them spent the next two and half hours exploring, taking pictures, and collecting samples.
> 
> Before they took off back to Earth, Apollo 11 left evidence of their rendezvous with the moon. Besides Armstrong's boot print and a bunch of junk, the astronauts also planted a three foot by five foot nylon American flag mounted on a pole into the ground. Subsequent Apollo missions that made it to the moon followed suit. But what happened to all of these flags? Are they still standing? Do they even still exist after nearly a half century on the moon?





> This brings us to 2012. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC for short, was first launched in June 2009. It spent over three years orbiting the moon and taking pictures with its high-resolution camera. In 2012, images sent back by LROC confirmed that all but Apollo 11's flag and possibly Apollo 15′s flag not only survived, but are still standing.


----------



## ekim68

Mysterious 'Magic Island' appears on Saturn moon



> Now you don't see it. Now, you do.
> 
> And now you don't see it again. Astronomers have discovered a bright, mysterious geologic object - where one never existed - on Cassini mission radar images of Ligeia Mare, the second-largest sea on Saturn's moon Titan. Scientifically speaking, this spot is considered a "transient feature," but the astronomers have playfully dubbed it "Magic Island."
> 
> Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience June 22, the scientists say this may be the first observation of dynamic, geological processes in Titan's northern hemisphere. "This discovery tells us that the liquids in Titan's northern hemisphere are not simply stagnant and unchanging, but rather that changes do occur," said Jason Hofgartner, a Cornell graduate student in the field of planetary sciences, and the paper's lead author.


----------



## valis

good read on possible dark matter find......

http://www.nasa.gov/chandra/news/mysterious-xray-signal.html#.U6ri_kAwAwZ


----------



## ekim68

ESA sets its sights on harpooning space debris



> In 2021, as part of its Clean Space Initiative, ESA plans to launch the e.DeOrbit mission. The aim of this mission is to clean up the important polar orbits between altitudes of 800 to 1,000 km (500 to 625 mil) that face the prospect of becoming unusable due to the increasing buildup of space debris. The ESA has now announced plans to examine the potential for the mission to use space harpoons to capture large items, such as derelict satellites and the upper stages of rockets.


----------



## Phantom010

New potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832 c:

http://m.space.com/26357-exoplanet-habitable-zone-gliese-832c.html


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity celebrates its first action-packed Martian year



> Curiosity feted its first Martian year on the red planet (687 earth days) with a stiched-up selfie while NASA reflected on the Mars rover's triumphs and setbacks. So far, it has achieved most of its mission goals, particularly its quest for evidence that Mars could have supported life. Drilling samples revealed traces of all the elements needed for life, and it spotted a streambed that once had "vigorous" water flow. The rover also found that moisture could be drilled from its soil, and that the radiation levels were safe for humans -- all important details for planned space travel.


----------



## ekim68

Trio of big black holes spotted in galaxy smashup



> Astronomers staring across the universe have spotted a startling scene: three supermassive black holes orbiting close to one another, two of them just a few hundred light-years apart. The trio, housed in a pair of colliding galaxies, may help scientists hunting for ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves.


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> Trio of big black holes spotted in galaxy smashup


Interesting that a few hundred Light Years is a small distance....


----------



## ekim68

Not Much Force: Berkeley Researchers Detect Smallest Force Ever Measured



> What is believed to be the smallest force ever measured has been detected by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. Using a combination of lasers and a unique optical trapping system that provides a cloud of ultracold atoms, the researchers measured a force of approximately 42 yoctonewtons. A yoctonewton is one septillionth of a newton and there are approximately 3 x 1023 yoctonewtons in one ounce of force.


----------



## valis

interesting read on apollo 13, if anyone wants to recreate that scrubber they used........

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/this-is-the-actual-hack-that-saved-the-astronauts-of-th-1598385593


----------



## ekim68

It must be getting crowded up there....

India launches five foreign satellites



> India has put into orbit five foreign satellites, including one built by France, to observe the earth.
> 
> Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched the rocket carrying the satellites take off from Sriharikota launch centre in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
> 
> The other satellites include two from Canada and one each from Singapore and Germany.


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> It must be getting crowded up there....
> 
> India launches five foreign satellites


If they don't concentrate on cleaning up that space of debris, soon they won't be able to send anything...


----------



## Phantom010

Is India's space program worth the money when hundreds of millions of Indians struggle to meet basic needs, in a country who takes the rape and murder of women, in the streets, in broad daylight, lightly? When 25 million people die of hunger every year in India, is it really worth their mission to Mars? 

Some really need to review their priorities... 

Space should not be a competition between countries...


----------



## Phantom010

*One of the Most Earthlike Planets Ever Found May Not Exist

*http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...ace-planet-gliese-starspot-astronomy-science/

I'm not surprised because I've always thought astronomers were overestimating these observations. After all, they are "interpretations"...


----------



## ekim68

Yep, but it's still incredible how much information came from that article that seemingly disproved it....I'm still astounded about the technology that has advanced astronomy, even in mathematical terms, and of course telescopes of all kinds...:up:

We can't learn without asking questions, eh?


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> We can't learn without asking questions, eh?


Exactly! And that's why they should say: "Could we have discovered exoplanets around that star?", or "We think we have discovered an exoplanet around Gliese, but with today's science, it's impossible to confirm...", instead of "New potentially habitable planet discovered, it's like this, and it's like that, and it looks like Earth!". A twinkle of a star is not much to claim a planet just passed in front of it... Until they can come up with more direct methods, I'll remain very skeptical...

We know very little about the universe, so we should be a little more careful with what we come up with, especially the way we say it... It's mostly hypothesis, not fact... Most of it, we'll never be able to prove. Some seem to forget it...


----------



## ekim68

Wow, it's been ten years....:up:

Cassini's amazing space odyssey to Saturn



> Of the astronomically profound discoveries it's made over a decade of circling, the startling hint this April of a new moon being formed in the rings of Saturn is merely the latest.
> 
> Indeed, the spacecraft Cassini - which inserted itself into orbit around the giant gas planet in July, 2004 - has transmitted imagery and sensory data back to Earth that has given us a new understanding of our bejewelled neighbour three doors down.


----------



## ekim68

Next generation of space cowboys get ready to fly



> Say hello to the next generation of space cowboys. This week, private aerospace firm FireFly Space Systems in Austin, Texas, revealed the design of the FireFly Alpha, a shiny new vehicle that aims to launch lightweight satellites at low cost.
> 
> FireFly was founded in January this year and has former SpaceX and Virgin Galactic employees on staff. The company's mission is to reduce costs for lighter loads going to low Earth orbit, such as constellations of small satellites used for communications networks or monitoring Earth.


----------



## ekim68

The Two Faces of the Moon



> The same side of the Moon always faces us, but different portions of the lunar hemisphere get illuminated throughout the month, dependent on the relative positions of the Earth, Moon and Sun.
> 
> In addition, because the Moon's orbit is elliptical, moving faster when it's closest to Earth and slower when it's farthest away, the face of the Moon that's visible changes ever-so-slightly, a phenomenon known as lunar libration. Even though this means, over the course of many months, we could see up to a total of 59% of the Moon, it wasn't until 55 years ago, when the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 swung around to the far side of the Moon, that we got our first pictures of the far side of the Moon.
> 
> Although it wasn't very impressive, many subsequent pictures have shown us what the side facing away from Earth actually looks like, and it came as quite a shock!


----------



## ekim68

Sun Sends More 'Tsunami Waves' to Voyager 1



> NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a new "tsunami wave" from the sun as it sails through interstellar space. Such waves are what led scientists to the conclusion, in the fall of 2013, that Voyager had indeed left our sun's bubble, entering a new frontier.
> 
> "Normally, interstellar space is like a quiet lake," said Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, the mission's project scientist since 1972. "But when our sun has a burst, it sends a shock wave outward that reaches Voyager about a year later. The wave causes the plasma surrounding the spacecraft to sing."
> 
> Data from this newest tsunami wave generated by our sun confirm that Voyager is in interstellar space -- a region between the stars filled with a thin soup of charged particles, also known as plasma. The mission has not left the solar system -- it has yet to reach a final halo of comets surrounding our sun -- but it broke through the wind-blown bubble, or heliosphere, encasing our sun. Voyager is the farthest human-made probe from Earth, and the first to enter the vast sea between stars.


----------



## ekim68

Brazil Nut Effect Explains Mystery Of The Boulder-Strewn Surface of Asteroids



> There are far more boulders on the surface of asteroids than astronomers can account for. Now a team of astrophysicists has worked out why.





> Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Soko Matsumura at the University of Dundee in Scotland and a few pals. These guys have pinpointed a mechanism that can explain the presence of the large boulders: the Brazil nut effect in which large particles in a sea of smaller ones rise to the surface when they are shaken. And the team have carried out simulations to confirm that the Brazil nut process does indeed have this effect.


----------



## valis

quick reminder.....Apollo 11 launched 45 years ago today.....


----------



## ekim68

An historical moment, eh? 

CBS NEWS Coverage of the Launch of Apollo 11


----------



## valis

awesome......thanks for that, Mike.....I know for a fact I watched it (pop was in aerospace) but as I was all of 1 and change, not that many clear memories......


----------



## DaveBurnett

I remember it well.


----------



## ekim68

I remember it too when I was going to college back then...There were several of us gathered and at the time my major was Astronomy....


----------



## ekim68

Two big dark matter experiments gain U.S. support



> For a change, U.S. particle physicists are savoring some good news about government funding. The Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on Friday that they will try to fund two major experiments to detect particles of the mysterious dark matter whose gravity binds the galaxies instead of just one. The decision allays fears that the funding agencies could afford only one experiment to continue the search for so-called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. It also averts having to choose between the two leading WIMP-search teams in the United States.


----------



## ekim68

Getting a charge out of water droplets



> Last year, MIT researchers discovered that when water droplets spontaneously jump away from superhydrophobic surfaces during condensation, they can gain electric charge in the process. Now, the same team has demonstrated that this process can generate small amounts of electricity that might be used to power electronic devices.
> 
> The new findings, by postdoc Nenad Miljkovic, associate professor of mechanical engineering Evelyn Wang, and two others, are published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.
> 
> This approach could lead to devices to charge cellphones or other electronics using just the humidity in the air. As a side benefit, the system could also produce clean water.


----------



## valis

bacteria that eats energy......weird.


----------



## ekim68

Weird and Wow.....That changes a lot of what Life depends on, eh?


----------



## ekim68

Shelter on the Moon could be the pits



> Moving into a new neighborhood means finding a place to live, and 45 years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, our largest satellite is still notoriously short on housing. However, that may be changing as NASA announces that its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has discovered over 200 deep pits on the Moon that could not only provide scientists with deeper insights into the geology of the Moon, but could also be used as sites for future Lunar outposts.


----------



## ekim68

If you want to see live TV from NASA, there's this: 

NASA TV


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Celebrates 15th Anniversary


----------



## ekim68

Space Junk Is Becoming a Serious Security Threat



> Theresa Hitchens: Space debris is a serious problem, particularly in the heavily used Low Earth Orbits (LEO). As of 2013, NASA estimated a population of 500,000 pieces of space debris (between 1 and 10 cm in diameter); some 21,000 pieces of which are larger than 10 cm. Unfortunately, NASA estimates that there are more than 100 million pieces of debris smaller than 1 cm that cannot be seen. U.S. space tracking facilities can only routinely see pieces of a certain size: in LEO, about the size of a softball; in Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO), where most large telecommunications orbit, down to the size of about a basketball.
> 
> Even more unfortunately, a piece of debris the size of a thumbnail can do serious damage to a satellite, due to the high speeds at which objects travel in space and the resulting impact velocities. As such, debris represents a standing danger for all space operations (there are an estimated 750 active satellites currently in orbit), including the International Space Station. Indeed, the ISS is forced to maneuver out of the way of potentially dangerous debris on average at least once a year.


----------



## valis

5 telescopes that will change astronomy


----------



## ekim68

Wow. Not only will those telescopes be able to see farther, they look so darn cool...


----------



## ekim68

Comet fireworks on Mars?



> In mid-October, a comet sweeping through our inner solar system for the first time will pass near Mars-so close, in fact, that if it were buzzing Earth at the same distance it would fly by well inside our moon's orbit. And while material spewing from the icy visitor probably won't trigger the colossal meteor showers on the Red Planet that some scientists predicted, dust and water vapor may still slam into Mars, briefly heating up its atmosphere and threatening orbiting spacecraft. However it affects the planet, the comet should give scientists their closest view yet of a near-pristine visitor from the outer edges of our solar system.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Wow. Not only will those telescopes be able to see farther, they look so darn cool...


Indeed..I seem to recall another space telescope, one that would use either 3 or 5 mirrors spread miles apart to give the appearance of a REALLY big telescope.....that said, I probably read it in an Asimov or Heinlein novel and juxtaposed it onto real life.....


----------



## DaveBurnett

Are you thinking about the time they linked radio telescopes around the world to create one massive receiver.
Didn't they use that to track something like (Vger?) Voyager 1 leaving the Solar System?


----------



## valis

nope, I'm thinking of an actual space array of mirrors, linked up and separated by quite a bit of space...it would have given the appearance of a telescope several hundred miles across via triangulation....again, I probably read it somewhere in a book and put the reality stamp on it....


----------



## ekim68

Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012



> July 23, 2014: If an asteroid big enough to knock modern civilization back to the 18th century appeared out of deep space and buzzed the Earth-Moon system, the near-miss would be instant worldwide headline news.
> 
> Two years ago, Earth experienced a close shave just as perilous, but most newspapers didn't mention it. The "impactor" was an extreme solar storm, the most powerful in as much as 150+ years.
> 
> "If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," says Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado.
> 
> Baker, along with colleagues from NASA and other universities, published a seminal study of the storm in the December 2013 issue of the journal Space Weather. Their paper, entitled "A major solar eruptive event in July 2012," describes how a powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) tore through Earth orbit on July 23, 2012. Fortunately Earth wasn't there. Instead, the storm cloud hit the STEREO-A spacecraft.


----------



## valis

new signal can't be explained with modern science....

eenterestink......


----------



## ekim68

Wow, good stuff. Thanks Tim..:up:


----------



## ekim68

The Truth About Solar Storms



> Imagine a beautiful, clear day. The Sun is shining, the skies are clear, and you couldn't ask for a nicer day.
> 
> All of a sudden, the Sun itself appears to brighten, just for a brief amount of time, like it released an extra burst of energy. That night, some 17 hours later, the most spectacular auroral display ever brightens the night in a way you never imagined.
> 
> Workers across the United States awaken at 1 AM, because the sky is as bright as the dawn. Aurorae illuminate the skies as far south as the caribbean, beneath the Tropic of Cancer. And long, electricity-carrying wires spark, start fires and even operate and send signals when there's no electricity! This even includes, believe it or not, when they aren't plugged in.
> 
> This isn't a science-fiction scenario; this is history.
> 
> This is what a catastrophic Solar Storm looks like, and this actually occurred exactly as described in 1859.


----------



## valis

Imagine if that were to hit today......we'd be set back a couple hundred years, technologically.....


----------



## ekim68

I'm glad we have detection methods now, but I'm also glad for Luck....:up:


----------



## ekim68

NASA Long-Lived Mars Opportunity Rover Sets Off-World Driving Record



> NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, which landed on the Red Planet in 2004, now holds the off-Earth roving distance record after accruing 25 miles (40 kilometers) of driving. The previous record was held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover.
> 
> "Opportunity has driven farther than any other wheeled vehicle on another world," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "This is so remarkable considering Opportunity was intended to drive about one kilometer and was never designed for distance. But what is really important is not how many miles the rover has racked up, but how much exploration and discovery we have accomplished over that distance."


----------



## ekim68

NASA's New Spacecraft Will Have A Star Trek-Like Cockpit



> The new Enterprise bridge on Star Trek: TNG replaced buttons and switches with backlit touch panels. This "prophetic" technology was created because production designers didn't have the budget to create and install individually lighted buttons. But, aboard the Orion spacecraft, sci-fi has once again become sci-fact.
> 
> An article in the August issue of Air & Space magazine takes readers on a technological tour of NASA's next generation spacecraft, emphasizing the lessons learned from previous designs, including the shuttle. One of the most significant changes is the cockpit. Prior to the debut of touchscreen interfaces on TNG, the article notes, we had come to associate space travel, at least in science fiction, with complex operating environments: astronauts surrounded by banks of switches and indicator lights:


----------



## valis

'impossible' rocket engine works just fine.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/31/nasa-validates-impossible-space-drive


----------



## ekim68

Mars 2020 rover will pave the way for future manned missions



> Nasa's next Martian rover will attempt to make oxygen on the surface of the red planet when it lands there in 2021.
> 
> The rover will carry seven scientific projects, aimed at paving the way for future manned missions, seeking evidence of life and storing samples to be brought back in the future.
> 
> Among them is a device for turning the CO2 that dominates the thin Martian air into oxygen.
> 
> This could support human life or make rocket fuel for return missions


----------



## valis

this stuff just boggles my mind......they launched a decade ago at where the comet would be this week......calculating ALL the gravities of ALL the planets....and nailed it....waaaaaaay beyond my math skills......

http://gizmodo.com/the-rosetta-spac...d-land-1443930270/1615810059/+andrewtarantola


----------



## DaveBurnett

Halley did it years ago without computers .............

The Chinese weren't bad either.


----------



## ekim68

Wow, that's really cool considering the matching of speed at mach 47....Good find Tim...:up:


----------



## ekim68

Far Out: The Most Distant Star in the Milky Way 



> Just as every planet in the solar system orbits the sun, so every star in the Milky Way orbits the big black hole at our galaxy's center. But how far out does the Milky Way extend? Astronomers are closer to answering that question with the discovery of two remote giant stars. "They're the most distant stars that we've ever seen in our Milky Way," says John Bochanski of Haverford College, the astronomer who found them. The two stars probe an unexplored region of space and should help gauge our galaxy's total mass, which is poorly known.
> 
> Both stars are red giants, aging suns that shine so brightly observers can see them from afar. One star is about 890,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces-33 times farther from the Milky Way's center than we are and well beyond the edge of the galactic disk.


----------



## ekim68

Stardust Team Reports Discovery of First Potential Interstellar Space Particles



> Seven rare, microscopic interstellar dust particles that date to the beginnings of the solar system are among the samples collected by scientists who have been studying the payload from NASA's Stardust spacecraft since its return to Earth in 2006. If confirmed, these particles would be the first samples of contemporary interstellar dust.


----------



## ekim68

Set Your Alarm: Venus and Jupiter Will Light Up the Pre-Dawn Sky



> This is a week dedicated to the early riser. If you're an energetic morning person who can actually operate in the early hours or just have a strong desire for astronomy that overrides your need for sleep, then you'll be able to witness quite the light show.
> 
> At about 45 minutes before sunrise (about 5:2o a.m.), Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets in the solar system, will be within one-third of a degree from each other above the east-northeastern horizon. This is the closest any two planets will be together in 2014.


----------



## ekim68

This is a Clever Read....:up:

No, a Huge Asteroid Is NOT "Set to Wipe Out Life on Earth in 2880"



> What is it about crappy reporting and asteroids?
> 
> The culprit this time is the UK's Telegraph. In its search to become ever more Daily Mail-ian, it ran an article about an asteroid called 1950 DA with this headline:
> 
> _Huge asteroid set to wipe out life on Earth - in 2880_
> 
> Along with a not-so-subtle (but cool) piece of artwork of a gigantic asteroid impacting the Earth:





> Yeah. The only problem with this: It's very, very unlikely the asteroid will whack us in 2880, so at best that headline is hugely misleading. And this ain't "at best." The real situation will take a moment to explain, but as usual, really cool science is involved.


----------



## valis

niiiice......but who is their right mind is going to be worried about something 8 hundred years away?


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> niiiice......but who is their right mind is going to be worried about something 8 hundred years away?


Esrahaddon?


----------



## valis

well.......yeah, I guess so......


----------



## ekim68

A very long and good read....

Curiosity wheel damage: The problem and solutions



> There are holes in Curiosity wheels. There have always been holes -- the rover landed with twelve holes deliberately machined in each wheel to aid in rover navigation. But there are new holes now: punctures, fissures, and ghastly tears. The holes in Curiosity's wheels have become a major concern to the mission, affecting every day of mission operations and the choice of path to Mount Sharp. Yet mission managers say that, so far, the condition of the wheels has no effect on the rover's ability to traverse Martian terrain. If the holes are not causing problems, why the rerouting? Is the wheel damage a big deal or not?


----------



## ekim68

Solar Power, Origami-Style



> As a high school student at a study program in Japan, Brian Trease would fold wrappers from fast-food cheeseburgers into cranes. He loved discovering different origami techniques in library books.
> 
> Today, Trease, a mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, thinks about how the principles of origami could be used for space-bound devices.
> 
> "This is a unique crossover of art and culture and technology," he said.
> 
> Trease partnered with researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, to pursue the idea that spacecraft components could be built effectively by implementing origami folds. Shannon Zirbel, a doctoral student at BYU, spent two summers at JPL working on these ideas, supported by the NASA Technology Research Fellowship, with Trease as her research collaborator.


----------



## ekim68

The star that exploded at the dawn of time



> To probe the dawn of time, astronomers usually peer far away; but now they've made a notable discovery close to home. An ancient star a mere thousand light-years from Earth bears chemical elements that may have been forged by the death of a star that was both extremely massive and one of the first to arise after the big bang. If confirmed, the finding means that some of the universe's first stars were so massive they died in exceptionally violent explosions that altered the growth of early galaxies.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists create water splitter that runs on a single AAA battery



> A new emissions-free device created by scientists at Stanford University uses an ordinary 1.5-volt battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen at room temperature, potentially providing a low-cost method to power fuel cells in zero-emissions vehicles and buildings.
> 
> The water splitter is made from the relatively cheap and abundant metals nickel and iron. It works by sending an electric current from a single-cell AAA battery through two electrodes.
> 
> "This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low," chemistry professor and lead researcher Hongjie Dai says. "It's quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals like platinum or iridium to achieve that voltage."


----------



## ekim68

Water clouds tentatively detected just 7 light-years from Earth



> Astronomers have found signs of water ice clouds on an object just 7.3 light-years from Earth-less than twice the distance of Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the sun. If confirmed, the discovery is the first sighting of water clouds beyond our solar system. The clouds shroud a Jupiter-sized object known as a brown dwarf and should yield insight into the nature of cool giant planets orbiting other suns.


----------



## valis

anyone remember..............


----------



## ekim68

Nope, but thanks for the info; Looks cool and I'm gonna check it out....


----------



## ekim68

Is Storage Necessary for Renewable Energy? 



> Physicist and energy expert Amory Lovins, chief scientist at The Rocky Mountain Institute, recently released a video in which he claims that renewable energy can meet all of our energy needs without the need for a fossil fuel or nuclear baseload generation. There's nothing unusual about that - many people have made that claim - but he also suggests that this can be done without a lot of grid-level storage. Instead, Lovins describes a "choreography" between supply and demand, using predictive computer models to anticipate production and consumption, and intelligent routing to deliver power where it's needed. This "energy dance," combined with advances in energy efficiency, will allow us to meet all of our energy needs without sacrificing reliability.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Nope, but thanks for the info; Looks cool and I'm gonna check it out....


odd.......I'd pegged you for a Hopper fan......


----------



## ekim68

Memory Reformat Planned for Opportunity Mars Rover



> An increasing frequency of computer resets on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has prompted the rover team to make plans to reformat the rover's flash memory.
> 
> The resets, including a dozen this month, interfere with the rover's planned science activities, even though recovery from each incident is completed within a day or two.
> 
> Flash memory retains data even when power is off. It is the type used for storing photos and songs on smart phones or digital cameras, among many other uses. Individual cells within a flash memory sector can wear out from repeated use. Reformatting clears the memory while identifying bad cells and flagging them to be avoided.


----------



## ekim68

The Mystery of Saturn's Expanding F Ring



> Saturn's rings are among the most beautiful sights in the Solar System. They have been a source of scientific fascination and puzzlement since they were discovered by Galileo in 1610 although it was Christiaan Huygens who first suggested they were rings in 1655.
> 
> The great mystery of Saturn's rings is how they formed and why they are so stable. A simple model of orbital dynamics suggests that any small particles in this kind of orbit should gradually spiral into the planet.
> 
> So the rings should long ago have smeared out and disappeared. Instead, they are highly complex and stable and contain other structures such as spokes and braids. Nobody knows how.
> 
> Now Robert French at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and a few pals discuss another mystery. They say Saturn's F ring, the most distant discrete ring, is twice as bright today as it was during the Voyager flybys in 1980 and 1981. It is also three times as wide.


----------



## ekim68

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a variety of intriguing cosmic phenomena.



> Surrounded by bright stars, towards the upper middle of the frame we see a small young stellar object (YSO) known as SSTC2D J033038.2+303212. Located in the constellation of Perseus, this star is in the early stages of its life and is still forming into a fully grown star. In this view from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) it appears to have a murky chimney of material emanating outwards and downwards, framed by bright bursts of gas flowing from the star itself. This fledgling star is actually surrounded by a bright disc of material swirling around it as it forms - a disc that we see edge-on from our perspective.


----------



## valis

this is kinda neat......

http://io9.com/a-chart-of-every-mission-traveling-in-our-solar-system-1629536286


----------



## airborne17

"Science and Space" is a very limited relationship, where "limited" may be vast, but nevertheless it is limited.

Science has categorically no answer to Infinity and runs out of gas as the Cosmos leaves it way behind all human comprehension and evaluation.

The Infinity of Space may have no end, but Science most emphatically *does*.


----------



## Brigham

airborne17 said:


> "Science and Space" is a very limited relationship, where "limited" may be vast, but nevertheless it is limited.
> 
> Science has categorically no answer to Infinity and runs out of gas as the Cosmos leaves it way behind all human comprehension and evaluation.
> 
> The Infinity of Space may have no end, but Science most emphatically *does*.


What is your point? There are lots of thing that I have learned on this thread. Because science has limits shouldn't the posters discuss it?


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> this is kinda neat......
> 
> http://io9.com/a-chart-of-every-mission-traveling-in-our-solar-system-1629536286


Thanks Tim. I'm gonna share this....:up:


----------



## airborne17

Brigham said:


> What is your point? There are lots of thing that I have learned on this thread. Because science has limits shouldn't the posters discuss it?


The point concerns Infinity. No human brain past or present has had the ability to comprehend Infinity. In human thinking, everything *must* have an end. This is all I was emphasizing in my post. Even in Infinitesimal Calculus, Infinity is merely a convenient mathematical "boundary".

Of course the posters should discuss it, I never suggested otherwise. The benefits of scientific knowledge are the very essence of life on Earth as we know it today and discussion is a primary source of information. There are heaps of scope for discussions within the limits of Science.

Beyond the limits of Science is an Unknown and we cannot discuss an Unknown, only speculate and speculation is *not* Science.


----------



## valis

airborne17 said:


> Science most emphatically *does*.


prove it.....


----------



## airborne17

valis said:


> prove it.....


I do not have to prove anything and respectfully have to say "*You* prove it does not". 

It is a matter of basic intelligence that when Science reaches its limit of comprehension, *that* is the end of human understanding. The rest is speculation and to be honest, Infinity is *beyond* speculation. We have reached a mental blank in the evolution of the human brain. 

Established Science cannot accept an endless parameter, all things must have an end. Therefore when we come across an endless parameter like Space, Science as we know it today is completely defeated. Nobody on Earth can even *think* about Infinity without reaching the inevitable stage of having a massive attack of the screaming ab-dabs.

Vast astronomical distances are measured in Light Years - one year travelling at the speed of light or 186,000 miles per second. A Light Year is therefore 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year. With Infinity, even that measurement becomes too small. Our Sun is sitting on our doorstep at a minuscule 92,955,807 miles.

I am afraid that Infinity is an extremely *big* parameter and I am sorry to say is not a tangible environment for any human to attempt the impossibility of understanding.


----------



## airborne17

Another amusing controversial issue concerning Space, is the common question "Are we alone ?" or "Is there life out there ?".

Considering what has already been said about the Infinity of Space, such questions are preposterous. Out of the duotrigintillions of Galaxies with their accompanying duotrigintillions of Stars and Planets the odds of there not being highly intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe are so phenomenal as to make the question stupid.

Of course there is other intelligent life existing in the Universe, it is a certainty by sheer size and odds. Planet Earth is not the only case of Abiogenesis, a natural chemistry function.which can occur in any one of the duotrigintillions of similar bodies present in the Infinity of the Universe, the same way that water and Oxygen can be progressively produced if the basic ingredients and conditions are suitable.

We are *not* dealing with a unique event but more likely a common event given the Infinity of Space.


----------



## valis

airborne17 said:


> I do not have to prove anything and respectfully have to say "*You* prove it does not".


weyalll........technically, I am the one asking you to prove out your comment, that science is definitely finite. I've not seen anything yet to show me empirically that this is an accurate statement.....


----------



## airborne17

valis said:


> weyalll........technically, I am the one asking you to prove out your comment, that science is definitely finite. I've not seen anything yet to show me empirically that this is an accurate statement.....


Dear Valis,

As we are attempting to discus the undiscussable, in the realms of speculation beyond the limits of Science whilst trying to prompt the mind to think a little deeper than it is normally accustomed to doing, we must agree to disagree.


----------



## ekim68

Newly identified galactic supercluster is home to the Milky Way



> Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) -- among other telescopes -- have determined that our own Milky Way galaxy is part of a newly identified ginormous supercluster of galaxies, which they have dubbed "Laniakea," which means "immense heaven" in Hawaiian.
> 
> This discovery clarifies the boundaries of our galactic neighborhood and establishes previously unrecognized linkages among various galaxy clusters in the local Universe.


----------



## airborne17

Not a lot of people know this - but Space is the only "abstract" subject known to man where at least partial *proof* is possible.

I put abstract in quotes because within the realms of human penetration, Space is certainly not abstract, but beyond human penetration it definitely is.


----------



## valis

whoa......

Scientists have unearthed the skeleton of a previously unknown, massive dinosaur species that may be the largest land animal ever found.



> The specimen named Dreadnoughtus schrani is exceptionally complete, with about 70 percent of its bones recovered. Scientists believe the creature, which lived about 77 million years ago, measured 85 feet (26 meters) long and weighed about 65 tons, heavier than a Boeing 737.


----------



## ekim68

Small Asteroid to Safely Pass Close to Earth Sunday 



> A small asteroid, designated 2014 RC, will safely pass very close to Earth on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014. At the time of closest approach, based on current calculations to be about 2:18 p.m. EDT (11:18 a.m. PDT / 18:18 UTC), the asteroid will be roughly over New Zealand. From its reflected brightness, astronomers estimate that the asteroid is about 60 feet (20 meters) in size.





> At the time of closest approach, 2014 RC will be approximately one-tenth the distance from the center of Earth to the moon, or about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers). The asteroid's apparent magnitude at that time will be about 11.5, rendering it unobservable to the unaided eye. However, amateur astronomers with small telescopes might glimpse the fast-moving appearance of this near-Earth asteroid.


----------



## airborne17

valis said:


> whoa......
> 
> Scientists have unearthed the skeleton of a previously unknown, massive dinosaur species that may be the largest land animal ever found.


WOW ! Valis.

Not a Space job, but *that* is probably the most astonishing piece of news I have ever seen. At 65 tons and 85 feet long - what did it eat to keep that huge mass in daily health ? I dunno what it ate, but I sure would`nt want to be anywhere near its rear end when it decided to do whoopsies.


----------



## ekim68

How Astrophysicists Are Turning The Entire Moon Into A Cosmic Ray Detector



> One of the great mysteries in astrophysics surrounds the origin of the highest energy particles ever observed. These particles, called ultra-high energy cosmic rays, come from space and smash into the Earth with so much energy that physicists have struggled to believe, let alone explain, it.
> 
> An ultra-high energy cosmic ray can have an energy of 10^20 electron volts. To put that in context, that's a single proton with the same energy as a baseball flying at 100 kilometres per hour.
> 
> It might come as some relief to know that these particles are extremely rare. Physicists detect them on Earth at a rate of less than one particle per square kilometre per century. And that makes them difficult to study.


----------



## pyritechips

*Lost Franklin expedition ship found in the Arctic*

This is a fascinating seafaring mystery that seems to have been solved finally after all these years. But before I throw a party I want to see irrefutable evidence that the wreck is either the _Erebus_ or the _Terror_.


----------



## valis

totally forgot about this one......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3


----------



## valis

holy cow.....stonehenge as we know it is WAAAAY smaller than we thought....

http://io9.com/archaeologists-have-made-an-incredible-discovery-at-sto-1632927903


----------



## ekim68

Solar storm heading for Earth



> A solar flare that launched off the sun Wednesday afternoon could wreak havoc with communications systems and power systems on the Earth, as well as with satellites in orbit, in coming days.
> 
> Forecasters with NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center said the flare already "caused impacts to high-frequency radio communications on Earth today," according to NOAA. "A coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with this event is likely, but further analysis is necessary to determine whether it will produce geomagnetic storming on Earth."
> 
> A coronal mass ejection contains billions of tons of energetic hydrogen and helium ions as well as protons and electrons ejected from the sun's surface.
> 
> If a CME occurred, Earth's magnetosphere will likely be disturbed and a geomagnetic storm could result in the next few days, NOAA reports.


----------



## valis

this could easily be the most astounding photo I've ever seen......at the very least, it's up there with Collins' shot from the dark side of the moon.....


----------



## valis

and here's Mssr. Collins photo.....just think.....the only person NOT in that photo is the person who took the dang thing......


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Have Captured the Sound One Atom Makes



> If an atom gets excited in a laboratory, does it make a sound? Turns out that it absolutely does, albeit it's the softest sound that scientists say is physically possible.
> 
> Researchers at Columbia University and Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology say that they have, for the first time, "captured" the sound a single atom makes when it moves around-a single "phonon," as it were. It's an achievement that could eventually be used as the basic science for new quantum computing devices.
> 
> Like everyone is taught in elementary school, anytime something moves or vibrates, it makes a sound. Scientists now know for sure that that principle extends down to the lowly atom.


----------



## pyritechips

Tim; nice shot but with all due respect don't you think 3,276px × 3,276px is a bit large? I thought my browser went whacko because when I clicked on the post all I got was one dark segment, making it look like a black, blank screen. Then I noticed the horizontal scroll bar.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity reaches Mt. Sharp, the rover mission's long-term prime destination!



> NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has reached the Red Planet's Mount Sharp, a Mount-Rainier-size mountain at the center of the vast Gale Crater and the rover mission's long-term prime destination.
> 
> "Curiosity now will begin a new chapter from an already outstanding introduction to the world," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "After a historic and innovative landing along with its successful science discoveries, the scientific sequel is upon us."


----------



## ekim68

'Solid light' could compute previously unsolvable problems



> Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter.
> 
> The researchers are not shining light through crystal - they are transforming light intocrystal. As part of an effort to develop exotic materials such as room-temperature superconductors, the researchers have locked together photons, the basic element of light, so that they become fixed in place.
> 
> "It's something that we have never seen before," said Andrew Houck, an associate professor of electrical engineering and one of the researchers. "This is a new behavior for light."


----------



## ekim68

CERN Tests First Artificial Retina For Spotting High Energy Particles



> The human retina is remarkably good at pattern recognition so particle physicists are borrowing the design.


----------



## valis

pyritechips said:


> Tim; nice shot but with all due respect don't you think 3,276px × 3,276px is a bit large? I thought my browser went whacko because when I clicked on the post all I got was one dark segment, making it look like a black, blank screen. Then I noticed the horizontal scroll bar.


it should have resized automatically?


----------



## ekim68

Looks like they found a Parking Spot on the Comet.....

Rosetta's lander Philae will target Site J



> Site J is on the 'head' of the comet, an irregular shaped world that is just over 4 km across at its widest point. The decision to select Site J as the primary site was unanimous. The backup, Site C, is located on the 'body' of the comet.


----------



## ekim68

NASA asteroid defense program falls short: audit



> The US space agency's program to detect and protect the Earth from incoming asteroids is poorly managed and far behind schedule, said a government audit report on Monday.
> 
> Just one million of the program's $40 million annual budget is spent on strategies to deflect an incoming asteroid or evacuate areas in danger of impact, said the report by NASA inspector General Paul Martin.
> 
> NASA was tasked by Congress in 2005 to establish a program for tracking near-Earth objects (NEO) greater than 140 meters in diameter (460 feet), to decide on their threat and to catalogue 90 percent of these objects by 2020.
> 
> "While the program has discovered, categorized, and plotted the orbits of more than 11,000 NEOs since 1998, NASA estimates that it has identified only 10 percent of all asteroids 140 meters and larger and will not meet the 2020 deadline," said the audit.


----------



## ekim68

219 million stars: a detailed catalogue of the visible Milky Way



> A new catalogue of the visible part of the northern part of our home Galaxy, the Milky Way, includes no fewer than 219 million stars. Geert Barentsen of the University of Hertfordshire led a team who assembled the catalogue in a ten year programme using the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) on La Palma in the Canary Islands.


----------



## valis

(said a la Prof Farnsworth):

Good news, everybody! NASA is going to fund BOTH Boeing and SpaceX....:up:

http://jalopnik.com/nasa-will-fund-both-boeing-and-spacex-to-build-us-manne-1635647974


----------



## valis

this is pretty cool...sort of neat to see how much we've progressed in the past 50 years or so....

http://gizmodo.com/rare-images-from-nasas-first-three-decades-of-space-exp-1635680615


----------



## valis

huh.....

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/20...el-identify-humongous-5-000-year-old-monument

mesolithic structure that could predate Stonehenge......


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Maven spacecraft reaches Mars this weekend



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Mars, get ready for another visitor or two.
> 
> This weekend, NASA's Maven spacecraft will reach the red planet following a 10-month journey spanning 442 million miles. If all goes well, the robotic explorer will hit the brakes and slip into Martian orbit Sunday night.





> Maven is not designed to land; rather, it will study Mars' upper atmosphere from orbit.
> 
> Hot on Maven's heels is India's first interplanetary spacecraft, Mangalyaan, which is due to go into orbit around Mars two days after Maven.


----------



## valis

here ya go, Mike...

http://io9.com/gaze-in-wonder-at-the-best-astronomy-photographs-of-the-1636299867


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff....:up:

The little-known Soviet mission to rescue a dead space station



> The following story happened in 1985 but subsequently vanished into obscurity. Over the years, many details have been twisted, others created. Even the original storytellers got some things just plain wrong. After extensive research, writer Nickolai Belakovski is able to present, for the first time to an English-speaking audience, the complete story of Soyuz T-13's mission to save Salyut 7, a fascinating piece of in-space repair history.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Launches Dragon Cargo Ship for NASA



> The private spaceflight company SpaceX lit up the night sky over Florida early Sunday (Sept. 21) with the spectacular launch of Dragon spacecraft packed with supplies -- *including the first 3D printer in space* and a troop of 20 mice -- for the International Space Station.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Good stuff....:up:
> 
> The little-known Soviet mission to rescue a dead space station


great read, Mike........I'd totally forgotten about this......


----------



## ekim68

Coming around again....

Is Pluto a Planet? The Votes Are In 



> Gingerich argued that "a planet is a culturally defined word that changes over time," and that Pluto is a planet. Williams defended the IAU definition, which declares that Pluto is not a planet. And Sasselov defined a planet as "the smallest spherical lump of matter that formed around stars or stellar remnants," which means Pluto is a planet.
> 
> After these experts made their best case, the audience got to vote on what a planet is or isn't and whether Pluto is in or out. The results are in, with no hanging chads in sight.
> 
> According to the audience, Sasselov's definition won the day, and Pluto IS a planet.


----------



## valis

India has joined the party.....

http://gawker.com/india-makes-history-as-satellite-enters-mars-orbit-1638434782


----------



## valis

valis said:


> India has joined the party.....
> 
> http://gawker.com/india-makes-history-as-satellite-enters-mars-orbit-1638434782


huh....just found out that the movie 'Gravity' actually cost more than India's mission to Mars........

something is not adding up........


----------



## DaveBurnett

Pretty poor film as well in my opinion.


----------



## ekim68

Is asteroid mining legal? Congress wants to make it so.



> A few different companies have recently announced grand plans to mine asteroids for precious metals and other materials.
> 
> But in addition to all the technological hurdles that would need to be cleared to make this possible, there's an obstacle of a much different sort: the law.
> 
> The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 - a UN treaty signed by 102 countries, including the US - bans countries from appropriating any astronomical bodies. But there's a dispute over whether this would apply to private companies mining asteroids.


----------



## valis

DaveBurnett said:


> Pretty poor film as well in my opinion.


I loved it....but that was probably a given.


----------



## ekim68

Rosetta's Philae Lander: A Swiss Army Knife of Scientific Instruments



> When traveling to far off lands, one packs carefully. What you carry must be comprehensive but not so much that it is a burden. And once you arrive, you must be prepared to do something extraordinary to make the long journey worthwhile.





> There are 10 science instrument packages on the Philae lander. The instruments use absorbed, scattered, and emitted light, electrical conductivity, magnetism, heat, and even acoustics to assay the properties of the comet. Those properties include the surface structure (the morphology and chemical makeup of surface material), interior structure of P67, and the magnetic field and plasmas (ionized gases) above the surface. Additionally, Philae has an arm for one instrument and the Philae main body can be rotated 360 degrees around its Z-axis. The post which supports Philae and includes a impact dampener.


----------



## ekim68

Rosetta: Date fixed for historic comet landing attempt



> The date has been fixed for Europe's daring attempt to land on a comet: Wednesday 12 November.
> 
> It will see the Rosetta satellite, which is currently orbiting the huge "ice mountain" known as 67P, drop a small robot from a height of 20km.
> 
> If all goes well, the lander will free-fall towards the comet, making contact with the surface somewhere in a 1km-wide zone at roughly 15:35 GMT.


----------



## ekim68

More on Rosetta.... (Video)

Rosetta Probe Wakes Up


----------



## ekim68

Signs of the formation of a planetary system around the star HD169142



> Planets are formed from disks of gas and dust that orbit around young stars. Once the "seed" of the planet -composed of a small aggregate of dust- is formed, it will continue to gather material and it will carve out a cavity or gap in the disk along its orbital path.
> 
> This transitional stage between the original disk and the planetary system, difficult to study and as yet little known, is precisely what has been observed in the star HD169142 and is discussed in two articles published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.


----------



## valis

gad, i love technology.....

http://io9.com/mans-parkinsons-tremors-vanish-with-the-touch-of-a-butt-1641677470


----------



## ekim68

Ancient magma plumbing found buried below moon's largest dark spot



> Scientists have found a nearly square peg underneath a round hole-on the moon. Several kilometers below Oceanus Procellarum, the largest dark spot on the moon's near side, scientists have discovered a giant rectangle thought to be the remnants of a geological plumbing system that spilled lava across the moon about 3.5 billion years ago. The features are similar to rift valleys on Earth-regions where the crust is cooling, contracting, and ripping apart. Their existence shows that the moon, early in its history, experienced tectonic and volcanic activity normally associated with much bigger planets.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Eyes Crew Deep Sleep Option for Mars Mission



> A NASA-backed study explores an innovative way to dramatically cut the cost of a human expedition to Mars -- put the crew in stasis.
> 
> The deep sleep, called torpor, would reduce astronauts' metabolic functions with existing medical procedures. Torpor also can occur naturally in cases of hypothermia.
> 
> "Therapeutic torpor has been around in theory since the 1980s and really since 2003 has been a staple for critical care trauma patients in hospitals," aerospace engineer Mark Schaffer, with SpaceWorks Enterprises in Atlanta, said at the International Astronomical Congress in Toronto this week. "Protocols exist in most major medical centers for inducing therapeutic hypothermia on patients to essentially keep them alive until they can get the kind of treatment that they need."


----------



## ekim68

Robot Arm Will Install New Earth-Facing Cameras On The Space Station



> TORONTO, CANADA - Canada's robotic Canadarm2 will install the next two Urthecast cameras on the International Space Station, removing the need for astronauts to go outside to do the work themselves, the company announced today (Sept. 30).
> 
> Urthecast plans to place two Earth-facing cameras on the United States side of the station (on Node 3) to add to the two they already have on the Russian Zvezda module. Technical problems with the cameras forced the Russians to do an extra spacewalk to complete the work earlier this year.
> 
> The company plans to make images and streaming video of its imagery available to the general public and interested paying customers.


----------



## ekim68

Total Lunar Eclipse On Wednesday Will Be a Rare 'Selenelion'



> Observers of Wednesday morning's total lunar eclipse might be able to catch sight of an extremely rare cosmic sight.
> 
> On Oct. 8, Interested skywatchers should attempt to see the total eclipse of the moon and the rising sun simultaneously. The little-used name for this effect is called a "selenelion," a phenomenon that celestial geometry says cannot happen.


----------



## ekim68

Some pics from the lunar eclipse...

Here


----------



## ekim68

Hungry black hole eats faster than thought possible



> Astronomers have discovered a black hole that is consuming gas from a nearby star 10 times faster than previously thought possible. The black hole -- known as P13 -- lies on the outskirts of the galaxy NGC7793 about 12 million light years from Earth and is ingesting a weight equivalent to 100 billion billion hot dogs every minute.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble sees influence of a jetstream on a hot, Jupiter-sized exoplanet



> Since the discovery of the very first exoplanets, it's been clear that there are lots of worlds out there that are markedly different from our solar system: hot Jupiters nearly skimming their host stars' surface, super-Earths, mini-Neptunes.
> 
> But we don't know exactly what these worlds look like. For the most part, we've been left to infer their properties using indirect measurements.
> 
> This week's edition of Science contains a description of one of the exceptions. The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged light from a hot Jupiter called WASP-43b, detecting temperature differences between the planet's day and night sides. The results suggest that the planet has an eastward jet stream that redistributes some of the heat from its host star, but otherwise there's very little circulation of heat.


----------



## ekim68

Brain-computer interface enables "locked-in" brain stroke sufferer to communicate



> By enabling users to communicate and control devices with their thoughts, brain-computer interfaces (BCI) hold almost a scary amount of potential. While they have achieved feats such as directing the flight of a quadcopter and helping victims of paralysis to communicate, sufferers of brainstem stroke with "locked-in" syndrome have so far been beyond reach. But now, a researcher at East Tennessee Sate University (ETSU) has demonstrated BCIs may in fact give brainstem stroke patients a voice again, with very specific brainwaves serving as a typing finger for a virtual keyboard.


----------



## ekim68

A long but good read....:up:

The First Spacewalk



> Alexei Leonov did not feel as if he was in motion as he clambered on to the outside of the spacecraft, 500km above the Earth.
> 
> But in reality, he was hurtling around our planet at speeds that are many times faster than a jet aircraft.
> 
> The vast, vivid geography of our planet stretched out before him - a giant canvas of contrasting colours and textures.
> 
> He was the first of his species to see our planet in such glorious aspect. The Russian was quickly overwhelmed:


----------



## valis

another long, and very good, read......looks like Skunk Works is back at it.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/lockheed-...actor-design-can-change-h-1646578094/+barrett


----------



## valis

and one more before I get all worky worky over here......

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/buzz-aldrins-amazing-view-riding-gemini-xii-with-his-ha-1646010271


----------



## valis

anyone else ever heard of this? I most certainly never have, and I find it fascinating....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_dark_matter


----------



## DaveBurnett

I was watching a program about universal dark matter on the TV earlier this week.
They suggested that there is so much mass in the Universe that they can't account for (according to accepted sums) that there must be loads of dark matter.


----------



## valis

Yeah, I've heard that for quite some time.......first time I've heard of bio dark matter, however.....


----------



## ekim68

Saturn Moon May Hide a 'Fossil' Core or an Ocean



> A new study focused on the interior of Saturn's icy moon Mimas suggests its cratered surface hides one of two intriguing possibilities: Either the moon's frozen core is shaped something like a football, or the satellite contains a liquid water ocean.
> 
> Researchers used numerous images of Mimas taken by NASA's Cassini mission to determine how much the moon wobbles as it orbits Saturn. They then evaluated several possible models for how its interior might be arranged, finding two possibilities that fit their data.The study is published in the Oct. 17 issue of the journal Science.


----------



## ekim68

An All-Female Mission to Mars
By Kate Greene



> In February of 1960, the American magazine Look ran a cover story that asked, "Should a Girl Be First in Space?" It was a sensational headline representing an audacious idea at the time. And as we all know, the proposal fell short. In 1961, NASA sent Alan Shepard above the stratosphere, followed by dozens of other spacemen over the next two decades. Only in 1983 did Sally Ride become America's first female astronaut to launch.
> 
> But why would anyone think a woman would be the first to space, anyway? Medical studies, for one thing. Some studies in the 1950s and '60s suggested female bodies had stronger hearts and could better withstand vibrations and radiation exposure. Moreover, psychological studies suggested that women coped better than men in isolation and when deprived of sensory inputs.
> 
> Some of these investigations were limited in their design and sample sizes. But there was another, more compelling reason that women might outshine men as potential astronauts: basic economics. Thanks to their size, women are, on average, cheaper to launch and fly than men. As a NASA guinea pig, I had the chance to verify this firsthand.


----------



## ekim68

Look up! Orionid meteor shower coming the next 2 nights



> The Orionid meteor shower will be visible Monday and Tuesday nights.
> 
> There could be as many as 25 meteors per hour at its height, according to EarthSky. If clouds don't interfere with your view, the lack of a bright moon will help in viewing the meteors.
> 
> "There's no year better for the Orionids than this one," said astronomer Bob Berman of the astronomy website Slooh.
> 
> The Orionids get their name because they seem to come from the constellation Orion the Hunter, though the meteors usually can be seen over much of the night sky.


----------



## ekim68

Partial Solar Eclipse to Darken U.S. Skies This Week



> Mark Thursday (Oct. 23) on your calendar as "Solar Eclipse Day," for if the weather cooperates, you should have no difficulty observing a partial eclipse of the sun.
> 
> Nearly all of North America, except for a portion of eastern Canada and a slice of eastern New England, will experience the partial solar eclipse this week.


----------



## ekim68

Two Exocomet Families Found Around Baby Star System



> Scientists have found two families of comets in the developing Beta Pictoris star system, located about 64 million light-years from Earth, including one group that appears to be remnants of a smashed-up protoplanet.
> 
> The discovery bolsters our theoretical understanding of the violent processes that led to the formation of Earth and the other terrestrial planets in the solar system.


----------



## ekim68

Where I live there is what we call 'Oregon Sunshine', which means clouds and rain so I didn't get to see this... 

Eye-catching highlights from the partial solar eclipse


----------



## valis

'where I live'........talk about a useless qualifier......

In the 8 years I was there, saw Mt. Hood once.


----------



## ekim68

'A useless qualifier', eh?  I'm gonna use that in a song...:up:


----------



## DaveBurnett

Massively minute is the one I like.........


----------



## valis

well, I'll be dipped.

http://io9.com/you-can-fit-every-planet-in-the-solar-system-between-ea-1650941597


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> well, I'll be dipped.
> 
> http://io9.com/you-can-fit-every-planet-in-the-solar-system-between-ea-1650941597


It has to be a sign!


----------



## valis

indeed.......as Pluto will also fit......


----------



## ekim68

What a clever fact....:up:


----------



## DaveBurnett

I don't know why, but that got me singing the introductory song to Fireball XL5 which used to be a favourite of mine along with several of the Supermarination shows.


----------



## ekim68

The little satellites that could.... And to think that their original missions were to explore Jupiter and Saturn....:up:

Voyagers


----------



## valis

DaveBurnett said:


> I don't know why, but that got me singing the introductory song to Fireball XL5 which used to be a favourite of mine along with several of the Supermarination shows.


Believe that would be Steve Zodiac.......caught the PBS version when Le Twit was a lad.....


----------



## ekim68

Very cool picture taken on the far side of the Moon, and Earth in the background.....

Lunar orbiter to fly back to Earth on Nov. 1


----------



## valis

man....that is an awesome shot.......hadn't seen one from that vantage before......


----------



## ekim68

Scientists propose existence and interaction of parallel worlds: Many Interacting Worlds theory challenges foundations of quantum science



> Academics are challenging the foundations of quantum science with a radical new theory on parallel universes. Scientists now propose that parallel universes really exist, and that they interact. They show that such an interaction could explain everything that is bizarre about quantum mechanics.


----------



## valis

ouch......


----------



## valis

....

http://www.kuriositas.com/2013/09/the-incredible-dinosaur-wall-of-bolivia.html


----------



## DaveBurnett

And my Mrs complains when I leave footprints on the kitchen floor......


----------



## valis

I swear......


----------



## valis

okay, this ain't good. It was a matter of time, but now we have our first fatalities in the privatized spaceflight:

http://flightclub.jalopnik.com/virg...o-suffers-anomaly-during-f-1653361506/+travis


----------



## DaveBurnett

It wouldn't surprise me if the engine blew up again.


----------



## ekim68

Most Planets in the Universe are Homeless



> It's really a romantic notion when you think about it: the heavens, the Milky Way, is lined with hundreds of billions of stars, each with their own unique and varied stories of birth and history. Some of them are massive and bright, some are smaller and dim; some were born only a few million years ago, others are nearly as old as the Universe themselves. But there is one thing that practically all of them are expected to have in common: solar systems.
> 
> But beyond that - in addition to the stars and all the bodies that orbit them - there are a huge number of planets with no central stars at all: the rogue planets of our galaxy.
> 
> We think this is true everywhere in the Universe, from small star clusters to interstellar space to the cores of giant galaxies. As best as we can tell, there are at least as many starless planets wandering the cosmos as there are stars, and probably many more than that.


----------



## ekim68

Look at the size of Rosetta's comet compared to a 747!


----------



## valis

DaveBurnett said:


> It wouldn't surprise me if the engine blew up again.


are you talking about the accident last week, or about future missions?


----------



## valis

well, the engine and fuel are cleared of any wrongdoing......for whatever reason, the craft began it's feathering maneuver almost immediately after engine start, and that caused the plane to disintegrate. 

The motor and fuel tanks have been found intact, so no issues with the motor or that iffy fuel.


----------



## ekim68

From what I've read it looks to be Pilot error...


----------



## valis

that is starting to raise it's head, yes.....nobody has come out and said so yet, but it is definitely going in that direction.

This may sound crass (it's not) but IMO, it's a good thing if pilot error is the final cause.......as that would show that the mechanics are at least solid.


----------



## valis

heyya guys, fun little (and free) app here.

http://en.spaceengine.org/


----------



## DaveBurnett

I was talking about the accident........

Your app A modern Moon Lander??


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> that is starting to raise it's head, yes.....nobody has come out and said so yet, but it is definitely going in that direction.
> 
> This may sound crass (it's not) but IMO, it's a good thing if pilot error is the final cause.......as that would show that the mechanics are at least solid.


Some results of the crash.....

Virgin Galactic crash: 'Dozens' of investors consider pulling out of space programme


----------



## ekim68

Gravity?

Brian Cox visits the world's biggest vacuum chamber


----------



## valis

DaveBurnett said:


> I was talking about the accident........
> 
> Your app A modern Moon Lander??


and europa, and titan, and enceladus......


----------



## ekim68

How to Land on a Comet 



> Since the Space Age began, the space agencies of Earth have succeeded in landing on only six bodies: Venus, Mars, the Moon, Titan, and asteroids 433 Eros and Itokawa.
> 
> In a move that could set a new standard for difficulty, the European Space Agency is about to add a seventh member to the list. On Nov. 12th ESA's Rosetta spacecraft will drop a lander named "Philae" onto the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.


----------



## ekim68

Trapping Light....Who would have figured? 

First Experimental Demonstration of a Trapped Rainbow Using Silicon



> When a beam of light reflects off a surface, the different parts of the beam can interfere in way that shifts the point of reflection. This process is known as the Goos-Hӓnchen effect after the physicists who discovered it in the 1940s.
> 
> Usually, this shift is in the same direction as the propagating light. But in recent years, physicists have realised that there are certain classes of materials - or more precisely combinations of materials - in which the Goos-Hӓnchen effect is negative. In other words, the shift in the point of reflection would be against the direction of propagation.
> 
> That gave a group of physicists a curious idea. Back in 2007, they suggested that if the negative Goos-Hӓnchen effect could be made big enough, it ought to bring a ray of light to a standstill. In other words, the negative shift in the point of reflection in one direction would be big enough to cancel out the movement of light in the other. So the beam itself would remain stationary.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Is that not a black body??


----------



## ekim68

Well it could be the beginning of Light Sabres, eh?


----------



## ekim68

An Interplanetary Magnetic Dance



> The Earth's magnetic field is the original forcefield, a wall of electromagnetic force that protects us from high-energy charged particles spewed by our sun during solar eruptions. The dance between our field and the sun is dynamic and beautiful.


----------



## valis

ouch.....think I broke something reading this.......

http://www.quantamagazine.org/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/


----------



## ekim68

Time check....This is happening within the next couple of hours....

Comet landing live coverage: The lander is now en route to the comet!


----------



## valis

och aye, and you can bet I'm watching......apparently the gravity is so low they are having issues anchoring it......when they shoot out the anchor, the craft lifts off.


----------



## valis

lead image on io9........










I'm sorry, but that is just TOTALLY AWESOME.

Carry on.


----------



## ekim68

Some pictures of the comet....

Rosetta


----------



## valis

Mike......you check out xkcd yesterday? Animation, and I just sat and watched with a very goofy smile on my face. 

http://io9.com/xkcd-animates-the-philae-comet-landing-and-its-adorable-1658135493


----------



## ekim68

That is just too cool. I'm gonna share it....Thanks Tim...:up:


----------



## ekim68

When I was a young Trekkie I was sure that I would have a chance to go to space. Now I know it ain't gonna happen so maybe I'll bring the Stars to me......

Beautiful Space-Themed Bedding Sets for Astonomy Lovers


----------



## ekim68

A long but good read....:up:

Lost in Space City



> SpaceShipTwo's tragedy shows how far the private space industry has to go - but it could still be the best hope for Florida's struggling space coast.


----------



## valis

oh please oh please oh please let this be real.......

Philae found organic matter on the comet. Hot DIGGITY damn. 

http://gizmodo.com/rosettas-lander-has-found-organic-molecules-on-its-come-1660205869


----------



## DaveBurnett

Well I would hesitate to call Methane organic but it is a step in the right direction.


----------



## ekim68

Public meets Private again, eh Tim? 

UK 'to lead moon landing' funded by public contributions



> A British-led consortium has outlined its plans to land a robotic probe on the Moon in 10 years' time.
> 
> Its aim is to raise £500m for the project from donations by the public.
> 
> In return, donors would be able to have photos, text and their DNA included in a time capsule which will be buried under the lunar surface.
> 
> Lunar Mission One aims to survey the Moon's south pole to see if a human base can be set up in the future.


----------



## valis

niiiice.......


----------



## DaveBurnett

I think that project needs to be taken with several tons of salt...... 
It was on the news over here and the reporter was struggling to keep a straight face.
While it is a superb idea, expecting the public to fund it by donations when our government is giving more than that to the likes of India who are funding space research, is not going to be very popular here.

Don't forget that would be about ten British pounds per head of population....


----------



## Phantom010

Remember Mars One...?


----------



## DaveBurnett

Yes, a lot of British people think that might have been sabotaged by other interested parties??


----------



## ekim68

Here you go Phantom....A very long but good read on the realities of Mars One....

All dressed up for Mars and nowhere to go



> 200,000 brave and/or insane people have supposedly signed up for a one-way mission to Mars. But the truth about Mars One, the company behind the effort, is much weirder (and far more worrying) than anyone has previously reported.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Damn, I was thinking of Beagle 2!


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> Here you go Phantom....A very long but good read on the realities of Mars One....
> 
> All dressed up for Mars and nowhere to go


Wow, that's some article!


----------



## ekim68

A reminder that this site changes pictures everyday...

Nasa Picture of the Day


----------



## valis

Howd you likeFridays? Wow...


----------



## ekim68

Didn't see the one on Friday, but I like the way it changes everyday....:up:


----------



## ekim68

Amateur, professional astronomers alike thrilled by extreme storms on Uranus



> BERKELEY - The normally bland face of Uranus has become increasingly stormy, with enormous cloud systems so bright that for the first time ever, amateur astronomers are able to see details in the planet's hazy blue-green atmosphere.


----------



## valis

here's friday; http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141122.html

btw, you can click on the 'archive' button to have the ENTIRE list in front of you......

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html


----------



## ekim68

NASA Issues 'Remastered' View of Jupiter's Moon Europa



> Scientists have produced a new version of what is perhaps NASA's best view of Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Europa. The mosaic of color images was obtained in the late 1990s by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. This is the first time that NASA is publishing a version of the scene produced using modern image processing techniques.


----------



## ekim68

Tokyo Bay from Space


----------



## ekim68

A castaway from ancient Mars



> Piatek has his own compulsions. Locked away at the clinic is a climate-controlled vault for his abiding passion: meteorites. With a near-photographic memory, he is able to rattle off the names and provenance of some of his more exotic specimens-Itzawisis, a pallasite found in Namibia; Gujba, a bencubbinite found in Nigeria. "They're like little movie stars," he says dreamily.
> 
> There is one diva in particular that I'm here to pay homage to: Black Beauty, a shiny, scaly-skinned, 4.4-billion-year-old rock from Mars. It began its journey to Earth more than 5 million years ago, about the time humans and chimpanzees were splitting from a common ancestor. That is when an asteroid struck Mars, catapulting the rock into space. Sometime in the last thousand years or so, orbital mechanics and gravity delivered the wandering rock to Earth. Surviving an incendiary plunge through the atmosphere, it landed in more than a dozen pieces in the western Sahara. There the fragments sat, untouched except by wind and sand. Finally, a nomad plucked a piece from the dunes. After passing through the hands of several Moroccan middlemen, the first piece wound up in Piatek's hands in 2011. He would acquire nine more.


----------



## ekim68

Spacecraft Bound for Pluto Prepares for Its Close Encounter



> The first spacecraft to ever visit Pluto is set to wake up on Dec. 6 in preparation for its midsummer rendezvous with the solar system's most famous dwarf planet.
> 
> The New Horizons spacecraft has been speeding toward Pluto for almost nine years, covering 2.9 billion miles. To conserve energy and general wear and tear, the spacecraft has gone into intermittent hibernation, often for months at a time, slumbering for a total of five years. When sleeping, it was almost completely shut down, maintaining only enough power to send a weekly beep home telling mission controllers that it's doing fine.
> 
> But now it's go time.


----------



## valis

two HUGE events this week......New Horizons and Orion on Thursday.......woo hoo!

http://space.io9.com/heres-what-to-...t-orion-test-flight-1654607626/+AnnaleeNewitz


----------



## valis

here ya go, Mike......this one broke something on me......

http://gizmodo.com/5-reasons-our-universe-might-actually-be-a-virtual-real-1665353513


----------



## ekim68

Whoa, gonna have to drink another cup of coffee before I wrap my brain around those Tim...


----------



## valis

okay, this is big......

http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeol...ld-shell-appear-have-been-made-human-ancestor

whoa.


----------



## valis

check this out, Mike.......made me snicker on this day....

http://io9.com/the-large-hadron-colliders-circuits-just-got-run-throug-1666242500


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> check this out, Mike.......made me snicker on this day....
> 
> http://io9.com/the-large-hadron-colliders-circuits-just-got-run-throug-1666242500


I think I'll try that with my computer parts. They'll be "****-and-span" and the computer will be running smoothly... :up:


----------



## valis

way I look at it, if those people want to wash it in a dishwasher, I'm going to assume that they know something I don't.......


----------



## ekim68

Dishwashers are actually pretty handy in unsuspecting ways...I have copper hinges on the pantry and they were tarnished pretty bad and a friend suggested I run them through a dishwasher. After running them through a basic cycle they came out bright and almost polished....


----------



## valis

nice.....i didn't know that was an option.......


----------



## DaveBurnett

He only put the hinges though the washer, not the whole pantry!!


----------



## valis

DaveBurnett said:


> He only put the hinges though the washer, not the whole pantry!!


Sorta makes one wonder who washes the dishwasher eh?


----------



## ekim68

I would think that a dishwasher is a self cleaner, eh?


----------



## DaveBurnett

I've put Motherboards and graphics cards from fire damaged buildings through a wash cycle before now.


----------



## ekim68

X-ray laser acts as tool to track life's chemistry



> An international research team that includes researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has captured the highest-resolution protein snapshots ever taken with an X-ray laser, revealing how a key protein in a photosynthetic bacterium changes shape when hit by light.
> 
> Human biology is a massive collection of chemical reactions and all involve proteins, known as the molecules of life. Scientists have been moving steadily toward their ultimate goal of following these life-essential reactions step by step in real time, at the scale of atoms and electrons.


----------



## ekim68

Video....

ISS Assembly Time-Lapse Animation


----------



## ekim68

2014's greatest meteor shower



> This weekend, the Geminids arrive, and promise to be the best meteor shower of the entire year!


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> 2014's greatest meteor shower


Man, I never knew you could actually see such a view of our galaxy through the naked eye! Think I'm moving to Chile...










Until I saw this picture and where it was taken!










http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141205.html

I always thought it was a montage...


----------



## valis

you wanna move to Atacama Desert? Rotsa ruck, buddy. 

That is one of the main training sites for both the past Apollo missions, as well as the (theoretically) upcoming Martian missions. That's the driest place on the planet (except poles, of course) and if memory serves correct, they tested the early Mars landers there.......

they couldn't find any life there........


----------



## valis

and really glad you are enjoying APOD. Fun site......goes back a couple years as well........


----------



## ekim68

Saturn & Moons

Space photography just keeps getting better....


----------



## valis

wow........

http://io9.com/the-most-amazing-science-images-of-2014-1671170711


----------



## ekim68

Spacecraft spots probable waves on Titan's seas



> SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA-It's springtime on Titan, Saturn's giant and frigid moon, and the action on its hydrocarbon seas seems to be heating up. Near the moon's north pole, there is growing evidence for waves on three different seas, scientists reported here today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Researchers are also coming up with the first estimates for the volume and composition of the seas. The bodies appear to be made mostly of methane, and not mostly ethane as previously thought. And they are deep: Ligeia Mare, the second biggest sea with an area larger than Lake Superior, could contain 55 times Earth's oil reserves.


----------



## valis

oh wow.......that is awesome.....


----------



## ekim68

Voyager is still riding shock wave in interstellar space



> Voyager 1 spacecraft is still on its history-making journey through interstellar space, and it appears its surroundings are getting louder and louder. The probe has been riding a sort of interstellar tsunami, a shock wave that first arrived in February, through interstellar space.
> 
> The ride is not only bumpy, but noisy, too -- as evidenced by a new video released by NASA this week.
> 
> The same type of vibrations that first allowed scientists to confirm Voyager's historic entry into interstellar space -- the long-distance oscillations of a coronal mass ejection emitted by the sun -- continue to emanate into interstellar space alongside the craft.
> 
> When the reverberations of a coronal mass ejection hit the outer limits of the solar system, they crash up against the barrier of the heliosphere and send out a sort of shockwave through interstellar space. Voyager 1, scientists say, has been surfing one of these shockwaves for nearly a year now -- it's the longest shockwave astronomers have yet observed.


----------



## ekim68

Nasa just emailed a wrench to space



> When International Space Station commander Barry Wilmore needed a wrench, Nasa knew just what to do. They "emailed" him one. This is the first time an object has been designed on Earth and then transmitted to space for manufacture.
> 
> Made In Space, the California company that designed the 3D printer aboard the ISS, overheard Wilmore mentioning the need for a ratcheting socket wrench and decided to create one. Previously, if an astronaut needed a specific tool it would have to be flown up on the next mission to the ISS, which could take months.


----------



## ekim68

ESA carries out asteroid impact drill



> In November, ESA gathered experts from national disaster response organizations in Germany and Switzerland for a two-day mock alert involving hypothetical asteroids of various sizes ranging from 12 to 38 meters (40 - 125 ft) in diameter, or about the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor and the object that hit Tunguska, Siberia in 1908.
> 
> The experts were formed into teams and asked how they would respond to an impact with warnings ranging from as much as 30 days in advance to as little as one hour. The differences in sizes and warning times dictated what the authorities could do, how the information would be distributed, and to whom it would go.
> 
> "For example, within about three days before a predicted impact, we'd likely have relatively good estimates of the mass, size, composition and impact location," says Gerhard Drolshagen of ESA's NEO team.


----------



## valis

all time favorite plane......some fantastic pic of it....

wrote an article on this plane a few years back about how Sputnik basically mothballed it. Pretty sure it could have gone orbital in the next few years.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-best-...-manned-aircraft-ev-1675268839/+matthardigree


----------



## ekim68

Wow, good stuff Tim...:up:


----------



## ekim68

Living above the Atmosphere.....

Alexander Gerst's Earth timelapses


----------



## valis

excellent compilation here. Fantastic stuff.....humans will never cease to amaze me.......

or disappoint, unfortunately......


----------



## ekim68

Mars Rover Opportunity Suffers Worrying Bouts of 'Amnesia'



> Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian surface for over a decade - that's an amazing ten years longer than the 3-month primary mission it began in January 2004. But with its great successes, inevitable age-related issues have surfaced and mission engineers are being challenged by an increasingly troubling bout of rover "amnesia."
> 
> Opportunity utilizes two types of memory to record mission telemetry as it explores the Meridiani Planum region. Sister rover Spirit, which sadly succumbed to the Martian elements in 2010 after 6 years of exploring Mars, used the same system. The two types of memory are known as "volatile" and "non-volatile."


(Just another reason I'm so amazed at the Voyagers and their 64K of memory still working after leaving our Solar System's heliosphere.)


----------



## valis

I'm just astounded all of these things are still going strong....astounding, and quite honestly a testament to engineering.


----------



## ekim68

I agree...:up: And, they just don't make computers like they used to...


----------



## valis

remember this post a couple years back?

http://gizmodo.com/5933011/10-of-historys-most-beautiful-typewriters


----------



## ekim68

Thanks for the reminder Tim...:up:


----------



## ekim68

Moons around Saturn....

Moons


----------



## ekim68

Nasa to hack Mars rover Opportunity to fix 'amnesia' fault



> Mars rover Opportunity, which has been exploring the Red Planet for more than 10 years, is suffering from memory problems, Nasa has said.
> 
> The six-wheeled vehicle - not to be confused with Curiosity, which launched in 2011 - keeps resetting unexpectedly.
> 
> The Opportunity team thinks an age-related fault affecting the flash memory used by the robot is to blame.
> 
> It believes it has found a way to hack the rover's software to disregard the faulty part.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers show neutrinos can deliver not only full-on hits but also 'glancing blows'



> In what they call a "weird little corner" of the already weird world of neutrinos, physicists have found evidence that these tiny particles might be involved in a surprising reaction.
> 
> Neutrinos are famous for almost never interacting. As an example, ten trillion neutrinos pass through your hand every second, and fewer than one actually interacts with any of the atoms that make up your hand. However, when neutrinos do interact with another particle, it happens at very close distances and involves a high-momentum transfer.
> 
> And yet a new paper, published in Physical Review Letters this week, shows that neutrinos sometimes can also interact with a nucleus but leave it basically untouched - inflicting no more than a "glancing blow" - resulting in a particle being created out of a vacuum.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble returns to 'old friends' for 25th anniversary


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers identify 8 new planets in Goldilocks zone



> BOSTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Astronomers have found eight new planets in the Goldilocks zones of their respective stars. That's eight new exoplanets that are potentially habitable.
> 
> The Goldilocks zone is the distance from a host star where temperatures would allow for water to exist in a liquid state -- not so close that the star's heat would boil it away, and not so far that all water would freeze.


----------



## ekim68

Black Holes Inch Ahead to Violent Cosmic Union



> In a galaxy far, far away, a pair of supermassive black holes appear to be spiraling together toward a cosmic collision of unimaginable scale, astronomers said on Wednesday.
> 
> The final act of this mating dance, perhaps a mere million years from now, could release as much energy as 100 million of the violent supernova explosions in which stars end their lives, and wreck the galaxy it is in, said S. George Djorgovski of the California Institute of Technology.


----------



## ekim68

This is cool...

NASA Creates Travel Posters for Recently Discovered Exoplanets [Pics]



> Yesterday, we reported that NASA discovered eight new exoplanets, including three that have qualified for NASA's Kepler Hall of Fame for being "Earth-like." In honor of this discovery, here are some fun travel posters from NASA for three alien worlds, one of which is potentially habitable: Kepler-16b, HD 40307g, and Kepler-186f.


----------



## valis

whoa.........

http://io9.com/an-astonishingly-long-spiral-arm-may-encircle-the-entir-1678475748


----------



## ekim68

Another Wow....

'Bent time' tips pulsar out of view



> The tiny, heavy pulsar is locked in a fiercely tight orbit with another star.
> 
> The gravity between them is so extreme that it is thought to emit waves and to bend space - making the pulsar wobble.
> 
> By tracking its motion closely for five years, astronomers determined the pulsar's weight and also quantified the gravitational disturbance.
> 
> Then, the pulsar vanished. Its wheeling beams of radio waves now pass us by, and the researchers have calculated that this can be explained by "precession": the dying star wobbling into the dip in space-time that its own orbit created.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Like the oozalum bird that ran round in ever decreasing circles till it disappeared up its own........ !


----------



## ekim68

Well you got me to look up the oozalum bird thing and I had not heard that before....Thanks....


----------



## DaveBurnett

It comes in useful when discussions are just going round and round and tends to make everyone go "WHAT!!"

I actually didn't realize till I just looked it up how widely used it is.


----------



## valis

Holy crap...i have a 10 YEAR OLD SON. How the heck did NEITHER of us know this?

Thought kids new this stuff first.....useless muttermutter grumble.

Seriously DB...thanks :up:


----------



## valis

yikes....

http://io9.com/new-study-suggests-that-an-active-sun-may-have-cut-life-1678928863


----------



## valis

oh dear lord.......another Texan opening his mouth about science.....please, no......

http://gizmodo.com/8-dumb-quotes-about-science-from-new-nasa-overseer-ted-1678965577


----------



## DaveBurnett

Fox News got into the foot in mouth act today with its comment about Birmingham.
What is really ironic about that is that it really is getting that way.


----------



## valis

Fox is very, very good at that.....


----------



## valis

dunno whether to laugh or cry.......

http://www.chron.com/news/strange-w...cuts-out-after-alien-UFO-sighting-6009944.php


----------



## valis

keep thy fingers crossed.

http://io9.com/the-remains-of-britains-missing-lander-may-have-been-sp-1679200587


----------



## ekim68

China Spacecraft Enters Orbit around the Moon



> A Chinese spacecraft service module has entered orbit around the moon, months after being used in the country's landmark test flight that sent a prototype sample-return capsule on a flight around the moon and returned it to Earth.





> Earlier reports noted that a camera system is onboard the service module, designed to assist in identifying future landing spots for the Chang'e 5 mission that will return lunar samples back to Earth in the 2017 time frame.


----------



## valis

Thanks Mike totally forgot about that..:up:






Ah jeeze......sorry....

Guess you could say I spaced it.


----------



## ekim68

You're on a roll my friend...


----------



## valis

Seriously though....thanks for the heads up. I did indeed forget this.


----------



## DaveBurnett

God they're making everything from ceramics nowadays............


----------



## valis

And? Or just being your random self?


----------



## DaveBurnett

Post 2450.


----------



## valis

gotcha....


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers Caught Some of Space's Most Mysterious Radio Bursts in Real Time



> For the first time ever, astronomers have captured an enormous radio wave burst in real time, bringing us one step closer to understanding their origins.
> 
> These fleeting eruptions, called blitzars or FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts), are truly bizarre cosmic phenomena. In the span of a millisecond, they emit as much radiation as the Sun does over a million years. But unlike other super-luminous events that span multiple wavelengths-gamma ray bursts or supernovae, for example-blitzars emit all that energy in a tiny band of the radio light spectrum.
> 
> Adding to the mystery is the rarity of blitzar sightings. Since these bursts were first discovered in 2007 with Australia's Parkes Telescope, ten have been identified, the latest of which was the first to be imaged in real time.


----------



## ekim68

New amazing metal is so hydrophobic it makes water bounce like magic



> Scientists at the University of Rochester have created a metal that is so extremely hydrophobic that the water bounces on it as if it were repelled by a magic force field. Instead of using chemical coatings they used lasers to etch a nanostructure on the metal itself. It will not wear off, like current less effective methods.


----------



## ekim68

This is a good long read, and I'm gonna read it again tomorrow with coffee influencing my brain...

The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart



> Some simple observations about the universe seem to contradict basic physics. Solving these paradoxes could change the way we think about the cosmos.


----------



## valis

ouch......I'm going to need something before I tackle that one.....thanks Mike....:up:


----------



## ekim68

Hubble is almost 25 years old....

Throwback Thursday: The Camera that changed the Universe



> The Hubble Space Telescope took its first images in 1990, but it was really starting in 1993 - after the first servicing mission - that the science really started to skyrocket.
> 
> That, of course and the awe that it brought us back. Not only did we fix the initial problem of the primary mirror and spherical aberration, but we were able to upgrade the main camera.
> 
> What we installed - the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) - was without a doubt the camera that changed the Universe.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists slow the speed of light



> A team of Scottish scientists has made light travel slower than the speed of light.
> 
> They sent photons - individual particles of light - through a special mask. It changed the photons' shape - and slowed them to less than light speed.
> 
> The photons remained travelling at the lower speed even when they returned to free space.
> 
> The experiment is likely to alter how science looks at light.


----------



## valis

I read that, and the first thought I had was about the time they announced this a decade or so ago, only to correct themselves a few months later.....this one, however, I think carries a bit more weight.....



man...buncha horrible puns in that sentence about light and mass and time....yeesh....


----------



## DaveBurnett

They will be proven to have made a mistake, just like that other experiment.

I can think of one question straight away. If they reduced it to one photon, have they considered the uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics? 

Also this is such a simple surmise that I would have thought that if it was true, some of the earlier great scientists doing experiments and theorising about light, would have discovered it.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Finds Mysterious Bright Spot on Dwarf Planet Ceres: What Is It? 



> A strange, flickering white blotch found on the dwarf planet Ceres by a NASA spacecraft has scientists scratching their heads.
> 
> The white spot on Ceres in a series of new photos taken on Jan. 13 by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which is rapidly approaching the round dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. But when the initial photo release on Monday (Jan. 19), the Dawn scientists gave no indication of what the white dot might be.
> 
> "Yes, we can confirm that it is something on Ceres that reflects more sunlight, but what that is remains a mystery," Marc Rayman, mission director and chief engineer for the Dawn mission, told Space.com in an email.


----------



## valis

xkcd.com/1476



love that guy.


----------



## ekim68

Good one Tim....:up:


----------



## ekim68

We claim to know the Universe's history to incredible precision. But is this justified?



> How do we know? There are three things that conspire together:
> 
> 1. We understand how the Universe expanded, and hence, what its physical size-and-scale is as a function of time.
> 2. We understand how the temperature (and hence, energy) of the particles in the Universe depends on the expansion history.
> 3. We understand - to varying degrees - the physical processes that determine each of these steps, and how they evolve.
> 
> Let's take a glimpse at each of these, individually, and then put the full story together.


----------



## ekim68

Making graphene affordable



> PhD candidate Shou-En Zhu developed a method that could produce high-quality graphene for a fraction of the current price. What's more, he demonstrated the quality in working devices.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> We claim to know the Universes history to incredible precision. But is this justified?


It depresses me that I am related to people who dispute these things.


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> It depresses me that I am related to people who dispute these things.


Needs repeating...:up:


----------



## valis

hmmm....http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015...signal-from-space-caught-live-for-first-time/


----------



## DaveBurnett

By "real time" they mean when they are on duty!!??


----------



## valis

i think it was more along the lines of they were looking in the right place at the right time....


----------



## ekim68

Lensless space telescope could be 1,000 times stronger than Hubble



> The Hubble space telescope has given us decades of incredible images, but it's reaching the end of its service life and the question is, what will come after? One possibility is the Aragoscope from the University of Colorado Boulder, which uses a gigantic orbital disk instead of a mirror to produce images 1,000 times sharper than the Hubble's best efforts.


----------



## ekim68

Video:

Asteroid That Flew Past Earth Has Moon



> January 27, 2015 Update:
> The Goldstone scientists observing 2004 BL86 are part of a team of astronomers from around the world who have been characterizing the asteroid. Spectroscopic observations of 2004 BL86 made by Vishnu Reddy, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, using the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate the asteroid's spectral signature is similar to that of massive asteroid Vesta. Located in the heart of the solar system's main asteroid belt, asteroid Vesta was the recent destination of NASA's Dawn mission, which is now on its way to the icy world Ceres.


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> ouch......I'm going to need something before I tackle that one.....thanks Mike....:up:


I'm gonna take it on tomorrow morning with my favorite coffee and toast... (I know I'll probably have to read it at least five times to get the gist, but, oh well... )


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity Mars rover back in the groove



> After some downtime to enable a software upgrade, the Curiosity rover on Mars has got straight back to work by drilling into a rock.
> 
> The robot sunk the latest shallow mini-test hole in a target called Mojave2.
> 
> An earlier attempt this month at the same activity resulted in a nearby slab splitting into several chunks.
> 
> Curiosity needs a stable rock to drill down the full 6cm to acquire a sample for analysis in its onboard labs. Mojave2 looks like it will oblige.


----------



## ekim68

I read something a long time ago, I'm not gonna look it up just now, about how our Neighbor Jupiter saved our Earth by absorbing a huge Gamma Ray which could have ripped off our atmosphere... Well here's the deal...

Gamma-ray bursts are a real threat to life



> A new study confirms the potential hazard of nearby gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), and quantifies the probability of an event on Earth and more generally in the Milky Way and other galaxies. The authors find a 50% chance that a nearby GRB powerful enough to cause a major life extinction on the planet took place during the past 500 million years (Myr). They further estimate that GRBs prevent complex life like that on Earth in 90% of the galaxies.


----------



## DaveBurnett

I think you may have been reading about it hoovering up most of the meteorites that would have destroyed life on Earth.

But I may well be wrong....


----------



## ekim68

Extrasolar Planets Are More Hospitable to Life Than Previously Thought



> Scientists have thought that exoplanets behave in a manner contrary to that of Earth - that is they always show their same side to their star. If so, exoplanets would rotate in sync with their star so that there is always one hemisphere facing it while the other hemisphere is in perpetual cold darkness.
> 
> Leconte's study suggests, however, that as exoplanets rotate around their stars, they spin at such a speed as to exhibit a day-night cycle similar to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

One of the things I'm gonna do when I retire is get a telescope. I've been perusing a few and I joined an astronomy forum for more knowledge and boy howdy, there's a lot to choose from... Although I'll never get something as sophisticated as the one that took this picture which is 1300 light years away....

VLT image of the cometary globule CG4


----------



## ekim68

Controllers now banking on Philae wake-up call



> The Philae probe made its historic touchdown on the 4km-wide "icy dirtball" 67P in November, but rapidly went silent when its battery ran flat.
> 
> High-resolution pictures of the surface of the comet acquired by the orbiting Rosetta satellite have failed to identify the lander's location.
> 
> Controllers say they will simply wait now for Philae itself to call home.
> 
> They will begin listening in a few weeks' time with the hope that communications could be established in the May/June timeframe.
> 
> This would be when improved lighting conditions at the probe's presumed resting place provide enough power to run the onboard radio transmitter.


----------



## ekim68

Flexible graphene-based LED clears the way for flexible displays



> Researchers from the University of Manchester and University of Sheffield have developed a new prototype semi-transparent, graphene-based LED device that could form the basis of flexible screens for use in the next-generation of mobile phones, tablets and televisions. The incredibly thin display was created using sandwiched "heterostructures", is only 10-40 atoms thick and emits a sheet of light across its entire surface.


----------



## ekim68

The strangest moon in the Solar System



> Saturn's Iapetus looks like nothing else we've ever seen. What made it so?


----------



## valis

fun read:

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-story-of-the-ultrasecret-a-12-oxcart-father-of-the-1684070908


----------



## ekim68

Weekend Diversion: the Moon as no one's seen it



> From here on Earth, even from up above our atmosphere in orbit around our planet, we could never image the entire surface of the Moon. This is because - like most moons in orbit around their parent worlds - the Moon is tidally locked to Earth, meaning that the "near side" always faces Earth.
> 
> This is why, no matter what the phase of the Moon is, the portion that you can see always looks exactly the same. Well, almost looks exactly the same!
> 
> Because the Moon is locked to Earth, it rotates a full 360° every time it revolves around the Earth: one lunar month, or about 29.53 days. But because it moves in an elliptical orbit about Earth, sometimes it's closer and moving faster in its orbit, and sometimes it's farther and moving slower.
> 
> With these effects combined, it means we get to see slightly more than 50% of the Moon over long enough periods of time: about 59% total, due to the phenomenon shown above: lunar libration.


----------



## valis

nice.....also, good read....


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Curiosity Rover Looks Like a Tiny Pimple on Mars' Surface



> Do you see it? That incredibly tiny dot in the center of that blue perimeter. That is NASA's $2.5 billion rover, steadily working away and analyzing the Martian soil.


----------



## ekim68

Phantom010 said:


> Wow, that's some article!


More on this: 

Meet the people who have volunteered to die on Mars



> Mars One, an interplanetary travel nonprofit, will soon select the next round of wannabe astronauts from the nearly 700 current finalists. While making a short movie about the competition for The Guardian, we at Stateless Media had a chance to speak to a few people vying for one of the coveted seats on a Mars One Spaceship. I learned the following: they are all really smart, incredibly brave, and a little bit crazy.


----------



## ekim68

Nice pictures...

New tool processes Cassini snaps to provide clearest-ever view of Titan



> A new technique has been developed to suppress the noise in radar images of Titan captured by Cassini. The snaps are usually grainy in appearance due to electronic noise, but the new tool pulls back the curtain, providing the clearest view yet of Saturn's largest moon.


----------



## DaveBurnett

If there IS intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe, we will never see it.

Think about it!


----------



## ekim68

Agreed, but we can sure take some cool pictures of a lot that's out there...:up:


----------



## ekim68

Collider hopes for a 'super' restart



> A senior researcher at the Large Hadron Collider says a new particle could be detected this year that is even more exciting than the Higgs boson.
> 
> The accelerator is due to come back online in March after an upgrade that has given it a big boost in energy.
> 
> This could force the first so-called supersymmetric particle to appear in the machine, with the most likely candidate being the gluino.
> 
> Its detection would give scientists direct pointers to "dark matter".


----------



## ekim68

Mysterious plumes erupt from Mars



> Amateur astronomers have spotted huge cloudlike plumes erupting from Mars - a phenomenon that scientists are at a loss to explain.
> 
> The bright flares, which have now died away, towered higher than anything else observed in the Martian atmosphere. Their tops reached some 150 miles in altitude, more than twice as high as the highest Martian clouds, and they sprawled across 300 to 600 miles, researchers report in this week's Nature, a science journal.


----------



## brettmurray

When I showed this to my friend, he thought it wasn't real. 
I dont bust dat CGI Ting


----------



## ekim68

CometWatch 14 February  flyby special



> On Saturday, Rosetta passed within just 6 km of the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in the first dedicated close flyby of the mission. The closest approach took place at 12:41 UT over the Imhotep region on the comets large lobe.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble gets best view of a circumstellar debris disk distorted by a planet



> Astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to take the most detailed picture to date of a large, edge-on, gas-and-dust disk encircling the 20-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris. The new image traces the disk in closer to the star to within about 650 million miles of the star.


----------



## ekim68

Cool stuff....

Lunar Surface Flown Apollo 11 Artifacts
From the Neil Armstrong Estate
on loan to the
Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C.



> After Neil Armstrong's death (25 August 2012), his widow, Carol, discovered a white, (beta)cloth bag in a closet, containing what were obviously either flight or space related artifacts. She contacted Allan Needell, curator of the Apollo collection at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, and provided photographs of the items. Needell, who immediately realized that the bag - known to the astronauts as the Purse - and its contents could be hardware from the Apollo 11 mission, asked the authors for support in identifying and documenting the flight history and purpose of these artifacts. After some research it became apparent that the purse and its contents were lunar surface equipment carried in the Lunar Module Eagle during the epic journey of Apollo 11.


----------



## ekim68

11 Incredible Stephen Hawking Quotes



> When Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at age 21, doctors thought he'd only survive a few more years. But the theoretical physicist defied the odds: Hawking is now 73, and last night, actor Eddie Redmayne took home the Best Actor Oscar for portraying the scientist and professor in The Theory of Everything. Here are 11 quotes from the Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge and author of A Brief History of Time.


----------



## ekim68

A Software Fix.....:up:

Curiosity pioneers new drilling technique on Mars



> Curiosity's next few tastes of the mountain it is drilling into at Mars will use a new "low percussion" drilling technique to better preserve the underlying rock.
> 
> The NASA rover, which has been exploring Gale Crater since August 2012, tested out the new procedures on a sample known as Mojave 2. Mission managers noted that layered rocks such as this one appear quite fragile in the pictures, leading to ideas on how best to take samples without breaking them.


----------



## ekim68

Stephen Hawking Says Humanity Won't Survive Without Leaving Earth



> If humanity is to survive long-term, it must find a way to get off planet Earth -- and fast, according to famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.
> 
> In fact, human beings may have less than 200 years to figure out how to escape our planet, Hawking said in a recent interview with video site Big Think. Otherwise our species could be at risk for extinction, he said.


----------



## ekim68

Astroquizzical: What happens when Betelgeuse explodes?



> If Betelgeuse were to go supernova right now - as in, if you could break physics and travel to the star instantaneously to check on it - you're absolutely correct to think that it would take us quite a while to notice. Betelgeuse is about 600 light years away from our solar system, so the light traveling from Betelgeuse has about 600 years of travel before it will reach us. If the star had physically exploded in 2015, we wouldn't spot the light from that explosion until 2615. We're constantly observing this star (and pretty much everything in the Universe) as it was, a significant period of time ago. This is also why astronomers say that in studying the night sky, we study the past. The more distant the object, the further in the past we observe. 600 light years, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty close; we're still dealing with our local neighborhood inside our own galaxy.


----------



## ekim68

NASA study looks to the ionosphere to improve GPS communications



> A new NASA study focusing on irregularities in Earth's upper atmosphere may help scientists overcome disruptions in GPS communication. The findings provide an insight into the causes of the disruptive regions, and represent the first time that such observations have been made from space.
> 
> The ionosphere is a barrier of charged ions and electrons, collectively known as plasma, produced by a combination of impacting particles and solar radiation. When signals pass through the barrier, they sometimes come into contact with irregularities that distort the signal, leading to less accurate data.





> The study surmised that the variation between the two regions can be attributed to outside factors, with the auroral regions being exposed to energetic particles from the magnetosphere, while the polar cap region is affected by solar wind particles and electric fields in interplanetary space. This is important information in understanding and mitigating the effects of the irregularities.


----------



## ekim68

Monster black hole discovered at cosmic dawn



> Scientists have discovered the brightest quasar in the early universe, powered by the most massive black hole yet known at that time. The international team led by astronomers from Peking University in China and from the University of Arizona announce their findings in the scientific journal Nature on Feb. 26.
> 
> The discovery of this quasar, named SDSS J0100+2802, marks an important step in understanding how quasars, the most powerful objects in the universe, have evolved from the earliest epoch, only 900 million years after the Big Bang, which is thought to have happened 13.7 billion years ago. The quasar, with its central black hole mass of 12 billion solar masses and the luminosity of 420 trillion suns, is at a distance of 12.8 billion light-years from Earth.


----------



## ekim68

NASA missions may re-elevate Pluto and Ceres from dwarf planets to full-on planet status



> Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, and NASA's Dawn spacecraft will arrive at this dwarf planet on March 6, 2015.
> 
> Pluto is the largest object in the Kuiper belt, and NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will arrive at this dwarf planet on July 15, 2015.
> 
> Launch of NASA's Dawn spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, September 27, 2007. Get ready, Ceres! NASA
> 
> These two events will make 2015 an exciting year for solar system exploration and discovery. But there is much more to this story than mere science. I expect 2015 will be the year when general consensus, built upon our new knowledge of these two objects, will return Pluto and add Ceres to our family of solar system planets.


----------



## ekim68

Researcher shows that black holes do not exist



> Black holes have long captured the public imagination and been the subject of popular culture, from Star Trek to Hollywood. They are the ultimate unknown - the blackest and most dense objects in the universe that do not even let light escape. And as if they weren't bizarre enough to begin with, now add this to the mix: they don't exist.
> 
> By merging two seemingly conflicting theories, Laura Mersini-Houghton, a physics professor at UNC-Chapel Hill in the College of Arts and Sciences, has proven, mathematically, that black holes can never come into being in the first place. The work not only forces scientists to reimagine the fabric of space-time, but also rethink the origins of the universe.


(Sounds like another Theory to me, after all, didn't Einstein use Mathematics in his Theory of Gravity?)


----------



## ekim68

An Old-looking Galaxy in a Young Universe



> A team of astronomers, led by Darach Watson from the University of Copenhagen, used the Very Large Telescope's X-shooter instrument along with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe one of the youngest and most remote galaxies ever found. They were surprised to discover a far more evolved system than expected. It had a fraction of dust similar to a very mature galaxy, such as the Milky Way. Such dust is vital to life, because it helps form planets, complex molecules and normal stars.


----------



## ekim68

A long but very good read....Seems the more sensitive the instruments are made, the more we can See....:up:

Physicists gear up to catch a gravitational wave



> Einstein himself predicted the existence of such gravitational waves nearly a century ago. But only now is the quest to detect them coming to a culmination. The device in Livingston and its twin in Hanford, Washington, ran from 2002 to 2010 and saw nothing. But those Initial LIGO instruments aimed only to prove that the experiment was technologically feasible, physicists say. Now, they're finishing a $205 million rebuild of the detectors, known as Advanced LIGO, which should make them 10 times more sensitive and, they say, virtually ensure a detection. "It's as close to a guarantee as one gets in life," says Peter Saulson, a physicist at Syracuse University in New York, who works on LIGO.





> IN 1915, Einstein explained that gravity arises when mass and energy warp space and time, or spacetime. A year later, he predicted that massive objects undergoing the right kind of oscillating motion should emit ripples in spacetime-gravitational waves that zip along at light speed.


----------



## ekim68

Here's what you can look forward to in the next ten years of space exploration



> We're about to enter one of the most exciting eras in the history of space exploration. From private spaceflight to journeys into the outer Solar System, find out what missions will be of most interest in the next ten years in our extensive (but not exhaustive) timeline below. Bear in mind that space is an unpredictable business, so all of these dates are subject to change.


----------



## ekim68

Nasa's Dawn probe achieves orbit around Ceres



> The US space agency's Dawn probe has gone into orbit around Ceres, the largest object in the Solar System between Mars and Jupiter.
> 
> A signal from the satellite confirming its status was received by ground stations at 13:36 GMT.
> 
> Ceres is the first of the dwarf planets to be visited by a spacecraft.
> 
> Scientists hope to glean information from the object that can tell them about the Solar System's beginnings, four and a half billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Fastest star in our galaxy propelled by a thermonuclear supernova



> A team of astronomers, including UH Mānoa astronomer Eugene Magnier, used the 10-meter Keck II and Pan-STARRS1 telescopes in Hawaiʻi to find a star that breaks the galactic speed record. It travels at about 1,200 kilometers per second (about 2.7 million mph), a speed that will enable the star to escape from our Milky Way galaxy.
> 
> "At that speed, you could travel from Earth to the moon in 5 minutes," Magnier commented.
> 
> The team showed that, unlike the half-dozen other known escaping stars, this compact star was ejected from an extremely tight binary by a thermonuclear supernova explosion.


----------



## ekim68

The Milky Way May Be 50 Percent Bigger Than Thought



> A ring-like filament of stars wrapping around the Milky Way may actually belong to the galaxy itself, rippling above and below the relatively flat galactic plane. If so, that would expand the size of the known galaxy by 50 percent and raise intriguing questions about what caused the waves of stars.
> 
> Scientists used data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to reanalyze the brightness and distance of stars at the edge of the galaxy. They found that the fringe of the disk is puckered into ridges and grooves of stars, like corrugated cardboard.


----------



## ekim68

Huge ocean confirmed underneath solar system's largest moon



> The solar system's largest moon, Ganymede, in orbit around Jupiter, harbors an underground ocean containing more water than all the oceans on Earth. Scientists were already fairly confident in the ocean's existence, based on the moon's smooth icy surface-evidence of past resurfacing by the ocean-and other observations by the Galileo spacecraft, which made a handful of flybys in the 1990s. But new observations by the Hubble Space Telescope, published online today in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, remove any remaining doubt.


----------



## ekim68

3D Printer for Small Molecules Opens Access to Customized Chemistry



> Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists have simplified the chemical synthesis of small molecules, eliminating a major bottleneck that limits the exploration of a class of compounds offering tremendous potential for medicine and technology.
> 
> Scientists led by Martin Burke, an HHMI early career scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, used a single automated process to synthesize 14 distinct classes of small molecules from a common set of building blocks. Burke's team envisions expanding the approach to enable the production of thousands of potentially useful molecules with a single machine, which they describe as a "3D printer" for small molecules. Their work is described in the March 13, 2015, issue of the journal Science.


----------



## ekim68

How we're still, only now, just discovering the closest stars to Earth.



> When we look up at the night sky from a dark location here on Earth, if the Moon isn't out, somewhere around 6,000 stars (or possibly even more) will greet your eyes on a clear night.
> 
> This is just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars that actually make up our galaxy, which makes sense, if you think about it. Considering how large our galaxy is and how vast the distances between the stars is, it makes sense that only a small, select few of these would be visible from our location. And while this is true, you'd probably think that the stars we can see are pretty representative of the closest stars to us. But the story is actually much richer than that.
> 
> It won't surprise you that all stars aren't created equal, but it might surprise you just how unequal these stars are when compared to one another.





> In other words, the stars you see are a combination of stars that are relatively close to us, but moreso stars that are very bright intrinsically. *In fact, of the ten nearest star systems to us, only two of them are visible to the naked eye!*


----------



## ekim68

Kim Stanley Robinson Says Colonizing Mars Won't Be As Easy As He Thought



> Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy filled us all with hope that we could terraform Mars in the 21st century, with its plausible description of terraforming processes. But now, in the face of what we've learned about Mars in the past 20 years, he no longer thinks it'll be that easy.


----------



## ekim68

MESSENGER's Latest Shots Of Mercury Are Some Of The Best We've Seen



> After four years in orbit around Mercury, NASA's MESSENGER mission is sadly coming to an end. But before it plunges to its doom, mission controllers are taking full advantage of the spacecraft's close proximity to the surface. Here are some of the most detailed and vivid images ever taken of the Solar System's innermost planet.


----------



## ekim68

Powerful Solar Storm Rips into Earth's Magnetic Field



> The most powerful solar storm of the current solar cycle is currently reverberating around the globe.
> 
> Initially triggered by the impact of a coronal mass ejection (CME) hitting our planet's magnetosphere, a relatively mild geomagnetic storm erupted at around 04:30 UT (12:30 a.m. EDT), but it has since ramped-up to an impressive G4-class geomagnetic storm, priming high latitudes for some bright auroral displays.


----------



## ekim68

Is Titan submarine the most daring space mission yet?



> Dropping a robotic lander on to the surface of a comet was arguably one of the most audacious space achievements of recent times.
> 
> But one concept mission being studied by the US space agency could top even that.
> 
> Scientists are proposing to send a robot submarine to the oily seas of Saturn's moon Titan. The seas are filled not with water, but with hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.
> 
> These compounds exist in their liquid state on the moon, where the temperature averages -180C.


----------



## ekim68

Total Eclipse of the Sun on March 20, 2015



> There will be a total eclipse of the Sun on March 20, 2015. The eclipse path travels up through the North Atlantic Ocean away from North America. The only two land masses to where you can stand on solid ground to watch totality are Faeroe Island and Svalbard which is a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean.


----------



## ekim68

Rosetta Spacecraft Makes Nitrogen Discovery on Comet



> A peculiar mix of molecular nitrogen on the comet target of Europe's Rosetta spacecraft may offer clues to the conditions that gave birth to the entire solar system.
> 
> Molecular nitrogen was one of the key ingredients of the young solar system. Its detection in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which Rosetta is currently orbiting, suggests that the comet formed under low-temperature conditions (a requirement to keeping nitrogen as ice), according to officials with the European Space Agency.
> 
> Since nitrogen is also found in planets and moons in the outer solar system, Rosetta's discovery implies that 67P's family of comets formed in the same area, ESA said.


----------



## ekim68

Dark matter even darker than once thought



> Astronomers using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have studied how dark matter in clusters of galaxies behaves when the clusters collide. The results, published in the journal Science on 27 March 2015, show that dark matter interacts with itself even less than previously thought, and narrows down the options for what this mysterious substance might be.
> 
> Dark matter is a giant question mark looming over our knowledge of the Universe. There is more dark matter in the Universe than visible matter, but it is extremely elusive; it does not reflect, absorb or emit light, making it invisible. Because of this, it is only known to exist via its gravitational effects on the visible Universe.


----------



## ekim68

Astronaut Kelly launches on record-setting trip



> Imagine being given a year to float free of gravity, to gaze down at Earth and its changing seasons, to observe the heavens from space as few ever have.
> 
> But during that time you cannot to take a breath of fresh air, hug a loved one or hear the sound of falling rain. And you are confined to the office that affords those spectacular views.
> 
> NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will attempt to balance those realities during a nearly year-long mission aboard the International Space Station. They blasted off at 3:42 p.m. ET Friday in a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.


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## valis

Watched it on io9, jesus....a year.....i cant even think of that.....


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## ekim68

Nope for me too...It's easy to read about living life in Space, but then a little bit of reality sets in and besides, I'm kind of Claustrophobic and Height-a-phobic....


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## valis

Oh, no Mike. I'd happily pay to go. Very happily. The part I was thinking about was their readjustment to gravity. A year with no flavor, no sinuses, and losing bone mass? THEN back to gravity?

Nope.

Odd, though....i am pretty tall, and am not claustrophobic. I am open water phobic though.....was a pain doing the cruise. Slept one night of six.


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## valis

This is pretty neat.

http://gizmodo.com/an-alien-radio-b...erylvis#_ga=1.107392258.1044335529.1418389051


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## ekim68

When I was a youngster, I grew up with the knowledge that Saturn had a dozen moons. Thanks to Astronomy techniques nowadays, however, that number has grown to 53...

About Saturn & Its Moons


----------



## ekim68

Years after shutting down, U.S. atom smasher reveals properties of 'God particle'



> In a scientific ghost story, a U.S. atom smasher has made an important scientific contribution 3.5 years after it shut down. Scientists are reporting that the Tevatron collider in Batavia, Illinois, has provided new details about the nature of the famed Higgs boson-the particle that's key to physicists' explanation of how other fundamental particles get their mass and the piece in a theory called the standard model. The new result bolsters the case that the Higgs, which was discovered at a different atom smasher, exactly fits the standard model predictions.
> 
> "This is a very interesting and important paper, because it's a different mechanism" for probing the Higgs's properties, says John Ellis, a theorist at King's College London and CERN who was not involved in the work. "This is the swan song" for the Tevatron, he says.


----------



## ekim68

The Solar System and Beyond is Awash in Water 



> As NASA missions explore our solar system and search for new worlds, they are finding water in surprising places. Water is but one piece of our search for habitable planets and life beyond Earth, yet it links many seemingly unrelated worlds in surprising ways.





> The chemical elements in water, hydrogen and oxygen, are some of the most abundant elements in the universe. Astronomers see the signature of water in giant molecular clouds between the stars, in disks of material that represent newborn planetary systems, and in the atmospheres of giant planets orbiting other stars.


----------



## ekim68

How Big Is The Milky Way?



> The Milky Way is our home galaxy, the spot where the Earth resides. We are not anywhere near the center - NASA says we're roughly 165 quadrillion miles from the galaxy's black hole, for example - which demonstrates just how darn big the galaxy is. So how big is it, and how does it measure up with other neighborhood residents?
> 
> The numbers are pretty astounding. NASA estimates the galaxy at 100,000 light-years across. Since one light year is about 9.5 x 1012km, so the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy is about 9.5 x 1017 km in diameter. The thickness of the galaxy ranges depending on how close you are to the center, but it's tens of thousands of light-years across.


----------



## ekim68

Exoplanet HD 189733b 



> This graphic depicts HD 189733b, the first exoplanet caught passing in front of its parent star in X-rays. As described in our press release , NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM Newton Observatory have been used to observe a dip in X-ray intensity as HD 189733b transits its parent star.
> 
> The main figure is an artist's impression showing the HD 189733 system, containing a Sun-like star orbited by HD 189733b, an exoplanet about the size of Jupiter. This "hot Jupiter" is over 30 times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun and goes around the star once every 2.2 days, as determined from previous observations. Also in the illustration is a faint red companion star, which was detected for the first time in X-rays with these observations. This star orbits the main star about once every 3,200 years.


----------



## ekim68

The International Space Station (finally!) gets an espresso machine



> NASA this week will be send its first espresso making machine into space letting astronauts onboard the International Space Station brew coffee, tea or other hot beverages for those long space days.


----------



## hewee

ekim68 said:


> The International Space Station (finally!) gets an espresso machine


Now I know they love this. Cheers:up:


----------



## ekim68

First Signs of Self-interacting Dark Matter?



> Using the MUSE instrument on ESO's VLT in Chile, along with images from Hubble in orbit, a team of astronomers studied the simultaneous collision of four galaxies in the galaxy cluster Abell 3827. The team could trace out where the mass lies within the system and compare the distribution of the dark matter with the positions of the luminous galaxies.
> 
> Although dark matter cannot be seen, the team could deduce its location using a technique called gravitational lensing. The collision happened to take place directly in front of a much more distant, unrelated source. The mass of dark matter around the colliding galaxies severely distorted spacetime, deviating the path of light rays coming from the distant background galaxy - and distorting its image into characteristic arc shapes.


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## ekim68

valis said:


> Odd, though....i am pretty tall, and am not claustrophobic. I am open water phobic though.....was a pain doing the cruise. Slept one night of six.


Oh I missed this....I was in the Navy back in the Day, remind me to tell you some of the stories...


----------



## ekim68

Enceladus Spreads Ghostly Ice Tendrils Around Saturn



> A ghostly apparition has long been known to follow Saturn moon Enceladus in its orbit around the gas giant. But until now, scientists have had a hard time tracking its source.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Probe to Crash Into Mercury in 2 Weeks



> NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft is in the final days of an unprecedented and unexpectedly long-lived, close-up study of the innermost planet of the solar system, with a crashing finale expected in two weeks.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Oh I missed this....I was in the Navy back in the Day, remind me to tell you some of the stories...


would love to hear them, my friend. Pop was a squid as well.


----------



## ekim68

Lasers could be used to zap orbital debris



> Orbital debris is increasingly becoming a hazard to satellites and other spacecraft, which is why various groups have proposed concepts such as gas clouds, nets and sails for collecting it. While those approaches could capture larger objects, the problem of smaller pieces of debris - which whiz around the Earth like bullets - would remain. That's why an international group of scientists is developing a system that could shoot those bits down with a laser.
> 
> The space-based system would consist of two main components: a super-wide field-of-view telescope developed by the EUSO team at Japan's Riken research institute, and a highly-efficient fiber optic-based laser.
> 
> The telescope was originally developed to detect ultraviolet light emitted produced by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays entering the Earth's atmosphere at night. EUSO's Toshikazu Ebisuzaki, who is leading the project, realized that it could also be adapted to detect high-velocity debris fragments at twilight.


----------



## ekim68

Mysterious 'Cold Spot': Fingerprint of Largest Structure in the Universe?



> When the Cold Spot was first revealed by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), astronomers quickly realized that the feature, if real, would be the largest structure ever seen in the cosmos. But with just one space telescope providing the measurements, there was always the concern that something mundane - like instrumental error - could be to blame.
> 
> Then the European Planck telescope, that was also launched to measure slight temperature variations in the CMB (known as anisotropies), also saw the Cold Spot. Despite some theories that the feature may actually be an error caused by our statistical analysis methods, it was generally thought that the Cold Spot was real.


----------



## ekim68

Rosetta Watches Comet Erupt With a Dusty Surprise



> On March 12, the Rosetta spacecraft was imaging Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from a distance of 75 kilometers (46 miles) and by pure chance it spotted an eruption of dusty material from the shaded nucleus.
> 
> Long-duration spacecraft are essential if we are to fully understand the evolution of a comet as it gradually heats up during its approach to the sun. And it just so happens that Rosetta is always in orbit around 67P's nucleus, ready to spot any transient event that could erupt at any time on the surface.


----------



## ekim68

Pulsing light may indicate supermassive black hole merger



> As two galaxies enter the final stages of merging, scientists have theorized that the galaxies' supermassive black holes will form a "binary," or two black holes in such close orbit they are gravitationally bound to one another. In a new study, astronomers at the University of Maryland present direct evidence of a pulsing quasar, which may substantiate the existence of black hole binaries.
> 
> "We believe we have observed two supermassive black holes in closer proximity than ever before," said Suvi Gezari, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland and a co-author of the study. "This pair of black holes may be so close together that they are emitting gravitational waves, which were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity."


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Space Telescope Celebrates 25 Years of Unveiling the Universe

As of tomorrow it will be 25 years since the Hubble was put into Space......


----------



## ekim68

Hubble spies a stellar mystery



> Astronomers have discovered a mysterious stellar outburst that appears to defy classification.
> 
> The exploding star, which was seen in the constellation Eridanus, faded over two weeks - much too rapidly to qualify as a supernova. The outburst was also about ten times fainter than most supernovae, explosions that destroy some or all of a star. But it was about 100 times brighter than an ordinary nova, which is a type of surface explosion that leaves a star intact.


----------



## ekim68

A bit more from the Hubble Telescope...

Hubble Images


----------



## ekim68

Tiny and Speedy: 'Homeless' Galaxies Ejected From Clusters



> Like stars that can be ejected from galaxies, resigned to an eternity floating through the darkness of intergalactic space, astronomers have discovered entire galaxies - 11 in total - that underwent some unpleasant gravitational turbulence and flung from their home clusters, marooned in intercluster space.
> 
> "These galaxies are facing a lonely future, exiled from the galaxy clusters they used to live in," said Igor Chilingarian, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Moscow State University.


----------



## valis

happy birthday, A12.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/th...rst-flew-53-years-ag-1700261411/+nicoleconlan


----------



## ekim68

Rosetta Captures Stunning New Images of Comets Surface and Activity



> What happens when you make a low-level flyby of a cometary nucleus?
> 
> You get jaw-dropping images.


----------



## valis

good lord, that is amazing.....


----------



## ekim68

Russian Spacecraft Spinning Out of Control in Orbit, with Salvage Bid Underway



> Update for April 29: Russia's space agency has confirmed that Progress 59 is falling from space and will burn up in Earth's atmosphere. Read the full story: Doomed Russian Space Station Cargo Ship Will Fall Back to Earth Soon
> 
> The Russian space agency Roscosmos is scrambling to regain control of a robotic Progress 59 cargo ship that appears to have suffered a serious malfunction shortly after launching into orbit early today (April 28).
> 
> Video from the Progress 59 spacecraft showed it in a dizzying spin, with the Earth and sun rapidly coming into and then out of frame.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Probe Spies Possible Polar Ice Cap on Pluto



> As NASA's New Horizon's spacecraft rapidly approaches Pluto for its historic flyby in July, the dwarf planet is gradually sliding into focus. And in the latest series of observations beamed back from the fringes of the Kuiper belt, surface features are becoming evident including the stunning revelation that Pluto may possess a polar ice cap.


----------



## ekim68

NASA: New "impossible" engine works, could change space travel forever



> Until yesterday, every physicist was laughing at this engine and its inventor, Roger Shawyer. It's called the EmDrive and everyone said it was impossible because it goes against classical mechanics. But the fact is that the quantum vacuum plasma thruster works and scientists can't explain why.
> 
> Shawyer's engine is extremely light and simple. It provides a thrust by "bouncing microwaves around in a closed container." The microwaves are generated using electricity that can be provided by solar energy. No propellant is necessary, which means that this thrusters can work forever unless a hardware failure occurs. If real, this would be a major breakthrough in space propulsion technology.


----------



## ekim68

High School Scientist Discovers Pulsar With Widest Orbit Ever Detected



> A team of high school students analyzed data from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and discovered a never-before-seen pulsar which has the widest orbit of any around a neutron star - one among only a handful of double neutron star systems.
> 
> Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, the superdense remains of massive stars that have exploded as supernovas. As a pulsar spins, lighthouse-like beams of radio waves, streaming from the poles of its powerful magnetic field, sweep through space.


----------



## valis

oh wow, that's awesome........and it was American HS students. May be hope yet.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX to test passenger spaceship escape system



> Sen-Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) will put a prototype passenger Dragon spaceship through its first test flight Wednesday, demonstrating how it can catapult itself to safety in case of a fire or accident during launch.
> 
> "It is similar to an ejection seat for a fighter pilot, but instead of ejecting the pilot out of the spacecraft, the entire spacecraft is 'ejected' away from the launch vehicle," SpaceX said in a statement.
> 
> Outfitted with 270 sensors, the 20ft tall Dragon capsule will fire its eight SuperDraco thrusters to lift itself off from a simulated rocket stage at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.


----------



## ekim68

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Logs Sol 4000, Digs Spirit of St. Louis Crater



> After investigating some flat, light and dark toned rocks around Spirit of St. Louis Crater in April, Opportunity chalked up another milestone achievement for the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission - the 4000th sol or Martian day of surface operations - then did what she does best. By month's end, the robot field geologist was closing in on Lindbergh Mound, the strange rockpile near the small crater's rim.





> It has been written many times in these pages, and it begs repeating: this rover was sent on a 90-day expedition, with the mission success mobility objective of driving 600 meters. In March, Opportunity completed 42.195 kilometers or 26.2 miles. It's the first marathon "run" on another planet. And in April - the 4000th sol. "This rover just keeps giving and giving," said Planetary Society President Jim Bell, professor of astronomy and planetary scientist at Arizona State University and lead scientist on the MERs' panoramic cameras (Pancams).


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers Set a New Galaxy Distance Record



> An international team of astronomers, led by Yale University and the University of California scientists, pushed back the cosmic frontier of galaxy exploration to a time when the universe was only 5 percent of its present age of 13.8 billion years. The team discovered an exceptionally luminous galaxy more than 13 billion years in the past and determined its exact distance from Earth using the combined data from NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and the Keck I 10-meter telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. These observations confirmed it to be the most distant galaxy currently measured, setting a new record. The galaxy existed so long ago, it appears to be only about 100 million years old.


----------



## ekim68

Electron microscopes close to imaging individual atoms



> Today's digital photos are far more vivid than just a few years ago, thanks to a steady stream of advances in optics, detectors, and software. Similar advances have also improved the ability of machines called cryo-electron microscopes (cryo-EMs) to see the Lilliputian world of atoms and molecules. Now, researchers report that they've created the highest ever resolution cryo-EM image, revealing a druglike molecule bound to its protein target at near atomic resolution. The resolution is so sharp that it rivals images produced by x-ray crystallography, long the gold standard for mapping the atomic contours of proteins. This newfound success is likely to dramatically help drugmakers design novel medicines for a wide variety of conditions.


----------



## ekim68

Millions of missing galaxies found hiding in plain sight



> Millions of ancient galaxies thought to be all but extinct today seem to have been hiding in plain sight, concealed by discs of stars stolen from other galaxies. Even our own Milky Way may be hiding one in its centre.


----------



## ekim68

Carl Sagan's solar sail spacecraft is finally getting a real-world test



> The Planetary Society is preparing to test a spacecraft proposed by legendary astronomer (and founder of the Planetary Society) Carl Sagan. The vessel is called LightSail, and as you might expect, it uses a light sail for propulsion. The fascinating design has been successfully tested on Earth, but now it's going to be launched to the upper atmosphere to test the deployment of its huge mylar sails in flight.


----------



## ekim68

Powerful New Radio Telescope Array Searches the Entire Sky 24/7 



> A new radio telescope array developed by a consortium led by Caltech and now operating at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory has the ability to image simultaneously the entire sky at radio wavelengths with unmatched speed, helping astronomers to search for objects and phenomena that pulse, flicker, flare, or explode.


----------



## ekim68

Ceres RC3 Animation


----------



## ekim68

Against all odds: Astronomers baffled by discovery of rare quasar quartet



> A team of astronomers including J. Xavier Prochaska, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, has discovered the first known quasar quartet: four quasars, each one a rare object in its own right, in close physical proximity to each other. The quartet resides in one of the most massive structures ever discovered in the distant universe (a "proto-cluster" of galaxies) and is surrounded by a giant nebula of cool dense gas.


----------



## ekim68

Venus Plane Pushed for Next NASA Next Frontiers Mission



> WASHINGTON - Northrop Grumman is developing an inflatable, propeller-powered aircraft for a years-long cruise in the sulfurous skies of Venus and is gearing up to enter the concept in NASA's next New Frontiers planetary science competition.
> 
> That Northrop believes its Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform, or VAMP, could be ready to compete for about $1 billion in NASA funding as soon as Oct. 1 is a testament to the company's confidence in the concept, which despite arousing the intrigue of some Venus scientists is technically immature and likely to face competition from finalists of NASA's last New Frontiers contest.


----------



## ekim68

Robotic Space Plane Launches in Mystery Mission This Week



> The United States Air Force's mysterious X-37B space plane will head to orbit this week for the fourth time.
> 
> The unmanned X-37B spacecraft is scheduled to launch Wednesday (May 20) at 10:45 a.m. EDT (1445 GMT) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The liftoff will begin the reusable space plane's fourth mission, which is known as OTV-4 (short for Orbital Test Vehicle-4).


----------



## ekim68

Cool stuff....

Pale Blue Dot


----------



## ekim68

Planetary Society's LightSail to make first test flight in May



> Though we tend to think of private spaceflight as being in the SpaceX league, it also includes many smaller-scale efforts. For example, the non-profit Planetary Society has announced that its LightSail spacecraft will make its first test flight in May. The solar-propelled CubeSat will lift off as a piggyback cargo atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
> 
> The LightSail consists of a CubeSat about the size of a loaf of bread, which was designed by Stellar Exploration in San Luis Obispo, California. Set around its rectangular electronics package, its propulsion system is a square of reflexive mylar plastic that deploys along four four-meter (13-ft) booms.
> 
> Once deployed the plastic will catch the pressure from sunlight to push the spacecraft along in what is called solar sailing. The term is apt because the principle is exactly the same as with nautical sailing, with the same maneuvers of tacking, luffing and running before the "wind." The hard part is coming up with a design that is light enough to be pushed by sunlight, yet can maintain its shape without collapsing.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists discover brightest galaxy in the universe



> LEICESTER, England, May 21 (UPI) -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, one of the agency's post powerful space telescopes, has located the most luminous galaxy to date -- emitting 300 trillion suns worth of infrared red light.
> 
> The galaxy, named WISE J224607.57-052635.0, belongs to a newly defined class of galaxies known as extremely luminous infrared galaxies, or ELIRGs. WISE was also responsible for helping astronomers find new types of extra-bright star clusters.
> 
> Researchers believe an especially hungry supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy is likely responsible for the galaxy's impressive luminosity. As the black hole swallows the surrounding gas, it emits visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. Dust clouds absorb that light, and as they do, they heat up and give off infrared light.


----------



## ekim68

The Largest Eruption In The Known Universe



> At the core of almost every galaxy is a supermassive black hole, with the largest ones of all residing at the cores of huge galaxy clusters. But 2.6 billion light years away, at the heart of galaxy cluster MS 0735.6+7421, the most powerful active galactic nucleus (AGN) ever discovered resides. Normally powered by matter accreting onto a supermassive black hole and being (very messily) devoured, these cosmic monstrosities can emit many supernovaes worth of energy per year, over the span of millions of years.
> 
> But this eruption is special, having been going on for hundreds of millions of years, due to the size of the eruption thats many millions of light years across. If it were caused by accreting matter, it would have had to accrete nearly a billion solar masses worth of material. The combined radio (VLA), visible (Hubble) and X-ray (Chandra) data suggest another interpretation: an ultramassive black hole in excess of 10^10 solar masses powers the outburst. The two 640,000 light year cavities  seen in the X-ray  offer support for this idea.


----------



## ekim68

Two Southwest Research Institute Instruments Selected for NASA Europa Mission



> Two Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) instruments have been selected for a NASA mission to Europa, which will launch in the 2020s to study this large, potentially habitable Jovian moon. The MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX) and Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) were selected from 33 candidate instruments for the yet-to-be named mission.
> 
> NASA selected nine science instruments to explore Europa, Jupiters fourth-largest moon. In the 1990s, NASAs Galileo mission yielded strong evidence that Europa, about the size of Earths moon, has a liquid ocean beneath an icy crust of unknown thickness. If proven to exist, this global ocean would have at least twice as much water as Earth.


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> Here you go Phantom....A very long but good read on the realities of Mars One....
> 
> All dressed up for Mars and nowhere to go


More on this:

How You'll Die On Mars



> We're on our way to Mars. NASA has a plan to land astronauts on its surface by the 2030s. Private spaceflight companies like SpaceX have also expressed interest in starting their own colonies there, while the infamous Mars One project has already enlisted civilians for a one-way trip to our planetary neighbor in 2020.
> 
> While many may dream of living their remaining days on Mars, those days may be numbered. The Martian environment poses significant challenges to Earth life, and establishing a Mars habitat will require an extraordinary amount of engineering prowess and technological knowhow to ensure the safety of its residents.


----------



## ekim68

An Inside Look at the Construction of NASA's Next Mission to Mars



> Preparations for NASAs next mission to Mars are kicking into high gear. And the technology the space agency is building for the Martian lander slated to launch in 2016 is enough to make science fiction fans foam at the mouth.


----------



## ekim68

A Bubbly Cosmic Celebration



> In the brightest region of this glowing nebula called RCW 34, gas is heated dramatically by young stars and expands through the surrounding cooler gas. Once the heated hydrogen reaches the borders of the gas cloud, it bursts outwards into the vacuum like the contents of an uncorked champagne bottle  this process is referred to as champagne flow. But the young star-forming region RCW 34 has more to offer than a few bubbles; there seem to have been multiple episodes of star formation within the same cloud.


----------



## ekim68

Cosmic cinema: astronomers make real-time, 3D movies of plasma tubes drifting overhead



> By creatively using a radio telescope to see in 3D, astronomers have detected the existence of tubular plasma structures in the inner layers of the magnetosphere surrounding the Earth.
> 
> "For over 60 years, scientists believed these structures existed but by imaging them for the first time, we've provided visual evidence that they are really there," said Cleo Loi of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) and School of Physics at the University of Sydney.


----------



## ekim68

This Is What The Aurorae Look Like On Mars



> The aurorae here on Earth are a pretty impressive sight to behold, but, just like Earth, it turns out that Mars also has aurorae visible to the naked eye  with one pretty startling difference.


----------



## ekim68

Mystery Moon Swirls Caused by Blasts of Comet Gas?



> This NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter observation shows the vast swirls of Reiner Gamma in the Oceanus Procellarum region of the moon, to the west of the crater Reiner. Scientists have long pondered the origin of these swirl patters and others like them and new computer simulations point to cometary impacts being a possible cause.


----------



## ekim68

NASA takes a stroll through 50 years of spacewalk history



> NASA has marked half a century of spacewalks by rolling out a catalog of breathtaking photos taken across decades of extravehicular activity. June 3 marks 50 years to the day that Edward H. White II stepped out into the emptiness of space in 1965, blazing a trail for generations of NASA astronauts to follow.


----------



## ekim68

All systems go for construction of world's largest optical telescope



> The construction of the largest optical telescope ever built has moved one step closer today, with US$500 million in funding now committed from 11 international partners. Set to be the world's biggest and most powerful, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) is constructed from seven huge mirrors that will span a total of 25.4-meters (82 ft), bringing in six times more light than any other large telescope. It is also claimed that the instrument will be able to resolve images up to ten times more clearly than the space-based Hubble telescope.
> 
> Set to sit high atop a hillside in Chile at the current site of the Las Campanas Observatory above the Atacama desert, the remote location and haze and light pollution free skies will allow the GMT the best chance to employ its incredible imaging capabilities.


----------



## ekim68

Diamond star thrills astronomers 



> Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered.
> 
> The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
> 
> It's the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk.
> 
> Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.


----------



## ekim68

Pittsburghs Astrobotic signs Mexican Space Agency for trip to the moon



> Astrobotic, the Strip District-based lunar logistics company, has signed up as a payload customer the first of what it hopes will be many future international space agency clients.
> 
> After several months of negotiation, the Mexican Space Agency - that countrys version of NASA  signed a deal to have Astrobotic take an undetermined payload to the moon, said Astrobotic CEO John Thornton.
> 
> They want to be the first Latin American country to land on the moon and operate a payload, Mr. Thornton said. And with us they can do it for a fraction of the cost compared to trying to do it alone.
> 
> Signing Mexico up as a customer also moves Astrobotic one step closer to having enough paying customers to win it the now-8-year-old Google Lunar XPrize it has been pursuing since it was created.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Probe Reveals More Detail in Pluto's Complex Surface



> Using an imaging processing technique called "deconvolution," the New Horizons team have managed to resolve some fascinating surface features from these early, blurry observations. Although powerful the method can produce artifacts. One such artifact is Pluto's un-spherical appearance here; it is a combination of deconvolution and Pluto's darkened regions that give it a strange shape.


----------



## ekim68

Teen discovers new planet while working at research university



> While pop culture likes to joke about interns making coffee runs, British teen Tom Wagg was discovering new celestial bodies.
> 
> The former Keele University research assistant and Newcastle-under-Lyme School student was just 15 years old when he discovered a planet orbiting a star one thousand light years away.


----------



## ekim68

The quest to find Philae



> Rosetta and Philae teams continue to search for the current location of the lander, piecing together clues from its unexpected flight over the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after its initial landing on 12 November.


----------



## valis

it woke up!!!!!

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33126885


----------



## ekim68

Wow.....Where did the Time go? 

Astronomy Picture of the Day Turns 20 Years Old This Week!



> Over at The Verge, Sean OKane interviewed APOD creators Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, the gamma ray astronomers who created the site and twenty years ago this week, and still run it today.


----------



## ekim68

These are the first full-color HD videos of earth from the International Space Station



> Dan Lopez pulled his iPhone out of his pocket to show me a series of texts. Each was a satellite picture of a particular farm in Syria, optimized to show a kind of heat mapwhere food is growing, and where food is burning. That is, his phone gets automatic updates on the state of a food crisis half a world away.
> 
> Lopez is a technologist at Urthecast, and his phone captures the promise of the satellite imagery company, which operates two cameras on the International Space Station that cost $35 million to develop. Today, it unveiled the first full-color video of earth taken from space. (Top-secret spy satellites have presumably had this capability for a while, but this is the first available to us regular folk.)


----------



## ekim68

18 Astounding Hubble Photos Released In 2012



> The universe is beautiful and terrifying.


----------



## ekim68

Orbiting 'Rest Stops' to Repair Crumbling Satellites?



> More than 1,100 satellites are orbiting the Earth right now transmitting TV shows and phone calls, collecting rainforest data and spying on missile bases around the planet. Most are expensive, costing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build, launch and operate.
> Play Video
> Can You Crowdfund a Satellite Out of Retirement?
> The International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 was launched in 1978 but retired, after distinguished service, in 1997 by NASA. Now private citizens are trying to put the bird back in business with an online campaign to raise enough cash to wake it up.
> 
> Now NASA wants to build a satellite service station that can gas up and repair aging birds, giving them a few years more life before they fall into the Earths atmosphere and disintegrate.


----------



## ekim68

Is there a limit to temperature?



> If you took all the energy out of something, youd reach absolute zero, the coldest temperature of all. But is there a highest temperature?


----------



## ekim68

Whoa, what a way to use the Energy....:up:

Scientists look at communicating with hypersonic vehicles using plasma resonance



> Returning spacecraft hit the atmosphere at over five times the speed of sound, generating a sheath of superheated ionized plasma that blocks radio communications during the critical minutes of reentry. It's a problem that's vexed space agencies for decades, but researchers at China's Harbin Institute of Technology are developing a new method of piercing the plasma and maintaining communications.
> 
> According to physicists Xiaotian Gao and Binhao Jiang of the Habin Institute, by redesigning the spacecraft antenna, it may be possible to maintain communications by setting up resonance in the plasma sheath. Essentially, this involves turning the layer between the spacecraft and the sheath into a capacitor in the antenna circuit. This causes the sheath to act as an inductor. Together, they create a resonant circuit.


----------



## Brigham

ekim68 said:


> Is there a limit to temperature?


As temperature is about the movement of particles, I would have thought that the speed of light would have been the deciding factor.


----------



## valis

well, not exactly. The hotter above absolute zero it is, the more disordered the system becomes. I read somewhere that the Brains that Be refer to a system at absolute zero as a perfectly ordered system, with all the atoms and molecules etc set to exactly where they are supposed to be.


----------



## ekim68

How to Fix a Flat on the Moon and Other Tips From NASAs Lunar Rover Guide



> Most people dont read the operating booklet stashed in their cars glove compartment, but you might want to take the time to check out NASAs handbook [PDF] for its Lunar Roving Vehicleyou know, just in case.
> 
> Completed in 1971, the LRV was built by Boeing and General Motors to withstand the unique conditions of the moon. This means it had wire-mesh tires powered by four separate electric motors, a navigational device that used the sun azimuth to calculate directional course, and dust guardslots and lots of dust guards.
> 
> (Worth reminding ourselves here that GM was making electric cars as early as the 1970s but you had to go to the moon to drive them.)


----------



## ekim68

A Big Solar Burp Pelted Earth Last Night



> The sun is throwing a fit. For the second time this week it has launched massive chunks of itself at usfrom 93 million miles away.
> 
> Dont be offended: This is all part of the normal solar weather cycle. Every so often, turbulence on the suns surface erupts, shooting radiation and ionized particles earth-ward. When its bad, it can fry satellites, and take them offline, disrupt the electrical power grid and expose astronauts and airline passengers to harmful radiation.
> 
> The solar storm that reached us yesterday turned out smaller than expected, causing no-known damage. But, if you were lucky, it did treat you to celestial nighttime light show.


----------



## ekim68

Monster Black Hole Wakes up After 26 Years



> Over the past week, ESA's Integral satellite has been observing an exceptional outburst of high-energy light produced by a black hole that is devouring material from its stellar companion.
> 
> X-rays and gamma rays point to some of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe, such as stellar explosions, powerful outbursts and black holes feasting on their surroundings.
> 
> In contrast to the peaceful view of the night sky we see with our eyes, the high-energy sky is a dynamic light show, from flickering sources that change their brightness dramatically in a few minutes to others that vary on timescales spanning years or even decades.


----------



## ekim68

Why didn't Voyager visit Pluto? 



> NASA once planned to send Voyager past the last planet. Alan Stern and the New Horizons team are happy they didnt.


----------



## ekim68

New process could usher in "graphene-driven industrial revolution"



> It's hard to find an article about graphene that doesn't include the words "wonder material" somewhere within it. Less wondrous, unfortunately, is the expensive and time consuming chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process used to produce it industrially. Now researchers from the University of Exeter claim to have discovered a new low-cost technique to produce high quality graphene that could see the wonder material start to realize its potential.
> 
> The new system is based on technology already used in the manufacture of semiconductors, providing the potential to mass produce graphene using existing facilities instead of sinking money into completely new plants. It involves growing graphene in an industrial resistive-heating cold wall CVD system developed by UK-based company, Moorfield Nanotechnology. The researchers say this so-called nanoCVD system can grow graphene 100 times faster than conventional CVD systems, cuts costs by 99 percent, and produces graphene boasting enhanced electronic qualities.


----------



## ekim68

A Runaway Star Makes An Interstellar Bow Wave



> Zeta Ophiuchi zooms through interstellar space at 24 kilometers per second, pushing a bow wave of glowing gas and dust 12 light-years wide in front of it.


----------



## ekim68

Universes hidden supermassive black holes revealed



> Astronomers have found evidence for a large population of hidden supermassive black holes in the Universe.


----------



## ekim68

Here's a Real-Time Map of All the Objects in Earth's Orbit



> The site updates itself daily using the latest satellite data from Space Track, a US Department of Defense website, which monitors satellites and space junk that are at least the size of a standard softball. (This excludes top-secret military satellites, of course.) In total, stuffin.space tracks 150,000 objects. Type in a satellite name to scope out its altitude, figure out its age, group satellites by type, and so on.


----------



## ekim68

At one time Pluto was downgraded from being a Planet and now it has a Moon....

We've Never Seen the Surface of Pluto's Moon Charon. Until Now!



> Todays gift from the New Horizons flyby is our first-ever look at the surface of Plutos enormous moon Charon. The icy world is distinctly different from its parent, and is guarding its secrets closely.


----------



## valis




----------



## ekim68

NASA names Commercial Crew test pilots



> NASA on Thursday named four astronauts who will train for test flights of new Boeing and SpaceX capsules, likely becoming the first crews to launch from the Space Coast since the final shuttle mission four years ago.
> 
> Bob Behnken, Eric Boe, Doug Hurley and Sunita Williams are veteran test pilots who have flown on the shuttle and the International Space Station.
> 
> The orbital test flights to the station, which could launch in 2017, hope to pave the way for regular trips by the new commercial crew vehicles, ending reliance on Russia for access to and from the outpost.


----------



## ekim68

Solar activity predicted to fall 60% in 2030s, to 'mini ice age' levels: Sun driven by double dynamo



> A new model of the Sun's solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun's 11-year heartbeat. The model draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone. Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the 'mini ice age' that began in 1645.


----------



## ekim68

Huge population of Ultra-Dark Galaxies discovered



> About 321 million light-years away from us is the Coma Cluster, a massive grouping of more than 1,000 galaxies. Some of its galaxies are a little unusual, however: theyre incredibly dim. So dim, in fact, that they have earned the title of Ultra-Dark Galaxies (UDGs). (The term is actually Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies, as their visible matter is thinly spread, though ultra-dark has been used by some sources and, lets face it, sounds a lot better). This was discovered earlier this year in a study that identified 47 such galaxies.


----------



## Brigham

I am sitting in front of my computer, trying to find which TV program is going to show me the best detail of the "Pluto pass" There is a 4.5 hour delay of course. This makes it difficult for me to know if the flypast has already happened, and the images are speeding towards me, or if it is about to happen, and I have to wait. Either way it is very exciting.


----------



## ekim68

Stunning high-res images of Plutos surface show youthful terrain


----------



## ekim68

Or Maybe..........


----------



## pyritechips

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/nasa-releases-more-new-horizons-photos-of-pluto-1.3157482

Truly amazing. I never thought I would live to see the surface of Pluto. I wish Clyde Tombaugh were here to see this.


----------



## ekim68

Good to see you around Jim...Astronomy has always fascinated me and now with the technology to see things with clarity that far away is just short of Science Fiction... I'm getting ready to retire and after I move I'm gonna get me a telescope so I can take pictures of the universe...I got my eye on this one but I'm still looking around...


----------



## ekim68

Massless particle discovered 85 years after it was theorized



> PRINCETON, N.J., July 17 (UPI) -- Researchers have discovered a massless particle, which was first theorized 85 years ago and thought to be a possible building block for other subatomic particles.
> 
> The discovery of the Weyl fermion, conceived of by mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl in 1929, could be a boon for electronics, researchers said. It could allow electricity to flow more freely and efficiently providing greater power, most notably for computers.


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid Mining Company's 1st Satellite Launches from Space Station



> A private spaceflight company took one small step for asteroid mining this week with the launch of its first spacecraft to test technology that may one day help tap into the riches of the solar system.
> 
> The Arkyd 3 Reflight spacecraft, a small satellite built by the space-mining company Planetary Resources, launched from the International Space Station on Thursday (July 16), beginning a 90-day mission to test the avionics, control systems and software needed to make asteroid mining possible.


----------



## ekim68

This Company Aims To Launch Rockets With Beams Of Power



> Colorado space startup Escape Dynamics announced today that theyve successfully tested a prototype of their spaceship engine and are ready to move on to their next phase in development. By itself, that doesnt sound like huge news  companies all over the world are testing prototype engines for rockets.
> 
> Except Escape Dynamics didnt fire its engine by setting alight fuel in a controlled explosion, like a traditional rocket. Instead, their engine fired using power beamed at it from a microwave antenna across the room.


----------



## ekim68

NASA funded study states people could be on the moon by 2021 for $10 billion



> The Houston Chronicle reported on Monday that NextGen Space LLC has released the results of a study that suggests that if the United States were to choose to do space in some new and creative ways, American moon boots could be on the lunar surface by 2021. The cost from the authorization to the first crewed lunar landing would be just $10 billion. The study was partly funded by NASA and was reviewed by former space agency and commercial space experts.
> 
> The way that the plan works is that it leverages lunar water to save the cost of taking fuel to the moon. The first steps of the plan, similar to one proposed by Paul Spudis and Tony Lavoie, would send robots to prospect for lunar water and to scout out locations for landing sites and an eventual lunar base


----------



## hewee

ekim68 said:


> NASA funded study states people could be on the moon by 2021 for $10 billion


And they don't have any WAITING List so are waiting for you to sign up.


----------



## Phantom010

*Prof Stephen Hawking backs venture to listen for aliens

*http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33596271



> "We are alive. We are intelligent. We must know."
> 
> Those behind the initiative claim it to be the biggest scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. They plan to cover 10 times more of the sky than previous programmes and scan five times more of the radio spectrum, 100 times faster.
> 
> It will involve access to two of the world's most powerful telescopes. - the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.


Assuming there might even be someone or something out there capable (or even interested) of emitting signals of any kind... At least, it won't be funded by our taxes...


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> NASA funded study states people could be on the moon by 2021 for $10 billion


$10 billion? And we thought Mars One was ridiculous...


----------



## valis

Phantom010 said:


> $10 billion? And we thought Mars One was ridiculous...


http://deadspin.com/move-the-minnesota-vikings-to-pluto-1718322172



> Thanks to the New Horizons probe, the worlds seeing marvelous new photos of dwarf planet Pluto and its moons this week. The 10-year trip cost approximately $720 million, and as WCCOs Pat Kessler pointed out in a lighthearted way, the Minnesota Vikings new stadium will require more money and not contribute nearly as much to mankinds collective knowledge of the mysteries and majesty of the universe. I want to take this opportunity to propose that the Vikings be sent to Pluto.


let's take a look at ridiculous spending, shall we?


----------



## ekim68

Another look at ridiculous spending....

6 surprising things the government spends way more on than the Pluto mission


----------



## Phantom010

Not sure you got the meaning of what I was referring to. $10 billion, like the 6 for Mars One, is not a realistic figure...


----------



## ekim68

Hmmph.....! Earth only has one moon and Pluto has five, and it's a Dwarf....

New Horizons Captures Two of Pluto's Smaller Moons

 (It looks like better pictures are coming in October... )


----------



## ekim68

Bringing back the magic in metamaterials



> A single drop of blood is teeming with microorganismsimagine if we could see them, and even nanometer-sized viruses, with the naked eye. That's a real possibility with what scientists call a "perfect lens." The lens hasn't been created yet, but it is a theoretical perfected optical lens made out of metamaterials, which are engineered to change the way the materials interact with light.
> 
> While a perfect lensand the metamaterials it's made ofis almost perfect, it's not foolproof. As the field of research expanded in the past 15 years, more and more challenges arose.
> 
> Now, researchers at Michigan Technological University have found a way to possibly solve one of the biggest challenges, getting light waves to pass through the lens without getting consumed.


----------



## Phantom010

*New Earth like exoplanet Kepler 452b*



> Remember the name Kepler 452b. Because in our search to discover if we are alone in this vast and fascinating universe, a sole life-harboring world among countless dead and uninhabitable planets, we may finally have a true candidate for Earth 2.0.


Reading the news this morning, NASA was going to broadcast live at noon with a very important announcement! I was all excited! Aliens? Life on Mars? Confirmed evidence of life on an exoplanet not too far away? Nah. Only speculation on a possible Earth like exoplanet 1400 light-years away (almost next door). Needless to say I was very disappointed and I still don't see what was all the fuss about, and why the entire world needed to know live.


----------



## ekim68

German scientists confirm NASA results of propellantless 'impossible' EM drive



> Hacked Magazine reported on Monday that a group of German scientists believe that they have confirmed that the EM Drive, the propulsion device that uses microwaves rather than rocket fuel, provides thrust. The experimental results are being presented at the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' Propulsion and Energy Forum in Orlando by Martin Tajmar, a professor and chair for Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology. Tajmar has an interest in exotic propulsion methods, including one concept using negative matter.





> New Horizons took over nine years to get to Pluto. A spacecraft using an EM Drive would get there in 18 months, orbit Pluto, and drop a lander on its surface, according to Wired. Think on that when looking at the images of the dwarf planet at the edge of the solar system.


----------



## ekim68

A galactic nursery



> This dramatic image shows the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopes view of dwarf galaxy known as NGC 1140, which lies 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus. As can be seen in this image NGC 1140 has an irregular form, much like the Large Magellanic Cloud  a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.
> 
> This small galaxy is undergoing what is known as a starburst. Despite being almost ten times smaller than the Milky Way it is creating stars at about the same rate, with the equivalent of one star the size of the Sun being created per year. This is clearly visible in the image, which shows the galaxy illuminated by bright, blue-white, young stars.


----------



## ekim68

RED Epic Dragon Camera Captures Riveting Images on Space Station



> In October 2014 NASA delivered high-definition, 3-D footage of astronauts living and working on the International Space Station to the Internet, posting video of astronauts exploring water tension in microgravity. The same engineers who sent high-definition cameras and then 3-D cameras to the space station have now delivered a new camera capable of recording images with six times more detail than either of the previous cameras.


----------



## ekim68

This is cool....

These panoramas offer a snapshot of the International Space Station as it was in June 2015


----------



## pyritechips

*Fort Conger, historic High Arctic fort, to be preserved in 3D*

It's amazing that something of historical significance, and is being slowly eroded by the elements, can be preserved for study.


----------



## ekim68

Extreme Access Flyer to Take Planetary Exploration Airborne



> Swamp Works engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are inventing a flying robotic vehicle that can gather samples on other worlds in places inaccessible to rovers. The vehicles  similar to quad-copters but designed for the thin atmosphere of Mars and the airless voids of asteroids and the moon  would use a lander as a base to replenish batteries and propellants between flights.


----------



## ekim68

Hello, World Universe! Hello? (Is This Thing On?)



> The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) hasn't yielded much, and some of the results are even a bit embarrassing. We don't really know what to look for when we're listening for alien signals. There's growing evidence that planets like ours are not rare in the universe, but that doesn't necessarily mean intelligent life is abundant. Given the vast distances to neighboring star systems, we're also not likely to visit them any time soon.


----------



## ekim68

See the planet.



> Our evolving planet, captured from the ISS.


----------



## ekim68

Here comes the Perseid meteor shower!



> Quite possibly the best meteor shower of the year  the Perseids  will be coming to a sky near you next week.


----------



## ekim68

An EPIC View of the Moon in Earth's Orbital Embrace


----------



## ekim68

Fastest ever neutrino among slew of fresh findings



> Physicists have unveiled a raft of new findings about neutrinos bombarding the Earth from above, below - and within.
> 
> An experiment built in a vast slab of Antarctic ice has doubled its count of "cosmic neutrinos" from outer space, by searching for arrivals passing through the planet from the north.
> 
> The same team this week announced the highest-energy neutrino ever detected.





> Neutrinos are subatomic particles with no charge and almost no mass, which very rarely interact with anything. This means they can practically cross the Universe in a straight line, passing through entire planets undeflected - and undetected.


----------



## ekim68

Inter-galaxy winds caught blowing away galaxys gas and dust



> In healthy galaxies, new stars are formed from the interstellar medium (ISM), the supply of gas and dust between stars. But sometimes cosmic windsthe movement of material between galaxiescan sweep a galaxy's interstellar medium clean, putting a damper on new star production there.
> 
> A lot of the specifics about this sweep-out are unknownspecifics like how easily it happens and under what physical conditions, and whether dense, star-forming clouds can survive these winds for any length of time. However, a new study on cosmic winds has observed the process with unprecedented detail, revealing complex and fascinating subtleties never before witnessed.


----------



## ekim68

Meals Ready to Eat: Expedition 44 Crew Members Sample Leafy Greens Grown on Space Station



> Fresh food grown in the microgravity environment of space officially is on the menu for the first time for NASA astronauts on the International Space Station. Expedition 44 crew members, including NASA's one-year astronaut Scott Kelly, are ready to sample the fruits of their labor after harvesting a crop of "Outredgeous" red romaine lettuce Monday, Aug. 10, from the Veggie plant growth system on the nations orbiting laboratory.
> 
> The astronauts will clean the leafy greens with citric acid-based, food safe sanitizing wipes before consuming them. They will eat half of the space bounty, setting aside the other half to be packaged and frozen on the station until it can be returned to Earth for scientific analysis.


----------



## ekim68

NASA marks Curiosity's third anniversary with new interactive online tools



> The Curiosity rover has now been on Mars for three years, and to mark the occasion, NASA has released two new tools designed to both educate the public and help scientists select future landing sites. The tools allow visitors to learn more about Curiosity and its mission and explore the Martian surface by climbing aboard Curiosity for a virtual tour.


----------



## pyritechips

*The universe is slowly dying, galaxy survey confirms*


----------



## valis

Maybe from our perspective........


----------



## Phantom010

Speculation...


----------



## ekim68

Well I'm worried.....Never can tell what I'll be doing in a hundred billion years...


----------



## pyritechips

It's interesting that Carl Sagan observed this same reaction. Mention something about space and most people ignore it. Predict the end of the universe and people take it personally and crap over the very suggestion.


----------



## valis

pyritechips said:


> It's interesting that Carl Sagan observed this same reaction. Mention something about space and most people ignore it. Predict the end of the universe and people take it personally and crap over the very suggestion.


Oh the universe will end, nothing is forever. Not that much of a pediction IMHO, just playing out the math. I was just saying its a bit of a matter of perspective as I give us maybe a thousand years, optimistically, as a species, after which the point is moot.


----------



## pyritechips

valis said:


> *Oh the universe will end, nothing is forever*. Not that much of a pediction IMHO, just playing out the math. I was just saying its a bit of a matter of perspective as *I give us maybe a thousand years, optimistically*, as a species, after which the point is moot.


Point #1: some cosmological models have an infinitely cyclical universe of big bangs and big crunches. It is favoured by many and is why they spent so much effort looking for the missing math.

Point #2: Interesting prediction and almost worthy of its own controversial thread. I dare you to start one so that I can analytically dissect it.


----------



## Phantom010

That's assuming the theory conveniently developed (and accepted by the Church) 100 years ago by a catholic priest is actually right, and that stars are really nuclear reactors, and singularities exist (even if they break down mathematically)... But that's another story...


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> Oh the universe will end, nothing is forever.


Why does it have to end? Why did it have a beginning? What will there be after the end?


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> Well I'm worried.....Never can tell what I'll be doing in a hundred billion years...


And wow! How accurate those instruments were 2 billion years ago!


----------



## valis

pyritechips said:


> Point #1: some cosmological models have an infinitely cyclical universe of big bangs and big crunches. It is favoured by many and is why they spent so much effort looking for the missing math.
> 
> Point #2: Interesting prediction and almost worthy of its own controversial thread. I dare you to start one so that I can analytically dissect it.


and I'm just as certain you've heard of the big rip postulation. The ultimate fate of the universe is a fun past-time.

as for numero dos, go for it chief. Like I said, I think another millenia is extremely optimistic. Ever hear of longbets? Bet 9 is sorta my point.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> The ultimate fate of the universe is a fun past-time.


I agree. For centuries, people have been so passionate about predicting the end of the world (Earth). Now, they're predicting the end of the universe. Like everybody desperately WANTS it to end... So, I repeat my questions, why does it have to end? Why did it have a beginning? What will there be after the end? Seems a few laws of physics are violated...

"EXTRAORDINARY claims require EXTRAORDINARY evidence". So, I'm sorry, but it'll take a lot more than a telescope and a few brains to convince me...


----------



## valis

stick around and find out.....


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> stick around and find out.....


Well, I guess when I die, "God" will tell me the Truth...


----------



## valis

's

IMO, there are basic limits to biological intellect. For instance, you are most likely never to see a golden retriever design and operate an orbital vehicle. That said, I think that we, as a species, have about as much chance of understanding the purpose of life, the universe, and everything as a tube worm does of understanding the inner workings of a jet turbine. I just don't think we got the chassis to handle that info. I mean, we can't even decide on stuff like the Gaia theory yet.

Who knows, could be wrong, could be right, but still fun to think about. Rather humbling, too.


----------



## Phantom010

I believe our species will ultimately know a lot more than we do now in a thousand years. We may eventually reach the stars, if we exist that long...


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## valis

Phantom010 said:


> I believe our species will ultimately know a lot more than we do now in a thousand years. We may eventually reach the stars,* if we exist that long*...


that's my point exactly, my friend. The fact that 90% or so of wars in history have been started over an imaginary, invisible being who lives in the sky and watches our every move isn't a good thing.

That's not the mark of a stable society, IMO.


----------



## ekim68

The Little Orbiter That Could.....


*On its 10th anniversary, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter finds a unusual lake*



> The orbiter carries many scientific instruments for photographing martian surface, analyze mineral deposits, search for subsurface water and shorelines of ancient seas, and monitor the weather. The way scientists determine the age of anything on Mars is by counting the number and measuring the size of impact craters in that region. It has salt deposits that could conceivable have housed some of the last living organisms that may have once been on the planet. It has a major role in Mars' planning by NASA with the help of the images it captures, revealing details as small as just a few square feet, assisting the analysis of potential landing sites for the 2016 InSight lander and Mars 2020 rover. They found evidence to suggest that at one point, the lake grew large enough to spill over the rim of the basin, carving channels in its wake.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://www.wired.com/2015/08/something-deep-inside-pluto-replenishing-atmosphere/']Something Deep Inside Pluto Is Replenishing Its Atmosphere



> Pluto has a problem: Its thin, nitrogen atmosphere shouldn't be there. Ultraviolet rays from the sun should have knocked it away, molecule by molecule, in the dwarf planet's first few thousand years. Four billion years later, Pluto's atmosphere is still there, a gauzy interplanetary mystery.
> 
> Okay, it's really scientists who have the problem, because it's not like there are nitrogen-breathing Plutonians down there pacing worriedly over impending suffocation. Right, NASA? Right?!? No, all worrying has been purely academic, expressed in papers like the one published earlier this month by a pair of New Horizons scientists who examined the trio of prevailing theories behind the atmosphere's perplexing replenishment.


[/URL]


----------



## valis

Cthulu. Duh.


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> Cthulu. Duh.


So I had to look it up, eh?


----------



## ekim68

HTV5 Mission




> Developed and built in Japan, the H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) known as "KOUNOTORI (white stork)" is an unmanned cargo transfer spacecraft that delivers supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).
> 
> Japan, the U.S., and Russia currently operate cargo transfers to the ISS. Among the supply vehicles, KOUNOTORI serves as the backbone of ISS operations with its world-leading supply capacity of approx. 6 metric tons, and is the only space liner capable of delivering large items of hardware.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> So I had to look it up, eh?


YOU never read Lovecraft? Wow.....


----------



## ekim68

I took up serious reading late in life and I'm still catching up...


----------



## valis

Ahhh.....well, he's an acquired taste.....of which I've not acquired it yet. I've read most of his stuff once, but that's generally enough.


----------



## ekim68

Here you go Phantom. Another read on the Mars One Project.

*



No money, no process, no explanation: An insider speaks out on the hopelessly flawed scheme.

Click to expand...

*


----------



## Phantom010

I dont


ekim68 said:


> Here you go Phantom. Another read on the Mars One Project.


Isn't that an old article? Read about that a few months ago.


----------



## ekim68

It is a few months old, but it's not the same article I posted before....This is testimony from an astrophysics professor who was curious about the training of people for the mission...


----------



## Phantom010

Anyway, Mars One is a joke, no doubt.


----------



## ekim68

Nine Real NASA Technologies in 'The Martian'




> A former computer programmer named Andy Weir, who enjoyed writing for its own sake and posted fiction to his blog, started a serial about a NASA astronaut stranded on Mars. The popularity ultimately led him to turn it into a successful novel, "The Martian", which has been made into a movie that will be released in October 2015.
> 
> "The Martian" merges the fictional and factual narratives about Mars, building upon the work NASA and others have done exploring Mars and moving it forward into the 2030s, when NASA astronauts are regularly traveling to Mars and living on the surface to explore. Although the action takes place 20 years in the future, NASA is already developing many of the technologies that appear in the film.


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## ekim68

Ah, Human Nature....


[URL='http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/08/20/japanese-whisky-experiment-heads-space-station/']Japanese Whisky Experiment Heads for Space Station[/URL]



> TOKYO (Suntory PR)-Suntory Global Innovation Center has embarked upon space experiments on the "development of mellowness in alcoholic beverage through the use of a microgravity environment." This research will be conducted in the International Space Station's Japanese Experiment Module (nicknamed "Kibo"), with the cooperation of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).


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## ekim68

The Lonely Mountain




> NASA's Dawn spacecraft spotted this tall, conical mountain on Ceres from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers). The mountain, located in the southern hemisphere, stands 4 miles (6 kilometers) high. Its perimeter is sharply defined, with almost no accumulated debris at the base of the brightly streaked slope.


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## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/a-double-black-hole-powers-a-brilliant-galactic-star-fa-1727461517']A Double Black Hole Powers a Brilliant Galactic Star Factory [/URL]




> Six hundred million light years away, a pair of black holes spiral furiously about one another at the brilliant core of a starburst galaxy.
> 
> Black holes are usually lone wolves, devouring light and matter at centers of their galaxies. But when galaxies collide, two black holes can in theory become locked in a gravitational embrace, much like a binary star. This is the first confirmed instance of the phenomena.


----------



## ekim68

World's Most Powerful Digital Camera Sees Construction Green Light

_



Menlo Park, Calif. -

Click to expand...

_


> The Department of Energy has approved the start of construction for a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera - the world's largest - at the heart of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Assembled at the DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the camera will be the eye of LSST, revealing unprecedented details of the universe and helping unravel some of its greatest mysteries.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://space.io9.com/a-successful-launch-means-its-about-to-get-crowded-on-t-1728175952']A Successful Launch Means It's About to Get Crowded on the Space Station[/URL]




> The latest trio of astronauts are safely space-bound after an early morning launch out of Kazakhstan. Soyuz will take the scenic route to meet the International Space Station, which is in a higher-than-usual orbit after avoiding space junk. After docking, the station's crew will temporarily grow to nine astronauts.


----------



## ekim68

Subatomic particles that appear to defy Standard Model points to undiscovered forces




> Subatomic particles have been found that appear to defy the Standard Model of particle physics. The team working at Cern's Large Hadron Collider have found evidence of leptons decaying at different rates, which could possibly point to some undiscovered forces.
> 
> Publishing their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters, the team from the University of Maryland had been searching for conditions and behaviours that do not fit with the Standard Model. The model explains most known behaviours and interactions of fundamental subatomic particles, but it is incomplete - for example it does not adequately explain gravity, dark matter and neutrino masses.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/this-is-the-oldest-galaxy-weve-found-so-far-1729038001']This is the Oldest Galaxy We've Found So Far[/URL]




> Astrophysicists at Caltech say they've detected the oldest, most distant galaxy known so far. It's 13.2 billion years old - just over half a billion years younger than the universe itself - and the discovery may change what astrophysicists know about the early history of the universe.


----------



## Brigham

ekim68 said:


> A Double Black Hole Powers a Brilliant Galactic Star Factory
> This may be a very stupid question (don't hesitate to tell me) but how can any black hole give off a glow of any sort if it's gravity prevents anything coming from it?


----------



## Phantom010

Brigham said:


> This may be a very stupid question (don't hesitate to tell me) but how can any black hole give off a glow of any sort if it's gravity prevents anything coming from it?


Black holes, like dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, and other objects, are coined by our "mathemagicians", and the glow of the black hole is said to come from the *quasar* around it, assuming the definition of a quasar is right...



> Quasars are believed to be powered by accretion of material into supermassive black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies, making these luminous versions of the general class of objects known as active galaxies. Since light cannot escape the black holes, the escaping energy is actually generated outside the event horizon by gravitational stresses and immense friction on the incoming material.


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## Brigham

Thanks Phantom


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## valis

I'm still trying to figure out what they are ejecting. Obviously the speed of light is the fastest thing around, and light cannot escape a black hole. Yet something is.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/spacexs-crewed-dragon-capsule-looks-like-a-luxury-sport-1729942532']SpaceX's Crew Dragon Capsule Looks Like a Luxury Sports Car[/URL]




> Well, it's official: The days of blasting into space in a rattly aluminum can are over. SpaceX has just unveiled the very first images of the interior of its Crew Dragon capsule. As you might expect, it looks a lot like a luxury sports car.


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons begins massive "treasure trove" data downlink




> When NASA's New Horizons probe made its historic flyby of Pluto on July 14, it gathered a wealth of information about the dwarf planet and its moons, but at a distance from Earth of over 3 billion mi (4.8 billion km), retrieving that data will take a very long time. To speed things up, NASA has begun an intensive download from the unmanned spacecraft that will return tens of gigabits of data over the next 12 months.
> 
> Until now, New Horizons has been concentrating on lower data-rate information from its energetic particle, solar wind, and space dust instruments with only a smattering of images thrown in as insurance against systems failures, but on September 5, NASA turned the metaphorical tap open. The probe is now sending back packets of information at a relatively high rate as it starts a download of high-resolution images and other data that will take about a year.


----------



## ekim68

It all starts with an idea, eh? 


How to Build a Space Elevator From Scratch




> The idea of a space elevator has been around for over a century. The basic concept is simple: a tether descends from a spacecraft in geostationary orbit to a floating platform at the equator, probably in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Because of a counterweight that would extend far into space, the space elevator's tether would be gravitationally stable, allowing electric elevator cars to make the week-long climb to orbit powered by solar panels and ground-based lasers.
> 
> Such a system, ISEC researchers believe, could eventually slash the cost of raising a kilogram of payload into geosynchronous orbit from roughly US $25,000 to $300 or less. The key word, of course, is "eventually." Technical challenges are legion, including building the aircraft carrier-size floating platform, designing safe, speedy climbers, and avoiding space debris and other satellites. But the truly fundamental obstacle is the lack of a material strong and resilient enough to form the elevator's tether.


----------



## Phantom010

They should first concentrate on cleaning out the junk in orbit...

And good luck in preventing planes from ever bumping into that cable, and especially 9/11 style crashes... I don't think I'll be buying a ticket...


----------



## valis

Mike, pretty sure you know Im a huge proponet of this....i think you and Iltos and El Buffo and I went around a few times on this one. 

And yup, agreeance Phantom. But the technology is juuust about there. Id say next 10-12 years tops...definitely something to consider. And I would buy a ticket on an elevator I can jump from (a la Baumgartner) far sooner than I would buy a ticket on a bomb aimed upwards.


----------



## valis

Speaking of upward going bombs, you guys ever see this? IMHO, the mother of all posters.

https://xkcd.com/113


----------



## ekim68

Cool stuff Tim...:up:


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> And yup, agreeance Phantom. But the technology is juuust about there. Id say next 10-12 years tops...definitely something to consider. And I would buy a ticket on an elevator I can jump from (a la Baumgartner) far sooner than I would buy a ticket on a bomb aimed upwards.


I'd also like to see this happen some day, unless they find a cheap and effective way to get a spaceship off the ground first. But, I'd say we have a more pressing problem right now, like getting rid of the long-bearded maniacs with AK-47's...


----------



## valis

How about just the ak's? Pretty sure that would help as well.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> How about just the ak's? Pretty sure that would help as well.


They'll find something else... 

And that cable will surely be AK-proof anyway...


----------



## valis

Yup. But at least its a start. And a topic for a different thread. 

Either of you catch the article yesterday on the red swoosh in the NASA logo? I think it was io9.

And yes, that was a shameless redirect to topic. Sue me.


----------



## ekim68

So I had to go look it up and yes it's a good read.
BTW Tim, are you going to read The Martian before the movie comes out in October? I've been hesitant about watching movies made from books that I like, but the Trailer's got me interested...


----------



## ekim68

Speaking of which...


Behind the science of The Martian


----------



## valis

I can guarantee i will read the book prior to seeing the movie. My imagination, IMO, isfar better than hollywoods, after all.


----------



## ekim68

First satellites with all-electric propulsion call home




> The launch of two new communications satellites may not seem like news these days, but it is when they're the first satellites with all-electric propulsion. Boeing announced that the two 702SP small platform satellites, called ABS-3A and EUTELSAT 115 West B, that launched on Sunday evening are sending back signals to mission control as they power towards geosynchronous orbit under ion drive.


----------



## ekim68

Moonquakes unearthed in data from 1970s Apollo mission




> Quakes deep inside the moon have been unearthed in seismic data recorded during the Apollo 16 mission. The algorithm behind the find could help NASA's next Mars mission study similar quakes on the Red Planet.
> 
> We have known that the moon shakes since shortly after Neil Armstrong's first step. Seismometers left by the Apollo missions picked up echoes from meteor strikes, deep quakes linked to the moon's orbit around Earth and powerful shallow quakes of unclear origin - all of them different-looking and of different origin to the seismic activity we see on Earth.
> 
> Since then, a catalogue of the moon's tremors has been painstakingly assembled both by hand and by computer, with about 13,000 events identified.


----------



## ekim68

The more the merrier, eh? 


Jeff Bezos confirms big Blue Origin space facility in Florida, unveils new rocket


----------



## ekim68

Couldn't help putting this here....


[URL='http://space.io9.com/51-favourite-photographs-from-astronaut-scott-kellys-fi-1730881885']51 Favourite Photos from Astronaut Scott Kelly's First Six Months in Space[/URL]


----------



## ekim68

When and Where to Watch This Weekend's Total Lunar Eclipse




> Late on Sunday evening, September 27, the Earth will slide precisely between the sun and the moon, throwing the satellite into a rusty red shadow. This'll be the fourth total lunar eclipse in two years, but that doesn't make it boring. Quite the opposite-this week's event will be the last in this rare tetrad, and the most dramatic.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/scientists-discover-weather-on-rosettas-comet-1732848251']Scientists Discover Weather on Rosetta's Comet[/URL]




> Earth's favorite comet is chock full of surprises. The latest? Weather, of sorts. According to research published this week in _Nature_, Comet 67P has a small weather system driven by an intense day-night cycle.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists break distance record for quantum teleportation




> A new record distance has been set for the quantum teleportation of information over optical fibers. Researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) claim to have transmitted the quantum information carried in light particles over 100 km (62 miles), four times farther than previously achieved.
> 
> Breakthroughs in quantum physics continue to accelerate, having already shown the practical potential of quantum cryptography and increasingly making progress toward powerful, everyday, quantum computers. This new record set by NIST adds to this momentum by providing the ability to transmit quantum state information much farther than previously thought practicable.


----------



## valis

hmmmmm...

http://gizmodo.com/nasa-says-theres-strong-evidence-of-liquid-water-on-mar-1733357660


----------



## ekim68

Saw that today....It just amazes me on how they can determine precisely such discoveries...:up:


----------



## ekim68

Rosetta's Comet is Actually 2 Comets Glued Together




> Scientists have solved the mystery of why the comet being studied by Europe's Rosetta spacecraft is shaped like a rubber duck -- it started off as _two_ separate comets, a new study shows.


----------



## ekim68

It's getting crowded up there....


ISRO launches ASTROSAT, first space observatory




> A few days after it celebrated the successful completion of a year around the Red planet by its first inter-planetary mission - the Mars Orbiter, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Monday launched its first dedicated multi wavelength space observatory into space, besides six satellites for Canada, Indonesia and the United States.


----------



## ekim68

3-D Flyover Visualization of Veil Nebula


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff....:up:


Thousands of Nasa Apollo mission photos uploaded online




> Around 13,000 scans of images from Nasa's archives, taken across ALL manned Apollo missions between 1961 and 1972 have been given to founder of the Project Apollo Archive Kipp Teague.
> 
> He told Newsbeat "serious budget cuts" mean the organisation doesn't have the recourses to publish them.
> 
> So he's done it for them, astronaut selfies and all. Enjoy.


----------



## ekim68

Rosetta explores the dark side




> Earth isn't the only place with seasons. Other planets and even very small celestial bodies can have them, too, as ESA's Rosetta probe has shown in its explorations of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. When the unmanned spacecraft went into orbit about the comet, it revealed that the southern hemisphere of the dumbbell-shaped nucleus is shrouded in a dark winter that lasts over five years and, according to data collected by the Rosettas's onboard spectrometer, hides ice in larger amounts than the rest of the comet.


----------



## ekim68

Where to look for life? UW astronomers devise 'habitability index' to guide future search




> Powerful telescopes are coming soon. Where exactly shall we point them?
> 
> Astronomers with the University of Washington's Virtual Planetary Laboratory have created a way to compare and rank exoplanets to help prioritize which of the thousands discovered warrant close inspection in the search for life beyond Earth.


----------



## ekim68

If all goes according to plan, the world's first private lunar mission will be launched just two years from now.




> SpaceIL





> , an Israeli nonprofit, has secured a launch contract with California-based Spaceflight Industries, and will aim to land a rover on the moon in the second half of 2017. It's the first such launch contract to be verified by the $30 million Google Lunar XPrize competition.
> 
> Only three nations have landed modules on the moon-the US, Russia, and China. If SpaceIL is successful, Israel will be the fourth.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> *If all goes according to plan*, the world's first private lunar mission will be launched just two years from now.


pretty sure we know how that is going to play out. Ambitious, yes, but realistic, no.


----------



## Phantom010

valis said:


> pretty sure we know how that is going to play out. Ambitious, yes, but realistic, no.


And will it be a one-way trip as well, like the other guys...?


----------



## ekim68

"One-way trip" reminds me of something Neil Armstrong once said about how they had to make the Lunar Lander lightweight and part of that weight was the step ladder he used to climb back up into the Lander. I'm paraphrasing but it was something like "The ladder was so light and cheap that he was concerned about climbing back up."


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons Finds Blue Skies and Water Ice on Pluto




> The first color images of Pluto's atmospheric hazes, returned by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft last week, reveal that the hazes are blue.
> 
> "Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It's gorgeous," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> "One-way trip" reminds me of something Neil Armstrong once said about how they had to make the Lunar Lander lightweight and part of that weight was the step ladder he used to climb back up into the Lander. I'm paraphrasing but it was something like "The ladder was so light and cheap that he was concerned about climbing back up."


they had a couple 'interesting' moments about the ascent, shall we say. Take a look at http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/001034.html.


----------



## ekim68

Wow, good read and thanks Tim....I've bookmarked the collectspace site.....:up:


----------



## valis

de niente. I had never heard of that until the trove of pics NASA released this week either.


----------



## ekim68

Terahertz radiation to enable portable particle accelerators




> Researchers at MIT in the US and DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Germany have developed a technology that could shrink particle accelerators by a factor of 100 or more. The basic building block of the accelerator uses high-frequency electromagnetic waves and is just 1.5 cm (0.6 in) long and 1 mm (0.04 in) thick, with this drastic size reduction potentially benefitting the fields of medicine, materials science and particle physics, among others.
> 
> The donut-shaped Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may have grabbed most of the headlines since it came online in 2010, but particle accelerators that are linear (_linacs_) rather than circular are equally deserving of attention. Though generally not as powerful, linacs are much simpler and cheaper to build, they routinely help scientists understand how certain chemical processes take place, and they have led to innovations including radiation therapy and compact X-ray lasers.


----------



## ekim68

Hacking when it Counts: Much Space Station Hacking Saved Skylab




> Thanks to the seminal work of Howard and Hanks _et al_, the world is intimately familiar with the story behind perhaps the most epic hack of all time, the saving of the crippled Apollo 13 mission. But Apollo 13 is far from the only story of heroic space hacks. From the repairs to fix the blinded Hubble Space Telescope to the dodgy cooling system and other fixes on the International Space Station, both manned and unmanned spaceflight can be looked at as a series of hacks and repairs.
> 
> Long before the ISS, though, America's first manned space station, Skylab, very nearly never came to fruition. Damaged during launch and crippled both electrically and thermally, the entire program was almost scrapped before the first crew ever arrived. This is the story of how Skylab came to be, how a team came together to fix a series of problems, and how Skylab went on to success despite having the deck stacked against her from the start.


----------



## ekim68

Something-we're not sure what-is radically dimming a star's light




> NASA's Kepler spacecraft, designed to discover planets orbiting distant stars, has turned up something that's decidedly not a planet. And at this point, that's pretty much all we can say about it-except that it's a mystery.
> 
> A star that Kepler has been observing, KIC 8462852, underwent several periods of dimming. This is exactly what Kepler was built to look for, because a slight dimming in a star's light can indicate the presence of a planet passing in front of it. But this is no slight dip in the star's light output-it dims by a full 20 percent. That's way too much change for any transiting planet to produce. So, as two researchers titled their paper, "Where's the Flux?"
> 
> The paper exhaustively examines various possible identities for the phenomena. They settle on a most likely scenario, but clearly this is one of the many cases in science where future work is needed.


----------



## valis

read that on slate recently. That would be awesome, but we don't really have the greatest history in that field. Remeber, I think they were called, perytons?


----------



## ekim68

So then I had to go and look up perytons and I remembered what they were, just not what they were called....


----------



## valis

And caused by a microwave oven. Makes me admire all the folks who think they can get a probe into that antarctic underground ocean and not contaminate it. That, btw, is usually my go-to mental exercise for insomnia.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Dust clouds from destroyed/collided planets??


----------



## ekim68

To save on weight, a detour to the moon is the best route to Mars




> Launching humans to Mars may not require a full tank of gas: A new MIT study suggests that a Martian mission may lighten its launch load considerably by refueling on the moon.
> 
> Previous studies have suggested that lunar soil and water ice in certain craters of the moon may be mined and converted to fuel. Assuming that such technologies are established at the time of a mission to Mars, the MIT group has found that taking a detour to the moon to refuel would reduce the mass of a mission upon launch by 68 percent.


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid making surprise flyby at an 'unusually high' velocity




> A newly discovered asteroid (not pictured) will make Halloween more thrilling by passing within 1.3 lunar distances (310,000 miles) of Earth. The object, which measures between 300 and 600 meters (1,000 and 2,000 feet) across, was discovered last week by the asteroid-hunting Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii, according to NASA.


----------



## ekim68

Wow, 160,000 light years away...


Closest, most massive double star imaged by VLT




> LEUVEN, Belgium, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Astronomers have spotted an extreme binary star system. It's closer, hotter and more massive than any double star ever observed.
> 
> The research team spotted the binary system, called VFTS 352, while scanning the Tarantula Nebula using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The double star is 160,000 light-years away.
> 
> The centers of the two stars are separated by roughly one million miles, completing their orbit around each other in less than a day. Together their mass is equal to 57 suns. Each star burns at a temperature of 40,000 degrees Celsius.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Awards Top Three Design Finalists in 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge




> NASA awarded three teams a total of $40,000 in the first stage of the 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge Design Competition at the New York Maker Faire on Sunday, Sept. 27. The design competition challenged participants to develop architectural concepts that take advantage of the unique capabilities 3-D printing offers to imagine what habitats on Mars might look like using this technology and in-situ resources.


----------



## ekim68

Only 8% of the universe's habitable worlds have formed so far




> There are likely hundreds of millions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way today, but that's a small fraction of the number that may form throughout the universe in the future, a new study suggests.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers catch Comet Lovejoy giving away alcohol




> Comet Lovejoy lived up to its name by releasing large amounts of alcohol as well as a type of sugar into space, according to new observations by an international team. The discovery marks the first time ethyl alcohol, the same type in alcoholic beverages, has been observed in a comet. The finding adds to the evidence that comets could have been a source of the complex organic molecules necessary for the emergence of life.


----------



## ekim68

The International Space Station is home to potentially dangerous bacteria




> There's a little known, dirty story about the International Space Station (ISS): It's filled with bacteria and fungi. A new study has found compelling evidence that microorganisms from human skin are present throughout the station, and some of the bugs could cause serious harm to astronauts.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini spacecraft set to dive into Saturn moon's jetting vapors



> More than 60 moons circle the ringed planet Saturn, but none is more intriguing than the tiny satellite named Enceladus, whose cracked and fissured crust is constantly erupting with violent jets of frozen water vapor that reach hundreds of miles high.
> 
> Now, after a dozen years exploring Saturn and its neighborhood more than a billion miles away, the unmanned spacecraft Cassini is about to fly directly through Enceladus' icy jets in a final mission to learn if conditions for life might exist in the ancient salty ocean that scientists say lies beneath the moon's frozen crust.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/theres-primordial-oxygen-leaking-from-rosettas-comet-1739333271']There's Primordial Oxygen Leaking From Rosetta's Comet[/URL]




> Comet 67P is full of surprises, from complex organic molecules to miniature space weather systems. Now, in an astronomical first, scientists have discovered molecular oxygen in the space rock's tenuous atmosphere. And it may be a relic from the birth of the Solar System.


----------



## ekim68

Has Voyager 1 escaped the Sun yet? Yes, but also no, say boffins




> Voyager 1, the deep space probe launched in 1977 and thought to have left the Solar System hasn't entirely escaped the parts of space where Sol holds sway.
> 
> So says a new contribution to _The Astrophysical Journal Letters_, Triangulation of the interstellar magnetic field .
> 
> Boffins have debated whether Voyager 1 has left the Solar System for a few years now, after NASA declared it could no longer detect direct evidence of the solar wind. The absence of the stream of particles hurtling out from the sun was taken as evidence Voyager 1 had left the solar system and entered the interstellar medium. But after revisiting Voyager data, the new paper suggests some odd magnetic field readings mean the probe is passing through "a more distorted magnetic field just outside the heliopause, which is the boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium."


----------



## ekim68

Happy birthday ISS.....


The Space Station Turns 15, Reaching a Remarkable Milestone




> You probably don't remember what you were doing on Nov. 2, 2000, but astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev likely do.
> 
> That was the day they climbed aboard the International Space Station (ISS), becoming its very first inhabitants-and beginning a streak for the station that reached 15 straight years of occupancy early Monday eastern time.


----------



## ekim68

Move Over, Hubble: Gravity Itself Is The Best Cosmic Telescope Of All




> Traditionally, there were only two ways to collect more photons:
> 
> 
> Build yourself a bigger telescope, and thereby increase your light-gathering power, or
> Observe your target object for longer periods of time, thereby increasing the amount of light you gather overall.







> But what if instead of building larger - and more expensive - telescopes, or spending all of your observing time focusing on the same one target, there were a way to magnify the ultra-distant targets, and brighten the light coming from them? In a tremendous stroke of serendipity, Einstein's theory of General Relativity predicts exactly that phenomenon: gravitational lensing.


----------



## ekim68

Evidence of a multiverse? We might have just bumped into another universe




> We might just have found evidence of another universe bumping into planet Earth, a scientist has very tentatively suggested. While mapping the cosmic microwave background - the light left over from the early universe - Ranga-Ram Chary found a mysterious glow.
> 
> Chary, a researcher at Planck's US data centre in California, was mapping CMB when he spotted the unexpected glow. In his paper, Spectral Variations of the Sky: Constraints on Alternate Universes, he said that while there is a 30% chance the fluctuations are nothing unusual, there is also the possibility they provide evidence of a multiverse.
> 
> "It could also possibly be due to the collision of our Universe with an alternate Universe whose baryon to photon ratio is a factor of around 65 larger than ours," he wrote.
> 
> The idea of a multiverse is nothing new. It says we are but one of many other universes. It builds on the notion of cosmic inflation and while the idea has gained more recognition over recent decades, being able to prove other universes exist has been unsuccessful.


----------



## ekim68

LHC luminosity upgrade project moving to next phase




> This week more than 230 scientists and engineers from around the world met at CERN to discuss the High-Luminosity LHC - a major upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that will increase its discovery potential from 2025.
> 
> After a four-year design study the project is now moving into its second phase, which will see the development of industrial prototypes for various parts of the accelerator.
> 
> Luminosity is a crucial indicator of accelerator performance. It is proportional to the number of particles colliding within a defined amount of time. Since discoveries in particle physics rely on statistics, the greater the number of collisions, the more chances physicists have to see a particle or process that they have not seen before.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/nasa-releases-harrowing-new-photos-of-last-year-s-antar-1740741248']NASA Releases Harrowing New Photos of Last Year's Antares Rocket Explosion[/URL]


----------



## ekim68

Physicists uncover novel phase of matter




> A team of physicists led by Caltech's David Hsieh has discovered an unusual form of matter-not a conventional metal, insulator, or magnet, for example, but something entirely different. This phase, characterized by an unusual ordering of electrons, offers possibilities for new electronic device functionalities and could hold the solution to a long-standing mystery in condensed matter physics having to do with high-temperature superconductivity-the ability for some materials to conduct electricity without resistance, even at "high" temperatures approaching -100 degrees Celsius.
> 
> "The discovery of this phase was completely unexpected and not based on any prior theoretical prediction," says Hsieh, an assistant professor of physics, who previously was on a team that discovered another form of matter called a topological insulator. "The whole field of electronic materials is driven by the discovery of new phases, which provide the playgrounds in which to search for new macroscopic physical properties."


----------



## ekim68

NASA wants to hire more astronauts




> Have you dreamed of becoming a space explorer? You now have your chance to do something about it: after a four-year silence, NASA is once again hiring new astronauts. The recruiting drive will run between December 14th and mid-February, with the final selections made public in mid-2017. You'll need the right mix education, experience and stamina to even get your foot in the door (there's a long-term spaceflight physical, for example).


----------



## ekim68

NASA's New Horizons Completes Record-Setting Kuiper Belt Targeting Maneuvers




> The four propulsive maneuvers were the most distant trajectory corrections ever performed by any spacecraft. The fourth maneuver, programmed into the spacecraft's computers and executed with New Horizons' hydrazine-fueled thrusters, started at approximately 1:15 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 4, and lasted just under 20 minutes. Spacecraft operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, began receiving data through NASA's Deep Space Network just before 7 p.m. EST on Wednesday indicating the final targeting maneuver went as planned.
> 
> The maneuvers didn't speed or slow the spacecraft as much as they "pushed" New Horizons sideways, giving it a 57 meter per second (128 mile per hour) nudge toward the Kuiper Belt object (KBO). That's enough to allow New Horizons to intercept MU69 in just over three years.


----------



## ekim68

Today, 9 November 2015, a chorus of voices on this [URL='http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151109-take-a-trip-around-the-pale-blue-dot-we-all-call-home']pale blue dot we call Earth are paying homage to the late, renowned American scientist, Carl Sagan. It would have been his 81st birthday.[/url]


----------



## DaveBurnett

Indeed, he inspired me, and I suspect, a whole generation of kids here.
And I'm in the UK so i don't know what impact he had in the US.


----------



## ekim68

He inpired me also and that was a big reason why my first major in college was Astronomy.....I'm still gonna get a new telescope and make field trips out to the high desert this next spring....


----------



## ekim68

Chemical Potency and Degradation Products of Medications Stored Over 550 Earth Days at the International Space Station




> Medications degrade over time, and degradation is hastened by extreme storage conditions. Current procedures ensure that medications aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are restocked before their expiration dates, but resupply may not be possible on future long-duration exploration missions. For this reason, medications stored on the ISS were returned to Earth for analysis. This was an opportunistic, observational pilot-scale investigation to test the hypothesis that ISS-aging does not cause unusual degradation.


----------



## DaveBurnett

All very interesting, but rather pointless without the comparison since if the control samples showed the same it has absolutely nothing to do with space.

I'm not getting at you, Mike; I'm saying the report itself is not scientific.

What may be more worrying is that someone in the future will use this partial study as scientific proof, much like they did with the effects of salt.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini spots massive ice cloud above Titan's south pole




> NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed the presence of an enormous cloud located around the Saturnian moon Titan's southern polar region. The discovery comes as the spacecraft nears the end of its mission, which has stretch over a decade-long mission, and characterizes the ringed giant and its moons in spectacular fashion.
> 
> Titan's winter season lasts for an impressive seven and a half Earth-years. This has allowed Cassini to observe the slow passing of the enigmatic moon periodically since arriving around Saturn in June 2004.


----------



## ekim68

Multi-tasking....

Galileo satellites set for year-long Einstein Experiment



> Europe's fifth and sixth Galileo satellites - subject to complex salvage manoeuvres following their launch last year into incorrect orbits - will help to perform an ambitious year-long test of Einstein's most famous theory.


----------



## ekim68

YouTube Video....


10 Lies You Were Told About Space


----------



## ekim68

NASA unveils shiny new coat for its Orion spacecraft




> NASA on Thursday evening released conceptual images of its Orion spacecraft featuring a new, metallic-based coating that will protect the vehicle both in orbit and during its fiery return to Earth.
> 
> Engineers at Johnson Space Center have decided to add a silver coating to the back shell panels of the spacecraft, which will help Orion regulate its temperature. When in space, as Orion faces away from the Sun, the new insulating coating will help keep the vehicle warm. And when the spacecraft is in direct sunlight the coating will keep the interior of the spacecraft cooler.


----------



## ekim68

NASA awards contracts for deep-space advanced propulsion systems




> NASA has awarded contracts to three American propulsion companies to aid the U.S. federal space agency with the development of advanced deep-space Electric Propulsion systems - including VASIMR - needed to one day transport astronauts to destinations beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO).


----------



## ekim68

Jeff Bezos beats Elon Musk's SpaceX in the reusable rocket race




> Blue Origin





> , the private space firm owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has just dropped a huge gauntlet in the race to develop a reusable rocket. It just launched its New Shepard space vehicle (video, below), consisting of a BE-3 rocket and crew capsule, to the edge of space at a suborbital altitude of 100.5 kilometers (62 miles). The capsule then separated and touched down beneath a parachute, but more importantly, the BE-3 rocket also started its own descent. After the rockets fired at nearly 5,000 feet, it made a a controlled vertical landing at a gentle 4.4 mph.
> 
> So far, SpaceX has managed to get its own reusable booster close to its barge platform, but hasn't nailed the landing yet. Elon Musk's company does have a more daunting task, however -- its much larger Falcon 9 reusable first stage is propelling the rocket to an orbital, not suborbital altitude.


----------



## ekim68

The Ins and Outs of NASA's First Launch of SLS and Orion




> NASA is hard at work building the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the ground systems needed to send astronauts into deep space. The agency is developing the core capabilities needed to enable the journey to Mars.
> 
> Orion's first flight atop the SLS will not have humans aboard, but it paves the way for future missions with astronauts. Ultimately, it will help NASA prepare for missions to the Red Planet. During this flight, currently designated Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), the spacecraft will travel thousands of miles beyond the moon over the course of about a three-week mission.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-largest-radio-telescope-dish-is-taking-shape-1744871145']The World's Largest Radio Telescope Dish Is Taking Shape Like a Giant Puzzle[/URL]




> Within a year, the world's current largest single-dish radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, will lose its title. It will instead be usurped by this: the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) in Pingtang County, China.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Space Cups help astronauts drink like they do on Earth




> Astronauts can't really enjoy beverages the way you do here on Earth. They have to drink from a pouch through a straw, which is about as glamorous as sipping from a juice box. NASA and IRPI are giving those spacefarers their dignity back, however. They're experimenting with Space Cups that, as the name implies, let astronauts drink as they would at home.


----------



## ekim68

This is a good read and the equipment involved is very good....


[URL='http://gizmodo.com/the-search-for-elusive-gravitational-waves-is-headed-to-1728399839']A New Mission Will Search for Ripples in Spacetime[/URL]




> In the distant reaches of the Universe, exploding stars and supermassive black holes are bending the very fabric of spacetime. It's hard to wrap our brains around such tremendous forces, but we may be able to quantify them, in the form of gravitational waves. A new European Space Agency mission marks humanity's first bold attempt to do so in outer space.
> 
> This fall, the ESA's LISA Pathfinder will be blasted into space on a course for the L1 Lagrange point. Situated nearly a million miles from Earth, it'll begin pilot-testing fundamental technologies for the detection of elusive gravitational waves.


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons Returns First of the Best Images of Pluto




> NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the first in a series of the sharpest views of Pluto it obtained during its July flyby - and the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades.


----------



## ekim68

Japanese space probe Akatsuki enters orbit around Venus five years late




> On May 17, 2010, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency Venus Climate Orbiter probe or as it is now called Akatsuki lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center. It was supposed to enter orbit around Venus on December 6, 2010. However, due to a failure in the probe's orbital maneuvering thruster, Akatsuki did not enter Venus orbit and went into orbit around the sun instead. According to a Sunday story in Gizmag, just about five years to the day of the failure, Akatsuki assumed an orbit around the second planet from the sun. Japanese scientists will determine what sort of orbit that is in a couple of days and, hopefully, begin the probe's science mission.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/we-finally-have-the-full-story-on-ceres-mysterious-brig-1746997700']We Finally Have the Full Story on Ceres' Mysterious Bright Spots[/URL]




> Water ice from a subterranean ocean? Giant salt deposits from an alien mining operation? Since March, dwarf planet Ceres' bright spots have mystified scientists, dazzled space nerds, and sparked all manner of wild speculation. A study published today in _Nature_ has the answers we've been waiting for. Ceres, you are one fantastically complex beast of a space rock.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/why-is-nasa-building-this-giant-soccer-ball-1747272129']Why Is NASA Building This Giant Soccer Ball?[/URL]




> Because it has a goal! But a different kind of goal to the ones found in soccer: instead, it's one to put American astronauts on Mars.


----------



## ekim68

Have to remember that this was made about 1500 years before Galileo and his Telescope...

The Antikythera Mechanism

(A long but good read..)


----------



## ekim68

This Jupiter-sized star has a giant storm that's been raging for years




> Turns out having "stellar" weather can be pretty unpleasant. Scientists using NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have discovered a long-lived storm on a cool dwarf star that's reminiscent of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
> 
> The findings, appearing in the Astrophysical Journal, shed light on the mysterious atmospheric dynamics on these strange objects living on the edge of the blurry boundary between planet and star.


----------



## ekim68

A good read...:up:


[URL='http://io9.com/the-real-story-of-apollo-17-and-why-we-never-went-ba-1670503448']The Real Story Of Apollo 17... And Why We Never Went Back To The Moon[/URL]




> On December 11, 1972, Apollo 17 touched down on the Moon. This was not only our final Moon landing, but the last time we left low Earth orbit. With the successful launch of the Orion capsule, NASA is finally poised to go further again. So it's important to remember how we got to the Moon - and why we stopped going.


----------



## ekim68

Bull's-eye Moons


----------



## ekim68

The FAA to facilitate American commercial participation in the ESA Moon Village




> While NASA remains fixated on its Journey to Mars, quietly, the FAA is positioning itself as the lead United States Government agency for a return to the moon. According to a Tuesday story in Space News, "FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) unanimously approved a recommendation that the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation begin discussions with ESA on ways American companies could participate in what's known as 'Moon Village.'" The "Moon Village" is a European concept for an international moon base where various countries and private entities would collocate habitats for mutual support and benefit.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/theres-a-mystery-lurking-in-curiositys-latest-drillhole-1748458329']There's a Mystery Lurking in Curiosity's Latest Drillholes[/URL]




> In its slow ascent up Mount Sharp, NASA's Curiosity Rover has stumbled upon a mystery fit for the robot's name: silica. Lots and lots of silica. And the discovery may shape our understanding of the Red Planet's geologic past, including whether life could have lived there.
> 
> Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, but we hadn't detected high concentrations of silica minerals on Mars until seven months ago, when Curiosity approached "Marias Pass," a contact zone between two Martian rock units located near the base of Mount Sharp. It was here that the rover's laser-firing ChemCam instrument first ID'd sediments chock full of silica, with concentrations of up to 90 percent. The discovery was so surprising that Curiosity's science team made the rare decision to turn the rover around and hunt for more.


----------



## ekim68

(It's getting crowded up there.)


PSLV-C29 successfully launched by ISRO with six Singapore satellites aboard




> India launched today six Singaporean satellites with its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle's core alone (PSLV-CA) variant. The PSLV rocket - standing 44.4 metres tall and weighing around 227 tonnes - tore into the evening skies with fierce orange flames at its tail.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble captures first-ever predicted exploding star




> Many stars end their lives with a bang, but only a few of these stellar explosions have been caught in the act. When they are, spotting them successfully has been down to pure luck - until now. On 11 December 2015 astronomers not only imaged a supernova in action, but saw it when and where they had predicted it would be.


----------



## ekim68

Why Mars should be Independent from Earth



> If we build a colony on Mars, should its citizens be their own masters?


----------



## DaveBurnett

Somebody has been reading "The Moon is a harsh mistress!"


----------



## ekim68

One of my all-time favorites....:up:


----------



## ekim68

Falcon 9 launch, landing from Cape Canaveral successful




> BREVARD COUNTY --
> 
> SpaceX returned to flight with a successful launch of the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on Monday after a 24-hour delay.
> 
> The company successfully landed the first stage on the ground after liftoff. It was the first time a rocket landed on the Cape.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists find new evidence for helium 'rain' on Saturn




> Using one of the world's most powerful lasers, physicists have found experimental evidence for Saturn's helium "rain," a phenomenon in which a mixture of liquid hydrogen and helium separates like oil and water, sending droplets of helium deep in the planet's atmosphere. The results show the range of blistering temperatures and crushing pressures at which this takes place. But they also suggest that a helium rain could also fall on Jupiter, where such behavior was almost completely unexpected.


----------



## ekim68

China's Lunar Rover Discovered a New Kind of Moon Rock



> The Yutu Rover has discovered a type of basalt unlike anything else ever found on the moon


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://sploid.gizmodo.com/what-an-earthrise-looks-like-from-the-surface-of-the-mo-1749514460']What an Earthrise Looks Like from the Surface of the Moon[/URL]


----------



## ekim68

Video....


Space Debris: 1957 - 2015


----------



## DaveBurnett

Scrap dealership anyone??


----------



## ekim68

Comet Catalina: Don't miss your only chance to see it




> A green comet with two tails is passing through our skies, and looking for it may be a great way to ring in the New Year.
> 
> Comet Catalina, officially known as C/2013 US10 (Catalina), is currently making its first and only trip through the inner solar system.
> 
> The comet has been visible with binoculars in the northern hemisphere before dawn since late November, and makes its closest approach to Earth on Jan. 17. At that point, it will be near the handle of the Big Dipper.


----------



## ekim68

Juno sets distance record for solar-powered spacecraft




> Aided by its enormous solar array, NASA spacecraft Juno has set a record as the most distant solar-powered space explorer. The four ton "armored tank" craft hit 493 million miles yesterday on its way to Jupiter, passing Rosetta's 492-million-mile mark. With a 30-foot-long array and 18,698 solar cells, it's able to profit from what little sunlight hits it. "Jupiter is five times farther from the sun than Earth, and the sunlight that reaches that far out packs 25 times less punch," said Juno project manager Rick Nybakken.


----------



## ekim68

NASA picks SpaceX, Orbital, and Sierra Nevada to resupply the space station through 2024




> NASA has awarded Sierra Nevada, Orbital ATK, and SpaceX the next round of contracts through the agency's Commercial Resupply Program. These companies will be responsible for resupplying the International Space Station from 2019 through 2024 - the length of time NASA has committed to keeping the station operational.


----------



## ekim68

> 570 billion times the brightness of our Sun


 


Colossal star explosion detected




> Astronomers have seen what could be the most powerful supernova ever detected.
> 
> The exploding star was first observed back in June last year but is still radiating vast amounts of energy.
> 
> At its peak, the event was 200 times more powerful than a typical supernova, making it shine with 570 billion times the brightness of our Sun.


----------



## 2twenty2

...


----------



## ekim68

China to land probe on dark side of moon in 2018: Xinhua




> China plans to land the first probe ever on the dark side of the moon in 2018, marking another milestone in its ambitious space program, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
> 
> China has launched a new round of work focused on lunar exploration, coming about two years after it made the first "soft landing" on the moon since 1976 with the Chang'e-3 craft and its Jade Rabbit rover.


----------



## ekim68

Astronauts grow their first flower in space




> They're raising zinnias aboard the ISS to know more about growing food on Mars.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/the-case-of-the-so-called-alien-megastructure-just-got-1753269810']The Case of the So-Called Alien Megastructure Just Got Weirder[/URL]




> It's probably not aliens. Seriously guys, it's very, _very_ unlikely that it's aliens. But the weird, flickering star known as KIC 8462852 still isn't sitting right with astronomers. In fact, it just got a lot weirder.
> 
> Ever since KIC 84628532 was spotted in the Kepler Space Telescope's dataset, astronomers have puzzled over what the heck could be responsible for the star's logic-defying light curve. Over four years of observational data, KIC 8462852 flickered erratically, its light output sometimes dropping by as much as 20%. That's highly unusual stellar behavior, and it can't be explained by a transiting planet.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble, the Little Telescope that Could....


Hubble Unveils a Tapestry of Dazzling Diamond-like Stars


----------



## ekim68

NASA's deep space habitat could support the Journey to Mars and a lunar return




> NASA received a $1.3 billion boost in funding earlier this month, but included in the budget was a mandate that NASA spend $55 million to produce a deep space habitat prototype by 2018.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://www.gizmag.com/planet-one-trillion-kilometer-orbit/41488/']Planet with 900,000-year orbit lies a staggering 1 trillion kilometers from its sun[/URL]




> In an astronomical astronomical discovery, scientists have identified what's believed to be the widest known planetary system. Situated about 104 light years from Earth, a planet that could be 15 times the size of Jupiter is in a 900,000-year orbit at a mind-boggling distance of 1 trillion km from its parent star - that's 7,000 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun.


----------



## DaveBurnett

With numbers that big you really have to wonder if they are speculating just "to be first"!! to find it.


----------



## ekim68

As an aside, I recently read where they found the largest prime number...


----------



## DaveBurnett

Bit-coins??


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://www.gizmag.com/cassini-saturn-titan/41497/']Cassini prepares for dramatic climax to its mission[/URL]




> NASA's Cassini spacecraft recently completed the second of five planned burns designed to maneuver the spacecraft out of Saturn's ring plane, and into a polar orbit. The move is being made in preparation for the final phase of Cassini's mission, which will see the spacecraft perform a series of daring orbits, maximizing the probe's scientific output prior to the mission's termination.
> 
> The venerated probe had been operating in Saturn's equatorial orbit since insertion there in Spring 2014, making use of the ring plane to undertake a series of final encounters with the gas giant's eclectic moons.
> 
> These close passes have provided scientists at NASA with a wealth of new information regarding the nature of the Saturnian system, but unfortunately, Cassini's operational life is coming to an end, and so mission operators are setting the probe on a new, polar orbit.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Successfully Tests Crew Dragon Landing Parachutes




> If you happen to live in the desert near Coolidge, Ariz. and saw something red and white falling from the sky recently, don't be alarmed.
> 
> It wasn't a UFO - it was just SpaceX testing out the parachute system it plans to use to land its manned Crew Dragon spacecraft back on Earth. The private spacecraft maker recently conducted its first successful test of the system as part of its final development and certification work with NASA's Commercial Crew Program, the space agency announced Wednesday.


----------



## ekim68

Space Photos of the Week: This Cloud's Going Places




> Hundreds of enormous, high-velocity gas clouds whiz around the outskirts of our galaxy, but the Smith Cloud is unique because its trajectory is well known. Discovered in the 1960s, astronomers believe it was launched from the outer regions of the galactic disk around 70 million years ago.


----------



## poochee




----------



## ekim68

Pluto's Widespread Water Ice




> New data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft point to more prevalent water ice on Pluto's surface than previously thought.
> 
> This false-color image, derived from observations in infrared light by the Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA) instrument, shows where the spectral features of water ice are abundant on Pluto's surface. It is based on two LEISA scans of Pluto obtained on July 14, 2015, from a range of about 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers).


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/theres-something-very-ominous-going-on-near-this-superm-1756643436']There's Something Very Ominous Going On Near This Supermassive Black Hole[/URL]




> What's this, you ask? Oh, it's nothing. Just a supermassive black hole blasting a giant x-ray beam over a 300,000 light year-wide gulf of intergalactic space.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/an-asteroid-will-pass-earth-so-closely-next-month-that-1757095305']An Asteroid Will Pass Earth So Closely Next Month That We Could See It in the Sky[/URL]




> Let's be very clear here: There is simply no possibility that Asteroid 2013 TX68 will get close enough to hit Earth when it flies by on March 5th. What it may do, though, is come close enough to be visible.


----------



## ekim68

NASA announces that Pluto has icebergs floating on glaciers of nitrogen ice



> When Pluto was first discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh it was a tiny dot that could be seen only by a telescope. All of that changed in July 2015 when NASA's New Horizons space probe flew by the dwarf planet in a signature feat of space exploration and took images and garnered data that has transformed it into a totally alien and fascinating world.
> 
> Pluto features plains of nitrogen ice and hills of water ice that are harder than rock. It has a hydrological cycle, of a kind, in which the nitrogen evaporates in the air and then falls as sleet and snow onto Pluto's surface.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/spacex-is-gearing-up-to-build-lots-and-lots-of-new-rock-1757515503']SpaceX Is Gearing Up To Build Lots and Lots of New Rockets[/URL]




> It's been a few really good months for SpaceX, and now, the commercial spaceflight company is kicking rocket production into high gear in anticipation of a packed launch schedule.
> 
> Speaking on Thursday at the Federal Aviation Administration's Commercial Space Transportation Conference, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell explained that the company was transitioning from testing and development of its Falcon 9 rocket cores to mass production.


----------



## ekim68

Einstein's Gravitational Waves Have Been Detected For The First Time




> Today, scientists announced that, for the first time in history, gravitational waves have been detected.
> 
> Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime throughout the universe. What's truly remarkable about this discovery is that Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves 100 years ago, but scientists have never been able to detect them, until now.


----------



## DaveBurnett

My wife could when she was on a diet!!


----------



## ekim68

Does your wife read this thread?


----------



## ekim68

RIP Philae lander: Scientists give up on the little probe that could




> (CNN)It was the intrepid little space probe that captured our imaginations. But the time has come to say farewell to the Philae lander.
> 
> Scientists from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have given up hope of establishing further contact with the comet lander, currently perched on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it races toward the sun.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble telescope spots 'supermassive' black hole




> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a photo of a distant galaxy that's home to one of the most massive black holes astronomers have ever discovered.
> 
> The black hole is located 300 million light years away in the center of the Coma Cluster of the galaxy NGC 4889, which is the brightest galaxy in the newly released photo, according to a statement from NASA and the ESA.


----------



## ekim68

NASA just smashed its record for astronaut applications-18,000+




> Despite uncertainty about destinations, NASA will now trim field down to 8-14 candidates.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Galactic's New Spaceship Puts It Back in the Space Race




> Soon you may not have to commit to the rigors of astronaut life to get out into space. Today Virgin Galactic is unveiling the second iteration of SpaceShipTwo, its shuttle designed to bring (wealthy) tourists on sub-orbital space flights.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Introduces New, Wider Set of Eyes on the Universe




> After years of preparatory studies, NASA is formally starting an astrophysics mission designed to help unlock the secrets of the universe -- the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).
> 
> With a view 100 times bigger than that of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, WFIRST will aid researchers in their efforts to unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, and explore the evolution of the cosmos. It also will discover new worlds outside our solar system and advance the search for worlds that could be suitable for life.


----------



## ekim68

New fast radio burst discovery finds 'missing matter' in the universe




> An international team of scientists using a combination of radio and optical telescopes has for the first time managed to identify the location of a fast radio burst, allowing them to confirm the current cosmological model of the distribution of matter in the universe.


----------



## ekim68

Space Station's one-year crew is coming home on March 1st




> On March 1st, the longest ISS mission is coming to an end. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Roscosmos cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will make their journey back to Earth, 340 days after they landed on the spacecraft. The year-long mission gave NASA's scientists the chance to study the physical and psychological effects of lengthy space travel on humans. Most astronauts only stay aboard the space station for six months -- scientists needed the data to plan for longer, deep space manned missions to Mars and other celestial bodies. It helped that Kelly has a twin brother on Earth who provided NASA "more bases for comparisons."


----------



## ekim68

Korea to inject W200b into moon exploration for 3 years




> South Korea will spend a total of 746.4 billion won ($603 million) on its space program this year, as part of efforts to realize its long-cherished goal of reaching the moon.


----------



## ekim68

What if extraterrestrial observers called, but nobody heard?




> As scientists step up their search for other life in the universe, two astrophysicists are proposing a way to make sure we don't miss the signal if extraterrestrial observers try to contact us first.
> 
> René Heller and Ralph Pudritz say the best chance for us finding a signal from beyond is to presume that extraterrestrial observers are using the same methods to search for us that we are using to search for life beyond Earth.


----------



## DaveBurnett

Well we can hardly use a method that we don't know about can we??
They certainly earned their salary there, didn't they??


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> What if extraterrestrial observers called, but nobody heard?


I actually wrote about this a few years back; I've emailed the link to the writers, as well as SETI again, we'll see if I get a response this time around.

https://timothypierce.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/86/


----------



## DaveBurnett

That page has an out of date certificate by the way; part of my security stops me seeing pages that have invalid certificates.


----------



## valis

That's wordpress, not my issue, unfortunately.


----------



## DaveBurnett

I know that!

It is amazing how many organisations have the same problem, including security companies that should know better.


----------



## valis

if you want, I can copy the text here. It's nothing new, just telling SETI what their problems are.


----------



## DaveBurnett

I'm not that fussed. I could use a different browser or setting if I really want to see it.

I do tend to keep up with scientific stuff, hence the sarcastic comment.


----------



## ekim68

That was a nice read Tim...Reminds me of how BIG Space is.....


----------



## valis

Yeah, sorta said that a few times, didn't I?


----------



## ekim68

Astronaut Scott Kelly taller after space stint




> Astronaut Scott Kelly and his twin brother used to be the same height.
> 
> But it's likely that won't be true when the two stand side by side for the first time in nearly a year.
> 
> NASA's Jeff Williams told CNN that Scott Kelly grew 2 inches during his time aboard the International Space Station
> 
> It was expected, and it's temporary, Williams said.


----------



## ekim68

Repeating fast radio bursts found coming from outside our galaxy




> Multiple short bursts of radio waves have been found coming from a single location far beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, Cornell astronomers have discovered. It's the first time researchers have found these enigmatic "fast radio bursts" to repeat, indicating that the waves are coming from a powerful source located many light years away.
> 
> Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, have long been a mystery for astronomers. Only 17 have ever been found, and they usually appear as isolated events - flashes of radio waves in the sky that only last for milliseconds at a time. Scientists had theorized that the flashes were caused by events as exotic as the smashing together of neutron stars, but Cornell's discovery indicates that whatever produces the burst isn't destroyed in the process. Shami Chatterjee, a senior researcher at Cornell, said that the FRB in question in the paper did not have an explosive origin. "So, either there's an odd coincidence," Chatterjee said, "or maybe there are different types of FRBs. Either way, it seems we've broken this enigmatic phenomenon wide open."


----------



## ekim68

Simulated Martian and lunar soils sprout their first crops




> When and if colonists ever arrive on Mars, they're going to need something to eat … on a long-term, ongoing basis. That's why several research groups are looking into the feasibility of growing crops on the Red Planet. One of those teams, from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, previously tried growing food plants in simulations of both lunar and Martian soil. Although those tests proved unsuccessful, that _wasn't_ the case the most recent time around.


----------



## ekim68

Ten Years of Discovery by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter




> True to its purpose, the big NASA spacecraft that began orbiting Mars a decade ago this week has delivered huge advances in knowledge about the Red Planet.
> 
> NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has revealed in unprecedented detail a planet that held diverse wet environments billions of years ago and remains dynamic today.
> 
> One example of MRO's major discoveries was published last year, about the possibility of liquid water being present seasonally on present-day Mars. It drew on three key capabilities researchers gained from this mission: telescopic camera resolution to find features narrower than a driveway; spacecraft longevity to track seasonal changes over several Martian years; and imaging spectroscopy to map surface composition.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Pursues Burning Desire to Study Fire Safety in Space




> Engineers at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland have developed a space flight experiment that will increase understanding of how an accidental fire might behave in a spacecraft after it leaves Earth's atmosphere. The first of three planned flight experiments is scheduled for launch in an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo vehicle on March 22 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.


----------



## ekim68

Saturn's moons younger than the dinosaurs, new research says




> MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 24 (UPI) -- Some of Saturn's moons are surprisingly young. New research from the SETI Institute suggests some of the gas giant's moons and portions of its rings were formed after the reign of the dinosaurs, just 100 million years ago.
> 
> Tidal interactions -- the push and pull of gravitational forces -- between Saturn's inner satellites and the gas giant's inner liquid have altered Saturn's moons and rings over time, pulling them farther out or titling them at an angle.


----------



## ekim68

Unmanned cargo ship reaches International Space Station on resupply run




> An unmanned cargo ship packed with science experiment materials plus food, water and clothes successfully docked at the International Space Station on Saturday, NASA partner Orbital ATK said.
> 
> The cargo ship, Cygnus, which blasted off Tuesday on the resupply run, was carrying 7,900 pounds (3.6 metric tons) of supplies to the station for the ISS crew of six astronauts, as well as components to support dozens of science and research probes.


----------



## ekim68

DARPA's satellite repair robot makes house calls




> There are over 400 geosynchronous satellites orbiting 22,000 mi (36,000 km) above the Earth. They are a vital part of global communications and represent billions of dollars in investments, but once they break down or run out of fuel, they're so much tin foil. DARPA has released a video outlining the agency's vision of a mobile robotic servicing system designed to rendezvous with and repair ailing telecommunications satellites.


----------



## ekim68

Jupiter Got Whacked by Yet Another Asteroid/Comet!




> On March 17, Gerrit Kernbauer, an amateur astronomer in Mödling, Austria, was taking video of Jupiter using a 20 cm telescope. This is a common technique to capture thousands of frames of an object, so that the best parts of each frame can be teased out to create a high-resolution image, removing the distorting effects of the atmosphere.
> 
> But he got more than he expected. At 00:18:33 UTC he captured what looks very much like the impact of a small comet or asteroid into Jupiter!


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX successfully lands its rocket on a floating drone ship for the first time




> SpaceX has finally landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship at sea, after launching the vehicle into space this afternoon. It's the first time the company has been able to pull off an ocean landing, after four previous attempts ended in failure. Today's success is a crucial milestone for SpaceX, as it shows the company can land its rockets both on solid ground and ocean.


----------



## ekim68

Despite lean space budgets Russia is headed for the moon




> Thanks to the collapse of oil prices that has ravaged the Russian economy, dependent as it is on fossil fuel exports, Russia's space program is facing draconian budget cuts. Vladimir Putin's imperial adventures in the Ukraine and the Middle East are consuming a great portion of the Russian Federation's national budget. Russia is also due to lose a source of income when NASA shifts its astronauts from Soyuz spacecraft to commercial crew vehicles in a couple of years. Still, the country that lost the race to the moon still has ambitious plans for Earth's closest neighbor, according to Science Magazine. The Russians even have hopes of landing cosmonauts on the lunar surface by the end of the 2020s.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://lifehacker.com/make-sure-to-catch-these-skywatching-events-for-2016-1769727932']Make Sure to Catch These Skywatching Events for 2016 [/URL]




> Our universe is constantly doing amazing things. It's worth looking up whenever we're lucky enough to catch a glimpse. Here are twelve skywatching events to mark on your calendar this year.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Delivers World's 1st Inflatable Room for Astronauts




> SpaceX





> has made good on a high-priority delivery: the world's first inflatable room for astronauts.
> 
> A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, two days after launching from Cape Canaveral. Station astronauts used a robot arm to capture the Dragon, orbiting 250 miles above Earth.
> 
> The Dragon holds 7,000 pounds of freight, including the soft-sided compartment built by Bigelow Aerospace. The pioneering pod - packed tightly for launch - should swell to the size of a small bedroom once filled with air next month.


----------



## ekim68

Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered from Emergency and Stable




> Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode.


It just amazes me how they can control these spacecrafts so far away...


----------



## ekim68

Stephen Hawking's space probes eye the express lane to neighboring stars




> The Alpha Centauri star system is a fair old hike. At 25 trillion miles (4.37 light years) away, it would take around 30,000 years for us to roll into the area, and that's if we hitched a ride on today's fastest spacecraft. If the latest idea from the cosmically inquisitive Stephen Hawking comes to fruition, however, we could reach this neighboring stellar system within 20 years of launch.


----------



## ekim68

A supernova once blasted the moon with radioactive iron




> Stars are gigantic hydrogen bombs that normally produce helium with little fuss. When the hydrogen is all gone, however, they implode, causing exotic new elements to be formed by the massive gravitational pressure. If a star is just the right size (eight to 15 times our sun's mass), it will go supernova, ejecting heavy, often unique isotopes into space. Researchers have found some of those isotopes on the moon, meaning that our solar system was once hit by dust from a supernova just a few hundred light years away.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/a-giant-galaxy-orbiting-our-own-just-appeared-out-of-no-1771257641']A Giant Galaxy Orbiting Our Own Just Appeared Out of Nowhere[/URL]




> Researchers scanning the skies just got a big surprise. They spotted a humongous galaxy orbiting our own, where none had been seen before. It appeared, seemingly, out of nowhere.
> 
> So, just how did the newly-discovered Crater 2 manage to pull off this feat, like a deer leaping from the interstellar bushes to stare us down through our collective headlights? Although the appearance may seem sudden, the fact is that Crater 2 has been there all along. We just missed it.


----------



## ekim68

New study shows mammals can be developed in space




> The latest experiment results from China's SJ-10 recoverable satellite have been sent back with some groundbreaking news. For the first time in human history, it has been proven that the early stages of embryos in mammals can be developed completely in a space environment.


----------



## ekim68

NASA: Top 10 space junk missions




> While many of the usual suspects are still the top space junk producers, much more debris is now floating around Earth's atmosphere since the six years NASA last looked a the top 10 space junk missions.
> 
> NASA' s Orbital Debris Program Office said that by far the source of the greatest amount of orbital debris remains the Fengyun-1C spacecraft, which was the target of a People's Republic of China anti-satellite test in January 2007.


----------



## ekim68

China plans to reach Mars by 2020 and eventually build a moon base




> China has plans to orbit the moon, land people on it, and eventually settle a moon colony.
> 
> But that's just part of the nation's vision for space exploration: China intends to get a spacecraft to Mars by 2020.
> 
> Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's moon and Mars missions, told the BBC of the country's plans.


----------



## ekim68

Wikipedia to the Moon - in a nutshell




> A group of science enthusiasts from Berlin, Germany, are planning to send their own custom-built rover to the Moon. And they want to take Wikipedia with them. In the year of Wikipedia's 15th anniversary, our global community of editors is invited to prepare the ultimate time (and space) capsule of knowledge.


----------



## poochee

ekim68 said:


> Wikipedia to the Moon - in a nutshell


----------



## ekim68

Tim Peake completes London Marathon from orbit




> British astronaut Tim Peake has successfully completed the London Marathon whilst orbiting 400 km (248 miles) above the Earth aboard the International Space Station. Peake is only the second astronaut to complete a Marathon in space, alongside NASA Astronaut Sunita Williams, who took part in the Boston Marathon from the ISS back in 2007.


----------



## valis

pfft. Had to wash my dog yesterday, probably ran 3 marathons......

Seriously, though, that's pretty dang cool.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX plans to send a spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018




> SpaceX plans to send its Dragon spacecraft to Mars as early as 2018, the company announced today - marking a major first step toward CEO Elon Musk's goal of sending humans to the Red Planet. The company didn't say how many spacecraft it will send, but hinted it would conduct a series of these Dragon missions and that it would release more details soon. In a tweet, the company indicated that the capsules would fly on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, a bigger version of its Falcon 9; the rocket will launch the capsules to the planet to test out how to land heavy payloads on Mars. If successful, the endeavor would make SpaceX the first private spaceflight company to land a vehicle on another planet.


----------



## ekim68

Software Error Doomed Japanese Hitomi Spacecraft




> Japan's flagship astronomical satellite Hitomi, which launched successfully on February 17 but tumbled out of control five weeks later, may have been doomed by a basic engineering error. Confused about how it was oriented in space and trying to stop itself from spinning, Hitomi's control system apparently commanded a thruster jet to fire in the wrong direction - accelerating, rather than slowing, the craft's rotation.


----------



## valis

more on planet '9'.

http://gizmodo.com/planet-nine-just-got-weirder-1774497705


----------



## ekim68

Wow, that's the first I've heard of planet '9'.....Lots of hypothesis/s...


----------



## valis

Yup, lots of them. I find it just amazing that something that size could be lurking out there, unnoticed. Which is why I have a hard time believing it, but those guys are waaaaaaaaay smarter than I will be in a skazillion lifetimes.


----------



## ekim68

Merging galaxy clusters produce second-strongest shock wave




> HUNTSVILLE, Ala., May 4 (UPI) -- Sarthak Dasadia, a physics doctoral student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, recently identified a massive shock wave emanating from a merging galaxy cluster known as Abell 655.
> 
> The shock wave is the second-strongest merger shock -- bested only by the Bullet Cluster shock, which astronomers measured in 2006.
> 
> The latest wave is moving outward from the merging cluster at a speed of 2,700 kilometers per second -- three times the speed at which sound travels through Abell 655.


----------



## ekim68

Falcon 9 beats the odds with nighttime barge landing




> SpaceX has nailed a night landing of its Falcon 9 booster. Against all expectations, the rocket not only achieved its second landing on the unmanned "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship, but did so in the dark, at high speed and with little fuel.


----------



## ekim68

2007 OR10: Largest Unnamed World in the Solar System




> Dwarf planets tend to be a mysterious bunch. With the exception of Ceres, which resides in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, all members of this class of minor planets in our solar system lurk in the depths beyond Neptune. They are far from Earth - small and cold - which makes them difficult to observe, even with large telescopes. So it's little wonder astronomers only discovered most of them in the past decade or so.


----------



## ekim68

Cosmic Rays are Intensifying




> For the past year, neutron monitors around the Arctic Circle have sensed an increasing intensity of cosmic rays. Polar latitudes are a good place to make such measurements, because Earth's magnetic field funnels and concentrates cosmic radiation there. Turns out, Earth's poles aren't the only place cosmic rays are intensifying. Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus have been launching helium balloons to the stratosphere to measure radiation, and they find the same trend over California:


----------



## valis

Europa is more earth like that originally thought.

http://gizmodo.com/europa-is-even-more-earthlike-than-we-suspected-1777202365


----------



## 2twenty2

Videos show spectacular fireball over U.S. and Canada as minivan-sized meteorite falls to Earth - http://news.nationalpost.com/news/c...ada-as-minivan-sized-meteorite-falls-to-earth


----------



## ekim68

There Were Mega-Tsunamis on Mars




> The ocean waves were almost as tall as Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza, and they barreled across the red planet. Today, a team of scientists has announced the first discovery of extraterrestrial tsunamis.
> 
> A team of astronomers and geologists led by J. Alexis Rodriguez at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona has uncovered evidence of massive tsunamis on Mars billions of years ago. As Rodriguez reports, two separate megatsunamis tore across the red planet around 3.4 billion years ago, a time when Mars was a mere 1.1 billion years old and nearby Earth was just cradling its first microbial lifeforms. The two tsunamis created 150-foot-high shore-break waves on average, and some absolutely monster waves up to _400 feet_ tall. Rodriguez and his colleagues outline their tsunami findings today in the journal _Scientific Reports._


----------



## 2twenty2

A scientist spent 26 years studying a black hole 10 times the mass of the sun. Then it did something incredible - http://news.nationalpost.com/news/w...e-of-the-sun-then-it-did-something-incredible


----------



## bobs-here

Robo-bee: miniature robot perches like an insect. Drones in swarms and small enough to fit into the hand. vid is further down the page


> Scientists have designed flying, insect-sized robots that can perch and launch from ceilings.
> The robots use something called electrostatic adhesion, the same process by which statically-charged balloons stick to walls.
> 
> Perching allows the robots to conserve energy. The findings, reported in the journal Science, contribute to a decade-long Harvard Microrobotics Laboratory project called "RoboBee".


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36313958


----------



## bobs-here

*How much does a bottle of water cost on the International Space Station?
*
Recycling just under 4 gallons a day and drinking the result. something that may have come from all members on the ISS is a thought not to dwell on.


> Each supply run to the ISS costs several million dollars, with the launch itself costing up to half a million dollars. As such, cargo space is at a premium, and every item needs to be costed to ensure value for money, looking at each item's weight, volume and necessity.


http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/...-cost-on-the-international-space-station.aspx


----------



## valis

knucklehead said:


> A scientist spent 26 years studying a black hole 10 times the mass of the sun. Then it did something incredible - http://news.nationalpost.com/news/w...e-of-the-sun-then-it-did-something-incredible





> emitting huge quantities of X-rays in the process


This has always bugged me. The same article states that light was observed entering the black hole, and as nothing is faster than light (x-rays move at the same speed as light), how are the x-rays being emitted and not sucked in?


----------



## 2twenty2

valis said:


> This has always bugged me. The same article states that light was observed entering the black hole, and as nothing is faster than light (x-rays move at the same speed as light), how are the x-rays being emitted and not sucked in?


Good question. There are things about the universe that boggles my mind.


----------



## ekim68

India launches mini space shuttle




> India has launched an unmanned model space shuttle, joining the race to develop reusable spacecraft.
> 
> The 7m-scale model took off from Andhra Pradesh and was expected to fly about 70km (43 miles) into the atmosphere before coming down at sea.
> 
> Since Nasa stopped its Space Shuttle programme in 2011, there has been strong international competition to design alternative reusable spacecraft.


----------



## valis

knucklehead said:


> Good question. There are things about the universe that boggles my mind.


Yup. Like why we have to vote for Trump or Clinton.


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff.....:up:


SpaceX successfully lands a Falcon 9 rocket at sea for the third time




> SpaceX just successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the third time in a row the company has landed a rocket booster at sea, and the fourth time overall.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/the-beautiful-birth-of-a-new-star-1779574254']The Beautiful Birth of a New Star[/URL]




> Welcome to the Universe, IRAS 14568-6304. There's no catchy name for this particular stellar object, because it's too new to have been given one.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble finds universe may be expanding faster than expected




> Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the universe is expanding 5 percent to 9 percent faster than expected.


----------



## ekim68

I'm with this Guy.....Go for it...


Musk: SpaceX could take humans to Mars in 9 years

*



Elon Musk believes SpaceX should be able to land humans on Mars nine years from now.

Click to expand...

*


> Musk reiterated confidence in his Mars timeline at the Code Conference on Wednesday night.
> 
> "If things go according to plan, we should be able to - we should be able to - launch people in 2024, with arrival in 2025," Musk said.
> 
> "That's the game plan," he added.
> 
> Musk said he's planning to share an architectural plan for the colonization of Mars at a conference in September.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/jupiters-mysterious-interior-is-coming-into-focus-1779754843']Jupiter's Mysterious Interior Is Coming Into Focus[/URL]




> For centuries, astronomers have been enchanted by the planet Jupiter, that roiling sea of clouds punctuated by a glowering red eye. But we've only had the fuzziest notion of what lies beneath this violent visage-until now.
> 
> With recent advances in radio telescope technology, astronomers are finally starting to cut through Jupiter's swirling clouds to see what's happening down below.


----------



## ekim68

Astronaut Jeff Williams to Step inside the ISS Inflatable Module




> June 6 is a big day. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams will get inside the International Space Station inflatable module. This is a big mission and will demonstrate the potentials of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM).
> 
> The mission involves astronauts entering the module in order to check, observe and study the possibility of using inflatable space houses for exploration missions and commercial flights in Mars and low-earth orbit. The job of the astronauts will also be to examine potential problems with the expandable habitats during space missions.


----------



## ekim68

Leap into the lunar unknown: Fifty years since the landmark launch of Surveyor 1



> Space travel can still be dramatic in 2016, but it's a cakewalk compared to half a century ago. Today marks 50 years since the unmanned Surveyor I probe lifted off from Cape Canaveral, and when it landed in the Oceanus Procellarum on June 2, 1966, it was more than the first US soft landing on the Moon, it was a leap into the unknown. Launched at the height of the Space Race and the depth of the Cold War, the stakes for the first of seven Surveyor missions were incredibly high, as NASA wrestled with untried technologies and questions about the basic nature of the Moon that could make or break any hope of a manned landing.


----------



## ekim68

A Video.......


Apollo: The Alignment Optical Telescope


----------



## 2twenty2

RIP E.T. - alien life on most exoplanets dies young - https://theconversation.com/rip-e-t-alien-life-on-most-exoplanets-dies-young-60243


----------



## ekim68

Four radioactive "babies" get their names



> We all know that naming a new baby is never easy; everyone has their opinion and arguments often arise when deciding on a suitable moniker. In a similar way, the naming of new elements on the periodic table is subject to a lot of discussion and comment involving a vast range of constraints, and a committee solely dedicated to the process. Despite the difficulty and length of the process, four new elements now have proper names that honor the places and people essential to their discovery.


----------



## ekim68

ESA's potential space garbage collector nets itself a drone



> ESA has provided a preview of its plan to net space debris by unveiling a prototype net gun designed to envelope and capture tumbling dead satellites. Wojtek Gołebiowski of Poland's SKA Polska, which is developing the gun under a contract with the space agency, used a small version to target and take down a low-flying drone at the Industry Days event for ESA's Clean Space initiative.


----------



## ekim68

Finnish scientist provides another explanation for the 'impossible' EM drive



> Ever since the EM drive entered the news about a year or so ago, it has sparked considerable controversy. The device is alleged to work by using microwaves that produce, in some fashion as yet unknown to science, thrust. Many scientists suggest that the EM drive is impossible as it violates known physics. However, a number of tests conducted in Great Britain, Germany, China, and at NASA's Eagleworks at the Johnson Spaceflight Center have resulted in thrust that cannot, as yet, be explained by experimental error. Wednesday, the International Business Times reported that a Finnish scientist has published an article in a peer-reviewed science journal with a possible explanation as to how the drive works.


----------



## ekim68

Right on....:up:


NASA approves five more years for Hubble Space Telescope



> Hubble will soon start seeing double. NASA has announced plans to extend operations of the famous space telescope for another five years, through to June 2021. That means it will still be on the job when its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launches in 2018, giving astronomers a dual view of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

Former NASA ISS manager planning commercial space station venture



> SEATTLE - A former NASA manager of the International Space Station announced June 22 that he is starting a new venture that eventually plans to develop a private space station.
> 
> In a presentation at the NewSpace 2016 conference here, Mike Suffredini, president of the commercial space division of Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies (SGT) who joined the company shortly after retiring from NASA last September, said he has co-founded a new company that initially will seek to install a commercial module on the ISS.
> 
> That module would serve as a precursor for a private facility once the ISS is retired. "We intend to work on a low Earth orbit platform to follow the International Space Station," he said.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover new moon in our solar system orbiting dwarf planet Makemake



> Astronomers say images from a Hubble Space Telescope camera have revealed a moon located near a dwarf planet on the outskirts of our solar system.
> 
> A Southwest Research Institute team spotted a faint light near the dwarf planet Makemake - beyond Pluto in the Kuiper Belt - and were able to determine that the object was a previously undiscovered moon.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble photographs Jupiter's dramatic auroras



> Astronomers want to study Jupiter's auroras, because they're quite different from what we're used to. They're big enough to be able to envelope the entirety of our planet, and they're so powerful, they never go away. See, they're fueled not just by solar winds like their counterparts here on Earth, but also by charged particles from Io (one of Jupiter's four biggest moons), which has numerous volcanoes. According to team leader Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester, the gas giant's auroras are the most dramatic and active he's ever seen. He said: "It almost seems as if Jupiter is throwing a firework party for the imminent arrival of Juno."


----------



## ekim68

This is so Cool....


Voyagers



(Sorry Tim, it's a video... )


----------



## ekim68

China successfully refuels a satellite in orbit



> China is now one of the precious few countries that knows how to refuel satellites in space. The nation's Tianyuan-1 system (launched aboard the Long March 7) has successfully topped up at least one satellite in orbit. Officials aren't describing the process beyond likening it to that for airplanes, but the result is clear: the refueling should help satellites stay in orbit for longer, or make adjustments that would otherwise be impractical.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Juno spacecraft approaches Jupiter for a 4th of July arrival




> The space probe will spend 20 months ferreting out the secrets of the solar system's largest planet


----------



## ekim68

Construction complete on the world's largest radio telescope in China



> With the installation of a final triangular panel on July 3, 2016, construction has been completed on the gargantuan Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in Dawodang, Kedu Town, Guizhou Province, China. Upon commencing operations in late September, the 1.5 billion yuan (US$ 180 million) FAST telescope will become the most powerful single-dish radio detector in the world.


----------



## bobs-here

Success!... Juno probe enters into the orbit around Jupiter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36710768


----------



## ekim68

Hubble images neutron star at the heart of the Crab Nebula



> The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of the super-dense neutron star at the heart of the famous Crab Nebula. The nebula resulted from one of the earliest supernovae to be recorded by human beings, and its striking form has made it a popular target for amateur and professional astronomers alike.
> 
> Located roughly 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Taurus, the chaotic twisting clouds of dust and gas mark the site of one of the Universe's most violent and dramatic events, a supernovae.


----------



## valis

that was the pic on APOD today, btw.........

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160708.html


----------



## ekim68

Thanks, I'm spreading that one around....:up:


----------



## 2twenty2

Astronomers have found another Pluto-like dwarf planet located about 20 times farther away from the sun than Neptune. The small planet, dubbed 2015 RR245, is estimated to be about 435 miles in diameter and flying in an elliptical, 700-year orbit around the sun.

http://www.seeker.com/new-dwarf-planet-discovered-in-outer-solar-system-1915913544.html


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity Mars Rover Resumes Full Operations



> NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is resuming full operations today, following work by engineers to investigate why the rover put itself into a safe standby mode on July 2. The rover team brought Curiosity out of safe mode on July 9.
> 
> The most likely cause of entry into safe mode has been determined to be a software mismatch in one mode of how image data are transferred on board. Science activity planning for the rover is avoiding use of that mode, which involves writing images from some cameras' memories into files on the rover's main computer. Alternate means are available for handling and transmitting all image data.


----------



## ekim68

Discovery becomes 27th 'highly likely' dwarf planet ... wait, 27?



> The newly discovered dwarf planet 2015 RR245, first sighted earlier this year and this week declared a dwarf planet (more on what makes a "dwarf planet" below), brings to 27 those objects in our solar system that are at least "highly likely" to be a full-fledged dwarf planet.


----------



## ekim68

Mars 2020 rides Curiosity's coattails to final assembly and testing



> NASA's Mars 2020 rover looks to be on track with the space agency announcing that the unmanned explorer has gone on to the fourth phase of its development, which includes final system assembly, testing, and launch. The follow up to the highly successful Curiosity rover mission is scheduled for liftoff in the middle of 2020 and arrival at the Red Planet in February 2021 to begin its mission to explore areas that might once have harbored microbial life.


----------



## ekim68

World's Most Powerful Radio Telescope Discovers 1300 New Galaxies in Trial Run



> On Saturday night astronomers at the South African MeerKAT radio telescope array fired up 16 of its recently completed dishes and released the first ever image from what is slated to become the world's most powerful radio telescope. The initial results were incredibly promising: operating with only one quarter of the 64 dishes that will eventually comprise MeerKAT, the telescope was able to find 1300 galaxies in a small corner of the universe where only 70 galaxies were known to exist previously.


----------



## 2twenty2

NASA denies covering up evidence of alien life after live footage of UFO suddenly cuts to black

The footage is grainy, but the object's path is clear: It is descending, slowly, toward the bluish hue of Earth, amid the pitch-dark backdrop of the solar system. Suddenly, the object stalls. There is a flash of white light. And the screen goes black.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Lands Another Rocket



> SpaceX pulled off its fifth rocket landing in the last seven months early Monday morning (July 18), this time bringing a booster back during a successful cargo launch toward the International Space Station (ISS).


----------



## ekim68

Having a blast! Nasa's Curiosity rover can now shoot a laser at rocks on Mars without the help of humans



> Since Nasa's Mars rover, Curiosity, landed on the red planet in 2012, it has been zapping rocks using an on-board laser to analyse their composition.
> 
> But until now, the laser was only able to operate when controlled by humans.
> 
> Now, the rover is able to select rock targets to blast on its own, using the first autonomous target selection instrument of its kind.


----------



## ekim68

The Milky Way's dark twin revealed



> It took 33.5 hours on one of the world's largest telescopes, but for the first time astronomers have measured the motion of stars inside a newly recognized breed of dimly lit galaxy. The stars' rapid speed reveals that the galaxy weighs as much as the far more brilliant Milky Way1.


----------



## Brigham

This find is a typical example of the discover something and reveal lots of new questions.


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff...:up:


Star Size Comparison 2


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/theres-growing-evidence-that-venus-was-once-habitable-1784828113']There's Growing Evidence That Venus Was Once Habitable[/URL]



> If you could hop in a time-traveling spacecraft, go back three billion years and land any place in our solar system, where would you want to end up? Earth, with its barren continents and unbreathable atmosphere? Or Mars, a chillier version its big brother? Wait, what about Venus?
> 
> Venus has a rep for being a toxic hellscape, but three billion years ago, it may have been the best piece of real estate our solar system had to offer-or at least, a close second to Earth. This hypothesis has been around for years, but it's gaining traction thanks to climate models developed by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and elsewhere.


----------



## ekim68

CERN confirms: Hints of hypothetical particle have disappeared



> Toward the end of last year, the people behind the Large Hadron Collider announced that they might have found signs of a new particle. Their evidence came from an analysis of the first high-energy data obtained after the LHC's two general-purpose detectors underwent an extensive upgrade. While the possible new particle didn't produce a signal that reached statistical significance, it did show up in both detectors, raising the hope that the LHC was finally on to some new physics.
> 
> This week, those hopes have officially been dashed. Physicists used a conference to release their analysis of the flood of data that came out of this year's run. According to their data, the area of the apparent signal is filled by nothing but statistical noise.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity: Four years on Mars and still trekking



> NASA's Curiosity Mars rover completed the fourth year of its original two-year mission today and is looking forward to another two-year extension beginning in October. When the US$2.5 billion unmanned explorer landed on the Red Planet on August 6, 2012, it was the most complex lander to have visited any world. In its brief career it has provided mankind with a new understanding of Mars and the chances that life may have once or could still exist there.


----------



## ekim68

Perseid meteor shower 'outburst' coming this week



> What's often the best meteor shower of the year - the Perseids - is predicted to be even better than usual when the shooting stars appear in the night sky later this week.
> 
> "Forecasters are predicting a Perseid outburst this year with double normal rates on the night of Aug. 11-12," said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office. "Under perfect conditions, rates could soar to 200 meteors per hour," he said.


----------



## ekim68

Wow, they're looking to harvest in five years.....:up:


Prospector-1: First Commercial Interplanetary Mining Mission



> Deep Space Industries announced today its plans to fly the world's first commercial interplanetary mining mission. *Prospector-1™* will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid, and investigate the object to determine its value as a source of space resources. This mission is an important step in the company's overall plans to harvest and supply in-space resources to support the growing space economy.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX has shipped its Mars engine to Texas for tests



> SpaceX appears to have taken a significant step forward with the development of a key component of its Mars mission architecture. According to multiple reports, during the Small Satellite Conference Tuesday in Logan, Utah, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the company has shipped a Raptor engine to its test site in McGregor, Texas. A spokesman confirmed to Ars that the engine has indeed been moved to Texas for developmental tests.
> 
> The Raptor is SpaceX's next generation of rocket engine. It may be as much as three times more powerful than the Merlin engines that power its Falcon 9 rocket and will also be used in the Falcon Heavy rocket that may fly in late 2016 or early 2017. The Raptor will power SpaceX's next generation of rocket after the Falcon Heavy, the so-called Mars Colonial Transporter.


----------



## ekim68

China's Hybrid Spaceplane Could Reset The 21st Century Space Race



> It takes off from a runway, flies at hypersonic speeds, then rockets into orbit


----------



## ekim68

Scientists propose why we cannot find life in space



> The reason we cannot find other life outside of Planet Earth is because we may be ahead of the curve, according to scientists from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
> 
> The universe is 13.8bn years old, with Earth forming less than five billion years ago. One school of thought among scientists is that there is life billions of years older than us in space. But this recent study in the_ Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics _argues otherwise.


----------



## Phantom010

We can't find life because we simply don't have the means to, yet, jeez! Maybe there is, maybe there is not. It could be nothing more than simple organisms. We just don't know.



> Life is predicted to end in 10 trillion years when all the stars in the universe have faded and died.


We humans have a very hard time imagining things not beginning or not ending. The Big Bang and the Big Crunch are two of the greatest 20th century fallacies.


----------



## ekim68

I think that even the fallacies are part of the overall questions...:up:

And there's this..


New, Nearby Earth-Like Planet Discovered



> The exoplanet orbits a star called Proxima Centauri that's 4.24 light-years away.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX successfully lands its sixth Falcon 9 rocket after launch



> Another one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets successfully landed on a floating drone ship this evening, after the vehicle launched a Japanese communications satellite into orbit. The feat marks the fourth time SpaceX has landed one of its vehicles at sea and the company's fifth rocket recovery overall this year.


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> I think that even the fallacies are part of the overall questions...
> 
> And there's this..
> 
> 
> New, Nearby Earth-Like Planet Discovered


Thanks for that article.

Funny though. How come they've detected so many exoplanets hundreds or thousands of light-years away, but this one just now? They're not saying which method was used.

Anyway, let's hope Stephen Hawking's project to send a laser-sail driven-nanocraft to Alpha Centauri in the coming years will materialize... Otherwise, all claims about this so-called Earth-Like planet will remain speculation for a long time...


----------



## ekim68

Have you read Foundation?


----------



## ekim68

How a 1967 Solar Storm Nearly Led to Nuclear War



> A powerful solar storm nearly heated the Cold War up catastrophically a half century ago, a new study suggests.
> 
> The U.S. Air Force began preparing for war on May 23, 1967, thinking that the Soviet Union had jammed a set of American surveillance radars. But military space-weather forecasters intervened in time, telling top officials that a powerful sun eruption was to blame, according to the study.


----------



## Phantom010

ekim68 said:


> Have you read Foundation?


No, I haven't.


----------



## ekim68

It's by Asimov, and to give the Readers Digest version of it, it's about a Civilization as Big as a Galaxy and it's declining and a Respected Mathematician decides that it can be saved, but it will take 12,000 years, rather than 30,000 years...


----------



## Phantom010

Yeah, I know. I did read a couple of books from Asimov, but that was quite a long time ago...


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/were-one-step-closer-to-proving-black-holes-evaporate-1785308312']We're One Step Closer To Proving Black Holes Evaporate[/URL]



> In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking made an audacious prediction that black holes aren't totally black; they evaporate over time, emitting tiny amounts of radiation in the process. Now Israeli physicists have reported the strongest evidence to date that Hawking was right in a new paper in _Nature Physics_.


----------



## ekim68

'New port of call' installed at space station



> With more private spaceship traffic expected at the International Space Station in the coming years, two spacewalking US astronauts installed a special parking spot for them on Friday.
> 
> Americans Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins floated outside the orbiting laboratory for a spacewalk lasting five hours and 58 minutes to attach the first of two international docking adaptors.
> 
> The astronauts spent more than two hours tying down the adaptor, after which robotic machinery at the space station completed the hard mate, making the attachment permanent.
> 
> "With that, we have a new port of call," NASA commentator Rob Navias said as the space station flew over Singapore at 10:40 am (1440 GMT).


----------



## ekim68

Super-resilient ceramic could be the key to future spacecraft




> It can withstand blistering temperatures above 5,400F.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/we-get-a-happy-ending-to-the-saga-of-nasas-lost-spacecr-1785623536']NASA Just Found a Lost Spacecraft[/URL]



> If movies about space have taught us anything, it's that no one can hear you scream. If you get lost in space, nobody's going to find you. Unless you're a spacecraft with a direct link to NASA. Then, there is hope for you yet.
> 
> STEREO-B, from the Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission, went missing on October 1, 2014 after losing contact with the team back on Earth. However, on Sunday night, scientists were able to reestablish contact, after 22 months of searching, when the Deep Space Network (NASA's tool for tracking space missions) was able to lock on to the signal.


----------



## ekim68

Proxima Centauri Just Became Our Gateway to the Cosmos



> In this golden age of exoplanetary science the announcement of a planet 30% more massive than the Earth, in an 11.2 day orbit around a low-mass star with a luminosity 0.15% of the Sun's would usually elicit little more than a raised eyebrow.
> 
> Except for the fact that this world orbits the nearest star to ours; Proxima Centauri.
> 
> It means that at a cosmically trifling 24 trillion miles (4.243 light years) from where you are at this instant is an alien system with a planet that could conceivably harbor life as we know it. That planet is estimated to be around 4.9 billion years old, it receives about 65% of the Earth's stellar irradiation, and its skies - whatever else is in them - are bathed in the red-hued rays of a diminutive star only 12% the mass of our Sun.
> 
> Say hello to the closest truly alien world.


----------



## ekim68

Splashdown! SpaceX Dragon home from ISS



> A SpaceX Dragon capsule that helped prepare the International Space Station for future commercial astronaut flights has returned to Earth after a stay of more than a month.
> 
> A robotic arm released the unmanned capsule packed with 3,000 pounds of cargo at 6:11 a.m. EDT. The capsule then fired thrusters several times to move a safe distance away from the station orbiting about 250 miles up.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Juno to Soar Closest to Jupiter This Saturday



> This Saturday at 5:51 a.m. PDT, (8:51 a.m. EDT, 12:51 UTC) NASA's Juno spacecraft will get closer to the cloud tops of Jupiter than at any other time during its prime mission. At the moment of closest approach, Juno will be about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling clouds and traveling at 130,000 mph (208,000 kilometers per hour) with respect to the planet. There are 35 more close flybys of Jupiter scheduled during its prime mission (scheduled to end in February of 2018). The Aug. 27 flyby will be the first time Juno will have its entire suite of science instruments activated and looking at the giant planet as the spacecraft zooms past.


----------



## Phantom010

Had completey forgotten about Juno! They were pretty quiet about it!


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX to Reach Another Milestone With Re-Use of Rocket Booster



> SpaceX plans to relaunch a used Falcon 9 booster later this year, the first time the company led by Elon Musk will refly a recovered rocket stage.
> 
> The rocket will carry an SES SA satellite into orbit in the fourth quarter, SpaceX and the Luxembourg-based customer said in a statement Tuesday.


----------



## ekim68

China's Quantum Satellite Could Change Cryptography Forever



> In the age of relentless cyberattacks and global electronic surveillance, nations and citizens are looking for any means to secure their communications. China is poised to launch a project that may provide the path to an uncrackable communications system, by turning messages quantum and taking them into space. The new Quantum Space Satellite (QUESS) program is no mere science experiment. China is already becoming a world leader in quantum communications technology; a satellite that delivers quantum communications will be a cornerstone for translating cutting-edge research into a strategic asset for Chinese power worldwide.
> 
> Cryptography operates through the use of an encryption key (such as a numbers pad), which, when applied to an encryption algorithm, can be used to decrypt or encrypt a message. Quantum entanglement is the act of fusing two or more particles into complementary "quantum states." In such states, no particle can be independently described, instead the particles exist in a hazy shared quantum state that "collapses" when observed. Quantum encryption thus takes advantage of this feature, using it to detect would-be eavesdroppers, whose presence causes quantum states to collapse and reveal their spying to legitimate parties. Additionally, the complexity of quantum mechanics makes it virtually impossible to reverse engineer the quantum key generated through quantum entanglement.


----------



## valis

well, this ain't good.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/01/a-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-just-exploded-at-cape-canaveral/


----------



## ekim68

Yeah, I read that too Tim, but on the plus side, things have been going pretty good for SpaceX lately....


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/what-in-the-world-just-happened-to-comet-67p-1785991061']What In the World Just Happened to Comet 67P?[/URL]



> February 19th, 2016 was going to be just another day on Comet 67P-until suddenly, the icy space rock lit up in a blaze of glory, as if suddenly slapped by an angry angel.
> 
> The strange astronomical event would have gone unnoticed by the seven billion people living right down the cosmic street, except that lucky for us, we had a spacecraft in orbit around that sucker. Rosetta caught all the action, and scientists on Earth have now reconstructed a detailed sequence of events that may have been triggered by a landslide.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Yeah, I read that too Tim, but on the plus side, things have been going pretty good for SpaceX lately....


Indeed. My first thought was that it was the first try for the used rocket, but glad I was wrong there.


----------



## ekim68

More on the SpaceX explosion.....


Here's everything you need to know about the SpaceX rocket that exploded


----------



## ekim68

NASA Probe Takes First-Ever Close-Up Images Of Jupiter's North Pole



> NASA has released the first close-up images ever taken of Jupiter's north pole. They were photographed by the Juno spacecraft now in orbit around the gas giant.
> 
> The north pole looks totally different from the rest of the planet. "It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms," Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute, says in a NASA statement on Friday.


----------



## ekim68

An Asteroid Has Been Named After Freddie Mercury



> Freddie Mercury, frontman of Queen and transcendent being of pure performative joy and vitality, would have been 70 years old this Monday, September 5.
> 
> To celebrate the occasion and honor Mercury's enormous impact on pop culture, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has officially changed the name of Asteroid 17473, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, to "Freddiemercury."


----------



## ekim68

Philae Found! Rosetta Spies Dead Comet Lander



> With only a month before its mission ends, the European Rosetta mission swooped low over Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko to see the stranded Philae lander jammed in a crack.


----------



## valis

That is awesome. Can't believe the sharpness of the pic, either.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/complex-organic-molecules-discovered-on-rosettas-comet-1786376941']Complex Organic Molecules Discovered on Rosetta's Comet[/URL]



> With only a few days left before it's scheduled to crash-land on the surface of Comet 67P, the Rosetta spacecraft is still yielding amazing discoveries. And I'm not just talking about lost comet landers.
> 
> Scientists now report that Rosetta detected complex organic molecules in the dust surrounding its comet. This strengthens the argument that the building blocks of life itself may have come from icy space rocks.
> 
> Complex organic molecules-mixtures of mostly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen that form the basis of our biology-have been hinted at on comets before, most notably during fast flybys of Halley's comet. But Rosetta is the first mission to actually catch dusty organic particles escaping the surface of such a body, affording scientists a detailed look at their composition.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini reveals Titan's dunes and Xanadu annex mountains



> NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter may be nearing the end of its 20-year mission, but it's still sending back a few surprises. On July 25, the unmanned probe passed within 607 mi (976 km) of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and sent back highly-detailed radar images showing long, linear, undulating dunes made of hydrocarbon sands that can help shed new light on Titan's winds.


----------



## ekim68

NASA launches spacecraft to intercept asteroid



> Cape Canaveral, Florida (CNN)NASA on Thursday evening launched a space probe called OSIRIS-REx to chase down a dark, potentially dangerous asteroid called Bennu. The probe will take a sample of the asteroid and -- in a US space first -- bring the sample back to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Q&A: Should we seed life on alien worlds?



> Astronomers have detected more than 3000 planets beyond our solar system, and just a couple weeks ago they discovered an Earth-like planet in the solar system next door. Most-if not all-of these worlds are unlikely to harbor life, but what if we put it there?
> 
> In an essay published last month in Astrophysics and Space Science, theoretical physicist Claudius Gros of Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany suggests we do just that. His proposed Genesis Project would send artificially intelligent probes to lifeless worlds to seed them with microbes. Over millions of years, they might evolve into multicellular organisms, and, perhaps eventually, plants and animals. In an interview with Science, Gros talked artificial intelligence (AI), searching for habitable planets, and what kind of organisms he'd like to see evolve.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover 63 new quasars in early universe



> PASADENA, Calif., Sept. 12 (UPI) -- Astronomers have identified 63 new quasars -- the largest number reported in a single scientific study.
> 
> Led by Eduardo Bañados, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, the survey almost doubles the number of known quasars in the early universe.
> 
> All of the newly identified quasars reveal the universe as it was when it was no more than 1 billion years old.


----------



## valis

No, would be my answer.


----------



## ekim68

And we disagree again. I'd like to see it happen and then live for a couple of million years to see the results....


----------



## valis

and I'd like to see us get our collective crap together on this planet prior to screwing up another one.


----------



## ekim68

I think it would be easier to seed a distant planet than it would be for us to get our collective crap together on Earth. I call it the "Human Equation"....And it don't like to budge...


----------



## valis

Boy howdy, do you got that right. I call it the SEP; Somebody Else's Problem......and there just ain't somebody else to fix it.


----------



## ekim68

Gaia's billion-star map hints at treasures to come



> 14 September 2016
> 
> The first catalogue of more than a billion stars from ESA's Gaia satellite was published today - the largest all-sky survey of celestial objects to date.
> 
> On its way to assembling the most detailed 3D map ever made of our Milky Way galaxy, Gaia has pinned down the precise position on the sky and the brightness of 1142 million stars.


----------



## ekim68

China Launches Tiangong-2 Space Lab



> China's next space laboratory, Tiangong-2 launched from the country's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center today at 10:04 a.m. EDT (1404 GMT) on a Long March 2F carrier rocket.





> "Some of the scientific research will include:





> Composite material fabrication
> 
> Advanced-plant cultivation
> 
> Gamma ray burst polarization
> 
> Fluid physics
> 
> Space-to-earth quantum communications


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## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/the-best-astronomy-images-of-2016-are-truly-out-of-this-1786707987']The Best Astronomy Images of 2016 Are Truly Out of This World[/URL]



> The winners of the annual Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year have been announced. From eerie eclipses through to battered lunar landscapes, these images are an absolute treat.


----------



## ekim68

China's atomic clock in space will stay accurate for a billion years



> China's new space laboratory has an atomic clock which, Chinese engineers say, is more accurate than the best timepiece operated by America's National Institute of Standards and Technology.
> The device, called Cacs, or Cold Atomic Clock in Space, was launched this weak along with other instruments of the Tiangong-2, China's second orbital lab. According to the South China Morning Post, it will slow down by only one second in a billion years. In comparison, the NIST-F2 atomic clock, which serves as the United States' primary time and frequency standard, loses a second every 300 million years.


----------



## ekim68

Pluto is apparently emitting X-rays and that has us questioning everything again



> Pluto, everyone's favorite dwarf planet, is acting a little strange and may once again be challenging our current understanding of the solar system. Scientists have noticed the tiny trans-Neptunium object emitting X-rays, which, if it is confirmed, is both a baffling and exciting discovery.





> One of the possible explanations for why Pluto is emanating X-rays would be that the high energy particles emitted by the sun are stripping away and reacting with Pluto's atmosphere, producing the X-rays that are visible to Chandra. Such interactions have been witnessed in the interaction between the sun's high-energy particles and the cold material that trails off of comets, but this would mark the first time an object past Saturn was visible on the X-ray spectrum. It also makes sense given that Pluto, like many comets, is part of the Kuiper Belt and produces a tail.


----------



## ekim68

Quantum teleportation over 7 kilometres of cables smashes record



> A new world record for quantum teleportation has been set, bringing quantum communication networks that can stretch between cities a step closer. Two independent teams have transferred quantum information over several kilometres of fibre optic networks.
> 
> Being able to establish teleportation over long distances is a crucial step towards exchanging quantum cryptographic keys needed for encoding data sent over the fibres.


----------



## ekim68

China Confirms Its Space Station Is Falling Back to Earth



> In a press conference on Wednesday, Chinese officials appear to have confirmed what many observers have long suspected: that China is no longer in control of its space station.
> 
> China's Tiangong-1 space station has been orbiting the planet for about 5 years now, but recently it was decommissioned and the Chinese astronauts returned to the surface. In a press conference last week, China announced that the space station would be falling back to earth at some point in late 2017.


----------



## ekim68

Stephen Hawking wants to find aliens before they find us



> The famed cosmologist is all in on searching for signals from E.T., but warns that we should be careful about inviting aliens over.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/plutos-liquid-water-ocean-might-be-insanely-deep-1787010446']Pluto's Liquid Water Ocean Might Be Insanely Deep[/URL]



> In recent months, there's been growing evidence that Pluto is hiding a liquid water ocean beneath its frozen surface. New models by researchers at Brown University support this hypothesis, and take it one mind-boggling step further: Pluto's ocean may be more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) deep.


----------



## ekim68

The United Nations Will Launch Its First Space Mission In 2021



> Considering that the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) has been around for over half a century, it might seem a bit strange that the organization has never launched its own space mission. This is finally slated to change in 2021, when the UN plans to send a spacecraft into orbit.
> 
> As detailed for a small crowd at the International Astronautical Congress yesterday, the goal of the 2021 UN mission is to make space accessible to developing member states that lack the resources to develop a standalone, national space program.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/all-the-incredible-things-we-learned-from-our-first-tri-1787243767']All the Incredible Things We Learned From Our First Trip to a Comet[/URL]



> The historic Rosetta mission has finally come to an end. Over the past two years, the probe's many instruments have scanned virtually every nook and cranny of this weirdly shaped rock, unleashing a treasure trove of new information about comets in general, and 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in particular.





> Mission scientists also began to paint a picture of the comet's chemical composition. Using the Rosetta Orbiter Sensor for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA), the scientists detected water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane, and methanol. But the chemical cocktail didn't stop there; ROSINA also sniffed out formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanide, sulfur dioxide, and carbon disulfide.
> 
> Taken together, it became clear that this comet really stinks.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/another-of-saturns-moons-may-have-a-global-ocean-1787275495']Another One of Saturn's Moons May Have a Global Ocean[/URL]



> The evidence is mounting that our solar system is rife with oceans. Last week, scientists reported that Pluto could have an insanely deep liquid water swimming pool beneath its surface, and on Monday, NASA revealed new evidence for geyser activity on icy Europa. Now, another frozen moon is poised to join the club of outer space scuba retreats: Dione.


----------



## ekim68

Boeing CEO Vows to Beat Musk to Mars



> Boeing Co. once helped the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in the race to the moon. Now the company intends to go toe-to-toe with newcomers such as billionaire Elon Musk in the next era of space exploration and commerce.
> 
> Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg sketched out a Jetsons-like future at a conference Tuesday, envisioning a commercial space-travel market with dozens of destinations orbiting the Earth and hypersonic aircraft shuttling travelers between continents in two hours or less. And Boeing intends to be a key player in the initial push to send humans to Mars, maybe even beating Musk to his long-time goal.


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## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/blue-origin-shocks-everyone-even-itself-by-landing-ro-1787443961']Blue Origin Shocks Everyone (Even Itself) by Landing Rocket During Launch Escape Test[/URL]



> Wow. After spending the last few days telling us that its New Shepard rocket was almost certainly going to be destroyed in today's in-flight launch escape test, Blue Origin surprised everybody-even itself-with a clean landing of both booster and crew capsule.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/astronomers-spot-a-massive-black-hole-that-s-gone-rogue-1787450161']Astronomers Spot a Massive Black Hole That's Gone Rogue[/URL]



> Using the Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found evidence of a "wandering" black hole on the outskirts of a distant galaxy. It's too far away to cause us any trouble, but the discovery of this homeless ball of gravitational despair affirms a long standing theory about the existence of such objects.
> 
> A massive black hole that's more than 100,000 times the mass of our sun has been detected in the outer regions of a galaxy located about 4.5 billion light years from Earth. Astronomers suspect that this "wandering" black hole was originally located at the core of a smaller galaxy, but it became dislodged during a merger with a larger one. Now homeless, it's settled into the outer reaches of the usurping galaxy.


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## ekim68

Hubble reveals Mars-sized plasma balls shooting from a dying star



> Data from the Hubble Space Telescope has helped solve the mystery of a seemingly impossible star. The red giant V Hydrae is the wrong type of star to be shedding gigantic "cannonballs" of energetic plasma, but that's exactly what it has been doing once every 8.5 years over the past 400 years. Now on closer examination it appears the culprit is its invisible companion.


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## valis

dunno if this has been posted, but it's pretty neato. 

ISS Live Stream


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## ekim68

The oldest computer (not) on Earth



> Nearly 40 years and 12.47 billion miles later, the tech behind Voyager 1 and 2 are still going strong


----------



## ekim68

ESA gives Schiaparelli probe final commands ahead of Mars landing



> With arrival at Mars set for October 19, ESA mission control in Darmstadt, Germany is busy making last minute adjustments for the Exomars 2016 mission. One key milestone completed last week was the uploading of final instructions for the computer aboard the Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing demonstrator spacecraft. The new commands will tell Schiaparelli when to separate from the Trace Gas Orbiter mothership, then guide the unmanned lander during its descent and touchdown on the surface of Mars.


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## ekim68

Making Human Settlement of Space a Reality



> Today, President Obama outlined a vision to CNN for the future of space exploration. Echoing what he said in the 2015 State of the Union address, the President wrote, "We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time." Later this week, many of the Nation's top innovators will come together in Pittsburgh at the White House Frontiers Conference, where they will further explore, among other things, how American investments in science and technology will help us settle "the final frontier" - space. But today, we're excited to announce two new NASA initiatives that build on the President's vision and utilize public-private partnerships to enable humans to live and work in space in a sustainable way.


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## ekim68

Good stuff....


The most valuable scientific documents of all-time #30-21


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## ekim68

Observable universe contains two trillion galaxies, 10 times more than previously thought



> Using data from deep-space surveys taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories, astronomers have performed a census of the number of galaxies in the universe. The team came to the surprising conclusion that there are at least 10 times as many galaxies in the observable universe than previously thought.


----------



## ekim68

Small impacts are reworking the moon's soil faster than scientists thought



> The moon's surface is being "gardened" - churned by small impacts - more than 100 times faster than scientists previously thought. This means that surface features believed to be young are perhaps even younger than assumed. It also means that any structures placed on the moon as part of human expeditions will need better protection.


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## ekim68

European-led Mars lander starts descent to red planet



> A Mars lander left its mothership on Sunday after a seven-month journey from Earth and headed toward the red planet's surface to test technologies for Europe's planned first Mars rover, which will search for signs of past and present life.
> 
> The disc-shaped 577-kilogramme (1,272 lb) Schiaparelli lander separated from the spacecraft Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) at 1442 GMT (10:42 a.m. EDT) as expected, starting a three-day descent to the surface.
> 
> Signals received from TGO, which is to orbit Mars and sniff out gases around the planet, did not at first contain data on the lander's onboard status, but the European Space Agency (ESA) later said the link with the craft had been restored.


----------



## ekim68

China's Shenzhou 11 blasts off on space station mission



> China has launched two men into orbit in a project designed to develop its ability to explore space.
> 
> The astronauts took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northern China.
> 
> They will dock with the experimental Tiangong 2 space lab and spend 30 days there, the longest stay in space by Chinese astronauts.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's plan to put Juno closer to Jupiter delayed



> Mission managers for Juno probe to Jupiter have decided to delay the upcoming burn of its main rocket motor - designed to put the spacecraft closer to the largest planet in our solar system - until December, the US space agency said on Saturday. The decision was made in order to further study the performance of a set of valves that are part of the spacecraft's fuel pressurisation system. This burn, originally scheduled for October 19, called the period reduction maneuver (PRM), was to reduce Juno's orbital period around Jupiter from 53.4 to 14 days.


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## ekim68

NASA has no plans to buy more Soyuz seats, and it may be too late anyway



> NASA is sure enough that Boeing and SpaceX can safely launch astronauts to the International Space Station by early 2019 to hold off paying Russia to keep flying U.S. crews to the research complex, and one official says a deadline to order parts for new Russian Soyuz crew capsules may have already passed.
> 
> Boeing and SpaceX are working on new commercial capsules designed to transport at least four astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost, but their schedules appear to be slipping, this time due to technical woes, not the lack of funding that caused previous delays in the program.
> 
> Until the U.S.-built spaceships are certified by NASA, all space station crews will launch and land aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
> 
> NASA last year signed a $490 million agreement with the Russian government for six round-trip seats on Soyuz missions, with launches in 2018 and landings extending into early 2019. The space agency is sending nearly $82 million to Russia for each ticket.


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## ekim68

NASA: Record quantum teleportation achieved in real-world setting



> Anytime a breakthrough can come out of the lab and still work in the real world, you're on to something. A lab is a setting perfect for achieving the goal of the experiment - a proof, failure or surprising result of a theory pumped through tubes or wires etc. It's the first step, but success in the lab almost never becomes success in the vastness of the real world.
> 
> And that's why the news from NASA last week of entangled photons communicating instantaneously or teleporting the state or characteristics of a third photon between them over the distance of nearly four miles through preexisting, unused cables under the city of Calgary is, in deed, something to marvel at.


----------



## ekim68

Schiaparelli Mars Lander May Have Exploded On Impact, European Agency Says



> Instead of drifting gently onto Mars' surface, the Schiaparelli Mars lander hit the planet hard - and possibly exploded. That's the word from the European Space Agency, which says new images taken by NASA show the possible crash site.
> 
> The NASA images, taken on Oct. 20, show two recent changes to the landscape on Mars' surface - one dark blotch, and one white speck - which are being interpreted as Schiaparelli's parachute and its crash site.


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## ekim68

Quantum research achieves 10-fold boost in superposition stability



> A team of Australian researchers has developed a qubit offering ten times the stability of existing technologies. The computer scientists claim that the new innovation could significantly increase the reliability of quantum computing calculations.
> 
> Qubits, or quantum bits, like standard binary bits can occupy a 0 or 1 value, but can also take a superposition of both states at the same time. The new technology, developed at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), has been named a 'dressed' quantum bit as it combines a single atom with an electromagnetic field.


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## ekim68

Best laid plans: Eight embarrassing failures of the Space Age



> On October 19, the ESA's unmanned Schiaparelli Mars lander went silent after an attempted landing on the Red Planet that probably ended in an explosive impact on the surface. This unfortunate mishap is a reminder that space travel really _is_ rocket science, and over the years we've seen many missions that have, spectacularly or otherwise, not gone according to plan. Here's a look at eight of the most embarrassing failures of the Space Age.


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## ekim68

Video of the ISS......


Space Station Fisheye Fly-Through 4K (Ultra HD)


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## ekim68

Newly identified "pumpkin" stars spin scary fast



> In this season of ghouls and goblins, it turns out even space agencies can get swept up in the Halloween spirit. Two years ago, NASA treated us all with an image of the sun resembling a jack-o-lantern. Last year, the organization told us about the Great Pumpkin asteroid heading our way for Halloween. And now, NASA has just dropped news about pumpkin stars, fiery balls of gas that spin so fast that they squash down from perfect spheres to shapes that do in fact resemble the fruit millions of people carve up every October.


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## ekim68

Spacecraft Sends Back Last Bit of Data From 2015 Pluto Flyby



> NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has sent back the last bit of data from its 2015 flyby of Pluto.
> 
> The picture - one of a sequence of shots of Pluto and its big moon, Charon - arrived earlier this week at Mission Control in Maryland. It took more than five hours for the image to reach Earth from New Horizons, some 3 billion miles away.
> 
> "We did it! Pluto data download complete!!" principal scientist Alan Stern cheered via Twitter on Thursday.


----------



## ekim68

Humanity's corner of the Milky Way may be larger than expected



> If you accept conventional views of the Milky Way, humans live in a sort of cosmic cul-de-sac: our star is in the Orion Arm (aka Local Arm), a small spur sitting in between the much larger Sagittarius and Perseus arms. A team of international researchers might just shake up that sense of place, however. They've published a study indicating that our arm is much, much larger than once thought. Instead, it incorporates a large arm that extends almost all the way to the Perseus Arm, and another long spur that branches between the Orion and Sagittarius arms. It's now believed to be about 25,000 light years long, or several times longer than expected.


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## ekim68

Tally of known near-Earth asteroids and comets hits 15,000



> As highlighted by the Chelyabinsk meteor impact of 2013 and the frequent fly-bys of asteroids past our planet, we need to keep watching the skies for any space rocks that may pose a threat. The international teams of astronomers doing just that have now hit a milestone: 15,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs) have been discovered, and there's plenty more still to find.


----------



## ekim68

Cosmic rays may threaten space-weather satellite



> A US space-weather satellite that is supposed to alert Earth to incoming solar storms has temporarily dropped offline five times in the year since it became operational. Its onboard computer may be experiencing hiccups caused unexpectedly by galactic cosmic rays.


----------



## ekim68

Where does Jeff Bezos foresee putting space colonists? Inside O'Neill cylinders



> SpaceX's Elon Musk wants to settle humans on Mars. Others talk about a Moon Village. But Seattle billionaire Jeff Bezos has a different kind of off-Earth home in mind when he talks about having millions of people living and working in space.
> 
> His long-range vision focuses on a decades-old concept for huge artificial habitats that are best known today as O'Neill cylinders.
> 
> The concept was laid out in 1976 in a classic book by physicist Gerard O'Neill, titled "The High Frontier." The idea is to create cylinder-shaped structures in outer space, and give them enough of a spin that residents on the inner surface of the cylinder could live their lives in Earth-style gravity. The habitat's interior would be illuminated either by reflected sunlight or sunlike artificial light.


----------



## ekim68

Forming star system spits out a third star, validating theoretical models



> If you look at one of the points of light in the night sky, chances are good it's not a star-it's likely two or more stars, so close together they look like one from far away. These binary, trinary, and more complex star systems formed together out of a single cloud of gas and dust.
> 
> This formation process is hard to observe because protostars have not yet begun nuclear fusion and are thus very dim. Furthermore, in many of these systems, the protostars are so close together that only an extremely sensitive instrument could resolve their separation. Fortunately, a very sensitive instrument now exists. A team of researchers turned to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and imaged a multi-star system during its formation. The team's observations shed light on the mechanisms that create these systems.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/a-naked-black-hole-is-screaming-through-the-universe-1788530403']A Naked Black Hole Is Screaming Through the Universe[/URL]



> Millions of years ago, B3 1715+425 was just an ordinary supermassive black hole. It had a comfortable life, of devouring stars and belching deadly x-rays, at the center of its distant galaxy. Now, starless and alone, it's screaming through space at 2,000 miles per second-and it may never stop.
> 
> BC 1715+425's troubles began when its galaxy bumped up against another. This isn't all that unusual: in fact, astronomers believe that the largest galaxies in our universe formed during ancient mergers. Normally, when two galaxies collide, the supermassive black holes at their centers start to orbit one another, moving closer and closer together in an inescapable gravitational attraction.
> 
> Eventually, those black holes can fuse, releasing a burst of energy as gravitational waves and completing the cosmic joining.


----------



## ekim68

NASA: We're Not Racing SpaceX to Mars



> If Elon Musk's SpaceX can get to Mars and bring samples back to Earth before the United States can get there, it would be cause for celebration not lament, said NASA's new science chief.
> 
> "If Elon Musk brought the samples in the door right now I'd throw him a party out of my own money," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's newly named associate administrator for science, told reporters Monday.
> 
> "I think that would be a huge success out of the strategies that were pursued by this administration of helping … the private industry to really grow capabilities that 10 years ago were not around," he said.


----------



## ekim68

See the first color images produced by an electron microscope



> Imagine spending your whole life seeing the world in black and white, and then seeing a vase of roses in full color for the first time. That's kind of what it was like for the scientists who have taken the first multicolor images of cells using an electron microscope. Electron microscopes can magnify an object up to 10 million times, allowing researchers to peer into the inner workings of, say, a cell or a fly's eye, but until now they've only been able to see in black and white. The new advance-15 years in the making-uses three different kinds of rare earth metals called lanthanides (think top row of that extra block below the periodic table) layered one-by-one over cells on a microscope slide.


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## ekim68

The Habitability of Planets Orbiting M-dwarf Stars



> The prospects for the habitability of M-dwarf planets have long been debated, due to key differences between the unique stellar and planetary environments around these low-mass stars, as compared to hotter, more luminous Sun-like stars. Over the past decade, significant progress has been made by both space- and ground-based observatories to measure the likelihood of small planets to orbit in the habitable zones of M-dwarf stars. We now know that most M dwarfs are hosts to closely-packed planetary systems characterized by a paucity of Jupiter-mass planets and the presence of multiple rocky planets, with roughly a third of these rocky M-dwarf planets orbiting within the habitable zone, where they have the potential to support liquid water on their surfaces.


----------



## ekim68

Leaked NASA paper shows the 'impossible' EM Drive really does work



> The results of NASA's tests on the 'impossible' EM Drive have been leaked, and they reveal that the controversial propulsion system really does work, and is capable of generating impressive thrust in a vacuum, even after error measurements have been accounted for.
> 
> The EM Drive has made headlines over the past year, because it offers the incredible possibility of a fuel-free propulsion system that could potentially get us to Mars in just 70 days. But there's one major problem: according to the current laws of physics, it shouldn't work.
> 
> The issue is the fact that the EM Drive defies Newton's third law, which states that everything must have an equal and opposite reaction. So, according to Newton and our current understanding of the world around us, for a system to produce propulsion, it has to push something out the other way (in space, that's usually combusted rocket fuel).
> 
> But the EM Drive works without any fuel or propellants at all. It works by simply bouncing microwave photons back and forth inside a cone-shaped closed metal cavity. That motion causes the 'pointy end' of the EM Drive to generate thrust, and propel the drive in the opposite direction.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://sploid.gizmodo.com/interactive-periodic-table-reveals-exactly-how-we-use-a-1788655221']Interactive Periodic Table Reveals Exactly How We Use All Those Elements[/URL]



> We all know how common elements like oxygen and helium are used in every day life. But gallium? Selenium? Rhodium? Keith Enevoldsen has created an interactive periodic table that illustrates exactly where you may encounter even obscure elements on the chart.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/europes-first-mars-lander-came-excruciatingly-close-to-1788807057']Europe's First Mars Lander Came 'Excruciatingly Close' to Success[/URL]



> Landing on Mars is hard, but the European Space Agency's first attempt-the Beagle 2 probe-came maddeningly close to being a complete success. In fact, a new 3D modeling analysis shows that the lander's failure to communicate with the Earth was likely due to a single jammed solar panel.


----------



## ekim68

A computer program just ranked the most influential brain scientists of the modern era



> When it comes to influential neuroscience research, University College London (UCL) has a lot to boast about. That's not the opinion of a human but rather the output of a computer program that has now parsed the content of 2.5 million neuroscience articles, mapped all of the citations between them, and calculated a score of each author's influence on the rest. Three of the top 10 most influential (see table below) neuroscientists hail from UCL: Karl Friston (1st), Raymond Dolan (2nd), and Chris Frith (7th). The secret of their success? "We got into human functional brain imaging very early," Frith says. Getting in early made it possible to "be first to do many of the obvious studies."


----------



## ekim68

Sharp-Eyed Earth-Observing Satellite Launches Atop Atlas V Rocket



> WorldView-4 is a multispectral, high-resolution commercial imaging satellite owned and operated by DigitalGlobe of Westminster, Colorado, and built by the aerospace company Lockheed Martin. Its mission is to provide high-resolution color imagery to commercial, government and international customers.
> 
> As the fifth spacecraft in the DigitalGlobe constellation, WorldView-4 joins WorldView-1, -2, -3 and GeoEye-1. The addition of WorldView-4 means the constellation can image a spot on Earth an average of 4.5 times per day, DigitalGlobe representatives have said.
> 
> Once in operation, WorldView-4 has a global capacity to image 260,000 square miles (680,000 square kilometers) per day.


----------



## ekim68

Space mining gets a boost through Luxembourg's new law



> American asteroid mining companies are allowed to keep their hauls, but what about European outfits? They should be set from now on. Luxembourg (which already has its own space mining tech) has adopted a draft law that gives private operations the right to keep what they take from asteroids and other near Earth objects, so long as they get authorization for their mission and obey international law. This doesn't let anyone lay claim to spaceborne entities, the country says -- it just eliminates the uncertainty when that material arrives on the ground. The law should take effect sometime in early 2017.


----------



## ekim68

New Analysis Supports Subsurface Ocean on Pluto



> A liquid ocean lying deep beneath Pluto's frozen surface is the best explanation for features revealed by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, according to a new analysis.
> 
> The idea that Pluto has a subsurface ocean is not new, but the study provides the most detailed investigation yet of its likely role in the evolution of key features such as the vast, low-lying plain known as Sputnik Planitia (formerly Sputnik Planum).


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed



> SpaceX has detailed ambitious plans to bring fast Internet access to the entire world with a new satellite system that offers greater speeds and lower latency than existing satellite networks.
> 
> The private spacecraft company founded by CEO Elon Musk filed an application Tuesday for satellite space station authorizations with the US Federal Communications Commission. SpaceX recently said that its satellite service's commercial availability date has not yet been determined, but the application's technical description mentioned 2019 as a possible time for launching satellites into orbit.
> 
> SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 satellites into low-Earth orbits, with altitudes ranging from 715 miles to 823 miles. By contrast, the existing HughesNet satellite network has an altitude of 22,000 miles.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/scientists-discovered-a-mind-boggling-chasm-on-mercury-1789147719']Scientists Discovered a Mind-Boggling Chasm on Mercury[/URL]



> Placed on Earth, it would stretch from Washington DC to New York to Detroit. Larger than the Grand Canyon, wider and deeper than East Africa's Great Rift Valley, Mercury's newly-discovered "Great Valley" boggles the imagination. But it's more than size that makes this geologic feature remarkable. The Great Valley may be our best evidence that Mercury's entire crust is contracting.


----------



## ekim68

ExoMars sharpens its scientific tools



> After a long cruise and eventful arrival, the ExoMars mission gets down to work next week. The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will make its first observations of Mars during two orbits to test and calibrate instruments in preparation for a detailed study of the atmosphere of the Red Planet beginning in 2018.
> 
> The unmanned ESA/Roscosmos mission, which arrived at Mars on October 19, is in a highly elliptical orbit at an altitude of between 230 and 98,000 km (143 to 69,000 mi) with a period of 4.2 Earth days. It's currently carrying out aerobraking maneuvers, where the spacecraft periodically skims the upper reaches of the Martian atmosphere. This slows it down and will make its orbit more circular until it reaches an altitude of 400 km (250 mi) by March 2018. At that point, the TGO will begin the science part of its mission.


----------



## ekim68

An Underground Ice Deposit on Mars Is Bigger Than New Mexico



> A single underground deposit of ice on Mars contains about as much water as there is in Michigan's Lake Superior, according to new research from NASA.
> 
> The deposit rests in the mid-northern latitudes of the Red Planet, specifically in the Utopia Planitia region. Discovered by the Shallow Subsurface Radar (SHARD) instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the deposit is "more extensive in area than the state of New Mexico," according to a NASA press release. It ranges in thickness from about 260 feet to about 560 feet, and has a composition that's 50 to 85 percent water ice, with what appears to be dust or larger rocky particles mixed in as well.
> 
> None of the ice is exposed to the surface. At various points the dirt covering it is in between 3 and 33 feet thick. Built by the Italian Space Agency, the SHARD probes the Martian subsurface with radar waves using a 15-25 MHz frequency band.


----------



## ekim68

New stars discovery shed new light on Galaxy's formation



> An astronomer from LJMU's Astrophysics Research Institute has discovered a new family of stars in the core of the Milky Way Galaxy which provides new insights into the early stages of the Galaxy's formation.
> 
> The discovery has shed new light on the origins of globular clusters -- which are concentrations of typically a million stars, formed at the beginning of the Milky Way's history.


----------



## ekim68

106-Year-Old Fishing Net Maker
May Have Space Junk Solution



> Space isn't so empty these days. Earth's orbit is cluttered with more than half a million bits of debris, mostly rocket and satellite remnants that can wreck anything in their flight path.
> 
> A 106-year-old Japanese fishing net maker may have a solution. Nitto Seimo Co. is working with Japan's space agency to develop a mesh material to tether and drag bus-size pieces of space junk into the atmosphere for incineration. Scientists will get their first indication of whether the metallic line will work when it's tested in orbit next month, said project chief Koichi Inoue, an associate principal researcher at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
> 
> The experiment is part of an international cleanup effort planning to safeguard astronauts and about $900 billion worth of space stations, satellites and other infrastructure relied on for telecommunications, weather forecasting, Earth-monitoring and navigation.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/this-entire-galaxy-is-being-ravaged-by-its-supermassive-1789598762']This Entire Galaxy Is Being Ravaged by Its Supermassive Black Hole[/URL]



> A stunning new image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a galaxy that's being strangled by tentacles of gas and dust. The strange and intricate shape of this celestial object is caused by a supermassive black hole at its core-and it's killing the host.


----------



## ekim68

Alien life could thrive in the clouds of failed stars



> There's an abundant new swath of cosmic real estate that life could call home-and the views would be spectacular. Floating out by themselves in the Milky Way galaxy are perhaps a billion cold brown dwarfs, objects many times as massive as Jupiter but not big enough to ignite as a star. According to a new study, layers of their upper atmospheres sit at temperatures and pressures resembling those on Earth, and could host microbes that surf on thermal updrafts.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini completes first ring-skimming dive



> NASA's Cassini spacecraft has completed the first of 20 close-proximity passes of Saturn's outermost rings. The pass, which took place on Dec. 4 at 8:09 a.m. EST, saw the probe fly just 6,800 miles (11,000 km) from the center of Saturn's F ring. This series of 20 orbits represents the penultimate phase of Cassini's decades-long mission, prior to the beginning of the mission's "Grand Finale."


----------



## ekim68

Chocks away: Official debut for solar-powered space plane



> A solar-powered plane that is to be flown to the edge of space has been officially unveiled today. The SolarStratos plane is powered by 22 sq m (237 sq ft) of solar panels and will be flown to an altitude of 25,000 m (82,000 ft) to demonstrate and explore the potential of the technology.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists see electricity pass through water molecules for the first time



> It's a well-known phenomenon, seen in action when hundreds of reindeer on melting permafrost were recently killed by a lightning strike and the same reason villains in horror movies lob hairdryers into the bathtub. Water is a very good conductor of electricity, but the precise manner in which the individual molecules pass along the positive charge has been difficult to observe. For the first time, scientists have now laid eyes on this electrified relay race, adding to our understanding of one of chemistry's most fundamental processes.


----------



## ekim68

Japanese cargo ship en route to space station



> Eight days after an unmanned Russian Progress cargo ship failed to reach orbit, a Japanese space freighter is on its way to the International Space Station (ISS). Today at 8:26 am EST (10:26 pm JST), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s HTV-6 mission lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan atop an H-IIB rocket. Carrying 4.5 tons (4.1 tonnes) of supplies, it's scheduled to rendezvous with the station on Tuesday.
> 
> According to NASA, today's launch went off without incident as the 12-ton (10.1 tonne) spacecraft soared into orbit after a spectacular nighttime liftoff. The cargo ship, known as "Kounotori" or "White Stork," is currently carrying out a series of orbital maneuvers to match orbits with the ISS.


----------



## ekim68

Self-healing nano-spacecraft could reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years



> With our current technology, it would take a conventional spacecraft over 18,000 years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, but calculations indicate a nano-spacecraft made from a silicon chip and traveling at one fifth the speed of light could make the journey in just 20 years. The problem is, such a "space-chip" wouldn't survive the intense radiation and temperature swings of deep space, so a team at NASA and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) are developing a method for helping the chip heal itself on the fly.


----------



## ekim68

'Star in a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works and Promises Infinite Energy



> For several decades now, scientists from around the world have been pursuing a ridiculously ambitious goal: They hope to develop a nuclear fusion reactor that would generate energy in the same manner as the sun and other stars, but down here on Earth.
> 
> Incorporated into terrestrial power plants, this "star in a jar" technology would essentially provide Earth with limitless clean energy, forever. And according to new reports out of Europe this week, we just took another big step toward making it happen.


----------



## ekim68

Ice found in the eternally dark craters at Ceres' poles



> NASA's Dawn deep-space probe has discovered ice inside the eternally shadowed craters of the polar regions of the dwarf planet Ceres. Discovered using onboard cameras built by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), the water ice survives in the crater interiors thanks to the extreme cold there.
> 
> According to the MPS team, the ice was discovered using Dawn's Framing Cameras, which are used for navigation as well as clear and spectral-selective imaging. Built in Göttingen, the cameras allowed the team to peer into the craters near the north pole of Ceres. Because the planetoid only tilts 4.028°, as opposed to the Earth's 23.5°, some of the polar craters are never exposed to sunlight and remain at a temperature of -163° C (-261° F).


----------



## ekim68

New telescope tools will probe universe for water



> Water is essential for the existence of carbon-based lifeforms, so when scientists hunt for extraterrestrial life, they look for it whenever probes are sent to other planets or when they peer through space-based telescopes into the cosmos. Though H2O is much more difficult to detect from instruments on the Earth, new water-detecting receivers fitted to the ALMA radio telescope in Chile have been designed to take advantage of the scope's high, arid, location, and give scientists a new ground-based capability for investigating the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Blast Antimatter Atoms With A Laser For The First Time



> In a technological tour de force, scientists have developed a new way to probe antimatter.
> 
> For the first time, researchers were able to zap antimatter atoms with a laser, then precisely measure the light let off by these strange anti-atoms. By comparing the light from anti-atoms with the light from regular atoms, they hope to answer one of the big mysteries of our universe: Why, in the early universe, did antimatter lose out to regular old matter?


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/this-is-our-best-look-yet-at-saturns-moon-pandora-1790381408']This Is Our Best Look Yet At Saturn's Moon Pandora[/URL]



> Pandora is one of Saturn's many baby moons, far too runty to form a sphere under its own gravity. Instead, this 52-mile across space rock looks more like a fossilized glob of silly putty in closest image ever captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.


----------



## ekim68

Quantum Leap: Researchers Send Information Using a Single Particle of Light



> According to research published Thursday in _Science_, physicists at Princeton University have designed a device that allows a single electron to pass its quantum information to a photon in what could be a big breakthrough for silicon-based quantum computers.


----------



## WhoseLineFan

Anyone like StarTalk by Neil Degrasse Tyson? I love it! I find it to be very interesting in fact.


----------



## ekim68

I like Neil and I follow him on Twitter. :up:


----------



## WhoseLineFan

ekim68 said:


> I like Neil and I follow him on Twitter.


Does he follow you back?


----------



## ekim68

Nope. I only have 15 followers and he has 6.32 million...As a matter of fact, I just looked at my followers and I only know half of them...


----------



## ekim68

Moon and Mars in China's five-year space plan



> Mars and the far side of the Moon are on the itinerary for China's National Space Administration (CNSA), according to a new white paper released this week. The document, from the State Council Information Office, recaps the country's space-faring achievements over the past five years, and outlines its goals for the next five.


----------



## ekim68

Donut-shaped ice shelters could shield astronauts on Mars



> Since future astronauts might be spending months at a time on Mars, their sturdy shelters must reliably insulate inhabitants from extreme outer temperatures and the cosmic radiation filtering through the planet's thin atmosphere. Some have proposed concepts that use material found on the surface, like this conceptual concrete, to minimize what the crew brings with them. Scientists and experts at NASA's Langley Research Center have came up with a novel, efficient solution that repurposes planet resources: The Mars Ice Home.
> 
> The design describes a torus -- a large, inflatable innertube -- lined with a shell of water ice. Not only is the structure lightweight, it incorporates materials from Mars itself. In addition, the water, which protects against cosmic rays, could be repurposed as rocket fuel for the Mars Ascent Lander.


----------



## ekim68

6 more mysterious radio signals have been detected coming from outside our galaxy



> Back in March, scientists detected 10 powerful bursts of radio signals coming from the same location in space. And now researchers have just picked up six more of the signals seemingly emanating from the same region, far beyond our Milky Way.
> 
> These fast radio bursts (FRB) are some of the most elusive and explosive signals ever detected from space - they only last milliseconds, but in that short period of time, they generate as much energy as the Sun in an entire day. But despite how powerful they are, scientists still aren't sure what causes them.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/hubble-shows-what-s-in-store-for-the-incredible-voyager-1790975229']Hubble Shows What's in Store for the Incredible Voyager Probes[/URL]



> Launched in 1977, the Voyager space probes are further from Earth than any human-made object ever built. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have charted a roadmap for the probes, revealing surprising details about their ongoing journey through interstellar space.
> 
> Incredible as it may seem, both Voyager probes are still collecting data and transmitting their findings back to Earth. They've got about a few decades of electrical power left, after which time they'll go dark. In the meantime, scientists can study the information collected by the Voyagers, and compare these findings to data gleaned by the Hubble Space Telescope.


----------



## ekim68

ESO will upgrade its Very Large Telescope to hunt for exoplanets



> The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope is getting an upgrade. ESO signed an agreement with Breakthrough Initiatives, a program created to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, to modify its infrared instrument called VISIR (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared). Once it's done, the observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile will easily be able to spot exoplanets in the Alpha Centauri. According to ESO, the astronomers' discovery of a habitable planet in our neighboring star system late last year "adds even further impetus to this search."
> 
> Exoplanets are hard to spot since the brightness of the massive stars they orbit tend to overwhelm their presence, making them hard to see from our little corner in the universe. While observing them in infrared makes exoplanets easier to detect, the upgrade will give VISIR an even more powerful technique called coronagraphy. It greatly reduces stellar light to make their comparably tinier planets more visible to the telescope.


----------



## 2twenty2

A Sneaky Asteroid Buzzed By Earth Yesterday
The space rock passed by at about half the distance between our planet and the moon

Monday at 7:47 A.M. EST, an asteroid passed by Earth at about half the distance between our planet and the Moon-roughly 119,500 miles, reports Mike Wall at Space.com. The space rock, dubbed 2017 AG13 was on the "smallish" size as far as asteroids go, Wall reports, thought to be between 36 and 111 feet wide.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/a-stellar-explosion-could-be-visible-in-the-night-sky-i-1790999540']A Stellar Explosion Could Be Visible In the Night Sky In 2022[/URL]



> It's not often that a new body appears in the night sky-aside from meteors and the occasionally comet, things tend to look pretty much the same. Now, astronomers predict that a pair of stars so close they're basically touching will collide and create a so-called red nova, resulting in a bright explosion visible to the naked eye.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX details its plans for landing three Falcon Heavy boosters at once



> As part of the process to gain federal approval for the simultaneous landing of its Falcon Heavy rocket boosters in Florida, SpaceX has prepared an environmental assessment of the construction of two additional landing pads alongside its existing site. The report considers noise and other effects from landing up to three first stages at the same time. After undergoing a preliminary review by the US Air Force, the document has been released for public comment.
> 
> First reported by NASASpaceFlight.com, the document offers some interesting details about the proposed launch and landing of SpaceX's heavy lift rocket, which the company hopes to fly for the first time in the spring or early summer of 2017. After previously demonstrating the ability to land a single Falcon 9 booster, SpaceX also hopes to land the three first-stage boosters that will power the Falcon Heavy for potential re-use.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/the-milky-ways-most-distant-stars-appear-to-be-stolen-1791111612']Our Heartless Milky Way Is Stealing Stars From Other Galaxies[/URL]



> Our thieving Milky Way stole a bunch of stars from unsuspecting galaxies-and it feels no remorse.
> 
> New research from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) suggests some of the 11 farthest stars in our galaxy-approximately 300,000 lightyears from Earth-were probably snatched from the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. It's the second-closest galaxy to our own, making it the perfect victim for this celestial crime.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX returns to flight, nails rocket landing



> (CNN)SpaceX returned to flight Saturday after a 4½-month hiatus.
> 
> The private space exploration company headed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 9:54 a.m. PT, taking 10 satellites into space for voice and data company Iridium.
> 
> It marked the company's first launch since a Falcon 9 rocket exploded at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in September.
> The launch's success Saturday was made even sweeter by a smooth return landing for the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage booster. It safely returned from space and glided to a landing on a seafaring platform, known as a drone ship.


----------



## ekim68

Moon Express raises $20M in Series B-1, fully funds trip to the Moon




> Moon Express





> , a company competing in the Google Lunar X-Prize, has raised $20 million in a Series B-1 round and announced that they've now fully financed their maiden mission to the moon. With the latest round of funding, Moon Express has raised over $45 million in private investment from individuals and venture funds including Founders Fund, Collaborative Fund, and Autodesk.
> 
> In July of 2016, Moon Express became the first private company in history to receive permission to travel to the moon. The company plans to launch their MX-1E spacecraft to the Moon at the end of 2017 with the goal of winning the $20 million grand prize in the X-Prize competition.


----------



## ekim68

NASA to explore asteroid made of $10,000 quadrillion worth of metal



> NASA recently announced it's latest endeavor: Explore a giant metal asteroid the size of Massachusetts.
> 
> Made up of mostly nickel and iron, the giant hunk of space metal is about three times further away from the Sun than Earth.
> 
> Enticingly, the mission's lead scientist has put a price tag of $10,000 quadrillion on the asteroid, known as "16 Psyche."
> 
> But NASA isn't there to pad it's budget for the fiscal year. Instead, it will study the possibility of Psyche being a "protoplanet," or the exposed core of an early planet.
> 
> Scientists believe Psyche may have once been a planet the size of Mars, but after a number of massive collisions, its outer layers were stripped away, leaving only the metal asteroid we know it as today.


----------



## ekim68

'Planet Nine' Can't Hide Much Longer, Scientists Say



> Planet Nine's days of lurking unseen in the dark depths of the outer solar system may be numbered.
> 
> The hypothetical giant planet, which is thought to be about 10 times more massive than Earth, will be discovered within 16 months or so, astronomer Mike Brown predicted.


----------



## ekim68

Galaxy Murder Mystery



> It's the big astrophysical _whodunnit_. Across the Universe, galaxies are being killed and the question scientists want answered is, what's killing them?
> 
> New research published today by a global team of researchers, based at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), seeks to answer that question. The study reveals that a phenomenon called ram-pressure stripping is more prevalent than previously thought, driving gas from galaxies and sending them to an early death by depriving them of the material to make new stars.
> 
> The study of 11,000 galaxies shows their gas-the lifeblood for star formation-is being violently stripped away on a widespread scale throughout the local Universe.


----------



## ekim68

Good pictures....:up:


SpaceX marks its return with stunning photo collection


----------



## ekim68

Intracranial pressure could be key to tackling astronaut vision loss



> New research could lead to the creation of equipment designed to reduce the deterioration of astronaut vision over the course of prolonged trips beyond Earth's protective atmosphere. According to the newly published study, the root cause of the degradation of vision is a lack of pressure variation in an astronaut's cranium.
> 
> NASA and its partners are actively seeking to address the effects of microgravity on the human eye as part of a more comprehensive effort to advance its ability to maintain an astronaut's physical health in the space environment in preparation for the next phase of manned space exploration.


----------



## ekim68

Russia, US Mulling Joint Mission to Venus



> Russia's space program and NASA are working together on a mission to Venus that would investigate some of the scorching-hot planet's biggest mysteries, including, perhaps, whether it harbors life.
> 
> An international team of scientists tasked with fleshing out the main goals of the mission, which is known as Venera-D, is wrapping up its work and will deliver its final report to NASA and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Space Research Institute by the end of the month, said David Senske, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.


----------



## valis

Hope it comes to fruition....the Venera images have always been among my favorites...


----------



## ekim68

Scientists enter Hawaii dome in eight-month Mars space mission study



> Six scientists have entered a dome perched atop a remote volcano in Hawaii where they will spend the next eight months in isolation to simulate life for astronauts traveling to Mars, the University of Hawaii said.
> 
> The study is designed to help NASA better understand human behavior and performance during long space missions as the U.S. space agency explores plans for a manned mission to the Red Planet.


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid named after Star Trek's Wil Wheaton: Engage!



> An asteroid going boldly through the universe now carries a new name that honors actor Will Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher on "Star Trek: The Next Generation."


----------



## ekim68

NOAA releases first impressive photos from next-gen satellite



> The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released the first batch of images taken by the GOES-16 satellite, including a breath-taking image of Earth's full disk. GOES-16 will play a vital role in the effort to provide early warnings for potentially dangerous weather systems, and aid in the planning of humanitarian efforts undertaken in the wake of natural disasters.


----------



## ekim68

Boeing reveals light and stylish spacesuit for Starliner astronauts



> When the Boeing CST-100 Starliner takes to space in 2018, its passengers and crew will be a little more stylish and a little cooler than their NASA predecessors. The company has unveiled its Boeing Blue spacesuit, which will be worn by astronauts flying to and from the International Space Station and features numerous innovations to improve both the comfort and protection of modern space travelers.


----------



## RT

Metallic hydrogen? Is it stable? Umm...is it non-flammable for new blimp technology? 

"It's the first-ever sample of metallic hydrogen on Earth, so when you're looking at it, you're looking at something that's never existed before"


----------



## ekim68

The advances in technology over the last ten years is amazing....:up:


----------



## ekim68

Spacewalker's view



> ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet completed his first spacewalk 13 January 2017 together with NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough to complete a battery upgrade to the outpost's power system.
> 
> Thomas recorded the spacewalk for the first time with a camera in a space-proof casing that was mounted to a bracket on his chest called the the mini work station. This video shows scenes from the spacewalk using this camera.


----------



## ekim68

In late April the Cassini Spacecraft will dive into Saturn, but for now: 


Close Views Show Saturn's Rings in Unprecedented Detail


----------



## ekim68

ESO's OmegaCam captures a two billion pixel nebula view


----------



## poochee

...


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/how-an-interstellar-starship-could-actually-explore-alp-1791869321']How an Interstellar Starship Could Actually Explore Alpha Centauri[/URL]



> Last year, Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner hatched an ambitious plan to send a tiny probe to the Alpha Centauri star system. Travelling at 20 percent the speed of light, the researchers weren't entirely sure how the probe was supposed to stop once it arrived at its destination, or whether it would even be able to. Excitingly, a pair of European scientists now say they've solved the problem.





> As part of the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, Milner plans to invest $100 million in an effort to develop an ultra-light autonomous lightsail that can be accelerated to one-fifth the speed of light (60,000 km/s, or 37,350 miles/s). At this ludicrous speed, a sail-driven robotic probe could reach Alpha Centauri-the closest star system to Earth-in just 20 years, as opposed to 100,000 years using traditional chemical thrusters.


----------



## ekim68

Do Cosmic Rays Grease Lightning?



> Nobody knows exactly what triggers lightning bolts. Now, two Russian researchers say that these discharges of a billion volts or more could be caused by the interaction of cosmic rays-high-energy particles from outer space-with water droplets in thunderclouds.
> 
> Cosmic rays are created deep in space by powerful events such as star collisions, gamma ray bursts, and supernovae. These cataclysms accelerate charged particles-mostly protons-to very high energies. The rays zoom across space, and those that strike the upper atmosphere of Earth generate invisible but highly energetic air showers of ionized particles and electromagnetic radiation.
> 
> The idea that these air showers could cause lightning when they pass through a thundercloud has been around for 2 decades.


----------



## ekim68

Star-destroying black hole sets record for longest lunch



> Almost 2 billion light-years away, a supermassive black hole has been slowly swallowing a star. That's a pretty spectacular thing to witness, and astronomers have had ample time to take a peek - this interstellar light show has been visible for over 10 years, making it the most drawn-out death of a star ever observed.


----------



## ekim68

We finally have a computer that can survive the surface of Venus



> Venus is one of the most inhospitable places in the solar system. Descending through the clouds of boiling sulphuric rain is actually the easy bit-the hard bit is not being cremated by the surface temperature of 470°C (878°F) or crushed by the atmospheric pressure, which is about 90 times that of Earth, the same as swimming 900 metres under water.





> Now, researchers out of NASA's Glenn Research Centre appear to have cracked the other big problem with high-temperature integrated circuits: they've crafted interconnects-the tiny wires that connect transistors and other integrated components together-that can also survive the extreme conditions on Venus.
> 
> The NASA Glenn researchers combined the new interconnects with some SiC transistors to create a ceramic-packaged chip. The chip was then placed into the GEER-the Glenn Extreme Environments Rig, a machine that can maintain Venus-like temperature and pressure for hundreds of hours at a time. The chip, a simple 3-stage oscillator, kept functioning at a steady 1.26MHz for 521 hours (21.7) days before the GEER had to be shut down.


----------



## poochee

WOW!!


----------



## ekim68

Is there life on Europa? NASA has a plan to find out



> NASA has outlined what could be the next major phase in the search for life in our Solar System. Under the direction of the US Congress in 2016, the space agency's Planetary Science Division looked at the feasibility of placing a lander on Jupiter's moon Europa. Now a 21-member Science Definition Team has delivered a detailed report on what such a mission could look like and how it would directly seek out extra-terrestrial life for the first time since the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s.


----------



## ekim68

Space junk collector burns up after hitting snag in first test



> It's a rubbish start for the world's first space clean-up experiment. A cable designed to drag space junk out of orbit has failed to deploy from a Japanese spacecraft.
> 
> More than half a million pieces of debris are currently whizzing around our planet, including abandoned satellites and fragments of old spacecraft. They pose a danger to working satellites and new space vehicles.
> 
> Scientists are working on a range of clean-up solutions, including cables, nets, harpoons, sails and robotic arms. All are designed to capture pieces of space junk and tug them down into Earth's atmosphere where they will burn up and disintegrate.


----------



## ekim68

India smashes satellite launch record



> The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has set a new record for the number of satellites delivered into orbit from a single rocket. On Wednesday at 9.28 am local time, the PSLV C37/Cartosat-2 Series Mission was launched from the spaceport at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh and delivered 104 satellites into orbit, beating the previous record for a single mission of 37 satellites set by Russia in 2014.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX reschedules its unmanned Red Dragon mission to Mars



> SpaceX is still relentlessly gunning for Mars, but the company has admitted that the current plans for its first unmanned flight might be a tad too ambitious. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has revealed that its robotic Martian lander called Red Dragon won't be ready in 2018 like the company wanted. She made the revelation at a press conference announcing the first time the space corporation is launching a rocket from the historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy Space Center.
> 
> SpaceX originally hoped to send a Red Dragon to our neighboring planet by 2022 until it bumped up its target date to 2018. Shotwell said that she and her team were focused on achieving that goal but ultimately felt that they "needed to put more resources and focus more heavily on our crew program and our Falcon Heavy program." They're now "looking more in the 2020 timeframe."


----------



## ekim68

Annular Eclipse of the Sun on February 26, 2017 as seen in South America and Africa


----------



## ekim68

3D printing Martian habitats from the ground up



> Given the cost of transporting goods to Mars, the first human colonists of the Red Planet will need to pack lightly - but it's going to take a lot of equipment to get that settlement set up. Building habitats, tools and parts out of local resources on arrival would be an ideal solution, but Mars is a pretty barren place. So researchers from NASA and the University of Central Florida (UCF) are investigating how metals could be extracted from the Martian soil, refined, and used as "ink" to 3D print vital components.
> 
> NASA has already outlined its roadmap to getting humans to Mars, which involves studying what kind of resources that the first settlers could harvest from the planet. The less we need to cart from Earth, the better, with the agency saying that finding ways to live off the land could save over US$100,000 per kilogram (2.2 lb) per launch. It's known as in situ resource utilization, and that's the goal of this new project.


----------



## ekim68

Exoplanet discovery: seven Earth-sized worlds found orbiting nearby star



> A huddle of seven worlds, all close in size to Earth, and perhaps warm enough for water and the life it can sustain, has been spotted around a small, faint star in the constellation of Aquarius.
> 
> The discovery, which has thrilled astronomers, has raised hopes that the hunt for alien life beyond the solar system could start much sooner than previously thought, with the next generation of telescopes that are due to switch on in the next decade.


----------



## ekim68

Musk's SpaceX Plans 2018 Flight Circling Moon With Civilians



> Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. plans to send two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year as it continues to work with NASA for a planned crewed mission to the International Space Station.
> 
> The passengers, who each paid a "significant deposit," will undergo health and fitness tests and begin initial training later this year, the company said in a blog post Monday. SpaceX didn't identify the two citizens or say how much they spent to book the trip that will use the Falcon Heavy, a new rocket in development that SpaceX has yet to fly.


----------



## ekim68

Amazon wants to start shipping packages to the moon



> Amazon chief Jeff Bezos has revealed aspirations to create a stable, frequent delivery service to the moon over four decades since a man last walked on the surface.
> 
> Bezos, who also owns private aerospace firm Blue Origin and _The Washington Post_, told the publication in an interview that in order to maintain a stable colony on the moon, a reliable delivery service is of paramount importance.
> 
> In a "propriety and confidential" white paper sent to NASA chiefs, Blue Origin urged scientists to consider a proposal to develop a lunar spacecraft for use as an Amazon-esque shipment service which could be used to deliver everything from equipment to food to moon settlers by mid-2020.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers create new form of matter-supersolid is crystalline and superfluid at the same time



> MIT physicists have created a new form of matter, a supersolid, which combines the properties of solids with those of superfluids.
> 
> By using lasers to manipulate a superfluid gas known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, the team was able to coax the condensate into a quantum phase of matter that has a rigid structure-like a solid-and can flow without viscosity-a key characteristic of a superfluid. Studies into this apparently contradictory phase of matter could yield deeper insights into superfluids and superconductors, which are important for improvements in technologies such as superconducting magnets and sensors, as well as efficient energy transport. The researchers report their results this week in the journal _Nature_.


----------



## ekim68

NASA proposes artificial magnetic field to make Mars a second home



> To combat some of the main barriers to sending humans to Mars, as reported by Universe Today, last week, NASA hosted a discussion and presentation group called the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop.
> 
> At the event, scientists and researchers discussed the future possibilities of space exploration and during one talk, NASA Planetary Science Division Director Dr. Jim Green proposed ways to deploy a magnetic shield around the planet which could act as a barrier to radiation and reduce the need for extreme protective equipment.


----------



## RT

This may have been posted before, if so - I bow in your general direction , and if not here's fair warning!
Umm, I mean be advised.
A Total Solar Eclipse is coming the US in August 2017! You will no doubt hear more of this on all the media as August approaches, but I encourage you to make plans now, if you can. 
A difference of 20-30 miles from your location can mean you see totality or just a partial view.

A *general view of the path over the US.*

Here's a fairly *specific* view of the *path of the eclipse.
*
There will be, no doubt, more info as the event draws nigh.

*https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4515*
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4515
*
*


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## poochee

Thanks for the information.


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## RT

Hey Poochee, if you're near the path remember to watch it safely...don't look directly at the sun...I and others will post more in that respect in the coming months.
I looked directly at my son once and I still can't see straight


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## poochee

Thanks.


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## ekim68

NASA finds lunar spacecraft that vanished 8 years ago



> (CNN)It made history as India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft. Then it vanished.
> 
> Nearly a decade later, NASA has located two unmanned spacecraft orbiting the moon, including India's Chandrayaan-1, which went quiet in 2009.
> 
> Scientists used a new ground radar to locate the two spacecraft -- one active and one dormant, NASA said Thursday.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> Amazon wants to start shipping packages to the moon


REALLY? I think somehow that the Prime Membership fee might be a bit higher for that service, nor will a two day delivery guarantee be included


----------



## ekim68

Saturnian flying-saucer moon stars in new Cassini images



> ASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured a series of stunning images highlighting the strange nature of Saturn's ring-shaping moon, Pan. The new shots represent the closest view ever taken of the enigmatic moon, which orbits within Saturn's A-ring, maintaining a 200-mile-wide (325 km) opening in the icy debris known as the Encke Gap.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's life-hunting Mars tech goes to work in the Atacama Desert



> As far as locations for Mars dress rehearsals go, you could do worse than Chile's Atacama Desert. Regarded as the driest place on the planet, parts of this parched desert landscape have never seen a single drop of rain, making them largely hostile to life on Earth. Sounds a bit like Mars right? Over the month of February, NASA researchers have been using the site to test a rover equipped with scientific instruments needed to comb the Red Planet for signs of life, with a view to fine-tuning the tech ahead of future Mars missions.


----------



## ekim68

Starquakes reveal surprises about birth of stars in our galaxy



> A study of the internal sound waves created by starquakes, which make stars ring like a bell, has provided unprecedented insights into conditions in the turbulent gas clouds where stars were born 8 billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Cooling to absolute zero mathematically outlawed after a century



> IT'S an absolute. Mathematics has put speed limits on cooling, finally proving a century-old law - that unless you have infinite time and resources, you can't get to the absolute zero of temperature.
> 
> In 1906, German chemist Walther Nernst formulated the heat theorem, which states that as a perfect crystal approaches the absolute zero point of 0 kelvin (-273.15°C), the system's entropy also goes to zero. This work earned him the 1920 Nobel prize in chemistry.


----------



## ekim68

Miniature lab begins science experiments in outer space



> Orbiting the earth at more than 500 kilometers (300 miles), a tiny satellite with a laboratory shrunk to the size of a tissue box is helping scientists carry out experiments that take gravity out of the equation.
> 
> The technology was launched into space last month by SpacePharma, a Swiss-Israeli company, which on Thursday announced that its first experiments have been completed successfully.
> 
> In space, with hardly any interference from earth's gravity, cells and molecules behave differently, helping researchers make discoveries in fields from medicine to agriculture.


----------



## ekim68

These Scientists Sent a Rocket to Mars for Less Than It Cost to Make "The Martian"




> And they happen to be women. Indian women, for that matter.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity's wheels are breaking down as the mileage adds up



> NASA's Curiosity rover has been driving across Mars for over four-and-a-half years without an overhaul and it's starting to show. According to the space agency, the six aluminum wheels that support the unmanned explorer are starting to show significant signs of wear, with two new small breaks in the metal treads of the left-side middle wheel. However, it's expected the wheels will go the distance to allow the rover to complete its planned mission.


----------



## 2twenty2

A 3 billion solar mass black hole rockets out of a galaxy at 8 million kilometers per hour. Yes, seriously.

In astronomy, you deal with a lot of ridiculously violent cosmic phenomena. Stars explode, asteroids collide, whole galaxies smash together. When you look at the math and physics, when you actually grasp the levels of power involved, it'll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It's chaos wielded on a mind-crushing scale.

And then there's the "two supermassive black holes colliding and merging and then launching the resulting even larger billion-solar-mass black hole out of a galaxy at nearly 8 million kilometers per hour due to gravitational waves" scale of immensity.


----------



## ekim68

Solar-powered two-seater plane will soar to the edge of space



> Solar planes have already traversed the Alps and flown around the world, but one team has its sights set a little higher: the edge of space. SolarStratos is planning to fly a solar-powered plane to an altitude of over 80,000 ft (24,000 m), from where the curvature of the Earth as well as daytime stars will be visible.


----------



## Brigham

ekim68 said:


> Solar-powered two-seater plane will soar to the edge of space


How does the plane stay up? There is almost no air for the propeller and wings to get a grip.


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## ekim68

Brigham said:


> How does the plane stay up? There is almost no air for the propeller and wings to get a grip.


This from the Article....



> There are 22 sq m (237 sq ft) of solar panels covering the plane that power a 32-kW electric engine and charge a 20-kWh lithium-ion battery. These will apparently allow the plane to stay airborne for over 24 hours, although its inaugural flight is slated to be a little shorter, clocking in at five hours - two to ascend, 15 minutes to look around, and three hours to descend.


----------



## ekim68

No one knows what to do with the International Space Station



> In 2024 the clock will run out on the International Space Station. Maybe. That's the arbitrary deadline that Congress imposed back in 2014, at which point they'll have to decide whether or not to keep funding the ISS. And yeah, that's a whole seven years away. But then again...it's only seven years away.


----------



## ekim68

NASA developing drones to take to Martian skies



> Using rovers has done wonders to open up Mars exploration, but traveling at a rate of about 10 mi (16 km) every four and half years is still a bit limiting, so NASA"s Langley Research Center is looking at expanding that range by equipping future missions with autonomous aerial drones. These electric-powered aircraft would work in conjunction with rovers to cover much more ground much more quickly and to directly investigate interesting features some distance from base without having to depend on telescopic observation.


----------



## ekim68

http://newatlas.com/swarm-supersonic-plasma-jets-discovered/48633/

Finally, some details about how NASA actually plans to get to Mars



> NASA has spent the last six years building the massive Space Launch System rocket, but beyond making general statements about a "Journey to Mars," the agency has not provided much detail about how the SLS booster would be used to that end. This situation began to change on Tuesday, when the agency's chief of human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier, briefed the agency's advisory council on tentative plans for the first dozen launches of the rocket.
> 
> During his presentation, Gerstenmaier presented slides outlining the assembly of a "deep space gateway" and subsequent testing of a "deep space transport" system in the vicinity of the Moon. The sequence of missions would culminate in a crewed mission to orbit Mars, but not land, in 2033.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/the-plan-to-bring-a-little-bit-of-venus-back-to-earth-1793206237']The Plan to Bring a Little Bit of Venus Back to Earth[/URL]



> Venus, arguably the most Earth-like world we know of, is an enigma. Despite decades of studying Venus from afar, and sending off probes to melt into metallic puddles on its surface, we still don't understand _why_ our nearest neighbor is a toxic hellscape. But scientists hope to change that, with a bold new mission that would bring a taste of Venus' alien atmosphere back to Earth.
> 
> At a Planetary Science Vision 2050 workshop hosted at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C. earlier this month, James Cutts of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other members of the Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG) presented a concept for a future mission to Venus that would scoop up samples of the nearby world's atmosphere, and deliver them to laboratories on Earth for analysis.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX makes aerospace history with successful launch and landing of a used rocket



> After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX's drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9's relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time.


----------



## ekim68

Solar wind stripped Martian atmosphere away



> Solar wind and radiation are responsible for stripping the Martian atmosphere, transforming Mars from a planet that could have supported life billions of years ago into a frigid desert world, according to new results from NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) spacecraft led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
> 
> "We've determined that most of the gas ever present in the Mars atmosphere has been lost to space," said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for MAVEN and a professor at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). "The team made this determination from the latest result, which reveals that about 65 percent of the argon that was ever in the atmosphere has been lost to space."


----------



## ekim68

Cassini Bids Farewell before Blazing into Saturn



> In November, to prepare for the end, Cassini moved closer to Saturn, tilting its orbit from nearly equatorial to circling the planet from pole to pole. Images from earlier this year showed a new, up-close look at the rings as the spacecraft glided past them. On April 22 engineers will use Titan's gravity to tweak Cassini's orbit for the last time-a fuel-saving maneuver that has been used throughout the mission to change the craft's velocity by slingshotting it through the moon's gravitational field. This time the adjustment will send Cassini zooming _between_ the rings and the planet, a route never taken by a spacecraft before. The probe will circle the planet in this manner nearly two dozen times before spiraling into its gassy atmosphere in a dramatic final descent in September.


----------



## ekim68

There's an 'Earth-like' planet with an atmosphere just 39 light-years away



> There are a lot of good reasons to be captivated by the exoplanet GJ 1132b. Located in the constellation Vela, it's a mere 39 light-years from Earth - just a hop, skip and a jump in galactic terms. It's similar to Earth in terms of size and mass, and it dances in a close-in orbit around its star, a dimly burning red dwarf.
> 
> And, astronomers recently discovered, it has an atmosphere.
> 
> The finding, published in the Astronomical Journal, is the first detection of an atmosphere around a terrestrial "Earth-like" planet orbiting a red dwarf star - and it suggests there could be millions more.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/new-up-close-image-of-jupiter-is-so-hypnotic-it-hurts-1793683261']New Up-Close Image of Jupiter Is So Hypnotic It Hurts[/URL]



> NASA's Juno spacecraft has consistently been coming through with the best close-up images of Jupiter we've ever seen. But a newly released, enhanced-color image of a large dark spot might be the most ethereal of all-its swirling, colorful clouds make it seem like a Jovian Van Gogh.


----------



## ekim68

Private company cleared for landing ... on the moon



> For the first time ever, a private company has been given permission to land on the moon. The authorization from the US Government means next year's planned lunar mission by Moon Express will not only be the first by a private company, but the first time a private company will leave Earth's orbit.


----------



## ekim68

China's first cargo spacecraft launch a 'crucial step' to space station



> (CNN)China launched its first cargo spacecraft Thursday night, according to state media Xinhua, which described it as a "crucial step for China's plan to have an operational space station by 2020."
> 
> The Tianzhou-1 took off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in China's southern Hainan province, on track to dock with the orbiting space lab Tiangong-2.


----------



## ekim68

Astronaut Peggy Whitson breaks record for cumulative time spent in space



> International Space Station Commander Peggy Whitson has broken the record for cumulative time spent in space by a NASA astronaut. Whitson is currently serving her third stint aboard the ISS, and with five months of her mission remaining, is set to rack up over 650 days in space before touching back down on Earth.
> 
> The latest achievement in Whitson's long and storied career occurred at 1:27 AM on April 24, when her cumulative time in low-Earth orbit surpassed the previous record holder Jeffrey Williams' time of 534 days, 2 hours and 48 minutes.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini makes first dive through Saturn's rings



> April 26 (UPI) -- Cassini is diving for rings -- or, at least, through rings.
> 
> On Wednesday, the space probe began its first dive through a 1,500-mile-wide gap separating Saturn and its rings.
> 
> During Cassini's "grand finale" phase, the probe will execute 22 dives. Along the way, the craft will record scientific data and collect samples from Saturn's rings and upper atmosphere. The observation will help scientists better understand how the gas giant and its rings formed and evolved.


----------



## ekim68

China and Europe to build a base on the moon and launch other projects into space



> China and Europe are looking to build a human outpost on the moon.
> 
> Representatives of the Chinese and European space agencies have discussed collaborating on a moonbase and other possible joint endeavours, according to spokespeople and media reports.
> 
> The work was first revealed by Tian Yulong, the secretary general of China's space agency, who told Chinese state media about the talks. Pal Hvistendahl, a spokesperson for the European Space Agency, confirmed the discussions.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini discovers 'Big Empty' in gap between Saturn and its rings



> May 2 (UPI) -- NASA scientists expected Cassini to encounter hundreds of dust particles as it flew through the gap between Saturn and its rings. Instead, the probe found "The Big Empty," an area with very few dust particles.
> 
> "The region between the rings and Saturn is 'The Big Empty,' apparently," Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a news release. "Cassini will stay the course, while the scientists work on the mystery of why the dust level is much lower than expected."
> 
> Engineers pointed the probe's antenna forwards as a protect mechanism -- a way to protect the probe for collisions with dust particles as it passes between Saturn's upper atmosphere and the gas giant's main rings.


----------



## ekim68

Printing bricks from moondust using the sun's heat



> Bricks have been 3-D printed out of simulated moondust using concentrated sunlight - proving in principle that future lunar colonists could one day use the same approach to build settlements on the moon.


----------



## ekim68

Lava oceans and ruby rains: Five of the most bizarre exoplanets ever found



> For a long time, Earth was the weirdest planet we knew about. In our little corner of the universe, where Mercury is the hot one, Jupiter is the protective bigger brother, and Pluto is the one we kicked out of the club for breaking the rules, Earth is the crazy cat lady, hoarding billions of life forms. But over the last 20 years the family has expanded to include over 3,600 exoplanets, and some of these distant relatives are far more unusual than we could've imagined.
> 
> There are planets where it rains rocks, planets where the wind whips around at seven times the speed of sound and planets where one year can last almost a million years.


----------



## ekim68

Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Lands in Florida After Record-Breaking Secret Mission



> The record-shattering mission of the U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane is finally over.
> 
> After circling Earth for an unprecedented 718 days, the X-37B touched down Sunday (May 7) at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida - the first landing at the SLF since the final space shuttle mission came back to Earth in July 2011.





> "Technologies being tested in the program include advanced guidance, navigation and control; thermal-protection systems; avionics; high-temperature structures and seals; conformal, reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems; and autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing," Capt. AnnMarie Annicelli, an Air Force spokeswoman, told Space.com via email in March.


----------



## poochee

....


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## ekim68

UAE seeks to build human settlement on Mars by 2117




> 'Mars 2117 Project' is set to be developed and executed in partnership with major international research institutions.


----------



## valis

neato.......http://gizmodo.com/massive-lava-waves-detected-on-jupiter-s-moon-io-1795088666


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## ekim68

Whoa, the Solar System is a very busy place...And what a cool picture with the Volcano...


----------



## ekim68

NASA's mission to Mars includes a year-long stay on the moon



> Some astronauts may spend a year orbiting cislunar space before NASA finally makes its way to Mars. At the Human to Mars Summit in Washington DC, Greg Williams from the agency's human exploration division revealed the details of NASA's two-phased plan to send humans to the red planet. According to _Space_, he said the first phase includes four manned flights to cislunar space in order to deliver a crew habitat, a science research module, a power source and an airlock for visiting vehicles. The whole installation could also have a robotic arm like the Canadarm2 with some autonomous functions. All those trips will take place between 2018 and 2026.


----------



## Johnny b

* Laser pulses reveal the superconductors of the future *

http://www.innovations-report.com/h...reveal-the-superconductors-of-the-future.html



> Another step forward towards superconductivity at room temperature: an experiment at the cutting edge of condensed matter physics and materials science has revealed that the dream of more efficient energy usage can turn into reality.


----------



## Johnny b

* Irreversible ocean warming threatens the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf *

http://www.innovations-report.com/h...g-threatens-the-filchner-ronne-ice-shelf.html



> By the second half of this century, rising air temperatures above the Weddell Sea could set off a self-amplifying meltwater feedback cycle under the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, ultimately causing the second-largest ice shelf in the Antarctic to shrink dramatically.










Info graph Antarctic - How the ocean's heat is threatening the ice shelves


----------



## ekim68

Dealing with spaceflight's dirty secret



> One of the dirty secrets of spaceflight is that, in space, there's no such thing as laundry day. That's because no one has figured out an economical way to wash clothes in orbit. To make things a bit less manky, a University of Arizona undergraduate is developing a new system that may one day allow astronauts to clean their clothes and make them last longer while conserving water.


----------



## ekim68

NASA pushes back first Orion manned mission



> Space watchers, adjust your calendars. NASA says that the next Orion mission won't carry astronauts after all. In February, the agency's Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot asked for a feasibility study on the possibility of moving the timetable forward and making Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) a manned mission. However, after weighing the project's technical factors and risks, NASA has decided to keep with the original plan for an unmanned EM-1, with the first manned mission to launch in 2021.
> 
> The second flight of the Orion crew capsule, EM-1 is scheduled to lift off in 2019 atop the Space Launch System rocket. The purpose of the mission is to send the spacecraft and its service module on a translunar trajectory, where it will loop around the Moon and then return to Earth for a splashdown at sea. This test is intended to act as a precursor to a new generation of manned deep space missions to cislunar orbit and, eventually, Mars.


----------



## ekim68

This Company Plans to Mine the Moon - and It's Not Alone



> The first-ever private mining operation on the moon is scheduled to kick off in 2020, when a landing craft sent by Florida-based Moon Express will ferry a single scoop of lunar dirt and rocks back to Earth.
> 
> Unlike the three governments that have led lunar missions - the United States, the Soviet Union, and China - the owners of this private firm have something history-making in mind for that little ball of extraterrestrial soil: They plan to sell it.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Achieve Direct Counterfactual Quantum Communication For The First Time




> Quantum communication





> is a strange beast, but one of the weirdest proposed forms of it is called counterfactual communication - a type of quantum communication where no particles travel between two recipients.
> 
> Theoretical physicists have long proposed that such a form of communication would be possible, but now, for the first time, researchers have been able to experimentally achieve it - transferring a black and white bitmap image from one location to another without sending any physical particles.


----------



## ekim68

Moon orbits third largest dwarf planet in our solar system



> The combined power of three space observatories, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, has helped astronomers uncover a moon orbiting the third largest dwarf planet, catalogued as 2007 OR10. The pair resides in the frigid outskirts of our solar system called the Kuiper Belt, a realm of icy debris left over from our solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Chemists may be zeroing in on chemical reactions that sparked the first life



> DNA is better known, but many researchers today believe that life on Earth got started with its cousin RNA, because that nucleic acid can act as both a repository of genetic information and a catalyst to speed up biochemical reactions. But those favoring this "RNA world" hypothesis have struggled for decades to explain how the molecule's four building blocks could have arisen from the simpler compounds present during our planet's early days. Now, chemists have identified simple reactions that, using the raw materials on early Earth, can synthesize close cousins of all four building blocks. The resemblance isn't perfect, but it suggests scientists may be closing in on a plausible scenario for how life on Earth began.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists may have found evidence for a parallel universe



> A parallel universe may not just be a quirk of science fiction anymore; scientists think they may have found evidence for the idea of a universe other than our own. It all has to do with a strange Cold Spot, which researchers haven't had an easy time explaining; some even suggest it could actually be an optical illusion. But new research reveals something far more bizarre may be going on.
> 
> NASA first discovered the baffling Cold Spot in 2004. The Cold Spot is 1.8 billion light years across and, as you may have guessed, colder than what surrounds it in the universe. Scientists thought perhaps it was colder because it had 10,000 less galaxies than other regions of similar size. They even thought perhaps the Cold Spot was just a trick of the light.
> 
> But now an international team of researchers think perhaps the Cold Spot could actually offer evidence for the concept of a multiverse.


----------



## ekim68

This is the Brother of a Classmate of mine from my Hometown....

Donald Jennings


----------



## poochee

...


----------



## ekim68

Space Junk Blocks Our Way to the Stars



> As orbital debris multiplies, scientists scramble for ways to clean up the mess. Here come the space garbage trucks.


----------



## ekim68

DARPA challenges Boeing to create spaceplanes able to launch ten times in ten days



> The United States Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has chosen Boeing to build a spaceplane able to launch ten payloads in ten days to fight the prospect of destroyed satellites causing chaos in the future.
> 
> According to the agency, the Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program aims to bring to life a fleet of hypersonic aircraft that can "revolutionize the Nation's ability to recover from a catastrophic loss of military or commercial satellites, upon which the Nation today is critically dependent."


----------



## ekim68

Juno's first big science dump reveals a "whole new Jupiter"



> Since entering orbit around Jupiter last July, NASA's Juno probe has circled the gas giant every 53 days. This week, scientists are publishing the results of the orbiter's first data collection pass, with complex storm systems and an unexpectedly strong and lumpy magnetic field some of the Jovian features to catch them by surprise.
> 
> "We knew, going in, that Jupiter would throw us some curves," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "But now that we are here we are finding that Jupiter can throw the heat, as well as knuckleballs and sliders. There is so much going on here that we didn't expect, that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter."


----------



## ekim68

NASA to Make Announcement About First Mission to Touch Sun



> NASA will make an announcement about the agency's first mission to fly directly into our sun's atmosphere during an event at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 31, from the University of Chicago's William Eckhardt Research Center Auditorium. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.
> 
> The mission, Solar Probe Plus, is scheduled to launch in the summer of 2018. Placed in orbit within four million miles of the sun's surface, and facing heat and radiation unlike any spacecraft in history, the spacecraft will explore the sun's outer atmosphere and make critical observations that will answer decades-old questions about the physics of how stars work. The resulting data will improve forecasts of major space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.


----------



## ekim68

Next moves for Rocket Lab following lift-off from Mahia



> Rocket Lab engineers have started analysing data from yesterday's historic launch from the Mahia Peninsula that took the company to space but not able to complete its orbital mission.
> 
> Lift-off at 4.20pm was the first orbital-class rocket launched from a private launch site in the world
> 
> New Zealand became the 11th country with potential to launch cargo into space, joining superpowers and tech heavyweights. The Government hailed the lift-off as a major milestone for the country's space industry.


----------



## ekim68

First stone laid on the European Extremely Large Telescope



> Construction has finally begun on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), with the first stone laid in a ceremony last week. Being built by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on the 3,046 m (9,993 ft) high summit of Cerro Armazones in Chile, the E-ELT is set to be the world's largest optical and infrared telescope.


----------



## ekim68

BEAM's first year on ISS expands potential of inflatable space habitats



> Blasting equipment into space is a costly venture, so finding ways to reduce weight and size is crucial. Last year, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was deployed to the International Space Station (ISS) to test how an inflatable habitat stands up to the harsh environment of space. Now, one year on, NASA has reported its initial findings.
> 
> Developed by Bigelow Aerospace and NASA, the BEAM was attached to the ISS on April 16 last year. After a false start, it was fully inflated on May 28 and astronauts entered it for the first time on June 6. Over its two-year lifespan, astronauts will assess how well this softer structure stands up against radiation, micrometeoroid impacts and microbial growth, to help inform designs for future deep space missions. When it's all over, the module will be jettisoned from the station to burn up as it reenters Earth's atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

"Halos" on Mars widen the life support window



> While it looks like a barren wasteland today, Mars was once much more friendly towards life, and one of the main goals of the Curiosity rover mission was to determine if the Red Planet has ever harbored living organisms. The project has already discovered that the rover's landing site, Gale Crater, was once home to an ancient lake, and now a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory has found "halos" in the bedrock, suggesting the area could have supported life long after the lake dried up.
> 
> Although liquid water does still exist on or near the surface of the Red Planet, it's thought that Mars hasn't been habitable for about 3.3 billion years - around the time that the Gale Crater lake dried up for good. But the Los Alamos findings suggest that the window for habitability could extend considerably later than that.


----------



## ekim68

Parker Solar Probe: NASA's journey to touch the Sun



> Dreams of sending a spacecraft to explore the big ball of seething energy that warms our planet have been on NASA's bucket list for 60 years, and now the ambitious mission to touch the Sun is in its final phase before launch.
> 
> Originally called the Solar Probe Plus, the mission was renamed overnight in honour of astrophysicist Professor Eugene Parker, who predicted the existence of high-speed solar winds - the mass of particles that are spewed into space from the Sun.
> 
> Set to kick off next July, the plan is to plunge the Parker Solar Probe into the Sun's corona - the hazy bit you can see around the edges of the Sun during a total solar eclipse - to study this phenomenon.[/qu0te]


----------



## ekim68

Microsoft co-founder: We've just built the world's biggest plane



> Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has unveiled his colossal, twin-fuselage jet that will act as an aerial launchpad for low earth orbiting satellites.
> 
> The Vulcan Aerospace Stratolaunch carrier made its debut on Wednesday from a giant hangar at the Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, where it's been under construction for the past four years.


----------



## ekim68

Could Cold Spot in the Sky Be a Bruise from a Collision with a Parallel Universe?



> Scientists have long tried to explain the origin of a mysterious, large and anomalously cold region of the sky. In 2015, they came close to figuring it out as a study showed it to be a "supervoid" in which the density of galaxies is much lower than it is in the rest of the universe. However, other studies haven't managed to replicate the result.
> 
> Now new research led by Durham University, submitted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests the supervoid theory doesn't hold up. Intriguingly, that leaves open a pretty wild possibility-the cold spot might be the evidence of a collision with a parallel universe. But before you get too excited, let's look at how likely that would actually be.


----------



## ekim68

An ancient Martian lake could have been teeming with lots of kinds of life



> Once upon a time on Mars, there was a crater that had a massive lake that may have hosted life. Now researchers are saying that a whole variety of organisms could have flourished there. Sure, that life was probably just microbial, but this is another exciting step toward understanding just how habitable Mars may have been around 3.5 billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

LIGO detects gravitational waves for third time



> The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory has made a third detection of gravitational waves, ripples in space and time, demonstrating that a new window in astronomy has been firmly opened. As was the case with the first two detections, the waves were generated when two black holes collided to form a larger black hole.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/india-just-launched-its-giant-monster-rocket-1795812284']India Just Launched Its Giant 'Monster' Rocket[/URL]



> It's a big day for India and its very, very large rocket: Today, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully launched its 640 ton GSLV-Mk III rocket, carrying the GSAT-19 communications satellite on it. The GSLV-Mk III's maiden voyage brought its satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit above Earth's equator-a high Earth orbit that allows a satellite to sync up with Earth's rotation. Needless to say, not to shabby for a first launch.


----------



## ekim68

Einstein's theory provides new technique to size up stars



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronomers have found a new application for Albert Einstein's century-old theory of relativity - using it to directly measure the size of a star beyond the sun.
> 
> In research published on Wednesday, scientists said they used the Hubble Space Telescope to plot minute changes in the path of light coming from a distant background star as it passed by a relatively close target star, known as Stein 2051B.
> 
> Researchers applied Einstein's findings to measure how Stein 2051B's gravity warped the background star's light, a phenomenon the physicist predicted more than 100 years ago and a direct means to assess its mass. The technique could be applied to other stars.


----------



## ekim68

Has the 40-year old mystery of the "Wow!" signal been solved?



> In August 1977, the Ohio State University Radio Observatory picked up a radio transmission from the Sagittarius constellation that was so strong it inspired the astronomer who discovered it to write "Wow!" in the margin of the data printout. Almost 40 years later, researchers from the Center for Planetary Science may have finally solved the mystery of the Wow! Signal's origin, and it's bad news for alien hopefuls: it was probably a comet.


----------



## ekim68

Chinese satellite shatters quantum teleportation distance record



> Chinese scientists have smashed the quantum entanglement distance record. Transmitting information through entangled photons had previously only been possible up to about 100 km (62 mi), but using the Micius satellite launched in August, information has effectively been teleported as far as 1,200 km (746 mi).


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk publishes 15-page manifesto outlining how to get humanity to Mars



> Last year, billionaire SpaceX founder and space-fan Elon Musk delivered an expansive, hour-long presentation, outlining his ambitious plan to get humanity to the Red Planet. Musk has recently published a research paper adapted from that presentation entitled "Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species".
> 
> The 15-page paper, published in the journal _New Space,_ and available for free until early July, doesn't offer a great deal of new information that wasn't presented last year, but it certainly reads like a solid manifesto from a man who is very serious about colonizing our solar system.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://lifehacker.com/how-and-where-to-watch-the-solar-eclipse-in-august-1796176093']How and Where to Watch the Solar Eclipse in August [/URL]



> Are you doing anything on Monday, August 21? If not, maybe you should plan a short vacation. There will be a total solar eclipse that day, passing over the entire continental US from Corvallis, OR to Columbia, SC. Most of us will see at least some darkening, but only a 70-mile-wide strip of the country will experience a total eclipse.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope's first science targets announced



> NASA officials have announced some of the first targets to be observed by the much-anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) following its launch atop an Ariane 5 rocket, which is slated for lift-off in October 2018. The initial observations cover the gamut of the JWST's scientific targets, from studies aimed at unraveling the secrets of galaxy formation, to gaining a better understanding of our home solar system via an in-depth study of select planets, moons, and asteroids.


----------



## ekim68

10 new planets that could have life



> In a grand finale of planet-spotting prowess, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has tracked down 219 new planets outside our solar system - including 10 that could have the right qualifications for hosting life, scientists announced Monday.
> 
> The 219 planets announced Monday are technically planet "candidates," meaning they await rigorous confirmation, and some may turn out to be false leads. Even so, Kepler is unlikely to lose its crown as the top planet-spotting machine ever devised. All told, the spacecraft has notched 2,335 confirmed planets orbiting a star other than the Sun - more than 80 percent of the total found by all the world's observatories combined.


----------



## Johnny b

* Volcanoes 'triggered dawn of dinosaurs' *

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40333902



> Scientists have analysed ancient rocks and have found traces of emissions from huge volcanic eruptions that happened about 200 million years ago.
> 
> This would have led to one of the largest mass extinctions on record, enabling dinosaurs to become dominant.


----------



## Johnny b

* Thin ice: Vanishing ice only exacerbates a bad, climate change-fueled situation *

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...rbates-a-bad-climate-change-fueled-situation/



> Most people view our planet's vanishing ice as a symptom of climate change. And if they pay a bit more attention, some people might even be aware of some of its effects, including sea level rise and the opening up of the Arctic to shipping. But ice is also an active player in the Earth's climate-it doesn't only respond to warming by melting. Changes in our planet's ice are capable of feeding back on the climate system, creating further consequences for the globe.


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk claims Mars colony dreams critical to avoid 'Doomsday' event



> SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has claimed that building a self-sustaining colony on Mars is necessary to our future survival as a species.
> 
> Musk's blueprint, titled "Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species," outlines the executive's vision for making the human race a multi-planetary, space-faring society.
> 
> The paper, a summary of Musk's presentation at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara last year, suggests that a future Doomsday event will force us to look at other planets to stave off extinction.
> 
> Out of all the options currently open to us, Venus is a cooking pot of pressure and acid, Mercury is too close to the sun and the planet's moons are difficult to reach, and our own moon is small and has no atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX's Successful Friday Launch Opens Weekend Doubleheader



> The year's not half over, and Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is about to launch more missions than it completed in all of 2016.
> 
> SpaceX successfully fired up a Falcon 9 rocket for the eighth time this year on Friday, matching its flight total for all of last year. Its next launch is scheduled just two days later, with the ramped-up cadence putting the company on track to achieve the 20 to 24 total missions it's targeting for the year.


----------



## ekim68

Move over, Planet 9: Does a Mars-sized 10th planet lurk beyond Pluto?



> In January last year, astronomers from Caltech suggested that a gigantic so-far-undiscovered planet might be lurking on the fringes of the Solar System. Now researchers from the University of Arizona (UA) have found that if it exists, this so-called Planet Nine might not be alone out there. Weirdly wobbling objects in the Kuiper Belt seem to indicate the influence of yet another planetary body at least as large as Mars.


----------



## ekim68

I missed this today but it's an interesting article about Technology these days....


SpaceX Launching 10 New Iridium Satellites



> On Sunday (June 25), SpaceX will complete a rocket launch doubleheader when it launches a new Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Liftoff is set for 1:25 p.m. PDT (4:25 p.m. EDT/2025 GMT).
> 
> The Falcon 9 rocket will launch 10 next-generation Iridium NEXT satellites for SpaceX customer Iridium. They are satellites 11 through 20 of what will be a 70-satellite constellation to boost Iridum's mobile communications network. The first 10 satellites launched earlier this year in January.


----------



## ekim68

Slow-dancing supermassive black holes are orbiting at a snail's pace



> Supermassive black holes lie at the center of most galaxies, but 750 million light-years away, a huge galaxy known as 0402+379 boasts two of them - and one appears to be orbiting the other. The discovery is the result of 12 years of observation, and while it's long been suspected, this marks the first time the phenomenon has been directly seen.


----------



## ekim68

Japan wants to put a man on the moon, accelerating Asian space race



> (CNN)Japan plans to put a man on the moon around 2030, according to a new proposal by the government's Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
> 
> It is the first time JAXA has revealed an intention to send Japanese astronauts beyond the International Space Station, and it will mostly likely be part of an international mission, the agency said.
> The announcement from Japan Wednesday is just the latest in a series of ambitious space exploration plans by Asian countries, with the increasing competition for space-related power and prestige in the region echoing that of the Cold War space race of the mid-20th century.


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> Move over, Planet 9: Does a Mars-sized 10th planet lurk beyond Pluto?


More on this....


Something big is warping the outer solar system


----------



## ekim68

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is ready for its close-up



> A massive storm bigger than the Earth has been raging for centuries on Jupiter, and now Juno is swooping in for a closer look. The spacecraft will come within a few thousand miles of the Great Red Spot, probing the storm to hopefully reveal some of its mysteries - and no doubt snapping some stunning photos in the process.
> 
> July 4 marks the first anniversary of Juno's arrival in Jupiter's orbit, and early observations paint the planet as an angrier, more turbulent place than astronomers suspected. Nowhere is that more apparent than the Great Red Spot, a storm 10,000 miles (16,000 km) wide that may have marked the gas giant's surface for over 350 years.


----------



## ekim68

NASA pushes ahead with asteroid deflection tests



> The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is moving ahead with plans to try out deflection techniques on a passing asteroid to prepare for future, threatening space matter.
> 
> The US space agency's latest mission, which will demonstrate the asteroid deflection technique, has now been promoted to the design phase.
> 
> The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) program, designed and managed by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, involves the creation of refrigerator-sized spacecraft "capable of deflecting asteroids and preventing them from colliding with Earth."


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Pushed Beyond Limits to Spot Clumps of New Stars in Distant Galaxy



> When it comes to the distant universe, even the keen vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope can only go so far. Teasing out finer details requires clever thinking and a little help from a cosmic alignment with a gravitational lens.
> 
> By applying a new computational analysis to a galaxy magnified by a gravitational lens, astronomers have obtained images 10 times sharper than what Hubble could achieve on its own. The results show an edge-on disk galaxy studded with brilliant patches of newly formed stars.


----------



## ekim68

Red Planet Housing: NASA Awards $200,000 in 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge



> Human travelers to Mars will require shelter from the harsh environment. To help generate ideas for how to build those Martian habitats, NASA recently awarded over $200,000 to citizen inventors working to created 3D-printable structures from recyclable materials and simulated Martian soil.


----------



## ekim68

NASA is studying the fungus among us before humans take it to a new planet



> As humanity starts packing for a trip to Mars, NASA scientists are studying what not to bring along for the journey. In short, leave the fungus at home. NASA researchers created a closed habitat-similar to where humans would have to live to survive long space travel or on a new planet-and looked at fungi and how they grew, publishing their findings in the journal _Microbiome._
> 
> Fungi are "extremophiles" that can survive in the harshest conditions, but in the closed environment of a space station, they can wreak havoc.


----------



## valis

rather interesting read on tardigrades, everyone's favorite water bear.

http://gizmodo.com/scientist-say-tardigrades-will-be-the-last-animals-on-e-1796895652


----------



## ekim68

The Water Bears are pretty darn hardy....This from the article....



> It should come as little surprise, therefore, that these animals, which emerged 350 million years ago during the Cambrian Era, have managed to survive no less than five mass extinctions.


----------



## valis

Yup. I had one as my desktop for years. Weird little critters, and again, I would not be the least bit surprised if the panspermia theory turned out correct and these guys were the genesis.


----------



## ekim68

Scrap dealer finds Apollo-era NASA computers in dead engineer's basement



> A pair of Apollo-era NASA computers and hundreds of mysterious tape reels have been discovered in a deceased engineer's basement in Pittsburgh, according to a NASA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
> 
> Most of the tapes are unmarked, but the majority of the rest appear to be instrumentation reels for Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, NASA's fly-by missions to Jupiter and Saturn.


----------



## ekim68

As space junk soars, science turns to nature for ideas




> Even if we stop launching rockets today, cascading collisions between orbiting objects will continue to endanger satellites. But this sticky problem might have an even stickier solution: gecko-inspired trash grabbers.


----------



## ekim68

Russian "lighthouse" satellite enters orbit



> Look upwards tonight and you might just see a new "star" streaking across the sky. A Russian CubeSat called Mayak (meaning "lighthouse") was successfully launched on Friday, and is set to be one of the brightest objects in the night sky.
> 
> At 9:36 am local time on July 14, Mayak was launched from Baikonur spaceport aboard a Soyuz 2.1a rocket. The satellite entered orbit a few hours later, at 12:10 pm, and shortly after that the sun reflector was unfolded.


----------



## ekim68

Want to tour the International Space Station? You can now use Google Street View



> Google has launched an interactive tour of the International Space Station (ISS), allowing anyone to log in and explore from Earth.


----------



## poochee

ekim68 said:


> Want to tour the International Space Station? You can now use Google Street View


...


----------



## ekim68

Good Stuff......


[URL='http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/nasa-uploads-hundreds-of-rare-aircraft-films-to-youtube-1797119276']NASA Uploads Hundreds of Rare Aircraft Films to YouTube[/URL]



> NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center is currently in the process of uploading hundreds of extremely rare films to YouTube. And I'd advise you to stop reading if you want to get any work done today.
> 
> The center has uploaded roughly 300 of the planned 500 films that it will continue to put up over the coming months.


----------



## ekim68

Full-scale cislunar habitat prototype to be built from old Space Shuttle cargo container



> In a mix of the old and the new, Lockheed Martin is recycling a Space Shuttle cargo container to create a prototype deep space habitat for NASA. The full-scale experimental module to be built at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida will be used to test technologies to provide astronauts with a safe living space that can operate autonomously when there is no one on board.
> 
> Part of the Phase II contract for the space agency's Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) habitat study, the new habitat module will upgrade the concepts produced in Phase I and identify key system requirements for the Deep Space Gateway. This space station is to be placed in cislunar orbit and serve as a jumping off point for missions to explore the Moon, Mars, and the asteroids.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's New Horizons Team Strikes Gold in Argentina



> A primitive solar system object that's more than four billion miles (6.5 billion kilometers) away passed in front of a distant star as seen from Earth. Just before midnight Eastern Time Sunday (12:50 a.m. local time July 17), several telescopes deployed by the New Horizons team in a remote part of Argentina were in precisely the right place at the right time to catch its fleeting shadow-an event that's known as an occultation.


----------



## ekim68

Moon has a water-rich interior



> Using satellite data, researchers have for the first time detected widespread water within ancient explosive volcanic deposits on the moon, suggesting that its interior contains substantial amounts of indigenous water.


----------



## ekim68

Work starts on a massive underground neutrino experiment



> Neutrinos are notoriously difficult to understand, but work is underway to know them a little better. Researchers have officially broken ground on the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, the home to the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. When it's finished 10 years from now, the South Dakota project will be the largest-ever US experiment built to study the subatomic particle -- teams will remove 870,000 tons of rock to create the caverns needed for the facility's centerpiece liquid argon detector. All that excavation should pay off, though, as it promises to shed light on some of the mysteries of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

What will this eclipse look like in your state?



> Less than one month folks!


----------



## valis

wowzers.

http://gizmodo.com/the-years-best-astronomy-photos-will-transport-you-to-a-1797258360


----------



## ekim68

Good one Tim....I'm gonna share it....


----------



## ekim68

It will be much harder to call new findings 'significant' if this team gets its way



> A megateam of reproducibility-minded scientists is renewing a controversial proposal to raise the standard for statistical significance in research studies. They want researchers to dump the long-standing use of a probability value (p-value) of less than 0.05 as the gold standard for significant results, and replace it with the much stiffer p-value threshold of 0.005.
> 
> Backers of the change, which has been floated before, say it could dramatically reduce the reporting of false-positive results-studies that claim to find an effect when there is none-and so make more studies reproducible. And they note that researchers in some fields, including genome analysis, have already made a similar switch with beneficial results.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini continues to "surprise and delight" on its final Saturn jaunt



> After 13 years of exciting discoveries, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is making its final orbits of Saturn. On September 15 it will commence its mission-ending plunge into the thick atmosphere of the gas giant, but recent observations are proving that Cassini still has some surprises in store.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble catches serial killer galaxy in the act



> The Hubble Space Telescope has done it again, capturing an incredibly detailed, macabre view of a dramatic galactic merger. This particular cosmic battle is set to be a pretty one-sided affair, as the majestic barred spiral galaxy NGC 1512 bears down on its victim - the (relatively) puny dwarf galaxy NGC 1510.


----------



## ekim68

Vector successfully launches prototype rocket for small satellites



> Today, Vector, a company that aims to deliver small and nano-satellites into orbit, successfully launched a full-scale prototype of its Vector-R rocket. It was a suborbital flight; the rocket took off from a spaceport in Camden, GA. It's the first for Vector (and for the small-satellite launching industry) that is fully funded by customers and has their payloads on board.
> 
> Small satellites are increasing in popularity, and have countless uses, but launching them can be tough. They're tiny (a CubeSat, for example, weighs around 3 lbs), which means unless you have a lot of them, you're not exactly the first priority on most launches. The Falcon 9, SpaceX's launch vehicle, can deliver about 50,000 pounds to low Earth orbit, just as a comparison. Small satellites often take a backseat to larger payloads and are forced to work around existing launch schedules and destinations. If a satellite needs to launch to an unusual orbit, it can be tough. That's where the Vector-R comes in; it's a teeny rocket, just 12-m (39 feet) tall and can carry a maximum of 66 kg (145 lbs) to orbit. It's specifically built to cater to these smaller satellites.


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid Flyby Will Benefit NASA Detection and Tracking Network



> NASA scientists are excited about the upcoming close flyby of a small asteroid and plan to use its upcoming October close approach to Earth as an opportunity not only for science, but to test NASA's network of observatories and scientists who work with planetary defense.
> 
> The target of all this attention is asteroid 2012 TC4 -- a small asteroid estimated to be between 30 and 100 feet (10 and 30 meters) in size. On Oct. 12, TC4 will safely fly past Earth. Even though scientists cannot yet predict exactly how close it will approach, they are certain it will come no closer than 4,200 miles (6,800 kilometers) from the surface of Earth. The asteroid has been out of range of telescopes since 2012.


----------



## ekim68

The little Rover that could....


Five years on, Curiosity is still capturing amazing images of Mars



> As of August 5th, 2017, NASA's Curiosity rover will have been cruising the landscape of Mars for five years. This US$2.5 billion-dollar mission landed the largest, and most technologically sophisticated, rover ever to roam the surface of the Red Planet. Over the course of its mission Curiosity has captured more than 200,000 images and drilled over a dozen rock samples, and it isn't done yet.
> 
> Initially, Curiosity's primary mission was scheduled to last two years (or one Martian year of 98 weeks), but the architecture of the rover has proven to be surprisingly resilient, despite some mechanical scares along the way.


----------



## ekim68

First antiprotons in ELENA



> On 2 August, the first 5.3 MeV antiproton beam coming from CERN's Antiproton Decelerator (AD) circulated in the Extra Low ENergy Antiproton (ELENA) decelerating ring.
> 
> ELENA is the new decelerator for antimatter experiments. It has a circumference of just 30 meters and will be connected to the AD experiments to increase the number of antiprotons available to several antimatter experiments. The slower the antiprotons (i.e. the less energy they have), the easier it is for the AD's antimatter experiments to study or manipulate them.


----------



## ekim68

The little Satellites that could....


First and Farthest: How the Voyagers Blazed Trails



> Launched in 1977, the Voyagers delivered many surprises and discoveries from their encounters with the gas giants of the outer solar system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Between 1977 and 1990, the mission attained these distinctions:
> 
> 
> First spacecraft to fly by all four planets of the outer solar system (Voyager 2)
> First mission to discover multiple moons of the four outer planets (both spacecraft):
> 3 new moons at Jupiter
> 4 new moons at Saturn
> 11 new moons at Uranus
> 6 new moons at Neptune
> 
> First spacecraft to fly by four different target planets (Voyager 2)
> First spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune (Voyager 2)
> First spacecraft to image the rings of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune (Voyager 2)
> First spacecraft to discover active volcanoes beyond Earth (on Jupiter's moon Io -- Voyager 1)
> First spacecraft to detect lightning on a planet other than Earth (at Jupiter -- Voyager 1)
> First spacecraft to find suggestions of an ocean beyond Earth (at Jupiter's moon Europa -- both spacecraft)
> First spacecraft to detect a nitrogen-rich atmosphere found beyond our home planet (at Saturn's moon Titan -- Voyager 1)


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/einsteins-theory-passes-a-massive-test-1797656245']Einstein's Theory Passes a Massive Test[/URL]



> General relativity works really well, and has made predictions scientists proved a hundred years later. The question then becomes: Can you break it?
> 
> A team of scientists used 20 years of data from several telescopes to watch how three stars orbited the center of our own Miky Way Galaxy, Sagittarius A*. They've created a general relativity theory test in a mass regime that isn't well-tested today. The theory checks out, yet again... for now.
> 
> "Right now, this is basically a consistency test," study author Andreas Eckart told Gizmodo. "We probed the data with what we expected from relativity," and saw "very strong indications here that we got the expected answer."


----------



## ekim68

Cassini probe prepares for final five trips around Saturn



> "As it makes these five dips into Saturn, followed by its final plunge, Cassini will become the first Saturn atmospheric probe," said NASA scientist Linda Spilker.


----------



## ekim68

The ISS is getting a ruggedized computer upgrade



> When SpaceX's rocket takes off on August 14th, it will be carrying a machine that could make things a lot easier for future astronauts embarking on deep space missions. That machine is the Spaceborne Computer, a high performance commercial off-the-shelf computer system running Linux that NASA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) "ruggedized" for use in outer space. It will stay aboard the space station for a year, so the two organizations can find out whether it's tough enough to operate seamlessly amidst the harsh conditions computers are bound to encounter on their way to Mars and farther locations.


----------



## ekim68

Calling the Moon: Startup to Put Cellphone Tower on the Moon



> An astronaut wandering the moon next year could use a smartphone to call home. A German startup is preparing to set up the first telecommunication infrastructure on the lunar surface.
> 
> The German company Part Time Scientists, which originally competed for the Google Lunar X Prize race to the moon, plans to send a lander with a rover in late 2018 to visit the landing site of Apollo 17. (Launched in 1972, this was NASA's final Apollo mission to the moon.) Instead of using a complex dedicated telecommunication system to relay data from the rover to the Earth, the company will rely on LTE technology - the same system used on Earth for mobile phone communications.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://www.neowin.net/news/scientists-discover-four-earth-sized-planets-orbiting-sun-like-star']Scientists discover four Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like star[/URL]



> A team of international astronomers has discovered four Earth-sized planets orbiting Tau Ceti, a star similar to the Sun just 12 light years away, and visible to the naked eye if you're residing in the southern hemisphere. The planets have masses as low as 1.7 Earth mass meaning they're some of the smallest planets ever discovered around a Sun-like star.
> 
> Two of the four planets are in the habitable zone of the star, which simply means that they could have liquid surface water; in our own planetary system, Venus, Earth, and Mars are in the habitable zone.


----------



## ekim68

Space agencies track trajectory of approaching asteroid




> Asteroid 2012 TC4





> hasn't been seen since its last brush with our planet five years ago, but calculations of its trajectory told astronomers that it would return in October 2017. Right on cue, the building-sized rock has now emerged from the darkness of space as it hurtles towards the Earth. NASA and the ESA plan to use it as a test run for the international Planetary Defense network, and have now been able to calculate its trajectory.
> 
> With asteroids grazing past Earth with worrying regularity, it would definitely pay to have some forewarning if any were on a collision course. The Chelyabinsk meteor is a perfect example of a hazardous space rock sneaking up on us, causing widespread damage and injury when it exploded over Russia in 2013. To help prevent a disaster like that (or worse) from occurring again, NASA has established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office to detect and track near-Earth objects.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX successfully launches and recovers Falcon 9 for CRS-12



> SpaceX has successfully launched yet another rocket, this one carrying a Dragon capsule loaded with over 6,400 pounds of cargo destined for the International Space Station. That makes an even dozen for ISS resupply missions launched by SpaceX under contract to NASA, and this is the most significant thus far in terms of potential scientific impact.


----------



## ekim68

Why NASA is sending bacteria into the sky on balloons during the eclipse



> As the Moon blocks the Sun's light completely next week  in a total solar eclipse, more than 50 high-altitude balloons in over 20 locations across the US will soar up to 100,000 feet in the sky. On board will be Raspberry Pi cameras, weather sensors, and modems to stream live eclipse footage. They'll also have metal tags coated with very hardy bacteria, because NASA wants to know whether they will survive on Mars.


----------



## ekim68

Voyager 40th anniversary: Tracing an epic journey of discovery



> On August 20, 1977, Voyager 2 was launched, beginning humanity's most epic astronomical adventure. Two weeks later its sister spacecraft, Voyager 1, was launched, and the two explorers set out to shed light on the mysteries of our solar system by getting up close and personal with our distant neighbors for the first time ever. Forty years later, both pioneers are still operating, sending back data, and heading on their way out of our solar system to explore further than any spacecraft ever launched.


----------



## ekim68

This is an interesting, and short, read on Active Galaxies and it's also interesting how different energies and waves that are emitted change from the different visual angles of looking at the Galaxies....


----------



## ekim68

Cosmonauts launch 3D-printed satellite from space station



> Aug. 18 (UPI) -- During a lengthy spacewalk on Thursday, Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy released five mini satellites by hand, including one made almost entirely of 3D-printed materials.
> 
> Some new reports are claiming the satellite is the first built from 3D-printed components to be launched into space, but in June, NASA launched a cube satellite made almost entirely of 3D-printed materials.
> 
> NASA claimed the satellite was not only the first 3D-printed satellite launched into space, it was the lightest satellite ever launched, weighing just 64 grams.


----------



## ekim68

3-mile asteroid is the largest Earth-buzzing object NASA's ever seen



> NASA and other agencies began tracking potentially hazardous objects in 1998, in order to give us enough warning to send up Bruce Willis (or a pair of orbit-altering probes). Since then, over 16,000 NEOs have been spotted, and although none have been found to be on a collision course, it's best to be prepared: as the 20-m (66-ft) Chelyabinsk meteor demonstrated in 2013, even a relatively small rock can wreak havoc.
> 
> But it's the really big ones that we need to keep a close eye on. Anything larger than 1 km (0.6 mi) could trigger planet-wide, life-extinguishing chaos, and by NASA's most recent count, there are over 880 of these monsters zipping around our neighborhood. At 4.4 km in size, asteroid Florence is one of the biggest, and if it were ever to crash into Earth it would be a swift Game Over for humanity.
> 
> Luckily, although it's about to make its closest pass on record, NASA says there's no chance of a collision this time, or at any point in at least the next 500 years. Florence will whip past on September 1 at a distance of 7 million km (4.4 million mi), or about 18 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.


----------



## ekim68

For those who can't make it to the Total Eclipse areas, NASA is gonna be streaming it. 

Here


----------



## ekim68

Cassini Saturn Probe Preps for Last Hurrah



> After orbiting Saturn for more than 13 years, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is getting ready to say goodbye.
> 
> On Monday (Aug. 14), Cassini made the first of five passes through Saturn's upper atmosphere, kicking off the last phase of the mission's "Grand Finale." After completing those five dives, Cassini will come back around again one last time, plunging into Saturn's atmosphere on Sept. 15.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Telescope will be infatuated with Europa and Enceladus



> NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will be focused on Europa and Enceladus, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, in efforts to uncover the secrets of how life began in the Solar System.
> 
> Europa and Enceladus have captivated scientists with rising plumes of water cracking beneath their icy surfaces. The moons have been described as "ocean worlds," as they may harbor liquid water - a vital ingredient for life.
> 
> The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to launch in 2018 from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, a district on the coastline of French Guiana.


----------



## ekim68

It rains solid diamonds on Uranus and Neptune



> Consider this your daily reminder that the solar system is even more awesomely bonkers than you realized: On Uranus and Neptune, scientists forecast rain storms of solid diamonds.
> 
> The gems form in the hydrocarbon-rich oceans of slush that swath the gas giants' solid cores. Scientists have long speculated that the extreme pressures in this region might split those molecules into atoms of hydrogen and carbon, the latter of which then crystallize to form diamonds. These diamonds were thought to sink like rain through the ocean until they hit the solid core.


----------



## RT

This is what happened to the scientist who stuck his head inside a particle accelerator 

"And on July 13, 1978, a Soviet scientist named Anatoli Bugorski stuck his head in a particle accelerator. On that fateful day, Bugorski was checking malfunctioning equipment on the U-70 synchrotron-the largest particle accelerator in the Soviet Union-when a safety mechanism failed and a beam of protons traveling at nearly the speed of light passed straight through his head, Phineas Gage-style. It's possible that, at that point in history, no other human being had ever experienced a focused beam of radiation at such high energy. Although proton therapy-a cancer treatment that uses proton beams to destroy tumors-was pioneered before Bugorski's accident, the energy of these beams is generally not above 250 million electron volts (a unit of energy used for small particles). Bugorski might have experienced the full wrath of a beam with more than 300 times this much energy, 76 _billion_ electron volts."


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/a-look-back-at-cassinis-most-mind-blowing-pictures-of-s-1793990095']RIP Cassini: A Look Back At the Doomed Probe's Most Stunning Saturn Pictures[/URL]


----------



## RT

Dang that is gorgeous!


----------



## ekim68

Rumours swell over new kind of gravitational-wave sighting



> Astrophysicists may have detected gravitational waves last week from the collision of two neutron stars in a distant galaxy - and telescopes trained on the same region might also have spotted the event.
> 
> Rumours to that effect are spreading fast online, much to researchers' excitement. Such a detection could mark a new era of astronomy: one in which phenomena are both seen by conventional telescopes and 'heard' as vibrations in the fabric of space-time. "It would be an incredible advance in our understanding," says Stuart Shapiro, an astrophysicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


----------



## ekim68

Europe unveils world's most powerful X-ray laser



> Facility in Hamburg will help recreate conditions deep inside the sun, unravel ways to make new antibiotics and even create a new form of diamond


----------



## ekim68

Repeating mysterious radio bursts from deep space surprise scientists



> Mysterious radio blips from deep space, far beyond our galaxy, have puzzled scientists since the first one was discovered in 2001.
> 
> Now, a Canadian scientist and his international collaborators have detected repeat performances of a "fast radio burst" for the first time. That raises new questions and new possibilities about what might be causing them.
> 
> Fast radio bursts or FRBs - single bursts of radio waves from outside our galaxy that last just one to 10 thousandths of a second - were first detected just 15 years ago by scientists using a radio telescope in Australia.
> 
> Since then, just 17 have been detected around the world, and all of them seemed to be one-offs, up until now.


----------



## ekim68

This is good stuff and you have to remember that they have only 64k of memory...]
[URL='http://gizmodo.com/relive-the-mind-blowing-photos-from-the-voyager-mission-1800012583']Relive the Mind-Blowing Photos From the Voyager Missions[/URL]




> Together, the Voyager missions have ventured past Jupiter, Saturn, the ice giants Neptune and Uranus, and even crossed the termination shock, into the outskirt's of the Sun's influence. These triumphant chunks of metal are still sending us back all sorts of scientific information and will continue to do so until they can't/are swarmed by aliens.










[/URL]


----------



## ekim68

"Unprecedented" CHIME radio telescope completed



> Assembly of a new giant Canadian radio telescope that has no moving parts yet is capable of scanning half the sky in a single day has been completed. The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) at Kaleden, British Columbia is composed of four 100-m (330-ft)-long metal troughs covering an area the size of five NHL hockey rinks and is capable of pairing with supercomputers to create 3D radio maps of deep space.


----------



## ekim68

On Friday Cassini will dive into Saturn......

Goodbye Cassini


----------



## valis

*sniff* Gonna miss the little dude.

but holy chrome, some of those pics that Cassini has sent back have been AMAZING.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170911.html

Wowzers.


----------



## valis

desktop at work; earth, obviously, is the Pale Blue Dot.


----------



## ekim68

Wow, nice shot Tim....This has been fun time for me to watch Cassini's pictures and I'm gonna miss it too. And the fact that they extended the mission two times tells you a lot about technology these days....


----------



## ekim68

21 hours to go


----------



## ekim68

Some more of the Little Satellite That Could......


Giant storms, methane lakes, and hidden oceans: Cassini's best discoveries of Saturn and its moons


----------



## ekim68

Goodbye Cassini.......


Cassini's Final Images


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers map out the Moon's best watering holes



> The Moon seems like a pretty barren place, but studies in 2009 revealed traces of water in the lunar soil. Now, scientists from Brown University have used data gathered from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument to construct a detailed map of where water can be found on the Moon - and it turns out it's more widespread than previously thought.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble spots a strange new type of celestial object



> Astronomers have discovered a brand new type of object in our solar system: an active binary asteroid. That means the object, named Body 288P, is the first known hybrid of two rare types of asteroid: a binary that's made up of two rocks orbiting each other, and an active asteroid that acts more like a comet, leaving a trail of gas and dust in its wake.
> 
> Traditionally, the line between asteroids and comets was fairly clear: asteroids are chunks of rock and metal, while comets are icier, causing them to leave a vapor tail when the Sun heats them up. But the more we study these objects, the more that line blurs.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists scout sub-surface settlement sites on the Moon and Mars



> Between the lack of air and the constant bombardment of radiation and micrometeorites, humans will need some serious shelter before we can feel at home on the Moon or Mars. While inflating or 3D printing our houses could be one way to pack light for the long trip, the most efficient method might just be to move into the natural shelter that's already there. Now astronomers have systematically analyzed possible lava tubes on the Moon and Mars, and found they may be just what Red Planet realtors are looking for.
> 
> Living underground is the easiest way to escape the harsh conditions of the lunar or Martian surface, and scientists have already found a few candidates. NASA has found hundreds of deep pits in the pock-marked rock of the Moon that could make good hidey-holes from the elements, and there's evidence of sprawling networks of lava tubes below the surface.


----------



## ekim68

Russia signs on to NASA deep space gateway goal



> It looks as if outer space cooperation between East and West will continue after the United States and Russia agreed to work together in the next step of deep space exploration. At the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, this week, NASA and the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, signed a joint statement making the US space agency's deep space gateway concept a common goal for the two major powers.
> 
> As the International Space Station (ISS) enters the last decade of its planned operational life, the next phase of manned space exploration begins to loom larger. One point of focus is NASA's Orion crew capsule designed for deep space missions to cislunar space, the asteroids, and Mars. A major component of such missions is potentially the deep space gateway, which is a small space station that would be placed in cislunar orbit and act as a jumping off point for manned deep space missions beyond the Moon.


----------



## ekim68

NASA pushes back launch date for James Webb Space Telescope, again



> Sept. 29 (UPI) -- NASA's new target window for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope is between March and June 2019. The world's most powerful space telescope was previously scheduled to launch in October 2018.
> 
> "The change in launch timing is not indicative of hardware or technical performance concerns," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's D.C. headquarters, announced in a news release this week. "Rather, the integration of the various spacecraft elements is taking longer than expected."


----------



## ekim68

A fresh look at older data yields a surprise near the Martian equator



> Scientists taking a new look at older data from NASA's longest-operating Mars orbiter have discovered evidence of significant hydration near the Martian equator -- a mysterious signature in a region of the Red Planet where planetary scientists figure ice shouldn't exist.


----------



## ekim68

Nobel Prize in Chemistry shared by 3 for cryo-electron microscopy



> Speaking by phone, Frank told a news conference after the Nobel announcement Wednesday that cryo-electron microscopy means medicine no longer focuses on organs, but "looks at the processes in the cell."


----------



## poochee

ekim68 said:


> Nobel Prize in Chemistry shared by 3 for cryo-electron microscopy


...


----------



## ekim68

The world's oldest scientific satellite is still in orbit



> Nearly 60 years ago, the US Navy launched Vanguard-1 as a response to the Soviet Sputnik. Six decades on, it's still circling our planet.


----------



## RT

Mike heard Sputnik was still beeping, also after 60+ years..could be wrong, often am...

Hope this happens...
https://www.space.com/38379-united-states-return-moon-mike-pence.html?utm_source=notification


----------



## ekim68

Astronaut Scott Kelly on the devastating effects of a year in space




> NASA astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year in space. His recollections of this unprecedented test of human endurance, and the physical toll it took, raise questions about the likelihood of future travel to Mars*.*


----------



## ekim68

New space race to Mars pits NASA vs. SpaceX



> Entrepreneur Elon Musk's announcement last week accelerating plans for manned flights to Mars ratchets up political and public relations pressure on NASA's efforts to reach the same goal.
> 
> With Musk publicly laying out a much faster schedule than NASA - while contending his vision is less expensive and could be financed primarily with private funds - a debate unlike any before is shaping up over the direction of U.S. space policy.


----------



## RT

RT said:


> Mike heard Sputnik was still beeping, also after 60+ years..could be wrong, often am...


Oh yeah, man was I wrong!!  :notworthy:

But you can Get a Beeping One, if You'll Settle for a Replica...


----------



## ekim68

I want one, or maybe not until I win the Lottery...

$847,500


----------



## ekim68

Half the universe's missing matter has just been finally found



> The missing links between galaxies have finally been found. This is the first detection of the roughly half of the normal matter in our universe - protons, neutrons and electrons - unaccounted for by previous observations of stars, galaxies and other bright objects in space.
> 
> You have probably heard about the hunt for dark matter, a mysterious substance thought to permeate the universe, the effects of which we can see through its gravitational pull. But our models of the universe also say there should be about twice as much ordinary matter out there, compared with what we have observed so far.
> 
> Two separate teams found the missing matter - made of particles called baryons rather than dark matter - linking galaxies together through filaments of hot, diffuse gas.


----------



## ekim68

Chinese space station set to crash-land on Earth's surface within months



> A Chinese space station has begun its out-of-control descent towards Earth's surface and is expected to crash-land within a few months.
> 
> Launched in 2011, the 8.5-ton Tiangong-1 space laboratory had originally been a symbol of Beijing's ambitious scientific bid to become a space superpower.
> 
> However, last year Chinese officials confirmed the country's first orbiting space station had to be scrapped after its functions failed following two years in space.
> 
> Since then, the space station known as "Heavenly Palace" has been gradually decaying and, in recent weeks, has accelerated its descent into the Earth's atmosphere.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> Chinese space station set to crash-land on Earth's surface within months


I've actually seen the thing pass over a few times, it's fairly bright at times .... thanks to the Heavens Above database!


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers just measured a whole lot more than gravitational waves



> A couple of weeks ago, the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and Virgo teams announced the detection of another set of gravitational waves -- the fourth since LIGO's first detection in September of 2015. The observations of these ripples in spacetime are extraordinary in and of themselves, no matter how many times we record them. However, while the first three sets of gravitational waves recorded were by the two LIGO observatories, the fourth was also detected by a newly established third -- Virgo -- located in Italy. And having three detectors allows researchers to triangulate the source of those waves with extraordinary precision.
> 
> The importance of that precision was made clear today when the LIGO and Virgo teams announced a fifth gravitational wave detection, the source of which was able to be quickly located. This allowed dozens of other observatories to hone in on it and collect additional data including visual, X-ray, infrared, ultraviolet and radio wave recordings -- meaning researchers all around the world just collected, and are continuing to collect, a massive trove of information that has given us the most detailed look at a gravitational wave-generating event ever.


----------



## RT

Hmm....basically graviton waves?
Is there much left that Star Trek has hasn't already clued us into except warp particles, and maybe those elusive tachyon beams... 
Very cool the data seems to be verified by multiple sources, that is sometimes rather rare!


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/scientists-just-found-the-perfect-spot-to-build-an-unde-1819658831']Scientists Just Found the Perfect Spot to Build an Underground Colony on the Moon[/URL]



> For years, scientists have wondered if dark, crater-like features on the lunar surface might be entrances to giant caverns carved long ago by flowing lava. Researchers from Japan and the United States have uncovered new evidence to prove that these features actually exist-which is good news for future lunar colonists looking for a convenient and safe place to live.
> 
> New research published in _Geophysical Research Letters_ shows that several pits located near the Marius Hill region of the Moon are large open lava tubes, and that these ancient caverns have the potential to offer, in the words of the researchers, a "pristine environment to conduct scientific examination of the Moon's composition and potentially serve as secure shelters for humans and instruments." The team, which included scientists from NASA and Japan's space agency, JAXA, combined radar and gravity data to make the finding.


----------



## ekim68

Bigelow and ULA plan orbital moonbase by 2022



> Bigelow Aerospace has made no secret of its desire to get into the space station business and now, along with United Launch Alliance (ULA), it's planning to go to the Moon. In a joint statement, the partners have announced they will launch a Bigelow B330 expandable module atop a ULA Vulcan launch vehicle with the aim of sending it into Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) and turning it into a lunar depot by the end of 2022.


----------



## ekim68

Right now if you have Clear Skies....


Orionid Meteor Shower: Leftovers of Halley's Comet


----------



## RT

I knew of it Mike, was going to post a similar article.....and was kind of awake at the predawn hours yesterday, (or was that today?) but my view of the sky is rather limited, except for zenith...still too many leaves on the trees, that block a decent sky view for me.
And even though it's not really cold yet, here, there's a chill and a bit of fog that rolls in about the time one should be watching for the show.

I hope you folks are more intrepid and get a good view of it, would be interested to know what y'all saw....


----------



## ekim68

Rain......Lots of Rain....*sigh*


----------



## RT

Aye, all that forecast to be here by Monday...or something like that..heavy rain, they say....
I did go out to have look this early AM, for meteors... at first seemed clear and just as I settled in, the clouds came, winking out the Pleiades, Orion, and even Sirius...but I had an owl to whistle with  ....now it's daylight here...wish it wasn't


----------



## ekim68

Plants in SPAAAAAAACE are good for you




> A splash of green stops astronauts feeling blue





> Valentin Lebedev, a Soviet cosmonaut that kept a diary about his 211 days on the ISS said that "during a TV broadcast we admitted that we feel sad and uncomfortable without our garden and without our dear plants. It was such a pleasure to take care of them. Man probably has a need to take care of things and without those things feels empty."


----------



## ekim68

The place spacecraft go to die



> China's Tiangong-1 space station is currently out of control and expected to fall back to Earth next year. But not in the remote place where many other spacecraft end their days.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's X3 ion thruster smashes records in test firings



> A human settlement on Mars is rapidly moving from science fiction to fact, with Elon Musk envisioning _Battlestar Galactica_-style fleets blasting off to the Red Planet in coming decades. That scenario is now one step closer, as engineers from NASA and the University of Michigan have successfully tested the X3, a thruster designed to get us to Mars. And it's broken several records in the process.


----------



## ekim68

India announces plan to land on moon in 2018



> Oct. 26 (UPI) -- India will make its second mission to the moon in 2018, the Indian Space Research Organization announced this week.
> 
> The Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft consists of an orbiter, lander and rover configuration "to perform mineralogical and elemental studies of the lunar surface," the ISRO said.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX unlocks "steamroller" achievement as company eyes 19 launches in 2017



> Prior to this year, the most successful launches SpaceX had performed in any given year was eight. But in 2017 the company has been able to put together a more efficient production flow, a maturing Falcon 9 rocket, and an experienced workforce to put its launch capabilities into overdrive. On Monday, SpaceX will go for its 16th launch of the year, doubling its previous record.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX lands the 13th Falcon 9 rocket of the year in flames

*



Update 10/30, 4:18 PM ET:

Click to expand...

*


> SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered Koreasat-5A to its designated orbit, marking the the company's 16th successful mission of the year - twice the number of successful missions in 2016. Shortly after liftoff, the first stage of the rocket returned to Earth and landed (flamboyantly) in the Atlantic Ocean on one of SpaceX's autonomous barges. (The fires eventually went out.) It was the 13th successful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket this year, the 15th in a row, and the 19th overall.


----------



## ekim68

Massive exoplanet discovery challenges theories on planetary formation



> An international team of astronomers has discovered a massive Jupiter-sized planet orbiting an M-dwarf star only half the mass and size of our Sun. The existence of so massive a planet around such a small star challenges current theories regarding planetary formation.


----------



## ekim68

RIP, Laika: Pioneering Space Dog Launched 60 Years Ago Today



> On Nov. 3, 1957, the Soviet Union lofted a dog named Laika aboard the satellite Sputnik 2. The milestone came less than a month after the Soviets kicked off the Space Age, and the Cold War space race, with the launch of Sputnik 1 on Oct. 4.


----------



## ekim68

Juno's pictures of Jupiter


----------



## ekim68

Repeating supernova challenges all we know about stellar death



> At the end of its life, a star goes supernova, ejecting its outer layers in one of the biggest cosmic cataclysms in the universe. With most of its mass gone the star then "dies", collapsing in on itself to form a black hole or a neutron star. Thousands of these events have been observed over decades, but now one star has broken the rules and refused to die, somehow exploding several times over 60 years. The find may challenge everything we know about the death of stars.


----------



## ekim68

A good article on his new book....


Exit Interview: Scott Kelly, an Astronaut Who Spent a Year in Space


----------



## ekim68

Dream Chaser spaceplane successfully completes glide flight and landing



> Four years ago, the Dream Chaser's first glide and landing test ended in a crash after its landing gear failed to deploy correctly. Since then, the reusable spaceplane has undergone a complete refurbishment and finally achieved its first successful free-flight and landing on Saturday.


----------



## Johnny b

* The Most Amazing Supermassive Spacetime Event in the Cosmos --'Absolutely Dwarfs the Black Hole Mergers Detected by LIGO' *


----------



## Johnny b

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...oles-there-are-tens-of-millions-of-these.html



> After conducting a cosmic inventory of sorts to calculate and categorize stellar-remnant black holes, astronomers from the University of California, Irvine led by UCI chair and professor of physics & astronomy James Bullock, concluded that there are probably tens of millions of the enigmatic, dark objects in the Milky Way - far more than expected.


----------



## ekim68

A good article about Programming on the Edge....


NASA's unsung heroes: The Apollo coders who put men on the moon


----------



## valis

that's gonna be a good read.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/two-teams-have-simultaneously-unearthed-evidence-of-an-1820554241']Two Teams Have Simultaneously Unearthed Evidence of an Exotic New Particle[/URL]



> A few months ago, physicists observed a new subatomic particle-essentially an awkwardly-named, crazy cousin of the proton. Its mere existence has energized teams of particle physicists to dream up new ways about how matter forms, arranges itself, and exists.
> 
> Now, a pair of new research papers using different theoretical methods have independently unearthed _another, _crazier particle predicted by the laws of physics. If discovered in an experiment, it would provide conclusive evidence of a whole new class of exotic particles called tetraquarks, which exist outside the established expectations of the behavior of the proton sub-parts called quarks. And this result is more than just mathematics.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/the-first-known-interstellar-asteroid-looks-incredibly-1820613194']The First Known Interstellar Asteroid Looks Incredibly Weird [/URL]



> Scientists know of *750,000 or so asteroids and comets*-and all of them are part of this fine solar system. That is, all of them but one. And as new research shows, it's weird as hell.


----------



## Johnny b

https://www.livescience.com/61013-lightning-radioactive-particle-accelerator.html

*Lightning Bolts Are Churning Out Antimatter All Over Planet Earth *


----------



## Johnny b

https://www.livescience.com/61010-evidence-disputes-climate-change-hiatus.html

* Evidence Mounts Against So-Called Climate Change Hiatus *



> The new estimates reveal that the Arctic heated up rapidly during this period - more than six times the global average


----------



## ekim68

Johnny-be-Good said:


> https://www.livescience.com/61013-lightning-radioactive-particle-accelerator.html
> 
> *Lightning Bolts Are Churning Out Antimatter All Over Planet Earth *


Wow, what a read....:up:


----------



## ekim68

NASA reinvents the wheel for planetary rovers



> The Curiosity Mars rover has been a remarkable success except in one area - its wheels are falling apart faster than expected. To prevent this from happening to future rover missions, NASA's Glenn Research Laboratory is developing a new wire mesh tire made out of special memory alloy that is much tougher than previous designs, and may pave the way for larger, more robust rovers and vehicles.


----------



## ekim68

Earthworms can thrive and reproduce in Martian soil simulants



> If humans are ever going to colonize Mars - which we will, if NASA and Elon Musk have their way - then we need to make sure we can grow food locally. Now a team from Wageningen University & Research has found that earthworms might soon need a name change: the creatures, a crucial part of making soil fertile, can thrive and reproduce in simulated Martian soil.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Dellingr spacecraft paves way for more reliable CubeSats



> NASA is carrying out pre-commissioning tests on a small satellite that could have a big impact on future missions. Launched into low-Earth orbit with little fanfare on November 20 from the International Space Station (ISS) using the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer, the shoebox-sized Dellingr spacecraft is designed to not only carry out science operations, but to demonstrate that it is possible to produce robust, reliable CubeSats with a low failure rate.
> 
> Originally created in 1999 by the California Polytechnic State University, the CubeSat concept has captured the imagination of engineers, scientists, students, and private companies. The small satellites are made of cubical units 10 cm (4 in) on a side that are cheap to build and launch as piggyback payloads alongside larger spacecraft or deployed from the ISS. In addition to economy, CubeSats hold the promise of using smaller, more expendable spacecraft that can work alone or in swarms to perform tasks that today can only be done by satellites the size of a bus.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists Made an Unprecedented 53 Qubit Quantum Simulator



> It's a big day for quantum physics. Two teams of researchers have published papers in _ Nature_ detailing how they were able to create unprecedented quantum simulators consisting of over 50 qubits. This means that these experimental quantum computers are on the cusp of being able to model physics that is too complex even for the most powerful conventional supercomputers.
> 
> Quantum simulators are a special type of quantum computer that uses qubits to simulate complex interactions between particles. Qubits are the informational medium of quantum computers, analogous to a bit in an ordinary computer. Yet rather than existing as a 1 _ or_ 0, as is the case in a conventional bit, a qubit can exist in some superposition of both of these states at the same time.


----------



## ekim68

A very good read....


Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years



> If you tried to start a car that's been sitting in a garage for decades, you might not expect the engine to respond. But a set of thrusters aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft successfully fired up Wednesday after 37 years without use.
> 
> Voyager 1, NASA's farthest and fastest spacecraft, is the only human-made object in interstellar space, the environment between the stars. The spacecraft, which has been flying for 40 years, relies on small devices called thrusters to orient itself so it can communicate with Earth. These thrusters fire in tiny pulses, or "puffs," lasting mere milliseconds, to subtly rotate the spacecraft so that its antenna points at our planet. Now, the Voyager team is able to use a set of four backup thrusters, dormant since 1980.


----------



## ekim68

This week's failed Russian rocket had a pretty bad programming error



> On Tuesday morning, a Russian rocket failed to properly deploy the 19 satellites it was carrying into orbit. Instead of boosting its payload, the Soyuz 2.1b rocket's Fregat upper stage fired in the wrong direction, sending the statellites on a suborbital trajectory instead, burning them up in Earth's atmosphere.
> 
> Now, we may know why. According to normally reliable Russian Space Web, a programming error caused the Fregat upper stage, which is the spacecraft on top of the rocket that deploys satellites, to be unable to orient itself. Specifically, the site reports, the Fregat's flight control system did not have the correct settings for a mission launching from the country's new Vostochny cosmodrome. It evidently was still programmed for Baikonur, or one of Russia's other spaceports capable of launching the workhorse Soyuz vehicle.


----------



## ekim68

China's dark matter space probe detects tantalizing signal



> A long-standing challenge in physics has been finding evidence for dark matter, the stuff presumed to make up a substantial chunk of the mass of the universe. Its existence seems to be responsible for the structure of the universe and the formation and evolution of galaxies. But physicists have yet to observe this mysterious material.
> 
> Results reported today by a China-led space science mission provide a tantalizing hint-but not firm evidence-for dark matter. Perhaps more significantly, the first observational data produced by China's first mission dedicated to astrophysics shows that the country is set to become a force in space science, says David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. China is now "making significant contributions to astrophysics and space science," he says.
> 
> Physicists have inferred the existence of dark matter from its gravitational effect on visible matter. But it has never been observed.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX will attempt to launch a red Tesla to the red planet



> There has been some confusion today because Elon Musk told _The Verge_ on Saturday morning that he "totally made it up" about sending a Tesla Roadster to Mars. However, in multiple emails with Ars on Saturday afternoon, Musk confirmed that this plan is, indeed, real. Another SpaceX official also said the Tesla payload was very much real.


----------



## ekim68

New spacesuit 'go home' function could save astronaut lives



> New research from Draper into technology that could build a self-return system into spacesuits would produce a significant leap in astronaut safety during activities in outer space. Draper researchers filed a patent for an automated 'take-me-home' feature that would turn spacesuits from mostly manual affairs to something that could guide itself back to safe shelter in the case of an accident.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope cruises through cryogenic testing



> It's been a long journey for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and it hasn't even begun its million-mile trip into the Sun's orbit yet. Almost two decades in the making, the world's largest space telescope to be has edged closer to the launchpad, passing a series of cryogenic tests designed to simulate the harsh space environment.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's oldest Mars rover survives another harsh winter



> Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Opportunity, NASA's senior Mars rover, has lasted through another harsh winter on the Red Planet.
> 
> Like Earth, Mars has a tilted axis. But because Mars takes longer to circle the sun, its seasons are nearly twice as long.
> 
> With the sun hanging low and appearing only for a brief time each day, keeping Opportunity charged via its solar panels is a challenge. Engineers worried the rover wouldn't make it through its first winter on Mars. But this week, the rover emerged on the other side of the season's shortest-daylight weeks.
> 
> "Opportunity has made it through the worst part of its eighth Martian winter," Jennifer Herman, power subsystem operations team lead for Opportunity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a news release.


----------



## RT

Man, I wish we all had batteries in our flashlights and bulbs in our lamps that lasted as long as Opportuniy!!
Amazing it's been there since 2004, but only designed to last 90 days!


----------



## ekim68

It's also amazing that the Voyagers each operate on 64k of memory and manage to still stay in contact 13 billion miles away....


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX to try reusing both rocket and spacecraft for historic ISS mission



> In a first for the company, SpaceX is planning to launch a supply mission to the International Space Station using both a pre-flown first stage rocket and a Dragon capsule that has already been in orbit.
> 
> The mission, which will carry 4,800 lbs of food, water, and science experiments to the astronauts in low-Earth orbit, was due to take off from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Friday. But NASA said the launch had been kicked back to Tuesday due to "account pad readiness, requirements for science payloads, space station crew availability, and orbital mechanics."


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> It's also amazing that the Voyagers each operate on 64k of memory and manage to still stay in contact 13 billion miles away....


And to think what we carry around inour pocket tnese days....


----------



## RT

Umm.. I prefer real cigs..and no phones, knowing both are bad for me but...
All that stuff in your pocket...


----------



## ekim68

First results from Microscope satellite confirm Albert Einstein's theory of relativity with unprecedented precision



> Measurements of the equivalence principle had not been improved upon for 10 years, but now the first results from CNES's Microscope satellite, equipped with accelerometers supplied by the French aerospace research agency ONERA, are 10 times better. They show, with an unprecedented precision of 2.10-14, that bodies in a vacuum fall with the same acceleration. The equivalence principle has so far proved unshakeable and this result simply reconfirms the theory of general relativity postulated by Albert Einstein over a century ago.[/qu0te]


----------



## ekim68

I've read this article three times and I think I'll get closer to understanding it after the next three reads...


Physicists excited by discovery of new form of matter, excitonium



> Excitonium has a team of researchers ... well... excited! They have demonstrated the existence of an enigmatic new form of matter, which has perplexed scientists since it was first theorized almost 50 years ago.


----------



## RT

Mike, not sure I'll ever understand it all, but for the first paragraph!


----------



## ekim68

Juno reveals the roots of Jupiter's Great Red Spot



> The Great Red Spot, a gigantic storm of crimson clouds bigger than the Earth, has been raging on Jupiter's surface for centuries. We've known its size in two dimensions for a long time, but after a close flyover in July the Juno probe has finally given us an answer about how deep into the atmosphere the storm's roots run. In the process, the mission also uncovered two new radiation zones.
> 
> While astronomers have been monitoring the Great Red Spot since 1830, the storm is believed to have marked the gas giant's face for up to 350 years. As of April this year it measured around 10,000 miles (16,000 km) wide, making it about 1.3 times the diameter of Earth. Impressive as that sounds, it seems the spot is shrinking at an increasing rate: when Voyager 1 and 2 whipped past in 1979 on their grand tour of the Solar System, the storm was twice the size of Earth.


----------



## ekim68

If you have clear skies tonight...


Geminid meteor shower to peak overnight Wednesday


----------



## ekim68

Blue Origin's Crew Capsule 2.0 makes maiden flight



> At 10:59 am CST today, Blue Origin's New Shepard reusable booster lifted off carrying Crew Capsule 2.0 for the first time. The rocket reached an altitude of 322,032 feet (98.16 km) in a flight lasting a total of 10 minutes and six seconds before returning to Earth for a controlled, powered landing.
> 
> Crew Capsule 2.0 is the latest experimental iteration of the capsule that will eventually carry passengers into space. It's notable for its large windows that measure 2.4 x 3.6 ft (73 x 110 cm), but on this flight the only passenger was "Mannequin Skywalker," an instrument-laden test dummy designed to return flight telemetry. In addition, the flight also included 12 commercial, research, and education payloads.


----------



## valis

here ya go, Mike. 

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/fap/APOD_Calendar_2018_300dpi.pdf


----------



## ekim68

Wow, thanks Tim....I'm gonna spread this around....


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX resupplies the ISS with recycled rocket and spacecraft for the first time



> SpaceX has been carrying supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) for more than five years, but the company achieved something special with its latest visit, completing the mission using a refurbished Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft together for the first time.
> 
> Since landing its Falcon 9 booster back on Earth for the first time in December 2015, SpaceX has largely made good on its promise to refurbish and relaunch these rockets. While private companies had previously launched satellites on these recycled boosters, the CRS-13 mission to the ISS on December 15 was the first time NASA had given them a go.


----------



## ekim68

Graphene tests cause for celebration in space experiments



> Researchers have cause for celebration as experiments utilizing graphene in zero-gravity environments have shown promise for the material in space.
> 
> Collaborative efforts between the Graphene Flagship, the European Space Agency and educational establishments worldwide have resulted in graphene being used successfully in tests for space applications.
> 
> Graphene, a thin layer of pure carbon, is a material that scientists worldwide are exploring for uses in industry, technology, and even battery charging. Due to impressive thermal properties, lightness, and strength, Graphene has also caught the eye of scientists in the space industry.


----------



## 2twenty2

Don' know if this belongs here but.....


> On the Trail of a Secret Pentagon U.F.O. Program - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/insider/secret-pentagon-ufo-program.html
> 
> If aliens invaded Earth, Earth wouldn't notice - https://www.thestar.com/entertainme...liens-invaded-earth-earth-wouldnt-notice.html


----------



## ekim68

We've had several discussions on UFO's before at TSG but you'll probably not find them because TechGuy didn't save the Archives after upgrading to the latest Software Platform. However, my opinion on the subject is the distance of all things Galactic. Since nothing can go faster than the speed of light it would seem that it would take a very long time for any other Species to visit our Earth. And then, why?


----------



## 2twenty2

ekim68 said:


> And then, why?


To checkout the latest sale at Amazon


----------



## ekim68

NASA picks two finalists for upcoming space missions: a trip to a comet and one to Saturn's moon Titan



> A mission to return a comet sample to Earth and one to explore different parts of Saturn's moon Titan, to see if it hosts life were selected today by NASA as finalists in a competition for a future robotic mission in our Solar System, part of a program called New Frontiers.
> 
> The first mission, spearheaded by Steve Squyres at Cornell University, is called CAESAR, or Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return. It will involve sending a spacecraft to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the same comet recently explored by the European Space Agency, collecting at least 3.5 ounces of samples from the comet's surface, and returning those samples back to Earth.





> The second mission, spearheaded by Elizabeth Turtle at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, is called Dragonfly. It'll involve sending a helicopter-like robot to the surface of Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Titan's considered one of the best candidates for alien life. The Dragonfly mission proposes a so-called dual-quadcopter, which will hop from site to site to take a variety of measurements, including what the surface is made of, how it's layered, and what the atmospheric conditions are.


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk shows off near-complete Falcon Heavy rocket



> SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has been a long time coming. The successor to its Falcon 9 and the vehicle hoped to carry humans to Mars, this booster will be one of the most powerful ever. And we've just gotten our best look at it yet, with CEO Elon Musk tweeting out photos of an almost complete Falcon 9 Heavy in the hangar ahead of a planned maiden launch next month.
> 
> The Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9 first stages rolled into one, with a second stage sat atop the middle one. The nine engine cores in each first stage work together to provide thrust equal to eighteen 747 aircraft, making it the most powerful rocket currently in operation and the most powerful since the Saturn V rocket last lifted off in 1973.


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk shows off the Tesla Roadster that SpaceX will send beyond Mars



> Weeks after announcing that he plans to send an original Tesla Roadster to space atop a Falcon Heavy rocket, Elon Musk has released photos of the car being prepped for launch at SpaceX headquarters.


----------



## ekim68

A very good read to start out the day...:up:


The Greatest Leap, Part 3: The triumph and near-tragedy of the first Moon landing




> Across the cislunar blackness, we set sail for a landing that almost didn't happen.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX rocket dazzles in California sky as it transports 10 satellites into space



> A reused SpaceX rocket carried 10 satellites into orbit from California on Friday, leaving behind a trail of mystery and wonder as it soared into space.
> 
> The Falcon 9 booster lifted off from coastal Vandenberg air force base, carrying the latest batch of satellites for Iridium Communications.
> 
> The launch in the setting sun created a shining, billowing streak that was widely seen throughout southern California and as far away as Phoenix, Arizona.


----------



## ekim68

This is a good read of the Players in the Satellite Communications/Internet Services....


[URL='http://cis471.blogspot.com/2017/12/eighteen-posts-on-low-earth-orbit.html']Eighteen posts on low-Earth orbit satellite Internet service[/URL]


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://nypost.com/2017/12/20/nasa-planning-interstellar-mission-for-2069/']NASA planning interstellar mission for 2069[/URL]



> Mankind hasn't yet explored some of the most interesting objects in our own solar system - heck, we still don't even know all that much about Earth itself - but that isn't stopping NASA from setting its sights at a destination so distant that it would take decades for a spacecraft to even get there. A tentative mission is currently being outlined that would see NASA send a spacecraft on an interstellar mission to explore the Alpha Centauri system.


----------



## ekim68

Galactic Glow, Thought to Be Dark Matter, Now Hints at Hidden Pulsars



> A number of high-energy anomalies raised hopes that astrophysicists had seen their first direct glimpses of dark matter. New studies suggest a different source may be responsible.


----------



## ekim68

The biggest rocket launches and space missions we're looking forward to in 2018



> Next year is already overflowing with exciting missions to space. NASA is launching a new lander to Mars, as well as a spacecraft that will get closer to the Sun than ever before. And two of NASA's vehicles already in space will finally arrive at their intended targets: one will rendezvous with a nearby asteroid, while another will pass by a distant space rock billions of miles from Earth.
> 
> But it's not just NASA that has a busy year ahead; the commercial space industry has a number of significant test flights planned, and the launch of one of the world's most anticipated rockets, the Falcon Heavy, is slated for early 2018. And if all goes well, people may finally ride to space on private vehicles.
> 
> Here are all the missions and tests we're looking forward to in 2018 and when you can expect to see them take off.


----------



## ekim68

NASA straps a new space debris sensor onto the ISS



> Space may be big, really big, but Earth orbit is getting a bit crowded as space debris accumulates and threatens operational spacecraft. Riding aboard the last Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station was part of the answer to this problem. NASA's Space Debris Sensor (SDS) will be installed on the outside of the station, where it will spend the next two to three years monitoring debris between 5 mm to 0.5 mm in diameter to learn more about their characteristics.
> 
> Currently, there are over 1,400 operational satellites orbiting the Earth at distances from a few hundred to tens of thousands of miles above the planet.


----------



## ekim68

Tiangong-1 is currently predicted to reenter the Earth's atmosphere around March of 2018.



> There is a chance that a small amount of Tiangong-1 debris may survive reentry and impact the ground. Should this happen, any surviving debris would fall within a region that is a few hundred kilometers in size and centered along a point on the Earth that the station passes over.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Goes for 'GOLD' to Scan the Border of Earth and Space



> A new NASA mission, the first to hitch a ride on a commercial communications satellite, will examine Earth's upper atmosphere to see how the boundary between Earth and space changes over time.


----------



## ekim68

Nebula spotted with more super-sized bodies than a gym on Jan 2nd

_(Sorry, we just couldn't resist)_



> A freak nebula is teeming with gigantic stars, say scientists who now reckon these cosmic heavyweights may not be so rare after all.
> 
> The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus or 30 Dor, located about 160,000 light years away, could contain a whopping 600 stars that are between 15 to 200 solar masses.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launches secretive Zuma spacecraft



> After more than a month of delays, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket vaulted toward the skies at 8 p.m. ET Sunday with the secretive payload. It launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers may be closing in on source of mysterious fast radio bursts



> Astronomers appear to be closing in on the source of enigmatic radio pulses emanating from space that have become the subject of intense scientific speculation.
> 
> Previous candidates for the origin of the fleeting blasts of radiation - known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs - have included exploding stars, the reverberations of weird objects called cosmic strings or even distant beacons from interstellar alien spaceships.
> 
> Now, new observations provide backing for a scenario involving a rapidly rotating neutron star cocooned by an ultra-powerful magnetic field. The explanation is more orthodox than some of the alternatives offered, but could point astronomers towards some of the most extreme magnetic environments in the known universe.





> Astronomers do not yet understand the circumstances under which neutron stars would unleash such powerful blasts of radiation. But there are lots unanswered questions about the basic physics governing neutron stars, which are some of the most exotic objects in the universe. They are only about 12 miles (19kms) wide, but a teaspoon of neutron star material has a mass of about a billion tons. The core is a soup of pure neutrons, while the crust is smooth, solid and 10bn times stronger than steel.


----------



## valis

rather surprised I had never heard of this; fun little read.

https://gizmodo.com/snoopy-the-astrobeagle-nasas-mascot-for-safety-1570066950


----------



## ekim68

Good find Tim....


----------



## valis

Danke. 

I was so surprised I called my pop, and he HAD heard of it, and was also surprised I hadn't. Man, I hate being humbled by the old man.


----------



## ekim68

Space in 2018: Big rockets, asteroid hunting and a close shave with the Sun



> The year just gone was a momentous for furthering our understanding of the universe. SpaceX now routinely lands its rockets, NASA's Cassini craft crashed into Saturn in a spectacular and invaluable mission finale and researchers proved once and for all the existence of gravitational waves. 2018 will also bring some landmark moments in space, beginning with the biggest bang the industry has seen in nearly half a century, the maiden launch of the world's most powerful operational rocket later this month.


----------



## ekim68

https://newatlas.com/fast-radio-bursts-twisted-magnetic-field/52920/

Astronomers find a new twist to mysterious radio signals from space



> Incredibly powerful but gone in a flash, mysterious signals known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are regularly detected in all corners of the sky. A repeating signal known as FRB 121102 was already the weirdest one out there, but now an international team of astronomers has found that this oddball is even odder than previously thought. The radio waves from FRB 121102 are being "twisted" to an extreme degree, indicating that highly-magnetized plasma could be interfering.
> 
> FRBs - strange flashes of radio signals that last just milliseconds - are a pretty new phenomenon. They were first spotted in 2007 as an anomaly in archival data, and weren't detected live until 2015. Normally, FRBs are a one-and-done deal, but FRB 121102 bucks the trend, pulsing dozens of times over the years and getting particularly chatty for a few hours back in August.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Think They've Discovered Lava Tubes Leading to The Moon's Polar Ice



> Small pits in a large crater on the Moon's North Pole could be "skylights" leading down to an underground network of lava tubes - tubes holding hidden water on Earth's nearest neighbour, according to new research.
> 
> There's no lava in them now of course, though that's originally how the tubes formed in the Moon's fiery past. But they could indicate easy access to a water source if we ever decide to develop a Moon base sometime in the future.
> 
> Despite the Moon's dry and dusty appearance, scientists think it contains a lot of water trapped as frozen ice. What these new observations carried out by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show is that it might be much more accessible than we thought.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX and Boeing Slated for Manned Space Missions By Year's End



> On Saturday afternoon, SpaceX successfully recovered a Dragon capsule that had returned from a cargo delivery to the International Space Station. The Dragon has so far been used mostly for those cargo runs, but it was also designed to carry crew - and NASA announced last week that it expects SpaceX to conduct a crewed test flight by the end of the year.
> 
> SpaceX's crewed test flight is slated for December, after an uncrewed flight in August. Boeing will also be demonstrating its CST-100 Starliner capsule, with a crewed flight in November following an uncrewed flight in August.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Weighs in on Mass of Three Million Billion Suns



> In 2014, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope found that this enormous galaxy cluster contains the mass of a staggering three million billion suns - so it's little wonder that it has earned the nickname of "El Gordo" ("the Fat One" in Spanish)! Known officially as ACT-CLJ0102-4915, it is the largest, hottest, and brightest X-ray galaxy cluster ever discovered in the distant Universe.


----------



## ekim68

Meteor lights up southern Michigan



> Early last night local time, a meteor rocketed through the skies of southern Michigan, giving local residents a dramatic (if brief) light show. It also generated an imperceptible thump, as the US Geological Survey confirmed that there was a coincident magnitude 2.0 earthquake.


----------



## ekim68

Gallery: A tour of the Solar System in spectacular new detail


----------



## valis

Awesome.....:up:


----------



## ekim68

Propellantless propulsion system could keep satellites in orbit, reduce space junk



> One of the main factors limiting the life of satellites is how much propellant they can carry to execute orbital corrections. Now scientists in Spain have come up with a propellantless propulsion system that also doubles as an electric generator. Using the Earth's magnetic field interacting with a 2-km long aluminum tether, the system could be used to dispose of space debris and boost the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS).


----------



## ekim68

Blast off! Rocket Lab successfully reaches orbit on second attempt



> An Auckland academic says Rocket Lab "made it look easy" following yesterday's successful launch of a rocket dubbed Still Testing which reached orbit for the first time.
> 
> Dr Nicholas Rattenbury from the University of Auckland's Department of Physics said being able to send a rocket to space remains "one of the most challenging technological acts we as a species can accomplish".
> 
> "Space is hard. Three words that sum up over fifty years of technological struggle, success, failure, national pride, fervour and a lot - a lot - of money and resources," Mr Rattenbury said.


----------



## ekim68

Neutron star cosmic collision keeps burning brighter, baffling scientists



> Back in August last year, astronomers around the world witnessed the momentous merger of two neutron stars. This unprecedented event was observed as a range of signals at once, including gravitational waves, light, radio and gamma rays, but the aftermath of the mashup hasn't played out quite as expected. Rather than fade out over time, the afterglow has continued to brighten over the past few months, leaving scientists stumped.


----------



## ekim68

Global quantum internet dawns, thanks to China's Micius satellite



> Thanks to the internet, a wealth of information is at our fingertips - although the flipside is that sensitive data is often vulnerable to eavesdropping and theft. Quantum encryption can make that literally impossible, and in a new demonstration of that kind of security, scientists have now used the Chinese satellite Micius to send quantum-encrypted data between China and Austria. The experiment brings the world another step closer to a global quantum internet.
> 
> Micius was launched in August 2016, to experiment with quantum communications and encryption. Conventional communications satellites transmit information via radio or microwave signals, but Micius uses quantum-entangled photons to effectively "teleport" information. The two photons are inextricably linked, meaning if a user knows the state of one particle they can infer the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are. Last year, Micius smashed the quantum entanglement distance record, sending a message over a distance of 1,200 km (746 mi).


----------



## ekim68

Electron launch put a very visible surprise into orbit



> When Rocket Lab's Electron rocket lifted off from its New Zealand launch complex on January 21, it carried a surprise payload. Along with its three commercial satellites, the launcher deployed a passive geodesic sphere called Humanity Star. The orbiting mirror ball is designed to reflect the Sun's rays and be visible to everyone on Earth as a way to create a "shared experience for all humanity."


----------



## ekim68

More on this....


Astronomers Are Annoyed at a New Zealand Company That Launched a Disco Ball Into Orbit




> The Humanity Star is a poetic and entirely useless satellite. For astronomers, however, it's a pain in the butt.


----------



## ekim68

Don't it make my red Moon blue: How to watch the total lunar eclipse on January 31



> On the last day of this month - January 31, 2018 - the Moon will slide into the Earth's shadow in space. When it does, the Moon will go dark, and we'll get a _total lunar eclipse_.
> 
> This event is _best_ visible from Asia, Australia, the Pacific islands, and the extreme western US. However, a piece of it is visible from everywhere in the US and Canada, though you'll have to be an early riser (or late-stayer-upper) to see it.


----------



## ekim68

ESO captures an ominous view of a dark nebula



> The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released the most detailed view to date of the ominous Lupus 3 dark nebula, one of the closest star formation regions to our Sun. Lupus 3 is located roughly 600 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Scorpius, and is known to host a population of young stellar bodies and protostars.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity looks back on its 5-year journey with sweeping panorama



> Curiosity has had quite a journey since it touched down on Mars in August 2012, and now the little rover that could has taken a moment to look back. Literally. From its perch on a ridge partway up Mount Sharp, Curiosity has snapped a panorama of Gale Crater, capturing many of the geological features the rover has explored and investigated over the years.


----------



## ekim68

Construction begins on first manned Orion spacecraft



> NASA's first of a new generation of manned deep space exploration craft has begun to take shape at the space agency's Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans. This week, Lockheed Martin technicians and engineers welded together the first two components of the Orion crew capsule for Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), which will carry astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in almost 50 years.


----------



## ekim68

Japan successfully launches world's smallest satellite-carrying rocket



> KAGOSHIMA - Japan successfully launched on Saturday the world's smallest satellite-carrying rocket following a failed attempt in January last year, the nation's space agency said.
> 
> The rocket about the size of a utility pole, measuring 10 meters in length and 50 centimeters in diameter, lifted off from the Uchinoura Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture and delivered its payload to its intended orbit, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
> 
> The No. 5 vehicle of the SS-520 series carried a microsatellite weighing about 3 kilograms developed by the University of Tokyo to collect imagery of the Earth's surface.


----------



## Johnny b

https://www.universetoday.com/13847...en-farther-universe/#8220;Natural Telescope&#

Astronomers use a Galaxy Cluster as an Extremely Powerful "Natural Telescope" to Peer Even Farther into the Universe



> astronomers have come to rely on a technique known as Gravitational Lensing, where the gravitational force of a large object (like a galactic cluster) is used to enhance the light of these fainter galaxies.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX has received permission from the US government to launch Elon Musk's car toward Mars



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - SpaceX this week is preparing to launch  Falcon Heavy, the biggest rocket in the company's history, for the first time.
> 
> The 230-foot-tall three-booster launcher is scheduled to blast off Tuesday between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. ET. SpaceX says Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket in the world.
> 
> SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk, wanted this test launch to happen as early as 2013, though he recently said it  could end in an explosion.
> 
> Instead of putting a standard "mass simulator" or dummy payload atop Falcon Heavy, Musk - who once  launched a wheel of cheese into orbit - will put his personal 2008 midnight-cherry-red Tesla Roadster  on top of the monster rocket.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/scientists-spot-one-of-the-oldest-stars-in-the-milky-wa-1822678633']Scientists Spot One of the Oldest Stars in the Milky Way[/URL]



> Meet J0815+4729. If it were a Pokémon, it would be kind of like the Milky Way's level-three Rattata.
> 
> A team of Spanish scientists spotted the star with a pair of telescopes and determined its age based on the amount of heavier elements it contained. The star was born perhaps 300 million years after the Big Bang, or 13.5 billion years ago-one of the oldest ever spotted. Our Sun, by comparison, is a youthful 4.6 billion years old.


----------



## valis

Got pushed back to 14:20 EST last check.


----------



## valis

pushed back to 15:45 EST, but it's looking very promising it will happen today.


----------



## valis

Aaaaand we have lift-off.


----------



## ekim68

Some good stuff.... :up:


SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch inspires tears, chills and awe



> It's been awhile since America came together to watch a rocket blastoff into space, and SpaceX's successful Tuesday launch may have just set a new bar for astronomical style.
> 
> The public reaction to Falcon Heavy's spectacular takeoff can be summed up succinctly: That was awesome.


----------



## ekim68

More on this...


SpaceX posts images of historic launch as Starman heads for the Asteroid Belt



> A day after SpaceX's Falcon Heavy blasted into space, the private spacefaring company has posted some spectacular images of the launch as well as updating the status of the Tesla Roadster that acted as ballast payload. In a Twitter post, CEO and Founder Elon Musk confirmed that the second stage of what is now the world's most powerful rocket fired successfully, sending the car and its dummy driver into an orbit that will take it well into the Asteroid Belt.


----------



## TechGuy

I really think Elon is going to inspire a whole new generation of kids to be interested in space. Such an amazing person.


----------



## valis

TechGuy said:


> I really think Elon is going to inspire a whole new generation of kids to be interested in space. Such an amazing person.


I sure hope so. The first rocket to be able to escape orbit in 40 some years and it was privately built. This is just incredible.


----------



## valis

New desktop. Note how the plastic on the headlights has already degraded.


----------



## valis

Obligatory. Let the children use it.


----------



## TechGuy

Even if the Roadster is destroyed, it will still make an impact on people - perhaps more so than if it had been launched and forgotten. Hopefully it'll make for some exciting video.


----------



## valis

Well, it has already been declared a celestial object so we got that.

Truth told? I am just happy we (humans) have a means to go to wherever again. We can now escape orbit. Couldnt do that last week. 

But the most important part is the privateer funding. This just astounds me and pleases me.


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons Captures Record-Breaking Images in the Kuiper Belt



> New Horizons is just the fifth spacecraft to speed beyond the outer planets, so many of its activities set distance records. On Dec. 9 it carried out the most-distant course-correction maneuver ever, as the mission team guided the spacecraft toward a close encounter with a KBO named 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019. That New Year's flight past MU69 will be the farthest planetary encounter in history, happening one billion miles beyond the Pluto system - which New Horizons famously explored in July 2015.


----------



## Johnny b

Super cool way to see quantum mechanics in action in your own home:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2018/01/see-quantum-naked-eye/


----------



## ekim68

Tesla Roadster carries Asimov sci-fi classic to the stars



> It's always good to take a good book on a long road trip and it seems that SpaceX considered this when it recently shot a Tesla Roadster into interplanetary space. Along with the spacesuited Starman dummy driver and a miniature version of the Roadster, the company included a copy of Isaac Asimov's sci fi epic, _The Foundation Trilogy_. Instead of a dog-eared paperback stuffed into the glovebox, the trilogy is actually laser etched on a quartz disc called an "Arch library," which is designed to survive intact for billions of years.


----------



## RT

^ Cool Mike, didn't know that! Let's hope whoever finds it understands English! 
The SpaceX boosters near simultaneous landings look like something from a sci-fi movie it was so beautiful....the whole "mission" re-ingites my faith in the human space endeavor.
While sending a car into space doesn't seem like a mission _per se_ - it worked, and that's a good place to start.


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff... 


A single atom is visible to the naked eye in this stunning photo



> An image of a single atom of the metal strontium suspended in electric fields has won the 2018 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council science photography competition.
> 
> David Nadlinger's photo, Single Atom In An Ion Trap, was captured through the window of a vacuum chamber in an Oxford University laboratory, using an ordinary digital camera on a long exposure shot.
> 
> Two metal electrodes, two millimetres apart, held the strontium almost motionless in a strong electric field as it was illuminated with a blue-violet-coloured laser.


----------



## ekim68

Don't panic: The chance of this space-traveling sports car hitting Earth is just 6% in the next million years



> SpaceX CEO Elon Musk grabbed the world's attention last week after launching his Tesla Roadster into space. But his publicity stunt has a half-life way beyond even what he could imagine-the Roadster should continue to orbit through the solar system, perhaps slightly battered by micrometeorites, for a few tens of millions of years. Now, a group of researchers specializing in orbital dynamics has analyzed the car's orbit for the next few million years. And although it's impossible to map it out precisely, there is a small chance that one day it could return and crash into Earth. But don't panic: That chance is just 6% over a million years, and it would likely burn up as it entered the atmosphere.


----------



## valis

Wouldn't panic in the least. Wouldnt be anything left after re-entry.


----------



## ekim68

I'm enjoying this... Finally some Imagination and the Power to make it happen.... :up:


----------



## Johnny b

wet blanket------>ego, orbiting billboard meet personalized space junk


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers bring Andromeda down to size



> Our galactic big brother might not be so big after all. Overturning 50 years of thinking on the subject, astronomers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia have calculated that the Andromeda galaxy is similar in size to the Milky Way.
> 
> Lying around 2.5 million light-year away, Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to our own. Astronomers have previously believed it to be two to three times more massive than the Milky Way, but the technique employed by the ICRAR team returned a very different result.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers image 40-light-year-wide space donut



> The supermassive black holes lurking at the centers of galaxies have been known to chow down on anything unlucky enough to pass too close, but the opportunity to see that in action rarely occurs at the Milky Way's quiet core. Now, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory in Chile have imaged a very active black hole at the center of spiral galaxy M77, which is apparently feasting on the universe's largest donut.


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> More on this...
> 
> 
> SpaceX posts images of historic launch as Starman heads for the Asteroid Belt


More on this: 


Where is Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster with Starman?


----------



## ekim68

Humanity's Biggest Machines Will Be Built in Space



> A rocket blasts off from the launchpad, carrying a couple dozen tons of cargo into space. In the span of a few minutes, the rocket accelerates to around 17,500 miles per hour, orbiting the Earth at nearly 300 miles above the surface.
> 
> What is this rocket carrying? Perhaps a communications satellite, a NASA spacecraft, or some payload for the military? Actually, the rocket isn't even carrying a spacecraft at all. Instead, its payload contains several tons of high-grade plastic and pre-fabricated components, material that will be fed to a 3D printer waiting in orbit. This futuristic printer will then use the plastic and components to construct a functional satellite spanning several miles.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Humanity's Biggest Machines Will Be Built in Space


Makes sense, with the lack of gravity and all.


----------



## valis

And the fact that we have emailed tools up there does NOT escape me. 

What a time to be alive, eh?


----------



## ekim68

I've had the pleasure of seeing a lot of it real time....:up:


----------



## valis

I reckon now that I am 50, I am allowed to say the same.


----------



## ekim68

Now you're an Oldtimer.....Welcome to the Club....

I was right in the middle of Star Trek 50 years ago....What a time...!


----------



## valis

Man walked on the moon when I was 1.5 or so.

My dads mom (deceased quite some time) actually rode in a covered wagon and saw man walk on the moon. That never ceases to blow my mind.

66 years between powered flight and a lunar landing. Wow.

Now that we can escape earth orbit again (man, that Tesla roadster pic is the pic of the year) AND it was a privateer outfit, I am very stoked for the future.

This is one of the times that being 'old' and counting what you have seen doesnt cut it. Mike, I reckon you know Lazarus Long; wish I had his longevity about now. Very curious as to where humanity will be in a couple-three hundred years.


----------



## ekim68

Whoa, 300 years? I'm thinking 50..... And, BTW, I'm not Berating Older Age at all, it's worked well for me...


----------



## valis

Sure beats the alternatives, eh?


----------



## valis

this is pretty cool....
https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-image-ever-of-a-hydrogen-atoms-orbital-struc-509684901


----------



## ekim68

"Ultramassive" black holes may be the biggest ever found - and they're growing fast



> Since they're basically invisible, it can be hard to pin down just how big a black hole is. They can range anywhere from a few times the mass of the Sun up to millions or billions times that mass, but there's a potential class that are even bigger than that. A new study of data gathered by NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope has found that these so-called "ultramassive" black holes may be larger and more common than we thought.
> 
> The smallest class is the stellar mass black holes, which can be from about five to 30 times the mass of the Sun. In the middle there sits a proposed group known as intermediate-mass black holes, between 100 and 10,000 solar masses. And finally there's the heavyweights that lurk at the center of galaxies, supermassive black holes with masses of millions or even a few billion Suns.


----------



## ekim68

CERN scientists get antimatter ready for its first road trip



> Nowadays, CERN can readily produce antiprotons in a particle decelerator, slowing them down to be captured in a specially-designed trap. But to really make the most of them, it's time for the volatile substance to leave the nest, and be put to work in other areas of research.
> 
> The goal of CERN's antiProton Unstable Matter Annihilation (PUMA) project is to get antimatter ready for its maiden voyage to another facility. The first destination isn't very far away - just a few hundred meters - but even a journey that short will require years of research and development.


----------



## ekim68

https://newatlas.com/opportunity-rover-5000-sols/53487/

Opportunity rover notches up 5,000 days on Mars and counting



> It was only meant to last about three months, but NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has officially clocked up 5,000 Martian days exploring the Red Planet. That's a little over 5,151 Earth days in which the robotic geologist has traversed a record 28 mi (45 km) across the surface of Mars to unlock the secrets of the planet's history and geology - and it's not done yet.


----------



## ekim68

Improved Hubble Yardstick Gives Fresh Evidence for New Physics in the Universe



> Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to make the most precise measurements of the expansion rate of the universe since it was first calculated nearly a century ago. Intriguingly, the results are forcing astronomers to consider that they may be seeing evidence of something unexpected at work in the universe.
> 
> That's because the latest Hubble finding confirms a nagging discrepancy showing the universe to be expanding faster now than was expected from its trajectory seen shortly after the big bang. Researchers suggest that there may be new physics to explain the inconsistency.


----------



## 2twenty2

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/should-we-fear-cyberattacks-space-aliens-ncna849941



> Scientists say space aliens could hack our planet!
> 
> New paper argues that extraterrestrials might beam 'contaminated' messages our way.


----------



## ekim68

Microbes found in Earth's deep ocean might grow on Saturn's moon Enceladus



> Some very resilient Earth microbes might be able to thrive in the hidden ocean of Enceladus - the icy moon of Saturn that has become a prime candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life. Scientists have successfully cultivated a few of these tiny organisms in the lab under the same conditions that are thought to exist on the distant moon, opening up the possibility that life might be lurking under the world's surface.


----------



## ekim68

IBM's Watson is going to space



> IBM yesterday announced it would be providing the AI brain for a robot being built by Airbus to accompany astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). When only the best of the best will do, it looks like Watson has the right stuff.


----------



## ekim68

Stars billions of years old drop big clue to early universe



> Astronomers have picked up a radio signal from the moment the lights went on in the universe billions of years ago, and they've discovered some surprises embedded in it. No, not aliens, but potential evidence of something just as mysterious and elusive.
> 
> Using a sensitive antenna only about the size of a table in the Australian desert, scientists managed to isolate the very faint signal of primordial hydrogen, part of the cosmic afterglow from the Big Bang. But the ancient signal from this basic building block of the universe also carries the imprint of some of the first light from the very first stars ever.


----------



## ekim68

A star like the Sun has *six* gas giants orbiting it... with two in its habitable zone



> Astronomers have discovered a pretty interesting multi-planetary system orbiting a nearby star. Each of the exoplanets is apparently a gas giant, but two of them orbit the star in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist!
> 
> To be clear, gas giants don't have a surface - they have such tremendous atmospheres that as you go down inside them the air just gets thicker, merges into a liquid mantle, then finally gets crushed into a solid deep down near the core - but they do tend to have moons, some of them quite large. And that makes this system very interesting indeed…
> 
> The planets orbit the star HD 34445 (the 34,445th entry in the Henry Draper catalog of brightish stars). The star itself is at first glance a lot like the Sun: It's a type G0 star, just slightly warmer and just a scosh more massive than the Sun (1.07 times as massive, to be specific).


----------



## ekim68

Unprecedentedly wide and sharp dark matter map



> A research team of multiple institutes, including the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and University of Tokyo, released an unprecedentedly wide and sharp dark matter map based on the newly obtained imaging data by Hyper Suprime-Cam on the Subaru Telescope. The dark matter distribution is estimated by the weak gravitational lensing technique. The team located the positions and lensing signals of the dark matter halos and found indications that the number of halos could be inconsistent with what the simplest cosmological model suggests. This could be a new clue to understanding why the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/iconic-stellar-ring-much-stranger-than-previously-thoug-1823556092']Iconic Stellar Ring Much Stranger Than Previously Thought[/URL]



> You're looking at an image of an enormous ring of debris, 237 light years away from Earth, orbiting a long-studied, young star called HR 4796A. While the bright white ring of debris may be the most visually striking part of the image, astronomers are more excited about what's around it: the much larger, less-concentrated area of dust around it.
> 
> Scientists have long known about the dust and ring surrounding the star. The ring alone is 77 astronomical units in radius, almost twice Pluto's average distance from our our sun. But a team recently took another look with the Hubble Space Telescope, and learned that the structure was in fact much larger and more complex than they previously thought.


----------



## ekim68

ESA test-fires electric ion thruster that could run satellites on thin air



> While ion thrusters are a promising propulsion method for future spacecraft, their working life is limited by the amount of propellant they can carry. Now, scientists at ESA and Italian space company SITAEL have test-fired a new type of "air-breathing" electric thruster that could keep satellites aloft for longer and reduce drag at the same time, by making them literally run on thin air.
> 
> The design is based on what's known as a Hall thruster, which uses electric and magnetic fields to ionize gases - usually xenon - before expelling these ions out the back to produce thrust.


----------



## ekim68

Tiangong-1 is currently predicted to reenter the Earth's atmosphere around April 3rd, 2018 ± 1 week.



> There is a chance that a small amount of Tiangong-1 debris may survive reentry and impact the ground.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/the-juno-spacecraft-is-revealing-some-astounding-things-1823579625']The Juno Spacecraft Is Revealing Some Astounding Things About Jupiter's Mysterious Interior[/URL]



> NASA's Juno space probe has been circling Jupiter for the past 20 months, and it's been transmitting scientific data back to Earth at a furious pace. Today, astronomers are releasing four new studies based on Juno's measurements, all of which explore the gas giant's turbulent atmosphere and the stuff that lies beneath its cloudy surface. As their results show, the largest planet in our Solar System is even more exotic than we realized.


----------



## ekim68

New sensors to monitor inflatable space habitats for impacts



> Inflatable habitat modules like Bigelow Aerospace's BEAM may point the way to future space station architecture, but with so many micro-meteoroids and bits of space debris shooting around in low Earth orbit, are they safe? To help minimize the risk, researchers from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and LUNA Innovations Inc. are developing ultrasensitive sensors made from carbon nanotubes that can detect impacts by near-microscopic objects.


----------



## ekim68

MIT embarks on ambitious plan to build nuclear fusion plant by 2033



> The extremely high temperatures require that magnetic fields, rather than solid materials, confine the hot plasma in which the fusion reactions take place. MIT and CFS plan to use newly available superconducting materials to develop large electromagnets that can produce fields four-times stronger than any being used now. The stronger magnetic fields will allow for more power to be generated resulting in, importantly, positive net energy. The method will hopefully allow for cheaper and smaller reactors. The research team aims to develop a prototype reactor within the next 10 years, followed by a 200-megawatt pilot power plant. "If MIT can do what they are saying -- and I have no reason to think that they can't -- this is a major step forward," Stephen Dean, head of Maryland-based advocacy group Fusion Power Associates, told _Nature_.


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk Says SpaceX's Mars Rocket Could Launch in Early 2019



> SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said a rocket that's intended to put humans on Mars could launch in early 2019.
> 
> "We are building the first ship, the first Mars or interplanetary ship, right now," Musk told screenwriter Jonathan Nolan on stage at the South By Southwest conference in Austin Sunday. "I think we'll be able to do short flights, short up and down flights, sometime in the first half of next year."


----------



## ekim68

Could This Bold New Technique Boost Gravitational-Wave Detection?



> Gravitational waves that we can detect here on Earth are generated by the most energetic events in the cosmos, from colliding black holes to merging neutron stars.
> 
> To spot these space-time ripples, which have traveled billions of light-years in some cases, scientists must build some of the most sensitive equipment the world has ever seen. But the very sensitivity of this gear means that vibrations, turbulence and even gas molecules in our atmosphere can drown out even the most powerful gravitational-wave signals in a crescendo of background noise.
> 
> Ingenious engineering solutions are therefore needed to pull the weak signal of gravitational waves out of the noise. In new research published in the journal Physical Review Letters, physicists describe a potentially powerful new method that could, theoretically, be used to remove a key component of noise from gravitational-wave detectors and, in doing so, remove the requirement of having to build costly and complex vacuum chambers.


----------



## ekim68

NASA begins Mars 2020 spacecraft pre-launch assembly



> NASA is ramping up for the Mars 2020 mission's July 2020 launch as the space agency begins the Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations (ATLO) phase of the project at the Spacecraft Assembly Facility High Bay 1 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. This includes the final assembly and electrical integration of flight hardware into the spacecraft's rocket-powered "sky crane" descent stage, Mars rover, cruise stage, and aeroshell.


----------



## ekim68

Kepler Space Telescope nears the end of its life



> After over nine years, the Kepler Space Telescope mission may be coming to an end. The reason: out of fuel. NASA engineers have determined that the unmanned deep space probe has only enough propellant left in its attitude control system to keep it properly oriented for a few more months. When this runs out, the spacecraft will no longer be able to collect data or transmit it to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's plan to bat away Earth-bound asteroids



> The odds of the Earth being hit by a large asteroid are extremely slim, but the potential damage is extremely large, so a partnership of scientists have been studying a conceptual spacecraft designed to deflect dangerous asteroids before they reach us. Called the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER) vehicle, the 9-m (30-ft) tall, 8.8-ton spacecraft is a modular construct that can either ram an asteroid directly or act as a bomb carrier to deliver a nuclear warhead.


----------



## ekim68

NASA fires rocket nozzle made with new 3D printing tech



> NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is developing a trio of new additive and milling technologies to create a 3D-printed rocket nozzle that is simpler in design than comparable ones, yet is able to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures. Made by a new process called Laser Wire Direct Closeout (LWDC), a prototype nozzle was fired successfully for more than 1,040 accumulated seconds.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX blasted massive plasma hole in Earth's ionosphere



> A SpaceX rocket ripped a humongous hole in Earth's ionosphere during a launch in California last year and may have impaired GPS satellites.
> 
> The Falcon 9 rocket was blasted from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 24 August last year. It was carrying the Formosat-5, an Earth observation satellite, built by the Taiwan's National Space Organization.
> 
> As the rocket reached supersonic speeds minutes after liftoff, it sent gigantic circular shock acoustic waves (SAWs) rippling through the atmosphere. These SAWs continued to extend outwards for about 20 minutes at a whopping speed of about 629 to 726 meters per second - equivalent between 0.021 and 0.0242 per cent of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum in _Reg_ units.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Curiosity rover celebrates its 2,000th Martian day on the Red Planet



> NASA's Curiosity rover has passed yet another impressive milestone, having spent 2,000 Martian days exploring one of the most enigmatic and fascinating worlds populating our solar system. Following an ambitious descent through Mars' tenuous atmosphere in August 2012, Curiosity has been slowly but deliberately trundling around a 96-mile-wide (154 km) impact crater in search of evidence that the seemingly barren planet may have been hospitable to life in the distant past.


----------



## ekim68

Chinese Space Station's Crash to Earth: Everything You Need to Know



> Update for March 25: China's first prototype space station, Tiangong-1, will come crashing back to Earth between March 30 and April 2 in an uncontrolled re-entry, give or take a few days, according to the latest forecast by the European Space Agency.


----------



## Johnny b

Science of the 'spaced out'.

* Breakthrough study reveals how LSD dissolves a person's sense of self *

https://newatlas.com/lsd-brain-imaging-sense-self/53874/



> A fascinating study led by scientists at the University of Zurich has uncovered key insights into the mechanisms behind how our brain generates our sense of self. The researchers administered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to several participants in order to home in on where in the brain our sense of self is activated and what happens when a powerful psychedelic drug interferes with that process.


----------



## Johnny b

Novel, but practical?
Something to follow, anyway.

* India: Yeah, we would like to 3D-print igloos on the Moon *

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/26/indian_igloos_on_moon/

* Isro is building 'igloos' for future outposts on Moon *

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...ure-outposts-on-moon/articleshow/63072867.cms



> In what's likely to become India's biggest science programme in the next few years, Isro has started work on building igloos on the Moon. These 'lunar habitats', as scientists call them, will be built by sending robots and 3D printers to the Moon, and by using lunar soil and other materials.


----------



## ekim68

Tiangong-1 reentry updates



> Reentry will take place anywhere between 43ºN and 43ºS. Areas above or below these latitudes can be excluded. At no time will a precise time/location prediction from ESA be possible. This forecast was updated approximately weekly through to mid-March, and is now being updated every 1~2 days.


----------



## ekim68

X-ray 'ghost images' could cut radiation doses



> On its own, a single-pixel camera captures pictures that are pretty dull: squares that are completely black, completely white, or some shade of gray in between. All it does, after all, is detect brightness.
> 
> Yet by connecting a single-pixel camera to a patterned light source, a team of physicists in China has made detailed x-ray images using a statistical technique called ghost imaging, first pioneered 20 years ago in infrared and visible light. Researchers in the field say future versions of this system could take clear x-ray photographs with cheap cameras-no need for lenses and multipixel detectors-and less cancer-causing radiation than conventional techniques.


----------



## ekim68

Tiangong-1 space station burns up over the Pacific



> China's first outpost in space came to a fiery end today, making an uncontrolled reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. The US Joint Force Space Command Component (JFSCC) has confirmed that at about 5:16 pm PDT on April 1 (April 2, 00:16 GMT), the derelict Tiangong-1 space station burned up over the southern Pacific Ocean ending weeks of uncertainty as to when and where it would finish its career.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon spacecraft embark on second flight to ISS



> Boldly going where they had already gone before, a SpaceX rocket and cargo capsule blasted off Monday afternoon from Cape Canaveral on a return trip to the International Space Station.
> 
> The Falcon 9 rocket, whose first stage launched ISS supplies last August, fired nine Merlin main engines again to roar from Launch Complex 40 at 4:30 p.m.
> 
> Ten minutes later, the unmanned Dragon capsule, which launched to the ISS two years earlier, floated free of the rocket's upper stage to start a two-day journey back to the orbiting research complex.


----------



## ekim68

Freak "cosmic telescope" reveals most distant star ever observed



> When it comes to viewing far-flung stars, astronomers are usually limited to studying them within groups - or galaxies - or as supernovae. But thanks to a rare cosmic alignment, astronomers have been able to view the most distant individual normal star ever observed. Located some 9 billion light years from Earth, the star was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope thanks to gravitational lensing amplifying the star's feeble glow.


----------



## ekim68

Not one, but 20,000 black holes hiding in Milky Way's heart



> Black holes are greedy. As they suck up all the surrounding gas, the material spirals around it like a whirlpool, creating an accretion disk. The matter in the accretion disk is gobbled up in streams as it reaches the void's centre. And as the disk spins, the frictional forces between the material causes it to heat up and emits X-ray radiation.
> 
> The researchers found 12 black holes with similar masses as the sun surrounding the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* that lives in the galaxy's center. But estimated that there could be up to 20,000 of them extending further out from Sagittarius A* based on calculations.


----------



## ekim68

New Zealand's Rocket Lab readies its first commercial launch



> Following a successful January test launch that saw its Electron booster reach orbit for the first time, Rocket Lab is now getting down to business. The New Zealand-based private space firm has announced plans to go ahead with its first fully commercial mission, with the launch window to open later this month.


----------



## ekim68

Computer searches telescope data for evidence of distant planets



> As part of an effort to identify distant planets hospitable to life, NASA has established a crowdsourcing project in which volunteers search telescopic images for evidence of debris disks around stars, which are good indicators of exoplanets.
> 
> Using the results of that project, researchers at MIT have now trained a machine-learning system to search for debris disks itself. The scale of the search demands automation: There are nearly 750 million possible light sources in the data accumulated through NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission alone.


----------



## ekim68

First in-flight firing of Virgin Galactic spaceplane engine



> Virgin Galactic's tourist-carrying spaceplane has taken a step closer to entering service after its chemical rocket engine was fired for the first time in the skies over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. With test pilots Mark "Forger" Stucky and Dave Mackay at the controls, the 60-ft-long (18 m) SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity pegged the speedometer at Mach 1.87 (1,424 mph, 2,290 km/h) within 30 seconds of igniting its engine.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble spots Einstein ring surrounding galaxy cluster



> April 6 (UPI) -- A new image from Hubble showcases dozens of distant galaxies, as well as an astronomical phenomenon known as an Einstein ring.
> 
> The lens-like circle at the image's center represents the distortion caused by the gravity of a galaxy cluster named SDSS J0146-0929. The cluster is comprised of millions of galaxies, all tied together by the pull of gravity.
> 
> The gravity of the cluster's millions of galaxies is strong enough to warp the surrounding space-time.


----------



## ekim68

Aurora Station, the luxury space hotel slated to open by 2022



> For years we've seen space tourism touted as "coming soon," but the only real opportunity to buy your way into space were very rare private trips to the International Space Station with price tags north of US$20 million. The latest private company to get into the space tourism game is Orion Span, which recently revealed its Aurora Station space hotel, promising an extremely ambitious 2022 opening date.


----------



## ekim68

Northrop Grumman, not SpaceX, reported to be at fault for loss of top-secret Zuma satellite




> Northrop Grumman





> built and operated the components that failed during the controversial January launch of the U.S. spy satellite known as Zuma, according to a Wall Street Journal report Sunday.
> 
> Two independent investigations, made up of federal and industry officials, pointed to Northrop's payload adapter as the cause of the satellite's loss, the report said, citing people familiar with the probes. The payload adapter is a key part of deploying a satellite in orbit, connecting the satellite to the upper stage of a rocket.


----------



## ekim68

Beyond the Milky Way: The sublime beauty of our galactic neighbors


----------



## ekim68

NASA may fly humans on the less powerful version of its deep-space rocket



> NASA may make some big changes to the first couple flights of its future deep-space rocket, the Space Launch System, after getting a recent funding boost from Congress to build a new launch platform. When humans fly on the rocket for the first time in the 2020s, they might ride on a less powerful version of the vehicle than NASA had expected. If the changes move forward, it could scale down the first crewed mission into deep space in more than 45 years.
> 
> The SLS has been in development for the last decade, and when complete, it will be NASA's main rocket for taking astronauts to the Moon and Mars. NASA has long planned to debut the SLS with two crucial test missions. The first flight, called EM-1, will be uncrewed, and it will send the smallest planned version of the rocket on a three-week long trip around the Moon. Three years later, NASA plans to launch a bigger, more powerful version of the rocket around the Moon with a two-person crew - a mission called EM-2.


----------



## ekim68

ESA's Space Storm Hunter will chase thunderstorms from the ISS



> According to NASA, the problem is that thunderstorms are very uncooperative beasts that often form in inaccessible regions. Worse, some of the most interesting and important characteristics of the storms occur in the upper atmosphere far beyond the reach of balloons or aircraft, yet too low for most satellites to observe. Many of these also occur in the visible spectrum and it's obvious that ground optical observations in a thunderstorm is an exercise in frustration.
> 
> To overcome this, ESA's Space Storm Hunter was recently transported to the ISS aboard an unmanned SpaceX Dragon cargo ship. More prosaically known as the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), it consists of infrared and ultraviolet cameras, photomultiplers, and X-ray and gamma-ray detectors.


----------



## ekim68

New satellite to set sights on industrial methane leaks



> Methane is a significant cause of global warming, second only to carbon dioxide in its contribution as a greenhouse gas. Human activity is a major contributor to methane emissions, chiefly from the energy industries. According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the oil and gas industries alone release 75 million metric tons each year. In response, the organization is planning to launch MethaneSAT to identify major sources of methane emissions and identify opportunities for reduction. If all goes the plan, EDF hopes to launch the satellite early in 2021.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Got a Plan for a 'Galactic Positioning System' to Save Astronauts Lost in Space



> COLUMBUS, Ohio - Outer space glows with a bright fog of X-ray light, coming from everywhere at once. But peer carefully into that fog, and faint, regular blips become visible. These are millisecond pulsars, city-sized neutron stars rotating incredibly quickly, and firing X-rays into the universe with more regularity than even the most precise atomic clocks. And NASA wants to use them to navigate probes and crewed ships through deep space.


----------



## ekim68

Black hole and stellar winds form giant butterfly, shut down star formation in galaxy



> The new study, led by CU Boulder research associate Francisco Müller-Sánchez, explores a galaxy called NGC 6240. While most galaxies in the universe hold only one supermassive black hole at their center, NGC 6240 contains two -- and they're circling each other in the last steps before crashing together.
> 
> The research reveals how gases ejected by those spiraling black holes, in combination with gases ejected by stars in the galaxy, may have begun to power down NGC 6240's production of new stars. Müller-Sánchez's team also shows how these "winds" have helped to create the galaxy's most tell-tale feature: a massive cloud of gas in the shape of a butterfly.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launched NASA's new exoplanet-hunting satellite - and landed its rocket afterwards



> SpaceX successfully launched the TESS spacecraft at 6:51PM ET on Wednesday and deployed the probe about 50 minutes later. The company also successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship following takeoff. That marks 24 successful landings for SpaceX now, and 13 drone ship recoveries.


----------



## ekim68

NASA prepares to send CubeSats to Mars



> When NASA's InSight mission to Mars lifts off on May 5, it won't be alone. Nestled inside the Atlas V launcher on the aft bulkhead carrier of the Centaur upper stage will be two CubeSats that will make up the Mars Cube One mission, or MarCO. The 14.4 x 9.5 x by 4.6 inch (36.6 x 24.3 x 11.8 cm) miniature spacecraft will be the first CubeSats to be deployed into deep space, and will demonstrate new technologies for future interplanetary missions.


----------



## ekim68

Face recognition for galaxies: Artificial intelligence brings new tools to astronomy



> A machine learning method called "deep learning," which has been widely used in face recognition and other image- and speech-recognition applications, has shown promise in helping astronomers analyze images of galaxies and understand how they form and evolve.


----------



## ekim68

Happy birthday Hubble.... 


Hubble at 28: Telescope has helped explain mysteries of universe



> April 24 (UPI) -- Today, astronomers know the age and size of the universe with greater certainty and precision than they did 28 years ago, thanks to 28 years of working with the Hubble Space Telescope.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers witness galaxy megamerger



> Peering deep into space -- an astounding 90 percent of the way across the observable universe -- astronomers have witnessed the beginnings of a gargantuan cosmic pileup, the impending collision of 14 young, starbursting galaxies.
> 
> This ancient megamerger is destined to evolve into one of the most massive structures in the known universe: a cluster of galaxies, gravitationally bound by dark matter and swimming in a sea of hot, ionized gas.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='http://gizmodo.com/incredible-new-view-of-the-milky-way-is-the-largest-sta-1825526275']Incredible New View of the Milky Way Is the Largest Star Map Ever[/URL]



> The European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft team has dropped its long-awaited trove of data about 1.7 billion stars.


----------



## ekim68

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox observed in many-particle system for the first time



> Physicistshave observed the quantum mechanical Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in a system of several hundred interacting atoms for the first time. The phenomenon dates back to a famous thought experiment from 1935. It allows measurement results to be predicted precisely and could be used in new types of sensors and imaging methods for electromagnetic fields.


----------



## ekim68

Jeff Bezos' rocket company launches its weird looking rocket for the first time this year



> Up, up, and away.
> 
> Blue Origin - the previously secretive rocket company started by Amazon's Jeff Bezos - just launched another successful flight and landing of its New Shepard rocket and capsule from its facility in Texas.
> 
> The test flight, which took place on Sunday at around 1:07 p.m. ET, will pave the way for people to actually fly to suborbital space aboard the Blue Origin rocket sometime in the coming years.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's X3 ion thruster smashes records in test firings



> A human settlement on Mars is rapidly moving from science fiction to fact, with Elon Musk envisioning _Battlestar Galactica_-style fleets blasting off to the Red Planet in coming decades. That scenario is now one step closer, as engineers from NASA and the University of Michigan have successfully tested the X3, a thruster designed to get us to Mars. And it's broken several records in the process.


----------



## ekim68

Old data, new tricks: Fresh results from NASA's Galileo spacecraft 20 years on



> Far across the solar system, from where Earth appears merely as a pale blue dot, NASA's Galileo spacecraft spent eight years orbiting Jupiter. During that time, the hearty spacecraft -- slightly larger than a full-grown giraffe -- sent back spates of discoveries on the gas giant's moons, including the observation of a magnetic environment around Ganymede that was distinct from Jupiter's own magnetic field. The mission ended in 2003, but newly resurrected data from Galileo's first flyby of Ganymede is yielding new insights about the moon's environment -- which is unlike any other in the solar system.
> 
> "We are now coming back over 20 years later to take a new look at some of the data that was never published and finish the story," said Glyn Collinson, lead author of a recent paper about Ganymede's magnetosphere at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "We found there's a whole piece no one knew about."


----------



## ekim68

Hubble spots a strange new type of celestial object



> Astronomers have discovered a brand new type of object in our solar system: an active binary asteroid. That means the object, named Body 288P, is the first known hybrid of two rare types of asteroid: a binary that's made up of two rocks orbiting each other, and an active asteroid that acts more like a comet, leaving a trail of gas and dust in its wake.


----------



## ekim68

Fly Me to the Sun



> This summer, a NASA spacecraft will launch into space from the coast of Florida, headed for the sun. After making several flybys of Venus to slow itself down, the Parker Solar Probe will come within 4 million miles of the sun's scorching surface, closer than any spacecraft in history.
> 
> NASA is never one to miss an opportunity to drum up publicity for upcoming space missions, especially the less flashy ones. Sending something to study the star we see every day may sound less thrilling, for example, than launching a mission to find exoplanets around 200,000 stars. So in March, the space agency announced a little campaign to promote the Parker Solar Probe: Send us your names and we'll put them on a microchip inside a spacecraft bound for the sun. (They even got _Star Trek _actor William Shatner to help promote it.)


----------



## ekim68

Testing the InSight Mars Lander's Solar Arrays



> NASA's InSight, the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is more than a Mars mission - it is a terrestrial planet explorer that will address one of the most fundamental issues of planetary and solar system science - understanding the processes that shaped the rocky planets of the inner solar system (including Earth) more than four billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Yale physicists find signs of a time crystal



> Yale physicists have uncovered hints of a time crystal - a form of matter that "ticks" when exposed to an electromagnetic pulse - in the last place they expected: a crystal you might find in a child's toy.
> 
> The discovery means there are now new puzzles to solve, in terms of how time crystals form in the first place.
> 
> Ordinary crystals such as salt or quartz are examples of three-dimensional, ordered spatial crystals. Their atoms are arranged in a repeating system, something scientists have known for a century.
> 
> Time crystals, first identified in 2016, are different. Their atoms spin periodically, first in one direction and then in another, as a pulsating force is used to flip them. That's the "ticking." In addition, the ticking in a time crystal is locked at a particular frequency, even when the pulse flips are imperfect.


----------



## ekim68

NASA launches mission to Mars



> Mars is about to get its first thorough checkup since it formed billions of years ago, as NASA's InSight heads to the red planet after launching Saturday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California
> 
> "Three ... two ... ... zero ... Lift off, of the Atlas V -- launching the first interplanetary mission from the West Coast and NASA's Insight, the first outer space robotic explorer to study the interior of Mars," a NASA announcer declared amid the rumble of takeoff at 7:05 a.m. ET, via NASA TV.


----------



## ekim68

The sun will become a planetary nebula after it dies, astronomers predict



> May 7 (UPI) -- When the sun finally dies, 10 billion years from now, it will become a planetary nebula, according to a team of scientists at the University of Manchester.
> 
> Some 90 percent of all stars become planetary nebulae during their afterlife, but some astronomers questioned whether the sun had sufficient mass to follow the traditional path.
> 
> Manchester researchers built a new stellar model to predict the luminosity of the envelope of gas and dust ejected by stars of different masses.


----------



## ekim68

Mars-bound CubeSats send first signals from space



> May 7 (UPI) -- The first messages from NASA's Mars Cube One, MarCO, have been received by the space agency. The two CubeSats, the first to be sent on a deep-space mission, beamed back radio signals to confirm all is well.
> 
> Like the InSight lander, the two craft are headed to Mars. Both were carried into space by a United Launch Alliance rocket on Saturday morning.


----------



## 2twenty2

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/one-milky-way-s-fastest-stars-invader-another-galaxy



> One of the Milky Way's fastest stars is an invader from another galaxy


----------



## ekim68

And That's That, right? 


Yes, Pluto is a planet



> Three years ago, NASA's New Horizons, the fastest spaceship ever launched, raced past Pluto, spectacularly revealing the wonders of that newly seen world. This coming New Year's Eve - if all goes well on board this small robot operating extremely far from home - it will treat us to images of the most distant body ever explored, provisionally named Ultima Thule. We know very little about it, but we do know it's not a planet. Pluto, by contrast - despite what you've heard - is.


----------



## ekim68

Curiouser and curiouser....


NASA Spacecraft Discovers New Magnetic Process in Turbulent Space



> Though close to home, the space immediately around Earth is full of hidden secrets and invisible processes. In a new discovery reported in the journal *Nature*, scientists working with NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft - MMS - have uncovered a new type of magnetic event in our near-Earth environment by using an innovative technique to squeeze extra information out of the data.
> 
> Magnetic reconnection is one of the most important processes in the space - filled with charged particles known as plasma - around Earth. This fundamental process dissipates magnetic energy and propels charged particles, both of which contribute to a dynamic space weather system that scientists want to better understand, and even someday predict, as we do terrestrial weather. Reconnection occurs when crossed magnetic field lines snap, explosively flinging away nearby particles at high speeds. The new discovery found reconnection where it has never been seen before - in turbulent plasma.


----------



## ekim68

With the landing of SpaceX's powerful new Falcon 9, a new era of rocket reusability takes off



> This afternoon, SpaceX landed the most powerful version yet of its Falcon 9 rocket, after launching the vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The so-named Block 5 upgrade took off from the company's launchpad at Kennedy Space Center, sending a communications satellite into orbit for Bangladesh and then touched down on one of the company's drone ships in the Atlantic. It was the 25th successful rocket landing for SpaceX, and the 14th on one of the company's drone ships.


----------



## ekim68

Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight



> Nasa is sending a helicopter to Mars, in the first test of a heavier-than-air aircraft on another planet.
> 
> The Mars Helicopter will be bundled with the US space agency's Mars rover when it launches in 2020.
> 
> Its design team spent more than four years shrinking a working helicopter to "the size of a softball" and cutting its weight to 1.8kg (4lbs).
> 
> It is specifically designed to fly in the atmosphere of Mars, which is 100 times thinner than Earth's.


----------



## ekim68

One of my Favorite places... 

Picture of the Day


----------



## valis

check that daily, and have for a loooooong time.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/spacecraft-may-have-flown-right-through-a-plume-of-wate-1826006318']Spacecraft May Have Flown Right Through a Plume of Water on Jupiter's Moon Europa[/URL]



> The team found the evidence they were looking for. On December 16, 1997, Galileo flew just 400 kilometers above Europa's surface and recorded a quick, isolated spike in the magnetic field strength alongside a simultaneous spike in the energy of the particles it detected. Galileo's scientists were reluctant to blame Europa for the spike, suggesting it instead came from Jupiter's magnetic field, but now it seems like the probe was just flying through a plume. They published the results today in _Nature Astronomy._


----------



## ekim68

Fastest-growing supermassive black hole eats a sun every two days



> It sounds strange to describe a black hole as "bright," but astronomers at Australian National University have spotted one so bright that were it in our home galaxy, it would outshine all the stars in the sky and even give the full moon a run for its money. This supermassive monster also happens to be the fastest-growing black hole ever seen, devouring the equivalent of the Sun every two days.


----------



## ekim68

ALMA and VLT find evidence for stars forming just 250 million years after Big Bang



> An international team of astronomers used ALMA to observe a distant galaxy called MACS1149-JD1. They detected a very faint glow emitted by ionised oxygen in the galaxy. As this infrared light travelled across space, the expansion of the Universe stretched it to wavelengths more than ten times longer by the time it reached Earth and was detected by ALMA. The team inferred that the signal was emitted 13.3 billion years ago (or 500 million years after the Big Bang), making it the most distant oxygen ever detected by any telescope [1]. The presence of oxygen is a clear sign that there must have been even earlier generations of stars in this galaxy.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Atomic Fridge Will Make the ISS the Coldest Known Place in the Universe



> Later this year, a small part of the International Space Station will become 10 billion times colder than the average temperature of the vacuum of space thanks to the Cold Atom Lab (CAL). Once it's on the space station, this atomic fridge will be the coldest known place in the universe and will allow physicists to 'see' into the quantum realm in a way that would never be possible on Earth.
> 
> In a normal room, "atoms are bouncing off one another in all directions at a few hundred meters per second," Rob Thompson, a NASA scientist working on CAL explained in a statement. CAL, however, can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero-the point at which matter loses all its thermal energy-which means that this chaotic atomic motion comes to a near standstill.


----------



## ekim68

Was straining my Head on this one tonight...


[URL='https://gizmodo.com/scientists-calculate-the-pressure-inside-a-proton-and-i-1826080338']Scientists Calculate the Pressure Inside a Proton and It's Higher Than in a Neutron Star[/URL]



> The pressure inside the particles that make up every atom in the universe could be greater than the pressure inside the densest stars, according to a new measurement.
> 
> Scientists at Jefferson Lab in Virginia calculated the pressure using the lab's Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, or CEBAF, and some tricky mathematics. The measurement will mainly be useful for fundamentally understanding these particles' nature. The calculation is pretty mind-boggling.


----------



## ekim68

A New World's Extraordinary Orbit Points to Planet Nine



> Astronomers argue that there's an undiscovered giant planet far beyond the orbit of Neptune. A newly discovered rocky body has added evidence to the circumstantial case for it.


----------



## ekim68

Alien asteroid discovered orbiting the Sun



> An international team of astronomers has discovered an asteroid orbiting the Sun at roughly the same distance as Jupiter that appears to have originated from another solar system. The imaginatively named asteroid 2015 BZ509 could have immigrated to our little pocket of the universe from a neighboring stellar body billions of years ago, at a time when our Sun was still embedded in a colossal star cluster.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Falcon 9 launches seven satellites



> A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbed away from California Tuesday carrying seven satellites intended to replace earlier spacecraft, five Iridium NEXT telephone relay stations and two for NASA and a German research agency that will fly in tandem using ultra-precise gravity readings to measure how water is distributed around the world.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/how-nasa-will-unlock-the-secrets-of-quantum-mechanics-a-1826191490']How NASA Will Unlock the Secrets of Quantum Mechanics Aboard the ISS[/URL]



> The Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) is set to create Bose-Einstein condensates on board the ISS. But what's a Bose-Einstein condensate? And why make it in space?
> 
> "Essentially, it's going to allow us to do different kinds of things than we'd be able to do on Earth," Gretchen Campbell, co-director of the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute, told Gizmodo.
> 
> Bose-Einstein condensates are collections of certain atoms (like rubidium, for example) held motionless by lasers, which cools them to temperatures just above absolute zero. These systems magnify the mind-boggling effects of quantum mechanics to nearly macroscopic scales, making them easier to study. Scientists have used Bose-Einstein condensates to create entirely new states of matter, quantum entangle thousands of atoms, and even model the Big Bang.
> 
> But as is the case with most nearly macroscopic collections of atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates feel the effects of gravity.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/nasa-s-curiosity-rover-is-able-to-drill-holes-into-rock-1826271498']NASA's Curiosity Rover Is Able to Drill Holes Into Rocks Again[/URL]



> That's one small hole for a probe, but one giant leap for NASA. This past weekend, the space agency jerry-rigged Curiosity's malfunctioning drill, allowing the rover to bore into Martian rock for the first time in over a year.


----------



## ekim68

Unprecedented detail in pulsar 6,500 light-years from Earth



> A team of astronomers has performed one of the highest resolution observations in astronomical history by observing two intense regions of radiation, 20 kilometers apart, around a star 6,500 light-years away. The observation is equivalent to using a telescope on Earth to see a flea on the surface of Pluto.


----------



## ekim68

Rosetta illuminates origins of sunrise jets on comet 67P



> May 23 (UPI) -- Thanks to data collected by the Rosetta probe, astronomers are beginning to understand the factors responsible for the formation of sunrise jets, which are unique dust and gas jets emitted by comets.
> 
> Sunrise jets are narrow strands of gas and dust extending from a comet's surface. They spring to life when a comet moves into the inner solar system and become bathed in sunlight, causing ice to melt and water vapor to envelope the orb.


----------



## ekim68

The Sunspot Number



> *S*cientists track solar cycles by counting sunspots -- cool planet-sized areas on the Sun where intense magnetic loops poke through the star's visible surface.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Galactic's spaceplane hits new heights in second powered flight



> Virgin Galactic has shown the first firing of its spaceplane's chemical rocket engine was no fluke, following last month's effort with another successful outing in California. The latest test flight took the tourist-carrying space vehicle a little closer to space, literally and figuratively, with engineers now poring over data with an eye to the next round of testing.


----------



## ekim68

Secrets behind Pluto's dunes revealed



> Scientists have discovered dunes on Pluto, and say they are likely to have been formed of methane ice grains released into its rarefied atmosphere.
> 
> Writing in _Science_, an international team of geographers, physicists and planetary scientists have analysed detailed images of the dwarf planet's surface, captured in July 2015 by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
> 
> Those images showed that on the boundary of the Sputnik Planitia ice plain, and pushed up against a major mountain range, there is a series of dunes spread across an area less than 75 km across.


----------



## ekim68

NASA sheds light on strange object created in cosmic collision



> In August 2017, astronomers were treated to one of the most spectacular stellar light shows ever seen - a collision between two neutron stars. The smashup was so powerful it sent gravitational ripples through the very fabric of spacetime, and produced flares in visible light, radio waves, x-rays and a gamma ray burst. Now that things have quietened down, astronomers have studied the strange object created in the cosmic collision.
> 
> The LIGO facility was the first to notice something big was happening. On August 17 last year, the instrument detected gravitational waves coming from a source now officially known as GW170817, which lies about 138 million light-years away. Gravitational waves alone are old news, but there was something different about this one - it wasn't caused by invisible black holes merging, but the very-visible crash of two neutron stars.


----------



## ekim68

Pluto may be made up of a billion comets



> Perhaps we're looking at Pluto the wrong way. Planet, dwarf planet-this semantic debate might be irrelevant, because in reality. . . maybe Pluto is actually sort of a giant comet? In a paper published this week in the journal _Icarus_, scientists from the Southwest Research Institute pitch a new theory that Pluto might really just be the aggregation of a bunch of comets. Billions of them.


----------



## ekim68

NASA sets out to examine Solar System's protective bubble



> The solar winds that stream outwards from our Sun at up to 700 km/h (435 mph) have a direct hand in the evolution of the Solar System's planets, but they have an indirect influence as well. When they hit the fringes of interstellar space they collide with material from beyond and work as a kind of cosmic filter, limiting the amount of harmful particles that come back the other way. NASA has ticked off a new mission to probe this protective bubble known as the heliosphere, to better understand how its mechanics affect the deep space environment and its ramifications for future exploration missions.


----------



## ekim68

Alien technology? Harvard scientists propose source for fast radio bursts



> Fast radio bursts (FRB) were first discovered in 2007 at Parkes Observatory in Australia, with several dozen or so detected since. The initial discoveries showed FRB to be seemingly random one-off events coming from distant galaxies, leading some to hypothesize they were the result of cataclysmic cosmic events, like the merging of black holes or a massive supernova.
> 
> But in 2015, an astronomer from McGill University found 11 bursts that not only originated from the same location in space, but were repeating. More repeating FRB were discovered in 2016, which were tracked to a dim dwarf galaxy 3 billion light-years away, poking holes in the cosmic cataclysm idea.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/nasa-to-extend-juno-jupiter-mission-by-three-years-1826581220']NASA to Extend Juno Jupiter Mission by Three Years[/URL]



> The Juno spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter was supposed end its mission by crashing into the gas giant next month. Not anymore!
> 
> It turns out the scientific mission will be extended through at least 2021 so it can meet its goals, as Business Insider first reported yesterday. This will delay the probe's dramatic demise for at least a few years.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Curiosity rover unearths building blocks in 3-billion-year-old organic matter on Mars



> The "building blocks" for life have been discovered in 3-billion-year-old organic matter on Mars, NASA scientists announced Thursday.
> 
> Researchers cannot yet say whether their discovery stems from life or a more mundane geological process. However, "we're in a really good position to move forward looking for signs of life," said Jennifer Eigenbrode, a NASA biogeochemist and lead author of a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal _Science_.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers detect strange dusty objects at the center of the galaxy



> Astronomers using the Keck Observatory have detected some strange objects at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. At a glance they look like ordinary clouds of gas, but they seem to have a more solid core that keeps them together. The truth may lie somewhere in-between. These G-objects, as they're known, seem to be stars hiding under puffy shrouds of dust.
> 
> The first G-object was discovered in 2004, and a second was later identified in 2012. These objects, known as G1 and G2 respectively, were initially thought to be just clouds of gas, but that assumption fell apart when the objects didn't. They managed to swing past the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy without being torn to shreds, indicating they were no ordinary gas clouds.


----------



## valis

but can it play Doom?

https://gizmodo.com/the-world-s-most-powerful-supercomputer-is-an-absolute-1826679256


----------



## ekim68

Whoa...! And then this thing...


> Behold Summit, a new supercomputer capable of making 200 million billion calculations per second.


----------



## valis

Linky, Mike?


----------



## ekim68

That was from the article you posted...


----------



## valis

Thats what I thought but wasnt sure if you had found another, more informative story.


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons Spacecraft Wakes Up to Prepare for Historic Flyby of Distant Object



> NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has woken up from hibernation to prepare for a historic New Year's Day flyby at the edge of our solar system.





> Ultima Thule





> , officially named 2014 MU69, is a world that orbits approximately a billion miles beyond Pluto. Ultima Thule was chosen as a nickname for this object, with public input, because it means "beyond Thule," or beyond the edge of the known world. The name signifies just how extraordinary this flyby will be, as it will be beyond anything humans have ever before accomplished.


----------



## ekim68

Mars mega-storm threatens Nasa rover after 14-year mission



> Nasa's Mars rover Opportunity has been knocked out by a gigantic dust storm that is enveloping the red planet and blotting out the sun.
> 
> Officials said on Wednesday they were hopeful the rover would survive the storm, which already covers a quarter of Mars and is expected to encircle the planet in another few days. It could be weeks, or even months, until the sky clears enough for sunlight to reach the surface and recharge Opportunity's batteries through its solar panels.


----------



## ekim68

Entanglement "on demand" sets the stage for quantum internet



> With more sensitive data than ever being shared - and stolen - online, more secure connections are desperately needed. The answer could be a quantum internet, where information is passed almost instantaneously between nodes that have been quantum entangled and are therefore physically unhackable, since any unauthorized observation of the data will scramble it. Researchers at Delft University of Technology have now overcome a major hurdle on the road towards that goal by generating quantum links faster than they deteriorate.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/the-large-hadron-collider-is-getting-an-upgrade-1826863307']The Large Hadron Collider Is Getting an Upgrade[/URL]



> Today, workers at the world's largest atom smasher are breaking ground on a performance-enhancing upgrade that will allow scientists to conduct even bigger and better physics experiments.
> 
> The upgrade will turn the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland into the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The upgrade will allow the machine to collide even more particles, potentially helping physicists see new stuff.


----------



## Johnny b

For those interested in the celestial sky, this might be of interest:

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient/

Astronomy in your browser


----------



## 2twenty2

That is


----------



## ekim68

Yes it is cool and I have a new Toy...  Thanks..


----------



## ekim68

Peggy Whitson, NASA's most experienced astronaut, retires



> Whitson ends her career with multiple records to her name, including most time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut -- 665 days. She has also conducted more spacewalks, 10, than any other female astronaut.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/scientists-find-stronger-evidence-for-new-kind-of-black-1826949283']Scientists Find Stronger Evidence for New Kind of Black Hole[/URL]



> We've seen supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies tearing stars to shreds. We've detected the energy wave from relatively tiny black holes slamming together to create a wobble in space-time a billion light-years away. But what about the medium-sized black holes in between these extremes?
> 
> Scientists have been looking for such objects, and have now provided further, more compelling evidence for intermediate-mass black holes. They spotted a bright explosion that decayed over 10 years in a galaxy's outskirts. Its mass is around 10 thousand times the mass of our Sun.


----------



## ekim68

New NASA instrument on ISS to track plant water use on Earth



> June 19 (UPI) -- To better track water use by Earth's plants, NASA is preparing to install a new instrument on the International Space Station.
> 
> The instrument is called ECOSTRESS, or ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, and it will measure the changing temperatures of plants on Earth's surface.
> 
> To avoid overheating, plants transpire, just as humans sweat. Transpiration is the process of taking up water through the root system and released it through the plant's pores. The process brings down the plant's temperature.


----------



## ekim68

Einstein proved right in another galaxy



> Astronomers have made the most precise test of gravity outside our own solar system. By combining data taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the researchers show that gravity in this galaxy behaves as predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, confirming the theory's validity on galactic scales.


----------



## RT

Johnny-be-Good said:


> For those interested in the celestial sky, this might be of interest:
> 
> http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient/
> 
> Astronomy in your browser


That makes me wish I had dual 32" monitors! 
(or an unobscured dark sky)


----------



## Johnny b

Me too!


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX wins $130 million Air Force launch contract, marking a first for Falcon Heavy



> The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $130 million firm-fixed-price contract to SpaceX for the launch of its classified AFSPC-52 satellite on a Falcon Heavy rocket.
> 
> It's the first national security contract won for SpaceX's heavy-lift rocket, which had its first test flight in February. AFSPC-52 is to lift off in 2020 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.


----------



## ekim68

NASA can't find most of the asteroids threatening Earth, but it has a plan



> If the movies teach us anything, it's that the US government has a small room with a few stressed-out bureaucrats worrying about every disaster that might arise. Volcanos? Absolutely. Pandemic influenza? You got it. Today, we heard from the killer asteroid team.
> 
> The bad news? NASA is not going to be able to find all the asteroids big enough to cause serious devastation on Earth by 2020-or even 2033. Also: For a hypothetical attempt to send a spacecraft to divert an seriously dangerous incoming asteroid, we'll need a ten year heads-up to build it and get it to the asteroid.
> 
> The good news? They're working on it.


----------



## ekim68

Once in a Blue Dune



> Sand dunes often accumulate in the floors of craters. In this region of Lyot Crater, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows a field of classic barchan dunes on Jan. 24, 2018.


----------



## valis

reckon you all will like this:

https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_image_archive_complete


----------



## ekim68

Nice find.. :up:


----------



## valis

you got newatlas, i got gizmodo.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Asks: Will We Know Life When We See It?



> In the last decade, we have discovered thousands of planets outside our solar system and have learned that rocky, temperate worlds are numerous in our galaxy. The next step will involve asking even bigger questions. Could some of these planets host life? And if so, will we be able to recognize life elsewhere if we see it?


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> NASA Asks: Will We Know Life When We See It?


a possible answer?


----------



## ekim68

Oh Man, I want to see this at Work...


NASA Again Delays Launch of Troubled Webb Telescope; Cost Estimate Rises to $9.7 Billion


----------



## ekim68

Robot with artificial intelligence about to invade space



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - A robot with true artificial intelligence is about to invade space.
> 
> The large, round, plastic robot head is part of SpaceX's latest supply delivery to the International Space Station.
> 
> Friday's pre-dawn liftoff also includes two sets of genetically identical female mice, 20 mousestronauts that will pick up where NASA's identical twin brother astronauts left off a few years ago. Super-caffeinated coffee is also flying up for the space station's java-craving crew.


----------



## ekim68

Interstellar visitor 'Oumuamua's trajectory suggests it's not an asteroid after all




> 'Oumuamua





> is one fascinating rock. The 400-meter-long (1,300-ft) cigar-shaped object is the first interstellar visitor ever detected passing through our Solar System, and while it was originally classed as an asteroid after its discovery, astronomers have now updated the label. 'Oumuamua, it turns out, is a comet after all, but it's unlike any other known comet.


----------



## ekim68

NASA uploads hundreds of historic experimental flight videos to YouTube



> Fans of experimental aircraft from the 20th century are in for a treat. NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center has begun uploading its entire historical archive to YouTube, making hundreds of videos highlighting different test flights and strange planes from the past 70 years easily accessible.


----------



## valis

well, so much for my freetime this weekend.  Nice find Mike.


----------



## ekim68

Precipitation explains Mars' fluvial patterns, astronomers claim



> June 28 (UPI) -- A variety of geological patterns on Mars suggests the Red Planet once hosted water. Several of these patterns recall the fluvial steam networks found on Earth.
> 
> While most scientists agree on Mars' watery past, planetary scientists are less sure about where the water came from.
> 
> Some have suggested volcanic activity melted subsurface ice, forming Martian streams and rivers. But new research suggests precipitation better explains the Red Planet's fluvial patterns.


----------



## ekim68

And so it begins..


The Quest to Find Nuclear Fuel on the Moon



> India's space program wants to go where no nation has gone before -- to the south side of the moon. And once it gets there, it will study the potential for mining a source of waste-free nuclear energy that could be worth trillions of dollars.
> 
> The nation's equivalent of NASA will launch a rover in October to explore virgin territory on the lunar surface and analyze crust samples for signs of water and helium-3. That isotope is limited on Earth yet so abundant on the moon that it theoretically could meet global energy demands for 250 years if harnessed.


----------



## valis

Didnt Heinlein or Asimov go over this already? If I recall it doesnt end well.


----------



## ekim68

It's Official: Astronomers Caught The First-Ever Direct Picture of a Planet Being Born



> For the very first time, astronomers have captured an image of a baby planet as it carves a path through the disc of dust that surrounds its star, an orange dwarf 113.4 parsecs (370 light-years) away from Earth.
> 
> The star is called PDS 70, and astronomers have long suspected the existence of the planet in orbit around it. They have named the newly discovered companion PDS 70b.


----------



## ekim68

ISRO conducts first escape test for India's manned mision to space



> On Thursday morning, Isro took the first, small but significant step towards realising human space flight by successfully conducting a test of the Crew Escape System that provides an escape mechanism for astronauts if the launch operation is aborted.
> 
> "This is one of the critical technologies for a future human space programme," said K. Sivan, chairman of Isro.
> 
> "When you are flying with the humans, if there is something wrong during the launch, this will help them escape to a safe place."


----------



## ekim68

ESA to test fire largest-ever solid rocket motor



> July 9 (UPI) -- Engineers with the European Space Agency are preparing to test fire the P120C rocket motor, the largest solid rocket motor ever built.
> 
> The motor will be erected in the test stand and fired for the first time at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
> 
> P120C is 44 feet tall and has a diameter of 11 feet. The massive rocket is slated to power the Vega-C and Ariane 6 rockets. Vega-C is scheduled to launch next year, while Ariane 6 will blast-off in 2020. Both next-generation rockets will handle satellite-launching duties for ESA.


----------



## ekim68

Rare double asteroid scoots by Earth



> Findings from three major world observatories confirm that a very rare binary asteroid came within a cosmic whisker of Earth on June 21, 2017. The near-Earth asteroid 2017 YE5 (actually two asteroids 3,000 ft in diameter orbiting one another) passed within 3.7 million miles of our planet for the first time in 170 years before heading out into deep space.


----------



## ekim68

Fermi Telescope locates extragalactic source of "ghost particles"



> About 3.7 billion years ago, when life was just beginning to take hold on this planet, a neutrino was thrown out of a blazar and launched towards Earth - and it just landed. The ghostly particle was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica and traced back to its distant point of origin with NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, helping to confirm the most distant source of neutrinos ever identified.


----------



## ekim68

Largest radio telescope on Earth switched on in China



> China is one step closer to leading the search for alien radio signals. On Sunday the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced that the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) has begun operations. FAST takes over the title of world's largest radio telescope from the 305-meter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.


----------



## ekim68

MeerKAT radio telescope inaugurated in South Africa - reveals clearest view yet of centre of the Milky Way



> Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr David Mabuza, today officially inaugurated the MeerKAT radio telescope. After a decade in design and construction, this project of South Africa's Department of Science and Technology has now begun science operations. At the launch event, a panorama obtained with the new telescope was unveiled that reveals extraordinary detail in the region surrounding the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter - one on collision course with the others



> One of a dozen new moons discovered around Jupiter is circling the planet on a suicide orbit that will inevitably lead to its violent destruction, astronomers say.
> 
> Researchers in the US stumbled upon the new moons while hunting for a mysterious ninth planet that is postulated to lurk far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system.





> Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, was hardly short of moons before the latest findings. The fresh haul of natural satellites brings the total number of Jovian moons to 79, more than are known to circle any other planet in our cosmic neighbourhood.


----------



## ekim68

Blue Origin successfully lands both booster and crew capsule after test launch



> Today, at its Texas launch facility, Blue Origin  performed its most critical test to date. It performed a live separation test of its crew capsule from the rocket booster and everything performed as expected. The crew capsule fired its escape motor at the right time, sending the capsule higher than it ever has gone before. This successful test is a huge milestone for Jeff Bezos' rocket company, which previously stated that if the test went well it could put the rocket company in position to become operational by the end of the year.


----------



## valis

pretty solid post at gizmodo today....https://gizmodo.com/some-of-the-most-spectacular-astronomy-images-of-2018-1827695259


----------



## RT

^
Beautiful, mesmerizing stuff there.
Appreciate that link Tim


----------



## ekim68

Nice Tim. I especially like the one with the Thunderstorm... :up:


----------



## RT

Yup Mike, me too.


----------



## ekim68

More good stuff...


Seeing Titan with Infrared Eyes



> These six infrared images of Saturn's moon Titan represent some of the clearest, most seamless-looking global views of the icy moon's surface produced so far. The views were created using 13 years of data acquired by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The images are the result of a focused effort to smoothly combine data from the multitude of different observations VIMS made under a wide variety of lighting and viewing conditions over the course of Cassini's mission.


----------



## ekim68

Where's my wallet? 


Neil Armstrong's collection of space artifacts goes up for auction



> The first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, took several items with him on that historic trip, including a US flag, a United Nations flag, state flags and several medallions that were only available to NASA astronauts. He also apparently kept the original camera that recorded his moonwalk in a closet. Now, Armstrong's personal collection will be offered for sale in a series of auctions starting November 1st and 2nd in his home state of Ohio. Bids can be offered online, by phone or in person.


----------



## ekim68

One of my favorite Satellites... 

Hubble


----------



## ekim68

Huge lake of liquid water found on Mars



> A huge lake of liquid water has been found on Mars. The groundbreaking discovery comes after years of evidence of the Red Planet's watery past and icy present, but this is the first time a significant amount of the life-giving liquid has been detected. Discovered through satellite radar readings, the lake lies beneath the ice caps at the south pole of Mars, and has profound implications for future missions and the search for extraterrestrial life.


----------



## ekim68

Two big rockets launched early Wednesday-then one landed in high seas



> 8am ET Wednesday update: Both rockets hit their instantaneous launch windows on Wednesday morning, with the Ariane 5 booster lifting off from Kourou, French Guiana under mostly sunny skies and the Falcon 9 rocket ascending from California through a thick fog layer. The upper stages of both rockets are now in their coast phases before deployment of their satellite payloads.
> 
> After the launches, attention turned toward SpaceX's attempt to recover its first stage and payload fairing. The atmosphere offshore, where the _Just Read the Instructions_ droneship was stationed 235km away from the launch pad, had high wind shear. This means wind speeds and directions varied at different altitudes, making it a challenge to come back to the ground in a more or less straight path. This, combined with high seas, made for the "worst" conditions SpaceX has ever tried to land a rocket in, said launch commentator John Insprucker.
> 
> The cameras on board didn't capture the landing clearly, but afterward SpaceX said the rocket did, in fact, make a safe landing on the droneship. Less certain was the fate of the payload fairing amid the poor weather conditions. "This is an experimental attempt; we're still learning how to catch a fairing out of the air," Insprucker said.


----------



## ekim68

More mysteries of metallic hydrogen



> Metallic hydrogen is one of the rarest materials on Earth, yet more than 80 percent of planets -- including Jupiter, Saturn, and hundreds of extrasolar planets -- are composed of this exotic form of matter.
> 
> Its abundance in our solar system -- despite its rarity on Earth -- makes metallic hydrogen an intriguing focus for researchers at the University of Rochester's Laboratory of Laser Energetics (LLE) who study planet formation and evolution, including how planets both inside and outside our solar system form magnetic shields.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Galactic breaks Mach 2.4 and powers into the mesosphere



> Virgin Galactic's manned spaceplane has hit another milestone, breaking Mach 2 as it roared into the mesosphere. With test pilots Dave Mackay and Mike "Sooch" Masucci at the controls, VSS Unity was released from the mothership VMS Eve at an altitude of 46,500 ft (14,200 m) before firing its hybrid rocket engine for 42 seconds to power it to 170,800 ft (32.3 mi, 52 km) and a speed of Mach 2.47 (1,832 mph, 2,948 km/h).



[/URL]


----------



## ekim68

We won't be able to see the eclipse from our town but you can watch it here.. 

NASA


----------



## ekim68

And he continues to amaze me...


Einstein theory passes black hole test



> The black hole at the centre of our galaxy has helped astronomers confirm a key prediction of Albert Einstein's ideas.
> 
> By observing a cluster of stars near the hole, they were able to confirm a phenomenon known as "gravitational redshift".
> 
> It's when the wavelength of light gets stretched out in response to a gravitational field.


----------



## ekim68

Launch date set for BepiColombo Mercury mission



> An official launch date has been set for the long-planned BepiColombo mission to Mercury. Consisting of three conjoined unmanned spacecraft, the joint ESA/JAXA deep space probe will lift off atop an Ariane 5 rocket from the ESA Spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana on October 18, 2018 to begin its seven-year voyage to the innermost planet of the Solar System.
> 
> BepiColombo is actually three spacecraft arranged in what ESA calls a composite "stack". The basis is the Mercury Transfer Module, which contains four QinetiQ T6 ion thrusters. Powered by solar panels, this will allow the spacecraft to carry out complex orbital maneuvers as it makes a series of nine flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury itself to place the modules in their final orbits around the smallest planet in our system. The first flyby of Mercury will take place three years after launch.


----------



## ekim68

Saturn and Mars Team Up to Make Their Closest Approaches to Earth in 2018


----------



## ekim68

The World's Only Homemade Spacesuit Is About To Get Its First Life-or-Death Test



> In a few months, Smith and the small team of volunteers that comprise Pacific Spaceflight will travel to an undisclosed location on the West Coast where Smith will don a homemade spacesuit and attempt to pilot a hot air balloon to over 60,000 feet. Beyond this altitude - known as the Armstrong Limit - pressurized enclosures are necessary to prevent exposed body fluids, such as the moisture on your eyes or tongue, from literally boiling away. Direct exposure to the atmosphere above the Armstrong Limit results in a quick and painful death.
> 
> Smith's flight to altitude will be his pressure suit's first survival test. It's the culmination of a nearly decade-long endeavor to design and build a functioning, low-cost spacesuit.


----------



## ekim68

NASA names top 5 in latest stage of 3D-printed Mars habitat competition



> NASA's 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, which kicked off in 2015, is now well into its third and final phase. The latest stage has awarded five teams a share of US$100,000 in prize money for the best virtual models ahead of the hard part, 3D-printing scale models of their designs.
> 
> The multi-phase competition challenges designers and engineers to come up with a Mars habitat that can be swiftly 3D-printed using local materials. Prior phases of the competition concentrated on creative architectural renderings and initial development of material or structural components.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's TESS Spacecraft Starts Science Operations



> NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has started its search for planets around nearby stars, officially beginning science operations on July 25, 2018. TESS is expected to transmit its first series of science data back to Earth in August, and thereafter periodically every 13.5 days, once per orbit, as the spacecraft makes it closest approach to Earth. The TESS Science Team will begin searching the data for new planets immediately after the first series arrives.
> 
> "I'm thrilled that our new planet hunter mission is ready to start scouring our solar system's neighborhood for new worlds," said Paul Hertz, NASA Astrophysics division director at Headquarters, Washington. "Now that we know there are more planets than stars in our universe, I look forward to the strange, fantastic worlds we're bound to discover."


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/nasas-sun-probe-set-to-launch-next-week-on-its-journey-1828053654']NASA's Sun Probe Set to Launch Next Week[/URL]



> Next week, NASA is scheduled to send human technology closer to a star than ever before. What they learn could change our understanding of, well, the whole galaxy.
> 
> The Parker Solar Probe is a mission set to orbit the Sun at just 3.8 million miles. Compare that to Earth's average distance of 93 million miles, or Mercury's average distance of 36 million miles. The spacecraft will need to shield itself from temperatures as high as 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit in order to find answers to the many questions scientists still have about our Sun and stars in general.


----------



## ekim68

Aren't Telescopes Great....


Time-delayed "rerun" of 1840s supernova suggests a long-dead sibling star



> In the 1830s and 40s, astronomers and even casual stargazers noticed that the star Eta Carinae was brightening, quickly becoming the second brightest star in the night sky. At a glance it seemed like the star had gone supernova, but it strangely survived the explosion. Thanks to the weirdness of space, modern astronomers have gotten the chance to travel back in time to witness the event, and discovered that Eta Carinae's outburst may have been the star violently cannibalizing a sibling.
> 
> Today, Eta Carinae still bears the scars from that explosion, in the form of a cloud of debris surrounding it that's known as the Homunculous Nebula (of which you can 3D print a model, if you're so inclined). We now also know that Eta Carinae is a binary system, made up of a large, unusual star and a smaller, hotter partner.


----------



## ekim68

Iconic Planet-Hunting Kepler Telescope Wakes Up, Phones Home

The Kepler space telescope isn't dead yet.



> Kepler, which has discovered about 70 percent of the 3,800 known exoplanets to date, woke up from a four-week hibernation yesterday (Aug. 2) and has begun beaming data home, just as planned, NASA officials announced today (Aug. 3).
> 
> Kepler had been sleeping in an attempt to save thruster fuel, which is running very low. Mission team members wanted to make sure the spacecraft had enough propellant left to orient its antenna toward Earth for yesterday's data dump.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers measure fastest non-lethal stellar blast in history



> Aug. 2 (UPI) -- New measurements of Eta Carinae suggest the star system produced the fastest non-lethal stellar blast in history.
> 
> Though the famed binary star system Eta Carinae exploded 170 years ago, scientists are still able to study the blast by measuring its light echoes. Light echoes are produced by light energy produced by stellar events bounce off and become redirected by distant gas clouds.


----------



## ekim68

Oldest volcanic meteorite dates back to the dawn of the solar system



> The asteroids that are whizzing around our little corner of space are basically the crumbs left over from the formation of the solar system, and that means they have a lot to tell us about those early years. Now, scientists have studied a particularly weird space rock and found that it's the oldest known igneous meteorite, dating back to one of the very first volcanic eruptions in the solar system.
> 
> About 4.568 billion years ago, the Sun burst into being, surrounded by a dusty, gassy disk that would eventually clump together to form planets and moons. But the ones we know today didn't just spring up at that stage - they all formed slowly over millions of years, as protoplanets were born and died, smashing together to create larger planets and splintering off to make moons. The leftovers gathered into the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune.


----------



## ekim68

Most distant radio galaxy discovered beams signals from 12 billion light-years away



> An international team of astronomers has detected the most distant radio galaxy ever observed. By measuring the redshift of its light, the researchers determined that the object is about 12 billion light-years away, which dates it back to when the universe itself was just a kid.


----------



## ekim68

(Going on right now.)


Perseids



> The Perseids, which peak during mid-August, are considered the best meteor shower of the year. With very fast and bright meteors, Perseids frequently leave long "wakes" of light and color behind them as they streak through Earth's atmosphere. The Perseids are one of the most plentiful showers (50-100 meteors seen per hour) and occur with warm summer nighttime weather, allowing sky watchers to easily view them.


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid Arrival! Japanese Probe Reaches 'Spinning-Top' Space Rock Ryugu



> The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 has successfully rendezvoused with Ryugu, beginning an 18-month stay at the diamond-shaped asteroid.
> 
> Launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, in 2014, the probe will poke, prod and even impact the asteroid, deploying a small lander and three rovers. It will then blast an artificial crater to analyze material below the asteroid's surface. After that, the probe will head back to Earth, arriving near the end of 2020 with samples in tow.


----------



## ekim68

NASA launches Parker Solar Probe in mission to 'touch' the Sun



> After a few delays, the Sun-chasing Parker Solar Probe is on its way. NASA launched the spacecraft aboard a ULA Delta IV Heavy rocket at 3:31AM Eastern this morning (August 12th) and confirmed that the vessel was healthy at 5:33AM. The probe still has a ways to go before it's conducting scientific studies. It'll spend its first week in space deploying its high-gain antenna, the first part of its electric field antennas and its magnetometer. In early September, the probe will start a roughly four-week instrument shakedown to be sure it's ready for science gathering.
> 
> The trip to the Sun will take a while. NASA's probe will pass by Venus a total of seven times (starting in early October) as it uses the planet's gravity to whip itself ever closer to the star. The spacecraft will make its first close approach in early November, when it will travel 15 million miles from the Sun -- inside the Sun's corona (aka the solar atmosphere). Its closest approach will put it at just 3.8 million miles from the Sun, at which point it should be the fastest-ever human-made object with a speed of 430,000MPH. The first science data should return sometime in December.


----------



## ekim68

(Science is busy these days..) 


New Horizons probe spots possible wall of hydrogen at the edge of the solar system



> Aug. 10 (UPI) -- New Horizons' data suggests a wall of hydrogen marks the edge of the solar system, where the sun's solar winds peter out, no longer able to push back interstellar winds.
> 
> As these two opposing winds butt up against each other, scientists believe hydrogen accumulates in a wall-like structure.
> 
> "We're seeing the threshold between being in the solar neighborhood and being in the galaxy," Leslie Young, astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, told ScienceNews.


----------



## ekim68

It's Surprisingly Hard to Go to the Sun



> The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass in our solar system. Its gravitational pull is what keeps everything here, from tiny Mercury to the gas giants to the Oort Cloud, 186 _billion_ miles away. But even though the Sun has such a powerful pull, it's surprisingly hard to actually go to the Sun: It takes 55 times more energy to go to the Sun than it does to go to Mars.


----------



## ekim68

Record-Breaking Signal May Help Solve the Mystery of Fast Radio Bursts



> A new telescope has revealed an important clue in the hunt for the astrophysical sources of powerful, enigmatic radio bursts. Canada's Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), inaugurated last fall at a remote site in British Columbia, has spotted a new burst at a lower frequency than any previous detections. The new discovery should provide insight into the elusive origins of the strange bright signals, and augurs a dawning era in which they will be found and studied by the thousands.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists measure energy difference between two quantum states



> Aug. 14 (UPI) -- A physicist in New Zealand has measured the energy difference between two quantum states in a helium atom.
> 
> The measurement, made with unprecedented accuracy, could advance scientists' understanding of space-time, the cosmos and its many mysterious phenomena.
> 
> Scientists achieved the feat while analyzing helium atoms, the second simplest element after hydrogen. After trapping and cooling helium gas, scientists measured a helium atom's quantum jump -- its transition between two energy states -- using a super-stable, ultra-precise laser.


----------



## valis

this is amazing.....https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-directly-detect-iron-and-titanium-on-an-exo-1828356086


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> this is amazing.....https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-directly-detect-iron-and-titanium-on-an-exo-1828356086


And this from the article:



> Scientists directly observed the signal of iron and titanium atoms in the atmosphere of an exoplanet 600 light-years from Earth, a new paper reports.
> 
> KELT-9b is a planet entirely alien to our own Solar System-it's 2.88 times the mass of Jupiter, with a year lasting just 1.5 Earth days and temperatures over 4,000 Kelvin (6,740 Fahrenheit). It's the hottest known exoplanet, and the site of the first exoplanetary observation of iron and titanium atoms. It's a stepping stone that will help astronomers one day characterize the atmospheres of more hospitable planets.


----------



## ekim68

Indian will take national flag to space on board Gaganyaan by 2022, says PM Narendra Modi in Independence Day speech



> Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day address on Wednesday announced that India would send a manned mission to space by 2022 on board Gaganyaan when the country completes 75 years of independence.
> 
> "I happy to announce that India has decided by 2022, when India celebrates its 75th year of Independence, or before, an India - could be a boy or a girl - will go to space with the tricolour in their hand," said PM Narendra Modi.


----------



## ekim68

ESA astronaut controls humanoid robot from space station



> An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) took a stroll around the Earth by proxy today, thanks to a new robotics system. A little after 11:30 am CEST (09:30 GMT), ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst took remote command of the humanoid robot Rollin' Justin at the DLR German Aerospace Center establishment in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. It was a two-hour test of the latest technology that will allow future expedition crews to explore other planets while remaining in orbit about them.


----------



## ekim68

A gallery of pictures of Earth from the ISS.. 

Earth from Space


----------



## valis

wow....


----------



## ekim68

After decades of work, scientists found direct evidence of ice on the Moon



> The idea that there was ice on the Moon tantalized astronomers for years, even before NASA's Apollo mission to send astronauts to the lunar surface began. When the NASA spacecraft _Clementine _brought sent back data that hinted at the possibility that there was ice on the surface of the Moon in 1994, it stirred excitement once again. The trouble was, the measurements recorded weren't definitive.
> 
> Since then, scientists have been plugging along for proof of lunar surface ice. Today (Aug. 20), a team of scientists led by researchers at the University of Hawaii found the first direct evidence of frozen water on the Moon's poles (paywall). The discovery is based on data gathered by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a NASA instrument that flew to the Moon back in 2008.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's asteroid-hunting spacecraft starts to swoop in on Bennu



> The lengthy two-year journey of NASA's OSIRIS-REx toward the asteroid Bennu has entered its final leg, with the unmanned probe officially beginning the approach phase of its mission. This will see it slowly close in on the chunk of space rock, snapping its first direct images along they way before snatching a sample for scientists to study here on Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Quasars may prove quantum entanglement - or a 12 billion-year-old conspiracy




> Quantum entanglement





> - the idea that two particles can remain inextricably linked across vast distances - is an eerie concept that Einstein himself had trouble accepting, and yet over the past few decades it's been experimentally demonstrated time and time again. But are there other variables involved that we simply don't understand yet? To find out, MIT researchers have now performed an experiment that provides the strongest evidence so far of either quantum entanglement, or a "conspiracy" that dates back over 12 billion years.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's new lasers to reveal polar ice changes down to the width of a pencil



> Ice coverage at the Earth's polar regions provides scientists with a crude but clear window into a changing climate, and they will soon be able to observe its shifts with unprecedented detail. NASA is preparing to launch a new tool into orbit that will bounce lasers off polar ice to finely monitor elevation changes over time, providing new insights into not only the severity of climate change, but how it is directly impacting sea level rise.


----------



## ekim68

NASA releases 19,000 hours of audio from historic Apollo 11 mission



> The back-and-forth between astronauts and mission control seldom gets much attention. But now that NASA and the University of Texas, Dallas have digitized 19,000 hours of recordings from the historic Apollo 11 mission, we can listen in on some of the most remarkable examples of the teamwork between astronauts and their ground-based colleagues.


----------



## ekim68

A video.. 


15 Years in Space: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope


----------



## ekim68

CERN's pioneering mini-accelerator passes first test



> An experiment at CERN has demonstrated a new way of accelerating electrons to high energies - one that could dramatically shrink the size of future particle accelerators and lower their costs.
> 
> The technique is the latest entrant in a hot race to develop a technology called plasma wakefield acceleration. The method uses waves in plasma, a soup of ionized atoms, to push electrons to ever-higher energies over distances much shorter than those required in today's particle accelerators. Several laboratories have demonstrated plasma wakefield acceleration using two different approaches; most teams use laser beams to create the plasma waves needed. The latest work is the first to show that protons can also induce the waves and achieve electron acceleration - a technique that may have advantages over the others because protons can carry high energies over long distances.


----------



## ekim68

Real time stuff....


Astronauts repairing air leak on International Space Station



> Aug. 30 (UPI) -- Astronauts are working to repair an air leak discovered on the International Space Station.
> 
> The leak -- which NASA characterized as "tiny" in a mission update -- was discovered Wednesday night inside the Russian module.
> 
> Sensors alerted flight controllers to a small loss of cabin pressure overnight, as the Expedition 56 crew slept. Because the crew nor space station were in immediate danger, flight controllers decided not to wake the six space station crew members.


----------



## ekim68

Successful testing gives NASA's Advanced Electric Propulsion System a boost



> The next-generation ion engine that may one day send American astronauts to Mars has passed a major milestone. Working in coordination with NASA engineers from Glenn Research and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Aerojet Rocketdyne says it has completed its early systems integration test of the Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) 13-kW Hall thruster that is it building for NASA, clearing the way for further development.
> 
> The next-generation ion engine that may one day send American astronauts to Mars has passed a major milestone. Working in coordination with NASA engineers from Glenn Research and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Aerojet Rocketdyne says it has completed its early systems integration test of the Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) 13-kW Hall thruster that is it building for NASA, clearing the way for further development.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists study single molecules with terahertz spectroscopy for the first time



> Sept. 4 (UPI) -- For the first time, scientists have used terahertz spectroscopy to study a single molecule.
> 
> Spectroscopy is the study of the interactions between light and matter. Most frequently, scientists use infrared light or X-rays to investigate atomic and molecular worlds.


----------



## ekim68

Cassini data reveals hexagonal vortex rising above Saturn's clouds



> Sept. 4 (UPI) -- Newly analyzed data collected during the Cassini mission has revealed a hexagon-shaped vortex rising above Saturn's clouds. The vortex boasts the same shape as a similar vortex found deep within Saturn's atmosphere.
> 
> "While we did expect to see a vortex of some kind at Saturn's north pole as it grew warmer, its shape is really surprising," Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester said in a news release. "Either a hexagon has spawned spontaneously and identically at two different altitudes, one lower in the clouds and one high in the stratosphere, or the hexagon is in fact a towering structure spanning a vertical range of several hundred kilometers."


----------



## ekim68

Last gasp? NASA fires up fading Kepler telescope for Campaign 19



> Although the science mission of its successor, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is now underway, NASA isn't done with the Kepler Space Telescope just yet. Its scientists have awoken the deep space probe to gather scientific data yet again, though with an unknown amount of fuel and a compromised performance, there's no telling how successful the venture will be.
> 
> Launched in March of 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope has already gone far beyond what anybody expected of it. The original mission was slated for a three-and-a-half-year duration and has since been extended multiple times.


----------



## ekim68

Here we go again.. 


Pluto should be reclassified as a planet, experts say



> In 2006, the International Astronomical Union, a global group of astronomy experts, established a definition of a planet that required it to "clear" its orbit, or in other words, be the largest gravitational force in its orbit.
> 
> Since Neptune's gravity influences its neighboring planet Pluto, and Pluto shares its orbit with frozen gases and objects in the Kuiper belt, that meant Pluto was out of planet status. However, in a new study published online Wednesday in the journal _Icarus_, UCF planetary scientist Philip Metzger, who is with the university's Florida Space Institute, reported that this standard for classifying planets is not supported in the research literature.


----------



## ekim68

Mosaic showcases Ceres' brightest bright spot



> Sept. 7 (UPI) -- A new mosaic image shared Friday by NASA showcases one of Ceres' bright spots.
> 
> The dwarf planet's bright spots were first discovered and photographed in 2015. In the time since, high resolution images have offered scientists clearer and clearer views of the bright spots.
> 
> Ceres' brightest spot is located on a feature called Cerealia Facula, found in the Occator Crater. The latest mosaic combines several photographs of the feature, some from altitudes as low as 22 miles above the dwarf planet's surface.


----------



## ekim68

Mysterious 'lunar swirls' point to moon's volcanic, magnetic past



> The mystery behind lunar swirls, one of the solar system's most beautiful optical anomalies, may finally be solved thanks to a joint Rutgers University and University of California Berkeley study.
> 
> The solution hints at the dynamism of the moon's ancient past as a place with volcanic activity and an internally generated magnetic field. It also challenges our picture of the moon's existing geology.
> 
> Lunar swirls resemble bright, snaky clouds painted on the moon's dark surface. The most famous, called Reiner Gamma, is about 40 miles long and popular with backyard astronomers. Most lunar swirls share their locations with powerful, localized magnetic fields. The bright-and-dark patterns may result when those magnetic fields deflect particles from the solar wind and cause some parts of the lunar surface to weather more slowly.


----------



## ekim68

EPFL plan outlines how to build a Mars colony



> If you're going to set up a colony on Mars, it's a good idea to have a plan, and scientists from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have put one together. The team's step-by-step strategy involves setting up a long-term manned outpost at one of the Martian poles that could later be expanded into a permanent colony.


----------



## ekim68

River basin provides evidence of ancient ocean on Mars



> Sept. 14 (UPI) -- Mars was once home to a giant ocean, new research suggests.
> 
> New analysis of the recently discovered river basin Hypanis Valles, the largest on Mars, suggests the presence a giant alluvial plain.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers Have Found the Universe's Missing Matter



> Now, in a series of three recent papers, astronomers have identified the final chunks of all the ordinary matter in the universe. (They are still deeply perplexed as to what makes up dark matter.) And despite the fact that it took so long to identify it all, researchers spotted it right where they had expected it to be all along: in extensive tendrils of hot gas that span the otherwise empty chasms between galaxies, more properly known as the warm-hot intergalactic medium, or WHIM.


----------



## ekim68

When I was Young I thought that some day I would go into Space and it would be a regular thing.. 


SpaceX will send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to the Moon



> This evening, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed that Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire and founder of Japan's largest online clothing retailer site Zozotown, will be the first private customer to ride around the Moon on the company's future massive rocket, the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR). He plans to fly on the trip as early as 2023, and he wants to turn the entire ride into an art project called #dearMoon. A website for the mission went live after the announcement.


----------



## ekim68

Ice volcanoes have likely been erupting for billions of years on Ceres



> All of the bodies in our Solar System started out hot, with energy built up by their gravitational collapse and subsequent bombardment. Radioactivity then contributed further heating. For a planet like Earth, that has kept the interior hot enough to sustain plate tectonics. Smaller bodies like Mars and the Moon, however, have cooled and gone geologically silent. That set the expectations for the dwarf planets, which were thought to be cold and dead.
> 
> Pluto, however, turned out to be anything but. It turns out that water and nitrogen ices need far less energy input to participate in active geology, and radioactive decay and sporadic collisions seem to be enough to sustain it. Which brings us to Ceres, a dwarf planet that is the largest body in the asteroid belt. The Dawn spacecraft identified an unusual peak called Ahuna Mons that some have suggested is a cryovolcano, erupting viscous water ice. But why would Ceres only have enough energy to support a single volcano?
> 
> A new paper suggests it doesn't. Instead, there may be more than two dozen cryovolcanoes on Ceres' surface.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble uncovers never-before-seen features around a neutron star



> An unusual infrared light emission from a nearby neutron star detected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope could indicate new features never before seen. One possibility is that there is a dusty disk surrounding the neutron star; another is that there is an energetic wind coming off the object and slamming into gas in interstellar space the neutron star is plowing through.
> 
> Although neutron stars are generally studied in radio and high-energy emissions, such as X-rays, this study demonstrates that new and interesting information about neutron stars can also be gained by studying them in infrared light, say researchers.[/url]


----------



## 2twenty2

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...ind-super-earth-in-star-system-from-star-trek



> Scientists Find 'Super-Earth' In Star System From 'Star Trek'
> Like Spock's home world Vulcan, this newly discovered exoplanet orbits the 40 Eridani triple star system.


----------



## ekim68

How Breakthrough Listen Trained AI to Spot Elusive, Mysterious Radio Bursts



> To date, radio astronomers have cataloged fewer than 300 fast radio bursts, mysterious broadband radio signals that originate from well beyond the Milky Way. Almost a third of them-72, to be precise-were not detected by astronomers at all but instead were recently discovered by an artificial intelligence (AI) program trained to spot their telltale signals, even hidden underneath noisy background data.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Solar Parker Probe snaps first image on its way to "touch the Sun"



> Following a successful launch last month that set it on a path to rendezvous with the Sun, NASA's Solar Parker Probe has fired up its scientific instruments for the first time. This first-light data from the star-bound spacecraft demonstrates that all is in working order as it hurtles away from Earth, and offers a taste of what to expect when it enters the Sun's orbit later in the year.


----------



## ekim68

Hayabusa 2 probe drops two robotic landers on asteroid Ryugu



> Sept. 21 (UPI) -- Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has released its two miniature robotic landers toward the target asteroid Ryugu.
> 
> If the landing is successful, the miniature spacecraft, which can hop around, will use their cameras and instruments, including temperature and optical sensors, to observe Ryugu.
> 
> "They will become the first ever mobile robots to conduct observations on an asteroid," according to Japanese newspaper The Mainichi.
> 
> Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, confirmed the release of the two landers, MINERVA-II1A and MINERVA-II1B, on Twitter. The agency is waiting on data and images to confirm the craft landed safely.


----------



## valis

that we, as a species, did this just astounds me.

Then I remember Trump and get depressed again.


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## ekim68

I've always been fascinated by the stars. When I was much younger I thought I was going to the stars, too. Alas I grew too old for the start of space travel..

Don't get depressed Tim... Pick up a guitar and I'll give you some lessons..


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> Hayabusa 2 probe drops two robotic landers on asteroid Ryugu


More on this:


They Made It! Japan's Two Hopping Rovers Successfully Land on Asteroid Ryugu



> The suspense is over: Two tiny hopping robots have successfully landed on an asteroid called Ryugu - and they've even sent back some wild postcards from their new home.


----------



## ekim68

Sprayable antennas turn surfaces into ultra-thin, transparent transmitters



> If a device connects wirelessly to other things, chances are high that it has an antenna in it. But as crucial as these components are, the rigid metals they're made of can limit what devices they can be built into. To help with that, researchers at Drexel University have developed a new kind of antenna that can be sprayed onto just about any surface.
> 
> The antenna is made up of an incredibly thin, metallic material known as "MXene" (pronounced "Maxine"). This stuff is a two-dimensional form of titanium carbide that's highly conductive, which allows it to transmit and direct radio waves.


----------



## ekim68

MAVEN probe celebrates 4th birthday with selfie



> Sept. 24 (UPI) -- NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has been in orbit around Mars for four years. To celebrate its birthday, the probe snapped a selfie using its array of instruments.
> 
> The selfie, shared by NASA over the weekend, is a composite image. Each of MAVEN's instruments measured the sun's ultraviolet rays reflecting off the spacecraft's different components. Scientists at the University of Colorado, Boulder, compiled the observations to produce a rendering of the probe.


----------



## ekim68

Moon is Stepping Stone, Not Alternative to Mars, NASA Chief Says



> The moon has not superseded Mars as a human-spaceflight target, despite NASA's current focus on getting astronauts to Earth's nearest neighbor, agency officials stressed.


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre Particles Keep Flying Out of Antarctica's Ice, and They Might Shatter Modern Physics



> There's something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it.
> 
> Physicists don't know what it is exactly. But they do know it's some sort of cosmic ray - a high-energy particle that's blasted its way through space, into the Earth, and back out again. But the particles physicists know about - the collection of particles that make up what scientists call the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics - shouldn't be able to do that. Sure, there are low-energy neutrinos that can pierce through miles upon miles of rock unaffected. But high-energy neutrinos, as well as other high-energy particles, have "large cross-sections." That means that they'll almost always crash into something soon after zipping into the Earth and never make it out the other side.


----------



## ekim68

Hunting alien planets and protecting Earth from asteroids: Five ways NASA is using AI



> It isn't just people who are wrestling with the big questions about the cosmos.
> 
> At NASA's Frontier Development Lab (FDL), researchers are using machine learning to explore whether life could exist on other planets, how to defend Earth from asteroids, and how to spot pristine meteorites on our planet's surface.
> 
> The FDL is an applied AI research accelerator hosted by the SETI Institute in partnership with NASA Ames Research Center. The lab focuses on how AI can tackle some of the hardest problems in space science, and brings together researchers from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and academia with those from Google, IBM, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Nvidia and various other companies.


----------



## valis

'Goblin' Solar System object.....Planet X?

https://gizmodo.com/discovery-of-goblin-solar-system-object-bolsters-the-ca-1829459509


----------



## ekim68

Great article Tim. The ways that Scientists find and measure these things is fantastic. The More we learn, the More we learn.. :up:


----------



## valis

yeah, that just boggles my mind that they even FOUND that.


----------



## ekim68

DARPA Is Researching Quantized Inertia, a Theory Many Think Is Pseudoscience



> The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded a $1.3 million contract to an international team of researchers to study quantized inertia, a controversial theory that some physicists dismiss as pseudoscience.
> 
> Quantized inertia (QI) is an alternative theory of inertia, a property of matter that describes an object's resistance to acceleration. QI was first proposed by University of Plymouth physicist Mike McCulloch in 2007, but it is still considered a fringe theory by many, if not most, physicists today. McCulloch has used the theory to explain galactic rotation speeds without the need for dark matter, but he believes it may one day provide the foundation for launching space vehicles without fuel.


----------



## ekim68

Hayabusa-2 drops another lander on the surface of Ryugu



> Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Hayabusa-2, Japan's asteroid-orbiting probe, has put another miniature lander on the surface of Ryugu.





> MASCOT is outfitted with a small infrared spectroscopic microscope, designed to analyze the composition of Ryugu's surface. MASCOT also boasts a thermal radiometer to measure electromagnetic radiation and magnetometer to detect magnetic fields.
> 
> Like the two MINERVA-II1 rovers dropped to Ryugu last month, MASCOT has a hopping function to help it move across the asteroid. It can also hop to reorient itself, so its communication antenna is facing Hayabusa-2.


----------



## ekim68

Study to explore viability of robot-built space outposts made from debris



> There's a lot of perfectly good space junk floating around up there, such as the upper stages of spent rockets. NanoRacks, a company dedicated to democratizing low-earth orbit by supporting innovations like cheap, easily deployed CubeSats, wants to use those in-space structures to build habitats known as Outposts. The Outposts could prove to be crucial infrastructure for commercial space travel and exploration.
> 
> Naturally, the heavy lifting -- er, weightless shifting -- will fall to robots.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers Created 'Quantum Artificial Life' For the First Time



> For the first time, an international team of researchers has used a quantum computer to create artificial life-a simulation of living organisms that scientists can use to understand life at the level of whole populations all the way down to cellular interactions.
> 
> With the quantum computer, individual living organisms represented at a microscopic level with superconducting qubits were made to "mate," interact with their environment, and "die" to model some of the major factors that influence evolution.


----------



## ekim68

It's over 9,000! Boffin-baffling microquasar has power that makes the LHC look like a kid's toy



> The first microquasar us Earthlings have detected has left astrophysicists puzzled.
> 
> Microquasars are greedy black holes that gobble up material from stars hovering nearby and shoot out powerful gamma ray beams. One particular specimen, codenamed SS 433, emits two jets that have energies measuring at least 25 trillion electron volts (25 x 1012 eV), we learned this week.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Switches Curiosity Rover to Backup Computer Following Glitch



> NASA's Curiosity rover has already long outlived its minimum projected lifespan with more than six Earth years - more than 2,000 Martian days or "Sols." However, NASA has announced that it recently had to make use of the rover's computer redundancy to keep the mission going. Curiosity has flipped over to its backup computer system after the main system started experiencing errors last month.
> 
> Many NASA spacecraft and surface missions have redundant systems built-in. Once they've launched from Earth, there's no way to repair damage to critical systems, so it makes sense to double-up on the vital components. That includes Curiosity's computers, which were designed specifically for the harsh environment on Mars.
> 
> The rover has a pair of identical brains running a 5-watt RAD750 CPU. This chip is part of the PowerPC 750 family, but it has been custom designed to survive high-radiation environments as you'd find on Mars or in deep space.


----------



## ekim68

First SpaceX mission with astronauts set for June 2019: NASA



> NASA has announced the first crewed flight by a SpaceX rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) is expected to take place in June 2019.
> 
> It will be the first manned US launch to the orbiting research laboratory since the space shuttle program was retired in 2011, forcing US astronauts to hitch costly rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
> 
> A flight on Boeing spacecraft is set to follow in August 2019.


----------



## ekim68

Saturn's inner rings are raining chemicals on its atmosphere



> Oct. 5 (UPI) -- New analysis of observations made during the Cassini's "Grand Finale" plunge suggests Saturn's rings are surprisingly complex in their chemical composition.
> 
> The data also suggests chemical-coated dust grains from Saturn's innermost D ring are raining down on the gas giant's upper atmosphere. Over time, scientists predict, the flow of chemicals could alter the composition of Saturn's atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

Voyager 2 shows first signs of entering interstellar space



> After 40 years of zipping through the solar system, Voyager 2 appears to be close to leaving the neighborhood. Currently at a distance of about 17.7 billion km (11 billion mi) from Earth, the probe's instruments have begun picking up radiation signals that suggest it is breaking out of the Sun's protective bubble, and will soon join its sibling in interstellar space.
> 
> Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 before conducting a grand tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, where the probes collected some of the clearest photos and data of the planets for the time. But their job wasn't done yet - given their exit trajectory, astronomers figured they could help study the very boundaries of the solar system.


----------



## valis

yikes.

https://gizmodo.com/soyuz-space-crew-makes-emergency-landing-after-terrifyi-1829676576


----------



## ekim68

Yep, I saw that today. I was wondering how much longer the Russian crafts would last after a few problems have cropped up..


----------



## valis

curious as to what happens next...


----------



## ekim68

A good thing the New Money Guys/Gals came along, eh?


----------



## ekim68

What Do You Call a Moon's Moon?



> Two astronomers have asked a question for the ages: Can moons have moons?
> 
> The delightful, if theoretical, answer is: Yes-yes, they can.
> 
> As _Gizmodo_ reports, this particular scientific inquiry began with a question from Juna Kollmeier's son. Kollemeier, who works at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, recruited Sean Raymond, of the University of Bordeaux, to help her answer the question.
> 
> In a paper posted on arXiv, they lay out their case that moons can have moons. The conditions have to be right-the primary moon has to be big enough and far away enough from the planet it's orbiting for the smaller, secondary moon to survive. But, even given these caveats, they found that moons in our very own solar system could theoretically have their own smaller moons. Two of Saturn's moons and one of Jupiter's are candidates. So is our favorite moon-the Earth's moon.


----------



## ekim68

Chandra X-ray Observatory goes into safe mode



> Oct. 12 (UPI) -- It's been a bad couple weeks in space.
> 
> A week ago, technical difficulties forced engineers to put the Hubble Space Telescope's science mission on hold. Now, the Chandra X-ray Observatory is in safe mode, too.
> 
> In a statement released on Friday, NASA confirmed Chandra, one of the most powerful telescopes in space, transitioned to safe mode earlier this week.


----------



## ekim68

Stephen Hawking's Last Paper Is Now Online



> When Stephen Hawking died in March at the age of 76, the world mourned a beloved and visionary scientist. But it is some consolation that Hawking's final paper has now been published on the preprint journal ArXiv, demonstrating that even during his last days, he was still pursuing the epic cosmic questions that defined his career.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover celestial titan from the early universe



> Astronomers have discovered and mapped an enormous structure in the early universe with a mass the equivalent to one million billion times that of the Sun. The proto-supercluster, which has been dramatically named Hyperion after the Titan of Greek mythology, is estimated to have formed only 2.3 billion years after the creation of the cosmos in the Big Bang.
> 
> Superclusters in our local universe are mindbogglingly massive. They are made up of thousands of galaxies, and stretch for hundreds of millions of light-years in diameter.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists investigate why matter and antimatter are not mirror images



> AS MISMATCHES go, it's a big one. When physicists bring the Standard Model of particle physics and Einstein's general theory of relativity together they get a clear prediction. In the very early universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have come into being. Since the one famously annihilates the other, the result should be a universe full of radiation, but without the stars, planets and nebulae that make up galaxies. Yet stars, planets and nebulae do exist. The inference is that matter and antimatter are not quite as equal and opposite as the models predict.
> 
> This problem has troubled physics for the past half-century, but it may now be approaching resolution. At CERN, a particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, three teams of researchers are applying different methods to answer the same question: does antimatter fall down, or up? Relativity predicts "down", just like matter. If it falls up, that could hint at a difference between the two that allowed a matter-dominated universe to form.


----------



## ekim68

Chemists design world's first high-temperature single-molecule magnet



> Oct. 18 (UPI) -- Scientists have designed and synthesized a high-temperature single-molecule magnet, the first of its kind. The breakthrough could inspire more efficient digital storage technologies for use in quantum computers.
> 
> Single-molecule magnets, or SMMs, are metalorganic compounds that store magnetic information for long periods of time. The behavior of of SMMs reveals the influence of a magnetic field long after the magnetic field has been turned off or removed.


----------



## ekim68

A Slow Trip To A Hot Planet: Spacecraft Launches For Mission To Mercury



> The European Space Agency is sending a mission to explore the mysteries of Mercury.
> 
> BepiColombo, named after the Italian mathematician and engineer Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo, launched at 9:45 p.m. ET Friday aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from a spaceport in French Guiana.
> 
> The spacecraft is actually made up of two probes: One will go into orbit close to the planet, while the other, supplied by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will orbit farther away, measuring Mercury's magnetic field.


----------



## ekim68

Orionid Meteor Shower 2018 Peaks This Weekend with Bits of Halley's Comet: What to Expect



> If you're a meteor enthusiast, the year 2018 has been very kind to you. This past summer, the annual Perseid meteor shower reached its peak the day after a new moon, ensuring that no moonlight would hinder those spotting celestial streakers. And looking ahead to December, the Geminid meteor shower, the most prolific of all of the annual displays, will reach its peak when an almost-first-quarter moon is setting during the late evening hours. This will make for excellent viewing conditions.


----------



## ekim68

Parker Solar Probe Looks Back at Home



> On Sept. 25, 2018, Parker Solar Probe captured a view of Earth as it sped toward the first Venus gravity assist of the mission. Earth is the bright, round object visible in the right side of the image.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX official says company about to launch a Falcon 9 for the third time



> SpaceX has re-used its Falcon 9 rocket 16 times, but the company has never flown a single first stage more than twice. However, in May of this year the company debuted a newer version of its Falcon 9 rocket, dubbed Block 5, that is specifically optimized for reusability across multiple flights.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Returns to Science Operations



> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope returned to normal operations late Friday, Oct. 26, and completed its first science observations on Saturday, Oct. 27 at 2:10 AM EDT. The observations were of the distant, star-forming galaxy DSF2237B-1-IR and were taken in infrared wavelengths with the Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. The return to conducting science comes after successfully recovering a backup gyroscope, or gyro, that had replaced a failed gyro three weeks earlier.


----------



## ekim68

What's That Weird Cloud That's Been Looming Over Mars for Weeks?



> For over a month, Mars orbiters have been watching a weird Martian cloud that resembles a booger and is so large that it can be seen with telescopes on Earth.
> 
> Suspended over the western slope of Arsia Mons, an enormous volcano near the red planet's equator, the elongated cloud stretches for about 930 miles, and was first spotted by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter on September 13. Though the cloud looks like the kind of volcanic plumes huffed out by Earth's active volcanoes, Arsia Mons is long extinct-its last eruption is estimated to have occurred around 50 million years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Trip through the universe with the Astronomy Photographer of the Year winners


----------



## ekim68

Parker Solar Probe now closer to the Sun than any spacecraft in history



> The Parker Solar Probe has only been in space about two and a half months, and it's already breaking records. On October 29, 2018 at 1:04 pm EDT, the unmanned spacecraft came within 26.55 million mi (42.73 million km) of the Sun's surface - closer than any other man-made object.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers confirm black hole inside Milky Way



> Oct. 31 (UPI) -- A team of scientists at the European Southern Observatory, or ESO, spotted flares of infrared radiation shooting up from a gas circle near the orbit of Sagittarius A*. The flare ups began after material orbited close to the the black hole's event horizon, or point of no return. The ESO scientists believe the flare ups stemmed from a magnetic reactions caused by the hot gas ring.
> 
> "It's mind-boggling to actually witness material orbiting a massive black hole at 30% of the speed of light," said Oliver Pfuhl, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. "GRAVITY's tremendous sensitivity has allowed us to observe the accretion processes in real time in unprecedented detail."
> 
> The Sagittarius A* black hole is 41 million miles in diameter. That's more than four million times the mass of the Earth's sun and big enough to engulf the entire orbit of Mercury.


----------



## ekim68

How NASA Will Use Robots to Create Rocket Fuel From Martian Soil

*



The year is 2038.

Click to expand...

*


> After 18 months living and working on the surface of Mars, a crew of six explorers boards a deep-space transport rocket and leaves for Earth. No humans are staying behind, but work goes on without them: Autonomous robots will keep running a mining and chemical-synthesis plant they'd started years before this first crewed mission ever set foot on the planet. The plant produces water, oxygen, and rocket fuel using local resources, and it will methodically build up all the necessary supplies for the next Mars mission, set to arrive in another two years.
> 
> This robot factory isn't science fiction: It's being developed jointly by multiple teams across NASA.


----------



## ekim68

13.5 billion year old star was born just after the Big Bang - and it's in our neighborhood



> While we normally associate evolution with life, even stars tend to go through a similar process across generations. The very first stars to fire up after the Big Bang would have been mostly made of light elements, while later ones became heavier with metals. Now astronomers have identified one of the oldest stars ever found, which appears to be just one generation removed from the beginning of the universe itself. Being relatively close to Earth, the find could mean our galactic neighborhood is much older than previously thought.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Reveals a Giant Cosmic 'Bat Shadow'



> Shadows on Earth can be mysterious and foreboding, but when they occur in space, they can convey information we otherwise could not know. In a stellar nursery called the Serpens Nebula, nearly 1,300 light-years away, a young star's game of shadow play is revealing secrets of its unseen planet-forming disk. The near-infrared vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured the shadow cast by the fledgling star's brilliant light being blocked by this disk.


----------



## ekim68

Does antimatter fall upwards? New CERN gravity experiments aim to get to the bottom of the matter



> Physics tells us that a hammer and a feather, dropped in a vacuum, will fall at the same rate - as famously demonstrated by an Apollo 15 astronaut on the Moon. Now, CERN scientists are preparing to put a spooky new spin on that experiment, by dropping antimatter in a vacuum chamber to see if gravity affects it the same way it does matter - or if antimatter falls _upwards _instead.


----------



## ekim68

E.T., we're home



> If extraterrestrial intelligence exists somewhere in our galaxy, a new MIT study proposes that laser technology on Earth could, in principle, be fashioned into something of a planetary porch light - a beacon strong enough to attract attention from as far as 20,000 light years away.


----------



## Brigham

ekim68 said:


> E.T., we're home


unfortunately we will have to wait 40,000 years for a reply.


----------



## ekim68

Brigham said:


> unfortunately we will have to wait 40,000 years for a reply.


I'm not sure I'd like to hear a reply..


----------



## ekim68

Got to Love Science... 


Cosmic fountain offers clues to how galaxies evolve



> Galaxy evolution can be chaotic and messy, but it seems that streams of cold gas spraying out from the region around supermassive black holes may act to calm the storm.
> 
> This is according to an international team of scientists who have provided the first clear and compelling evidence of this process in action.
> 
> Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) of telescopes, the team, which includes researchers from Cardiff University, has observed a supermassive black hole acting like a 'monumental fountain' in the middle of a galaxy over a billion light-years from Earth.
> 
> At the centre of the galaxy, named Abell 2597, the black hole is drawing in vast stores of cold molecular gas and then spraying them back out again in an ongoing cycle.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers find pairs of black holes at the centers of merging galaxies



> For the first time, a team of astronomers has observed several pairs of galaxies in the final stages of merging together into single, larger galaxies. Peering through thick walls of gas and dust surrounding the merging galaxies' messy cores, the research team captured pairs of supermassive black holes -- each of which once occupied the center of one of the two original smaller galaxies -- drawing closer together before they coalescence into one giant black hole.


----------



## ekim68

Amateur Don Machholz Discovers His 12th Comet!



> With all the automated searches busily looking for anything crawling across the sky, it's a wonder an amateur can still discover a comet. Yet that's exactly what happened on November 7.53 UT, when Arizona's Don Machholz, the most successful living visual comet hunter, visually picked up a new comet in Virgo near the break of dawn. Two Japanese observers - Shigehisa Fujikawa and Masayuki Iwamoto - independently spotted the object around the same time and potentially will have their autographs added to the comet's final, official name.


----------



## ekim68

A visual journey through space and time



> Treat yourself to a sightseeing tour through the cosmos with the winning images for the Robotic Scope Prize category category of Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the year 2018.


----------



## ekim68

GPS killer? Quantum 'compass' promises satellite-free navigation



> Scientists in the UK have unveiled a new quantum accelerator that is capable of providing accurate navigation information without the help of signals from navigation satellites used in GPS.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launched and landed another used Falcon 9 rocket

_



Update November 15th, 4:25PM ET: After a smooth launch, SpaceX successfully deployed the Es'hail-2 satellite into orbit 32 minutes after takeoff. The company also landed its Falcon 9 rocket on one of its drone ships following liftoff, bringing its total number of successful booster landings to 31.

Click to expand...

_


----------



## ekim68

Brightest-known galaxy is cannibalizing its three neighbors



> If the extremely faint, nearby "ghost" galaxy Antlia 2 had an exact opposite, it would be W2246-0526. This galaxy sits 12.4 billion light-years from Earth - almost the entire radius of the observable universe - and is the most luminous galaxy ever discovered, with the brightness of 350 trillion Suns. Now, astronomers have found that W2246-0526 is cannibalizing three neighboring galaxies.


----------



## ekim68

NASA shuts down Kepler, ending nine years of planet-hunting



> After nine years, NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission came to a final end Thursday as the space agency sent the radio commands ordering the onboard computer to shut down the unmanned space telescope's systems. The "goodnight" commands were sent via the Deep Space Network from Kepler's operations center at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and severed all communications with Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers find star system on the verge of a massive supernova explosion



> Nov. 19 (UPI) -- Scientists have discovered a distant star system that appears to be on the verge of a violent collapse -- the kind of collapse that produces a powerful gamma ray burst. Astronomers have yet to detect a gamma-ray burst within the Milky Way galaxy.
> 
> "We discovered this star as an outlier in a survey with a radio telescope operated by the University of Sydney," research Joe Callingham said. "We knew immediately we had found something quite exceptional: the luminosity across the spectrum from the radio to the infrared was off the charts."
> 
> Scientists found the binary star system 8,000 light-years from Earth, within the constellation Norma. Observations suggests one of the two stars is on the threshold of a massive supernova explosion.


----------



## ekim68

Why NASA wants to look at flying tourists to space - a dramatic change for a by-the-book agency



> NASA is considering selling seats on the spacecraft that will ferry its astronauts to the International Space Station, offering rides to the public while opening another line of revenue as the agency attempts to broaden its appeal.


----------



## ekim68

Rolling stones paved grooves across Martian moon



> Nov. 20 (UPI) -- Millions of years ago, rolling stones rocked the Marian moon Phobos. According to a new study, boulders put in motion by an ancient asteroid impact explain the grooves crisscrossing Phobos' surface.
> 
> "These grooves are a distinctive feature of Phobos, and how they formed has been debated by planetary scientists for 40 years," Ken Ramsley, planetary scientist at Brown University, said in a news release. "We think this study is another step toward zeroing in on an explanation."
> 
> Ramsley and his colleagues designed a computer model to simulate the impact responsible for the Stickney crater, the large gash that marks one end of Phobos' oddly shaped body. The model showed such a violent impact would have sent large pieces of debris tumbling across the lunar surface.


----------



## ekim68

International Space Station clocks up 20 years in orbit



> From humble beginnings as a single cargo module in 1998, the International Space Station (ISS) has gone on to become an expansive and truly one-of-a-kind research facility. Today marks its 20th birthday, an impressive milestone for any scientific laboratory let alone one hurtling through space at around 17,000 mph (27,300 km/h).


----------



## ekim68

The Sun's long-lost sibling found in our own backyard



> Our Sun sits alone in space, with the nearest star a bone-wearying journey of 4.3 light years away. But it wasn't always this way; evidence has been mounting for many years that the Sun was born in a cluster of stars, a stellar nursery that may have contained many thousands of stars, nearly 4.6 billion years ago.





> That star is HD 186302





> , and it really is uncannily like the Sun. It's what we call a G3 star, very close to the Sun's classification as a G2; it's only slightly less massive and cooler than the Sun. The chemical abundances seen in it are a virtual match for the Sun. The age is harder to determine; the average age found using various indicators was about 3.5 billion years, but the uncertainty is well over a billion years, meaning that within the margin of error HD 186302 was born around the same time as the Sun.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Will Land InSight on Mars With Cunning-and Lots of Cork

*



Monday, November 26 at 11:47 am PT

Click to expand...

*


> For InSight, the action will begin Monday, November 26th at around 11:47 am PT (2:47 pm ET). That's when the lander is slated to hit the top of Mars' atmosphere, at an altitude roughly 43 miles above the planet's surface. On contact, the spacecraft will be blazing along at a not-so-cool 5500 meters per second. That's 12,300 miles per hour.
> 
> At those speeds, the primary concern for NASA's engineers is friction. Mars' atmosphere, which is roughly 100 times thinner than Earth's, plays a vitally important role in InSight's arrival: Bleeding the spacecraft of its kinetic energy. Yet the atmosphere poses a significant threat, as well. The resistance it exerts on InSight's heat shield, a 419-pound enclosure composed primarily of crushed cork, will drive the temperature of the protective barrier to temperatures greater than 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit-hot enough to melt steel.


----------



## ekim68

NASA InSight Landing on Mars: Milestones



> On Nov. 26, NASA's InSight spacecraft will blaze through the Martian atmosphere and attempt to set a lander gently on the surface of the Red Planet in less time than it takes to hard-boil an egg. InSight's entry, descent and landing (EDL) team, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, along with another part of the team at Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, have pre-programmed the spacecraft to perform a specific sequence of activities to make this possible.


----------



## ekim68

NASA is preparing to have a live feed for the InSight landing and can be seen here.



It will start in an hour..


----------



## ekim68

InSight Mars lander sends back selfie after fiery landing


----------



## ekim68

NASA plans new partnerships to return humans to moon after 46 years



> Nov. 29 (UPI) -- NASA plans to announce new commercial partners Thursday in the U.S. space agency's quest to return humans to the moon -- and eventually Mars.
> 
> Administrator Jim Bridenstine will reveal the companies from NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C, at 2 p.m. EST on NASA TV and its website, according to a press release.


----------



## ekim68

All of the starlight ever produced by the observable universe measured



> Putting a number on the amount of starlight ever produced has several variables that make it difficult to quantify in simple terms. But according to the new measurement, the number of photons (particles of visible light) that escaped into space after being emitted by stars translates to 4x10^84.
> 
> Or put another way: 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons.


----------



## ekim68

This New Atomic Clock Is So Precise Our Ability to Measure Gravity Constrains Its Accuracy



> Researchers at the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed an atomic clock that is so precise that our models of Earth's gravity aren't accurate enough to keep up with it. As detailed in a paper published this week in _ Nature__ , _the atomic clock could pave the way for creating an unprecedented map of the way the Earth's gravity distorts spacetime and even shed light on the development of the early universe.


----------



## ekim68

InSight lander sets power record on its first full day on Mars



> We now know that both of its solar arrays were successfully deployed shortly after landing. Not only that, during the lander's first full day on Mars, it generated more electrical power from the planet's surface than any other vehicle before it. Its 4,588 Wh far outstrips Curiosity's best effort of 2,806 Wh of radioisotope power, and the roughly 1,800 Wh of solar power produced by the Phoenix lander.


----------



## ekim68

The Milky Way's Central Black Hole Is a Hot Spot for Astrophysics



> The discovery of wobbling "hotspots" circling the drain of a massive black hole offers exciting new evidence for the behemoth that lies at our galaxy's center-and the study leader shares how 13 years of observations have finally paid off.
> 
> The new study, involving the work of by Avery Broderick, an astronomer from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, revealed three flares, or visual hotspots, emanating from the Milky Way's central black hole, also known as Sagittarius A*.
> 
> The team detected a wobble of emissions coming from the flares, allowing the scientists to detect the accretion disk-a growing mass of orbiting gas and debris-surrounding the black hole itself. In turn, the researchers were able to use the emissions to map the behavior of Sagittarius A*, Broderick told Space.com.


----------



## Johnny b

* Physicists detected gravitational waves from four new black-hole mergers *

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...ional-waves-from-four-new-black-hole-mergers/


----------



## ekim68

I wonder if there are Dimensional shifts within those Gravitational Waves..


----------



## Johnny b

You mean like variable time dilation?


----------



## Johnny b

Interesting link here on it:

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/104722/do-gravitational-waves-cause-time-dilatation


----------



## ekim68

Thanks for the link. I've bookmarked it for future questions...


----------



## ekim68

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrives at asteroid Bennu



> NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft completed its 1.2 billion-mile (2 billion-kilometer) journey to arrive at the asteroid Bennu Monday. The spacecraft executed a maneuver that transitioned it from flying toward Bennu to operating around the asteroid.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX sends Dragon to ISS but Falcon 9 rocket misses landing pad



> SpaceX on Wednesday had trouble sticking the landing with one of its reusable rockets. It's the first time that's happened since the groundbreaking launch of the company's Falcon Heavy spacecraft in February.
> 
> Elon Musk's company succeeded in its primary mission of sending a Dragon spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station to deliver supplies, but the first stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle appeared to lose control as it approached Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral.


----------



## ekim68

Comet Wirtanen makes a very close (for a comet) approach to the Earth

Coming Dec. 16th...


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Mars InSight Flexes Its Arm 



> New images from NASA's Mars InSight lander show its robotic arm is ready to do some lifting.
> 
> With a reach of nearly 6 feet (2 meters), the arm will be used to pick up science instruments from the lander's deck, gently setting them on the Martian surface at Elysium Planitia, the lava plain where InSight touched down on Nov. 26.
> 
> But first, the arm will use its Instrument Deployment Camera, located on its elbow, to take photos of the terrain in front of the lander. These images will help mission team members determine where to set InSight's seismometer and heat flow probe - the only instruments ever to be robotically placed on the surface of another planet.


----------



## ekim68

Unknown treasure trove of planets found hiding in dust



> "Super-Earths" and Neptune-sized planets could be forming around young stars in much greater numbers than scientists thought, new research by an international team of astronomers suggests.
> 
> Observing a sampling of young stars in a star-forming region in the constellation Taurus, researchers found many of them to be surrounded by structures that can best be explained as traces created by invisible, young planets in the making. The research, published in the _Astrophysical Journal_, helps scientists better understand how our own solar system came to be.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Voyager 2 probe enters interstellar space



> For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars. NASA's Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere - the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun.
> 
> Members of NASA's Voyager team will discuss the findings at a news conference at 11 a.m. EST (8 a.m. PST) today at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Washington. The news conference will stream live on the agency's website.
> 
> Comparing data from different instruments aboard the trailblazing spacecraft, mission scientists determined the probe crossed the outer edge of the heliosphere on Nov. 5. This boundary, called the heliopause, is where the tenuous, hot solar wind meets the cold, dense interstellar medium. Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.


----------



## ekim68

InSight eavesdrops on the winds of Mars



> NASA has released a recording that captures the "sound" of the Martian winds for the first time ever. Collected on December 1 by the InSight mission, the low rumble was unexpectedly detected by the unmanned lander's seismographs and other sensors when they detected vibrations in the spacecraft generated by a northwest wind blowing at 10 to 15 mph (16 to 24 km/h).
> 
> The InSight lander was not specifically equipped to detect sounds, but it does have a pair of highly sensitive sensor packages presently sitting atop its deck awaiting deployment. These are an air pressure sensor from the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem (APSS) that collects meteorological data, and the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) for detecting marsquakes and therefore learn more about the interior of the Red Planet.


----------



## ekim68

There's water on Bennu, OSIRIS-REx confirms



> Dec. 11 (UPI) -- NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has discovered water on the asteroid Bennu.
> 
> Data collected by the probe's two spectrometers, OVIRS and OTES, revealed the presence of hydroxyls, molecules featuring bonded oxygen and hydrogen atoms. The discovery suggests Bennu is covered in water-bearing clay minerals.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Galactic advances space tourism with successful test



> MOJAVE, Calif. (Reuters) - A Virgin Galactic rocket plane blasted to the edge of space on Thursday and returned safely to the California desert, capping off years of difficult testing to become the first U.S. commercial human flight to reach space since America's shuttle program ended in 2011.
> 
> The test flight foreshadows a new era of civilian space travel that could kick off as soon as 2019, with British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic battling other billionaire-backed ventures, like Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, to be the first to offer suborbital flights to fare-paying tourists.


----------



## ekim68

Mars InSight Lander Seen in First Images from Space



> On Nov. 26, NASA's InSight mission knew the spacecraft touched down within an 81-mile-long (130-kilometer-long) landing ellipse on Mars. Now, the team has pinpointed InSight's exact location using images from HiRISE, a powerful camera onboard another NASA spacecraft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).


----------



## ekim68

Juno approaches halfway mark of its science mission



> NASA's Juno orbiter arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016, but the unmanned explorer is already approaching the halfway mark of its science mission. On December 21 at 8:49:48 am PST (11:49:48 am EST), the spacecraft will be marking the midpoint of its Jovian mapping and data collection mission with a close flyby on its 16th of 32 scheduled science orbits that will bring it within 3,140 mi (5,053 km) of the planet's cloud tops while traveling at 128,802 mph (207,287 km/h).


----------



## ekim68

In Search of Missing Worlds, Hubble Finds a Fast Evaporating Exoplanet



> A few years ago astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found that one of the warmest known Neptunes (GJ 436b) is losing its atmosphere. The planet isn't expected to evaporate away, but hotter Neptunes might not have been so lucky.
> 
> Now, astronomers have used Hubble to nab a second "very warm" Neptune (GJ 3470b) that is losing its atmosphere at a rate 100 times faster than that of GJ 436b. Both planets reside about 3.7 million miles from their star. That's one-tenth the distance between our solar system's innermost planet, Mercury, and the Sun.
> 
> "I think this is the first case where this is so dramatic in terms of planetary evolution," said lead researcher Vincent Bourrier of the University of Geneva in Sauverny, Switzerland. "It's one of the most extreme examples of a planet undergoing a major mass-loss over its lifetime. This sizable mass loss has major consequences for its evolution, and it impacts our understanding of the origin and fate of the population of exoplanets close to their stars."


----------



## ekim68

NASA research reveals Saturn is losing its rings at 'worst-case-scenario' rate



> New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 & 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field.
> 
> "We estimate that this 'ring rain' drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn's rings in half an hour," said James O'Donoghue of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "From this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years, but add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn's equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live. This is relatively short, compared to Saturn's age of over 4 billion years." O'Donoghue is lead author of a study on Saturn's ring rain appearing in _Icarus_ December 17.


----------



## ekim68

10 CubeSats Ready for NASA's First Venture Class Launch



> NASA will enable the launch of 10 small research satellites, or CubeSats, selected through the CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) for launch on Rocket Lab's first mission for NASA. The CubeSats were built by three NASA centers, seven universities, and a middle school as part of the Educational Launch of Nanosatellite XIX (ELaNa-19) mission. More than 250 students have been involved in the design, development and construction of the CubeSats scheduled to be flown as payloads on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket. This mission will be the first launch under NASA's Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) contracts, which aims to provide a dedicated launch capability for smaller payloads such as CubeSats on smaller rockets.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX raising $500 million, pushing valuation to $30.5 billion: Report



> Starlink - a name SpaceX filed to trademark last year - is an ambition unmatched by any current satellite network. The company is attempting to build its own constellation of 4,425 broadband satellites, with another 7,518 satellites to come after. SpaceX will begin launching the constellation in 2019. The system will be operational once at least 800 satellites are deployed.
> 
> Starlink would offer broadband speeds comparable to fiber optic networks.The satellites would provide direct-to-consumer wireless connections, rather the present system's redistribution of signals, transforming a traditionally high-cost, low reliability service.


----------



## ekim68

India Launches Hefty Communications Satellite Into Orbit to Cap Busy 2018




> India





> has successfully squeezed a seventh launch into the year, using an upgraded version of the country's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle to place a massive communications satellite into orbit for the Indian Air Force today (Dec. 19).
> 
> That communications satellite, called the GSAT-7A, weighs nearly 5,000 lbs. (2250 kilograms) and will allow the Indian Air Force to manage all of its space communications itself, rather than paying for satellite services, according to reporting by The Times of India.


----------



## ekim68

The year's most spectacular space photos



> The Sun is setting on 2018, and with so many eyes on (and in) the skies it's been a stellar year for space photography.


----------



## ekim68

BepiColombo spacecraft begins two-month ion thrust



> ESA's BepiColombo spacecraft has fired up all four of its ion thrusters as it begins the first of 22 burn arcs. The high-tech engines that use xenon as a propellant were powered up on December 17 at 1:45 pm CET (12:45 GMT) and will fire for two months as they propel the unmanned probe on the start of its 9-billion-km (5.6-billion-mi) journey to explore the planet Mercury.


----------



## ekim68

50 years ago today the Apollo 8 launched.. 


'Twas the Apollo Before Christmas


----------



## ekim68

Mars Express beams back images of ice-filled Korolev crater



> The stunning Korolev crater in the northern lowlands of Mars is filled with ice all year round owing to a trapped layer of cold Martian air that keeps the water frozen.
> 
> The 50-mile-wide crater contains 530 cubic miles of water ice, as much as Great Bear Lake in northern Canada, and in the centre of the crater the ice is more than a mile thick.
> 
> Images beamed back from the red planet show that the lip around the impact crater rises high above the surrounding plain. When thin Martian air then passes over the crater, it becomes trapped and cools to form an insulating layer that prevents the ice from melting.


----------



## RT

A Blast from the Past, and help put things in perspective, the caption for this photo reads:

_"Phil Plait, the bad astronomer himself, has posted an extraordinarily cool photo of a group of skydivers falling in formation as the Space Shuttle Discovery rockets into space in the background (on its mission to place the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit). The Discovery will launch for its last time on September 16, 2010. More at the Bad Astronomy Blog."_


----------



## ekim68

Researchers model glaciation on Mercury's poles



> Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Mercury's poles are marked by large craters. Icy deposits hide inside. Now, scientists think they know how the ice got there.
> 
> Researchers at the University of Maine modeled the glaciation process on the planet closest to the sun.
> 
> Most of Mercury is rather hot. But a few of its polar craters remain in permanent shadow, allowing for temperature low enough to sustain ice deposits. The glaciers are thought to be less than 50 million years old and 165-feet thick in some places.


----------



## ekim68

Blast offs and bubbly: The year in space, 2018



> When it comes to space travel, and space in general, 2018 has been a busy year. It was one marked by remarkable technological firsts, dramatic incidents, and new milestones set. It was a time when commercial spaceflight made great strides, we returned to Mars, headed for Mercury, and probed the farthest reaches of the solar system. Oh, and there was space champagne. So, let's look back on the highlights of the year in space, 2018.


----------



## ekim68

Nancy Grace Roman, 'Mother Of Hubble' Space Telescope, Has Died, At Age 93



> Known as the "Mother of Hubble," for her role in making the Hubble Space Telescope a reality, Roman worked at NASA for nearly two decades. She died on Dec. 25 at the age of 93.


----------



## ekim68

FYI, this is happening right now.. 

Where is New Horizons?


----------



## ekim68

NASA clears Dream Chaser spaceplane for full production



> Sierra Nevada Corporation is picking up the pace in its mission to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station using a next-generation spaceplane, with NASA giving its Dream Chaser vehicle the all clear following a design and performance review. This means the vehicle will now move into full production, with the developers hopeful of using it to ship goods to the orbiting laboratory within two years.


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons Spacecraft Makes New Year's Day Flyby of Ultima Thule, the Farthest Rendezvous Ever



> LAUREL, Md. - Wow, what a way to ring in the new year.
> 
> As the world celebrated the start of 2019, scientists with NASA's New Horizons spacecraft partied with them. But the bigger celebration came just over 30 minutes later, when New Horizons made history with the flyby of Ultima Thule, a mysterious object 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometers) from Earth in the Kuiper Belt, home to frozen relics left over from the birth of the solar system. It's the farthest flyby of an object in our solar system; and the second rendezvous for New Horizons, which visited Pluto in July 2015.


----------



## ekim68

NASA probe makes history as it slips into orbit around asteroid Bennu



> And things are now set to ramp up even further. Not only did the New Year's Eve maneuver make Bennu the smallest object ever orbited by a spacecraft, it also put OSIRIS-REx in the tightest orbit around a celestial object of study in history. The probe is now circling the asteroid from a distance of around a mile (1.6 km) from the surface, where it will gather even sharper images of its surface and learn more about its mass and gravity.
> 
> The reason OSIRIS-REx needs to orbit Bennu so tightly is largely due to its incredibly weak gravitational field, which is around five millionths as strong as Earth's and barely strong enough to hold a vehicle in a stable orbit.


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> New Horizons Spacecraft Makes New Year's Day Flyby of Ultima Thule, the Farthest Rendezvous Ever


More on this.. 

NASA's Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt


----------



## ekim68

Neighboring galaxy found to be on a collision course with the Milky Way



> When we think of celestial threats to our planet, we usually think of big asteroids and comets, and maybe the odd gamma ray burst or supernova. What we probably wouldn't think of is an entire galaxy bearing down on us, but according to a new study, that's exactly what's happening right now. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby dwarf galaxy, is on a collision course with the Milky Way, but there's no need to worry just yet - the starry smashup won't begin for another two billion years or so.
> 
> The Large Magellanic Cloud is one of our closest cosmic neighbors, orbiting the Milky Way at a distance of about 163,000 light-years.


----------



## ekim68

Chinese rover powers up devices in pioneering moon mission



> All systems are go as a Chinese spacecraft and rover power up their observation equipment after making a first-ever landing on the far side of the moon, the Chinese National Space Administration said.
> 
> The Jade Rabbit 2 rover has succeeded in establishing a digital transmission link with a relay satellite that sends data back to the Beijing control center, the space agency said in a posting late Friday on its website.


----------



## ekim68

NASA drops spacecraft into orbit around potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu



> Visiting a distant, icy world that looks like a snowman certainly had space enthusiasts enraptured in the first days of 2019, but some other historic NASA news slipped through in the final hours of 2018 -- and it might reveal just as much about our solar system.
> 
> The asteroid-chasing Osiris-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) performed its own historic maneuver on New Year's Eve. An eight-second thruster burn on Dec. 31 placed the spacecraft in orbit around 101955 Bennu, which drifts through the solar system's asteroid belt between the Earth and Mars.


----------



## ekim68

Just came across this and it's a keeper.. 


Our Solar System

I didn't know that they have discovered more than 2,800 planetary bodies, and counting because of new technologies..


----------



## valis

Wow, Mike, that's a keeper indeed. Thanks for that.


----------



## ekim68

Swarm of mysterious radio bursts seen coming from deep space



> Astronomers have detected 13 high-speed bursts of radio waves coming from deep space-including one that regularly repeats. While the exact sources remain unknown, the new bevy of mysterious blasts does offer fresh clues to where and why such flashes appear across the cosmos.
> 
> Fast radio bursts, as they are known to scientists, are among the universe's most bizarre phenomena. Each burst lasts just thousandths of a second, and they all appear to be coming from far outside our home galaxy, the Milky Way.


----------



## SillyBilly1

ekim68 said:


> Swarm of mysterious radio bursts seen coming from deep space


Crazy stuff. Just imagined some civilization similar to us millions of miles away. I envy the late future life, they'll experience some incredible stuff.


----------



## ekim68

How radio astronomers will tune into the cosmic dawn from the far side of the Moon



> China's history-making Chang'e-4 spacecraft touched down on the far side of the Moon last week and it opened up some exciting new avenues of scientific enquiry. While the rover goes to work examining the makeup of the lunar crust and mantle, a small radio instrument aboard a satellite parked in lunar orbit will allow scientists to listen into low-frequency signals that are blocked by the Earth's atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX shows off shiny Starship built for Mars travel



> Having recently rebranded its BFR to the more benignly named Starship, SpaceX has now added the finishing touches to the first prototype of this super heavy-lift vehicle. The rocket will be used for sub-orbital testing sometime this year, marking important baby steps in its plans for the Moon, Mars and maybe beyond.


----------



## valis

very 1950s....love it. I keep expecting George Jetson to pop out.


----------



## ekim68

Britain rolls out first reprogrammable "chameleon" satellite



> According to the UK Space Agency, which, along with ESA is a development partner, Eutelsat Quantum is a new approach. Instead of a specialized platform the Quantum is software driven and is designed to be reprogrammed and reconfigured even after its been placed in its geostationary orbit 22,236 mi (35,786 km) above the Earth.
> 
> This means that the chameleon satellite can adjust its coverage, frequency, power, and orbital position as needed. It can even split a coverage area into smaller ones, generate dynamic and varied frequencies, and even cover the entire visible area of the Earth rather than a small, preset region.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover first direct evidence of white dwarf stars solidifying into crystals



> The first direct evidence of white dwarf stars solidifying into crystals has been discovered by astronomers at the University of Warwick, and our skies are filled with them.
> 
> Observations have revealed that dead remnants of stars like our Sun, called white dwarfs, have a core of solid oxygen and carbon due to a phase transition during their lifecycle similar to water turning into ice but at much higher temperatures. This could make them potentially billions of years older than previously thought.
> 
> The discovery, led by Dr. Pier-Emmanuel Tremblay from the University of Warwick's Department of Physics, has been published in _Nature_ and is largely based on observations taken with the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite.


----------



## ekim68

Birth of a black hole or neutron star captured for first time



> After combining several imaging sources, including hard X-rays and radiowaves, a team now speculates that the telescopes captured the exact moment a star collapsed to form a compact object, such as a black hole or neutron star. The stellar debris, approaching and swirling around the object's event horizon, caused The Cow's remarkably bright glow.


----------



## ekim68

Brightest quasar ever found shines with the intensity of 600 trillion Suns



> From our point of view here on Earth, the brightest object in the sky is unquestionably the Sun. But this unremarkable star is a mere 10-watt bulb compared to quasars, extremely luminous galactic cores that shine so intensely thanks to their ravenous hunger for nearby material. Now, astronomers have detected the brightest quasar ever found, shining with the light of almost 600 trillion Suns.
> 
> The quasar, officially designated J043947.08+163415.7, pips the previous brightness records by a fair margin. Until now the title belonged to a quasar shining with the equivalent of 420 trillion Suns, while the most luminous galaxy found so far is "only" as bright as 350 trillion.


----------



## ekim68

China's rover scoots across the far side of the Moon in fresh photo dump



> China's landing of a probe on the far side of the Moon at the beginning of the year was a landmark moment for space exploration, and after operating in the dark for a little while new images are now starting to show its rover at work.


----------



## ekim68

CERN's New Collider Design Is Four Times Larger Than the LHC




> If built, the Future Circular Collider will be 10 times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider, and could discover new types of particles.


----------



## ekim68

Steam-powered space probes could refuel themselves indefinitely



> A team of researchers from the University of Central Florida (UCF) and Honeybee Robotics in California has developed a prototype steam-powered space probe. This may seem like a great leap backwards, but by using water as a propellant, the World Is Not Enough (WINE) spacecraft can operate indefinitely by topping off on ice gathered while visiting asteroids and other bodies to fuel future travels.


----------



## ekim68

You Don't Look A Day Over 100 Million, Rings Of Saturn



> Saturn is famous for its lovely rings, but a new study suggests the planet has spent most of its 4.5 billion years without them.
> 
> That's because the rings are likely only 10 million to 100 million years old, according to a newly published report in the journal _Science _that's based on findings from NASA's Cassini probe.


----------



## ekim68

How long is a Saturnian day? Now we know



> Reset your interplanetary watches because data from NASA's Cassini probe has finally answered the question of how long a day on Saturn is. Using the planet's giant rings as a natural seismograph, a team led by UC Santa Cruz astronomy and astrophysics graduate student Christopher Mankovich calculates that Saturn rotates once every 10 hours, 33 minutes and 38 seconds.


----------



## ekim68

A meteorite hit the moon during yesterday's total lunar eclipse



> Observers of yesterday's lunar eclipse were blessed with the first known sighting of a meteorite impact during such an event.


----------



## ekim68

Weird new landmarks on Ultima Thule come into focus with sharpest image yet



> On January 1 the New Horizons probe whizzed past Ultima Thule, a tiny world on the fringe of the solar system. Data is still streaming back to Earth, and now the latest image shows the object closer and in higher resolution than ever before. With that improved clarity comes some intriguing new landmarks on the rocky surface.


----------



## valis

Interesting....looks like some of Earth was found on the Moon....https://gizmodo.com/apollo-astronauts-may-have-brought-a-piece-of-ancient-e-1832055011


----------



## ekim68

Psychedelic Simulation Showcases the Ferocious Power of a Solar Flare



> For the first time, scientists have created a computer model that can simulate the evolution of a solar flare, from thousands of miles below the photosphere to the eruption itself in the lower corona - the sun's multimillion degree atmosphere. And the results are not only scientifically impressive, the visualization is gorgeous.


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff... :up: 

'Apollo 11' lands at Sundance with never-before-seen mission footage



> January 25, 2019 - Attendees at this year's Sundance Film Festival are getting a first look at never-before-seen footage from the first moon landing mission.


----------



## ekim68

European astronauts practice moonwalks in anticipation of new lunar missions



> Fifty years after the first manned mission to the Moon, ESA is training a new generation of astronauts to work on the lunar surface. Based on findings from NASA's Apollo missions, the new explorers are using simulated moonwalks in Lanzarote, Spain, to test a range of advanced electronic aids, new geological tools, and improved scientific protocols to make lunar excursions safer and more efficient.


----------



## ekim68

Japanese astronomers spot new class of object in the Kuiper Belt



> This is the first object of its class to have been spotted in the Kuiper belt, the expanse of rocky and icy debris that extends out past Neptune. While there are likely hundreds of thousands of objects out there, we only really know about the big ones. Pluto is the headliner of course, with a diameter of 2,377 km (1,477 mi), but other dwarf planets like Haumea and Makemake, with diameters of 1,632 km (1,014 mi) and 1,430 km (889 mi), respectively, are nothing to sneeze at either. By comparison Ultima Thule, which New Horizons just buzzed a few weeks ago, is a tiny 32 km (20 mi) long.


----------



## ekim68

China will attempt 30-plus launches in 2019, including crucial Long March 5 missions



> HELSINKI- The main contractor for the Chinese space program is planning more than 30 launches in 2019, with major missions including the crucial return-to-flight of the heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket in July.
> 
> The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), announced Jan. 29 that it would aim to loft more than 50 spacecraft on 30-plus launches this year.


----------



## ekim68

Goodbye to a beauty in the night sky



> For over a century and a half, Eta Carinae has been one of the most luminous - and most enigmatic - stars of the southern Milky Way.





> In as little as a decade from now, however, we will no longer be able to see the nebula clearly.
> 
> A recent study indicates that the Homunculus will be obfuscated by the increasing brightness of Eta Carinae itself. So rapidly is it growing, in fact, that in 2036 the star will be 10 times brighter than its nebula, which in the end will make it indistinguishable from other LBVs.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity's gravity instruments reveal new holes in the story of Mars



> NASA's Curiosity rover and its suite of advanced tools have revealed all kinds of fascinating facts about Mars, but scientists here on Earth have now uncovered a surprising characteristic through one of its more rudimentary instruments. Using an accelerometer similar to what you'd find in a smartphone, the researchers have been able to gather more precise density measurements of its rocky layers, finding it to be much more porous than previously thought.
> 
> For more than six years now the Curiosity rover has been schlepping its way across Mars' Gale Crater, using its high-resolution cameras to image its more remarkable features, its drill to dig into the surface and its miniature onboard laboratories to break down samples and reveal organic molecules at least three billion years old.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists Made a Flying Army of Laser Schrödinger's Cats



> A laser pulse bounced off a rubidium atom and entered the quantum world - taking on the weird physics of "Schrödinger's cat." Then another one did the same thing. Then another.
> 
> The laser pulses didn't grow whiskers or paws. But they became like the famous quantum-physics thought experiment Schrödinger's cat in an important way: They were large objects that acted like the simultaneously dead-and-alive creatures of subatomic physics - existing in a limbo between two simultaneous, contradictory states.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble fortuitously discovers a new galaxy in the cosmic neighborhood



> Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the oldest and faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 have made an unexpected finding. They discovered a dwarf galaxy in our cosmic backyard, only 30 million light-years away. The finding is reported in the journal _Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters_.





> Our newly discovered cosmic neighbour, nicknamed Bedin 1 by the astronomers, is a modestly sized, elongated galaxy. It measures only around 3000 light-years at its greatest extent -- a fraction of the size of the Milky Way. Not only is it tiny, but it is also incredibly faint. These properties led astronomers to classify it as a dwarf spheroidal galaxy.


----------



## ekim68

Extreme chemistry: experiments at the edge of the periodic table



> The quest to extend the periodic table is not over, but it is grinding to a halt. Since Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev published his periodic table 150 years ago, researchers have been adding elements to it at the average rate of one every two or three years (see 'When elements were discovered'). Having found all the elements that are stable enough to persist naturally, researchers started to create their own, and are now up to element 118, oganesson. Although they still hope to find more, they agree that prospects of venturing beyond element 120 are dim. "We're reaching the area of diminishing returns in the synthesis of new elements, at least with our current level of technology," says Jacklyn Gates, who works on heavy-element chemistry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.


----------



## ekim68

NASA puts a lid on InSight's Mars seismometer



> NASA's InSight lander continues to set up house on Mars and has now placed a domed shield over the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument package that its robotic arm placed on the surface on December 19, 2018. After weeks of calibration and adjustment to the advanced seismometer, adding the Wind and Thermal Shield will both protect the instrument and greatly enhance its sensitivity and accuracy.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/chinese-satellite-snaps-rare-pic-of-lunar-far-side-and-1832392868']Chinese Satellite Snaps Rare Pic of Lunar Far Side and Earth Together[/URL]



> A unique view of the Moon, with its far side facing the camera and an unsettlingly tiny Earth lurking in the background, has been captured by China's Longjiang-2 satellite.


----------



## ekim68

Inside an otherworldly mission to prepare humans for Mars



> On an average day, you might find Kartik Kumar in the Netherlands, where he's finishing up his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering at Delft University of Technology or tending to his startup company. But in February 2018, Kumar was standing on the surface of Mars.
> 
> Well, almost. After intensive training, Kumar became one of six "analog astronauts" who volunteered for a month-long simulated mission to the red planet called AMADEE-18. The project's main goal: to test the tools, procedures, and mental and physical challenges that a real future Mars mission might face.


----------



## ekim68

New "Metallic Wood" Is as Strong as Titanium But Much Lighter



> Titanium has long been touted as the metal of the future, due to its strength, rust resistance, and amazing lightness. But it's not as strong as it could be, due to random defects in the way its atoms are stacked during the manufacturing process.
> 
> Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Cambridge have discovered a way to work with the individual atoms in metal to design and build a new material. One that is as strong as titanium but five times lighter, according to their study published in Nature Scientific Reports last month.


----------



## ekim68

Mars One is dead



> The company that aimed to put humanity on the red planet has met an unfortunate, but wholly-expected end. Mars One Ventures, the for-profit arm of the Mars One mission was declared bankrupt back in January, but wasn't reported until a keen-eyed Redditor (and a Swiss newspaper) found the listing. It was the brainchild of Dutch entrepreneur Bas Lansdorp, previously the founder of green energy company Ampyx Power. Lansdorp's aim was to start a company that could colonize one of our nearest neighbors.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/scientists-remember-the-mars-rover-opportunity-as-hope-1832243390']Scientists Remember the Mars Rover Opportunity as Hope Fades for Its Resurrection[/URL]



> A brutal dust storm engulfed Mars last summer. The planet-wide tempest spared the nuclear-powered Curiosity rover, but the older, solar-powered Opportunity rover shut down as the thick dust blocked light from the Sun. Opportunity has remained silent since June 10, 2018, despite NASA's hundreds of attempts to contact it. When a windy season on Mars began in November, scientists hoped that gusts might clear debris from its solar panels, but that hope appears to have been in vain. NASA continues to send recovery commands, but sadly, it seems the Opportunity mission has finally come to an end.


----------



## valis

Gonna miss her... *sniff*


----------



## valis

Wow....interesring if confirmed...

https://gizmodo.com/2-billion-year-old-squiggles-could-be-the-earliest-evid-1832560056


----------



## ekim68

ISS - extremely good lunar transit



> Lunar transit is something I've been craving for a long time now. I had some experience in this from the past, but it never turned out to be as good as I expected. But let's be honest, it is not an easy task. Not only commitment required, but also circumstances must be perfect - Moon high in the sky, appropriate ISS pass, good light conditions, good weather conditions, etc.


----------



## ekim68

A long but good read.. 


Arthur C. Clarke: Communications in the Second Century of the Telephone (1977)


----------



## ekim68

Liquid lake on Mars might be evidence the Red Planet is still volcanically active



> Last year we got some big news from the Red Planet - a huge lake of liquid water was apparently found beneath the ice at the Martian south pole. Building on that, a new study has now examined how it might have gotten there, and concluded that there has to be an underground heat source for water to pool there. For that to happen, Mars must have had volcanic activity much more recently than is normally believed, and may even still be active today.


----------



## RT

Mars Rover Opportunity dies after 15 years?

NASA Declares It So...

Thought they've been wrong and surprised before...


----------



## ekim68

Moon Rush: NASA Wants Commercial Lunar Delivery Services to Start This Year



> NASA is eager to get back to the surface of the moon.
> 
> In November, the agency tagged nine American companies as eligible to bid on delivering robotic NASA payloads to the moon, via Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contracts. Thursday (Feb. 14), NASA officials announced that the first "task order" for such a delivery will likely come out in a month or so - and that flight is expected to follow in relatively short order.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/neutron-star-collisions-could-reveal-mysterious-quark-m-1832634202']Neutron Star Collisions Could Reveal Mysterious Quark Matter[/URL]



> Scientists are dreaming up ways to probe the nature of the Universe's smallest bits-quarks-by observing ultra-dense neutron stars slamming into each other.
> 
> Particle colliders in Switzerland and on Long Island, New York, have each seen evidence of a whole new form of matter in which quarks, rather than atoms, are the basic unit. But scientists think that neutron star collisions should also produce this kind of matter, and think that they might be able to spot it using gravitational wave detectors.


----------



## ekim68

Jokers please: first human Mars mission may need onboard comedians



> Wanted: smart, fit and unflappable applicants for humanity's first mission to Mars. Must have: crazy wig, oversized boots and a big red nose.
> 
> It is enough to make Neil Armstrong spin in his grave, but researchers have found that the success of a future mission to the red planet may depend on the ship having a class clown.
> 
> Rather than the cool personality that underpinned the Right Stuff in the Apollo era, future astronauts may need to prove they have something very different: the Silly Stuff. An onboard comedian is a proven way to unite teams in stressful situations, research shows.


----------



## ekim68

Gravitational wave detectors upgraded to hunt for 'extreme cosmic events'



> Our ability to detect gravitational waves is about to level up.





> "I'm extremely excited about the future prospects that the Advanced LIGO Plus upgrade affords gravitational-wave astrophysics," said David Reitze, executive director of LIGO.
> 
> LIGO's twin facilities both contain two 4-kilometre long arms that use lasers to detect minute disturbances caused by extremely energetic cosmic events -- like black holes merging. The incredibly high-powered events are responsible for gravitational waves, rippling out through spacetime the same way water does when you drop a rock in a pond. By the time they reach Earth, the ripples are so small that only incredibly tiny disturbances in LIGO's lasers can detect them.


----------



## ekim68

InSight begins posting daily weather reports from Mars



> If you've ever wondered what the weather is on Mars, wonder no more. Today, NASA published an online tool that will allow the public to get daily Martian weather reports based on data gathered by the space agency's unmanned InSight lander and includes a 24-hr breakdown of the Red Planet's temperature, wind, and air pressure.


----------



## ekim68

Touchdown: Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe snatches dust from asteroid Ryugu



> Mission scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are celebrating today after data from the Hayabusa 2 probe confirmed a successful touchdown on its target, a kilometer-wide near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. This in itself is a triumph for the team, but the indications are that the spacecraft's effort to snaffle dust from the surface were also successful, meaning an invaluable sample holding potential secrets of the early solar system will soon be making its way back to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Ancient Martian rivers revealed in newest satellite images



> The Red Planet is notoriously dry and dusty, but its scarred surface shows that that wasn't always the case. A new set of photos from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter demonstrates some pretty clear evidence of an ancient river network that once wound across the Martian landscape.


----------



## ekim68

NASA picks 12 lunar experiments that could fly this year



> NASA has selected a dozen science experiments and technology demonstrators that could land on the Moon as early as the end of 2019. Slated to fly on commercial lunar missions, the instruments and new technologies were solicited by the space agency's Science Mission Directorate and are intended to support later missions, including the return of US astronauts to the Moon and the first manned mars missions.


----------



## ekim68

Geez, when I was young we were taught that Jupiter had 12 moons and now it's up to 79... 


Help Name Five Newly Discovered Moons of Jupiter!



> In July 2018, Carnegie's Scott Sheppard announced the discovery of 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter-11 "normal" outer moons, and one that he called an "oddball." This brought Jupiter's total number of known moons to a whopping 79-the most of any planet in our Solar System.
> 
> Now you can help Sheppard and his co-discoverers select the names for five of these newly announced moons!


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Galactic conducts highest, fastest test flight yet



> New York (CNN)If you're willing to spend $250,000 for a quick trip to space, that option is getting closer to reality.
> 
> VSS Unity, Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered plane, climbed to a record altitude of nearly 56 miles during a test flight on Friday, marking the second time Richard Branson's startup has reached space. Two pilots, and for the first time, an additional crew member, were on board.
> Beth Moses, Galactic's chief astronaut trainer and an aerospace engineer, rode along with the pilots. The trip allowed her to run safety checks and get a first look at what Galactic's customers could one day experience.


----------



## ekim68

More Moons...  


Say hello to Hippocamp, Neptune's newest moon



> Neptune's collection of moons has officially grown to 14. Originally discovered in 2013 and designated S/2004 N 1, this tiny world is described more accurately in a new paper, which also gives it an origin story and, finally, a catchier name. Say hello to Hippocamp.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX successfully sends Israel's historic moon mission on its way



> On Thursday evening, just after 5:45 p.m. PT, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched a small spacecraft on its way to the moon from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. And if the little lander, known as Beresheet, makes it all the way to the lunar surface, it'll mark several milestones that've been years in the making.
> 
> SpaceIL, the Israel-based nonprofit that's been working on the lander for eight years, is one of the original Google Lunar XPrize teams. Though the competition ended last year without a winner, SpaceIL is now poised to be the first among nearly 30 teams to make it to the moon on its own anyway.


----------



## ekim68

No, 'Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship. It might be even weirder.



> Not to put too fine a point on it, but what the frak is 'Oumuamua?
> 
> Oh, you remember 'Oumuamua. It caused quite a stir last year; first seen in late 2017 by the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii, it was quickly found to have a very unusual orbit. Instead of the usual ellipse or circle around the Sun like normal solar system objects, it was found to have a _hyperbolic_ orbit. That means it was moving too quickly to be bound to the Sun, and _that_, in turn, means it came from Out There. Like _really_ out there: interstellar space, the void between the stars.
> 
> Subsequent observations confirmed it: 'Oumuamua was just passing through the solar system, with so much extra velocity (about 25 km/sec) that it was moving faster than the Sun's escape velocity. This was a one-time visitor, screaming through the solar system and heading back out into The Black once again.


----------



## ekim68

The periodic table is 150 years old this week



> Its creation is a perfect illustration of how science progresses


----------



## ekim68

NASA, SpaceX Launch First Flight Test of Space System Designed for Crew



> Known as Demo-1, SpaceX's inaugural flight with NASA's Commercial Crew Program is an important uncrewed mission designed to test the end-to-end capabilities of the new system. It brings the nation one-step closer to the return of human launches to the space station from the United States for the first time since 2011 - the last space shuttle mission. Teams still have work to do after this flight to prepare the spacecraft to fly astronauts. The best way to advance the system design was to fly this spacecraft and uncover any other areas or integrated flight changes that might be required.


----------



## ekim68

Four new DNA letters double life's alphabet



> Synthetic DNA seems to behave like the natural variety, suggesting that chemicals beyond nature's four familiar bases could support life on Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Doomed, rare black hole spotted near the center of the galaxy



> Black holes tend to fall into two categories: fairly small or supermassive. It's long been believed that there should be another class of the objects that fall between those two extremes, and in recent years astronomers have found evidence of these "intermediate mass" black holes (IMBHs). Now a Japanese team has located one near the center of the Milky Way.


----------



## ekim68

Deflecting an asteroid will be harder than scientists thought



> March 4 (UPI) -- According to new asteroid collision models designed by scientists at Johns Hopkins University, deflecting a large rock headed for Earth will be harder than previously thought.
> 
> Using the most up-to-date findings on rock fracturing, researchers developed computer models to more accurately simulate asteroid collisions.
> 
> "Our question was, how much energy does it take to actually destroy an asteroid and break it into pieces?" Charles El Mir, a mechanical engineer at Johns Hopkins, said in a news release.
> 
> The results, detailed this week in the journal Icarus, suggest the task is quite difficult.


----------



## ekim68

InSight lander pauses drilling operations after hitting a snag on Mars



> Things have run pretty smoothly for NASA's Mars Insight lander so far, safely touching down on the Red Planet, setting a power record, relaying weather reports and deploying its deep-digging drill on the surface. But mission control has now brought drilling operations ground to a halt, with the probe seemingly snagged on some hardened material beneath the surface.


----------



## ekim68

CERN reveals plans for new experiment to search for dark matter particles




> Every time LHC and ATLAS conduct particle collision experiments in 2021 and 2023, the FASER instrument will be collecting data that could reveal the presence of "dark photons."


----------



## ekim68

What does the Milky Way weigh? Hubble and Gaia investigate



> We can't put the whole Milky Way on a scale, but astronomers have been able to come up with one of the most accurate measurements yet of our galaxy's mass, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite.
> 
> The Milky Way weighs in at about 1.5 trillion solar masses (one solar mass is the mass of our Sun), according to the latest measurements. Only a few percent of this is contributed by the approximately 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and includes a 4-million-solar-mass supermassive black hole at the center. Most of the rest of the mass is locked up in dark matter, an invisible and mysterious substance that acts like scaffolding throughout the universe and keeps the stars in their galaxies.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Crew Dragon Splashdown Marks Success of First NASA Commercial Crew Flight Test



> NASA passed a major milestone Friday in its goal to restore America's human spaceflight capability when SpaceX's Crew Dragon returned to Earth after a five-day mission docked to the International Space Station.
> 
> About 6 hours after departing the space station, Crew Dragon splashed down at 8:45 a.m. EST approximately 230 miles off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX retrieved the spacecraft from the Atlantic Ocean and is transporting it back to port on the company's recovery ship.


----------



## ekim68

The Moonrush has begun



> Space engineer and entrepreneur Dennis Wingo coined the term "Moonrush" in 2004 in his excellent book _Moonrush: Improving Life on Earth with the Moon's Resources_ (see "Review: Moonrush", The Space Review, August 16, 2004) The Moonrush is now on, fueled by entrepreneurs dreaming of profits from Earth's nearest neighbor. Leading the Moonrush are a bunch of private companies developing small lunar landers and rovers to explore the Moon.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Captures First Air-to-Air Images of Supersonic Shockwave Interaction in Flight



> Physical Scientist J.T. Heineck of NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley gets his first glimpse at a set of long-awaited images, and takes a moment to reflect on more than 10 years of technique development - an effort that has led to a milestone for NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.
> 
> NASA has successfully tested an advanced air-to-air photographic technology in flight, capturing the first-ever images of the interaction of shockwaves from two supersonic aircraft in flight.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers make unexpected dusty discoveries in Mercury's and Venus' orbits



> Saturn may sport the most famous rings in the solar system, but it's far from the only thing with some bling. The Sun has several dusty rings surrounding it, including faint ones near the orbits of Venus and Earth and, of course, the asteroid belts out beyond Mars and Neptune. But now, two new studies have found evidence of new rings in the inner solar system - a dusty one in the orbit of Mercury and a new set of asteroids following Venus' path around the Sun.
> 
> The Mercury dust ring was discovered, ironically, by a team trying to find a region of space that was dust-free. A long-standing hypothesis proposes that there should be an empty, clean zone around the Sun, since the intense heat would vaporize any and all dust particles that wander too close. Mapping the exact extent of this area can teach astronomers a lot about what's in the dust and even fill in gaps in the story of the solar system's formation.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover 83 supermassive black holes in the early universe



> Astronomers from Japan, Taiwan and Princeton University have discovered 83 quasars powered by supermassive black holes in the distant universe, from a time when the universe was less than 10 percent of its present age.
> 
> "It is remarkable that such massive dense objects were able to form so soon after the Big Bang," said Michael Strauss, a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University who is one of the co-authors of the study. "Understanding how black holes can form in the early universe, and just how common they are, is a challenge for our cosmological models."


----------



## ekim68

https://gizmodo.com/mercury-not-venus-is-the-closest-planet-to-earth-1833290616
Mercury, Not Venus, Is the Closest Planet to Earth[/URL]



> Our misconceptions about how close the planets are to one another comes from the way we usually estimate the distances to other planets. Normally, we calculate the average distance from the planet to the Sun. The Earth's average distance is 1 astronomical unit (AU), while Venus' is around 0.72 AU. If you subtract one from the other, you calculate the average distance from Earth to Venus as 0.28 AU, the smallest distance for any pair of planets.
> 
> But a trio of researchers realized that this isn't an accurate way to calculate the distances to planets. After all, Earth spends just as much time on the opposite side of its orbit from Venus, placing it 1.72 AU away. One must instead average the distance between every point along one planet's orbit and every point along the other planet's orbit. The researchers ran a simulation based on two assumptions: that the planets' orbits were approximately circular, and that their orbits weren't at an angle relative to one another.


----------



## ekim68

Lockheed Martin completes full-size cislunar habitat prototype



> Lockheed Martin has completed work on its prototype cislunar habitat that will be used in designing and testing NASA's Gateway manned deep-space outpost. Built as part of the space agency's Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Phase II study contract, the earthbound habitat will be used to explore key technologies, interfaces, and general livability needed for extended missions far from home.


----------



## ekim68

Spaceflight found to reactivate dormant viruses in astronauts



> There are certainly a whole host of technological hurdles to overcome before humans successfully travel to Mars, or beyond, but research is also pointing to a growing assortment of fundamental health challenges that astronauts may face from long stretches of time in space. A recent NASA-funded study has found dormant viruses can reactivate in the human body during spaceflight, presenting yet another physiological problem for scientists to solve before we journey out into deep space.


----------



## ekim68

Spacefaring bacteria prove no match for new space station antimicrobial coating



> Humans weren't built for space travel - the harsh environment messes with our vision, circulation, muscles and bones, and increases our risk of cancer and diabetes. The immune system also takes a beating, leaving us more vulnerable to infection. Astronauts have now tested a new antimicrobial coating on board the International Space Station (ISS), and found it kept the space-faring bugs at bay for well over a year.


----------



## ekim68

Supernova sends "cannonball" pulsar hurtling at intergalactic speeds



> The universe is full of fascinating stories, and NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has just spotted a doozy. About 10,000 years ago a star went supernova, and the explosion managed to shoot the resulting pulsar off like a cannonball, with enough force to send it hurtling out of the galaxy altogether.
> 
> When massive stars explode, they throw off their outer layers as a supernova and leave behind an extremely dense core called a neutron star. Pulsars are a class of these that spin rapidly and are very visible to telescopes as regular pulses of electromagnetic signals - hence the name.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists to finally get their hands on 50-year-old moon rocks



> Scientists are hoping to unlock some of the universe's mysteries through 50-year-old moon rocks!
> 
> The lunar dust and chunks have been stored away in airtight canisters by NASA for decades. The samples were collected during Apollo missions and none has been exposed to Earth's atmosphere, reported Popular Science.
> 
> One Apollo 18 sample from 1972 contains 1.8 pounds of a vacuum-sealed lunar core that is a stratified layer of rock that will be studied by six research teams.


----------



## ekim68

Colossal X-ray "chimneys" discovered at center of the Milky Way



> From our perspective inside the Milky Way, it's hard to really understand its large-scale structure. Now, astronomers have peered towards the center of the galaxy using the ESA's X-ray telescope XMM-Newton, and discovered two colossal "chimneys" pumping huge amounts of energy and gas out into intergalactic space.
> 
> Black holes - especially the supermassive variety like Sagittarius A* at the heart of the Milky Way - are known for being ravenous, to the point that not even light can escape their gravity. But they don't necessarily swallow up everything that comes their way. Black holes are messy eaters, throwing dust, gas, energy and matter away, and as a result, the center of the Milky Way is a turbulent region.


----------



## ekim68

Tremors on Mars detected for first time - but they're not caused by geologic activity



> Since NASA's InSight lander touched down on Mars at the end of last year, the plucky little surface probe has spent months getting carefully situated so that its special seismometer could carefully listen for "marsquakes" - a neologism for earthquakes that occur on Mars, rather than Earth, as you probably guessed. Observations of marsquakes will help determine just what's going on inside Mars, and to what extent it is still a geologically active world. We know Mars was very geologically active in the past; notably, it has the tallest mountain of any planet in the solar system.


----------



## ekim68

Space Butterfly



> What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Officially named W40, the butterfly is a nebula - a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars may form. The butterfly's two "wings" are giant bubbles of hot, interstellar gas blowing from the hottest, most massive stars in this region.


----------



## ekim68

Microbes survive in space outside the ISS, raising hopes for life on Mars



> From the hottest deserts to the freezing polar regions, microorganisms keep turning up in Earth's most extreme environments. And if that's the case, why wouldn't it hold that life can do the same on other planets? To test whether certain hardy microbes can survive the harsh conditions of space or Mars, colonies were placed on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) for almost 18 months - and many managed to survive.
> 
> For the project, known as the Biology and Mars Experiment (BIOMEX), several hundred samples of Earthly microbes, including bacteria, archaea, mosses, lichens, fungi and algae, were placed in containers attached to the outside of the Russian Zvezda module on the ISS. Some samples were kept in soil and air that mimicked that of Mars, to see whether they could survive on the Red Planet.


----------



## ekim68

Saturn's strange moons are scooping up material from the rings and growing



> Two years ago as the Cassini probe made its daring final plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn, it flew past for a closer look at a few of the gas giant's inner moons. Now a NASA team has analyzed the data and uncovered some intriguing new details about these tiny worlds, including how they're busily scooping up material from Saturn's rings and growing into weird shapes.
> 
> Between December 2016 and April 2017, Cassini used six instruments to examine the shape, structure and composition of five of Saturn's innermost moons, Pan Daphnis, Atlas, Pandora and Epimetheus. These moons all orbit within or very near to the planet's iconic rings, so it's no surprise that they interact with the dusty disks.


----------



## ekim68

Self-destructing asteroid is spinning itself to death



> NASA has released images from the Hubble Space Telescope showing an asteroid that is tearing itself apart. Located 214 million mi (344 million km) from the Sun, the 2.5-mile-wide (4-km) asteroid (6478) Gault is spinning so fast that it is self-destructing and throwing off debris tails half a million miles (800,000 km) long.
> 
> Sometimes it seems like the world is falling apart, but for Gault, this is literally the case. First discovered in 1988, it sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and might have just been catalogued as another unexceptional rock, except that observations from the Hubble telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) telescopes in Hawaii, the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, ESA's (European Space Agency) Optical Ground Station in Tenerife, and the Himalayan Chandra Telescope in India have shown that Gault is anything but unexceptional.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2019/03/29/nasa-astronauts-complete-215th-spacewalk-at-station/']NASA Astronauts Complete 215th Spacewalk at Station[/URL]




> Expedition 59





> Flight Engineers Nick Hague and Christina Koch of NASA concluded their spacewalk at 2:27 p.m. EDT. During the six hour and 45-minute spacewalk, the two NASA astronauts successfully connected three newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries to replace the previous six nickel-hydrogen batteries that provide power for one channel on one pair of the station's solar arrays. The new batteries provide an improved and more efficient power capacity for operations.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's challenge to create 3D-printed space habitats nears completion



> NASA's 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge is edging towards its conclusion, which means another phase of the four-year competition has drawn to a close. This latest round tasked teams with creating detailed virtual models of shelters designed specifically for life on Mars, with the winners each claiming a share of US$100,000 ahead of the grand finale next month.


----------



## ekim68

The Sun's magnetic field might be 10 times stronger than we thought



> A new study by Queen's University Belfast and Aberystwyth University indicates that the Sun's magnetic field is 10 times more powerful than previously thought. By analyzing a solar flare on September 10, 2017 using the Swedish one-meter Solar Telescope at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma in the Canary Islands, Dr David Kuridze, Research Fellow at Aberystwyth University, was able to determine that the magnetic field is an order of magnitude greater than earlier measurements have suggested.
> 
> The Sun's magnetic field is of more than academic interest. Though the Sun is so far away that its light takes eight minutes to reach us, its magnetic field has tremendous impact on our world.


----------



## ekim68

India's anti-satellite weapon test sent debris flying that could threaten space station, NASA chief warns



> The successful test of an Indian anti-satellite weapon March 27 created a cloud of high-velocity debris that poses a near-term threat to other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit, including the International Space Station, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told agency employees Monday. Indian officials said the threat was minimal.
> 
> But during a "town hall" meeting at NASA Headquarters in Washington, Bridenstine said the anti-satellite weapon created at least 400 pieces of debris, including 60 trackable fragments that are four inches across or larger. Of that total, 24 ended up in orbits with high points, or apogees, above the 255 mile altitude of the space station.


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> India's anti-satellite weapon test sent debris flying that could threaten space station, NASA chief warns


More on this...
2019 Indian Anti-Satellite Weapon Test - Updated]

(Video)


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity and Mars Express sniff out source of Martian methane



> The mystery of methane on Mars has been wafting around for decades. Now, using data gathered by the ESA's Mars Express orbiter and NASA's Curiosity rover on the ground, a new study has not only confirmed that the gas is there, but identified its likely source.
> 
> Here on Earth, methane is released into the atmosphere in large quantities by all sorts of organisms (most notably livestock), but can also bubble up from geological sources. The problem is, it's an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Luckily, it also tends to dissipate pretty quickly.
> 
> Those two factors make methane detection on Mars a pretty exciting prospect. There's a chance that it could have come from biological sources - and the fact that it doesn't linger long suggests it was released recently.


----------



## ekim68

More powerful than ever, LIGO fires back up to search for gravitational waves



> In 2015, a century-old prediction by Einstein was finally proven correct, as gravitational waves were detected for the first time. Now, the facilities behind this discovery - the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) - are back up and running after a year-long upgrade, with a few new tricks up their sleeves.





> All up, the new and improved LIGO is about 40 percent more sensitive than during its last run, allowing it to survey a larger volume of space than ever before. The team says the detector can also now see neutron star collisions out to an average distance of 550 million light-years, which is more than 190 million further than previously possible.


----------



## ekim68

First ever private lunar mission enters orbit around the Moon



> A historic mission to the Moon is approaching its crescendo, with the Israeli-built Beresheet lander today entering orbit around our biggest satellite and preparing to close in on its surface. If successful, it will become the first privately built spacecraft to touch down on the Moon, and would make Israel just the fourth nation to do so after the US, the Soviet Union and China.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity watches as Mars' two moons eclipse the Sun



> A solar eclipse is an amazing sight to behold, and it's an astronomical event that's not limited to Earth. NASA's Curiosity rover has captured images of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, as they passed between the Red Planet and the Sun.


----------



## ekim68

Heavy metal planet fragment survives destruction from dead star



> A fragment of a planet that has survived the death of its star has been discovered by University of Warwick astronomers in a disc of debris formed from destroyed planets, which the star ultimately consumes.
> 
> The iron and nickel rich planetesimal survived a system-wide cataclysm that followed the death of its host star, SDSS J122859.93+104032.9. Believed to have once been part of a larger planet, its survival is all the more astonishing as it orbits closer to its star than previously thought possible, going around it once every two hours.


----------



## ekim68

Oops.... 


Why the Air Force still cannot identify more than a dozen satellites from one December launch



> On the afternoon of December 3rd, 2018, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from the southern coast of California, lofting the largest haul of individual satellites the vehicle had ever transported. At the time, it seemed like the mission was a slam dunk, with all 64 satellites deploying into space as designed.
> 
> But nearly four months later, more than a dozen satellites from the launch have yet to be identified in space. We know that they're up there, and where they are, but it's unclear which satellites belong to which satellite operator on the ground.
> 
> They are, truly, unidentified flying objects.


----------



## ekim68

Rivers may have flowed on Mars for longer than anyone realized



> The surface of modern Mars is a parched memory of water. What little remains of the life-giving liquid trickles from salty seasonal seeps, languishes in pockets as underground lakes, or sits frozen in sheets of ice.
> 
> Yet the planet's rusty rocks record a past flush with water; deep valleys carve through a landscape speckled with dry lake beds, alluvial fans, and smooth river pebbles. While scientists have long thought the planet's warm and wet period was relatively brief, a study published today in _Science Advances _hints that these rivers may have stuck around for much longer than previously thought.


----------



## ekim68

Self-driving spacecraft tech to be road-tested as part of planetary defense mission



> If you're going to spend millions of dollars on a spacecraft, you might as well try to cram in as much as possible. With that in mind, ESA has now detailed the side mission it's planning for the asteroid-visiting spacecraft Hera. After the main work is complete, the probe will test out some new autonomous navigation systems, which should help future spacecraft get around without relying on ground control all the way back on Earth.
> 
> Hera is part of a planetary defense test known as the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA), which as the name suggests is designed to figure out how we might go about nudging a potential Earth-bound space rock off-course. The target is a binary asteroid called Didymos, which consists of a tiny 160-meter-wide (525-ft) rock orbiting a larger, 780-m (2,560-ft) asteroid.


----------



## ekim68

Odd orbits shed light on identity of objects that are half-star, half-planet



> To most of us, the difference between a star and a planet is pretty clear. But officially it's surprisingly murky, thanks to a middle-ground celestial object known as a brown dwarf, which could be classed as either the largest possible planets or the smallest possible stars. Now astronomers from Heidelberg University have found evidence of brown dwarfs forming like planets, as opposed to stars.
> 
> Stars and planets are born in similar ways but usually under different circumstances. If you have a cloud of dust and gas, a star can be born when enough material gathers in one spot that the pressure and heat kickstarts hydrogen nuclear fusion in its core. Planets often form out of the leftover material as it swirls in a disk around a star, but they don't collect enough mass to ignite into stars themselves.
> 
> Brown dwarfs seem to straddle the line between the two.


----------



## RT

Seeing the 'unseeable': Scientists reveal first photo of black hole



> This is a huge day in astrophysics," said U.S. National Science Foundation Director France Cordova. "We're seeing the unseeable."
> 
> "It did bring tears to my eyes," Cordova added.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX nails triple rocket landing following Falcon Heavy's first commercial launch



> SpaceX made history today as it not only successfully flew is Falcon Heavy rocket on its first commercial mission, but also recovered all three of the first-stage boosters for the first time. The Arabsat-6A mission to send a high-capacity telecommunications satellite into geosynchronous orbit is the second flight of the Falcon Heavy, which is the most powerful rocket currently operating and the fourth most powerful ever built.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/israels-beresheet-probe-crashes-on-the-moon-1833979818']Israel's Beresheet Probe Crashes on the Moon [/URL]




> The Beresheet probe crash-landed on the Moon earlier today, dashing Israel's hopes of becoming only the fourth country to land a functioning probe on the lunar surface.
> 
> "We lost it," said a SpaceIL official a few minutes after mission controllers lost contact with the Beresheet probe. "We failed to land the spacecraft."


----------



## ekim68

NASA's landmark Twins Study reveals resilience of human body in space



> Results from NASA's landmark Twins Study, which took place from 2015-2016, were published Thursday in _Science_. The integrated paper -- encompassing work from 10 research teams -- reveals some interesting, surprising and reassuring data about how one human body adapted to -- and recovered from -- the extreme environment of space.
> 
> The Twins Study provides the first integrated biomolecular view into how the human body responds to the spaceflight environment, and serves as a genomic stepping stone to better understand how to maintain crew health during human expeditions to the Moon and Mars.


----------



## ekim68

What's cool about this picture is the sharpness and the fact that it's almost twenty years old... 

Light Bridges on the Sun


----------



## ekim68

Wow.... 


NASA backs 18 new space technology projects for further research



> From smart spacesuits to solar surfing, 18 high-tech projects designed to push the envelope of space technology have been selected for the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. The dozen and a half early studies are being funded at up to US$500,000 each to aid in the long-term exploration and exploitation of the Moon and beyond.


----------



## ekim68

DIY gravitational waves with '[email protected]'



> Researchers hoping to better interpret data from the detection of gravitational waves generated by the collision of binary black holes are turning to the public for help.





> "As our gravitational wave detectors become more sensitive, we're going to need to greatly expand our efforts to understand all of the information encoded in gravitational waves from colliding binary black holes," Etienne said. "We are turning to the general public to help with these efforts, which involve generating unprecedented numbers of self-consistent simulations of these extremely energetic collisions. This will truly be an inclusive effort, and we especially hope to inspire the next generation of scientists in this growing field of gravitational wave astrophysics."


----------



## ekim68

NASA 'Nose' Importance of Humans, Robots Exploring Together



> NASA is sending humans forward to the Moon, this time to stay. Upcoming expeditions to the Moon will require making every moment of astronaut time outside the safety of the Gateway in orbit and lunar lander system on the surface count. Robotics will enable lunar crews to do more while minimizing their risk.


This part of the article caught my eye.. 



> The total pressure gauge measures the total pressure in space. After the general vicinity of a leak is known, the pressure gauge is able to pinpoint it within a few inches in real time.


Interesting to me that they can measure pressure and locate it within a Vacuum..


----------



## ekim68

For the first time, astronomers see the birth of a neutron star binary system



> A brief and rapidly fading blip of light from a distant galaxy has given astronomers a glimpse into a never-before-seen event: The birth of a binary neutron star system.
> 
> Oh yeah, stuff like this makes my brain tingle. There's a lot of fun things here.
> 
> The galaxy is called IV Zw 155 (the 155th galaxy in astronomer Fritz Zwicky's fourth edition of his galaxy catalog). It's pretty far away, about 850 - 900 million light years or so, but even at that distance you can see it's a weird spiral, with wide-flung arms just screaming out that the galaxy recently suffered a collision with another galaxy.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists aim to catch slow-decaying dark particle inside LHC



> April 18 (UPI) -- Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have developed a new strategy for tracking down dark matter.
> 
> Dark matter is apparently everywhere, binding galaxies together. But astronomers can only intimate dark matter's presence by measuring its gravitational effect on regular matter. As such, dark matter and dark energy remains poorly understood.
> 
> "We know for sure there's a dark world, and there's more energy in it than there is in ours," LianTao Wang, a researcher at LHC and a professor of physics at the University of Chicago, said in a news release.
> 
> To gain insights into this dark world, Wang and his colleagues are trying to isolate the dark particle that they estimate occasionally interacts with normal matter. Researchers predict the elusive particle is heavier and longer-lived than other subatomic particles.


----------



## ekim68

A meteor from another solar system may have hit Earth, and the implications are fascinating



> It could take humanity hundreds, if not thousands, of years to develop the capability to explore interstellar space. Until then, interstellar space can just come to us.
> A new study by two Harvard researchers reveals the cosmos may have already deposited the first such far-flung visitor onto our doorstep five years ago in 2014, when a small meteor crashed into Earth near Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. According to their research, this 1.5-foot-wide object most likely came all the way from another solar system.


----------



## ekim68

How NASA Earth Data Aids America, State by State



> For six decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to better understand our home planet and improve lives. A new interactive website called Space for U.S. highlights some of the many ways that NASA's Earth observations help people strengthen communities across the United States and make informed decisions about public health, disaster response and recovery, and environmental protection.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Celebrates 29th Anniversary with a Colorful Look at the Southern Crab Nebula


----------



## ekim68

Space fire extinguisher sucks instead of blows



> The Department of Mechanical Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology has developed an inside-out fire extinguisher for use inside spacecraft. Instead of spraying out extinguishing agents at a fire, the Vacuum Extinguish Method (VEM) sucks the flames and burning materials into a vacuum chamber, where they can be safely suffocated or extinguished.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's InSight Lander Captures Audio of First Likely 'Quake' on Mars



> NASA's Mars InSight lander has measured and recorded for the first time ever a likely "marsquake."
> 
> The faint seismic signal, detected by the lander's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, was recorded on April 6, the lander's 128th Martian day, or sol. This is the first recorded trembling that appears to have come from inside the planet, as opposed to being caused by forces above the surface, such as wind. Scientists still are examining the data to determine the exact cause of the signal.


----------



## RT

This is sad news...

for me and many others that like to watch the sky.
Heavens Above website gives very accurate info for the sky in your location.
One of things I've become fond of is seeing the Iridium Flares in my sky.
It's just a satellite flashing the last glint of the sun as it reflects from it's solar panels towards your eye, should you be looking up at the right place at the right time.

The Heavens Above website has kept an astoundingly accurate database of when you can see it at any time or place.
It was a kind of of hobby of mine to step outside and catch that few seconds of flare...got a few pics...but now it's rare, and will be gone soon, as the satellites are being decommissioned.

It's one thing to look up and bask in the wonders of the night sky, and another if you see objects the we humans have put into orbit, so they look down upon us.
Man made objects can be predictable, the rest of the universe is not, it still holds surprises.


----------



## ekim68

Thanks for the info Randy. I did not know about this and I've bookmarked the sites to learn more...


----------



## RT

Surprised you didn't know of it Mike but we all learn stuff...

Here's one pic I took of an Iridium Flare from my deck...from the thread Oldie but Newbie..Rt's pics..









and I only got that because of the website prediction.
There are tons better on the web


----------



## ekim68

New Hubble measurements confirm universe is expanding faster than expected



> New measurements from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope confirm that the Universe is expanding about 9% faster than expected based on its trajectory seen shortly after the big bang, astronomers say.


----------



## ekim68

NASA, FEMA, International Partners Plan Asteroid Impact Exercise



> For more than 20 years, NASA and its international partners have been scanning the skies for NEOs, which are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun and come within 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) of Earth's orbit. International groups, such as NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), the European Space Agency's Space Situational Awareness-NEO Segment, and the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) have made better communication of the hazards posed by NEOs a top priority.
> 
> In the spirit of better communication, next week at the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference, NASA's PDCO and other U.S. agencies and space science institutions, along with international partners, will participate in a "tabletop exercise" that will play out a realistic-but fictional-scenario for an asteroid on an impact trajectory with Earth.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX's rockets and spacecraft have cool names. What do they mean?



> Space exploration is serious business.
> 
> Missions cost tens of millions of dollars and frequently put human lives on the line. That's probably why rockets and spacecraft tend to have serious-sounding names.
> 
> Atlas, Saturn, Delta, Soyuz (which means "union" in Russian), and a host of other space-faring machines have some authoritative names.
> 
> Then there's SpaceX.


----------



## valis

well, this is terrifying.....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...aboratory-takes-hidden-toll-america-s-arsenal


----------



## Brigham

It sounds like the scientists need to become reaquainted with critical mass and radiation.


----------



## valis

Indeed. Which is the other terrifying part.


----------



## ekim68

Thanks Tim.. I'm saving that article for reference...


----------



## ekim68

Dark matter detector reveals material with longest half-life ever - 18 sextillion years



> Although the many experiments searching for evidence of dark matter have yet to turn up any solid proof of the stuff yet, they are making other amazing discoveries. The XENON1T experiment has now revealed the longest half-life ever seen in an element, which is far, far longer than the age of the universe.
> 
> Half-life is a measure of a material's stability, in terms of how long on average it's expected to take for half of its atoms to decay. Xenon 124 was already thought to have a long half-life - about 160 trillion years - but the new observation makes that look like the blink of an eye.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers have discovered a 2,000-year-old nova remnant



> April 29 (UPI) -- An international team of astronomers has identified the ancient remains of a nova inside a galactic globular cluster.
> 
> Using the Very Large Telescope's MUSE instrument, scientists located the deceased stellar core glowing near the center of globular cluster Messier 22, which is found inside the constellation Sagittarius, 10,600 light-years from Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Star unlike any found in the Milky Way appears to be an intergalactic intruder



> Astronomers have discovered a star in the Milky Way that doesn't belong. Officially known as J1124+4535, the star has a chemical composition unlike any others ever observed in our home galaxy, suggesting it's an intergalactic interloper that may have come from a dwarf galaxy that was swallowed up by the Milky Way.
> 
> The star in question first came to the attention of astronomers through a survey conducted by the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST). Located in China, the telescope can help astronomers figure out the chemical compositions of stars by analyzing the spectrum of their light.


----------



## ekim68

NASA head: Expect a major asteroid strike in your lifetime



> This week, as scientists work through an exercise simulating an imminent asteroid impact with Earth, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine warned that we need to take the real-world threat seriously.


----------



## ekim68

Water found in sample brought back from asteroid Itokawa



> During a seven-year round trip, the Japanese probe Hayabusa collected samples from the asteroid Itokawa and returned them to Earth in 2010. Now researchers from Arizona State University have discovered traces of water in those samples, adding weight to the idea that much of Earth's water may have come from asteroid impacts.


----------



## ekim68

Blue Origin successfully launches and lands its New Shepard rocket during 11th test flight



> Update May 2nd, 10:00AM ET:_ Blue Origin successfully performed another test launch of its New Shepard system today. Both the New Shepard rocket and capsule touched down safely back at the company's West Texas facility around 10 minutes after liftoff. The capsule reached about 346,000 feet, or more than 65 miles, eclipsing the recognized boundary of space._


----------



## valis

Sweet!


----------



## ekim68

Nearby collision of two neutron stars sprinkled our solar system with precious heavy elements



> A cataclysmic collision between the remnants of a pair of dead stars may have seeded our solar system with precious heavy metals including gold and uranium, according to a newly published study. If such a heavyweight clash were to be observed in the present day, it would be the brightest point in the night sky.
> 
> Neutron stars are the remains of once massive stellar bodies that have exploded in dramatic supernovae. This violent event casts vast quantities of stellar material out into the surrounding space environment, but the ultra-dense core of the once majestic star lives on.


----------



## ekim68

My new favorite word is photogrammetry... 


Mars 2020 lander's heat shield passes critical milestone



> A vital part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission has passed an important milestone, with the unmanned probe's heat shield passing its final static load test under the thermal conditions it will encounter as it enters the Martian atmosphere. Designed and built by Lockheed Martin, the 15 ft (4.5 m) ablative shield is one of the largest ever built.
> 
> When the Mars 2020 spacecraft reaches the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, it will face the most dangerous phase of the mission - hitting the atmosphere at interplanetary speeds. Sealed inside its protective aeroshell, the probe will be traveling at 12,000 mph (19,300 kph) as it plunges into the thin Martian atmosphere, piling up the air in front of it in a shockwave that will slow it down to supersonic speeds.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacex/2019/05/04/spacex-dragon-heads-to-space-station-after-successful-launch-2/']SpaceX Dragon Heads to Space Station After Successful Launch[/URL]



> More than 5,500 pounds of cargo is on its way to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The company's 17th commercial cargo mission to resupply the space station began at 2:48 a.m. EDT on May 4, 2019, with liftoff aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.


----------



## ekim68

The Race to Develop the Moon




> For science, profit, and pride, China, the U.S., and private companies are hunting for resources on the lunar surface.


----------



## ekim68

InSight Captures Sunrise and Sunset on Mars



> A camera on the spacecraft's robotic arm snapped the photos on April 24 and 25, the 145th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. In local Mars time, the shots were taken starting around 5:30 a.m. and then again starting around 6:30 p.m. As a bonus, a camera under the lander's deck also caught clouds drifting across the Martian sky at sunset.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's First Planetary Defense Technology Demonstration to Collide with Asteroid in 2022



> The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) - NASA's first mission to demonstrate a planetary defense technique - will get one chance to hit its target, the small moonlet in the binary asteroid system Didymos. The asteroid poses no threat to Earth and is an ideal test target: measuring the change in how the smaller asteroid orbits about the larger asteroid in a binary system is much easier than observing the change in a single asteroid's orbit around the Sun. Work is ramping up at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and other locations across the country, as the mission heads toward its summer 2021 launch - and attempts to pull off a feat so far seen only in science fiction films.


----------



## ekim68

Antimatter Is Both a Particle and a Wave, New Experiment Confirms




> Antimatter





> isn't just made of antiparticles, it's also made of waves. Now we know that this holds true even at the level of a single antimatter particle.
> 
> Physicists have known for a long time that just about everything - light and other forms of energy, but also every atom in your body - exists as both particles and waves, a concept known as particle-wave duality. That's been shown again and again in experiments. But antimatter particles, which are identical to their matter partners, except for their opposite charge and spin, are much more difficult to experiment with. These twins of matter flit into existence fleetingly, usually in massive particle accelerators.
> 
> But now, physicists have shown at the level of a single positron - an antimatter twin of the electron - that antimatter, too, is made of both particles and waves.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble captures the good side of a stunning, scarred "two-faced" galaxy



> The galaxy NGC 4485 appears normal on the left side, but on the right it bears the stunning scars of a close encounter with another galaxy, in the form of a new star forming region


----------



## ekim68

The Definition of a Kilogram Just Changed Worldwide



> The definition of a kilogram, a unit roughly equal to 2.2 pounds, has changed forever.
> 
> Since 1889, the kilogram has been defined by a platinum-iridium alloy cylinder nicknamed Le Grand K, which is located in a triple-locked vault underneath the Pavillon de Breteuil, a building near Paris first unveiled by King Louis XIV in 1672.
> 
> But on Monday-World Metrology Day-Le Grand K lost its special status as the international prototype kilogram (IPK) and it will no longer represent this base unit of mass to the world.
> 
> From now on, the kilogram-along with the ampere, kelvin, mole, and candela-will be defined by fundamental physical and atomic properties instead of tangible human-made objects.


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre celestial object spotted is one of the rarest in the galaxy



> The cosmos is full of strange things, like planets made of diamond, mysterious radio bursts and quasars that shine with the light of 600 trillion Suns. Now astronomers have spotted a bizarre star that may prove to be one of the rarest objects ever, with maybe as few as five or six of them in the galaxy.
> 
> The object in question is known as J005311, located in the constellation Cassiopeia about 10,000 light-years from Earth. Found in images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite, J005311 is a bright star nestled inside a gas nebula, which seems to be emitting only infrared radiation and no visible light.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launches first bunch of satellites for its Starlink mega-constellation



> The first of SpaceX's functional Starlink satellites have been launched into space, with the company successfully putting the first pieces in place for what it hopes will be a vast network blanketing the entire globe in high-speed broadband internet.


----------



## ekim68

Boeing CST-100 Starliner completes hot-fire thruster tests



> At NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, Boeing recently completed live-fire tests of the complex array of thrusters that will be used to guide the seven-passenger spacecraft in orbit and provide propulsion for the emergency abort system. The successful trials now open the way to full abort testing and the first unmanned orbital flight.


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk: The Popular Mechanics Interview



> In January, we ran an exclusive interview with Elon Musk in which he explained, for the first time, his full thinking-and the complex engineering questions-behind his decision to construct SpaceX's Starship rocket and booster with stainless steel. The previous design for the rocket (which was then known as the BFR) had called for carbon fiber, but Musk recalculated and went with steel due to its durability, cost-effectiveness, and ductility.
> 
> Here, in a continuation of that interview, Musk goes deep on what it takes to actually travel beyond orbit and into space. Also, it sounds like Mars will have a nice park.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-spy-three-comets-circling-a-nearby-star-1834981685']Astronomers Spy Three Comets Circling a Nearby Star[/URL]



> NASA's exoplanet-hunting TESS spacecraft has spotted three comets orbiting a star 64 light-years away, according to a new paper.
> 
> Comets in our own solar system are Sun-orbiting objects that develop a cloud and tail from volatile elements when they receive enough solar energy. Scientists have already detected comet-like objects orbiting other stars, but these three are the first to be seen in data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. The finding demonstrates the kinds of exciting discoveries likely to come from this relatively new mission, which launched in April 2018.


----------



## ekim68

Close Encounters with the Taurid Swarm

*



May 24, 2019:

Click to expand...

*


> In November 2032, Earth will pass through the Taurid Swarm, a cloud of debris from Comet 2P/Encke that makes brilliant fireballs when its gravelly particles occasionally hit Earth's atmosphere. Previous encounters with the Swarm in 2005 and 2015 produced showers of bright meteors observed around the world; in 1975 the Swarm contacted the Moon, making Apollo seismic sensors ring with evidence of objects hitting the lunar surface. If forecasters are correct, we're in for similar activity 13 years from now.


----------



## ekim68

NASA officially orders its first segment of a lunar space station



> NASA has chosen its first commercial partner for a proposed space station, known as the Lunar Gateway, to be built near the Moon. On Thursday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Maxar Technologies would build the first component of the Gateway-the power and propulsion element. Like the name suggests, it will provide electricity to the Gateway and help move it around.


----------



## ekim68

A video... 


SpaceX Starlink Satellites Spotted Over Netherlands


----------



## ekim68

Lightning Strikes Russian Rocket During Satellite Launch (But Everything's Fine)



> A bolt of lightning struck a Russian Soyuz rocket during a satellite launch Monday (May 27), but did not hinder the booster's trip into space, Russian space officials said.
> 
> The lightning strike occurred during the launch of a Glonass-M navigation satellite from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome about 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow at 9:23 a.m. Moscow time (0623 GMT). In a statement, officials with Russia's space agency Roscosmos announced that the rocket successfully reached orbit.


----------



## ekim68

Close encounter with alien star could explain 'Oumuamua, debunk Planet Nine



> Our solar system has several belts of rocky planetesimals that are essentially the crumbs left over from the formation of the planets and moons. But new research suggests some of these objects could actually be alien, captured during close flybys with other star systems. These close encounters could also explain objects like 'Oumuamua and might even provide an alternative to the "Planet Nine" hypothesis.


And things I learned today.. 



> This idea has several implications for our own solar system. For one, it's known that other stars have brushed past the Sun in the past, with the most recent event occurring just 70,000 years ago. That means there could be alien asteroids whizzing around our neighborhood. Some of these have already been identified, but perhaps they're more common than we thought.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity strikes clay in new samples, further proving Mars' watery past



> NASA's Curiosity rover has begun investigating one of the most interesting regions so far on its seven-year journey. Scientists call the area the "clay-bearing unit," and sure enough, that name has turned out to be very apt. After drilling two new samples last month, the rover has finally confirmed high amounts of clay minerals, providing further proof that ancient Mars was once much wetter.


----------



## ekim68

You too can send your name to Mars.. 


NASA Invites Public to Submit Names to Fly Aboard Next Mars Rover


----------



## valis

Can we submit, say, an ex-wife?


----------



## ekim68

Who knows? She could be a famous name buried in Martian soil and an Mars Archaeology Team would puzzle her name 100,000 years later...


----------



## ekim68

I'm always amazed at the Technological advances in peeking in on the Universe... 


Subaru Telescope captures 1800 exploding stars



> By combining one of the world's most powerful digital cameras and a telescope capable of capturing a wider shot of the night sky compared to other big telescopes, a team of researchers from Japan have been able to identify about 1800 new supernovae, including 58 Type Ia supernovae 8 billion light years away, reports a new study released online on 30 May.


----------



## valis

Had not heard of that so thanks, Mike.


----------



## ekim68

In my first year in college my Major was Astronomy... I've been hooked since I was a teenager...


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff.. 


James Webb Space Telescope emerges successfully from final thermal vacuum test



> NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has successfully cleared another critical testing milestone, taking this ambitious observatory one step closer to its 2021 launch. The spacecraft has gone through its final thermal vacuum test meant to ensure that its hardware will function electronically in the vacuum of space, and withstand the extreme temperature variations it will encounter on its mission.


----------



## ekim68

NICER's Night Moves Trace the X-ray Sky



> In this image, numerous sweeping arcs seem to congregate at various bright regions. You may wonder: What is being shown? Air traffic routes? Information moving around the global internet? Magnetic fields looping across active areas on the Sun?
> 
> In fact, this is a map of the entire sky in X-rays recorded by NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), a payload on the International Space Station. NICER's primary science goals require that it target and track cosmic sources as the station orbits Earth every 93 minutes. But when the Sun sets and night falls on the orbital outpost, the NICER team keeps its detectors active while the payload slews from one target to another, which can occur up to eight times each orbit.


----------



## ekim68

NASA chooses three companies to send landers to the moon



> May 31 (UPI) -- NASA has chosen three private U.S. companies to send unmanned landers to the moon starting in 2020, the space agency announced Friday.
> 
> The companies and contract amounts are Astrobotic, of Pittsburgh, Pa., $79.5 million; Intuitive Machines, of Houston, Texas, $77 million; and OrbitBeyond, of Edison, N.J., $97 million.


----------



## ekim68

And now here's Tom on Jupiter with the weather: Thanks, Karen. Still a bit breezy on the Great Red Spot, but it's easing up



> Updated: The storm that has been raging on Jupiter for the last 400 years or so could be coming to an end earlier than expected, judging by observations from some in the amateur astronomer community.
> 
> The backyard boffins have spotted some very unusual activity around the gas giant's Great Red Spot (GRS) over recent weeks, and seen edges of the storm seem to splinter off and dissipate into Jupiter's clouds. By the end of last week, some observers reckoned the GRS had shrunk by 5-10 per cent in less than a month. Others put the decline as much as 15 per cent.


----------



## ekim68

Dusty, gassy origins of giant planets observed at last



> An international team of physicists has finally found proof of circumplanetary disks, adding substantial weight to current theoretical models of planet formation. These disks of gas surrounded by dust have eluded detection, until now.
> 
> The international study, led by the Monash School of Physics and Astronomy in Melbourne, Australia, looked at the very early stages of planet formation - typically only a few million years in - using the power of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) facility in Chile.


----------



## ekim68

Exotic particles called pentaquarks may be less weird than previously thought



> Four years ago, when experimenters spotted pentaquarks-exotic, short-lived particles made of five quarks-some physicists thought they had glimpsed the strong nuclear force, which binds the atomic nucleus, engaging in a bizarre new trick. New observations have now expanded the zoo of pentaquarks, but suggest a tamer explanation for their structure. The findings, from the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb), a particle detector fed by the LHC at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, suggest pentaquarks are not bags of five quarks binding in a new way, but are more like conventional atomic nuclei.


----------



## Brigham

valis said:


> Can we submit, say, an ex-wife?


Me first!!


----------



## ekim68

NASA Is Sending an Atomic Clock Into Deep Space



> On Saturday, June 22, SpaceX plans to launch its Falcon Heavy Rocket out of the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The reusable craft is coming off two successful flights; its maiden launch in early 2018 and a satellite delivery trip in April 2019.
> 
> For its third adventure, the Falcon Heavy will ferry a trove of precious cargo up into space. Around two dozen satellites are going along for the ride this time. But the rocket's most interesting passenger has to be the Orbital Test Bed satellite. Its main payload is an experimental, toaster-sized gizmo called the Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC). If the thing works properly, future missions to Mars, Jupiter and beyond could become a whole lot easier - and less expensive.


----------



## ekim68

NASA opens up use of the ISS to private companies for commercial purposes



> In a move emphasizing NASA's desire to focus on deep space exploration instead of low-Earth orbit (LEO) activities, the space agency is opening the International Space Station (ISS) to limited commercial use, including hosting private astronauts. The plans not only involve making room on the station for commercial services, but also reserves a docking berth for a privately owned and operated habitat module.


----------



## ekim68

India set to launch second lunar mission; land rover on the moon



> BENGALURU (Reuters) - India said on Wednesday it will launch its second lunar mission in mid-July, as it moves to consolidate its status as a leader in space technology by achieving a controlled landing on the moon.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX successfully launched and landed its Falcon 9 rocket on the California coast this morning



> Update June 12th, 11:20AM ET:_ Despite heavy fog obscuring the view of the launchpad, SpaceX successfully launched and deployed all three RADARSAT spacecraft into orbit this morning. After takeoff, the company also landed the Falcon 9 on the California coast amid the heavy fog._


_
_


----------



## ekim68

NASA gives go-ahead for mission to explore ancient planet core in asteroid belt



> NASA has given its approval to start construction of a spacecraft that will one day explore the metallic asteroid Psyche, which may represent the exposed metallic core of what was once a Mars-sized planet. The probe is set to launch in August 2022, after which it will endure a frigid 3.5-year journey through space before achieving orbit around Psyche on January 31, 2026.
> 
> Some scientists believe that Psyche was once an early solar system planet that suffered a violent collision with a large impactor billions of years ago. This event could have stripped the world of its outer crust, leaving behind the metallic core that we observe today.


----------



## ekim68

The proton, a century on



> It is 100 years since Ernest Rutherford published his results proving the existence of the proton. For decades, the proton was considered an elementary particle. But ever since researchers at the SLAC and DESY laboratories began firing electrons into protons, beginning in the 1960s, experiments have revealed that the proton has a complex internal structure, one that depends on how you look at it, or rather on how hard you hit it. A century on, however, much remains to be learnt about the proton.


----------



## ekim68

NASA estimates it will need $20 billion to $30 billion for moon landing, administrator says



> NASA has touted its bold plan to return American astronauts to the moon by 2024 for months. Now we're starting to get an idea of how much it will cost.
> The space agency will need an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion over the next five years for its moon project, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told CNN Business on Thursday. That would mean adding another $4 billion to $6 billion per year, on average, to the agency's budget, which is already expected to be about $20 billion annually.


----------



## ekim68

Milky Way still reeling from impact with "ghost galaxy"



> Last year astronomers discovered a gigantic "ghost" galaxy, named Antlia 2, orbiting the Milky Way. Now, new research led by Rochester University has found that the bizarre galaxy may have been involved in a hit-and-run that left the Milky Way with a wobbly galactic disc.


----------



## ekim68

I found this from a site I like and another Wow for me. I didn't realize that the Sun had so many Cycles and Currents... 

*



WHY ARE NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS GOING CRAZY?

Click to expand...

*


> Another night, another bright display of noctilucent clouds. "On the evening of June 17th, a large area of our sky was covered by noctilucent clouds, even directly overhead," reports Marek Nikodem of Szubin, Poland. "Simply mysterious, beautiful, stunning, unpredictable and photogenic--this season is unbelievable."
> 
> Heiko Ulbricht witnessed the same display from Herzogswalde, Germany. "I have been observing noctilucent clouds for 21 years. Never before have I seen such a stunning mega-outburst! The electric-blue waves extended 50° above the horizon with many rippling structures. I was speechless."
> 
> "What is different this year in the mesosphere?" he wonders.
> 
> The most likely answer is "Solar Minimum." The solar cycle is currently swinging low through one of the deepest minima of the past century. Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation from the sun is at its lowest level in a decade--a deficit that can lead directly to more noctilucent clouds.


----------



## ekim68

NASA probe enters the tightest orbit ever around a planetary object



> NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu has already brought about a series of landmark moments for space exploration, not least of which is the fact that the rock currently stands as the smallest object ever orbited by a spacecraft. Not content with that, mission control has moved the probe into tighter and tighter loops around the asteroid, now setting a new record for the closest ever orbit of a planetary body.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers see 'warm' glow of Uranus' rings



> The rings of Uranus are invisible to all but the largest telescopes-they weren't even discovered until 1977-but they're surprisingly bright in new heat images of the planet taken by two large telescopes in the high deserts of Chile.
> 
> The thermal glow gives astronomers another window onto the rings, which have been seen only because they reflect a little light in the visible, or optical, range and in the near-infrared. The new images taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) allowed the team for the first time to measure the temperature of the rings: a cool 77 Kelvin, or 77 degrees above absolute zero-the boiling temperature of liquid nitrogen and equivalent to 320 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's historic Apollo 11 launch comes to your phone in AR



> We're nearing the 50th anniversary of the Apollo  11 Moon landing (on July 20) and, to celebrate, there's an interactive augmented reality app called 321 LAUNCH that will bring a faithful recreation of the launch to your mobile device - and any surface you happen to have at hand.
> 
> There are actually two AR experiences launches as part of this project, including the launch simulator, which will start on July 16th and provide eight days of live broadcast content until the actual end of mission day on July 24th, with the spacecraft's return to Earth. The other will be part of the USA TODAY app, as USA TODAY is putting together the broadcast along with FLORIDA TODAY.


----------



## ekim68

One legacy of Carl Sagan may take flight next week-a working solar sail



> As early as next Monday night, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a cluster of 24 satellites for the US Air Force. Known as the Space Test Program-2 mission, the rocket will deposit its payloads into three different orbits. Perhaps the most intriguing satellite will be dropped off at the second stop-a circular orbit 720km above the Earth's surface. This is the Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft.
> 
> After a week in space, allowing the satellites deposited in this orbit to drift apart, LightSail 2 will eject from its carrying case into open space. About the size of a loaf of bread, the 5kg satellite will eventually unfurl into a solar sail 4 meters long by 5.6 meters tall. The Mylar material composing the sail is just 4.5 microns thick, or about one-tenth as thick as a human hair.


----------



## ekim68

Cool stuff.... 

Sublime snaps from the 2019 Astronomy Photographer of the Year shortlist


----------



## ekim68

Experts Predict a Long, Deep Solar Minimum



> If you like solar minimum, good news: It could last for years. That was one of the predictions issued last week by an international panel of experts who gathered at NOAA's annual Space Weather Workshop to forecast the next solar cycle. If the panel is correct, already-low sunspot counts will reach a nadir sometime between July 2019 and Sept 2020, followed by a slow recovery toward a new Solar Maximum in 2023-2026.


----------



## valis

Just an FYI, Nat Geo is running an Apollo special starting 7.7.19.

Man....50 years....


----------



## ekim68

I've been keeping up on that too. NASA's site is providing a countdown and side stories...


----------



## ekim68

More on the Solar Sail... 


What to Expect when LightSail 2 Launches into Space



> The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft is finally ready to attempt flight by light.
> 
> The crowdfunded, loaf-of-bread-sized CubeSat is set to blast off from Kennedy Space Center on 24 June 2019 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Liftoff is set for 23:30 EDT (03:30 UTC), the start of a 4-hour launch window.
> 
> Roughly 2 weeks after launch, the spacecraft will deploy its 32-square-meter solar sail-about the size of a boxing ring-and use the slight pressure from solar photons to gradually raise its orbit. If successful, LightSail 2 will become the first spacecraft in Earth orbit to fly on sunlight alone, demonstrating that solar sailing is a viable method of propulsion for CubeSats. It will also mark the culmination of a 10-year project with a legacy deeply intertwined with Planetary Society history.


----------



## ekim68

Mars rover has detected methane that could mean life on the Red Planet



> In the New York Times, Kenneth Chang reports that NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars has detected high amounts of methane, a gas that is commonly a signature of life.


----------



## ekim68

Galaxy clusters caught in a first kiss



> For the first time, astronomers have found two giant clusters of galaxies that are just about to collide. This observation can be seen as a missing 'piece of the puzzle' in our understanding of the formation of structure in the universe, since large-scale structures-such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies-are thought to grow by collisions and mergers. The result was published in _Nature Astronomy_.


----------



## ekim68

Falcon Heavy carries 24 satellites into orbit in SpaceX's "most difficult launch ever"



> SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has lifted off again, this time embarking on what the company calls one of the most challenging launches in its history. With a slew of government satellites and important spacecraft onboard, the world's most powerful operational vehicle took off into the night sky for the first time, on a mission to deliver payloads into three different orbits.
> 
> "This will be our most difficult launch ever," said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Twitter leading up to today's STP-2 mission. The launch tasked the Falcon Heavy vehicle with completing four separate upper-stage engine burns, three different payload deployments and then fire the engines on the three separated boosters to bring them safely back down to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Things have been busy in Space these days.. 


Hubble finds tiny 'electric soccer balls' in space, helps solve interstellar mystery



> Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the presence of electrically-charged molecules in space shaped like soccer balls, shedding light on the mysterious contents of the interstellar medium (ISM) - the gas and dust that fills interstellar space.


----------



## ekim68

Who Has Jurisdiction for Crimes Committed in Space?



> It's 2050. Humans have mastered commercial space travel. Hundreds of people pay thousands of dollars to be sent into orbit in a spaceship. Maybe some decide to help colonize Mars.
> 
> Then, trouble. A jilted spouse. A smuggled firearm. Perhaps a struggle followed by suffocation. A space traveler is found dead on board a ship or on the Red Planet. Who has jurisdiction over such crimes? Is there such a thing as a cosmic Hercule Poirot? Could someone fall through the cracks and get away with space murder?


----------



## ekim68

Cosmic waves discovery could unlock mysteries of intergalactic space



> Scientists were celebrating a groundbreaking astronomical discovery Thursday that they say could pave the way for mapping the outer reaches of the universe.
> 
> An Australian-led team of international astronomers have determined for the first time the precise source of a powerful, one-off burst of cosmic radio waves.


----------



## ekim68

A very good read on what the early Astronauts had to deal with... 

Apollo's multi-day missions meant astronauts needed good quality food. But how do you cook a meal in space when you don't have a stove or even hot water?


----------



## valis

Very good read. Thanks Mike!


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Dragonfly Will Fly Around Titan Looking for Origins, Signs of Life



> NASA has announced that our next destination in the solar system is the unique, richly organic world Titan. Advancing our search for the building blocks of life, the Dragonfly mission will fly multiple sorties to sample and examine sites around Saturn's icy moon.
> 
> Dragonfly will launch in 2026 and arrive in 2034. The rotorcraft will fly to dozens of promising locations on Titan looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and Earth. Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a multi-rotor vehicle for science on another planet; it has eight rotors and flies like a large drone. It will take advantage of Titan's dense atmosphere - four times denser than Earth's - to become the first vehicle ever to fly its entire science payload to new places for repeatable and targeted access to surface materials.


----------



## ekim68

ISS is home to super-tough molds that laugh in the face of deadly radiation



> Mold spores commonly found aboard the International Space Station (ISS) turn out to be radiation resistant enough to survive 200 times the X-ray dose needed to kill a human being. Based on experiments by a team of researchers led by Marta Cortesão, a microbiologist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, the new study indicates that sterilizing interplanetary spacecraft may be much more difficult than previously thought.


----------



## ekim68

NASA to Livestream South America Total Solar Eclipse



> NASA has partnered with the Exploratorium in San Francisco to bring live views to people across the world of a total solar eclipse, occurring Tuesday, July 2, over South America. The eclipse will only be visible directly to observers within the path of totality, which stretches across parts of Chile and Argentina.
> 
> NASA will livestream three Exploratorium views via separate players on the agency's website (all times EDT):


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Captures the Galaxy's Biggest Ongoing Stellar Fireworks Show


----------



## ekim68

Successful Orion Test Brings NASA Closer to Moon, Mars Missions



> NASA successfully demonstrated Tuesday the Orion spacecraft's launch abort system can outrun a speeding rocket and pull astronauts to safety during an emergency during launch. The test is another milestone in the agency's preparation for Artemis missions to the Moon that will lead to astronaut missions to Mars.
> 
> During the approximately three-minute test, called Ascent Abort-2, a test version of the Orion crew module launched at 7 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on a modified Peacekeeper missile procured through the U.S. Air Force and built by Northrop Grumman.
> 
> The Orion test spacecraft traveled to an altitude of about six miles, at which point it experienced high-stress aerodynamic conditions expected during ascent. The abort sequence triggered and, within milliseconds, the abort motor fired to pull the crew module away from the rocket. Its attitude control motor flipped the capsule end-over-end to properly orient it, and then the jettison motor fired, releasing the crew module for splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Took an M.R.I. Scan of an Atom



> As our devices get smaller and more sophisticated, so do the materials we use to make them. That means we have to get up close to engineer new materials. Really close.
> 
> Different microscopy techniques allow scientists to see the nucleotide-by-nucleotide genetic sequences in cells down to the resolution of a couple atoms as seen in an atomic force microscopy image. But scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., and the Institute for Basic Sciences in Seoul, have taken imaging a step further, developing a new magnetic resonance imaging technique that provides unprecedented detail, right down to the individual atoms of a sample.


----------



## ekim68

Mission plans for SULIS solar storms project revealed



> At the National Astronomy Meeting in Lancaster, UK, Dr. Eamon Scullion of Northumbria University, revealed the mission plans for SULIS, a UK-led solar project designed to answer fundamental questions about the physics of solar storms. Employing a cluster of six small, formation-flying satellites known as CubeSats, the mission will directly measure the magnetic field of the Sun's corona for the first time.
> 
> Solar storms occur when solar flares trigger coronial mass ejections - massive magnetic clouds of charged gas. When these charged particles interact with our upper atmosphere, we get the stunning Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis - otherwise known as the Northern and Southern Lights respectively - but they can also do a lot of damage.


----------



## ekim68

Mars 2020 Rover Gets a Super Instrument



> Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have installed the SuperCam Mast Unit onto the Mars 2020 rover. The instrument's camera, laser and spectrometers can identify the chemical and mineral makeup of targets as small as a pencil point from a distance of more than 20 feet (6 meters).
> 
> SuperCam is a next-generation version of the ChemCam instrument operating on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. It has been developed jointly in the U.S., France and Spain. Once France delivered the last piece of flight hardware, the instrument was fully integrated on the Mars 2020 rover on June 25, 2019, in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility's High Bay 1 clean room at JPL.


----------



## RT

Whut?
I'm not sure whether *this here* makes me feel proud to live in Tennessee or become increasingly wary....


----------



## ekim68

How common elements can make a more energy-secure future



> ANN ARBOR-Thin-film solar panels, the cell phone in your hand and the LED bulb lighting your home are all made using some of the rarest, most expensive elements found on the planet.
> 
> An international team including researchers at the University of Michigan has devised a way to make these kinds of optoelectronic materials from cheaper, more abundant elements. These compounds can also be "tuned" to efficiently harvest electrical energy from the different wavelengths of light in the solar spectrum and to produce the range of colors we like to use in lighting.


----------



## ekim68

LightSail 2 Sends Back 1st Signals from Its Solar-Surfing Test Flight



> The space advocacy organization The Planetary Society recently confirmed that its LightSail 2 spacecraft has sent its first signals home from space.
> 
> The roughly 11-lb. (5 kilograms) cubesat is designed to prove that solar sailing is a feasible way of keeping satellites moving. Fuel is a costly and heavy commodity, and if LightSail 2 can prove that the solar-powered technique works well, perhaps future missions into the deep reaches of the solar system and beyond can be propelled by photons, or particles of light released by the sun.


----------



## ekim68

Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3,236 Internet Satellites



> Amazon wants the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to give it the go-ahead to launch 3,236 satellites that would be used to establish a globe-spanning internet network. Seeking Alpha reported that Amazon expects "to offer service to tens of millions of underserved customers around the world" via the network, which the company is developing under the code-name Project Kuiper.


----------



## ekim68

NASA taps Carnegie Mellon to build small, speedy MoonRanger lunar rover



> NASA has awarded Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Astrobotic a US$5.6 million contract to build a new suitcase-sized robotic lunar rover that could land on the Moon as soon as 2021. One of 12 proposals selected as part of the agency's Lunar Surface and Instrumentation and Technology Payload (LSITP) program, the 24-lb (11-kg) MoonRanger rover is designed to operate autonomously on week-long missions within 0.6 mi (1 km) of its lander.
> 
> NASA's Artemis project to return American astronauts to the Moon and establish a permanent presence there involves a new wave of robotic surface exploration vehicles to scout out landing sites, mineral resources, water ice, and other points of interest.


----------



## ekim68

What You Didn't Know About the Apollo 11 Mission



> The Moon has a smell. It has no air, but it has a smell. Each pair of Apollo astronauts to land on the Moon tramped lots of Moon dust back into the lunar module-it was deep gray, fine-grained and extremely clingy-and when they unsnapped their helmets, Neil Armstrong said, "We were aware of a new scent in the air of the cabin that clearly came from all the lunar material that had accumulated on and in our clothes." To him, it was "the scent of wet ashes." To his Apollo 11 crewmate Buzz Aldrin, it was "the smell in the air after a firecracker has gone off."


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> LightSail 2 Sends Back 1st Signals from Its Solar-Surfing Test Flight


 More on this:


[URL='https://lifehacker.com/how-to-track-the-lightsail-2-as-it-sails-in-orbit-1836151875']How to Track the LightSail 2 as It 'Sails' Around Earth[/URL]


----------



## ekim68

Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem



> You see, lenses are made from spherical surfaces. The problem arises when light rays outside the center of the lens or hitting at an angle can't be focused at the desired distance in a point because of differences in refraction.


----------



## ekim68

NASA reallocates resources to extend life of Voyager deep-space probes



> NASA engineers are conducting an extremely long-range reconfiguring of the space agency's two 42-year-old Voyager deep-space probes to extend their service lives. By cutting back and reallocating heating resources and bringing back online thrusters that haven't been used in decades, the goal is to keep the unmanned spacecraft sending back data from the frontiers of the solar system for several more years.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Celebrates 50th Anniversary of Historic Moon Landing with Live TV Broadcast, Events



> NASA will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 Moon mission and look to the future of exploration on the Moon and Mars with a live, two-hour television broadcast Friday, July 19, and partner-led events taking place across the country from July 16 through July 20.
> 
> On July 16, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a journey to the Moon and into history. Four days later, while Collins orbited the Moon in the command module, Armstrong and Aldrin landed Apollo 11's lunar module, Eagle, on the Moon's Sea of Tranquility, becoming the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface.


----------



## ekim68

Moons that escape their planets could become 'ploonets'



> Meet ploonets: planets of moonish origin.
> 
> In other star systems, some moons could escape their planets and start orbiting their stars instead, new simulations suggest. Scientists have dubbed such liberated worlds "ploonets," and say that current telescopes may be able to find the wayward objects.


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> Moons that escape their planets could become 'ploonets'


My New Favorite Word...  :up:


----------



## ekim68

Astronauts could heal themselves with 3D-printed skin and bones grown from their own cells



> It goes without saying that there aren't any doctors in space - which is a problem, given that the harsh environment is conducive to injuries. Now researchers from Dresden Technical University (TUD) have developed a 3D bioprinting method for use in space, creating new skin and bone tissue out of resources that might be available to astronauts.


----------



## ekim68

Hayabusa 2 spacecraft survives second touchdown on asteroid Ryugu



> The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 has successfully pulled off a second touchdown on the surface of the distant asteroid Ryugu. The risky maneuver saw the probe dive down to collect material that had been exposed during the creation of an artificial crater on April 5, when the probe smashed a copper weight into the surface of the ancient Solar System body.
> 
> Simply catching up with and entering the orbit of an asteroid whipping around the Sun at 29.8 km/s (18.6 miles per second) is an incredible feat. However, this was not enough for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which wanted to go one massive step further - to swoop down to touch the asteroid and gather samples from the primordial body to return to Earth for analysis.


----------



## ekim68

Jupiter's auroras powered by alternating current



> July 11 (UPI) -- New analysis of Juno mission data suggests Jupiter's auroras are powered by alternating current, not direct current.
> 
> Jupiter, a the largest planet in the solar system, boasts an aurora with a radiant power of 100 terawatts, or 100 billion kilowatts. It's the brightest aurora in the solar system.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX's Starhopper will undergo hover test next week



> Next week will see the latest test of SpaceX's Starhopper spacecraft, the test vehicle for the Starship project which aims to create a resuable long-duration spacecraft for carrying passengers and cargo into space. SpaceX hopes to begin commercial launches using the Starship by 2021.
> 
> The Starhopper has already undergone two previous hop tests and shown that it can lift a few inches off a launchpad. Now the Raptor engine has been mounted to the Starhopper again so the next stage of testing can begin, with a hover test scheduled for Tuesday, July 16th.


----------



## ekim68

NASA backs demo that will 3D-print spacecraft parts in orbit



> It could lead to space-based construction and fewer spacewalks.


----------



## ekim68

NASA green lights upgrade of Apollo era lunar laser experiment



> One of the original designers of a pioneering Apollo Moon experiment is leading an effort to create an upgraded version for future lunar landing missions. A team under Doug Currie, Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland (UMD), is developing a more accurate version of the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment left behind by Apollo 11, 14, and 15 between 1969 and 1971, which allows scientists to measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon extreme accuracy.


----------



## ekim68

50 Facts About the Apollo 11 Moon Landing for Its 50th Anniversary



> On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center with the goal of becoming the first people in history to walk on the Moon. Four days later, on July 20, 1969, the manned mission achieved that historic goal when Neil Armstrong took his famous "one small step" onto the lunar surface.


----------



## valis

this is awesome.....https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/cbs-news-is-livestreaming-the-original-apollo-11-launch-1836406428


----------



## ekim68

A material way to make Mars habitable



> New research suggests that regions of the Martian surface could be made habitable with a material -- silica aerogel -- that mimics Earth's atmospheric greenhouse effect. Through modeling and experiments, the researchers show that a 2- to 3-centimeter-thick shield of silica aerogel could transmit enough visible light for photosynthesis, block hazardous ultraviolet radiation, and raise temperatures underneath permanently above the melting point of water, all without the need for any internal heat source.


----------



## ekim68

White dwarf supernova observation is a first for NASA's TESS mission



> NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was built to search for new planets, but astronomers at Ohio State discovered that it could also observe supernovas created by exploding white dwarf stars. This development means we might soon have a better idea about why they explode, and what they leave behind in the process.


----------



## ekim68

Powerful new telescope joins the search for possible laser pulses from aliens



> The Breakthrough Listen initiative is the largest scientific program designed specifically to find evidence of extraterrestrials. The aim is to survey the million closest stars to Earth for any signs of radio and laser transmissions, which aliens might be using to communicate with each other or even deliberately broadcasting their existence. The team claims the tech is so powerful it can detect a laser with the energy of a regular light bulb from 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km) away.
> 
> And now the project has a new tool in its arsenal. The Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) is made up of four 12-m (40-ft) telescopes, and was designed to detect gamma rays by the bursts of blue light they create as they hit the Earth's upper atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

A good read... 


50 Years Ago: One Small Step, One Giant Leap


----------



## valis

https://apolloinrealtime.org/11


----------



## ekim68

Quantum leap from Australian research promises super-fast computing power



> An Australian research team led by the renowned quantum physicist Prof Michelle Simmons has announced a major breakthrough in quantum computing, which researchers hope could lead to much greater computing power within a decade.
> 
> Simmons, a former Australian of the Year, and her team at the University of New South Wales announced in a paper published in Nature journal on Thursday that they have been able to achieve the first two-qubit gate between atom qubits in silicon, allowing them to communicate with each other at a 200 times faster rate than previously achieved at 0.8 nanoseconds.
> 
> A qubit is a quantum bit. In this design, it is built from single phosphorus atoms in silicon. In standard computing, a bit can exist in one of two states - 1 or 0. For qubits, it can be 1 or 0 or both simultaneously, which is referred to as a superposition.


----------



## ekim68

Can We Use Special Sails To Bring Old Satellites Back Down To Earth?



> The growing problem of space debris in LEO (Low-Earth Orbit) is garnering more and more attention. With thousands of satellites in orbit, and thousands more on the way, our appetite for satellites seems boundless. But every satellite has a shelf-life. What do we do with them when they've outlived their usefulness and devolve into simple, troublesome space debris?
> 
> In the next five years alone, it's expected that we will launch up to 2600 more nanosatellites and cubesats. There are already almost 5,000 satellites orbiting Earth, and many of them are non-functioning space debris now, clogging up orbital paths for newer satellites. In fact, according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), we launched a total of 382 objects into space in 2018 alone, an unsustainable number.


----------



## ekim68

Lunar bricks could keep Moon colonists warm and generate electricity



> Space engineers have long considered lunar soil as locally available material for building outposts on the Moon, and now ESA researchers are considering it as a means to store energy. The Discovery & Preparation study by the agency and Azimut Space aims to determine how the lunar regolith can soak up solar energy during the day, then use it to generate electricity during the 14-day night and protect equipment against freezing.





> According to ESA, regolith can not only be formed into bricks, but these could be configured so they can become heat-storage bricks. To study this idea, the research team made artificial powdered regolith based on an analysis of rock samples brought back by the Apollo missions. This was then formed into bricks and heated under lunar conditions before attaching the bricks to a heat engine to generate electricity.


----------



## ekim68

The early days of the Milky Way revealed



> The universe 13,000 million years ago was very different from the universe we know today. It is understood that stars were forming at a very rapid rate, forming the first dwarf galaxies, whose mergers gave rise to the more massive present-day galaxies, including our own. However the exact chain of the events which produced the Milky Way was not known until now.


----------



## ekim68

NASA releases magnificent new images of the Milky Way




> NASA's





> Chandra X-ray Observatory is marking 20 years since the Space Shuttle Columbia launched it into space on July 23, 1999. The agency released a series of gorgeous, new Chandra images to celebrate.


----------



## ekim68

CERN searches for "dark photons," light's hypothetical cousin that could unlock dark matter



> Dark matter is a mysterious substance that seems to permeate the universe, but detecting it is tricky on account of it not interacting with regular matter very often. Scientists have a list of particles that they're working through as possible suspects, and now that list is a little shorter. Experiments at CERN have ruled out some types of dark photons, inching us closer to finding the elusive dark matter.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacex/2019/07/25/spacex-falcon-9-successfully-launches-crs-18/']SpaceX Falcon 9 Successfully Launches CRS-18[/URL]



> A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida on July 25, 2019, at 6:01 p.m. EDT, carrying the company's Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station on its 18th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-18) mission.


----------



## ekim68

Red giant star spotted in its death throes



> Human lives are just blips on the cosmic time scale, which makes it impossible for us to witness the full life cycles of stars, planets and galaxies. But sometimes, if we're lucky, astronomers might be able to catch crucial moments playing out before their eyes. Now a team from Australia and Hungary have done just that, watching as a red giant star goes through its death throes.
> 
> The star in question is called T Ursae Minoris (T UMi), located about 3,000 light-years away in the constellation of Little Bear. At around 1.2 billion years young, the star is only about a quarter the age of the Sun, but because it started with twice the mass it's burned out much faster.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://lifehacker.com/how-to-view-the-delta-aquarids-meteor-shower-this-weeke-1836696101']How to View the Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower This Weekend[/URL]



> The Delta Aquarids meteor shower is getting ready to peak on Sunday and Monday, so if you're going to try to catch it, now's your chance. Although it favors the Southern Hemisphere, it's still visible from mid-northern latitudes. Wherever you are, the best time to try to catch the shower is between midnight and dawn.


----------



## ekim68

In a Lab Accident, Scientists Create the First-Ever Permanently Magnetic Liquid



> For the first time, scientists have created a permanently magnetic liquid. These liquid droplets can morph into various shapes and be externally manipulated to move around, according to a new study.
> 
> We typically imagine magnets as being solid, said senior author Thomas Russell, a distinguished professor of polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But now we know that "we can make magnets that are liquid and they could conform to different shapes - and the shapes are really up to you."


----------



## ekim68

Mars 2020 rover flexes its arm ahead of 2020 launch



> NASA's Mars 2020 rover got a bit of a workout recently as it flexed its mechanical muscles. Captured in a time-lapse video, the 7-ft (2.1 m) robotic arm with its 88-lb (40-kg) "hand" did a bit of curling as space agency engineers guided it from its deployed to its stowed configuration ahead of the unmanned explorer's launch to the Red Planet next year.
> 
> Dong a bit of lifting and bending may seem like a simple thing, but when it's a robotic arm that's one of the most vital pieces of equipment for a US$2.5-billion mission to collect samples of Mars for eventual return to Earth, the team wants things done right.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2019/07/27/dragon-installed-to-stations-harmony-module-for-cargo-operations/']Dragon Installed to Station's Harmony Module for Cargo Operations[/URL]



> Two days after its launch from Florida, the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft was installed on the Earth-facing side of the International Space Station's Harmony module at 12:01 p.m. EDT.
> 
> The 18th contracted commercial resupply mission from SpaceX (CRS-18) delivers more than 5,000 pounds of research, crew supplies and hardware to the orbiting laboratory.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's TESS Mission Scores 'Hat Trick' With 3 New Worlds



> NASA's newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), has discovered three new worlds - one slightly larger than Earth and two of a type not found in our solar system - orbiting a nearby star. The planets straddle an observed gap in the sizes of known planets and promise to be among the most curious targets for future studies.
> 
> TESS Object of Interest (TOI) 270 is a faint, cool star more commonly identified by its catalog name: UCAC4 191-004642. The M-type dwarf star is about 40% smaller than the Sun in both size and mass, and it has a surface temperature about one-third cooler than the Sun's. The planetary system lies about 73 light-years away in the southern constellation of Pictor.


----------



## ekim68

JAXA releases footage of Hayabusa 2 spacecraft's second asteroid touchdown



> The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released a video showing the climactic moments of the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft's second descent to the surface of asteroid Ryugu. The goal of the risky operation was to capture newly exposed material from the asteroid's interior, which had been forcefully ejected during the creation of an artificial crater on Ryugu's surface in early April.


----------



## ekim68

Lightsail 2 makes history by using sunlight to propel itself onto a new orbital path



> It appears to be all smooth sailing for The Planetary Society's LightSail 2, with the history-making CubeSat now propelling itself through space on sunlight alone. The nonprofit announced today that after unfurling its solar sail last week, the tiny spacecraft has successfully leveraged photons from the Sun to shift its trajectory in Earth orbit, a landmark moment in the history of space exploration.


----------



## Johnny b

* The Universal Law That Aims Time's Arrow *

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-universal-law-that-aims-times-arrow-20190801/



> A new look at a ubiquitous phenomenon has uncovered unexpected fractal behavior that could give us clues about the early universe and the arrow of time.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble reveals egg-shaped exoplanet so hot it's venting vaporized iron into space



> Between exoplanets with ruby clouds and those that are actually just giant diamonds, science fiction has barely prepared us for just how weird alien worlds could be. Now, thanks to new Hubble observations we have another contender in WASP-121b, a planet that's so intensely hot it's vaporizing heavy metals and venting them into space. As if that wasn't enough, the poor planet is also being stretched into an egg shape thanks to the strong gravity of its host star.


----------



## ekim68

Report outlines SpaceX's plans for Starship launches from KSC



> WASHINGTON - SpaceX plans to build facilities at the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A for launches and, eventually, landings of its next-generation launch vehicle, according to a newly released report.
> 
> An environment assessment prepared by SpaceX, and released by NASA Aug. 1, discusses plans to develop additional facilities at LC-39A, which currently hosts Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, for use by the company's Starship vehicle and its Super Heavy booster.


----------



## ekim68

Magnetic plasma pulses excited by UK-size swirls in the solar atmosphere



> Scientists have discovered previously undetected observational evidence of frequent energetic wave pulses the size of the UK, transporting energy from the solar surface to the higher solar atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

New Finds for Mars Rover, Seven Years After Landing



> NASA's Curiosity rover has come a long way since touching down on Mars seven years ago. It has traveled a total of 13 miles (21 kilometers) and ascended 1,207 feet (368 meters) to its current location. Along the way, Curiosity discovered Mars had the conditions to support microbial life in the ancient past, among other things.
> 
> And the rover is far from done, having just drilled its 22nd sample from the Martian surface. It has a few more years before its nuclear power system degrades enough to significantly limit operations. After that, careful budgeting of its power will allow the rover to keep studying the Red Planet.


----------



## ekim68

One Search to (Almost) Rule Them All: Hundreds of Hidden Planets Found in Kepler Data



> Most of the more than 4,000 exoplanets astronomers have found across the past few decades come from NASA's pioneering Kepler mission, which launched in 2009 and ended in late October 2018. But among Kepler's cavalcade of data, more planets are still waiting to be found-and a new method just turned up the biggest haul yet from the mission's second, concluding phase, called K2.
> 
> The K2 run from 2014 to 2018 was notable for its unique use of the functionality, or lack thereof, of the Kepler space telescope. Essentially a large tube with a single camera, Kepler relied on four reaction wheels (spinning wheels to orient the spacecraft) to point at specific patches of the sky for days or even weeks on end. Such long stares were beneficial for its primary planet-finding technique, known as the transit method, which detects worlds by watching for dips in a star's light caused by an orbiting planet's passage in front of it. But when two of Kepler's reaction wheels failed, one in 2012 and another in 2013, mission planners came up with an ingenious method of using the pressure of the solar wind to act as a makeshift third wheel, allowing observations to continue, albeit with some limitations.
> 
> "We had this issue because the K2 mission was working off of two reaction wheels; it rolled a little bit every six hours," says Susan Mullally of the Space Telescope Science Institute. "And as a result, the light curves have these little arcs that run through them that you have to first remove."


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/lightsail-2-pushed-by-sunlight-raises-its-orbit-by-10-1837008090']LightSail 2, Pushed by Sunlight, Raises Its Orbit by 10,500 Feet in Just Two Weeks[/URL]



> Two weeks after entering solar sailing mode, the Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft has managed to raise its orbit by nearly 2 miles, in an important test of this promising new means of propulsion.
> 
> LightSail 2 unfurled its 32-square-meter (344-square-foot) solar sail on July 23, around one month after it was deposited into low Earth orbit by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. At the time, the spacecraft's apogee, or high point of its orbit, was just shy of 726 kilometers (451 miles). But now, a mere two weeks after entering into solar sailing mode, LightSail 2's apogee is now at 729 kilometers (453 miles), a gain of nearly 3.2 kilometers (2 miles), according to the Planetary Society.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers hope to search for radio waves broadcast from dead planets orbiting dead stars



> So for the new study, researchers from the University of Warwick set out to determine how long they may be detectable for, and which white dwarfs are the best candidates to start the search.
> 
> The team says that these planetary cores could be detectable through the radio waves they give off. The magnetic field of a white dwarf can actually interact with the planetary core if it's metallic enough, creating a unipolar inductor circuit. Radiation from that circuit can then be detected by radio telescopes here on Earth, in the form of radio waves.


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab lays out plan to recycle used rockets by catching them with helicopters



> Not too long ago, the ability to reuse rockets rather than burn them up in the atmosphere or let them plunge into the ocean was a very fanciful concept. SpaceX singlehandedly changed the game in this regard, but it might soon have some company in the realm of rocket recycling with competitor Rocket Lab today announcing a reusability program of its own.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover 39 ancient, massive galaxies hiding in invisible light



> A galaxy seems like a hard thing to miss - let alone 39 of them - but that's exactly what a team of astronomers has just discovered. So where have these countless stars been hiding? About 11.5 billion light-years away, in a part of the light spectrum that's invisible to many telescopes. The discovery of so many star-forming galaxies this old may call into question our understanding of galaxy formation in the early universe.


----------



## valis

Surprised this hasnt been posted yet....

https://gizmodo.com/something-big-just-slammed-into-jupiter-1837095949


----------



## ekim68

Probably protected good old Terra Ferma yet again.... I like the increase of numbers of people watching the skies with amateurs, too.. :up:


----------



## ekim68

Long-missing, potentially dangerous asteroid finally rediscovered - and it won't hit Earth



> Of all the things you don't want to lose, an asteroid with a chance of striking Earth is pretty high up the list. A space rock called 2006 QV89 has been missing in action for 13 years, after it was discovered to be on an orbit that regularly brought it too close to Earth for comfort. Now astronomers have finally found it again, and ruled out an impact within the next century.


----------



## ekim68

11 Fascinating Facts About Our Milky Way Galaxy



> How much do you know about the city you live in? Sure, you've got your favorite restaurants and the best way to avoid traffic during rush hour, but it's unlikely you know the details of every urban nook and cranny. The same goes for the galaxy you live in, the Milky Way.
> 
> Our celestial home is an awe-inspiring place full of stars, supernovas, nebulas, energy and dark matter, but many aspects of it remain mysterious, even to scientists. For those seeking to better know their own place in the universe, here are 11 enlightening facts about the Milky Way.


----------



## ekim68

NASA installs robotic toolkit in Mars 2020 rover



> NASA's Mars 2020 rover has received a key piece of equipment for the collection, containment, and eventual return to Earth of samples of the Red Planet. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. California, engineers have installed the bit carousel of the Sample Caching System that will be used to store and sort out the tools and containers for core samples as well as move them about inside the rover for processing.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers build a heat shield just 10 atoms thick to protect electronic devices



> Excess heat given off by smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices can be annoying, but beyond that it contributes to malfunctions and, in extreme cases, can even cause lithium batteries to explode.
> 
> To guard against such ills, engineers often insert glass, plastic or even layers of air as insulation to prevent heat-generating components like microprocessors from causing damage or discomforting users.
> 
> Now, Stanford researchers have shown that a few layers of atomically thin materials, stacked like sheets of paper atop hot spots, can provide the same insulation as a sheet of glass 100 times thicker.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Galactic pulls back curtain on "Gateway to Space"



> After spending years baking in the New Mexico desert, Virgin Galactic has declared its Gateway to Space building at Spaceport America "operationally functional." In a media event on Thursday, company officials unveiled the interior of the facility that will act as both Mission Control and the departure/arrival lounge for space tourists flying on the company's SpaceShipTwo suborbital spacecraft.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Discover New State of Matter



> A team of physicists has uncovered a new state of matter-a breakthrough that offers promise for increasing storage capabilities in electronic devices and enhancing quantum computing.
> 
> "Our research has succeeded in revealing experimental evidence for a new state of matter-topological superconductivity," says Javad Shabani, an assistant professor of physics at New York University. "This new topological state can be manipulated in ways that could both speed calculation in quantum computing and boost storage."


----------



## ekim68

Gravitational waves point to a black hole swallowing a neutron star



> Astronomers have detected a gravitational wave signal that appears to have been caused by a black hole swallowing a neutron star. Aside from being an incredible cosmic cataclysm to witness, this detection is important for another reason: it may be the final point in the gravitational wave trifecta.
> 
> Gravitational waves are ripples in the very fabric of spacetime itself. They're created by some of the most energetic events in the universe, such as collisions between massive objects like black holes. While Einstein himself predicted their existence over a century ago, they weren't directly detected until 2015.


----------



## ekim68

Eight new repeating radio signals detected from deep space




> Fast radio bursts





> (FRBs) are one of the most intriguing mysteries of modern astronomy. Picked up from all corners of the cosmos, these perplexing radio signals usually only last milliseconds before fading forever, but some particularly strange ones repeat on an irregular basis. Now the catalog of repeaters has grown substantially, as astronomers have detected a whopping eight new repeating signals.
> 
> Since the first fast radio bursts were discovered in 2007 in old data, dozens of signals have been detected. Most are one-off events, but in 2015 a burst was found coming from a location where another burst had been detected in 2012. Since then this source, known as FRB 121102, has given off well over a hundred signals, sometimes lying dormant for months, sometimes flashing dozens of times in the space of a few hours.


----------



## ekim68

Stardust in the Antarctic snow



> The rare isotope iron-60 is created in massive stellar explosions. Only a very small amount of this isotope reaches the earth from distant stars. Now, a research team has discovered iron-60 in Antarctic snow for the first time. The scientists suggest that the iron isotope comes from the interstellar neighborhood.


----------



## ekim68

Nasa mission to Jupiter moon Europa moves step closer to launch



> A Nasa mission to explore the most tantalising of Jupiter's 79 moons has been given the green light to proceed to the final stages of development.
> 
> Europa - which is slightly smaller than our own moon - has long been considered a possible candidate in the hunt for alien life. Evidence suggests there is an ocean below the moon's thick, icy crust that might be tens of miles deep. Scientists believe this body of water could contain the right chemical cocktail for life and could even be home to some form of living organisms.


----------



## ekim68

Indian spacecraft launched last month is now orbiting moon



> NEW DELHI -- An unmanned spacecraft India launched last month began orbiting the moon Tuesday as it approaches the lunar south pole to study previously discovered water deposits.
> 
> The Indian Space Research Organization said it successfully manoeuvred Chandrayaan-2, the Sanskrit word for "moon craft," into lunar orbit, nearly a month after it left Earth. The mission is led by two female scientists.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Activates Deep Space Atomic Clock



> An atomic clock that could pave the way for autonomous deep space travel was successfully activated last week and is ready to begin its year-long tech demo, the mission team confirmed on Friday, Aug. 23, 2019. Launched in June, NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock is a critical step toward enabling spacecraft to safely navigate themselves in deep space rather than rely on the time-consuming process of receiving directions from Earth.
> 
> Developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the clock is the first timekeeper stable enough to map a spacecraft's trajectory in deep space while being small enough to fly onboard the spacecraft. A more stable clock can operate farther from Earth, where it needs to work well for longer periods than satellites closer to home.


----------



## Dasher47

ekim68 said:


> NASA Activates Deep Space Atomic Clock


That's one step closer to more accurate time and info gathering from deep space.


----------



## ekim68

Space medicine: The technology that will keep astronauts alive on their mission to Mars



> Any mission to Mars will face many health risks, but researchers are already working on how to tackle them.


----------



## Dasher47

ekim68 said:


> Space medicine: The technology that will keep astronauts alive on their mission to Mars


They got to be super effective to sustain the vitamins and energy the astronauts needed, even for faster recovery from any possible illness.


----------



## ekim68

They're also learning new techniques on staving off Radiations...


----------



## ekim68

Going up: Watch SpaceX's Starhopper soar to new heights



> A prototype of the Starship spacecraft that SpaceX hopes to one day send to Mars has had its second outing, and a hugely successful one at that. The Starhopper completed its second test hop at the company's Boca Chica test facility in Texas today, reaching its highest altitude yet before returning safely to solid ground.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is finally complete



> Following more than two decades of design and construction, engineers have put the final pieces in place for NASA's next generation orbiting observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope. Built to succeed Hubble as NASA's premier space telescope, the now-complete instrument will take our space exploration capabilities to whole new levels, with the sensitivity to spot a single firefly a million kilometers away.
> 
> The James Webb Space Telescope is set to become the largest, most powerful and complex orbital observatory ever fired into space. With seven times the light-collecting capacity of Hubble and advanced infrared imaging abilities, scientists hope to gain fresh perspectives on distant celestial objects, including those that died out long ago.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Mars 2020 rover gets saddled with helicopter sidekick



> Engineers have attached what could be the first ever helicopter to fly on another world, to NASA's Mars 2020 rover. The robotic duo is set to be launched into space atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in July next year, and will arrive at their destination on February 18, 2021.
> 
> The Mars Helicopter has no scientific goals of its own beyond proving that it is possible to fly an autonomous aircraft through the super-thin Martian atmosphere. The drone carries a single 13-megapixel camera, no science instruments, and weighs in at just under 4 lb (1.8 kg).
> 
> The dual-blade, solar-powered helicopter has been subjected to stringent testing designed to assess not only its ability to fly, but also whether it can survive the tumultuous environment of launch and re-entry, not to mention the frigid space environment that it must endure during transit.


----------



## Dasher47

ekim68 said:


> They're also learning new techniques on staving off Radiations...


That and many other factors to keep them healthy.


----------



## ekim68

Glowing gold reveals stellar explosion as a rare kilonova



> In August 2016 astronomers spotted an intensely bright explosion in the sky, which faded after about 10 days, but it's only now that scientists have identified this event as a collision between two neutron stars. Known as a kilonova, these are events that may be the source of all the gold and platinum in the universe.


----------



## ekim68

Plasma thrusters for small satellite systems hit hyper drive



> Hall-effect plasma thrusters are a type of ion drive in which a propellant is accelerated by an electric field. The technology has been around since the 1960s, and Hall-effect thrusters were in use on Soviet satellites between 1972 and 1990.
> 
> What's new is the size of the thrusters, as well as the size of the satellites they power, which are variously dubbed smallsats, microsatellites, or nanosatellites. As components and sensing technology has gotten smaller, and with the diversity of computing and sensing components available off-the-shelf, this new breed of satellite is cheap to build and lightweight, further reducing payload costs. That's opening up the possibility of launching communications and satellite arrays to companies and organizations that have never had that option.


----------



## Brigham

Plasma thrusters for small satellite systems hit hyper drive
This says to me "more adverts"


----------



## ekim68

China's lunar rover discovers strange substance on far side of the moon



> China's Yutu-2 rover, launched as part of the Chang'e 4 mission, is the first-ever robot to explore the far side of the moon. Since landing in January, it's snapped gorgeous views of the lunar surface and made one unexpected discovery. Now, it's made another surprising find: an unusual substance with a "gel-like" appearance hidden inside a crater.


----------



## ekim68

Rare double-tailed asteroid spotted changing colors



> One of the weirdest objects in the asteroid belt just got weirder. Not only does the asteroid 6478 Gault have two tails like a comet, but now astronomers have spotted it changing color in real time, shifting from red to blue.
> 
> Originally discovered way back in 1988, Gault was long thought to be a boring old space rock. It's about 4 km (2.5 mi) wide and orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, along with millions of other bits of rock.


----------



## ekim68

Study shows some exoplanets may have greater variety of life than exists on Earth



> A new study indicates that some exoplanets may have better conditions for life to thrive than Earth itself has. "This is a surprising conclusion," said lead researcher Dr. Stephanie Olson, "it shows us that conditions on some exoplanets with favourable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth."


----------



## ekim68

Physicists Just Released Step-by-Step Instructions for Building a Wormhole



> Everybody wants a wormhole. I mean, who wants to bother traveling the long-and-slow routes throughout the universe, taking tens of thousands of years just to reach yet another boring star? Not when you can pop into the nearest wormhole opening, take a short stroll, and end up in some exotic far-flung corner of the universe.
> 
> There's a small technical difficulty, though: Wormholes, which are bends in space-time so extreme that a shortcut tunnel forms, are catastrophically unstable. As in, as soon as you send a single photon down the hole, it collapses faster than the speed of light.
> 
> But a recent paper, published to the preprint journal arXiv on July 29, has found a way to build an almost-steady wormhole, one that does collapse but slowly enough to send messages - and potentially even things - down it before it tears itself apart. All you need are a couple of black holes and a few infinitely long cosmic strings.


----------



## ekim68

A fingerprint of Earth from space



> Scientists have developed a fingerprint of Earth from space that could one day help identify other habitable worlds light-years from our own.
> 
> *Why it matters:* If researchers find a planet that matched Earth's fingerprint - which shows what Earth would look like in infrared if seen by an alien civilization - out there in the universe, it could indicate they've found a habitable world.
> 
> *What they did:* The fingerprint - detailed in a new study published in the journal _Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society -_ was created by using data collected by the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment onboard the SCISAT satellite.


----------



## ekim68

Science fiction gets real: Asteroid-busting mission proposed



> Global warming, nuclear war, and asteroid hits. There are so many ways the world could end, but now NASA and the ESA are working on a trial to deflect would be Earth-shattering asteroids.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX's new ride-sharing launches to boost small-satellite industry



> ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 4 (UPI) -- SpaceX's plans for more frequent, regularly scheduled ride-sharing launches will unleash new growth in the small-satellite industry, leading to easier and cheaper rollouts for new communication networks, experts said.
> 
> SpaceX recently published a schedule of 30 rocket launches for small satellites in 2020 and 2021. Its customers can buy space on the missions for as low as $1 million, a previously unprecedented price to put a satellite into orbit.


----------



## ekim68

Strange X-ray flash detected in the Fireworks galaxy



> NGC 6946, better known as the Fireworks galaxy, has certainly lived up to its name recently. In a series of observations, an extremely bright flare of X-rays was seen to appear and disappear within a matter of weeks. In a new study, NASA scientists speculate on what could have caused the strange signal.
> 
> The puzzle began when NASA's NuSTAR X-ray telescope was trained on NGC 6946 to observe one of the supernovae that gives the Fireworks galaxy its nickname. At first glance, that supernova was the star attraction, shining brighter than anything else in view. In the image above, it can be seen as a blueish-green spot at the top right.
> 
> But when NuSTAR looked at the area again 10 days later, the supernova was being upstaged. Another X-ray signal had bloomed bright, visible in the image as the big green blob towards the bottom left. This appearance within such a short period was unusual in itself, but the mystery deepened when another NASA X-ray observatory, Chandra, observed the galaxy a further 10 days later. The signal had vanished.


----------



## ekim68

India loses communication with lunar lander shortly before scheduled landing on the Moon



> What was supposed to be India's first soft landing on the Moon today appeared to end in failure when the country's robotic Vikram lander seemingly crashed into the lunar surface during its powered descent to the ground. If it had been successful, India would have become the fourth country to land a spacecraft intact on the Moon. But for now, only the United States, Russia, and China hold that title.


----------



## ekim68

India's Moon Mission Continues Despite Apparent Lander Crash



> But Chandrayaan-2's journey isn't over yet, because the orbiter is still going strong. In fact, its yearlong moon mission has barely begun; the spacecraft slipped into lunar orbit just last month.
> 
> Since then, the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has been studying Earth's natural satellite with eight different science instruments, from an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers). The probe's data should eventually allow researchers to compile detailed maps of the lunar surface, revealing key insights about the moon's elemental composition, formation and evolution, ISRO officials have said.


----------



## ekim68

More on the above... 

Chandrayaan 2: Latest News


----------



## ekim68

And more on the above..


India spots lost lander on lunar surface



> All appeared on track for India's Chandrayaan-2 mission as the orbiter released its Vikram lander from orbit and began maneuvering itself toward the surface of the Moon on Saturday. But a sudden loss of radio contact derailed the country's plans to become just the fourth nation to land on the Moon and left mission control in the dark as to the lander's exact whereabouts. The team now appears to have pinpointed its location, with attempts underway to restore a connection.


----------



## ekim68

It's Raining on the Sun



> The sun comes up every day in the east and goes down in the west, always looking the same; it's so constant that it has made its way into many idioms as a symbol of immutability. But for those who study the sun, the picture is much more complex. The boiling surface can change in mere minutes, like a pot of water on high heat. Twisted magnetic fields worm their way out through the solar surface, crackling with energy and releasing vast amounts of matter as they erupt. Just above this roiling surface is the sun's atmosphere, the outermost portion of which is called the corona.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Hubble Finds Water Vapor on Habitable-Zone Exoplanet for 1st Time



> Its size and surface gravity are much larger than Earth's, and its radiation environment may be hostile, but a distant planet called K2-18b has captured the interest of scientists all over the world. For the first time, researchers have detected water vapor signatures in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system that resides in the "habitable zone," the region around a star in which liquid water could potentially pool on the surface of a rocky planet.


----------



## ekim68

Newly discovered comet is likely interstellar visitor



> A newly discovered comet has excited the astronomical community this week because it appears to have originated from outside the solar system. The official confirmation that comet C/2019 Q4 is an interstellar comet has not yet been made, but if it is interstellar, it would be only the second such object detected.


----------



## ekim68

Mysterious flashes of light seen emanating from the galaxy's central black hole



> Given their name, black holes aren't the kind of places you'd expect to see much light. But sometimes flashes of light are seen as the black holes snack on gas and dust. Earlier this year though the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy flared up in an unprecedented light show, and astronomers don't really know why.
> 
> Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way, some 26,000 light-years from Earth. Although it has the mass of about four million Suns, this monster is usually quite placid, flickering within a fairly predictable range.
> 
> At least until recently, when this gentle giant began going bananas. On May 13 this year, Sgr A* gave off a near-infrared flare 75 times brighter than usual, in as little as two hours. At its peak, the black hole appeared double the brightness of its previous personal best, which astronomers described as "unprecedented" in 24 years of observations.


----------



## ekim68

"Ringing" black hole proves Einstein right yet again



> A quirk of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity says that after two black holes collide and merge, the newly-created black hole should "ring" like a bell, sending gravitational waves rippling through spacetime. What's more, the pitch and decay of these waves should directly tell us about the object's mass and spin. Now, astronomers have managed to observe exactly this for the first time, proving the preeminent scientist right once again.


----------



## ekim68

The Sun Is Stranger Than Astrophysicists Imagined



> A decade's worth of telescope observations of the sun have revealed a startling mystery: Gamma rays, the highest frequency waves of light, radiate from our nearest star seven times more abundantly than expected. Stranger still, despite this extreme excess of gamma rays overall, a narrow bandwidth of frequencies is curiously absent.
> 
> The surplus light, the gap in the spectrum, and other surprises about the solar gamma-ray signal potentially point to unknown features of the sun's magnetic field, or more exotic physics.


----------



## ekim68

Europe's ArianeWorks Aims for Reusable Rockets (with a Very SpaceX Look)



> Europe's rocket-launching industry is gearing up to go reusable.
> 
> The European launch provider Arianespace - best known as the manufacturer of the heavy-lift Ariane 5 and the future Ariane 6 - has a plan to make its future rockets more competitive in a tight launch industry. As you might guess from looking at the U.S. company SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, reusability is what Arianespace wants to do as well.


----------



## ekim68

Most massive neutron star ever detected, almost too massive to exist



> A team of astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) has brought us closer to finding the answers.
> 
> The researchers, members of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, discovered that a rapidly rotating millisecond pulsar, called J0740+6620, is the most massive neutron star ever measured, packing 2.17 times the mass of our Sun into a sphere only 30 kilometers across. This measurement approaches the limits of how massive and compact a single object can become without crushing itself down into a black hole. Recent work involving gravitational waves observed from colliding neutron stars by LIGO suggests that 2.17 solar masses might be very near that limit.


----------



## ekim68

Comet visitor from outside our Solar System will wow scientists for months



> An amateur astronomer, Gennady Borisov, first spotted this object on August 30th with his own telescope in Crimea. At the time, it wasn't immediately clear that the object - named C/2019 Q4 - wasn't from around here. As time has passed and more people looked at this thing, they've realized that the path that C/2019 Q4 is on does not loop around the Sun. Additionally, it's going super fast: about 93,000 miles per hour (150,000 kilometers per hour), which is faster than any object from the outer fringes of our neighborhood would be traveling. As NASA and an international team of experts announced last week, the signs all point to it passing through our Solar System on its way from some distant origin.


----------



## ekim68

A Lunar Space Elevator Is Actually Feasible & Inexpensive, Scientists Find



> The concept of a moon elevator isn't new. In the 1970s, similar ideas were floated in science fiction (Arthur C. Clarke's _The Fountains of Paradise_, for example) and by academics like Jerome Pearson and Yuri Artsutanov.
> 
> But the Columbia study differs from previous proposal in an important way: instead of building the elevator from the Earth's surface (which is impossible with today's technology), it would be anchored on the moon and stretch some 200,000 miles toward Earth until hitting the geostationary orbit height (about 22,236 miles above sea level), at which objects move around Earth in lockstep with the planet's own rotation.


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## ekim68

ESA spacecraft captures stunningly-detailed mosaic of Mars from orbit


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## valis

Wow....new desktop there....


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## ekim68

Mysterious magnetic pulses discovered on Mars



> At midnight on Mars, the red planet's magnetic field sometimes starts to pulsate in ways that have never before been observed. The cause is currently unknown.
> 
> That's just one of the stunning preliminary findings from NASA's very first robotic geophysicist there, the InSight lander. Since touching down in November 2018, this spacecraft has been gathering intel to help scientists better understand our neighboring planet's innards and evolution, such as taking the temperature of its upper crust, recording the sounds of alien quakes, and measuring the strength and direction of the planet's magnetic field.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers watch six galaxies suddenly fire up into quasars



> Normally things happen slowly out in space. It can take thousands, millions or even billions of years for stars and galaxies to evolve. But now astronomers have spotted an event that was thought to happen over millennia play out in a matter of months, as a usually-quiet galaxy suddenly fired up into an energetic quasar - and not just once, but in six different cases.


----------



## ekim68

Google reportedly attains 'quantum supremacy'



> The tech giant unveiled its 72-qubit quantum computer chip Bristlecone in March 2018, saying at the time that it was "cautiously optimistic that quantum supremacy can be achieved with Bristlecone."


----------



## ekim68

Skyscapes 2019


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## ekim68

Second interstellar visitor confirmed, officially named



> The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has now confirmed that a strange object discovered in our solar system on August 30 is unambiguously interstellar in origin. This makes it only the second such object, after 'Oumuamua in 2017, and it's now been given an official name.
> 
> On August 30, amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov discovered what looked like a comet, using a telescope he built himself. After follow-up observations were conducted by astronomers from around the world, it began to look like this object was on a hyperbolic trajectory - meaning it doesn't circle the Sun but is just passing through our solar system.


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## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/nasa-is-moving-forward-with-space-based-mission-to-hunt-1838444548']NASA Is Moving Forward With Space-Based Mission to Hunt for Hazardous Asteroids[/URL]



> NASA will begin developing a space-based telescope to track the asteroids near Earth, according to a statement by NASA's associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen.
> 
> Space News reports that the mission will be based on a previous concept mission called NEOCam. The Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission will be led by NASA, unlike NEOCam, which would have been part of the agency's proposal-based, principle investigator-led Discovery Program. The mission will help NASA fulfill its congressional mandate to discover asteroids that potentially threaten Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Still no trace of missing Indian moon lander: NASA



> A NASA satellite orbiting the Moon passed over the site where the Indian probe Vikram should have made touchdown earlier this month, but didn't see the missing lander, the US space agency said.


----------



## ekim68

Gigantic Chinese telescope opens to astronomers worldwide



> The world's largest single-dish radio observatory is preparing to open to astronomers around the world, ushering in an era of exquisitely sensitive observations that could help in the hunt for gravitational waves and probe the mysterious fleeting blasts of radiation known as fast radio bursts.


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff.. 


Into the great unknown: The Parker Solar Probe



> From Fukushima to the darkest corners of the ocean, robots built for extreme environments and an appetite for discovery continue to enlighten our understanding of places too dangerous to tread. Those launched into deep space may be the most daring examples, continually pushing the limits of human ingenuity and expanding our understanding of the universe. In this series New Atlas will be profiling space probes, both past and present, tasked with pushing the boundaries of science by leading us into the great unknown. This week: a spacecraft built to "touch the Sun".


----------



## ekim68

Musk unveils SpaceX rocket designed to get to Mars and back



> Elon Musk has unveiled a SpaceX spacecraft designed to carry a crew and cargo to the moon, Mars or anywhere else in the solar system and land back on Earth perpendicularly.
> 
> In a livestreamed speech from SpaceX's launch facility near the southern tip of Texas, Musk said Saturday that the space venture's Starship is expected to take off for the first time in about one or two months and reach 65,000 feet (19,800 meters) before landing back on Earth.


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## ekim68

This Astronaut Photo of Her Friend's Launch Into Space Is Absolutely Stunning!



> The best view of today's crew launch turned out to be from the spacecraft's destination itself, the International Space Station.


----------



## ekim68

China Grew Two Cotton Leaves on the Moon



> The team behind a pioneering biological experiment sent to the lunar far side has released an image showing two green leaves grown on the moon.


----------



## ekim68

Juno probe dodges Jupiter's shadow



> NASA's Juno deep-space probe has completed a major orbital maneuver to keep it out of Jupiter's deadly shadow. The 10.5-hour burn began on September 30, 2019, at 7:46 pm EDT and was executed to keep the solar-powered unmanned spacecraft from being eclipsed by the giant planet on November 3, which would have caused the orbiter to permanently shut down.
> 
> One of the novel features of Juno is that, unlike previous missions to the outer solar system, the spacecraft is solar-powered, generating electricity thanks to large, advanced photovoltaic panels. It's a testament to how far solar technology has come, but it also means that Juno is dependent on the Sun to keep on functioning.


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## valis

https://gizmodo.com/scientists-uncover-new-organic-molecules-coming-off-sat-1838716488


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## ekim68

Hayabusa 2 sends third and final robot towards asteroid Ryugu



> Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has made its presence known on Ryugu since entering orbit around the asteroid in June 2018, deploying a pair of bouncing robots and touching down on its surface not once, but two times. The spacecraft has now sent in a third and final rover for a closer look, as mission control begins to think about bringing the probe and its precious samples home.
> 
> The Hayabusa 2 probe launched in 2014 on a mission to study the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. Packed aboard was a shoebox-sized lander called the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT), which touched down in October last year, along with a pair of skipping robots which were deployed a month earlier.


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## ekim68

The violent history of the big galaxy next door



> Astronomers have pieced together the cannibalistic past of our neighbouring large galaxy Andromeda, which has now set its sights on the Milky Way as its next main course.
> 
> The galactic detective work found that Andromeda has eaten several smaller galaxies, likely within the last few billion years, with left-overs found in large streams of stars.


----------



## ekim68

2,000 "Schrodinger's Cats" break record for large-scale quantum superposition



> The world of quantum mechanics, where particles can be in two places at once or entangled with each other across vast distances, sounds spooky to us living in the macroscopic world of classical physics. But where exactly the boundary between the two lies is still a mystery. Now physicists have blurred the line more than ever before, with a new experiment showing that massive molecules containing up to 2,000 atoms can exist in two places simultaneously.
> 
> The discovery was made using an advanced version of an experiment that's been conducted countless times over the last 200 years - the double slit experiment. It was through this experiment that scientists came to understand the duality of light as both particles and waves.


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## ekim68

Spacewalks for the next few weeks.. 

Upcoming Live Events (All Times Eastern)


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## ekim68

NASA launches a new planet-hunting telescope using a giant balloon



> A new telescope will seek out planets that resemble Earth from a height of around 125,000 feet, using special optical technology that will filter out light from the stars they orbit to provide a better view. The telescope is the product of UMass Lowell, and took off on Tuesday morning from Fort Sumner, New Mexico aboard a helium balloon roughly the size of an entire football field.


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## ekim68

Japanese gravitational wave detector to join LIGO and Virgo



> Later this year a new detector is set to begin hunting for gravitational waves - ripples in the very fabric of spacetime. The Kamioka Gravitational-wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan will join the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US and Virgo in Italy, and together the three observatories will be better able to triangulate where any waves are coming from.
> 
> It takes a tremendous amount of energy to distort spacetime itself, but collisions between massive objects like black holes and neutron stars can do the trick. Over a century ago, Einstein himself predicted that such events would produce ripples he called gravitational waves, but they weren't detected directly until 2015.


----------



## ekim68

Good stuff.. 


Where is the Sun located in the Milky Way?



> I get email. Most of the time it's people asking a question or two that are Google-able (hint hint), and sometimes it's a question I have to dig around a bit to answer. I like those, because it means I Get to Learn a Thing.
> 
> In this case, Bad Reader Joshua Brown it was about the Sun's location in the galaxy. Not how far we are from the center, which we know pretty well now (about 26,700 light years), but how far we are from the _midplane_ of the galaxy. Our Milky Way galaxy is a flat disk 100,000 light years or so across, but it's also about 2,000 light years thick.


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## ekim68

Saturn surpasses Jupiter after the discovery of 20 new moons



> Move over Jupiter; Saturn is the new moon king. A team has found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn. This brings the ringed planet's total number of moons to 82, surpassing Jupiter, which has 79.


----------



## ekim68

A scientist captured an impossible photo of a single atom



> A student at the University of Oxford is being celebrated in the world of science photography for capturing a single, floating atom with an ordinary camera.
> 
> Using long exposure, PhD candidate David Nadlinger took a photo of a glowing atom in an intricate web of laboratory machinery. In it, the single strontium atom is illuminated by a laser while suspended in the air by two electrodes. For a sense of scale, those two electrodes on each side of the tiny dot are only two millimeters apart.


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## ekim68

India pulls in the sharpest Moon surface images ever taken from orbit



> Things haven't quite gone to plan for India's Chandrayaan-2 mission, with the team losing the spacecraft's Vikram lander following a touchdown attempt last month. But there is still plenty of science to come as the probe continues to circle the Moon, with the latest imagery relayed by the orbiting spacecraft revealing the lunar surface in unparalleled detail.


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## ekim68

Virgin Orbit plans first private satellite mission to Mars



> As an aspiring launch provider with a unique approach, Virgin Orbit has made some impressive steps toward lifting small satellites into Earth orbit with the help of its modified 747, but its business mightn't end there. The company has today revealed plans to carry out the first commercial satellite mission to Mars, where a new breed of tiny probes could further our understanding of the Red Planet.
> 
> Central to Virgin Orbit's ambitions is a modified 747 called Cosmic Girl, which it has adapted to be able to carry its LauncherOne rocket into the air. That rocket would fire up its own engines at an altitude of around 35,000 ft (10,700 m) and blast its payload into space, which could be satellites as small as a loaf of bread and as large as a fridge. Cosmic Girl would then come down to land and be prepared to go again.


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## ekim68

Quantum computing may be closer than expected with 'game changer' discovery



> While quantum computing has long been an exciting notion for scientists and the public alike, the realization of these technologists has long been on hold. But researchers from the Johns Hopkins University have discovered a material that might just fast-track the creation of these, until now, mythical machines.
> 
> The team's research describes a superconducting material, β-Bi2Pd, that naturally exists in a quantum state without the additional influence of magnetic fields usually needed for such an effect. The authors write that the low-maintenance, stability of this material makes it a perfect candidate for designing quantum systems. The research will be published Friday in the journal _Science_ by physicists from Johns Hopkins University.


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## ekim68

The first all-female spacewalk is scheduled for this month



> (CNN)After the first all-female spacewalk was scrapped in March, NASA has now scheduled another attempt with astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir for October 21.
> 
> The announcement was made Friday during a briefing by the agency previewing 10 upcoming spacewalks by astronauts on the International Space Station.


----------



## ekim68

"Axion radio" may let physicists listen for dark matter signals



> Over 85 percent of all the matter in the universe is unaccounted for, known only through its gravitational interactions with regular matter. This mysterious stuff - referred to as dark matter - has yet to be directly detected, but it's not from a lack of trying. Many different experiments have been run over the years to try to pick up signals from various proposed dark matter particles.
> 
> In recent years, the HADES particle detector eliminated "dark photons" as a candidate, and LUX and XENON1T turned up empty while searching for weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs).
> 
> But one explanation that's still possible is a hypothetical elementary particle called an axion. It's believed that axions wouldn't be discrete particles, but act like waves, flowing throughout space and only rarely interacting with normal matter. In particular, axions are thought to have weak - but detectable - interactions with electricity and magnetism, and this might be how they ultimately reveal themselves.


----------



## ekim68

High-speed video shows violent flaring at center of black hole



> Advances in imaging technology are allowing researchers to observe scientific phenomena in exciting new ways, both here on Earth and far, far beyond. By training a pair of instruments on a nearby black hole, a team of astronomers have now produced a high-frame rate visualization of violent flares at its center in the kind of detail never seen before.
> 
> The black hole in question goes by the catchy name of MAXI J1820+070 and is located within the Milky Way, but about 10,000 light years away. It bears the mass of around seven Suns, condensed into section of space covering less area than the city of London.


----------



## ekim68

Britain's first moon lander set to walk on lunar surface in 2021



> A British start-up has revealed its plan to land a walking rover on the Moon 2021. On October 10 at a New Scientist Live event in London, Spacebit's founder and CEO Pavlo Tanasyuk showed off the rover, which is not only the first to use legs instead of wheels to move about but will also be the smallest lunar rover ever launched.


----------



## ekim68

Insight lander's jammed heat probe starts to turn on Mars again



> A key component of NASA's Insight Mars lander may soon be back in full swing, with a creative maneuver to free the vehicle's heat probe after it became lodged in the soil now appearing to bear some fruit.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Observes 1st Confirmed Interstellar Comet



> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their best look yet at an interstellar visitor - comet 2I/Borisov - whose speed and trajectory indicate it has come from beyond our solar system.


----------



## ekim68

Galaxy with strangely-spinning clouds could unlock a cosmic mystery



> Astronomers have discovered a galaxy with some strange clouds orbiting the supermassive black hole in the center. Rather than all circling in the same direction as is usually expected, the galaxy NGC 1068 has two rings that orbit in opposite directions. This phenomenon might go a long way towards explaining another long-standing cosmic puzzle.


----------



## ekim68

Friday's All-Woman Spacewalk: The Basics



> The first all-woman spacewalk is a milestone worth noting and celebrating as the agency looks forward to putting the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024 with NASA's Artemis lunar exploration program. Our achievements provide inspiration to students around the world, proving that hard work can lead you to great heights, and all students should be able to see themselves in those achievements.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Scientists Created a Super-Hot Exoplanet Atmosphere on Earth



> Humans haven't yet figured out how to travel to other star systems to study exoplanets up close. But NASA has accomplished the next best thing-recreating the atmospheres of bizarre alien worlds right here on Earth.
> 
> Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, have succeeded in cooking up a simulated version of a "hot Jupiter." These worlds are similar in scale to Jupiter, but orbit much closer to their stars than any planet in our solar system, with years that last no longer than 10 days. As a result, the atmospheres of hot Jupiters can reach searing temperatures exceeding 2,800°C (5,000°F).





> When the simulated hot Jupiter was exposed to these high temperatures and faux-starlight beams, its brew of hydrogen and carbon monoxide partially transformed into water and carbon dioxide. This corroborates past observations of water vapor in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters, and suggests that water might be more common on these planets than previously assumed.


----------



## ekim68

The Tycho Supernova: Death of a Star


----------



## ekim68

European SolO probe ready to take on audacious mission



> The European spacecraft that aims to take the closest ever pictures of the Sun is built and ready for launch.
> 
> The Solar Orbiter, or SolO, probe will put itself inside the orbit of Planet Mercury to train its telescopes on the surface of our star.
> 
> Other instruments will sense the constant outflow of particles and their embedded magnetic fields.


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab gears up for lunar missions




> Rocket Lab





> announced today at the International Astronautical Congress in Washinton DC that it is expanding its services to deliver small satellites and other payloads into medium, geostationary, and even lunar orbits as soon as late 2020.
> 
> It was only a little less than two years ago that the California-based Rocket Labs launched its first small satellite into Low-earth Orbit (LEO) from the company's New Zealand spaceport using its Electron booster. Now it's not only talking about sending small payloads into medium, geostationary, lunar flyby, Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), L1/L2 points, and Lunar orbit, but soon delivering larger payloads to cis-lunar space and geostationary orbit (GEO).


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover 'monster' galaxy lurking in distant dust clouds



> AMHERST, Mass. - A team of astronomers including assistant professor Kate Whitaker at the University of Massachusetts Amherst reports today that they have by chance discovered faint traces of a huge galaxy never seen before, dating from the early universe. Likening the finding to photographing footprints of the mythical Yeti, the authors, led by postdoctoral fellow Christina Williams at the University of Arizona, say the scientific community once regarded such monster galaxies as folklore because there was no evidence for them, until now.
> 
> The authors say the discovery provides new insights into the first growing steps of some of the biggest galaxies in the universe. Details appear in the current _Astrophysical Journal_.


----------



## ekim68

It seems as though Quantum Computing is still going through growing pains... 


Achieving quantum supremacy


Google and NASA Achieve Quantum Supremacy


Hands-On with Google's Quantum Computer


Google both has and hasn't achieved "quantum supremacy"


----------



## valis

Lol at the last one....good ol Schroedinger....


----------



## ekim68

NASA plans to send water-hunting robot to moon surface in 2022



> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA will send a golf cart-sized robot to the moon in 2022 to search for deposits of water below the surface, an effort to evaluate the vital resource ahead of a planned human return to the moon in 2024 to possibly use it for astronauts to drink and to make rocket fuel, the U.S. space agency said on Friday.


----------



## ekim68

No Defects Found In Reproductive Ability Of Male Mice After A Short Stay In Space



> A team of researchers led by Professor Ikawa Masahito from the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases of Osaka University, in a joint research project with the University of Tsukuba and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, raised 12 male mice in the Japanese Experiment Module "Kibo" on the International Space Station for 35 days.
> 
> They were then transported back safely from space. They revealed the world's first findings that male mice sent to outer space retained their reproductive ability after their return. Their research results were published in Scientific Reports.


----------



## ekim68

Into the great unknown: Rosetta and the crazy plan to catch a comet



> Through Rosetta's observations we now know there are active sinkholes on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and that the comet smells like rotten eggs, an aroma created by the ammonia, hydrogen and other chemicals at the surface. We know that it once had a tiny temporary moon and that the comet is blacker than charcoal. We also know that its atmosphere contains key amino acids and molecules, considered the building blocks of life, and that its surface features significant quantities of water ice.
> 
> Rosetta gently crashed into 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in September of 2016, gathering data until the very end and bringing its history-making 12-year journey to a dramatic finale. But the data and images it collected throughout will continue to enlighten our understanding of these primitive bodies for some time yet.


----------



## ekim68

Artemis


----------



## ekim68

CERN precisely measures the mass of the Higgs boson



> The detection of the Higgs boson at CERN in 2012 is one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the decade. In the years since, scientists have been carefully measuring its properties, and now the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations have made the most precise measurement of its mass to date.





> At the time it was first detected, the mass of the Higgs boson was measured as roughly 125 to 126 Gigaelectronvolts (GeV). And now that figure has been refined further, to an uncertainty of within 0.1 percent. According to the team, the Higgs boson has a mass of 125.35 GeV.


----------



## ekim68

New VIPER Lunar Rover to Map Water Ice on the Moon


----------



## ekim68

Large asteroid beyond Mars may actually be a dwarf planet



> In 2006, Pluto was famously downgraded from planet to dwarf planet - and now, based on the same definition an object in the main asteroid belt may need to be upgraded from asteroid to dwarf planet. New observations of an object named Hygiea suggest it fits the four requirements of the class, which would make it the smallest dwarf planet in the solar system.
> 
> The International Astronomical Union (IAU) tweaked the definitions of some solar system objects in 2006. Both planets and dwarf planets have to be in orbit around the Sun, and have to be massive enough for their gravity to pull them into a roughly spherical shape. The main point of difference between the two though is that a planet has to have cleared other objects out of the neighborhood around its orbit - if it hasn't, it's a dwarf planet. And finally, a dwarf planet also can't be a moon.


----------



## ekim68

Tracking satellites through crowdsourcing



> A newly announced project called TruSat uses crowdsourced data to track satellites in an effort to hold companies and nations operating in space accountable.


----------



## ekim68

A Series of Spacewalks Four Years in the Making Will Attempt to Revive a Scientific Experiment



> Many scientists theorize stars, planets and the molecules that comprise them are only less than five percent of the mass-energy content of the universe. The rest is dark matter, invisible matter that cannot be directly detected but can be inferred. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer - 02 (*AMS-02*) has been looking for evidence of this mysterious substance from the vantage point of the *International Space Station* since 2011. Designed for a three-year mission of sifting through cosmic ray particles, AMS records the number of particles that pass through all its detectors (over 140 billion particles to date), the type of particle and characteristics such as mass, velocity, charge and their direction of travel. The goal is for scientists to track down their sources to help understand dark matter and the origins of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

Voyager 2 reaches interstellar space



> Researchers at the University of Iowa report that the spacecraft Voyager 2 has entered the interstellar medium (ISM), the region of space outside the bubble-shaped boundary produced by wind streaming outward from the sun. Voyager 2, thus, becomes the second human-made object to journey out of our sun's influence, following Voyager 1's solar exit in 2012.
> 
> In a new study, the researchers confirm Voyager 2's passage on Nov. 5, 2018, into the ISM by noting a definitive jump in plasma density detected by an Iowa-led plasma wave instrument on the spacecraft. The marked increase in plasma density is evidence of Voyager 2 journeying from the hot, lower-density plasma characteristic of the solar wind to the cool, higher-density plasma of interstellar space. It's also similar to the plasma density jump experienced by Voyager 1 when it crossed into interstellar space.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Opens Previously Unopened Apollo Sample Ahead of Artemis Missions



> NASA scientists opened an untouched rock and soil sample from the Moon returned to Earth on Apollo 17, marking the first time in more than 40 years a pristine sample of rock and regolith from the Apollo era has been opened. It sets the stage for scientists to practice techniques to study future samples collected on Artemis missions.


----------



## ekim68

Human heart cells are altered by spaceflight, but return to (mostly) normal on Earth



> Heart muscle cells derived from stem cells show remarkable adaptability to their environment during and after spaceflight, according to a study publishing November 7 in the journal _Stem Cell Reports_. The researchers examined cell-level cardiac function and gene expression in human heart cells cultured aboard the International Space Station for 5.5 weeks. Exposure to microgravity altered the expression of thousands of genes, but largely normal patterns of gene expression reappeared within 10 days after returning to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

New measurement yields smaller proton radius



> The result, recently published in the journal _Nature_, is one of the most precise measured from electron-scattering experiments. The new value for the proton radius that was obtained is 0.831 fm, which is smaller than the previous electron-scattering value of 0.88 fm and is in agreement with recent muonic atomic spectroscopy results.


----------



## ekim68

NASA instrument spots its brightest X-ray burst from a peculiar pulsar



> On August 20, an X-ray instrument onboard the International Space Station (ISS) captured the brightest X-ray burst it has ever seen. The explosion came from a pulsar thousands of light-years away, releasing as much energy in 20 seconds as the Sun does in 10 days. Now a NASA team has outlined what they believe caused it.
> 
> A pulsar is a type of neutron star, left behind after a more massive star sheds most of its material in a dramatic supernova. The remaining core is still active, particularly at its poles where it blasts X-rays in focused beams. Because these objects spin so fast, some of their beams happen to sweep over Earth periodically, creating regular X-ray pulses that gives pulsars their name.


----------



## ekim68

A Transit of Mercury Happens Nov. 11



> The sky will put on a show Nov. 11 when Mercury journeys across the Sun. The event, known as a transit, occurs when Mercury passes directly between Earth and the Sun. From our perspective on Earth, Mercury will look like a tiny black dot gliding across the Sun's face. This only happens about 13 times a century, so it's a rare event that skywatchers won't want to miss! Mercury's last transit was in 2016. The next won't happen again until 2032!


----------



## ekim68

Gamma ray study recalculates rate of expansion of the universe



> Scientists generally agree that the universe is expanding, and that the rate of expansion is accelerating, but exactly how fast that's happening is up for debate. Now, astrophysicists at Clemson University have come up with a new figure for this measure - called the Hubble Constant - by studying how gamma rays interact with the background radiation of the universe.
> 
> The Hubble Constant is named after Edwin Hubble, the astronomer who first discovered that the universe is expanding. Einstein himself had actually found this in earlier equations, but assumed he was wrong and rejigged his calculations to model a static universe. He soon conceded to Hubble, calling the assumption his greatest ever blunder.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX says upgraded Starlink satellites have better bandwidth, beams, and more



> Just hours ago, SpaceX successfully launched its second batch of 60 Starlink satellites, featuring a variety of upgrades as part of the move from v0.9 to v1.0 spacecraft. During SpaceX's launch webcast, the hosts revealed a number of intriguing new details about those upgrades, shedding a bit more light on what exactly has changed.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble captures a dozen sunburst arc doppelgangers



> Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a galaxy in the distant regions of the Universe which appears duplicated at least 12 times on the night sky. This unique sight, created by strong gravitational lensing, helps astronomers get a better understanding of the cosmic era known as the epoch of reionisation.


----------



## ekim68

Fastest star ever found is being flicked out of the Milky Way



> The Sun is constantly moving through space at a speed of 720,000 km/h (450,000 mph) - but that's a leisurely Sunday stroll compared to some. Astronomers have now discovered a star known as S5-HVS1, which is travelling at an incredible 6 million km/h (3.7 million mph). That not only makes it the fastest known star, but it's enough to fling it right out of the galaxy.
> 
> Stars that are moving this fast are known as hypervelocity stars, and only a handful have been identified so far. Even so, "hypervelocity" is normally defined as those travelling faster than 500 km per second (310 mi/s), which is fast enough for them to escape the Milky Way's gravitational pull and eventually whiz off into intergalactic space.


----------



## valis

long read, but worth it.

https://gizmodo.com/how-the-2010s-changed-physics-forever-1839677834


----------



## ekim68

Mars 2020 landing site could be a fossil hotspot



> In November last year, NASA announced that the Mars 2020 rover will be touching down in Jezero Crater, and now there's more evidence that this was a good choice. Two new studies have found that the area around the landing site is rich in the kinds of minerals that could preserve fossils of ancient microbes and other lifeforms.
> 
> Spanning 28 miles (45 km) wide, Jezero Crater appears to have been an ancient river delta. More than 3.5 billion years ago the area was home to a lake, fed by rivers to the northwest. That makes it a prime spot for studying the history of water on Mars and, by extension, the possibility of whether life was present during that history.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Successfully Tests Crewed Dragon Launch Abort Engines



> The new and improved Dragon has a burst disk in the fuel lines that keeps propellant from leaking into the high-pressure lines before ignition. This week's test-firing demonstrates that the new system functions as intended, and SpaceX says it can now move forward with launch plans.


----------



## ekim68

Astronauts Complete First Excursion to Repair Cosmic Particle Detector



> Station Commander Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency conducts repairs while attached to the space station's robotic arm during the first spacewalk to repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on Nov. 15, 2019. He and NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan (out of frame) worked for more than six hours outside the International Space Station and successfully positioned materials, removed a debris cover on the AMS and installed handrails in preparation for the subsequent spacewalks.


----------



## ekim68

Water vapor on Jupiter's moon Europa confirmed once and for all



> With growing suspicions of a huge salty ocean hiding beneath its frosty shell, Jupiter's moon Europa is increasingly seen as one of the more likely bodies to harbor life in our solar system. Surface plumes that appear to eject water into space have played a huge role in shaping this perception of late, and scientists at NASA have now directly confirmed water vapor within them for the very first time.


----------



## ekim68

First global map of Titan highlights oceans, plains, dunes and mountains



> In some ways, the most Earth-like world in our solar system (other than Earth, obviously) is Saturn's largest moon, Titan. And now, astronomers from NASA JPL and Arizona State University have used years of Cassini data to construct the first global map of Titan.
> 
> From space, Titan just looks like a featureless, orange-brown moon - but that's because of its thick atmosphere. The Cassini mission peered through the hazy clouds and revealed a fascinating surface of complex geology, carved from a hydrologic cycle much like Earth's. Titan is the only place besides our homeworld that's known to have lakes, rivers, oceans and rains - but rather than water, it's liquid methane and ethane.


----------



## ekim68

Highest-energy light from a gamma-ray burst ever



> It has been decades since the discovery of the first gamma-ray burst, yet some of their fundamental traits remain unclear. An international team of researchers, including two astrophysicists from the George Washington University, Chryssa Kouveliotou and Alexander van der Horst, now has taken the next step in understanding the physical processes at work during these events with a recent discovery published today in the journal _Nature_.
> 
> The researchers observed a gamma-ray burst with an afterglow that featured the highest energy photons -- a trillion times more energetic than visible light -- ever detected in a burst.


----------



## ekim68

Missing neutron star found 30 years after supernova explosion



> On February 23, 1987, a supernova lit up the night sky, visible to the naked eye. As the closest such event in almost 400 years, it provided the perfect opportunity to study supernovae, but one predicted piece has been missing ever since. Now, more than 30 years on astronomers say they've finally found the neutron star that was produced in the explosion.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2019/11/22/astronauts-complete-intricate-tasks-during-second-cosmic-repair-spacewalk/']Astronauts Complete Intricate Tasks During Second Cosmic Repair Spacewalk[/URL]


----------



## ekim68

An Alarming Discovery in an Astronaut's Bloodstream



> Astronauts are more than cosmic travelers. They're also research subjects in the careful study of what exactly outer space does to the human body. On the ground, researchers measure vitals, draw blood, swab cheeks, and more. In orbit around the Earth, the astronauts do the work themselves.
> 
> That's how they found the blood clot.


----------



## ekim68

A 'no-brainer Nobel Prize': Hungarian scientists may have found a fifth force of nature



> Physics centers essentially on four forces that control our known, visible universe, governing everything from the production of heat in the sun to the way your laptop works. They are gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong force.
> 
> New research may be leading us closer to one more.
> 
> Scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Atomki) have posted findings showing what could be an example of that fifth force at work.
> 
> The scientists were closely watching how an excited helium atom emitted light as it decayed. The particles split at an unusual angle -- 115 degrees -- which couldn't be explained by known physics.


----------



## valis

wow...big news there. I hadnt heard of this.


----------



## ekim68

Hi Honey! NASA's Second Astrobee Wakes Up in Space



> European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano performed initial tests of the second Astrobee robot, named Honey, aboard the International Space Station. Astrobee is a free-flying robot system that includes three robots and a docking station for recharging, and will be used to test how robots can assist crew and perform caretaking duties on spacecraft.


----------



## ekim68

JAXA to set up a two-way streaming studio on the ISS



> The Japanese space agency, JAXA, is teaming up with Bascule and SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation to set up a studio on the International Space Station (ISS) that will provide two-way live-streaming video feeds starting in 2020. Part of the JAXA Space Innovation through Partnership and Co-Creation (J-SPARC) initiative, its purpose is to help promote the commercial development of "space media businesses."
> 
> Called "The Space Frontier KIBO," the mini video station will be installed in Japanese Experiment Module "Kibo" on the ISS. The basic set will consist of two tablet terminals, one on either side the module's porthole, where an astronaut will act as cameraman and lighting technician for two-way live streaming of original, interactive programs.


----------



## ekim68

Monster black hole that 'should not exist' discovered in the Milky Way



> Astronomers think our home galaxy -- the Milky Way -- is practically bursting with black holes, with estimates of up to 100 million of the invisible beasts hiding across the galactic neighborhood. It was generally assumed these black holes could reach a mass of up to 20 times that of the sun, but the discovery of a "monster" black hole, with about 70 times the mass of the sun, has surprised Chinese astronomers.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists inch closer than ever to signal from cosmic dawn



> Around 12 billion years ago, the universe emerged from a great cosmic dark age as the first stars and galaxies lit up. With a new analysis of data collected by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope, scientists are now closer than ever to detecting the ultra-faint signature of this turning point in cosmic history.


----------



## ekim68

Cool stuff.. 


The 5 most groundbreaking scientific achievements of the decade



> As we stare down the barrel of the futuristic-sounding year 2020, it's a time for reflection on the past decade. The world has seen some pretty major scientific achievements in the last 10 years, as discoveries and developments decades in the making were finally realized. New Atlas rounds up five of the most ground-breaking, history-making milestones of the 2010s.


----------



## ekim68

Interstellar Comet Borisov Shines in New Photo



> A new photo shows the solar system's second confirmed interstellar visitor in an impressive new light.
> 
> A team of astronomers from Yale University in Connecticut imaged Comet 2I/Borisov on Sunday (Nov. 24) using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, revealing the object's tail to be nearly 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometers) long.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble catches galactic pair locked in a gravitational dance



> The Hubble Space Telescope has treated us to another spectacular view of two enormous galaxies locked in a cosmic embrace. The image showcases an early stage of a galactic encounter, and highlights the chaotic effect that gravity can have on one of the grandest scales imaginable.


----------



## ekim68

NASA finally pinpoints crash site of India's lost lunar lander



> NASA has pinpointed India's missing Vikram lander through the lens of its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, bringing an end to a three-month search for the fragmented spacecraft. New images from the NASA orbiter reveal the exact spot that the lander impacted on the Moon, along with how far its debris is scattered across the surface.


----------



## ekim68

First giant planet around white dwarf found



> Researchers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, found evidence of a giant planet associated with a white dwarf star. The planet orbits the hot white dwarf, the remnant of a Sun-like star, at close range, causing its atmosphere to be stripped away and form a disc of gas around the star.


----------



## ekim68

NASA weighs up four hazardous sampling sites on asteroid Bennu



> Having nearly completed its long journey to the asteroid Bennu and collected a couple of orbital records along the way, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is now being readied for its most critical maneuver, sample collection. After combing through the probe's recent observations of the rocky body, mission scientists are now in the process of selecting which of the four possible sites it will target for a sampling attempt, which is expected to take place midway through next year.
> 
> The OSIRIS-REx mission is NASA's first asteroid sampling mission, and all going to plan, will follow a similar path to Japan's Hayabusa2 probe, which recently departed asteroid Ryugu with its samples securely onboard.


----------



## ekim68

This huge galaxy has the biggest black hole ever measured



> Astronomers have found the biggest black hole ever measured - it's 40 billion times the sun's mass, or roughly two-thirds the mass of all stars in the Milky Way. The gargantuan black hole lurks in a galaxy that's supermassive itself and probably formed from the collisions of at least eight smaller galaxies.
> 
> Holm 15A is a huge elliptical galaxy at the center of a cluster of galaxies called Abell 85. A team of astronomers captured a snapshot of Holm 15A's stars in orbit around the galaxy's central black hole and created a model to help them calculate the black hole's mass. The team described their findings in a recent paper posted to the preprint site arXiv and set to be published in _The Astrophysical Journal_.


----------



## ekim68

Dragon Attached to Station for Month-Long Stay


----------



## RT

Mike I sure do appreciate this thread, and thank you for reminding everyone that the universe is a rather big place, beyond imagination, and humans are but a dot in that vastness.
But knowledge about it is gathered from our search, the need to know and understand what lies beyond the sunrise and sunset.

How we process new discoveries will yet to be determined, we may be voyagers into the unknown, wether it be from our own imagination, or if there's a toothache that centers the universe in your little space and you don't give a damn about anything else.

I hope the exploration of space continues, and some may it costs too much...
IMHO knowledge is worth as much as it costs, but that changes with new facts that fit scientific theory, learning is discovery, and we won't discover anything unless some one or a reliable measuring device gets out there.

Now I'm not belittling the pain of a of a tooth ache, nor any pain 
we all suffer from, pain of life for various reasons...

Well now I feel stupid, for trying to express what you folks already know...


----------



## ekim68

I've always been an Astronomy fan and it started when I was a youngster and my Brother and I would camp out under the Milky Way... We lived in a desert so the stars were always bright with no city lights and low humidity. As a matter of fact, my first major in college was Astronomy..

That being said, I'm a curious person and the Universe changes all the time and with the advances in technology we've been able to see more and more.. Thanks to the Internet we're allowed to visit a number of sites where this information is available and educational.. I recently read Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and near the end of the book he gives what he calls the Cosmic Perspective and it shows just how small we really are:



> The cosmic perspective flows from fundamental knowledge. But it's more than about what you know. It's also about having the wisdom and insight to apply that knowledge to assessing our place in the universe. And its attributes are clear:
> 
> The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it is not soley the provenance of the scientist. It belongs to everyone.
> 
> The cosmic perspective is humble.
> 
> The cosmic perspective is spiritual--even redemptive--but not religious.
> 
> The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small.
> 
> The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we're told.
> 
> The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place, forcing us to reassess the value of all humans to one another.
> 
> The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote. But it's a precious mote and, for the moment, it's the only home we have.
> 
> The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae, but also celebrates the laws of physics that shape them.
> 
> The cosmic perspective enables us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to transcend the primal search for food, shelter, and a mate.
> 
> The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave--an indication that perhaps flagwaving and space exploration do not mix.
> 
> The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.


----------



## RT

Man, there were people that saw me in the neighborhood with a telescope and binoculars looking into that which lies beyond our sky and thought I was strange. Huh? _Moi?_ 

They didn't know what I was looking at, or looking for.

Some even told me so, but then with a little educational chat, a a glimpse through the scope some of them actually became interested too.
So my scope was always open to the curious, some evenings being better than others, all got to see the moon's craters and seas, Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings.
When the seeing was good I could pull in the Great Nebula, Pleiades easily, and the Andromeda Galaxy.... tho most deep space objects were just faint cloudy things with my equipment at the time.

Light pollution played a part even in the 60's and got worse.
Sometimes took my gear to mountains... much better.

The thing that kinda tickled me was if there was meteor shower predicted, kids and adults would ask why the telescope wasn't
set up for an astronomic event.... and of course the only answer was "so you can see the meteors with your own eyeballs."


----------



## ekim68

Speaking of new technologies.... 


NASA's Parker Solar Probe Sheds New Light on the Sun



> In August 2018, NASA's Parker Solar Probe launched to space, soon becoming the closest-ever spacecraft to the Sun. With cutting-edge scientific instruments to measure the environment around the spacecraft, Parker Solar Probe has completed three of 24 planned passes through never-before-explored parts of the Sun's atmosphere, the corona. On Dec. 4, 2019, four new papers in the journal _Nature_ describe what scientists have learned from this unprecedented exploration of our star - and what they look forward to learning next.


----------



## ekim68

World-first space debris removal mission to launch in 2025



> ESA has commissioned the world's first mission to recover a piece of space debris in orbit. At the end of November, the space agency's Ministerial Council consortium awarded a service contract to a consortium led by Swiss startup ClearSpace. The ClearSpace-1 mission set to launch in 2025 will intercept and collect a rocket upper stage from a previous ESA mission as part of a project to jump-start the market for the servicing and disposal of orbiting payloads.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's treasure map for water ice on Mars



> Martian water ice is locked away underground throughout the planet's mid-latitudes. These regions near the poles have been studied by NASA's Phoenix lander, which scraped up ice, and MRO, which has taken many images from space of meteor impacts that have excavated this ice. To find ice that astronauts could easily dig up, the study's authors relied on two heat-sensitive instruments: MRO's Mars Climate Sounder and the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on Mars Odyssey.


----------



## ekim68

Blue Origin's reusable booster makes sixth flight in a row



> Blue Origin's New Shepard booster completed its 12th successful test flight (NS-12) on December 11, and the first using a booster that has now made six consecutive missions. At 11:53 am CDT, the single-stage rocket lifted off from the company's West Texas launch site in Van Horn for a 10 min 16 sec flight, where the unmanned crew capsule reached a maximum ascent velocity of 2,222 mph (3576 km/h) and an altitude of 346,727 ft (106 km).


----------



## ekim68

Technology just keeps getting better.... 


NASA's NICER Delivers Best-ever Pulsar Measurements, 1st Surface Map



> Astrophysicists are redrawing the textbook image of pulsars, the dense, whirling remains of exploded stars, thanks to NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station. Using NICER data, scientists have obtained the first precise and dependable measurements of both a pulsar's size and its mass, as well as the first-ever map of hot spots on its surface.


----------



## ekim68

Air Force seeking commercial technologies for cislunar space operations



> On the wish list for the next round of Air Force SBIR bids are technologies for operations far beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit


----------



## ekim68

Spectacular survey of Milky Way center reveals history of star birth



> An incredibly detailed survey of the Milky Way's core has shed light on our galaxy's explosive legacy of star birth. According to the authors of the study, their results disagree with the widely accepted view that stars formed in the central region at a continual pace.
> 
> The Milky Way is estimated to play host to roughly 100 thousand million stars. On a clear night away from city lights they fill the sky, and the heart of our galaxy can be seen as a light, blurry streak arcing overhead. Counter intuitively, it is estimated that just one to two solar masses worth of stars are created per year in the Milky Way today.


----------



## valis

interesting read...the trees vs stars really surprised me...

https://lifehacker.com/reddit-s-favorite-mindblowing-facts-of-all-time-fact-c-1840398431


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## ekim68

Mars 2020 rover takes its first test drive



> NASA's Mars 2020 rover has taken its first drive as part of preflight systems tests. On December 19, 2019, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the unmanned explorer completed a 10-hour drive in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility clean room as it operated under its own weight in Earth gravity and put its new autonomous navigation system through its paces.
> 
> The Mars 2020 mission isn't the first to send a rover to the Red Planet, but the mission's rover is the most advanced. Outwardly, it looks very much like the Curiosity rover on which it is based, but it reflects almost a decade of technological advancement over NASA's previous rolling laboratory.


----------



## ekim68

The big business of being a space janitor



> Companies are trying to capitalize on the threat of space junk with new technology to clean it up, but it's not clear who will pay for the service.


----------



## ekim68

'Bull's-eye' landing in New Mexico for Boeing's Starliner astronaut capsule



> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N)'s Starliner astronaut spacecraft landed in the New Mexico desert on Sunday, the company said, after faulty software forced officials to cut short an unmanned mission aimed at taking it to the International Space Station.
> 
> The landing at 7:58 a.m. ET (1258 GMT) in the White Sands desert capped a turbulent 48 hours for Boeing's botched milestone test of an astronaut capsule that is designed to help NASA regain its human spaceflight capabilities.
> 
> "We hit the bull's-eye," a Boeing spokesman said on a livestream of the landing.


----------



## ekim68

ESO observations reveal black holes' breakfast at the cosmic dawn



> Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have observed reservoirs of cool gas around some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe. These gas halos are the perfect food for supermassive black holes at the centre of these galaxies, which are now seen as they were over 12.5 billion years ago. This food storage might explain how these cosmic monsters grew so fast during a period in the Universe's history known as the Cosmic Dawn.


----------



## ekim68

Information teleported between two computer chips for the first time



> Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet.
> 
> This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can "communicate" over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no matter how much space separates the two of them. In essence, information is being teleported between them.


----------



## ekim68

Japanese satellite sets low altitude record



> The Guinness Book of World Records has awarded the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) the official record for the lowest altitude achieved by an Earth observation satellite. During its mission from December 23, 2017 to October 1, 2019, the Super Low Altitude Test Satellite (SLATS) "TSUBAME" reached a suitably super-low altitude of 167.4 km (104 mi).


----------



## ekim68

Starliner in good shape after shortened test flight



> SANTA FE, N.M. - The Boeing CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle that flew an abbreviated test flight this month appears to be in good condition as an investigation into the timer problem that shortened the flight continues.





> Boeing emphasized the good condition of the spacecraft, which showed "little scorching" from reentry and used only a fraction of its onboard propellant reserved for reentry, which the company said confirmed aerodynamic models of the spacecraft. The interior of the Starliner cabin appeared the same after landing as it did before its Dec. 20 launch from Cape Canaveral, the company noted, evidence that "the Starliner's fully operational life support system functioned as intended and the layout of the interior is well-suited to support crew members in the future."


----------



## ekim68

2019: Moments in space



> With every year that passes our knowledge of the universe grows exponentially, and 2019 was no exception. The year in which we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing itself ushered in a number of notable firsts - we unlocked mysteries, traveled further and viewed the universe in more detail than ever before. As we move into 2020, here'a look back at some of our favorite moments in space from the past 12 months.


----------



## ekim68

Humanity Is Sending 3 New Rovers to Mars in 2020 to Look for Signs of Life



> The 2010s saw Mars welcome NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on the red planet in 2012, and bid farewell to the Opportunity rover, which was declared dead in February after 14 years on the Martian surface. Curiosity is now the only working rover on the planet, signaling the end of a decadal era in the exploration of Mars.
> 
> But even as this older generation of Mars-cars winds down, a flurry of new rover missions is gearing up to redefine Martian road trips for a new decade. Three different rovers are scheduled to launch to Mars during the summer of 2020: NASA's Mars 2020 rover, Europe and Russia's Rosalind Franklin, and China's Huoxing-1.


----------



## ekim68

Lasers learn to accurately spot space junk



> Scientists applied a set of algorithms to laser-ranging telescopes and succeeded in increasing accurate detection of the space litter in Earth's orbit threatening spacecraft safety


----------



## ekim68

India approves third moon mission, months after landing failure



> BENGALURU (Reuters) - India has approved its third lunar mission months after its last one failed to successfully land on the moon, its space agency said on Wednesday, the latest effort in its ambitions to become a low-cost space power.


----------



## ekim68

One of NASA's exoplanet hunters has gone quiet]



> NASA has a lot of high-tech hardware cruising around in space right now, but one of the space agency's pint-sized exoplanet hunters appears to have gone dark. In a post by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the group explains that its ASTERIA satellite has been failing to return attempts to contact it for about a month now.
> 
> ASTERIA is a tiny satellite capable of observing some very big things. The spacecraft was sent into Earth orbit in late 2017, and it spent several months studying nearby stars for changes in their brightness. These brightness dips are the telltale signs that a planet is orbiting those stars.


----------



## ekim68

45th Space Wing prepares for first launch under the U.S. Space Force



> WASHINGTON - The SpaceX launch of Starlink satellites scheduled for Jan. 6 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the Florida Space Coast will be the first launch of 2020 and also the 45th Space Wing's inaugural launch as part of the U.S. Space Force.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's flying telescope captures galaxy center in unprecedented detail


----------



## ekim68

Repeating radio signal traced back to nearby galaxy



> The universe appears to be full of strange radio signals that come and go so quickly that their sources are difficult to locate. As such, we don't really know what causes these fast radio bursts (FRBs). But now astronomers have traced one back to its home galaxy - the closest one yet - which could help unravel the mystery.





> The team tracked the signal to an area about seven light-years wide, placing it in a galaxy called SDSS J015800.28+654253.0, which is about 500 million light-years from Earth. That might sound like quite a distance, but it's a cosmic stone's-throw considering that most others are more than 3 billion light-years away.


----------



## ekim68

LIGO detects gravitational waves from two neutron stars colliding



> The LIGO collaboration has announced the detection of gravitational waves from a pair of neutron stars colliding. This marks just the second time ever that this kind of event has been spotted, as the smash-up sent ripples through spacetime itself.


----------



## ekim68

Binary star system set to go nova by 2100



> Mark your calendars because sometime around 2083 a star as bright as Sirius will suddenly appear in the night sky. Based on 130 years of telescopic photographs, astronomers Bradley E. Schaefer, Juhan Frank, and Manos Chatzopoulos, with the Louisiana State University Department of Physics & Astronomy, have concluded that the binary star V Sagittae (V Sge), located 1,100 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta, will go nova as the main star is devoured by its white dwarf companion.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers find wandering massive black holes in dwarf galaxies



> Studies with the VLA indicate that roughly half of the massive black holes in dwarf galaxies are not in the centers of those galaxies. This gives astronomers new insights into the conditions in which similar black holes formed and grew in the early history of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

New York teen discovers new planet while interning with NASA



> A New York teen reached for the stars last summer and found a one-of-a-kind planet.
> 
> Wolf Cukier, 17, an intern at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, last July, was tasked with going through data on star brightness from the facility's ongoing Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission or TESS. The Scarsdale High School senior was looking at a foreign system located 1,300 light-years from Earth. He said he then observed what appeared to be a slight darkness in one of the system's suns.
> 
> It turned out that darkness was a planet 6.9 times larger than Earth that orbited two stars, what scientists call a circumbinary planet.


----------



## ekim68

5 scientific myths you probably believe about the Universe



> The Universe is a vast, mysterious place, encompassing everything we've ever known, observed or could ever hope to come into contact with. For millennia, a look up at the sky - our window into the cosmos beyond our world - was met with wonder, awe, and a fascination with the unknown. Thanks to all the scientific advances made by civilizations across the globe, we now know that the points of light in the sky are stars, found grouped together in galaxies, which cluster together on the largest scales, in a Universe that began with our Big Bang a finite amount of time ago: 13.8 billion years. Yet knowing that doesn't mean we know everything. In fact, knowing some physics opens the door for some really large misconceptions, some of which afflict even professional scientists.


----------



## ekim68

Oldest material ever found on Earth predates the entire solar system



> Researchers have discovered the oldest material on Earth - and it's much older than the planet itself. Tiny grains isolated from a meteorite that fell in Australia were found to be between 5 and 7 billion years old, meaning they predate the Earth, the Sun and the solar system itself.
> 
> In 1969, a fireball was seen exploding in the sky near Murchison, Victoria, Australia. Fragments of the meteorite totaling 100 kg (220 lb) were found across an area of over 13 sq km (5 sq mi). With so much of the strange space rock recovered, the Murchison meteorite has been extensively studied, yielding some fascinating results. Just last year, for example, it was found to contain extraterrestrial sugars essential to life.


----------



## ekim68

Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years



> In the foundations of physics, we have not seen progress since the mid 1970s when the standard model of particle physics was completed. Ever since then, the theories we use to describe observations have remained unchanged. Sure, some aspects of these theories have only been experimentally confirmed later. The last to-be-confirmed particle was the Higgs-boson, predicted in the 1960s, measured in 2012. But all shortcomings of these theories - the lacking quantization of gravity, dark matter, the quantum measurement problem, and more - have been known for more than 80 years. And they are as unsolved today as they were then.


----------



## valis

I did not know this


http://imgur.com/o9WHsjD


----------



## ekim68

Whoa, that's cool..  Thanks Tim, I'll pass it around..


----------



## valis

huh...surprised you didnt know either...


----------



## ekim68

The last sentence in the article...


> On the brighter side, those fearing an alien invasion can now rest easy.



Scientists say humans are alone in the universe


----------



## ekim68

The mysterious giant blobs of gas around our galaxy's black hole are actually massive merger stars being shredded



> Astronomers have finally figured out what the peculiar object known as "G2" orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is: a behemoth star created from the merger of two binary stars being stretched by the extreme tidal forces around the black hole.


----------



## ekim68

NASA, SpaceX Complete Final Major Flight Test of Crew Spacecraft



> NASA and SpaceX completed a launch escape demonstration of the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket Sunday. This was the final major flight test of the spacecraft before it begins carrying astronauts to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
> 
> The launch escape test began at 10:30 a.m. EST with liftoff from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission to show the spacecraft's capability to safely separate from the rocket in the unlikely event of an inflight emergency.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://gizmodo.com/scientists-are-generating-oxygen-from-simulated-moon-du-1841060875']Scientists Are Generating Oxygen from Simulated Moon Dust[/URL]



> European researchers are working on a system that can churn out breathable oxygen from simulated samples of moon dust.
> 
> "Being able to acquire oxygen from resources found on the Moon would obviously be hugely useful for future lunar settlers, both for breathing and in the local production of rocket fuel," explained Beth Lomax, a chemist from the University of Glasgow, in an European Space Agency (ESA) press release.


----------



## ekim68

Atomic bonds forming and breaking captured on video for the first time



> Atoms are known for forming bonds and breaking apart, a process that's crucial to basically everything in the universe. But because it happens on such a tiny scale, it's difficult to study and record. Now, researchers from the Universities of Nottingham and Ulm have managed to capture atoms forming and breaking bonds on video for the first time.
> 
> The team used transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to image a pair of rhenium atoms, as they "walked" hand in hand along a carbon nanotube. With a quadruple bond between them, the two atoms form a molecule of Re2.


----------



## ekim68

Nine Finalists Chosen in NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Naming Contest



> Members of the public have an opportunity to vote for their favorite name for NASA's next Mars rover. The nine candidate names were made possible by the "Name the Rover" essay contest, which invited students in kindergarten through 12th grade from across the United States to come up with a fitting name for NASA's Mars 2020 rover and write a short essay about it.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Celebrates the Legacy of the Spitzer Space Telescope


----------



## ekim68

World's highest and India's largest gamma-ray telescope to go live in Ladakh this year

*



New Delhi:

Click to expand...

*


> India's largest and the world's highest gamma-ray telescope is set to go live later this year, aiming to provide a new window into distant stars and galaxies in the universe.
> 
> The Major Atmospheric Cherenkov Experiment Telescope (MACE) in Hanle, Ladakh, is placed at an altitude of 4,300 metres above sea level.
> 
> It is the world's second-largest, ground-based gamma-ray telescope with a 21-metre-diameter dish. The largest telescope of the same class is the 28-metre-diameter telescope, which is part of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) in Namibia.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists find 'ghost particles' coming from inside the Earth



> Scientists have found new "ghost particles" coming from inside the Earth.
> 
> The mysterious particles, known as geoneutrinos, rarely interact with matter and so can be almost impossible to detect.
> 
> But scientists working in the world's biggest underground laboratory have found 53 new events, nearly twice as many as before.


----------



## ekim68

Detection of very high frequency magnetic resonance could revolutionize electronics



> A team of physicists has discovered an electrical detection method for terahertz electromagnetic waves, which are extremely difficult to detect. The discovery could help miniaturize the detection equipment on microchips and enhance sensitivity.
> 
> Terahertz is a unit of electromagnetic wave frequency: One gigahertz equals 1 billion hertz; 1 terahertz equals 1,000 gigahertz. The higher the frequency, the faster the transmission of information. Cell phones, for example, operate at a few gigahertz.


----------



## ekim68

NASA reports Voyager 2 is experiencing technical difficulties



> Voyager 2 has been going strong for over 40 years, but it's beginning to show signs of its age. NASA is reporting that a fault has caused the spacecraft to lock itself down in safe mode, as engineers work to get it back up and running again.
> 
> According to NASA, Voyager 2 failed to perform a scheduled maneuver on Saturday January 25. The craft was due to rotate a full 360 degrees to calibrate its magnetic field instrument, but for some reason the action was delayed. That in turn meant that two particularly power-hungry systems were left running at the same time, which overdrew the available power supply.
> 
> Because a mechanic can't exactly be sent 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion km) to look at it, Voyager 2 is designed to automatically react to these situations by going into a low power mode, preventing any damage. Engineers back at NASA HQ can then communicate with the craft to try to troubleshoot the problem.


----------



## ekim68

[URL='https://www.nso.edu/inouye-solar-telescope-first-light']Inouye Solar Telescope First Images page



> The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope has produced the highest resolution observations of the Sun's surface ever taken. In this movie, taken at a wavelength of 705nm over a period of 10 minutes, we can see features as small as 30km (18 miles) in size for the first time ever.


----------



## ekim68

NASA selects first habitable commercial module for the ISS



> NASA has announced its selection for the first commercial habitat module to be installed on the International Space Station (ISS). Houston, Texas-based Axiom Space will provide the first part of what will eventually become the "Axiom Segment" of the station, consisting of a node module, a research and manufacturing facility, crew habitat, and a large-windowed Earth observatory.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launches 60 new Starlink satellites, sticks rocket landing at sea



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - SpaceX successfully launched its fourth batch of Starlink satellites into orbit and nailed a rocket landing today (Jan. 29) following days of weather delays for the mission.


----------



## ekim68

Dense stars spotted twisting and dragging the spacetime continuum



> Under general relativity, gravity is the result of huge amounts of mass bending the very fabric of spacetime. A few years after Einstein published the theory of general relativity, mathematicians Josef Lense and Hans Thirring proposed the concept of "frame dragging." Essentially, general relativity suggests that rotating objects should drag spacetime around with them.
> 
> Most of the time that effect would be too minor to detect, so it's remained unconfirmed for over 100 years. But now, the researchers on the new study claim to have found evidence of this long-sought side effect.
> 
> It's not entirely surprising that PSR J1141-6545 would be the site of this breakthrough, given the crazy amounts of mass the system is throwing around. The astronomers have been studying the objects for almost 20 years with the Parkes telescope in Australia, watching how they interact over time. And in the long-term, they noticed a gradual change that could be attributed to frame dragging.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Gravity Probe Confirms Two Einstein Theories



> A NASA probe orbiting Earth has confirmed two key predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity causes masses to warp space-time around them.
> 
> The Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission was launched in 2004 to study two aspects of Einstein's theory about gravity: the geodetic effect, or the warping of space and time around a gravitational body, and frame-dragging, which describes the amount of space and time a spinning objects pulls with it as it rotates.


----------



## ekim68

A good look at the insides of the ISS... 


Astronaut Christina Koch's Space Station Science Scrapbook



> After almost a year in space, NASA astronaut *Christina Koch* is coming home. When Koch returns to Earth, she will have lived in space for 328 days, setting the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman. On Dec. 28, 2019, she surpassed the *previous record* of 288 days held by NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson.


----------



## ekim68

Satellite Host Named for NASA Air Pollution Sensor



> A NASA instrument that will measure air quality over North America in unprecedented detail during daylight hours now has a satellite host.
> 
> Maxar Technologies and Intelsat recently agreed to partner to host NASA's Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument onboard the Intelsat 40e mission. In 2019, NASA selected Maxar to host the TEMPO instrument utilizing the U.S. Air Force Hosted Payload Solutions (HoPS) contract vehicle. Intelsat 40e is based on Maxar's 1300-class satellite platform and will provide commercial satellite communications for Intelsat customers in North and Central America. The satellite is scheduled to launch into geostationary orbit 22,236 miles above Earth's equator in 2022.


----------



## ekim68

We have a new cousin in the neighborhood.. 


Meet Farout, the New Most Distant Member of Our Solar System




> It's the farthest object we've ever spotted in our neighborhood


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover unusual monster galaxy in the very early universe



> An international team of astronomers led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, has found an unusual monster galaxy that existed about 12 billion years ago, when the universe was only 1.8 billion years old.
> 
> Dubbed XMM-2599, the galaxy formed stars at a high rate and then died. Why it suddenly stopped forming stars is unclear.


----------



## ekim68

ALMA catches beautiful outcome of stellar fight



> Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, have spotted a peculiar gas cloud that resulted from a confrontation between two stars. One star grew so large it engulfed the other which, in turn, spiralled towards its partner provoking it into shedding its outer layers.


----------



## ekim68

And only with 64k of memory... 


NASA brings Voyager 2 fully back online, 11.5 billion miles from Earth




> In an incredible feat





> of remote engineering, NASA has fixed one of the most intrepid explorers in human history. _Voyager 2_, currently some 11.5 billion miles from Earth, is back online and resuming its mission to collect scientific data on the solar system and the interstellar space beyond.


----------



## ekim68

Something in Deep Space Is Sending Signals to Earth in Steady 16-Day Cycles



> A mysterious radio source located in a galaxy 500 million light years from Earth is pulsing on a 16-day cycle, like clockwork, according to a new study. This marks the first time that scientists have ever detected periodicity in these signals, which are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), and is a major step toward unmasking their sources.
> 
> FRBs are one of the most tantalizing puzzles that the universe has thrown at scientists in recent years. First spotted in 2007, these powerful radio bursts are produced by energetic sources, though nobody is sure what those might be. FRBs are also mystifying because they can be either one-offs or "repeaters," meaning some bursts appear only once in a certain part of the sky, while others emit multiple flashes to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Names Axiom Space to Build Its Space Hotel




> Introducing Axiom Space





> Earlier this week, NASA announced that it has selected Axiom Space to build "at least one habitable commercial module to be attached to the International Space Station." The contract is awarded under NASA's "Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships," or NextSTEP-2, program, which was first announced some five years ago.
> 
> In this particular demonstration project, Axiom will deliver to the ISS an "element" which "will attach to the space station's Node 2 forward port," giving access to the rest of the space station, and also a place for weary private astronauts to lay their heads at night.


----------



## ekim68

Solar Orbiter Instruments



> The scientific payload elements of Solar Orbiter are being provided by ESA Member States, NASA and ESA. They have been selected and funded through a competitive selection process. The Solar Orbiter payload accommodates a set of _in situ _and a set of remote-sensing instruments, with a total payload mass of 209 kg.


----------



## ekim68

New images reveal "golf ball asteroid" has seen its share of hits



> Astronomers have taken the clearest-ever shots of asteroid Pallas, a large rock orbiting out beyond Mars. The new images revealed the surface of this tiny world to be heavily dotted with craters, to the point where it's been dubbed the "golf ball asteroid."


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons Team Uncovers a Critical Piece of the Planetary Formation Puzzle



> Data from NASA's New Horizons mission are providing new insights into how planets and planetesimals - the building blocks of the planets - were formed.
> 
> The New Horizons spacecraft flew past the ancient Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth (2014 MU69) on Jan. 1, 2019, providing humankind's first close-up look at one of the icy remnants of solar system formation in the vast region beyond the orbit of Neptune. Using detailed data on the object's shape, geology, color and composition - gathered during a record-setting flyby that occurred more than four billion miles from Earth - researchers have apparently answered a longstanding question about planetesimal origins, and therefore made a major advance in understanding how the planets themselves formed.


----------



## ekim68

William Gerstenmaier joins SpaceX, and that's a really big deal



> SpaceX has confirmed that NASA's former chief of human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, has joined the company as a consultant as it prepares to launch astronauts for the first time.
> 
> This is a consequential hire for SpaceX-it is difficult to overstate the influence Gerstenmaier has over human spaceflight both in the United States and abroad. He led NASA's space shuttle, International Space Station, commercial crew, and exploration programs for more than a decade.


----------



## ekim68

Artemis Student Challenge: NASA Selects University Teams to Build Technologies for the Moon's Darkest Areas



> Almost a quarter of a million miles away from home, the Moon's permanently shadowed regions are the closest extraterrestrial water source. These craters have remained dark for billions of years, but student-developed technologies can help shine light on all they have to offer.
> 
> Through the competitive Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge and the Space Grant project, NASA has awarded nearly $1 million to eight university teams to build sample lunar payloads and demonstrate innovative ways to study the Moon's darkest areas.


----------



## ekim68

Quantum memories entangled over 50-kilometer cable



> A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China has succeeded in sending entangled quantum memories over a 50-kilometer coiled fiber cable. In their paper published in the journal _Nature_, the group describes several experiments they conducted involving entangling quantum memory over long distances, the challenges they overcame, and problems still to be addressed.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Wants to Launch 4 Tourists Into Super High Orbit



> SpaceX aims to launch up to four tourists into a super high orbit, possibly by the end of next year.
> 
> The private company is working with Space Adventures Inc. for the flight, officials announced Tuesday. Ticket prices are not being divulged but expected to be in the millions.


----------



## ekim68

Found at Last - The First Molecule in the Universe



> Helium hydride, a molecule consisting of hydrogen and helium, was the first molecule to be created in the Universe, but it has never been seen in space until now. Researchers searching for this molecule for decades have finally found evidence of it in a distant planetary nebula.
> 
> Just 100,000 years after the big bang, hydrogen and helium combined into the first molecule, helium hydride (HeH+). Researchers believed they should still be able to see this material out in space, but this finding marks the first time this ancient molecule has been found in the modern Universe. This discovery not only proves this helium hydride can exist in space, but also confirms theories of chemistry in the earliest era of matter in the Cosmos.


----------



## Johnny b

I've enjoyed this lady's scientific web site for a while and I hope others do also.

Sabine Hossenfelder
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/p/about.html

The 10 Most Important Physics Effects 
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-10-most-important-physics-effects.html


----------



## ekim68

Satellite 'license plates' and re-igniting rocket fuel could head off space junk crashes



> Two defunct satellites nearly collided on Jan. 29, and their close call (the objects missed each other by an estimated 154 feet, or 47 meters) renewed attention for a growing problem far above Earth: a cloud of space junk.
> 
> Millions of objects make up this orbiting junkyard, where hurtling fragments can reach speeds of nearly 18,000 mph (19,000 km/h), around seven times faster than the speed of a bullet, according to NASA. About 500,000 pieces of debris are at least marble size, and approximately 20,000 objects are the size of a softball or bigger, NASA reported in 2013.


----------



## ekim68

Radical hydrogen-boron reactor leapfrogs current nuclear fusion tech



> "We are sidestepping all of the scientific challenges that have held fusion energy back for more than half a century," says the director of an Australian company that claims its hydrogen-boron fusion technology is already working a billion times better than expected.
> 
> HB11 Energy is a spin-out company that originated at the University of New South Wales, and it announced today a swag of patents through Japan, China and the USA protecting its unique approach to fusion energy generation.
> 
> Fusion, of course, is the long-awaited clean, safe theoretical solution to humanity's energy needs. It's how the Sun itself makes the vast amounts of energy that have powered life on our planet up until now. Where nuclear fission - the splitting of atoms to release energy - has proven incredibly powerful but insanely destructive when things go wrong, fusion promises reliable, safe, low cost, green energy generation with no chance of radioactive meltdown.


----------



## ekim68

Japan green lights first ever mission to sample a Martian moon



> JAXA, Japan's space agency, is moving ahead with a first-of-a-kind mission to explore the two moons of the Mars system, Phobos and Deimos. All going to plan, the Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) mission will return to Earth with the first ever samples of a Martian moon by the end of the decade, which scientists hope may offer a few clues about Mars' formation and its watery past.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Found Breathable Oxygen in Another Galaxy for the First Time



> Astronomers have spotted molecular oxygen in a galaxy far far away, marking the first time that this important element has ever been detected outside of the Milky Way.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Team Wins 2020 Michael Collins Trophy



> In recognition of the NASA Hubble Space Telescope's 30 years of civilization-changing astronomical discoveries, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, D.C., has awarded its 2020 Collins Trophy for Current Achievement to the Hubble operations team at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.


----------



## ekim68

Tiny, cool star fires off enormous X-ray superflare



> Astronomers have spotted a tiny, cool star putting on a stellar light show that would shame our Sun. This X-ray "superflare" was 10 times more powerful than anything the Sun can produce, and is completely unexpected for a star this small.
> 
> Known as J0331-27, the star belongs to a rare class called an L dwarf. With barely eight percent of the mass of the Sun, the object only barely scrapes over the line to even qualify as a star. As such, these stars weren't thought to be particularly energetic.
> 
> But J0331-27 bucked expectations, unleashing a powerful X-ray flare that even a star 10 times bigger would be proud of. The flare was recently spotted in archival data dating back to July 5, 2008, recorded by the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory.


----------



## ekim68

Mars InSight lander to push on top of the 'mole'



> After nearly a year of trying to dig into the Martian surface, the heat probe belonging to NASA's InSight lander is about to get a push. The mission team plans to command the scoop on InSight's robotic arm to press down on the "mole," the mini pile driver designed to hammer itself as much as 16 feet (5 meters) down. They hope that pushing down on the mole's top, also called the back cap, will keep it from backing out of its hole on Mars, as it did twice in recent months after nearly burying itself.


----------



## ekim68

First direct marsquake data reveals a seismically active Red Planet



> The drilling component on NASA's Mars Insight lander may have hit a snag or two, but this probe has its fingers in a few pies on the surface of the Red Planet. The spacecraft's primary sensor has now pulled in the first ever direct measurements of seismic activity on Mars, which mission scientists can use as window to better understand the planet's insides and its potential to harbor life.


----------



## ekim68

Earth has picked up a tiny second moon



> The Minor Planet Center has announced that Earth now has two moons. But don't bother running outside to check - this second satellite is tiny and temporary.
> 
> The newcomer, designated 2020 CD3, measures between 1.9 and 3.5 m (6.2 and 11.5 ft) wide, which obviously pales in size compared to our main Moon's massive 3,474 km (2,159 mi) diameter. That's because it's little more than an asteroid that just wandered too close, and got tangled up in Earth's gravitational pull.
> 
> The discovery was made on February 15 by US astronomers Theodore Pruyne and Kacper Wierzchos, using the telescope at Mount Lemmon Observatory. Follow-up observations allowed astronomers to trace its orbit, and calculated that this tiny space rock has been orbiting Earth for about three years.


----------



## ekim68

Fired Up! Final Test of Orion Motor Critical to Astronaut Safety a Spectacular Success



> When NASA astronauts blast off for their voyage to the Moon on the Orion spacecraft during Artemis missions, they'll have protection in the form of the launch abort system (LAS). The LAS is designed to carry crew to safety in the event of an emergency during launch or ascent atop the agency's Space Launch System rocket.
> 
> On Feb. 25, NASA successfully tested the attitude control motor (ACM), which is built by Northrop Grumman and provides steering for Orion's LAS during an abort, at the company's facility in Elkton, Maryland. The 30-second hot fire was the third and final test to qualify the motor for human missions, beginning with Artemis II.


----------



## ekim68

China's Rover Finds Layers of Surprise Under Moon's Far Side




> China's robotic Chang'e-4 spacecraft





> did something last year that had never been done before: It landed on the moon's far side, and Yutu-2, a small rover it was carrying, began trundling through a crater there. One of the rover's instruments, a ground-penetrating radar, is now revealing what lies beneath.
> 
> In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, a team of Chinese and Italian researchers showed that the top layer of the lunar soil on that part of the moon is considerably thicker than some expected - about 130 feet of what scientists call regolith.


----------



## ekim68

Record-breaking Explosion by Black Hole Spotted



> The biggest explosion seen in the universe has been found. This record-breaking, gargantuan eruption came from a black hole in a distant galaxy cluster hundreds of millions of light years away.
> 
> "In some ways, this blast is similar to how the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 ripped off the top of the mountain," said Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, and lead author of the study. "A key difference is that you could fit fifteen Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster's hot gas."


----------



## ekim68

GAIA Reveals Bar at Center of Milky Way for First Time Ever



> The Milky Way galaxy, our home among the Cosmos, is a barred spiral galaxy, containing hundreds of billions of stars. Our massive family of stellar systems fits within a disk roughly 100,000 light years across, but just 1,000 light years thick.
> 
> The Gaia space telescope, a European Space Agency (ESA) mission launched December 19, 2013, was designed with a unique mission - to create a 3D map of stars in the Milky Way and beyond. Astronomers have now used this remarkable instrument to reveal the bar at the center of our galaxy for the first time.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX wins launch contract for NASA mission to study unique metal asteroid



> SpaceX has been awarded a $117 million launch contract for NASA's Psyche mission that will study a unique metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.
> 
> The NASA mission to loft a 5,750-lb. (2,608-kg) spacecraft atop of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket will study a mineral-rich asteroid named 16 Psyche. The mission is expected to take place sometime in 2022 and launch from NASA's historic Launch Pad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Florida.


----------



## ekim68

Honeywell says it will soon launch the world's most powerful quantum computer



> "The best-kept secret in quantum computing." That's what Cambridge Quantum Computing  (CQC) CEO Ilyas Khan called Honeywell's efforts in building the world's most powerful quantum computer. In a race where most of the major players are vying for attention, Honeywell has quietly worked on its efforts for the last few years (and under strict NDA's, it seems). But today, the company announced a major breakthrough that it claims will allow it to launch the world's most powerful quantum computer within the next three months.


----------



## ekim68

Curiosity Mars Rover Snaps 1.8 Billion-Pixel Panorama (narrated video)


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX announces partnership to send tourists to ISS



> SpaceX on Thursday announced a partnership to send three tourists to the International Space Station (ISS), the first private trip in more than a decade.
> 
> Elon Musk's company has signed a deal with Axiom Space to transport the tourists along with a commander on one of its Crew Dragon capsules in the second half of 2021.
> 
> Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini said the flight "will represent a watershed moment in the march toward universal and routine access to space." He did not reveal a price tag.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Deep Space Antenna Upgrades to Affect Voyager Communications



> Starting in early March, NASA's Voyager 2 will quietly coast through interstellar space without receiving commands from Earth. That's because the Voyager's primary means of communication, the Deep Space Network's 70-meter-wide (230-feet-wide) radio antenna in Canberra, Australia, will be undergoing critical upgrades for about 11 months. During this time, the Voyager team will still be able to receive science data from Voyager 2 on its mission to explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain and beyond.
> 
> About the size of a 20-story office building, the dish has been in service for 48 years. Some parts of the 70-meter antenna, including the transmitters that send commands to various spacecraft, are 40 years old and increasingly unreliable. The Deep Space Network (DSN) upgrades are planned to start now that Voyager 2 has returned to normal operations, after accidentally overdrawing its power supply and automatically turning off its science instruments in January.


----------



## ekim68

Robotic Arm Captures Dragon Packed With Science



> While the International Space Station was traveling more than 262 miles over the Northeast Pacific near Vancouver, British Columbia, Expedition 62 Flight Engineer Jessica Meir of NASA grappled Dragon at 6:25 a.m. EDT using the space station's robotic arm Canadarm2 with NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan acting as a backup.


----------



## ekim68

This Is How We Know There Are Two Trillion Galaxies In The Universe



> When you gaze up at the night sky, through the veil of stars and the plane of the Milky Way close by, you can't help but feel small before the grand abyss of the Universe that lies beyond. Even though nearly all of them are invisible to our eyes, our observable Universe, extending tens of billions of light years in all directions, contains a fantastically large number of galaxies within it.
> 
> Just how many galaxies are out there used to be a mystery, with estimates rising from the thousands to the millions to the billions, all as telescope technology improved. If we made the most straightforward estimate using today's best technology, we'd state there are 170 billion galaxies in our Universe. But we know more than that, and our modern estimate is even grander: two trillion galaxies. Here's how we got there.


----------



## valis

interesting read....https://gizmodo.com/new-analysis-of-large-hadron-collider-results-confirms-1842240236


----------



## ekim68

Almost 140 new minor planets spotted in the outer solar system



> Well over 100 new minor planets have been discovered in our solar system, in the darkness out beyond the orbit of Neptune. The discoveries were made by sifting through several years' worth of data gathered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and applying new techniques to study objects that the survey was never intended to search for.
> 
> While Neptune is the furthest known planet in the solar system (sorry Pluto), that doesn't mean there's nothing beyond it. Roughly 3,000 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are known to be drifting around even further out, ranging from small asteroids and comets right up to dwarf planets like Pluto. There's even a chance that larger undiscovered planets are hiding in these distant shadows.


----------



## ekim68

How do you keep a space station clean?




> By 1998, after 12 years in orbit, Russian space station Mir was showing its age. Power cuts were frequent, the computers unreliable and the climate control system was leaking. But when the crew began a study to assess the types of microbes they were sharing their living space with, even they were surprised at what they found.
> 
> Opening an inspection panel, they discovered several globules of murky water - each around the size of a football. Later analysis revealed the water was teeming with bacteria, fungi and mites.


----------



## ekim68

Big Bang 'fossil' gas cloud discovered by world's most powerful telescope



> A relic cloud of gas over left-over from shortly after the big bang and subsequently isolated has been discovered in a distant galaxy by the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii.


----------



## ekim68

Something strange is going on with the North Star



> Something's up with the North Star.
> 
> People have watched the North Star for centuries. The bright star, also known as Polaris, is almost directly above Earth's North Pole and serves as a landmark in the sky for travelers without a compass. It's also Earth's closest cepheid, a type of star that pulses regularly in diameter and brightness. And Polaris is part of a binary system; it's got a dimmer sister, known as Polaris B, that we can watch circling it from Earth.
> 
> "However, as we learn more, it is becoming clear that we understand less" about Polaris, wrote the authors of a new paper on the famous star.
> 
> The problem with Polaris is that no one can agree on how big or distant it is.


----------



## ekim68

Help NASA Design a Robot to Dig on the Moon



> Digging on the Moon is a hard job for a robot. It has to be able to collect and move lunar soil, or regolith, but anything launching to the Moon needs to be lightweight. The problem is excavators rely on their weight and traction to dig on Earth. NASA has a solution, but is looking for ideas to make it better. Once matured, robotic excavators could help NASA establish a sustainable presence on the Moon under the Artemis lunar exploration program, a few years after landing astronauts on the surface.
> 
> Engineers have tested various configurations of a Moon-digging robot called RASSOR - short for Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot - in a large lunar simulant sand box at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now, NASA is asking the public to help design a new bucket drum, the portion of the robot that captures the regolith and keeps it from falling out. The regolith can then be transported to a designated location where reverse rotation of the drum allows it to fall back out.


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## ekim68

Falcon 9 rocket overcomes engine failure to deploy Starlink satellites



> One of the rocket's nine first stage engines shut down prematurely around 2 minutes, 22 seconds, after liftoff from pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, an event visible in a view from a camera streaming live video from the Falcon 9 as it climbed into the upper atmosphere.
> 
> Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, confirmed in a tweet that the Falcon 9 experienced an "early engine shutdown on ascent, but it didn't affect orbit insertion."
> 
> The rocket's other Merlin engines fired a little longer to compensate for the loss of thrust. The rest of the Falcon 9's climb into orbit appeared to go according to plan, and the upper stage deployed the 60 Starlink satellites into orbit around 15 minutes after liftoff.
> 
> "Shows value of having 9 engines!" Musk wrote on Twitter.


----------



## ekim68

New SpaceX launch: Starlink now has 360 internet-beaming satellites, as US service nears



> SpaceX has successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites, boosting its internet-beaming space network to 360 satellites.
> 
> The latest launch on Wednesday, SpaceX's sixth Starlink mission to date, puts it much closer to the minor coverage of North America that SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk expects to achieve when the network reaches 400 satellites.


----------



## valis

lol.....https://jalopnik.com/nasa-fixes-probe-on-mars-by-hitting-it-with-a-shovel-1842415243


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## ekim68

The right tool for the job, eh? :up:


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## ekim68

Quasar Tsunamis Rip Across Galaxies



> Using the unique capabilities of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has discovered the most energetic outflows ever witnessed in the universe. They emanate from quasars and tear across interstellar space like tsunamis, wreaking havoc on the galaxies in which the quasars live.
> 
> Quasars are extremely remote celestial objects, emitting exceptionally large amounts of energy. Quasars contain supermassive black holes fueled by infalling matter that can shine 1,000 times brighter than their host galaxies of hundreds of billions of stars.


----------



## ekim68

New Telescope Design Could Capture Distant Celestial Objects With Unprecedented Detail



> Researchers have designed a new camera that could allow hypertelescopes to image multiple stars at once. The enhanced telescope design holds the potential to obtain extremely high-resolution images of objects outside our solar system, such as planets, pulsars, globular clusters and distant galaxies.
> 
> "A multi-field hypertelescope could, in principle, capture a highly detailed image of a star, possibly also showing its planets and even the details of the planets' surfaces," said Antoine Labeyrie, emeritus professor at the Collège de France and Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, who pioneered the hypertelescope design. "It could allow planets outside of our solar system to be seen with enough detail that spectroscopy could be used to search for evidence of photosynthetic life."


----------



## ekim68

Watch This Rocket Engine's 3D-Printed Thrust Chamber Ace a 'Hot Fire' Test



> The European Space Agency's (ESA) Vega launcher project has passed a milestone, with a successful sustained heat test on its new 3D-printed thrust chamber. The new part belongs to Vega's M10 engine, which the ESA hopes to put into space beginning in 2025.
> 
> As part of a "hot fire" test, the engine was fired 19 times for a combined 450 seconds. This kind of test mimics the most challenging conditions a system might face during launch so scientists can identify any weaknesses and help shore them up as development continues.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX gets FCC license for 1 million satellite-broadband user terminals



> SpaceX has received government approval to deploy up to 1 million user terminals in the United States for its Starlink satellite-broadband constellation.
> 
> SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission for the license in February 2019, and the FCC announced its approval in a public notice last week. The FCC approval is for "a blanket license for the operation of up to 1,000,000 fixed earth stations that will communicate with [SpaceX's] non-geostationary orbit satellite system." The license is good for 15 years.


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## ekim68

Scientists create quantum sensor that covers entire radio frequency spectrum



> A quantum sensor could give Soldiers a way to detect communication signals over the entire radio frequency spectrum, from 0 to 100 GHz, said researchers from the Army.


----------



## ekim68

NASA pulls out incredibly high-res global map of asteroid Bennu



> With OSIRIS-REx in close orbit around Bennu, we've already seen some pretty amazing up-close shots of the asteroid. And now, NASA has released a full global map of this rocky little world in unprecedented resolution.
> 
> The map is a mosaic made up of 2,155 individual images, giving it an incredibly high resolution of just 2 inches (5 cm) per pixel. That makes it the highest-resolution global map of any planetary body to date.


----------



## ekim68

Revisiting Decades-Old Voyager 2 Data, Scientists Find One More Secret



> Over the next few hours, Voyager 2 flew within 50,600 miles (81,433 kilometers) of Uranus' cloud tops, collecting data that revealed two new rings, 11 new moons and temperatures below minus 353 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 214 degrees Celsius). The dataset is still the only up-close measurements we have ever made of the planet.
> 
> Three decades later, scientists reinspecting that data found one more secret.
> 
> Unbeknownst to the entire space physics community, 34 years ago Voyager 2 flew through a plasmoid, a giant magnetic bubble that may have been whisking Uranus's atmosphere out to space. The finding, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, raises new questions about the planet's one-of-a-kind magnetic environment.


----------



## ekim68

What Gravitational Waves Will Change



> They arise from events so luminous that their energy eclipses everything, becoming 50 times more powerful in their last fraction of a second than all the universe combined. These events occur when two massive, rapidly accelerating objects fall towards each other and merge. In the case of our first detection of gravitational waves, it was two black holes with the mass of about 30 suns each, but gravitational waves can also be caused by neutron stars or supernova explosions. Energy released by the objects then causes ripples in the fabric of space. We then call these ripples gravitational waves. They're not unlike the ripples on the surface of a pleasant little pond once a pebble has been thrown in. General relativity lets us see space as something which can be manipulated. In the case of gravity, for example, the mass of objects warps the fabric of space around them, creating indents and allowing for the circular paths we refer to as orbits. The sun creates geometry in space - a curvature - that the Earth then follows.


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## ekim68

10.9 Million Names Now Aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover



> NASA's "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign invited people around the world to submit their names to ride aboard the agency's next rover to the Red Planet. Some 10,932,295 people did just that. The names were stenciled by electron beam onto three fingernail-sized silicon chips, along with the essays of the 155 finalists in NASA's "Name the Rover" contest. The chips were then were attached to an aluminum plate on NASA's Perseverance Mars rover at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 16. Scheduled to launch this summer, Perseverance will land at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.


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## ekim68

A good site to visit once in a while.. 

NASA at Home


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## ekim68

NASA contracts SpaceX for supply missions to Gateway outpost



> NASA has selected SpaceX to carry cargo to the space agency's deep-space Gateway outpost. Under the first Gateway Logistics Services contract to be awarded to a US company, SpaceX will deliver pressurized and unpressurized supplies, experiments, and items to the Gateway station, which will be used for the Artemis program to return American astronauts to the lunar surface and establish a permanent manned presence there.


----------



## ekim68

Uranus is losing its atmosphere because of its weird wobbly magnetic field



> Voyager 2 may have long ago left our solar system and headed out into interstellar space to explore the unknown, but scientists are still learning from the data it collected as it passed by the other planets in our system. A new analysis of 30-year-old data has revealed a surprising finding about the planet Uranus - the huge magnetic bubble surrounding it is siphoning its atmosphere off into space.





> Uranus's atmospheric loss is driven by its strange magnetic field, the axis of which points at an angle compared to the axis on which the planet spins. That means its magnetosphere wobbles as it moves, which makes it very difficult to model.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers have found the edge of the Milky Way at last



> Our galaxy is a whole lot bigger than it looks. New work finds that the Milky Way stretches nearly 2 million light-years across, more than 15 times wider than its luminous spiral disk. The number could lead to a better estimate of how massive the galaxy is and how many other galaxies orbit it.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Shows Perseverance with Helicopter, Cruise Stage Testing



> Activities to measure mass properties of the Cruise Stage vehicle were performed on the spin table inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. Successful testing also was performed on NASA's Mars Helicopter, which will be attached to Perseverance. The functional test (50 RPM spin) was executed on the stand in the airlock. This marked the last time the rotor blades will be operated until the rover reaches the Martian surface.
> 
> The NASA Mars Helicopter will be the first aircraft to fly on another planet. The twin-rotor, solar-powered helicopter will remain encapsulated after landing, deploying once mission managers determine an acceptable area to conduct test flights.


----------



## ekim68

NASA unfolds James Webb Telescope's huge mirrors in deployment test



> The James Webb Space Telescope has crossed another milestone on the path to its long-awaited launch. NASA engineers have now completed a deployment test, unfurling the telescope's gigantic mirror into the configuration it will take in space.
> 
> Ahead of its launch next year, James Webb is currently in the midst of an exhaustive series of tests to make sure that it will work properly once it gets up there. After all, it's a bit tricky to send a mechanic 1.5 million km to take a look if something goes wrong.
> 
> The latest of these tests focused on making sure the spacecraft's mirrors unfold in the right way. At an impressive 6.5 m (21.3 ft) wide, Webb has the largest mirror ever launched into space, so to fit in the rocket fairing for launch it needs to tuck its wings in. Only once it's safely in space will it stretch out to full size.


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## ekim68

Hubble Finds Best Evidence for Elusive Mid-Sized Black Hole



> Astronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as "intermediate-mass," which betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that passed too close.
> 
> Weighing in at about 50,000 times the mass of our Sun, the black hole is smaller than the supermassive black holes (at millions or billions of solar masses) that lie at the cores of large galaxies, but larger than stellar-mass black holes formed by the collapse of a massive star.


----------



## ekim68

Earth to be buzzed this week by spacecraft heading to Mercury



> This week Earth will be visited by a spacecraft that has traveled 1.4 billion km to get here. But no, it's not aliens - it's BepiColombo, a European-Japanese mission that's just slingshotting around our planet for a gravitational speed boost on its roundabout journey to Mercury.
> 
> The spacecraft is a joint mission between European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which was launched back in October 2018 to study Mercury.


----------



## ekim68

Dragon Leaves Station, Returns to Earth with Valuable Science



> SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 2:50 p.m. (11:50 a.m. PDT), approximately 300 miles southwest of Long Beach, California, marking the end of the company's 20th contracted cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA. The spacecraft returned more than 4,000 pounds of valuable scientific experiments and other cargo.


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## ekim68

Experiment finds that gravity still works down to 50 micrometers



> This and many other experimental refinements have allowed them to measure gravitational attraction down to a distance of just 52µm. Once they add additional stabilization against vibration, they will be able to measure at even smaller separations. In the meantime, they have verified that the inverse-square law holds for distances shorter than 50µm, and therefore we have no New Physics™.


----------



## ekim68

Data From NASA's Cassini May Explain Saturn's Atmospheric Mystery



> The upper layers in the atmospheres of gas giants - Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune - are hot, just like Earth's. But unlike Earth, the Sun is too far from these outer planets to account for the high temperatures. Their heat source has been one of the great mysteries of planetary science.
> 
> New analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft finds a viable explanation for what's keeping the upper layers of Saturn, and possibly the other gas giants, so hot: auroras at the planet's north and south poles. Electric currents, triggered by interactions between solar winds and charged particles from Saturn's moons, spark the auroras and heat the upper atmosphere. (As with Earth's northern lights, studying auroras tells scientists what's going on in the planet's atmosphere.)


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## ekim68

NASA Awards Contract to Deliver Science, Tech to Moon Ahead of Human Missions



> NASA has selected Masten Space Systems of Mojave, California, to deliver and operate eight payloads - with nine science and technology instruments - to the Moon's South Pole in 2022, to help lay the foundation for human expeditions to the lunar surface beginning in 2024.
> 
> The payloads, which include instruments to assess the composition of the lunar surface, test precision landing technologies, and evaluate the radiation on the Moon, are being delivered under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative as part of the agency's Artemis program.


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab uses a helicopter to catch its booster in mid-air



> Recovering rockets for re-use is becoming a key consideration for those in the private spaceflight game, with the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin leading the charge. Rocket Lab is looking to join the party by collecting the first stage of its Electron launch vehicle in midair using a helicopter, a method that it has now successfully demonstrated over the open ocean in New Zealand.
> 
> Small satellite launch provider Rocket Lab first revealed its rocket recycling intentions in August last year, announcing plans to recover the Electron's first stage from the ocean, as well as from mid-air. This would see the first-stage re-enter the atmosphere and deploy a parachute after delivering its payload into orbit to help reduce its velocity as it plummets towards the Earth. Then it can either make a soft landing on the ocean or a helicopter can come along and snatch it up in the air, by grabbing the line that connects it to the parachute with a specially designed grappling hook.


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## ekim68

What Did Hubble See on Your Birthday?



> Hubble explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday.
> 
> What did Hubble look at on your birthday? Enter the month and date below to find out!


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## ekim68

This is a good read about the Little Satellite that could.. 


This Is About The Extraordinary Journey of One of The Greatest Human Creations- The Voyager



> The Voyager probes are two obscure looking robots, weighing about 800 kilograms with giant arms and big ears designed to sense what's out there.
> 
> And it took 1,500 engineers and scientists to bring these robotic explorers to life.


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## ekim68

Final Russian rocket launched NASA Astronaut, now SpaceX will ignite a new era in American spaceflight



> This is the final time NASA will book Russian launch services to send astronauts to the space station. Russia's Soyuz costs $86 million per seat. In total, 38 Americans have flown on 35 launches. That's a total cost of over $3 billion. NASA started funding American spacecraft development under the Commercial Crew Program. SpaceX and Boeing have been awarded funding from the agency: $3.1 billion for SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft development, and $4.8 billion for Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. A seat aboard Dragon is $55 million, and $70 million for Starliner. SpaceX and Boeing will return human spaceflight capabilities to the United States of America, at a significantly lower cost. SpaceX is scheduled to conduct its first crewed mission to the space station in May this year.


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## valis

ekim68 said:


> Final Russian rocket launched NASA Astronaut, now SpaceX will ignite a new era in American spaceflight


about dang time IMO...glad to see it privatised as well...


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## ekim68

Astronomers spot the brightest and most energetic supernova on record 



> Astronomers have spotted the brightest and most energetic supernova ever recorded. The event, known as SN2016aps, may have been the result of two stars merging and then exploding, before the dust had completely settled.
> 
> Supernovae are among the most energetic events in the cosmos, occurring when stars of a certain mass exhaust their fuel. At that point, they throw off their outer layers in a spectacular light show, while their core collapses into an incredibly dense object such as a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole.


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## ekim68

Stunning high-res photos of the Sun reveal swirling threads of plasma


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## ekim68

OSIRIS-REx probe rehearses asteroid sampling from lowest altitude yet 



> NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been circling the primitive asteroid Bennu for more than a year now, with mission control gearing up for its sample collection maneuver later this year. The unmanned probe has ticked off another key milestone on this epic journey, successfully completing a first practice run of a complex sampling sequence in close proximity to the asteroid's surface.
> 
> All going to plan, the OSIRIS-REx will grab a sample from the surface of Bennu using an instrument called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM). This 11-ft (3.4-m) articulating arm features a rounded sampling head and bottles of high-pressure nitrogen gas, which will be blasted into the surface to stir up some rubble for collection.


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## ekim68

NASA, SpaceX set date for historic launch of astronauts to ISS



> The last space shuttle launched in 2011 and NASA hasn't sent astronauts to space from US soil since then. That long dry patch is set to end on May 27 when the SpaceX Crew Dragon is scheduled to head to the International Space Station with two crew members on board.


----------



## ekim68

Intelsat orbital comms satellite is back online after first robo-recovery mounting and tug job gets it back into position



> The first mission that flew a spacecraft out to save an old telecoms satellite running low on fuel has been successful.
> 
> The recovery quest by MEV-1, a Mission Extension Vehicle probe developed by Northrop Grumman to fix the Intelsat 901 comms satellite, now has the bird up and running again.


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## ekim68

I'm on the fence when it comes to having more satellites in the sky and therefore more clutter and less star light. However, they make for more sightings and add to my sky watching...  This is a shot of one of the starlinks..


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## ekim68

NASA farewells Spitzer Space Telescope with final mosaic image 



> The Spitzer Space Telescope was finally decommissioned on January 30 this year, after more than 16 years in operation. Now NASA has released the infrared observatory's last-ever mosaic image, giving us a glimpse into how Spitzer's vision works and revealing new features of a stunning nebula.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble reveals interstellar visitor is unlike any local comet




> 2I/Borisov





> is like a time capsule from a part of the universe humans might never be able to visit. This comet from another star system is currently visiting our own, and now Hubble has taken the valuable opportunity to study its chemical makeup. The famous Space Telescope reveals that Borisov is very different to any local comet, giving hints about what kind of system it was born in.
> 
> As the "2I" designation indicates, Borisov is only the second interstellar object ever detected whizzing through our neighborhood. The first was the oddly oblong asteroid 'Oumuamua, and while that had plenty to teach us, comets are more active, so astronomers can glean different types of information.


----------



## ekim68

Upgraded LIGO hears new tones in the gravitational wave song



> For the first time, scientists have managed to pick up higher harmonics accompanying the cosmic song that rings out through the universe. The LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have been listening to this song for years, and after a round of upgrades they've extended their range, revealing new details about the events that cause them.
> 
> When massive objects collide in space, they send waves rippling through the very fabric of spacetime. These gravitational waves were a prediction of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, but we weren't able to pick them up until 2015. Since then, signals have come in so regularly that they've almost become mundane - to reiterate, measuring _distortions in reality itself _is no longer news.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Gets Balanced



> With 13 weeks to go before the launch period of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover opens, final preparations of the spacecraft continue at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On April 8, the assembly, test and launch operations team completed a crucial mass properties test of the rover.


----------



## ekim68

Quantum Computing Milestone: Researchers Compute With 'Hot' Silicon Qubits



> Two research groups say they've independently built quantum devices that can operate at temperatures above 1 Kelvin-15 times hotter than rival technologies can withstand.
> 
> The ability to work at higher temperatures is key to scaling up to the many qubits thought to be required for future commercial-grade quantum computers.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists compile the first comprehensive geological map of the Moon 



> Drawing on data from satellites and Apollo-era missions, scientists at the US Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute have pieced together what they say is the first comprehensive geological map of the Moon.
> 
> Our 4.5-billion-year-old satellite is adorned with all kinds of rocks, craters and other interesting geological features. To dig into the details, the scientists looked to regional maps from six Apollo missions and combined these with modern data from recent satellite missions.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Marks 30 Years in Space With Tapestry of Blazing Starbirth



> NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's 30 years of unlocking the beauty and mystery of space by unveiling a stunning new portrait of a firestorm of starbirth in a neighboring galaxy.


----------



## ekim68

Long-Lost U.S. Military Satellite Found By Amateur Radio Operator



> There are more than 2,000 active satellites orbiting Earth. At the end of their useful lives, many will simply burn up as they reenter the atmosphere. But some will continue circling as "zombie" satellites - neither alive nor quite dead.
> 
> "Most zombie satellites are satellites that are no longer under human control, or have failed to some degree," says Scott Tilley.


----------



## ekim68

Progress Cargo Ship Docked to Station



> Traveling about 260 miles over Northwestern China, south of the Mongolian border, the unpiloted Russian Progress 75 cargo ship docked at 1:12 a.m. EDT to the Zvezda Service Module on the Russian segment of the complex.


(There are currently four ships attached to the ISS.)


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX's Starlink satellites will soon get glare-reducing 'sunshades,' Elon Musk says




> SpaceX





> founder and CEO Elon Musk has said that the company will find a way to make Starlink craft fade from scientists' sight, predicting that the constellation will end up having no impact whatsoever on astronomical discoveries. SpaceX has been working with the astronomical community to help make this happen, researchers say, and the company has already tried out some mitigation measures.


----------



## ekim68

Population of asteroids beyond Jupiter may be from another star system



> Not everything in our solar system was born here. In 2017, astronomers noticed an asteroid on a strange trajectory that indicated it had swept in from interstellar space. It was named 'Oumuamua, and it was followed in 2019 by an interstellar comet called Borisov.
> 
> But while both of these objects are now on their way out of the solar system, it seems other visitors are here to stay. In 2018 astronomers discovered that an asteroid known as 2015 BZ509 (later named Ka'epaoka'awela) was born in another star system, before taking up permanent residence near Jupiter's orbit.


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## ekim68

Set your Alarm: Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon will be Aligning to form a smiley face



> '*Smiley face*' - when you hear that, most likely you would think of an emoticon, not planets aligning to form one!
> 
> The moon, Jupiter and Venus are going to be showing off for us on the 16th of May 2020, by aligning in a rare position that will form a smiley face in the sky!


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Watches Comet ATLAS Disintegrate Into More Than Two Dozen Pieces


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid has close encounter with geosynchronous satellite



> A small asteroid came within a cosmic hairbreadth of the ring of communications satellites circling the Earth in geosynchronous orbit this week. Passing by our planet at an altitude of about 35,000 km (22,000 mi), the object measuring four to eight meters (13 to 20 ft) in diameter whizzed past the nearest satellite on April 28, 2020, at 18:49 GMT at a distance of about 1,200 km (750 mi) on one of the closest Earth flybys ever recorded.


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## ekim68

The Persistent Ionospheric Responses Over Japan After the Impact of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake 



> On 11 March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurred near the east coast of Honshu, Japan, unleashing a savage tsunami as well as unprecedented plasma ripples at the space‐atmosphere interaction region. Although the earthquake was a transient local event, the tsunami ocean waves backscattered by seafloor topography in the Pacific Ocean continuously excited gravity waves and planar traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) propagating toward Japan for more than 10 hr. Unusual ionospheric band structures referred to the midlatitude nighttime medium‐scale TIDs (MSTIDs) and plasma irregularities developed following the planar TIDs over Japan. It is common to observe the nighttime MSTIDs traveling along the Japan island during the summer; however, they are rarely seen in March. What drove the appearance of MSTIDs and ionospheric irregularities in March was likely the reflected tsunami wave‐induced gravity waves.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Names Companies to Develop Human Landers for Artemis Moon Missions 



> NASA has selected three U.S. companies to design and develop human landing systems (HLS) for the agency's Artemis program, one of which will land the first woman and next man on the surface of the Moon by 2024. NASA is on track for sustainable human exploration of the Moon for the first time in history.


----------



## ekim68

A white dwarf star & a pulsar is dragging the space-time continuum 



> Based on the theory of general relativity, mathematicians Josef Lense and Hans Thirring proposed the concept of "*frame dragging*" - which essentially suggested that rotating objects in space should drag spacetime around with them.
> 
> However, the effect is usually too small to detect. With the new technology and super-sensitive instruments, we are beginning to verify this claim too. International astronomers have now found evidence of "frame dragging" in two dense stars in a close orbit within the system known as PSR J1141-6545.


----------



## ekim68

Origami-inspired expanding lunar module set for testing in Greenland 



> With NASA determined to return humans to the Moon in 2024 through its Artemis program, many are turning their attention to the habitats that will house this next generation of explorers. Among them is Danish design duo Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sørensen, who have been busy developing a self-expanding lunar module they plan on putting to the test in the harsh environment of Northern Greenland.
> 
> Like another example of a Moon shelter we looked at back in 2018, the newly revealed Lunark is inspired by the art of origami. While the idea of the astronauts piecing together a habitat on the Moon has its own appeal, in reality the low-gravity environment and clunky spacesuit attire are likely to pose more than a few problems when it comes to construction.
> 
> Habitats that assemble themselves are therefore a more feasible proposition, at least for the initial settlers.


----------



## ekim68

Closest black hole to Earth found 'hiding in plain sight'



> During winter in the Southern Hemisphere, a blue point of light in the constellation Telescopium gleams overhead. The brilliant pinprick on the sky, which looks like a bright star, is actually two stars in close orbit-accompanied by the closest known black hole to Earth.
> 
> The newly discovered black hole is about 1,011 light-years from our solar system in the star system HR 6819. Unveiled today in _Astronomy & Astrophysics_, the invisible object is locked in an orbit with two visible stars. It's estimated to be about four times the mass of the sun and roughly 2,500 light-years closer than the next black hole.


----------



## ekim68

The Radiation Problem on Mars is Completely Solvable



> Aside from the health problems associated with zero-g, which I talked about here and, you know, blowing up on launch or excessive lithobraking into the Martian surface, the big health risk we have to deal with on a mission to Mars is radiation. There are a lot of gloomy headlines about this problem, with this one going so far as to propose genetic engineering as our savior from radiation.
> 
> All of this strikes me as a staggering overreaction - which is not surprising, given how most people (especially the government) think about radiation.


----------



## ekim68

Solar slingshot could help spacecraft intercept interstellar objects 



> An MIT research proposal outlines a new method for rendezvousing with interstellar objects (ISOs) like 'Oumuamua using a solar slingshot technique. By using solar sails to position deep-space probes on the edge of the solar system, the idea is to use the gravitational pull of the Sun to accelerate the spacecraft and set it on an intercept course with an interstellar visitor.


----------



## ekim68

Touchdown! Hayabusa2 sends back Stunning Ryugu Images



> On February 21st, 2019, the Japanese space agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft touched down on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu - the orbit of which brings it between Earth and Mars - granting researchers at close-up look at the object's rocky-surface. The images, released in a paper published in the journal _Science, _come as a precursor to samples that will be returned to the research team in December 2020.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX's Starship SN4 prototype fires rocket engine for 1st time



> SpaceX's newest Starship prototype has fired its engine for the first time, potentially paving the way for a test flight in the very near future.
> 
> The SN4, the latest test version of SpaceX's Mars-colonizing Starship vehicle, aced a "static fire" Tuesday night (May 5), lighting up its single Raptor engine briefly while remaining on the ground at the company's South Texas facilities.


----------



## ekim68

Ultra-sharp infrared images show Jupiter as a giant jack-o'-lantern 



> Scientists have spent centuries pointing their instruments at Jupiter, and every now and then they make observations that not only further our understanding of the solar system's largest planet, but astound us at the same time. Using what is known as the "lucky imaging" technique, scientists have created one of the sharpest infrared images of Jupiter ever taken from Earth, helping to reveal its weather systems, lightning and iconic Great Red Spot in exciting new detail.


----------



## ekim68

Telescopes and spacecraft join forces to probe deep into Jupiter's atmosphere



> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based Gemini Observatory in Hawaii have teamed up with the Juno spacecraft to probe the mightiest storms in the solar system, taking place more than 500 million miles away on the giant planet Jupiter.


----------



## ekim68

New observations of Ryugu reveal the ancient asteroid's colorful past



> Japan's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is scheduled to arrive back on Earth later this year following a sample collection at asteroid Ryugu, but the mission is offering fascinating insights well ahead of its big return. Data collected by the probe during its historic touchdown has revealed surprising characteristics of the ancient space rock, including signs of a close encounter with the Sun.
> 
> The reasons scientists see such huge potential in studying asteroids like the one-kilometer-wide (0.6-mi) Ryugu is that they are thought to have gone largely unchanged since the formative stages of the solar system around five billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

High-energy cosmic neutrinos traced back to their home quasars 




> There are billions of tiny particles called neutrinos streaming through your body right now. But where did they come from? Russian researchers have now traced back some ultra-high energy neutrinos to their points of origin - radio flares from raging quasars.
> 
> Neutrinos are elementary particles with a neutral charge and almost no mass at all. They're extremely common, produced in nuclear reactors and weapons, the Sun, supernovae, and cosmic rays interacting with the Earth's atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

Laser-powered rover is designed to explore the Moon's eternal darkness



> Solar power is not just a great energy source on Earth, it can work on the Moon and Mars too. But there are some places that a solar-powered rover just can't reach, like the Moon's polar regions that are permanently in shadow. Now, ESA has outlined a new system where a lander shines a laser at a rover to keep it powered from miles away.


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## ekim68

Why Clouds Form Near Black Holes



> But black holes aren't truly like vacuum cleaners; they don't just suck up everything that gets too close. While some material around a black hole will fall directly in, never to be seen again, some of the nearby gas will be flung outward, creating a shell that expands over thousands of years. That's because the area near the event horizon is extremely energetic; the high-energy radiation from fast-moving particles around the black hole can eject a significant amount of gas into the vastness of space.
> 
> Scientists would expect that this outflow of gas would be smooth. Instead, it is clumpy, extending well beyond 1 parsec (3.3 light-years) from the black hole.


----------



## ekim68

NASA crowdsourcing helps build a better Moon digging robot



> NASA's Artemis program will eventually need robots to help live off the lunar soil, and it's enlisting help from the public to make those robots viable. The space agency has picked winners from a design challenge that tasked people with improving the bucket drums RASSOR (Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot) will use to dig on the Moon. The victors all had clever designs that should capture lunar regolith with little effort - important when any long-term presence might depend on bots like this.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists puzzle over massive, never-before-seen star system in the Milky Way



> Earlier this year, an international team of scientists announced the second detection of a gravitational-wave signal from the collision of two neutron stars. The event, called GW190425, is puzzling: The combined mass of the two neutron stars is greater than any other observed binary neutron star system. The combined mass is 3.4 times the mass of our sun.


----------



## ekim68

15 trillion quantum entangled atoms make a record-breaking hot mess




> Quantum entanglement





> is a phenomenon that's as bizarre as it is fragile. Entangled particles are thought to lose this inexplicable link when exposed to outside factors. But now, physicists have managed to produce hot clouds of trillions of entangled atoms, breaking quantity records and showing that entanglement isn't as fragile as previously thought.
> 
> Pairs or groups of particles can become so intertwined that measuring the state of one will instantly change properties of the others, no matter how far apart they are. That sounds weird enough already, but the implications threaten to undo our entire understanding of physics.


----------



## ekim68

Top Ten Discoveries from SOFIA



> Ten years ago, NASA's telescope on an airplane, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, first peered into the cosmos. Since the night of May 26, 2010, SOFIA's observations of infrared light, invisible to the human eye, have made many scientific discoveries about the hidden universe.


----------



## ekim68

Galactic cosmic rays now available for study on Earth, thanks to NASA



> To better understand and mitigate the health risks faced by astronauts from exposure to space radiation, we ideally need to be able to test the effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) here on Earth under laboratory conditions. An article publishing on May 19, 2020 in the open access journal _PLOS Biology_ from Lisa Simonsen and colleagues at the NASA Langley Research Center, USA, describes how NASA has developed a ground-based GCR Simulator at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL), located at Brookhaven National Laboratory.


----------



## ekim68

Meet the first NASA astronauts SpaceX will launch to orbit



> NASANASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are about to star in the biggest spaceflight event of the decade: launching on the inaugural flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft. For years, they've anticipated this moment, picturing throngs of people lined up on Florida's beaches to watch them ascend into the sky.


----------



## ekim68

Images with a "twist" could be first showing birth of an exoplanet 



> An international team of astronomers led by Anthony Boccaletti of the Observatoire de Paris has found what may be the first images of a planet being born. Based on observations by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), images of the young star AB Aurigae located 520 light-years away in the constellation of Auriga show a "twist" in the dust and gas cloud surrounding the star that indicate the presence of a planet being formed.


----------



## ekim68

Do aliens exist? Probably. Are they intelligent? Probably not.



> Are we alone?
> 
> That's a big question. _Huge_. It's one of the biggest philosophical concept there is: Is there life elsewhere in the Universe?
> 
> Moreover, is there _intelligent_ life? I'd be thrilled beyond measure if we saw the signature of, say, chlorophyll in the ice of Europa, but finding phytoplankton is a long way from having someone to talk to.


----------



## ekim68

Graphene shows promise as solar sail material in ESA tests



> ESA engineers are looking at using the world's thinnest known material to build lighter, more efficient solar sails. By making sails out of one-atom-thick graphene sheets, the space agency aims to make sails capable of propelling unmanned interstellar missions.
> 
> Solar sails have been considered on and off as a way of propelling spacecraft ever since Konstantin Tsiolkovsky first put forward the idea early in the 20th century. By using sunlight or lasers aimed at gigantic, gossamer-like sails, the pressure of photons hitting the sails could generate thrust, pushing the craft along like a sailing ship.


----------



## ekim68

Space Station receives the last of NASA's science racks after 19 years



> One of the longer chapters of the International Space Station has come to a close. NASA has sent the last of its 11 ExPRESS (Expedite the Processing of Experiments to the Space Station) science racks to the orbiting facility, 19 years after sending the first two. They don't look like much, but they provide the power, storage, climate control and communications for up to 10 small payloads - they're key to many of the experiments that run aboard the ISS and will help the station live up to its potential research capabilities.


----------



## RT

*NASA and SpaceX to launch astronauts into orbit this week on Crew Dragon spacecraft*

Scheduled to be broadcast* live *starting at 2:00 p.m. EDT on Discovery, space.com and likely NASA TV.



> On Wednesday (May 27) at 4:33 p.m. EDT (2033 GMT), veteran NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will launch as co-commanders on SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle, which will lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission, known as Demo-2, will fly the astronauts to the International Space Station. They are scheduled to arrive at the space station on May 28 and could stay in space anywhere from one to four months.
> 
> Demo-2 will be the first crewed launch to orbit from American soil since NASA's shuttle program ended in 2011. In fact, Hurley was on the crew for both that final shuttle mission (STS-135) and the upcoming mission. [\quote]


----------



## ekim68

Same starting time as Tech Guy's chat, eh?


----------



## ekim68

"Cosmic ring of fire" tells tale of ancient intergalactic collision



> Astronomers have discovered a "cosmic ring of fire" - a galaxy shaped like a gigantic donut. This type of galaxy is extremely rare, especially for its age, and it was likely caused by a collision with a smaller galaxy that can still be seen lingering near the scene of the accident.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> Same starting time as Tech Guy's chat, eh?


Yeah, but lift off is scheduled for 4:33 ET if all goes well.


----------



## ekim68

Thanks for the reminder Randy. I'm gonna try to watch it.. :up:


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## ekim68

RT said:


> Yeah, but lift off is scheduled for 4:33 ET if all goes well.


And,  here's where you can follow it through NASA....


----------



## ekim68

Darn....Scrubbed until Saturday..


----------



## ekim68

"Cow" and "Koala" lead explosive new class of space signals



> The universe is full of powerful explosions from various sources, and now astronomers have described a brand new class of space signals. Named fast blue optical transients (FBOTs), these events are very bright and throw off incredible amounts of energy in a short amount of time.


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## ekim68

ESA'S Solar Orbiter set for unexpected rendezvous with Comet ATLAS



> The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter is set to have a chance encounter with the two tails of the disintegrating Comet ATLAS over the coming days. The spacecraft is currently en route to the inner solar system for a close pass with the Sun, and has had four key scientific instruments rushed through commissioning in order to be ready for the unexpected rendezvous.


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*


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## valis

Woohoo for Bob and Doug and SpaceX!!!!!!


----------



## ekim68

Just watched the launch and the camera angles are so cool. :up:


----------



## ekim68

Mysterious radio bursts reveal missing matter in cosmos



> Roughly half of the "normal" matter in the universe-the stuff that makes up stars, planets, and even us-exists as mere wisps of material floating in intergalactic space, according to cosmologists. But astronomers had no good way to confirm that, until now. A new study has used fast radio bursts (FRBs)-powerful millisecondslong pulses of radio waves coming from distant galaxies-to weigh intergalactic matter, and the results match up with predictions.


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> Just watched the launch and the camera angles are so cool.


And then: 


SpaceX Nasa Mission: Astronauts on historic mission enter space station



> US astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken have docked with, and entered, the International Space Station (ISS).
> 
> Their Dragon capsule - supplied and operated by the private SpaceX company - attached to the bow section of the orbiting lab 422km above China.


----------



## ekim68

The Galaxy That Grew Up Too Fast



> A vast wheel of gas in the primordial cosmos is forcing astronomers to rethink how some of the universe's largest structures may have formed.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> And then:
> 
> SpaceX Nasa Mission: Astronauts on historic mission enter space station


One place in our Solar System where hugs are allowed


----------



## ekim68

Video.. 


Space X Falcon 9 Engine LANDING on SHIP 05/30/2020


----------



## ekim68

Neutron stars show their cores



> Dive into the interior of neutron stars and you'll find, guess what, neutrons. But it's not as simple as that. The deeper the dive, the fuzzier and denser the interior gets. There's no shortage of theories as to what might make up the centre of these cosmic objects. One hypothesis is that it's filled with free quarks, not confined inside neutrons. Another is that it's made of hyperons, particles that contain at least one quark of the "strange" type. Another still is that it consists of an exotic state of matter called a kaon condensate.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launches experimental sun visor to reduce satellite visibility 



> SpaceX has swiftly followed last week's historic launch of the Crew Dragon with another momentous liftoff, this time firing a further 60 high-speed internet satellites into orbit as part of its Starlink project. Among those was a prototype fitted out with an experimental sun visor designed to reduce the reflectivity, which shapes as a potential solution to a problem that has plagued astronomers banking on clear views of the night sky.


----------



## ekim68

Got lithium? Thank a long-gone explodey white dwarf



> So where'd it come from? The ground, sure, but where before _that?_ Well, a lot of lithium was made in the Big Bang. No, seriously. About a minute (!) after the Universe formed it was hot and dense enough to maintain nuclear fusion, and that's where we got most of the helium in the Universe, as well as some lithium.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Awards Northrop Grumman Artemis Contract for Gateway Crew Cabin



> NASA has finalized the contract for the initial crew module of the agency's Gateway lunar orbiting outpost.
> 
> Orbital Science Corporation of Dulles, Virginia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Space, has been awarded $187 million to design the habitation and logistics outpost (HALO) for the Gateway, which is part of NASA's Artemis program and will help the agency build a sustainable presence at the Moon. This award funds HALO's design through its preliminary design review, expected by the end of 2020.


----------



## ekim68

From Earth to orbit with Linux and SpaceX



> SpaceX's workhouse Falcon 9 rocket, which flew NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station, is powered by liquid oxygen, rocket-grade kerosene, and Linux.


----------



## ekim68

Hidden pattern discovered in repeating radio signal from space



> New clues have been uncovered in the mystery of fast radio bursts (FRBs) from space. One of these strange signals has been repeating seemingly at random - but with years of observation, an international study has now found a pattern hidden in the noise, which could help reveal what causes them.
> 
> FRBs are hugely energetic pulses of radio that last mere milliseconds. Many of them are one-off events, gone in a flash never to be heard from again, while others repeat at random intervals. Or so we thought.


----------



## ekim68

Video.. 


NASA Explains Moon Return Plans in Stunning Animated Short


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers have found a planet like Earth orbiting a star like the sun



> Three thousand light-years from Earth sits Kepler 160, a sun-like star that's already thought to have three planets in its system. Now researchers think they've found a fourth. Planet KOI-456.04, as it's called, appears similar to Earth in size and orbit, raising new hopes we've found perhaps the best candidate yet for a habitable exoplanet that resembles our home world. The new findings bolster the case for devoting more time to looking for planets orbiting stars like Kepler-160 and our sun, where there's a better chance a planet can receive the kind of illumination that's amenable to life.


----------



## ekim68

Planet's view from above just got clearer



> The remote-sensing firm Planet operates more than one hundred satellites that constantly orbit the earth, collecting imagery of the world's entire landmass each day. Now, to offer more clarity to its customers, it has flown a handful of its satellites 50 km closer to the Earth.
> 
> This literal zoom-in effort will allow the firm to offer imagery with a resolution of 50 cm of earth per pixel, an increase from 80 cm.


----------



## ekim68

The 'Useless' Perspective That Transformed Mathematics



> Representation theory is a way of taking complicated objects and "representing" them with simpler objects. The complicated objects are often collections of mathematical objects - like numbers or symmetries - that stand in a particular structured relationship with each other. These collections are called groups. The simpler objects are arrays of numbers called matrices, the core element of linear algebra. While groups are abstract and often difficult to get a handle on, matrices and linear algebra are elementary.


----------



## ekim68

Video.. 


OVERVIEW



> On the 40th anniversary of the famous 'Blue Marble' photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts' life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside - a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists have made Bose-Einstein condensates in space for the first time



> On board the International Space Station since May 2018 is a mini-fridge-size facility called the Cold Atom Lab (CAL), capable of chilling atoms in a vacuum down to temperatures one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero. It is, for all intents and purposes, one of the coldest spots in the known universe. And according to a new study published in Nature, scientists have just used it to create a rare state of matter for the first time ever in space.


----------



## ekim68

Solar Orbiter fires up its cameras on first close approach to the Sun 



> Back in February, the European Space Agency and NASA launched the Solar Orbiter, a spacecraft developed in collaboration to study the Sun in entirely new ways. Following this successful launch the probe has now made its first close approach to our star, with mission control preparing to test out the onboard instruments by gathering close-up images of the Sun and its surroundings.


*








*


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## ekim68

Mars orbiter spots green glow over Red Planet 



> Turns out the Red Planet is a little more green than we thought. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has detected a tinge of green in the atmosphere, making it the first time this aurora-like glow has been spotted around a planet other than Earth.
> 
> Here at home, green glows in the sky are caused by glowing oxygen, excited by collisions with electrons that stream into the atmosphere from solar wind. While aurora are the most dramatic examples, the sky glows almost constantly. At night it can appear green as molecules previously ripped apart by solar winds begin to recombine.


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## ekim68

SpaceX plans seaborne spaceports for Mars missions and hypersonic flights



> Don't think SpaceX is toning down its spaceflight ambitions in light of the pandemic - if anything, the company is ramping things up. Elon Musk has confirmed a _SpaceXFleet_ scoop (via _TechCrunch_) that SpaceX is hiring staff to help build "floating, superheavy-class spaceports" for Mars and Moon missions, not to mention hypersonic flights for Earth. The private spaceflight outfit had teased the possibility of seaborne ports in concept renders before, but the plans are only really solidifying now.


----------



## ekim68

Out on a tangent: Almost two decades into its 5-year mission, INTEGRAL still delivers the gamma ray goods



> The satellite itself stands five metres in height and weighs four tonnes. Its service module, containing power generation and conditioning, control and communications, is a rebuild of the one used by XMM-Newton, which goes some way to explaining INTEGRAL's extraordinary longevity. Launched with an expectation that the satellite would have an initial two-year mission, with an extension to five years, INTEGRAL will be celebrating the 18th anniversary of its launch this year and plans are afoot to keep it ticking over into 2029.


----------



## ekim68

A million miles: Early detection system for catastrophic solar storms



> A commercial space exploration company has been tapped to conduct a study into the possibility of providing early detection for solar events that can disrupt power grids and communications on earth. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) awarded the study to Seattle-based Xplore Inc.
> 
> Solar storms can wreak havoc on earth. In 2003, a storm disrupted satellite communications, impacted air travel, and caused a significant blackout in Sweden. One study predicts that 20 to 40 million people in the U.S. could be affected during extreme solar events, with damages upward of $2.6 trillion.


----------



## ekim68

Nano-motor of just 16 atoms runs at the boundary of quantum physics 



> Researchers at Empa and EPFL have created one of the smallest motors ever made. It's composed of just 16 atoms, and at that tiny size it seems to function right on the boundary between classical physics and the spooky quantum realm.
> 
> Like its macroscopic counterparts, this mini motor is made up of a moving part (the rotor) and a fixed part (the stator). The stator in this case is a cluster of six palladium atoms and six gallium atoms arranged in a rough triangular shape. Meanwhile, the rotor is a four-atom acetylene molecule, which rotates on the surface of the stator. The whole machine measures less than a nanometer wide.


----------



## ekim68

Breathtaking new map of the X-ray Universe



> A German-Russian space telescope has just acquired a breakthrough map of the sky that traces the heavens in X-rays.
> 
> The image records a lot of the violent action in the cosmos - instances where matter is being accelerated, heated and shredded.


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons becomes first spacecraft to demonstrate stellar parallax 



> NASA's New Horizons deep-space probe has, for the first time, returned images to Earth that show stellar parallax, or how the positions of stars shift when seen from two different places. This phenomenon could one day be used for interstellar navigation.
> 
> Parallax is a very simple thing to demonstrate. Hold up a finger in front of your eyes at arm's length, close one eye, and then swap to the other. You'll notice that this causes your finger to seem to shift because your eyes are looking from two different locations.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown



> A team of astronomers, including researchers at MIT, has picked up on a curious, repeating rhythm of fast radio bursts emanating from an unknown source outside our galaxy, 500 million light years away.


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## ekim68

A star is born: Astronomers spot youngest known magnetar



> Astronomers at NASA and ESA have discovered the youngest pulsar known. This celestial child is a mere 240 years old, and its birth would have been visible on Earth at the time as a supernova.
> 
> In astronomy, most objects have had millions or billions of birthdays, so it's pretty rare to spot something out there that's younger than American independence. But this little star, known as Swift J1818.0−1607, is the youngest of its type, nudging out Cassiopeia A by about 60-odd years.


----------



## ekim68

CERN Council endorses building larger supercollider



> The CERN Council has unanimously endorsed the idea of building a newer, larger circular supercollider, dubbed the Future Circular Collider (FCC). The group made the announcement on June 19. The move is the first step toward building a 100 TeV 100-kilometer circumference collider around Geneva.


----------



## ekim68

Gamma ray patterns hint at galaxies with two supermassive black holes



> Astronomers investigating gamma ray emissions have discovered that certain active galaxies seem to be giving off bursts in regular patterns. This, the team says, could be an indication of galaxies harboring two supermassive black holes in their centers.


----------



## ekim68

NASA funds SETI study to scan exoplanets for alien "technosignatures" 



> Given just how incomprehensibly, unfathomably big the universe is, chances are tiny that Earth is the only planet with life on it. But how would we find others? A new NASA grant has been awarded to aid the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) by hunting for signs of advanced alien civilizations.


----------



## ekim68

Cool stuff.. 


14 Mind-Blowing Places in Our Solar System


----------



## ekim68

Hubble spies cosmic "Bat Shadow" flapping its wings



> A few years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope captured a striking sight in the Serpens Nebula - a huge shadow in the shape of a bat. Now, follow-up observations have shown that it appears to be "flapping its wings," which may be the influence of a nearby planet. If so, it'll be one of the weirdest ways any planet will have been found.


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*


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## ekim68

Energia and Space Adventures plan first tourist space walk 



> RSC Energia and Space Adventures, Inc plan to fly two tourists to the Russian section of the International Space Station in 2023, with one of them embarking on a space walk with a cosmonaut during the short visit.
> 
> The announcement comes less than a month after SpaceX's Crew Dragon made history as the first privately built spacecraft to carry astronaut's to the International Space Station (ISS), and follows hot on the heels of Virgin Galactic signing a deal with NASA for private passenger trips to the orbiting laboratory.


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## ekim68

THE 25 MOST INSPIRING MILKY WAY PICTURES


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## Brigham

ekim68 said:


> Nano-motor of just 16 atoms runs at the boundary of quantum physics


I find this fascinating. How do you move the atoms into the configuration you want?


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## ekim68

This from the article..



> Like its macroscopic counterparts, this mini motor is made up of a moving part (the rotor) and a fixed part (the stator). The stator in this case is a cluster of six palladium atoms and six gallium atoms arranged in a rough triangular shape. Meanwhile, the rotor is a four-atom acetylene molecule, which rotates on the surface of the stator. The whole machine measures less than a nanometer wide.


----------



## ekim68

One of the most massive stars in local universe may have disappeared 



> A star that shined with 2.5 million times the light of our Sun has disappeared from the night sky. It is possible that the star collapsed into a black hole without first triggering a supernova - a rare event, even in the context of dying stars.


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## ekim68

Astronomers witness black hole collision give off unexpected light 



> Astronomers have observed a bright flash of light from space, which appears to have come from a collision between two black holes. And that's surprising, considering that black holes are famously dark objects.


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## ekim68

Hubble and ALMA mosaic captures stellar fireworks of star formation 



> Astronomers are celebrating the 4th of July weekend in their own trademark fashion - by releasing a new image of some cosmic fireworks. The spectacular shot is made up of a mosaic of radio and infrared images, showing a cluster of young stars exploding into life.


----------



## ekim68

Core of a gas planet seen for the first time



> Astronomers have found a previously unseen type of object circling a distant star.
> 
> It could be the core of a gas world like Jupiter, offering an unprecedented glimpse inside one of these giant planets.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Spots Feathered Spiral


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## ekim68

Fastest-growing black hole in the universe eats the equivalent of one sun per day



> Astronomers have come across a monstrously large black hole with a gargantuan appetite. Each passing day, the insatiable void known as J2157 consumes gas and dust equivalent in mass to the sun, making it the fastest-growing black hole in the universe.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX nails second Falcon nosecone recovery in one month



> SpaceX has successfully recovered two pairs of Falcon 9 payload fairings (nosecones) - one twice-flown - in one month after twin ships GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief returned to port on July 2nd.


----------



## ekim68

After a second-stage failure, Rocket Lab loses seven satellites



> On Sunday morning, local time in New Zealand, Rocket Lab launched its 13th mission. The booster's first stage performed normally, but just as the second stage neared an altitude of 200km, something went wrong and the vehicle was lost.


----------



## ekim68

7 Things to Know About the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission



> In less than a month, NASA expects to launch the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Loaded with scientific instruments, advanced computational capabilities for landing, and other new systems, the Perseverance rover is the largest, heaviest, most sophisticated vehicle NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet.


----------



## ekim68

White dwarfs reveal new insights into the origin of carbon in the universe



> A new analysis of white dwarf stars supports their role as a key source of carbon in galaxies. Every carbon atom in the universe was created by stars, but astrophysicists still debate which types of stars are the primary source of the carbon in our galaxy. Some studies favor low-mass stars that blew off their envelopes in stellar winds and became white dwarfs, while others favor massive stars that eventually exploded as supernovae.


----------



## ekim68

The world's nonsense keeping you awake in middle of the night? Good news. Go outside and see this two-tail comet



> If you're in the northern hemisphere, and gazing up at the right moment - around 4am local time, July 10 to 15, looking northeast; and potentially an hour after sunset, July 14 to 23, looking northwest - you should catch a glimpse of the comet, C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. And local time really does mean the time wherever you are.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists propose plan to determine if Planet Nine is a primordial black hole



> Scientists at Harvard University and the Black Hole Initiative (BHI) have developed a new method to find black holes in the outer solar system, and along with it, determine once-and-for-all the true nature of the hypothesized Planet Nine. The paper, accepted to _The Astrophysical Journal Letters_, highlights the ability of the future Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) mission to observe accretion flares, the presence of which could prove or rule out Planet Nine as a black hole.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Completes Comprehensive Systems Test



> Now that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has been assembled into its final form, testing teams seized the unique opportunity to perform a critical software and electrical analysis on the entire observatory as a single, fully connected vehicle.
> 
> Known as a Comprehensive Systems Test or CST, this was the first full systems evaluation that has ever been run on the assembled observatory, and one of the final first-time activities the team will perform. Similar performance evaluations have been completed in Webb's history, using simulations and surrogates to infer data about pieces of the spacecraft that had not yet been assembled. Now that Webb is fully built, simulations and simulators are no longer needed, and engineers can confidently assess both its software and electronic performance.


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## ekim68

The comet can be seen now and for a few days... 


How to See Comet NEOWISE



> Observers in the Northern Hemisphere are hoping to catch a glimpse of Comet NEOWISE as it zips through the inner solar system before it speeds away into the depths of space. Discovered on March 27, 2020 by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission, Comet NEOWISE is putting on a dazzling display for skywatchers before it disappears, not to be seen again for another 6,800 years.


----------



## ekim68

6 Things to Know About NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter



> When NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida later this summer, an innovative experiment will ride along: the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Ingenuity may weigh only about 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms), but it has some outsize ambitions.


----------



## ekim68

New research of oldest light confirms age of the universe



> Now new research published in a series of papers by an international team of astrophysicists, including Neelima Sehgal, PhD, from Stony Brook University, suggest the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. By using observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile, their findings match the measurements of the Planck satellite data of the same ancient light.


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## ekim68

Puzzled astronomers watch a black hole vanish and reappear in a year



> Despite the name, black holes often shine very bright in the sky. That's due to a hot, glowing ring of dust and gas that surrounds them, called the corona. Now, astronomers have been puzzled to witness a black hole's corona suddenly vanish - and as if that wasn't weird enough, it reappeared a few months later.


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## ekim68

Mars Mission From United Arab Emirates Embarks on 7-Month Journey



> You'll be hearing a lot about Mars in the weeks to come this summer. Three missions are launching toward the red planet, taking advantage of the way Earth and its neighbor get closer every 26 months or so, allowing a relatively short trip between the two worlds. If they launch successfully, the spacecrafts will arrive at Mars early next year.


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## ekim68

SpaceX uses ships to catch both Falcon 9 fairings for the first time



> SpaceX approaches this by having vessels parked in the ocean, which are fitted with huge nets. After coming up empty-handed on a number of attempts, the team managed to retrieve one of the two nosecone halves following a landmark launch of the Falcon Heavy last year. It has now managed to catch the pair, as CEO Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter.


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## ekim68

6 Technologies NASA is Advancing to Send Humans to Mars



> Mars is an obvious source of inspiration for science fiction stories. It is familiar and well-studied, yet different and far enough away to compel otherworldly adventures. NASA has its sights on the Red Planet for many of the same reasons.
> 
> Robots, including the Perseverance rover launching soon to Mars, teach us about what it's like on the surface. That intel helps inform future human missions to the Red Planet. We'll also need to outfit spacecraft and astronauts with technologies to get them there, explore the surface, and safely return them home. The roundtrip mission, including time in transit - from and back to Earth - and on the Martian surface, will take about two years.


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## ekim68

First-ever direct image of two giant planets orbiting Sun-like star 



> Although astronomers have detected more than 4,000 planets outside our solar system, most of them appear as points of data or dips in light charts. Now, astronomers have captured a very rare sight, with an image of two exoplanets orbiting a star very much like our own.
> 
> The multi-planetary system orbits a star called TYC 8998-760-1, which is located about 300 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Musca, or The Fly. The two planets are gas giants that are much more massive than our local ones, with one measuring as much as 14 Jupiters and the other six.


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## ekim68

Strange star somehow survives supernova, shoots off across galaxy 



> A supernova may seem like a pretty final fate, but now astronomers have discovered a star that apparently survived this explosive process. It wasn't without consequence, however - the star was kicked out of a tight binary orbit and flung across the galaxy.


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## ekim68

Giant waves of sand are moving on Mars



> Researchers have spotted large waves of martian sand migrating for the first time. The discovery dispels the long-held belief that these "megaripples" haven't moved since they formed hundreds of thousands of years ago. They're also evidence of stronger-than-expected winds on the Red Planet.


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## 2twenty2

AI Upscales Apollo Lunar Footage to 60 FPS
https://www.universetoday.com/146960/ai-upscales-apollo-lunar-footage-to-60-fps/

Lunar Rover (60fps)





Apollo Landing (60fps)





First Step (24fps)


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## ekim68

Spectacular stars in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year shortlist 



> The Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year is one of the world's top astrophotography competitions, and the 2020 shortlist offers a sublime selection of this year's best entries, from some mind-bending close-ups of the sun's surface to a series of magnificent Milky Way skyscapes.


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## ekim68

Mysterious meteorites came from an asteroid with a liquid metal core



> Most meteorites that fall to Earth belong to one of two broad groups - there are rocky ones, and there are metallic ones that were once molten iron. But one puzzling group of meteorites appears to belong to both camps at once, and now scientists have determined that the parent body had a rocky shell and a liquid metal core, which likely generated a strong magnetic field.


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## ekim68

It takes off in two days.. 

Virtual guide to Lauch



> Because of the coronavirus pandemic and in the interest of health and safety, NASA can't invite you to Florida to watch the launch personally. However, there are many ways you can participate virtually:


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## ekim68

Virgin Galactic unveils stylish design for SpaceshipTwo cabin


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## ekim68

It's on its way.... 


NASA launches Mars rover Perseverance to seek signs of ancient life



> Perseverance and its fly-along helicopter buddy will land in February 2021.


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## ekim68

Fast-radio-burst-like signal traced to dead star in our galaxy



> We may be a step closer to understanding the mystery of fast radio bursts (FRBs), as astronomers have now detected the first such signal from within our own galaxy. The radio burst in this case was traced to a highly magnetic dead star called a magnetar, which could be key to unlocking the origin of these strange space signals.


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## ekim68

Here's a little Physics/Math thing Tim... 

 This electromagnetic catapult flings airplanes into the sky (and giant sleds into the water). Here's how to calculate the projectile motion involved.


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## ekim68

How old is the universe? New studies disagree by a billion years



> The universe likes to play coy about its age, but astronomers believe they have a pretty good idea of the range. Now, a series of new studies has investigated the question using different methods - and they've come up with two different answers, separated by more than a billion years.
> 
> Currently, the most widely accepted age for the universe is around 13.8 billion years, but determining the age of … well, everything, is no easy feat. There are several key calculations that need to be done, and checked against each other. The problem is, these can be figured out in different ways, resulting in different answers.


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## ekim68

ALMA finds possible sign of neutron star in supernova 1987A  *

*


> Two teams of astronomers have made a compelling case in the 33-year-old mystery surrounding Supernova 1987A. Based on observations of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and a theoretical follow-up study, the scientists provide new insight for the argument that a neutron star is hiding deep inside the remains of the exploded star. This would be the youngest neutron star known to date.


----------



## ekim68

Tough Decisions Loom as Voyager Just Keeps Going and Going…



> The Voyager spacecraft are still functioning 42 years after launch, and NASA recently announced a plan to keep these intrepid space travelers functioning as they continue their journeys beyond the Solar System. However, as power on each of the two craft continues to dwindle, difficult decisions need to be made soon regarding the future of the most-traveled spacecraft ever produced by humans.


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## ekim68

Touch down is in about an hour... 


Astronauts dodge hurricane as they head for homecoming in SpaceX Dragon capsule



> SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule pulled away from the International Space Station today to begin the homeward flight for NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, even as Hurricane Isaias headed for Florida's Atlantic coast.
> 
> Fortunately, SpaceX's Dragon capsule is heading for waters off Florida's _other_ coast.


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## ekim68

NASA Astronauts Safely Splash Down after First Commercial Crew Flight to Space Station 



> Two NASA astronauts splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday for the first time in a commercially built and operated American crew spacecraft, returning from the International Space Station to complete a test flight that marks a new era in human spaceflight.


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## ekim68

The nearby supernova no one saw



> Sometime between early 1995 and 1996, a supernova went off in a very nearby galaxy. The weird thing is, nobody noticed.
> 
> That's… bizarre. How do you miss _an entire exploding star?_


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## ekim68

Stadium-sized balloon to carry NASA telescope to the edge of space



> Balloons may seem like an outdated mode of transportation, but for high-flying scientific instruments they're making a comeback. NASA has unveiled ASTHROS, a new infrared telescope that will be carried to the edge of space by a balloon the size of a football stadium.
> 
> ASTHROS, short for Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths, will view the cosmos in far-infrared light. These wavelengths are blocked by Earth's atmosphere, so infrared observatories are usually space-based, such as Spitzer, Herschel, and the Infrared Space Observatory.


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## ekim68

Scientists find way to track space junk in daylight



> Scientists said Tuesday they had discovered a way to detect space debris even in daylight hours, potentially helping satellites to avoid the ever-growing cloud of junk orbiting the planet.





> The estimated 500,000 objects circling the globe range in size from a single screw to an entire rocket fuel tank.


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## ekim68

Watch SpaceX's shimmering Starship prototype fly to 500 feet



> While its feats flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station rightly generate a lot of the headlines, the SpaceX team has been busily working on the vehicle that could take humans well past this point in low-Earth orbit. Development of this Starship spacecraft continues at the company's Boca Chica site in Texas, where the team just performed a 150-meter (500-ft) hop test of a full-size prototype.


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## ekim68

And here's the video


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## ekim68

A good read.. :up:


Letter To The World After The Apollo Astronauts Died On The Moon



> The Letter That Was Never Read


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## ekim68

NASA's OSIRIS-REx is One Rehearsal Away from Touching Asteroid Bennu



> NASA's first asteroid sampling spacecraft is making final preparations to grab a sample from asteroid Bennu's surface. Next week, the OSIRIS-REx mission will conduct a second rehearsal of its touchdown sequence, practicing the sample collection activities one last time before touching down on Bennu this fall.


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## ekim68

Seasonal ultraviolet light pulses in Martian skies three times a night 



> A NASA spacecraft has observed a pulsing glow coming from Mars. Huge spots of ultraviolet light were seen in the night sky, pulsing with uncanny regularity - exactly three times every night. The find highlights (literally) the atmospheric processes and circulation patterns of the Red Planet.





> But it's the specificity of the light that's most intriguing. MAVEN data revealed that the UV light only shows up during the Martian spring and fall seasons, and it pulses exactly three times each night. The show begins just after sunset and it's all over by midnight.


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## valis

ekim68 said:


> Here's a little Physics/Math thing Tim...
> 
> This electromagnetic catapult flings airplanes into the sky (and giant sleds into the water). Here's how to calculate the projectile motion involved.


forwarded this to Le Twit who is VERY heavy into physics....essentially isnt this a rail gun?


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## ekim68

Yep, basically a rail gun the length of a flight deck. During my years in the Navy I flew off/on several carriers while on EW meetings. We flew on E-2 mail planes but while we were on deck a bunch of F-4s took off and talk about power...


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## valis

whoa....never knew you did that...my sisters hubby did 26 years in an F16 and thinks anyone who voluntarily lands on a carrier is certifiably bonkers....I am impressed Mike...


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## ekim68

To guild the lily, I met Hank Ketcham on one of my trips and he was getting material for his Half Hitch cartoon..


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## ekim68

NASA sounding rocket finds helium structures in sun's atmosphere 



> Previously, when measuring ratios of helium to hydrogen in the solar wind as it reaches Earth, observations have found much lower ratios than expected. Scientists suspected the missing helium might have been left behind in the Sun's outermost atmospheric layer - the corona - or perhaps in a deeper layer. Discovering how this happens is key to understanding how the solar wind is accelerated.


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## ekim68

How to View the Perseid Meteor Shower This Week



> The annual Perseid Meteor Shower is peaking this week, so now is the time to plan your escape to a dark spot under open sky.
> 
> The highly-anticipated Perseids are visible when the Earth passes through debris left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle. The 2020 shower began on July 14 and will last until August 24, but the ideal viewing dates are August 11-13 with a peak on August 12 (according to NASA).


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## ekim68

First Image of a Young Sun and Two Giant Planets



> The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has captured an image of a young, Sun-like star and its two companions. Direct images of exoplanets are nothing new, but this is the first time researchers have directly seen multiple planets orbiting a star like our own.


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## ekim68

Laser Beams Reflected Between Earth and Moon Boost Science



> Dozens of times over the last decade NASA scientists have launched laser beams at a reflector the size of a paperback novel about 240,000 miles (385,000 kilometers) away from Earth. They announced today, in collaboration with their French colleagues, that they received signal back for the first time, an encouraging result that could enhance laser experiments used to study the physics of the universe.


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## ekim68

NASA hails primary mission of planet-hunting TESS a "roaring success" 



> Launched in 2018 as the successor to the Kepler Space Telescope, NASA had high hopes for its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) when it comes to finding other worlds that resemble our own. The space telescope has now wrapped up the primary phase of its mission, completing an extensive survey of the starry sky that revealed 66 new exoplanets and thousands more candidates.
> 
> TESS uses a set of four low-power and low-noise digital cameras to study stars up to 30,000 light years away, and up to 100 times brighter than those studied by Kepler.


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## ekim68

Perovskite and organic solar cells tested in space for first time



> Perovskite and organic solar cells have proven promising alternatives to the widespread silicon-based devices, and now they've been tested in space for the first time. Not only did these solar cells perform well, but they're much thinner and lighter than those currently used and were found to absorb even diffuse light reflected back from Earth.
> 
> Silicon has been the solar cell material of choice for decades, and it's served us well so far. But it may soon be usurped by perovskite, which has advanced so quickly in the last decade or so that its efficiency is already approaching that of silicon.


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## ekim68

Hubble Finds that Betelgeuse's Mysterious Dimming Is Due to a Traumatic Outburst



> The aging, bright-red supergiant star Betelgeuse has captivated sky watchers since antiquity. The ancient astronomer Ptolemy was one of the first to note the monster star's red color. It is one of the brightest stars in the night sky and appears even more luminous because it is so close to Earth, only 725 light-years away.


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## ekim68

5 Beautiful Pallasite Meteorites Discovered on Earth



> Discovering pallasite meteorites on Earth can be an Universal Easter egg hunt. They've already been found in Russia, China, the U.S., Chile and Argentina. They've been over 50,000 meteorites that have landed on Earth since one of the first meteorites found in 1400 (Elboge) in the Kingdom of Bohemia.


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## ekim68

Astronomers spy a Milky Way-like galaxy in very early universe



> Astronomers imagine the early universe as a wild and lawless place, with chaotic fledgling galaxies full of swirling gases and frantic star formation. So an image released today comes as a surprise: a young galaxy, spied when the universe was just 10% of its current age, that looks remarkably like our calm and well-ordered Milky Way.


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## ekim68

Amazon Satellites Add to Astronomers' Worries About the Night Sky



> The F.C.C. approved the company's 3,236-satellite constellation, which aims to provide high-speed internet service around the world.


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## ekim68

How Do You Solve a Moon Mystery? Fire a Laser at It



> The moon is drifting away. Every year, it gets about an inch and a half farther from us. Hundreds of millions of years from now, our companion in the sky will be distant enough that there will be no more total solar eclipses.
> 
> For decades, scientists have measured the moon's retreat by firing a laser at light-reflecting panels, known as retroreflectors, that were left on the lunar surface, and then timing the light's round trip.


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## ekim68

Citizen Scientists Discover Dozens of New Cosmic Neighbors in NASA Data 



> We've never met some of the Sun's closest neighbors until now. In a new study, astronomers report the discovery of 95 objects known as brown dwarfs, many within a few dozen light-years of the Sun. They're well outside the solar system, so don't experience heat from the Sun, but still inhabit a region astronomers consider our cosmic neighborhood. This collection represents some of the coldest known examples of these objects, which are between the sizes of planets and stars.


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## ekim68

When Voyager 2 Calls Home, Earth Soon Won't Be Able to Answer



> NASA will spend 11 months upgrading the only piece of its Deep Space Network that can send commands to the probe, which has crossed into interstellar space.


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## ekim68

Sierra Nevada's slick new space plane ditches capsules for the shuttle route 



> Soaring into the wild blue yonder and beyond, the planet's only non-capsule, private orbital spacecraft, Dream Chaser, is slated to make its first flight sometime next year shuttling supplies and cargo to the International Space Station for NASA.
> 
> This stylish unmanned space plane was recently given its official name, Tenacity, and a pair of exotic composite material wings to complete its sleek design.


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## ekim68

SpaceX sends up the same recycled rocket for a record sixth time 



> SpaceX's rocket landings have now become so routine that it's easy to forget such a thing had never been accomplished five years ago. Its engineers' recycling methods were in full swing again today, with the company sending up and welcoming back the same refurbished Falcon 9 rocket for a record sixth time.


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## ekim68

Deep Learning Will Help Future Mars Rovers Go Farther, Faster, and Do More Science



> NASA's Mars rovers have been one of the great scientific and space successes of the past two decades.
> 
> Four generations of rovers have traversed the red planet gathering scientific data, sending back evocative photographs, and surviving incredibly harsh conditions - all using on-board computers less powerful than an iPhone 1. The latest rover, Perseverance, was launched on July 30, 2020, and engineers are already dreaming of a future generation of rovers.


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## ekim68

Repeating radio signal from space fires back up on predicted schedule



> Back in June, astronomers discovered a hidden pattern within seemingly-random radio signals from space. Based on years of data, it was predicted that the next bursts of activity should flare up around August - and now those signals have come through, right on schedule. The discovery could help us unravel the mystery of these Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).
> 
> FRBs are pulses of radio signals that throw off incredible amounts of energy within milliseconds, often as one-off events. But a select few have been found to repeat at random - or at least, we thought it was random.


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## ekim68

Scientists slow and steer light with resonant nanoantennas



> Light is notoriously fast. Its speed is crucial for rapid information exchange, but as light zips through materials, its chances of interacting and exciting atoms and molecules can become very small. If scientists can put the brakes on light particles, or photons, it would open the door to a host of new technology applications.
> 
> Now, in a paper published on Aug. 17, in _Nature Nanotechnology_, Stanford scientists demonstrate a new approach to slow light significantly, much like an echo chamber holds onto sound, and to direct it at will.


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## ekim68

5 Gorgeous and Famous Comets Spotted on Earth in the Last 34 Years



> Whether we've seen the beauty of a comet in motion through a telescope or shooting in the night skies, it's definitely a magnificent visual worth witnessing. It's tail of gas and dust discharge that shines brilliantly as it is moved by solar winds and sunlight pressure from the sun is worth a photo for all the world to see.


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## ekim68

Andromeda's "halo" already bumping into Milky Way's ahead of collision 



> There's more to galaxies than meets the eye, and now astronomers have mapped out a huge invisible region of the galaxy next door. Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope have detailed the size and structure of the gas halo of Andromeda - and found that it's already bumping up against that of the Milky Way, in advance of a cosmic collision.
> 
> Galaxies are usually seen as flat disks of stars, but that's not the full story. Surrounding most galaxies is a huge spherical envelope of gas and plasma that extends for thousands or even millions of light-years.


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## ekim68

ISS experiment shows bacteria can survive in space for years, could seed planets 



> A new study has now put that to the test. Researchers at Tokyo University placed dry pellets of a tough bacteria called _Deinococcus radiodurans _in panels on the outside of the ISS, where they were exposed to the freezing cold, high radiation vacuum of space. These pellets contained "aggregates" - large colonies of the bacteria of different thicknesses, with no protective shielding.
> 
> These aggregates were analyzed after one, two and three years of exposure. By the end, all pellets thicker than 0.5 mm showed at least partial survival, faring better the thicker they were. On closer inspection, the researchers found that the colonies survived because the individual bacteria on the outside died of exposure, forming a protective shell for the rest.


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## ekim68

Japan's manned lunar rover gets an official nickname



> The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Toyota Motor Corporation have released the official nickname for their manned pressurized, long-range lunar rover that is powered by fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) technology. It's been dubbed the Lunar Cruiser.


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## ekim68

Rocket Lab makes successful return to the launchpad after July failure 



> For a relatively young space startup, Rocket Lab has made some impressive strides since first reaching orbit in January of 2018, delivering satellites to orbit for NASA, DARPA, the US Air Force and a number of others. A booster failure in early July threatened to derail this momentum, but the company now appears to have taken the setback in its stride with a successful return to the launchpad today.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX changes the game with 100th rocket launch



> Ending exactly five months of delays, SpaceX has completed the first polar launch from Florida in more than half a century, potentially changing the game for the US launch industry.
> 
> Coincidentally SpaceX's 100th launch ever, the SAOCOM 1B mission's success could significantly redefine what current and future US launch providers are able to achieve with a single launch pad.


----------



## ekim68

Europe's largest Solar Telescope GREGOR unveils magnetic details of the Sun 



> The Sun is our star and has a profound influence on our planet, life, and civilization. By studying the magnetism on the Sun, we can understand its influence on Earth and minimize damage of satellites and technological infrastructure. The GREGOR telescope allows scientists to resolve details as small as 50 km on the Sun, which is a tiny fraction of the solar diameter of 1.4 million km. This is as if one saw a needle on a soccer field perfectly sharp from a distance of one kilometer.


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## ekim68

Gravitational waves signal most massive black hole collision ever recorded 



> A century-long treasure hunt instigated by Einstein finally came to an end in 2015, when LIGO detected gravitational waves for the very first time. These ripples in the very fabric of space and time are created by some of the most powerful cataclysms in the cosmos, usually when black holes or neutron stars collide. In the five years since, LIGO and other facilities like Virgo have detected dozens of gravitational wave signals. And now, the Collaboration has picked up a signal from a gigantic collision that created a new black hole more than twice the mass of any other ever detected through gravitational waves.


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## ekim68

Rocket Lab launches its two-in-one satellite for deep space missions



> Rocket Lab made a successful return to service by launching a customer's satellite into orbit earlier this week, but that deployment wasn't the only cause for celebration. The team also managed to insert its own house-built Photon satellite into orbit as part of the same flight, it revealed today, marking the first outing for a spacecraft it hopes to one day send to the Moon, and possibly beyond.
> 
> New Zealand's Rocket Lab has been delivering satellites to orbit at a steady rate over the past couple of years, carrying out missions for NASA, DARPA and the US Air Force.


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## ekim68

NASA's Chandra Opens Treasure Trove of Cosmic Delights



> This compilation gives examples of images from different missions and telescopes being combined to better understand the science of the universe. Each of these images contains data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as other telescopes. Various types of objects are shown (galaxies, supernova remnants, stars, planetary nebulas), but together they demonstrate the possibilities when data from across the electromagnetic spectrum are assembled.


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## ekim68

China launches experimental spaceplane



> China launched a new experimental reusable space vehicle on Thursday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center using a Long March-2F/T - Chang Zheng-2F/T - launch vehicle. Launch from the LC43/91 launch complex, under a veil of secrecy with no official launch photos or even a launch time disclosed.


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## ekim68

SpaceX launches and lands another Starship prototype, the second flight test in under a month



> The prototypes are built of stainless steel and represent the first versions of the Starship rocket that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled last year. The company is developing Starship with the goal of launching cargo and as many as a 100 people at a time on missions to the Moon and Mars.


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## ekim68

Rarest planet in the universe may be lurking in Orion's nose



> Known as GW Orionis (or GW Ori) and located about 1,300 light-years from Earth, the system is a rare example of a triple-star solar system, with two suns orbiting one another at the center, and a third star swirling around its siblings from several hundred million miles away. Scientists previously identified the system by its three bright rings of planet-forming dust, nested inside one another like a massive orange bullseye in the sky.
> 
> Now, a closer analysis reveals that the rings may hold more than just dust;


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## ekim68

The biggest black hole merger ever detected rocked the Universe and left behind a mystery



> This was no ordinary event. These were hefty black holes, dozens of times the mass of ordinary stars. When they merged to form an even more massive black hole, they let out a positively colossal blast of energy in the form of gravitational waves that literally shook the fabric of spacetime. The waves of energy expanded outward, dissipating with distance.
> 
> Then, on 21 May 2019, those waves passed through our planet. Did you feel it? Probably not; the expansion and contraction of space would've stretched you less than a millionth of the diameter of a proton.


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## ekim68

Molecule to store solar energy developed



> Researchers have developed a molecule that absorbs energy from sunlight and stores it in chemical bonds. A possible long-term use of the molecule is to capture solar energy efficiently and store it for later consumption.


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## ekim68

World's largest camera sensor snaps first ever 3,200-megapixel photos 



> A next-generation imaging instrument built to probe the universe's biggest mysteries has been put through a practice run and pieced together the largest photos ever taken as a result. The focal plane for what will be the world's largest digital camera was used to snap the first ever 3,200-megapixel images, with the team now preparing to install this sensor array into an ultra-sensitive telescope capable of spotting objects 100 million times dimmer than what can be seen with the naked eye.


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## ekim68

Engineered "Mighty Mice" sent to space retain their mass in low gravity 



> The short- and long-term impacts of the space environment on the human body is still a great unknown, and one that a number of research groups are trying to get to the bottom of. The results of an interesting experiment in which muscled-up mice were sent into space has shed some new light on the matter, revealing that these brawny rodents could retain their muscle mass in low-gravity when engineered to lack a certain protein.
> 
> While there is a lot we don't know about human physiology and space, we do know that weightlessness can cause bones to lose calcium and muscles to lose mass as they atrophy. We've seen a few inventive approaches to counteract this process and ensure the health of astronauts, including skin-tight body suits and human centrifuges, but the authors of the new study have instead sought answers by diving into genetics.


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## ekim68

Astronomers detect strongest known magnetic field in the universe



> Astronomers have detected the strongest magnetic field ever observed in the universe. Studying powerful X-ray signals coming from a neutron star, the team calculated that its magnetic field is tens of millions of times stronger than any ever created in a lab here on Earth.
> 
> Designated GRO J1008-57, this neutron star belongs to a very specific subtype - an accreting X-ray pulsar. As a pulsar, it emits powerful beams of electromagnetic radiation that periodically sweep over the Earth like a lighthouse beam. The "accreting X-ray" description comes from the fact that material regularly falls onto its surface, causing periodic energetic X-ray outbursts that can be detected by telescopes.


----------



## ekim68

How gravitational tides help explain the puzzle of Jupiter's hot moons



> A new study from the University of Arizona indicates that Jupiter's four largest moons are as warm as they are thanks to tidal forces caused by the moons' gravitational fields tugging on one another. This tidal heating may help to explain how the Jovian moon system evolved.
> 
> Ever since NASA's Pioneer 10 flew by Jupiter in 1973, the giant planet has provided a growing list of surprises. One of the more perplexing is that the Galilean Moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, the largest four of Jupiter's 80 moons, are not the frozen balls of rock and ice that one would expect 484 million mi (778 million km) from the Sun. Instead, three of the moons are warm enough to have subsurface global oceans and the fourth's interior is so hot it is riddled with active volcanoes.


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## ekim68

Venus is hell, but science is seriously looking for life in its skies



> Researchers float a hypothesis about how microbial life could actually survive in the clouds above the toxic and overheated planet.


----------



## ekim68

Solar Cycle 25 Is Here. NASA, NOAA Scientists Explain What That Means



> Solar Cycle 25 has begun. During a media event on Tuesday, experts from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) discussed their analysis and predictions about the new solar cycle - and how the coming upswing in space weather will impact our lives and technology on Earth, as well as astronauts in space.


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## ekim68

ESA moves forward with Hera planetary defense mission



> ESA has awarded €129.4 million of funding to the planetary defense mission Hera, which will observe the results of humanity's first attempt to intentionally alter the orbit of a solar system asteroid. The mission could be the fist step along the road to creating a defense strategy to guard the Earth against future asteroid impacts.


----------



## ekim68

Boundless beauty in the 2020 Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards 

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*


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## ekim68

Hubble's stunning new snaps of Jupiter reveal fresh storms brewing 



> It's human nature to be transfixed by clouds and all the strange shapes they swirl into, but we don't have to be limited to Earthly skies. Jupiter offers some of the best cloud-watching in the solar system, and new Hubble images remind us why, revealing fresh storms brewing and some intriguing changes to old ones.
> 
> The new images were snapped on August 25, showing the giant planet in all its gassy glory. Amongst the streaks of colorful cloud bands are familiar features like the Great Red Spot, a storm bigger than the Earth that's been raging for centuries.


----------



## RT

And on the left is a Jupiter moon, Io perhaps?


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## ekim68

NASA astronauts have a new task: make videos of Estée Lauder products



> The International Space Station has served as the world's most unique laboratory for two decades, hosting hundreds of scientific experiments, crews of astronauts and even the occasional slime.
> 
> But now, NASA, one of the space station's primary operators, is preparing to oversee the largest push of business activity aboard the ISS. Later this month, up to 10 bottles of a new Estée Lauder (EL) skincare serum will launch to the space station, a NASA spokesperson told CNN Business. NASA astronauts are expected to film the items in the microgravity environment of the ISS and the company will be able to use that footage in ad campaigns or other promotional material.


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## ekim68

Earth-size 'pi planet' rocks a 3.14-day orbit



> Everyone's favorite mathematical constant has received an inadvertent tribute from the universe. A team led by MIT researchers discovered a distant planet that orbits its star every 3.14 days, mirroring the famous first three digits of pi.


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## ekim68

ISS moves to avoid space debris



> Astronauts on the International Space Station carried out an "avoidance maneuver" Tuesday to ensure they would not be hit by a piece of debris, said US space agency NASA, urging better management of objects in Earth's orbit.


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## ekim68

Cyclones of Color at Jupiter's North Pole



> Cyclones at the north pole of Jupiter appear as swirls of striking colors in this extreme false color rendering of an image from NASA's Juno mission. The huge, persistent cyclone found at Jupiter's north pole is visible at the center of the image, encircled by smaller cyclones that range in size from 2,500 to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,600 kilometers). Together, this pattern of storms covers an area that would dwarf the Earth.


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## ekim68

The only black hole we've ever seen has a shadow that wobbles



> The supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy has a shadow crescent that moves, like a dancer in the dark.


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## ekim68

NASA Lays Out $28 Billion Plan to Land First Woman on the Moon



> Last year, NASA had said that in four years, it would be landing the first woman ever on the moon, and returning to Earth's only natural satellite for the first time since 1972, through its Artemis programme. Now, in a release on September 22, NASA has shared an update outlining its plan, announcing a whopping $28 billion plan for the return to the lunar surface.


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## ekim68

Lunar orbiter to listen for radio signals from cosmic "Dark Ages"



> The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) has announced a new addition to NASA's upcoming moon-shot Artemis program. From the silent skies on the far side of the Moon, the DAPPER spacecraft will listen out for radio signals from the "Dark Ages" of the universe, before the first stars fired up.
> 
> Beginning around 370,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe settled into quite a dull existence. For millions of years after that, pretty much the only things around were huge clouds of hydrogen gas, but as everything started to cool down, pockets of that gas condensed and collapsed to form the first stars and black holes. With those stars came the first ever light, ending the Dark Ages and transitioning to a time often called the "Cosmic Dawn."


----------



## ekim68

NASA's new $23 million space toilet is ready for launch



> NASA is launching a new space toilet to the International Space Station next week for astronauts to test out before it's used on future missions to the moon or Mars.
> 
> The $23 million toilet system, known as the Universal Waste Management System (UWMS), is 65% smaller and 40% lighter than the toilet currently in use on the space station, and can support larger crews.


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## Brigham

"The big bang theory" could probably have done it much cheaper.


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## 2twenty2

*Astronomers discover possible 60s-era Moon rocket booster heading back to Earth*

https://www.teslarati.com/astronomers-discover-mysterious-object-heading-to-earth/


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## xrobwx71

ekim68 said:


> Cyclones of Color at Jupiter's North Pole
> 
> View attachment 281161


Looks like a Van Gogh.


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## ekim68

Over 75% of space debris detected in new survey is unknown objects 



> All of this is mirrored in our expansion into the space domain. Since we started lobbing rockets into orbit in the 1950s, the amount of human-made trash whipping around the Earth has been steadily increasing.
> 
> Orbital debris is comprised of old, defunct satellites and the rockets that put them there. They range in size from flakes of paint to huge fairing sections. In February 2009 a worst-case scenario occurred, wherein two large defunct satellites - the commercial Iridium 33 and the Russian military-owned Kosmos-2251 - smashed into each other, creating a vast cloud of hazardous debris.


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## ekim68

First Moon radiation measurements reveal risk to astronaut health



> The instrument recorded an equivalent dose rate of around 60 microsieverts per hour. That's about 200 times higher than what we're exposed to here on the ground, between five and 10 times more than you'd get on a long-haul flight, and about 2.6 times more than experienced by astronauts on the International Space Station.
> 
> There are ways to reduce that exposure though. Moon bases could be set up in huge caverns and lava tubes that are believed to sprawl underground, or shelters constructed of moon dust could provide adequate protection on the surface.


----------



## ekim68

Liquid water on Mars? New research indicates buried 'lakes'



> The existence of liquid water on Mars - one of the more hotly debated matters about our cold, red neighbor - is looking increasingly likely.
> 
> New research published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy indicates that there really is a buried reservoir of super salty water near the south pole. Scientists say such a lake would significantly improve the likelihood that Mars just might harbor microscopic life of its own.


----------



## ekim68

BIG shoots for the Moon with 3D-printed lunar habitat plan



> The Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has conceived some of the most interesting architecture projects we've seen on land, and even water, but its latest design is out of this world - literally. It involves the development of 3D-printed Moon habitats that could be used to support the human exploration of Earth's satellite.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble watches exploding star fade into oblivion 



> When a star unleashes as much energy in a matter of days as our Sun does in several billion years, you know it's not going to remain visible for long.
> 
> Like intergalactic paparazzi, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured the quick, fading celebrity status of a supernova, the self-detonation of a star. The Hubble snapshots have been assembled into a telling movie of the titanic stellar blast disappearing into oblivion in the spiral galaxy NGC 2525, located 70 million light-years away.


----------



## ekim68

Six Galaxies Orbiting a Black Hole in Ancient Universe



> Astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) recently found six galaxies orbiting a black hole in the ancient Universe. The galaxies orbiting this supermassive black hole (SMBH) are seen as they appeared when the Universe was just 900 million years old. This collection of galaxies, centered around the quasar SDSS J1030+0524, is the oldest, closest galactic cluster ever seen orbiting a supermassive black hole.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers reveal first direct image of Beta Pictoris c using new astronomy instrument



> The vast majority of planets near foreign stars are discovered by astronomers with the help of sophisticated methods. The exoplanet does not appear in the image, but reveals itself indirectly in the spectrum. A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Astronomy and Extraterrestrial Physics has now succeeded in obtaining the first direct confirmation of a previously discovered exoplanet using the method of radial velocity measurement. Using the the GRAVITY instrument at the VLT telescopes in Chile, the astronomers observed the faint glint of the planet Beta Pictoris c, some 63 light-years away from Earth, next to the bright rays of its mother star. The researchers can now derive both the brightness and the dynamic mass of an exoplanet from these observations and thus better narrow down the formation models of these objects.


----------



## ekim68

24 "super-habitable" exoplanets potentially better than Earth identified 



> A team of scientists led by Washington State University (WSU) geobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch has identified two dozen exoplanets that could be more favorable to life than the Earth. Based on data from the Kepler mission, these super-habitable worlds may have conditions more suitable for sustaining life for a longer period of time than our planet.
> 
> One of the major questions vexing modern science is whether there is life elsewhere in the universe. While no direct evidence of such life has been discovered, exoplanet-hunting missions like Kepler have changed many of our ideas about how planetary systems are formed and have provided scientists with the means to think about life beyond our solar system without leaning so heavily on conjecture and speculation.


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## Brigham

I have always thought that there must be many planets capable of sustaining life as we know it. The problem is getting to them. The only practical way would be if we could travel FTL. That can't happen as far as our knowledge is now. Wormholes haven't been discovered yet. Space ships aren't capable of sustaining life over generations, so it looks like emigration from the earth is just pie in the sky. (pun intended)


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## ekim68

It starts one step at a time and we're making progress. There have been some great engineering and technological advances in the last 15 years which will at least take a first step to the Moon and Mars. IMO the biggest drawback is Radiation but they're working on that too.


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## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope completes prelaunch environmental tests



> NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has passed a major milestone, completing its prelaunch environmental testing. The space agency and primary contractor Northrop Grumman subjected the fully assembled spacecraft to several weeks of acoustic and sine-vibration tests to determine whether it can withstand the rigors of a rocket launch and its journey to orbit.


----------



## Brigham

ekim68 said:


> It starts one step at a time and we're making progress. There have been some great engineering and technological advances in the last 15 years which will at least take a first step to the Moon and Mars. IMO the biggest drawback is Radiation but they're working on that too.


I was really thinking of exo planets


----------



## ekim68

ESO telescope spots galaxies trapped in the web of a supermassive black hole



> Astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less than a billion years old. This is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and the finding helps us better understand how supermassive black holes formed and grew so quickly. It supports the theory that black holes can grow rapidly within large structures which contain plenty of gas to fuel them.


----------



## ekim68

The Moon's South Pole Is Hiding Something Massive and Mysterious



> It's been 50 years since Apollo 11, but our knowledge of the moon is still remarkably scant. We've only just scratched the surface of what there is to know, quite literally. A recent paper published in _Geophysical Research Letters_ outlines the discovery of a massive - truly massive - body of material sitting hundreds of miles under the largest crater on the moon. And scientists are stumped as to what it is and how it got there.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's OSIRIS-REx collects sample from surface of asteroid Bennu 



> In a truly remarkable feat of engineering, NASA's OSIRIS-REx has scooped a sample of soil from the surface of asteroid Bennu, as it hurtles through space some 205 million miles from Earth. The spacecraft successfully touched the asteroid Bennu on Tuesday at 6:11 pm EDT and collected a 2-oz (57-g) sample of its surface.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Perseverance Rover Bringing 3D-Printed Metal Parts to Mars



> If you want to see science fiction at work, visit a modern machine shop, where 3D printers create materials in just about any shape you can imagine. NASA is exploring the technique - known as additive manufacturing when used by specialized engineers - to build rocket engines as well as potential outposts on the Moon and Mars. Nearer in the future is a different milestone: NASA's Perseverance rover, which lands on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021, carries 11 metal parts made with 3D printing.
> 
> Instead of forging, molding, or cutting materials, 3D printing relies on lasers to melt powder in successive layers to give shape to something. Doing so allows engineers to play with unique designs and traits, such as making hardware lighter, stronger, or responsive to heat or cold.


----------



## ekim68

The Propulsion We're Supplying, It's Electrifying



> But what if the most powerful propulsion system in NASA's toolbox produces less than one pound of thrust while reaching speeds of up to 200,000 mph? What if it costs less, carries more, and uses less fuel?
> 
> This radical system is in-space electric propulsion. It can reduce the amount of fuel, or propellant, needed by up to 90% compared to chemical propulsion systems, saving millions in launch costs while providing greater mission flexibility.


----------



## ekim68

Einstein's theory of relativity, critical for GPS, seen in distant stars



> What do Albert Einstein, the Global Positioning System (GPS), and a pair of stars 200,000 trillion miles from Earth have in common?
> 
> The answer is an effect from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity called the "gravitational redshift," where light is shifted to redder colors because of gravity. Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have discovered the phenomenon in two stars orbiting each other in our galaxy about 29,000 light years (200,000 trillion miles) away from Earth. While these stars are very distant, gravitational redshifts have tangible impacts on modern life, as scientists and engineers must take them into account to enable accurate positions for GPS.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon



> NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has confirmed, for the first time, water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places.


----------



## ekim68

The sky's not falling, yet...


Space debris by the numbers


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## ekim68

NASA and ESA finalize agreement to build Gateway deep space outpost 



> Scheduled to begin construction in cislunar orbit in 2024, the Gateway outpost is intended to act as a staging point for missions to the lunar surface, and deep space, and, ultimately, for the first crewed missions to Mars. One-sixth the size of the International Space Station (ISS), the Gateway will be assembled as modules launched into a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit, where it will not revolve around the Earth or the Moon, but one of the Lagrange points where the gravitational fields of the Earth and Moon balance out.


*







*


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## ekim68

NASA's Perseverance Rover Is Midway to Mars 



> NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission has logged a lot of flight miles since being lofted skyward on July 30 - 146.3 million miles (235.4 million kilometers) to be exact. Turns out that is exactly the same distance it has to go before the spacecraft hits the Red Planet's atmosphere like a 11,900 mph (19,000 kph) freight train on Feb. 18, 2021.


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## ekim68

NASA's OSIRIS-REx Successfully Stows Sample of Asteroid Bennu



> NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has successfully stowed the spacecraft's Sample Return Capsule (SRC) and its abundant sample of asteroid Bennu. On Wednesday, Oct. 28, the mission team sent commands to the spacecraft, instructing it to close the capsule - marking the end of one of the most challenging phases of the mission.


----------



## ekim68

Chinese spacecraft set for Mars landing in May: state media



> BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese spacecraft is expected to land on Mars in May, state-run media reported on Thursday, citing a space agency official.
> 
> The spacecraft, which left Earth in July, is set to land in Utopia Planitia, a plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the China News Service reported, citing Liu Tongjie, spokesman for the Mars mission.
> 
> Separate spacecraft launched by the United States and the United Arab Emirates this year are also en route to Mars, though only the U.S. one will attempt a landing.


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## ekim68

Space Station 20th: Halloween on ISS


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## ekim68

Unusual molecule found in atmosphere on Saturn's moon Titan



> Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is the only moon in our solar system that has a thick atmosphere. It's four times denser than Earth's. And now, scientists have discovered a molecule in it that has never been found in any other atmosphere
> 
> The particle is called cyclopropenylidene, or C3H2, and it's made of carbon and hydrogen. This simple carbon-based molecule could be a precursor that contributes to chemical reactions that may create complex compounds. And those compounds could be the basis for potential life on Titan.


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk's SpaceX will 'make its own laws on Mars'



> SpaceX will not recognise international law on Mars, according to the Terms of Service of its Starlink internet project.
> 
> Elon Musk's space company will instead reportedly adhere to a set of "self-governing principles" that will be defined at the time of Martian settlement.


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## ekim68

We finally know what has been making fast radio bursts



> Today, researchers are announcing they've solved one of the questions that has been nagging them over the past decade: what exactly produces the weird phenomena known as fast radio bursts (FRBs)? As their name implies, FRBs involve a sudden blast of radio-frequency radiation that lasts just a few microseconds. We didn't even know that FRBs existed until 2007 but have since cataloged hundreds of them; some come from sources that repeatedly emit them, while others seem to burst once and go silent.


----------



## ekim68

The Little Satellite that Could.. 


NASA sends first commands to Voyager 2 in eight months



> NASA is back in contact with Voyager 2 after almost eight months of silence. Radio communication has not been possible because the Deep Space Station 43 (DSS43) in Australia is undergoing an upgrade, but on October 29 it sent a signal to Voyager 2, which successfully carried out the commands and returned a confirmation signal.


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## ekim68

NASA objects to new mega-constellation, citing risk of "catastrophic collision"



> NASA has formally commented (PDF) on a request by a US company to build a mega-constellation of satellites at an altitude of 720km above the Earth's surface, citing concerns about collisions. This appears to be the first time that NASA has publicly commented on such an application for market access, which is pending before the Federal Communications Commission.


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## ekim68

CERN scientists design trap to transport antimatter between facilities 



> The BASE collaboration has now designed a new device, called BASE-STEP, that could help scientists move antimatter around to other facilities. The key to the system is what's known as a Penning trap, which uses electric and magnetic fields to suspend antiprotons (the antimatter version of protons) away from the walls of the container. But there are atoms in air too of course, so the trap also stores them in a vacuum. BASE-STEP would be made with two Penning traps - one to receive and release antiprotons and a second one that acts as a storage reservoir.
> 
> Penning traps are already in use in antimatter facilities, with CERN previously showing they can store antiprotons for over 400 days - a huge improvement over the record of 16 minutes, set in 2011. But the real challenge for the team was to then make these devices portable.


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab gets set for its first ever booster recovery attempt



> Last year, we saw some details start to emerge around Rocket Lab's vision to recover its spacecraft for reuse, plans that involved catching part of its Electron booster in mid-air with a helicopter. The private company is set to take an important step toward this objective, announcing that it will make its first attempt to recover the rocket's first stage during a mission scheduled for later this month.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launches 4 astronauts to space station, beginning new era for NASA



> Lighting up the night sky, four astronauts shot into orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Sunday for a 27-hour voyage to the International Space Station in the first operational flight of a commercially developed Crew Dragon capsule.


----------



## ekim68

UK set to help build space debris removal satellite



> The UK government has announced a firm based in the UK will help build the Clearspace-1 satellite which aims to clear space debris. The satellite is jokingly called 'The Claw' and will begin its mission in 2025.
> 
> Once in space, The Claw will use a pincer motion to collect debris and then control it to re-enter Earth's atmosphere where it will burn up. The debris that is sent into the atmosphere will be too small to make it through the atmosphere and pose a risk to life but if any does eke its way through there's a very high likelihood it'll end up in the sea.


----------



## ekim68

Texas astronomers revive idea for 'Ultimately Large Telescope' on the moon



> A group of astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin has found that a telescope idea shelved by NASA a decade ago can solve a problem that no other telescope can: It would be able to study the first stars in the universe. The team, led by NASA Hubble Fellow Anna Schauer, will publish their results in an upcoming issue of _The Astrophysical Journal_.


----------



## ekim68

Earth's nearest miss on record as small asteroid zips by closer than ISS



> Last week, the Earth had its closest shave with an asteroid ever recorded, when a small space rock skimmed just 370 km (230 miles) above the surface. For comparison, that's closer than the orbit of the International Space Station.


----------



## ekim68

Famed Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled



> The Arecibo telescope's long and productive life has come to an end. The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today it will decommission the iconic radio telescope in Puerto Rico following two cable breaks in recent months that have brought the structure to near collapse. The 57-year-old observatory, a survivor of numerous hurricanes and earthquakes, is now in such a fragile state that attempting repairs would put staff and workers in danger.


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab nails its first ever booster recovery attempt



> Startup Rocket Lab has joined SpaceX and Blue Origin in the world of rocket recovery, today bringing its Electron booster back down to Earth for the first time ever. The company's recovery of the Electron's first stage during its landmark "Return to Sender" mission will act as a springboard for even more ambitious recovery techniques in the coming years.


----------



## ekim68

Next SpaceX Starlink launch set to hit a big milestone:



> The company aims for bi-coastal missions in a single day this weekend.


----------



## ekim68

HALO space habitat module passes preliminary design review



> Northrop Grumman has announced that its Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module has passed its preliminary design review. The module, which forms a key element of NASA's Gateway deep space outpost, will act as a way station for future missions to the Moon and beyond.


 *







*


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## ekim68

Astronomers discover new 'fossil galaxy' buried deep within the Milky Way



> The proposed fossil galaxy may have collided with the Milky Way ten billion years ago, when our galaxy was still in its infancy. Astronomers named it Heracles, after the ancient Greek hero who received the gift of immortality when the Milky Way was created.


----------



## ekim68

China launches ambitious mission to land on moon and return samples to Earth



> China launched its most ambitious moon mission yet Monday: a robotic spacecraft expected to land on the lunar surface by the end of the week. The spacecraft is expected to collect about 4 pounds of rock and soil samples, and return them to Earth next month for laboratory analysis.


----------



## ekim68

Perseverance rover to create oxygen on the surface of Mars



> When NASA's Perseverance rover touches down in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, it will carry with it an experiment that will attempt to transform atmospheric carbon dioxide into precious oxygen. Future crewed missions to the Red Planet could use large amounts of converted oxygen to create fuel with which to launch return rockets from the surface of Mars.


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## 2twenty2

Happy Birthday Mike!


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## ekim68

Thanks Twenty2, one more day and all of a sudden another year..


----------



## zebanovich

The most fascinating thing about space is human inability to develop interstellar travel.

So far the best and most developed tech among other space races is mathematics, thanks to math there is 100% working theory about FTL space travel, it's called Alcubierre drive - Wikipedia


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX blows away cobwebs at dormant California pad with satellite launch as a Falcon 9 makes touchdown number 7



> *In Brief* Elon Musk's SpaceX demonstrated that a long-dormant pad could be reactivated with seemingly little effort after it launched the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite from Space Launch Complex 4 at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.
> 
> The launch, at 17:17 UTC on 21 November, was the first from the pad since 2019, and the brand-new Falcon 9 booster performed the always-impressive trick of landing back on Earth, fiery end down. Rather than a drone ship, however, the first stage performed a ground landing.


----------



## ekim68

There will be a remote-control car race on the Moon in 2021. Seriously.



> An extremely odd project is planning to hold a remote-controlled car race next October ... On the surface of the Moon. What's more, the two racecars will be partially designed by high school kids, and McLaren P1 designer Frank Stephenson is involved.
> 
> Each car will weigh 2.5 kg (5.5 lb), and the "deployment mechanism" used to deposit them on the lunar surface will weigh a further 3 kg (6.6 lb.) This 8 kg (17.6 lb) combined weight is a big deal, because _it's going to the Moon_. That's somewhat of a special delivery, and not a cheap one. Lunar logistics company Astrobotic, for example, is currently quoting prices of US$1.2 million per kilogram (around US$544,000 per pound) to plonk things down in one of its Peregrine lander modules.


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## ekim68

China successfully lands spacecraft on moon to retrieve lunar rocks



> BEIJING (Reuters) - China successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon's surface on Tuesday in a historic mission to retrieve lunar surface samples, Chinese state media reported.
> 
> China launched its Chang'e-5 probe on Nov. 24. The uncrewed mission, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon, aims to collect lunar material to help scientists learn more about the moon's origins.


----------



## ekim68

Astronauts Harvest First Radish Crop on International Space Station



> On Nov. 30, 2020, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins harvested radish plants growing in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) aboard the International Space Station. She meticulously collected and wrapped in foil each of the 20 radish plants, placing them in cold storage for the return trip to Earth in 2021 on SpaceX's 22nd Commercial Resupply Services mission
> 
> The plant experiment, called Plant Habitat-02 (PH-02), is the first time NASA has grown radishes on the orbiting laboratory. NASA selected radishes because they are well understood by scientists and reach maturity in just 27 days.


----------



## ekim68

China's Chang'e 5 probe lifts off from moon carrying lunar samples



> The small probe, which sat on top of the Chang'e 5 lander, lifted off from Oceanus Procellarum at 10:10 EST Thursday (15:10 GMT/23:10 Beijing time) carrying with it the first fresh lunar samples since 1976.





> Six minutes later, the ascent spacecraft achieved lunar orbit, marking a huge milestone in the Chang'e 5 mission to return lunar samples to Earth. The ascent vehicle's job now is to meet up with the Chang'e 5 orbiter while still circling the moon, and then transfer its precious cargo to a return capsule for the journey home.


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## ekim68

Japan is bringing pieces of an asteroid to Earth this weekend. Here's how to watch online.



> Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft is about to deliver a precious sample of asteroid dust to Earth this weekend and you can watch the event live.
> 
> The mission will swing by our planet to drop off a capsule full of regolith from asteroid Ryugu, before departing to visit another asteroid in 2031 on its newly extended mission.


----------



## ekim68

Jupiter and Saturn Head for Closest Visible Alignment in 800 Years



> On Dec. 21, Jupiter and Saturn will appear to be no more than a dime's width apart in the night sky. The last time that could be seen was in 1226.


----------



## ekim68

World's largest solar telescope captures its first dramatic sunspot image



> Astronomers have released a stunningly detailed image revealing the structure of a massive sunspot as it temporarily darkened the Sun's surface on January 28, 2020. The new image was taken during the final commissioning phase of the upcoming Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, which will be capable of revealing structures on our parent star as small as 20 km (12.4 miles) across.


----------



## ekim68

NASA to Provide Spanish-Language Coverage, Livestream of Solar Eclipse



> NASA will provide live coverage Monday, Dec. 14, of a solar eclipse that will pass over South America, treating parts of Chile and Argentina to views of a total eclipse of the Sun. A Spanish-language program will air on NASA Television and the public channel on the agency's website. A separate livestream of the eclipse without narration will air on the media channel.


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## ekim68

Fragments of energy - not waves or particles - may be the fundamental building blocks of the universe



> Matter is what makes up the universe, but what makes up matter? This question has long been tricky for those who think about it - especially for the physicists. Reflecting recent trends in physics, my colleague Jeffrey Eischen and I have described an updated way to think about matter. We propose that matter is not made of particles or waves, as was long thought, but - more fundamentally - that matter is made of fragments of energy.


----------



## ekim68

Mission to "ambush" pristine comet enters new study phase



> The European Space Agency has selected Thales Alenia Space in the UK to lead a study for the planned mission to "ambush" a passing comet. Called Comet Interceptor, this cosmic brigand represents a new strategy for exploring comets fresh from the Oort cloud by lying in wait, perhaps for years, before embarking on a rendezvous mission.


----------



## ekim68

Epic time-lapse shows what the Milky Way will look like 400,000 years from now



> Have you ever seen 40,000 shooting stars blaze across the sky at the same time?
> 
> If you'd like to, the European Space Agency (ESA) is offering you two options: Either stare at the night sky for about half a million years as our solar system drifts steadily through the Milky Way (some patience required) - or, watch a new 60-second time-lapse simulation of the same thing, courtesy of the ESA's Gaia space observatory.


----------



## ekim68

China to open giant telescope to international scientists



> Nestled among the mountains in southwest China, the world's largest radio telescope signals Beijing's ambitions as a global centre for scientific research.
> The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)-the only significant instrument of its kind after the collapse of another telescope in Puerto Rico this month-is about to open its doors for foreign astronomers to use, hoping to attract the world's top scientific talent.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers precisely trace distance to oldest and farthest known galaxy



> Astronomers have more accurately measured the distance to the oldest and farthest galaxy ever detected. The light they're seeing left the galaxy, known as GN-z11, around 13.4 billion years ago, when the universe was a cosmic toddler, and this galaxy marks the very edge of the observable universe.
> 
> To look into the cosmos is to look back in time. The speed of light is a constant, meaning when we look at an object 100 light-years away, for instance, we're seeing it as it was 100 years ago. So by extension, if we study objects billions of light-years away, we can get a glimpse into how the universe looked in the early years of its existence.


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## valis

ekim68 said:


> China to open giant telescope to international scientists
> 
> View attachment 283436


with Arcibo decommed, this is a good thing.


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## ekim68

Capella Space's new satellite is eerily observant



> A new satellite from Capella Space sounds... pretty creepy. Like other hunks of metal currently orbiting Earth, The Capella-2 satellite's onboard radar system makes it capable of producing ludicrously high-resolution visuals from its data. More unconventional is the service Capella has launched to match: the government or private customers can, at any time, request a view of anything on the planet that's visible from the sky.


----------



## ekim68

The 10 most bizarre space discoveries of 2020



> It's no secret that space is incredibly weird, but every year astronomers seem to outdo themselves in discovering bizarre new objects and events. From extreme exoplanets to stars with strange fates, clues to an old mystery and the beginnings of a brand new one, here are 10 of the weirdest astronomical discoveries that blew our minds (and those of scientists) this year.


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## ekim68

Neutron stars scanned for signals of dark matter turning into light



> Dark matter is thought to outnumber the regular stuff by a ratio of five to one, yet it remains frustratingly elusive. But there might be ways to potentially spot it, if you know where to look, and now astronomers have scanned neutron stars for telltale signals of a proposed dark matter particle called an axion.
> 
> Decades of astronomical observations have led scientists to conclude that the universe is filled with massive, invisible particles. This "dark" matter doesn't emit or reflect light, but it makes its presence known through its extremely strong gravitational effects on stars and galaxies.


----------



## ekim68

Atomic-scale nanowires can now be produced at scale



> Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered a way to make self-assembled nanowires of transition metal chalcogenides at scale using chemical vapor deposition. By changing the substrate where the wires form, they can tune how these wires are arranged, from aligned configurations of atomically thin sheets to random networks of bundles. This paves the way to industrial deployment in next-gen industrial electronics, including energy harvesting, and transparent, efficient, even flexible devices.


----------



## ekim68

Korean artificial sun sets the new world record of 20-sec-long operation at 100 million degrees



> The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), a superconducting fusion device also known as the Korean artificial sun, set the new world record as it succeeded in maintaining the high temperature plasma for 20 seconds with an ion temperature over 100 million degrees (Celsius).


----------



## ekim68

Microfarm on the International Space Station Grows Radishes in One Month



> The thought of eating "astronaut food" brings to mind a kind of instant food that is far from "farm to table." However, recent experiments aboard the ISS are improving our understanding of how to bring the farm directly into space itself.
> 
> Astronauts just ran a Veg-PONDS 02 experiment on the International Space Station. The experiment used food that was cultivated in space. Potential cultivations could include tomatoes or other plants, NASA says.


----------



## ekim68

Japanese Capsule Containing Bits Of An Asteroid Returns To Earth



> A Japanese space capsule ferrying sample material from an asteroid - the bounty from a six-year mission spanning billions of miles - made its triumphant return to Earth this weekend.


----------



## ekim68

Mysterious asteroid the size of a dwarf planet is lurking in our solar system



> There's a giant asteroid somewhere out in the solar system, and it hurled a big rock at Earth.
> 
> The evidence for this mystery space rock comes from a diamond-studded meteor that exploded over Sudan in 2008.
> 
> NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroid - one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.


----------



## ekim68

Neptune's Weird Dark Spot Just Got Weirder



> Neptune boasts some of the strangest weather in the solar system. The sun's eighth planet holds the record for the fastest winds observed on any world, with speeds cutting through the atmosphere upward of 1,100 miles per hour, or 1.5 times the speed of sound. Scientists still don't know exactly why its atmosphere is so tumultuous. Their latest glimpse of Neptune provided even more reason to be confused.
> 
> The Hubble Space Telescope identified a storm in 2018, a dark spot some 4,600 miles across. Since that time, it appears to have drifted toward the equator but then swooped back up north, according to the latest Hubble observations. It also has a smaller companion storm, nicknamed Dark Spot Jr., that scientists think might be a chunk that broke off the main storm.


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk says SpaceX will attempt to recover Super Heavy rocket by catching it with launch tower[/SIZE]




> SpaceX





> will try a significantly different approach to landing its future reusable rocket boosters, according to CEO and founder Elon Musk. It will attempt to 'catch' the heavy booster, which is currently in development, using the launch tower arm used to stabilize the vehicle during its pre-takeoff preparations. Current Falcon 9 boosters return to Earth and land propulsively on their own built-in legs - but the goal with Super Heavy is for the larger rocket not to have legs at all, says Musk.


----------



## ekim68

Japan developing wooden satellites to cut space junk



> Sumitomo Forestry said it has started research on tree growth and the use of wood materials in space.
> The partnership will begin experimenting with different types of wood in extreme environments on Earth.
> 
> Space junk is becoming an increasing problem as more satellites are launched into the atmosphere.
> 
> Wooden satellites would burn up without releasing harmful substances into the atmosphere or raining debris on the ground when they plunge back to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Highlights from the year in science 2020



> The COVID-19 crisis ensured science related to developing vaccines and improving virus testing kits was at the forefront of everyone's mind during 2020, but scientists also managed to produce fascinating research and valuable breakthroughs in many other areas. In a salute to those hardworking and often under-appreciated scientists, here's a sample of some of those achievements.


----------



## ekim68

High-fidelity, long-distance teleportation paves way for quantum internet 



> This mechanism - which Einstein himself dubbed "spooky" - can be tapped into to create quantum networks. Pairs of photons can be entangled and separated, allowing data to be "teleported" between them over long distances. As a bonus, these networks could be more secure, since any hackers would garble the data just by trying to read it.
> 
> Now, researchers at Fermilab, AT&T, Caltech, Harvard, NASA JPL and the University of Calgary have demonstrated sustained, very accurate quantum teleportation over long distances. The team sent information over 44 km (27 miles) with fidelity of over 90 percent - an accuracy record for this distance.


----------



## ekim68

ThermaSat design would see CubeSats propelled by jets of steam



> Howe Industries has submitted a design for a solar-powered steam rocket engine for propelling CubeSats to the National Science Foundation (NSF). With only two moving parts, the ThermaSat engine uses a thermal condenser to flash boil distilled water into superheated steam.


----------



## ekim68

Liquid glass discovered as new state of matter



> It's a persistent fallacy that glass already _is _a liquid, spread by misinformed high school teachers and tour guides. But that's not technically true - glass is an amorphous solid. Normally when a substance transitions from a liquid to a solid, the formerly free-flowing atoms line up into a rigid crystal formation. That's not the case with glass though: its atoms "freeze" in their disordered state.
> 
> Or at least, that's how it usually goes. In the new study, the researchers discovered a form of glass where the atoms exhibit a complex behavior that's never been seen in bulk glass before. Essentially, the atoms can move but aren't able to rotate.


----------



## ekim68

CubeSat to test harnessing Earth's magnetic field for propulsion 



> A student-built CubeSat from the University of Michigan will investigate whether small satellites can be maintained in low Earth orbit without thrusters or propellant. Scheduled to launch from the Mojave Air and Space Port on Virgin Orbit's Launch Demo 2 on January 10, 2020, the Miniature Tether Electrodynamics Experiment-1 (MiTEE-1) will test the concept of using the Earth's magnetic field to generate thrust.


----------



## ekim68

UK nuclear spacecraft could halve time of journey to Mars



> British spacecraft could travel to Mars in half the time it now takes by using nuclear propulsion engines built by Rolls-Royce under a new deal with the UK Space Agency.
> 
> The aerospace company hopes nuclear-powered engines could help astronauts make it to Mars in three to four months, twice as fast as the most powerful chemical engines, and unlock deeper space exploration in the decades to come.


----------



## ekim68

Magnetic 'Highway' Channels Material Out of Cigar Galaxy



> What's fueling the massive ejection of gas and dust out of the Cigar galaxy, otherwise known as Messier 82?
> 
> We know that thousands of stars bursting into existence are driving a powerful super-wind that's blowing matter into intergalactic space. New research shows that magnetic fields are also contributing to the expulsion of material from Messier 82, a well-known example of a starburst galaxy with a distinctive, elongated shape.


----------



## ekim68

Boeing to provide six new solar arrays for International Space Station



> The International Space Station (ISS) is getting a major upgrade starting this year, as Boeing is tapped to deliver six new solar arrays. They will provide the orbital laboratory with up to 30 percent more electricity for research and commercial applications.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers may have detected background ripples in spacetime itself



> The gravitational waves we've detected so far have been like tsunamis in the spacetime sea, but it's believed that gentle ripples should also pervade the universe. Now, a 13-year survey of light from pulsars scattered across the galaxy may have revealed the first hints of these background signals.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Orbit launches rocket off a 747 aircraft, puts nine satellites in space



> A 70-foot rocket, riding beneath the wing of a retrofitted Boeing 747 aircraft, detached from the plane and fired itself into Earth's orbit on Sunday - marking the first successful launch for the California-based rocket startup Virgin Orbit.


----------



## ekim68

Unexplained X-ray signals from neutron stars hint at "ghost" particles



> Astronomers have detected a strange signal coming from a group of neutron stars that could be the fingerprints of a long-sought elementary particle - and maybe even dark matter. An unexplained excess of X-rays hints at axions, hypothetical "ghost" particles that could solve several long-standing physics puzzles.
> 
> When massive stars go supernova, they can leave behind neutron stars - extremely dense cores with powerful magnetic fields. A group of neutron stars nicknamed the Magnificent Seven was expected to produce ultraviolet light and low-energy X-rays, but a few years ago astronomers discovered they were also somehow giving off high-energy X-rays, which can't be explained by current models.


----------



## ekim68

Depths of alien ocean probed with radar in Cassini study



> Saturn's moon Titan is one of the most fascinating bodies in the solar system, not least because it's home to huge oceans, lakes and rivers of liquid methane. Now scientists have used radar to probe the composition and depth of its largest sea, Kraken Mare, and estimated it to be at least 300 m (1,000 ft) deep.


----------



## ekim68

Saturn's moons explain the planet's tilt and why it's increasing



> Everyone who has taken basic geography knows that the Earth is tilted on its axis, but so are the other planets and other bodies in the solar system. The degree of these tilts vary so dramatically that, at first glance, this seems to be random. The tilt of a planet "just is."
> 
> However, this turns out not to be the case. Saturn has a tilt in relation to its orbit of 26.73°, but this is not the result of chance. In fact, according to a pair of scientists from CNRS and the Sorbonne University working at the Paris Observatory, it's due to a complex ballet of gravitational forces.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX puts record 143 satellites in orbit in one launch 



> SpaceX's latest orbital mission has set a new record for the most spacecraft launched by a single rocket at one time. On January 24, 2021 at 10:00 am EST, the Transporter-1 mission lifted off atop a Falcon 9 booster from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with 143 satellites aboard.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX adds laser links to Starlink satellites to serve Earth's polar areas



> SpaceX has begun launching Starlink satellites with laser links that will help provide broadband coverage in polar regions. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter on Sunday, these satellites "have laser links between the satellites, so no ground stations are needed over the poles."


----------



## ekim68

A handful of other six-star systems have been discovered, but this one is unique.



> From star-destroying black holes to exploding comets, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has spotted its share of surprises since it began searching the galaxy for exoplanets in 2018. But the source of starlight that was mysteriously brightening and dimming some 1,900 light-years away may top all those discoveries for its science fiction-like grandeur.
> 
> The source, named TIC 168789840, is a system of six stars. That alone makes it a rarity, but what makes this sextuplet even more remarkable is that they consist of three pairs of binary stars: three different stellar couplets revolving around three different centers of mass, but with the trio remaining gravitationally bound to one another and circling the galactic center as a single star system.


----------



## ekim68

Exoplanet system discovered with strange balance of order and disorder



> Astronomers have discovered a nearby system of exoplanets with unusually orderly orbits but disordered densities. Five of the six planets circle the star in a rare rhythmic dance called a resonance chain, and the types of planets are far more shuffled around than usual.


----------



## ekim68

Was early Mars wet and warm, or dry and cold? Yes.



> We know there's water on Mars. And lots of it.
> 
> Thing is, it's frozen. With the polar caps, and under the surface even down to mid-latitudes, when you talk Martian water you're talking ice.


----------



## ekim68

Axiom Space announces crew for first all-private orbital mission



> A year after it was selected to supply the first private module for the International Space Station (ISS), Axiom Space has announced the crew for the first-ever all private crewed orbital space mission. Still awaiting legal clearance and the green light from the 15-member ISS partnership, the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) will carry four astronauts to the station for an eight-day stay.
> 
> The idea of private citizens instead of official government astronauts going into space isn't new. As far back as 1975, the Soviet Union was offering places on space missions to Warsaw Pact citizens for diplomatic and propaganda purposes. Since then, astronauts have been joined by mission specialists, journalists, and even paying tourists.


----------



## ekim68

Has this woman just invented the rocket that will take us to Mars?



> Dr Fatima Ebrahimi has invented a new fusion rocket thruster concept which could power humans to Mars and beyond.
> 
> The physicist who works for the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) designed the rocket which will use magnetic fields to shoot plasma particles - electrically charged gas - into the vacuum of space.


----------



## ekim68

It was 50 years ago today...

Apollo 14: The mission that saved the US Moon program



> Fifty years ago today, on January 31, 1971, at 4:03 pm EST, a Saturn V rocket lifted off from Pad A of Launch Complex 39 at the Kennedy Space Center carrying Apollo 14 - the Moon mission that would make or break the US space program.
> 
> If Apollo 14 is remembered at all by most people, it's mainly as the answer to trivia questions like, who was the oldest man to walk on the Moon, or what is the longest lunar golf drive? But it was far more than that. Arguably, it was one of the most important of all the Apollo lunar landing missions, with the possible exception of Apollo 11.


----------



## ekim68

bluShift Aerospace makes history with biofuel-powered rocket launch



> LIMESTONE - Despite frigid weather and early technical difficulties, Brunswick's bluShift Aerospace Inc., made history Sunday afternoon when it launched its prototype rocket, Stardust 1.0.
> 
> The company became the first in Maine to launch a commercial rocket and the first in the world to launch a commercial rocket using bio-derived fuel.


----------



## ekim68

A giant black hole suddenly went dark, and no one knows why



> Beginning in 2018, one of the brightest X-ray lights in the sky went dark, and scientists still aren't sure why.
> 
> The black hole responsible for creating the lights-out mystery lives in GRS 1915+105, a star system 36,000 light-years from Earth containing both a normal star and the second-heaviest known black hole in the Milky Way. That heavyweight is 10 to 18 times the mass of the sun and second in mass only to Sagittarius A* (or SgrA*), the supermassive black hole in the galactic center.


----------



## 2twenty2

Galaxy-Size Gravitational-Wave Detector Hints at Exotic Physics

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...tional-wave-detector-hints-at-exotic-physics/


----------



## ekim68

Tianwen1 probe sends back its first picture of Mars



> China's Tianwen-1 probe has sent back its first picture of Mars, the Chinese space agency has said, as the mission prepares to touch down later this year.
> 
> The spacecraft, launched in July around the same time as a US mission, is expected to enter Mars orbit around 10 February.


----------



## ekim68

A good read.. 

The Uncensored Guide To 'Oumuamua, Aliens, And That Harvard Astronomer


----------



## ekim68

NASA offers foodies, boffins $500,000 to find ways for astronauts to make their own dinners on the Moon, Mars



> NASA has teamed up with the Canadian Space Agency to launch a competition to challenge foodies and engineers to design new food production systems that will feed future astronauts exploring the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
> 
> Far away from the lush lands of terra firma where fresh fruit, vegetables, and animals for meat are grown, the men and women on the International Space Station survive on sometimes unpalatable freeze-dried packets typically delivered by cargo spacecraft. Space may be fun and all, but the food there sucks.


----------



## ekim68

Cold gas cloud in our galaxy could be hiding universe's missing matter



> By studying the twinkling of stars, astronomers in Australia have discovered a huge cloud of cold gas in our galaxy, not far from Earth. This invisible mass could provide new hints about where to find the universe's missing matter.


----------



## ekim68

Dark energy instrument snaps breathtaking image of galactic neighbor



> Astronomers have captured a stunning image of one of the Milky Way's neighboring spiral galaxies. The portrait was taken using an instrument that was first created to hunt down dark energy - the enigmatic, invisible force that may be responsible for accelerating the expansion of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

10 Space Pictures That Look So Good You Won't Believe They're Real



> Just say no to artist's illustrations. This is what the Universe actually looks like.


https://medium.com/@startswithabang...-b4d630bfa198--------------------------------


----------



## ekim68

There's a tantalizing sign of a habitable-zone planet in Alpha Centauri



> An international team of astronomers has found signs that a habitable planet may be lurking in Alpha Centauri, a binary star system a mere 4.37 light-years away. It could be one of the closest habitable planet prospects to date, although it's probably not much like Earth if it exists.





> Proxima Centauri is orbited by two planets, one of which (Proxima b) seems be an Earth-size exoplanet in the habitable zone (the region of a star's orbit where liquid water can form on the surface). But Proxima b is thought to be tidally locked and inundated by stellar winds, which means it's unlikely to be habitable.


----------



## ekim68

Smoking gun of rare "zombie star" supernova discovered in Milky Way 



> Astronomers have identified the remains of a rare type of supernova in our home galaxy for the first time. These events, known as Type Iax supernovae, occur when white dwarfs explode and may leave behind a "zombie star."
> 
> Not all supernovae are created equal. Some occur when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse into a neutron star or black hole. Others are produced by white dwarf stars that slurp too much material off a companion star, triggering runaway nuclear fusion. The latter is known as a Type Ia supernova, and the brightness they emit is so consistent that they've been dubbed "standard candles" and used as yardsticks to measure distance in the cosmos.


----------



## ekim68

A good place to visit these next few years....

Mars Rover


----------



## ekim68

Hubble spots swarm of small black holes in nearby cluster



> A team of astronomers using Hubble to hunt for an elusive type of black hole have stumbled onto an even weirder scene. In the center of a nearby globular cluster, Hubble discovered what looks like a whole gang of small black holes being uncharacteristically chummy.


----------



## ekim68

NASA is about to send the ultimate valentine to Mars with Perseverance rover landing



> NASA has a very special Valentine's Day delivery en route to the Red Planet - one that could deliver presents to us in person, in a few years.
> 
> About once every decade, the agency sends out a seminal Mars landing mission to learn more about our potentially habitable neighbor. Its latest effort is the powerful Perseverance rover, ready for touchdown on Thursday, Feb. 18. (Bonus Valentine for you: You can watch the landing live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, and participate in a virtual NASA Social event as well.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists narrow down the 'weight' of dark matter



> The new estimate helps pin down how heavy its particles could be - with implications for what the mysterious stuff actually is.
> 
> The research sharply narrows the potential mass of dark matter particles, from between an estimated 10^minus 24 electronvolts (eV) and 10^19 Gigaelectron volts (GeV) , to between 10^minus 3 eV and 10^7eV - a possible range of masses many trillions of trillions of times smaller than before.


----------



## ekim68

ExoMars Discovers New Gas And Traces Water Loss On Mars



> A major quest in Mars exploration is hunting for atmospheric gases linked to biological or geological activity, as well as understanding the past and present water inventory of the planet, to determine if Mars could ever have been habitable and if any water reservoirs could be accessible for future human exploration.
> 
> Two new results from the ExoMars team published today in Science Advances unveil an entirely new class of chemistry and provide further insights into seasonal changes and surface-atmosphere interactions as driving forces behind the new observations.


----------



## RT

Perseverance rover has successfully landed on Mars and sent back its first images



> The NASA Perseverance rover safely landed on Mars after its 292.5 million-mile journey from Earth, the agency confirmed at 3:55 p.m. ET Thursday. The rover landed itself flawlessly, according to the mission's team.


  🎯 🖖


----------



## ekim68

Linux Is Now on Mars, Thanks to NASA's Perseverance Rover



> Previous NASA Mars rovers mostly used an operating system from Wind River Systems. But this time, the space agency chose Linux for Perseverance's Ingenuity helicopter drone.


----------



## ekim68

The first black hole ever discovered is more massive than we thought



> Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes when he published his theory of general relativity in 1916, describing how gravity shapes the fabric of spacetime. But astronomers didn't spot one until 1964, some 6,070 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation. Geiger counters launched into space detected cosmic x-rays coming from a region called Cygnus X-1. (We now know the cosmic rays are produced by black holes. Back then, scientists disagreed about what it was: Stephen Hawking famously bet physicist Kip Thorne that this signal was not from a black hole, but he conceded in 1990.)
> 
> Now, some 57 years later, scientists have learned that the black hole at Cygnus X-1 is much more massive than first believed-forcing us to once again rethink how black holes form and evolve. This time, the observations were taken from Earth's surface.


----------



## MakeTopSite

ekim68 said:


> Linux Is Now on Mars, Thanks to NASA's Perseverance Rover


Thank you, that's interesting. Anyone know please which Linux distribution is used ?


----------



## ekim68

NASA will unveil dramatic video of the Perseverance rover landing on Mars today. Here's how to watch live.



> The reveal begins at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT).


----------



## ekim68

NASA releases 360-degree panorama of Perseverance rover landing site



> NASA has released the first HD 360-degree panorama taken by the Perseverance rover's mast-mounted cameras since it touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021 . The composite image, which was captured on the third Martian day of the mission (Sol 3), is the first of many that the rover will take as it unravels the secrets still harbored by the Red Planet.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> NASA will unveil dramatic video of the Perseverance rover landing on Mars today. Here's how to watch live.


 "Dramatic" seems an understatement!


----------



## ekim68

Cosmologists create 4,000 virtual universes to solve Big Bang mystery



> The goal is to paint a picture of the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, when the observable universe suddenly expanded 1 trillion trillion times in size in the tiniest sliver of a microsecond. By applying the method used for the simulations to real observations of today's universe, researchers hope to arrive at an accurate understanding of what this inflationary period looked like.


----------



## ekim68

Seven Hundred Leagues Beneath Titan's Methane Seas



> What could be more exciting than flying a helicopter over the deserts of Mars? How about playing Captain Nemo on Saturn's large, foggy moon Titan - plumbing the depths of a methane ocean, dodging hydrocarbon icebergs and exploring an ancient, frigid shoreline of organic goo a billion miles from the sun?


----------



## valis

Thats a book I would read...


----------



## ekim68

Invisible "dark matter" stars may explain puzzling gravitational waves



> Last year scientists detected gravitational waves from what appeared to be the most massive black hole collision ever recorded. But now an international team of astrophysicists has proposed an exotic alternative - the data may actually favor a collision between two boson stars, hypothetical objects that would be invisible, incredibly dense and could even help untangle the mystery of dark matter.
> 
> Gravitational waves are ripples in the very fabric of spacetime, produced in some of the most energetic cataclysms in the cosmos - most commonly, collisions between black holes and/or neutron stars. Incredibly precise instruments run by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) pick up these waves as they wash over Earth, and the signals can be analyzed to learn about the masses of the objects involved in the original merger.


----------



## PeterOz

MakeTopSite said:


> Thank you, that's interesting. Anyone know please which Linux distribution is used ?


Most Likely Wind River Wind River Linux


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab's reusable Neutron rocket is built for human spaceflight



> Rocket Lab has made a name for itself in short space of time by focusing on highly frequent launches of small satellites, but now the space startup believes it has bigger fish to fry. The company has today revealed plans for a bigger reusable rocket named Neutron, which it will build to launch astronauts and cargo into low-Earth and possibly far beyond.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Perseverance rover deploys wind sensor on Mars



> Since Perseverance's picture-perfect landing on Feb. 18, the rover team has been methodically checking out its seven science instruments and various subsystems. For example, Perseverance just deployed its wind sensor, as before-and-after photos captured by the six-wheeled robot's navigation cameras show.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomically hard: French stargazers hunt for meteorite the size of apricot



> France's ranks of amateur astronomers have been urged to help find an apricot-size meteorite that fell to Earth last weekend in the south-west of the country.
> 
> The rock, estimated to weigh 150 grams (just over five ounces), was captured plunging through the atmosphere by cameras at an astronomy education facility in Mauraux, and landed at exactly 10.43pm on Saturday near Aiguillon, about 100km (62 miles) from Bordeaux.


----------



## ekim68

Orbital Assembly plans to build Voyager rotating space station in 2026



> California's Orbital Assembly Corporation reckons it will soon have the solar system's first luxury space hotel open in orbit, offering spacewalks, Beyonce concerts and fine dining to space tourists at US$5 million for three and a half days.
> 
> The company plans to take advantage of plummeting space launch costs - which SpaceX's Starship could bring down to a few hundred dollars a kilogram - to build a giant circular space station, some 700 feet (212 m) in diameter, assembled in orbit by semi-autonomous and remote controlled robots. A hub-and-spoke wheel design similar to the ones Wernher Von Braun wrote about in the 1950s, the Voyager Space Station (VSS) would rotate slowly, at one and a quarter revolutions per minute, to provide artificial gravity about as strong as the moon's.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists find most distant quasar shooting powerful radio jets

A newly discovered quasar from the early universe is the most distant found to date that's shooting out powerful radio jets.



> Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) recently discovered the quasar, called P172+18, which is so far away that it takes about 13 billion years for the light from this quasar to reach Earth, where we observe the object as it was when the universe was just 780 million years old. While the new find is not the most distant quasar ever detected, it appears to be the most distant radio-loud quasar, or radio jet-emitting quasar.


----------



## ekim68

Blue Origin's spinning New Shepard capsule to simulate lunar gravity 



> For NASA and anyone else developing technologies for use on the Moon, opportunities to test them out beforehand in lunar-like conditions are rather limited. A newly announced upgrade to Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket system will serve as a new type of testbed for these efforts, offering minutes of simulated lunar gravity by spinning through suborbital space.
> 
> New Shepard is Blue Origin's commercial rocket system designed to carry cargo and tourists into suborbital space, and in January this year completed its 14th test flight. This included the first flight of an upgraded crew capsule complete with a dummy astronaut onboard, and successful landings for both the booster and capsule.


----------



## ekim68

My new favorite phrase in this article:


> leptophilic gravity portals


 

'Gravity portals' could morph dark matter into ordinary matter, astrophysicists propose



> Astrophysicists have an idea that could help to solve two mysteries: the reason for the bizarre abundance of super-high-energy radiation shooting from the center of our galaxy and the identity of invisible stuff called dark matter that has perplexed the world since its discovery some 50 years ago.
> 
> And the idea has a super-cool name: gravity portals. The idea goes, when two dark matter particles (whatever they are) get sucked into one of these portals, they obliterate each other and spit out shockingly strong gamma rays.


----------



## ekim68

How fast is the universe expanding? Galaxies provide one answer



> Among the methods astronomers have found to measure the expansion rate of the local universe, the Hubble constant, surface brightness fluctuations is potentially one of the most precise. Scientists have now published the first good SBF estimate of the Hubble constant, pegging it at 73.3 km/s/Mpc: in the ballpark of other measurements of the local expansion, including the gold standard using Type Ia supernovae. The new estimate highlights the mismatch with estimates from the early universe.


----------



## ekim68

10 Surprising Facts About Pi



> But how was this irrational number discovered, and after thousands of years of being studied, does this number still have any secrets? From the number's ancient origins to its murky future, here are some of the most surprising facts about pi. [The 9 Most Massive Numbers in Existence]


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX breaks own record by landing a Falcon 9 rocket for the ninth time



> SpaceX Starlink launches are becoming increasingly routine, but the seventh mission of 2021 to carry a new batch of the company's broadband satellites to orbit also set a new record Sunday morning.
> 
> The Falcon 9 booster blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:01 a.m. PT (6:01 a.m. ET) early Sunday. It sent 60 more orbiting routers to space and in the process nailed a record ninth launch and landing, setting a new standard for rocket recycling.


----------



## ekim68

"Restless" supermassive black hole may be wandering round its galaxy



> Moons orbit planets, planets orbit stars, and stars in galaxies orbit supermassive black holes. And that's more or less where the chain ends, because the super masses involved tend to anchor those black holes in place. But now, researchers have found evidence of one that's on the move within its galaxy.
> 
> As the name suggests, supermassive black holes pack an incredible amount of mass, usually on the order of millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun. As such, they have an incredible influence on the universe, trapping hundreds of millions of stars in orbit around them to form galaxies. Most of the time they're a pretty stationary anchor, but it's been speculated that perhaps some supermassive black holes do get around.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> 10 Surprising Facts About Pi


okay, passed that one on to Nate.....that was cool....


----------



## ekim68

Dark matter or cooling "primordial soup" could create gravitational waves 



> Just a few months ago, scientists reported the detection of very low-frequency gravitational waves. Now a pair of German astrophysicists has investigated two intriguing possible sources - the universe cooling down after the Big Bang, and a field of particles that could be dark matter.


*







*


----------



## ekim68

Most of Mars' missing water may still be there - underground



> Mars may currently be a dusty desert, but that wasn't always the case - a growing body of evidence points to the Red Planet being much bluer in its ancient past. Where all that water went is a key question, and now researchers at JPL and Caltech have put forward a new answer: underground.


----------



## ekim68

Listen to the first audio recordings ever taken on Mars



> We've seen photos and videos of Mars for decades, but now NASA has released the very first audio clips recorded on the Red Planet. The Perseverance playlist includes the sounds of Martian wind, a laser zapping rocks, and the crunch of gravel under the rover's metal wheels.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Mega Moon Rocket Passes Key Test, Readies for Launch\



> The largest rocket element NASA has ever built, the core stage of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, fired its four RS-25 engines for 8 minutes and 19 seconds Thursday at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The successful test, known as a hot fire, is a critical milestone ahead of the agency's Artemis I mission, which will send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a test flight around the Moon and back to Earth, paving the way for future Artemis missions with astronauts.


----------



## ekim68

Plans for the first sustainable city on Mars unveiled



> The new design overall contains five cities - the capital is called Nüwa. The vertical city has homes, offices and green spaces, all built into the side of a cliff to protect inhabitants from atmospheric pressure and radiation.
> 
> The oxygen is largely produced by plants, food is 90 per cent plant-based and the energy comes from solar panels.


----------



## ekim68

A good read.. :up:

 
Skylab: The myth of the mutiny in space



> It's been almost half a century since the three astronauts on board the Skylab 4 space mission famously fell out with mission control. Soon afterwards, reports began to circulate that they went on strike. But Ed Gibson, the only one of the crew still alive, says the idea that they stopped work is a myth.


----------



## ekim68

Titan's largest crater might be the perfect cradle for life



> Saturn's frigid moon Titan has long intrigued scientists searching for life in the Solar System. Its surface is coated in organic hydrocarbons, and its icy crust is thought to cover a watery ocean. An asteroid or comet slamming into the moon could theoretically mix these two ingredients, according to a new study, with the resulting impact craters providing an ideal place for life to get started.


----------



## ekim68

New result from the LHCb experiment challenges leading theory in physics



> The LHCb Collaboration at CERN has found particles not behaving in the way they should according to the guiding theory of particle physics-the Standard Model.
> 
> The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that particles called beauty quarks, which are measured in the LHCb experiment, should decay into either muons or electrons in equal measure. However, the new result suggests that this may not be happening, which could point to the existence of new particles or interactions not explained by the Standard Model.


----------



## ekim68

Part of Wright brothers' 1st airplane on NASA's Mars choppe 



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - A piece of the Wright brothers' first airplane is on Mars.
> 
> NASA's experimental Martian helicopter holds a small swatch of fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, the space agency revealed Tuesday. The helicopter, named Ingenuity, hitched a ride to the red planet with the Perseverance rover, arriving last month.


----------



## ekim68

Detailed image of a black hole's magnetic field may explain how matter fuels powerful jets



> The team that in 2019 brought you the first image of a black hole is now offering a new twist on that iconic view. The thin lines spiraling toward the central black hole shadow in the image above show emissions with different polarizations-the direction in which light waves vibrate. Light is polarized if it passes through a magnetic field, so the spiraling lines point to the twisting magnetic field lines near the black hole's event horizon.


----------



## ekim68

Frosty Sand Dunes of Mars



> A field of sand dunes occupies this frosty 5-kilometer diameter crater in the high-latitudes of the northern plains of Mars. Some dunes have separated from the main field and appear to be climbing up the crater slope along a gully-like form.


----------



## ekim68

Atomic clocks compared with astounding accuracy



> Three atomic clocks based on different atoms have been compared with record accuracy. The findings bring a redefinition of the second a step closer and aid the search for dark matter - an elusive component of the Universe.


----------



## Johnny b

* The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science *

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00733-5


----------



## ekim68

A 'lump' of dark matter may be ripping apart Taurus' face



> The Hyades - a young, V-shaped cluster of stars swooshing through the head of the constellation Taurus - is slowly being ripped apart by an enormous, invisible mass, a new study suggests. This unrest in the bull's head could point to an ancient cache of dark matter left over from the Milky Way's creation, the study authors said.


----------



## ekim68

Exploring the Metal-Rich Asteroid Psyche



> Set to launch next year, NASA's Psyche spacecraft will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.


----------



## ekim68

New study sows doubt about the composition of 70 percent of our universe



> Until now, researchers have believed that dark energy accounted for nearly 70 percent of the ever-accelerating, expanding universe.
> For many years, this mechanism has been associated with the so-called cosmological constant, developed by Einstein in 1917, that refers to an unknown repellant cosmic power.
> 
> But because the cosmological constant-known as dark energy-cannot be measured directly, numerous researchers, including Einstein, have doubted its existence-without being able to suggest a viable alternative.
> 
> Until now. In a new study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, a model was tested that replaces dark energy with a dark matter in the form of magnetic forces.


----------



## ekim68

Antimatter atoms can be precisely manipulated and cooled with lasers



> One of our most precise mechanisms for controlling matter has now been applied to antimatter atoms for the first time. Laser cooling, which slows the motion of particles so they can be measured more precisely, can make antihydrogen atoms slow down by an order of magnitude.


----------



## ekim68

NASA TV to Air First US Commercial Crew Port Relocation on Space Station



> NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts aboard the International Space Station will mark another first for commercial spaceflight Monday, April 5, when the four astronauts will relocate the Crew Dragon spacecraft to prepare for the arrival of new crew members in late April and the upcoming delivery of new solar arrays this summer.
> 
> Live coverage will begin at 6 a.m. EDT on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency's website.


----------



## ekim68

How long would it take to walk around the moon?



> From our vantage point on Earth, the moon looks small. But if you were to hop in a spaceship, don a spacesuit and go on an epic lunar hike, how long would it take to walk all the way around it?
> 
> The answer depends on myriad factors, including how fast you can go, how much time every day you spend walking, and what detours you'll need to take to avoid dangerous topography.


----------



## JCooper121

ekim68 said:


> SpaceX breaks own record by landing a Falcon 9 rocket for the ninth time


UK space company Skyrora also tries to keep up with the leaders of the industry. Skylark Nano rocket is their concept of supersonic reusable rocket that was successfully launched three times. It's an important step towards reducing the launching costs.


----------



## ekim68

Under the world's deepest lake, Baikal telescope being assembled to hunt ghost particles



> A glass orb, the size of a beach ball, plops into a hole in the ice and descends on a metal cable toward the bottom of the world's deepest lake. Then another, and another. These light-detecting orbs come to rest suspended in the pitch-dark depths down as far as 4,000 feet below the surface. The cable carrying them holds 36 such orbs, spaced 50 feet apart. There are 64 such cables, held in place by anchors and buoys, 2 miles off the jagged southern coast of this lake in Siberia with a bottom that is more than 1 mile down.
> 
> This is a telescope, the largest of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere, built to explore black holes, distant galaxies and the remnants of exploded stars.


----------



## ekim68

String theorist Michio Kaku: 'Reaching out to aliens is a terrible idea'

A good interview... :up:


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Mars Helicopter Survives First Cold Martian Night on Its Own

_



Making it through the frigid Martian temperatures after being deployed by NASA's Perseverance rover is a major milestone for the small rotorcraft.

Click to expand...

 _


----------



## ekim68

NASA Invites Public to Take Flight With Ingenuity Mars Helicopter



> NASA is targeting no earlier than Sunday, April 11, for Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's first attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet. To mark a month of Ingenuity flights, the agency will host several events to bring people along for the ride.
> 
> A livestream confirming Ingenuity's first flight is targeted to begin around 3:30 a.m. EDT Monday, April 12, on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency's website, and will livestream on multiple agency social media platforms, including the JPL YouTube and Facebook channels.


----------



## ekim68

Particle mystery deepens, as physicists confirm that the muon is more magnetic than predicted



> A potential ***** in physicists' understanding of fundamental particles and forces now looks more real. New measurements confirm a fleeting subatomic particle called the muon may be ever so slightly more magnetic than theory predicts, a team of more than 200 physicists reported this week. That small anomaly-just 2.5 parts in 1 billion-is a welcome threat to particle physicists' prevailing theory, the standard model, which has long explained pretty much everything they've seen at atom smashers and left them pining for something new to puzzle over.


----------



## ekim68

You have time to plan ahead... 


The Great North American Solar Eclipse of 2024 is just three years away



> Three years from today, on Monday, April 8, 2024, more than half a billion people across North America will likely take a few moments out of their daily routines, and gaze up into the sky to get a view of one of nature's great shows: an eclipse of the sun.


----------



## Johnny b

* Volcanic activity worldwide *

https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/vo...-Fuego-Popocatepetl-Dukono-Reventador-Sa.html

edit:
Webcams:
https://webcams.volcanodiscovery.com/


----------



## ekim68

Are You Confused by Scientific Jargon? So Are Scientists



> Polje, nappe, vuggy, psammite. Some scientists who study caves might not bat an eye, but for the rest of us, these terms might as well be ancient Greek.
> 
> Specialized terminology isn't unique to the ivory tower - just ask a baker about torting or an arborist about bracts, for example. But it's pervasive in academia, and now a team of researchers has analyzed jargon in a set of over 21,000 scientific manuscripts. They found that papers containing higher proportions of jargon in their titles and abstracts were cited less frequently by other researchers. Science communication - with the public but also among scientists - suffers when a research paper is packed with too much specialized terminology, the team concluded.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers detect a bright-blue bridge of stars, and it's about to blow



> Astrophysicists have found a new region of the Milky Way, and it's filled with searingly hot, bright-blue stars that are about to explode.
> 
> The researchers were creating the most detailed map yet of the star-flecked spiral arms of our galactic neighborhood with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia telescope when they discovered the region, which they have named the Cepheus spur, they reported in a new study.


----------



## 2twenty2

Remembering

Yuri Gagarin: First Man in Space
https://www.space.com/16159-first-man-in-space.html

Yuri Gagarin: the spaceman who came in from the cold
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210409-yuri-gagarin-the-spaceman-who-came-in-from-the-cold


----------



## ekim68

Tailor-made light passes through opaque obstacles like they're not there



> Even diffuse objects like clouds or sugar cubes cast shadows, because they're disordered media that scatter light waves. But now, researchers at TU Wien and Utrecht University have found a way to manipulate light waves to pass through, projecting an image on the other side as clearly as if the obstacle wasn't there.
> 
> A disordered medium is essentially a collection of randomly arranged particles, such as a powder, sand, sugar, or even a cloud. When light enters this group of tiny obstacles it will scatter in an incredibly complex way. But theoretically, if you were able to figure out this scattering pattern, it could be possible to manipulate light waves so that they would pass right on through without scattering.
> 
> And now, researchers have managed to do exactly that, using zinc oxide as the scattering medium, with a light source was placed on one side, and a detector on the other.


----------



## ekim68

MEV-2 spacecraft docks with satellite in orbit to extend its life



> Northrop Grumman and its SpaceLogistics LLC subsidiary have made the first successful docking of their robotic service vehicle with a fully operational communications satellite. On April 21, 2021 at 1:34 pm EST, the Mission Extension Vehicle-2 (MEV-2) linked up to the Intelsat 10-02 (IS-10-02) commercial communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,416 mi (36,076 km) above the Earth to begin a five-year life extension mission.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers detect new frequencies from mysterious fast radio bursts



> The mystery of fast radio bursts (FRBs) from space may be a step closer to being solved. Astronomers studying a repeating signal from a nearby galaxy have detected radiation at the lowest frequency of any FRB found so far, providing new potential hints about their origin.
> 
> FRBs are exactly what they sound like - bursts of radio signals that only last milliseconds. Ever since they were first detected over a decade ago, they've poured in from all corners of the sky, with each detection either deepening the mystery or bringing new clues about what might be causing them - or sometimes both at once.


----------



## ekim68

OneWeb, SpaceX satellites dodged a potential collision in orbit



> Two satellites from the fast-growing constellations of OneWeb and SpaceX's Starlink dodged a dangerously close approach with one another in orbit last weekend, representatives from the US Space Force and OneWeb said. It's the first known collision avoidance event for the two rival companies as they race to expand their new broadband-beaming networks in space.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Field Guide to Black Holes



> Thinking about doing some black hole watching the next time you're on an intergalactic vacation, but you're not quite sure where to start? Well, look no further!
> 
> This series of videos shows you everything you need to know. With topics ranging from basic black holes, to fancy black holes, to giant black holes and their companions, you'll be more than ready for your next adventure.


----------



## ekim68

How to watch the Mars helicopter Ingenuity's first flight online



> The first helicopter is expected to attempt the first-ever flight on Mars on Monday (April 19) and you can follow it all online. The flight has been delayed since April 11.
> 
> NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity flight coverage will begins at *6:15 a.m. EDT (1015* GMT) on Monday, with a post-flight press conference at* 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT)*. You can watch that live on Space.com and on this page, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly from NASA Television, the NASA smartphone app, the agency's website and several social media platforms (such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's YouTube and Facebook channels.)


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter succeeds in historic first flight



> Monday, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA's Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT).


----------



## ekim68

New Horizons snaps photo of Voyager 1 from 11 billion miles away 

*







*


----------



## ekim68

A good read.. :up:


Dark matter: What is it, how do we know it's there and will we find it?



> It sounds like science fiction to say there's invisible, undetectable stuff all around us, and it doesn't help that it has the spooky name of dark matter. But there's plenty of evidence that this material is very real. So what exactly is dark matter? How do we know it's there? And how are scientists looking for it?


----------



## ekim68

"Unicorn" may be smallest and closest black hole to Earth



> Astronomers have discovered a black hole that may set a new record or two - it seems to be both the smallest black hole ever detected, and the closest one to Earth found so far.
> 
> Nicknamed The Unicorn, the black hole is located right next to a red giant star called V723 Mon in the constellation of Monoceros. That's only 1,500 light-years from Earth, and the object appears to have a mass just three times that of the Sun.


----------



## ekim68

Perseverance makes oxygen on Mars for the first time *

*


> NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has notched up another first by extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. On April 20, the toaster-sized Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) converted carbon dioxide into about 5.4 grams of oxygen - a process that may one day help astronauts live off the land on the Red Planet.


----------



## ekim68

Ingenuity helicopter makes first controlled horizontal flight on Mars



> NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter made history again today by flying horizontally for the first time. At 5:33 am EDT, the tissue-box-sized rotorcraft lifted off from what's been dubbed "Wright Brother's Field" on the Red Planet and flew for 51.9 seconds before descending safely to the ground.
> 
> Today's flight comes on the heels of Ingenuity's first flight that took place on April 19, as the little helicopter began its 30-day test program. As with the first, the second flight was carried out autonomously due to the minutes-long delay for signals to travel to and from Earth.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX successfully launches astronauts with a re-used Dragon spacecraft for the first time



> SpaceX has another successful human space launch to its credit, after a good takeoff and orbital delivery of its Crew Dragon spacecraft on Friday morning.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers find an exoplanet where an exoplanet shouldn't be



> A team of astronomers has targeted 70 nearby stars to look for such exoplanets, and have just announced a new one: YSES 2b, a giant planet orbiting a star just 360 light years away.
> 
> We've seen some similar to this before, but in this case, this planet is special. For one thing, it's orbiting a star that will one day be very much like the Sun. For another, it's orbiting at least _16.5 billion kilometers_ from the star, a whopping 110 times farther from its star as Earth is from the Sun!


----------



## ekim68

What Do You Call a Bunch of Black Holes: A Crush? A Scream?



> There are pods of whales and gaggles of geese. Now astronomers are wondering which plural term would best suit the most enigmatic entity in the cosmos.


----------



## ekim68

Welcome aboard... 

Coming to the ISS


----------



## ekim68

Mars helicopter Ingenuity goes long distance in 3rd flight on Red Planet



> "Third flight in the history books." officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California wrote on Twitter. "Our #MarsHelicopter continues to set records, flying faster and farther. The space chopper is demonstrating critical capabilities that could enable the addition of an aerial dimension to future missions to Mars & beyond."


----------



## ekim68

The science of spin -- asteroseismologists confirm older stars rotate faster than expected



> In a new study, published in _Nature Astronomy,_ researchers at the University of Birmingham used a different approach to confirm that older stars do, in fact, appear to rotate faster than expected. The team used asteroseismology to calculate how the star is rotating. This relatively new field of study enables scientists to measure the oscillations caused by sound waves trapped inside the star. By measuring the different characteristics of these waves, they can reveal different characteristics of stars, such as their size or age.


----------



## ekim68

15 Magnificent Images from the Hubble Telescope



> On April 24, 1990, the Hubble Telescope hitched a ride aboard the space shuttle _Discovery_ and began its ascent into low-earth orbit, where it has remained ever since, exploring the great unknown and projecting images that have helped scientists and the public at large make better sense of our place in the universe.


----------



## ekim68

New Milky Way map reveals wake of dwarf galaxy on a collision course



> A team has made a few intriguing discoveries in the outermost regions of the Milky Way. The astronomers mapped the fringes of the sparse halo that envelops our home galaxy, and found the wake of a dwarf galaxy pushing through it on its eventual collision course with the Milky Way.
> 
> When picturing the Milky Way, most people think of the spiral disc of stars, but our galaxy extends much further than that. That disc lies at the center of a gigantic spherical halo of hot gas, stretching hundreds of thousands of light-years in all directions. While it still contains a huge number of stars, they're spread out much more thinly than in the disc.


----------



## ekim68

Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life beneath its surface, study finds



> The study, published in the journal _Astrobiology_, looked at the chemical composition of Martian meteorites -- rocks blasted off of the surface of Mars that eventually landed on Earth. The analysis determined that those rocks, if in consistent contact with water, would produce the chemical energy needed to support microbial communities similar to those that survive in the unlit depths of the Earth. Because these meteorites may be representative of vast swaths of the Martian crust, the findings suggest that much of the Mars subsurface could be habitable.


----------



## ekim68

Molecules wrangled into single quantum state in breakthrough experiment



> Quantum technology is bursting with potential, but controlling atoms and molecules keeps proving tricky. In a breakthrough new study, physicists have successfully wrangled thousands of molecules into a single unified quantum state for the first time.
> 
> The key to the new development is a strange state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). When a low density cloud of atoms is cooled to just a hair above absolute zero, they settle into the same quantum state. In essence, they begin to act like one giant atom, which brings hard-to-measure quantum behavior up to the macro scale where it can be observed more easily.


----------



## ekim68

Parker Solar Probe clocks 330,000 mph as the fastest object ever made



> Launched in 2018 on a mission to study the Sun from close proximity, NASA's Parker Solar Probe continues to edge closer and closer to its target, setting one new record after another. The latest came during a close approach today, where the spacecraft exceeded blistering speeds of 330,000 mph (532,000 km/h) as it began its eighth loop of the Sun.
> 
> The car-sized Parker Solar Probe is built to travel closer to the Sun than any spacecraft in history, using a carbon composite heat shield to fend off the star's energy and remain cool in temperatures of nearly 2,500 °F (1,377 °C). The probe will use a suite of onboard instruments to study high-energy solar particles in the Sun's atmosphere to better understand the origin of solar winds, which emanate from our star outwards through the solar system.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Mars helicopter goes farther and faster for dramatic fourth flight



> The "high-risk, high-reward" Ingenuity helicopter is now pouring on the rewards for NASA. It completed its fourth and most ambitious test flight across Mars on Friday.
> 
> NASA JPL tweeted "Success," saying Ingenuity went father and faster than ever before. NASA also shared a nifty image from one of the Perseverance rover's cameras showing the helicopter in flight in the distance.


----------



## ekim68

A 22-Million-Year Journey From the Asteroid Belt to Botswana



> Astronomers reconstructed a space rock's path before it exploded over southern Africa in 2018 and sprinkled the Kalahari with meteorites.


----------



## ekim68

Proxima Centauri shoots out humongous flare, with big implications for alien life



> "The star went from normal to 14,000 times brighter when seen in ultraviolet wavelengths over the span of a few seconds," lead author Meredith MacGregor, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a statement.
> 
> The power of this flare and type of radiation it emitted could change what we know about red dwarfs and the chances of life developing on the planets that orbit them.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX returns 4 astronauts to Earth; rare night splashdown



> SpaceX safely returned four astronauts from the International Space Station on Sunday, making the first U.S. crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.


----------



## ekim68

And more on that... 


Crew-1 Astronauts Safely Splash Down After Space Station Mission


----------



## 2twenty2

Heads up! Debris from Chinese rocket could crash anywhere

https://torontosun.com/news/world/heads-up-debris-from-chinese-rocket-could-crash-anywhere


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launches Starship SN15 rocket and sticks the landing in high-altitude test flight



> SpaceX's SN15 stuck the landing.
> 
> The private spaceflight company's latest Starship prototype aced a high-altitude test flight today (May 5), checking every box from takeoff to touchdown for the first time.


----------



## ekim68

"Recent" volcanic eruption on Mars boosts subsurface life hypothesis



> While there's evidence of volcanic activity in Mars' ancient past, it was presumed to have been quiet for millions of years. But now, orbiters have spotted a large volcanic deposit that appears to be relatively fresh - only about 53,000 years old - which may lend weight to the idea that the Red Planet was recently, or still is, habitable for subsurface microbes.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX might try to fly the first Starship prototype to successfully land a second time



> SpaceX is fresh off a high for its Starship spacecraft development program, but according to CEO Elon Musk, it's already looking ahead to potentially repeating its latest success with an unplanned early reusability experiment. Earlier this week, SpaceX flew the SN15 (i.e. 15th prototype) of its Starship from its development site near Brownsville, Texas, and succeeded in landing it upright for the first time. Now, Musk says they could fly the same prototype a second time, a first for the Starship test and development effort.


----------



## ekim68

And the beat goes on...  (And video link included..)


NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes First One-Way Trip 



> NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter completed its fifth flight on the Red Planet today with its first one-way journey from Wright Brothers Field to an airfield 423 feet (129 meters) to the south. After arrival above its new airfield, Ingenuity climbed to an altitude record of 33 feet (10 meters) and captured high-resolution color images of its new neighborhood before touching down.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists generate the highest-intensity laser pulses ever recorded



> Scientists in South Korea have achieved a major milestone in physics - and one pursued by researchers in the field for decades - by generating a record-breaking ultra-high intensity laser. The pulse intensity of over 1023 W per cm sq is the result of a highly advanced optics system that tightly focused the beam on a minuscule target, and opens up entirely new possibilities in research fields ranging from astrophysics to cancer treatments.


----------



## ekim68

Space junk removal is not going smoothly



> "There is now agreement within the community that the debris environment has reached a 'tipping point' where debris would continue to increase even if all launches were stopped," Kessler says. "It takes an Iridium-Cosmos-type collision to get everyone's attention. That's what it boils down to.... And we're overdue for something like that to happen."


----------



## ekim68

We'll see how close their predictions are...


Plunging back to earth: Chinese rocket set for re-entry



> China says debris from April 29 launch set to land somewhere between longitude 28.38 degrees east and latitude 34.43 degrees north.


----------



## ekim68

And there's this.... 


A huge Chinese rocket will fall to Earth this weekend. Here's how to track it online.



> The Long March 5B booster is expected to come down this weekend.


----------



## ekim68

Huge Chinese rocket booster falls to Earth over Arabian Peninsula



> The Chinese rocket has come down.
> 
> The 23-ton core stage of a Long March 5B booster crashed back to Earth Saturday night (May 8), ending 10 controversial days aloft that captured the attention of the world and started a wider conversation about orbital debris and responsible spacefaring.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launches 60 Starlink satellites in record 10th liftoff (and landing) of reused rocket



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 60 Starlink internet satellites into orbit early Sunday (May 9) and then stuck a landing at sea to cap a record 10th flight for the company's reusable booster.
> 
> The veteran Falcon 9 rocket blasted off before dawn from Space Launch Complex 40 here at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 2:42 a.m. EDT (0642 GMT), marking the company's 14th launch of the year.


----------



## hillelana

lotuseclat79 said:


> Chickens 'One-Up' Humans in Ability to See Color.
> 
> *Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have peered deep into the eye of the chicken and found a masterpiece of biological design.*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> All five cone types are interwoven together in the chicken retina so that all cone types are present throughout the retina, but two cones of the same type are never directly next to each other. (Credit: Joseph Corbo/Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis)
> 
> -- Tom


It's amazing what evolution can accomplish by accident.


----------



## ekim68

Voyager 1 detects plasma "hum" in interstellar space



> More than 40 years after launch, Voyager 1 is still making new discoveries. The latest achievement by the craft is the detection of a faint, plasma "hum," indicating that there may be more activity in interstellar gas than previously thought.
> 
> When it took off in 1977, Voyager 1 was carrying an instrument called the Plasma Wave System (PWS), which measures electron density. The craft used this to study the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, and recorded radio waves coming from the gas and ice giants on its tour of the solar system.
> 
> But it wasn't until it left the solar system that the PWS really earned its keep.


----------



## ekim68

OSIRIS-REx headed back to Earth with "abundance" of asteroid samples 



> NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) robotic deep-space probe is returning from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. On May 10, 2021 at 4:23 pm EDT, the spacecraft began its 2.5-year journey to Earth laden with rock and dust samples as its four high-thrust main engines fired for seven minutes to reach a relative velocity of 600 mph (1,000 km/h).


 *







*


----------



## ekim68

World first: Oblique wave detonation engine may unlock Mach 17 aircraft



> UCF researchers say they've trapped a sustained explosive detonation, fixed in place, for the first time, channeling its enormous power into thrust in a new oblique wave detonation engine that could propel an aircraft up to 17 times the speed of sound, potentially beating the scramjet as a hypersonic propulsion method.


----------



## ekim68

A good read.. 

 The visitors from deep space baffling scientists 



> Astronomers spent decades looking for objects from outside our own solar system. Then two arrived at once. When should we expect the next one? And what can they teach us?


----------



## ekim68

Extraterrestrial Plutonium Atoms Turn Up on Ocean Bottom



> Scientists studying a sample of oceanic crust retrieved from the Pacific seabed nearly a mile down have discovered traces of a rare isotope of plutonium, the deadly element that has been central to the atomic age.
> 
> They say it was made in colliding stars and later rained down through Earth's atmosphere as cosmic dust millions of years ago. Their analysis opens a new window on the cosmos.


----------



## ekim68

China's 1st Mars rover 'Zhurong' lands on the Red Planet



> China just successfully landed its first rover on Mars, becoming only the second nation to do so.
> 
> The Tianwen-1 mission, China's first interplanetary endeavor, reached the surface of the Red Planet Friday (May 14) at approximately 7:11 p.m. EDT (2311 GMT), though Chinese space officials have not yet confirmed the exact time and location of touchdown. Tianwen-1 (which translates to "Heavenly Questions") arrived in Mars' orbit in February after launching to the Red Planet on a Long March 5 rocket in July 2020.


----------



## ekim68

Canso spaceport secures $10.5M, aims for first launch next year



> The company behind a proposed spaceport in Canso, N.S., has secured financing it says will allow it to begin construction on the facility this fall and get its first launch off the ground in 2022.
> 
> Maritime Launch Services is receiving $10.5 million from Toronto investment bank PowerOne Capital Markets.


----------



## ekim68

Highest ever energy light captured by Chinese mountain observatory



> Using an observatory on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, astronomers have spotted the highest energy light ever, gamma ray photons up to 1.4 petaelectronvolts (PeV). They have traced these extreme photons back to a dozen of their likely sources: powerful factories in the Milky Way Galaxy that accelerate charged particles called cosmic rays. The results are challenging theorists' understanding of what these factories are and how they generate such high-energy light.


----------



## ekim68

European startup builds oxygen-making machine for 2025 moon mission



> The oxygen-making machine will rely on the FFC Cambridge process, originally developed in the late 1990s for direct extraction of titanium from titanium oxide, which can be found in nature in the minerals rutile and anatase. The process - named after its inventors George Chen, Derek Fray and Thomas Farthing, and Cambridge University in England where they all worked -uses electrolysis to separate the pure metal from the ore.
> 
> In the lunar environment, the technique will split lunar regolith, which is known to consist of up to 45% oxygen, into metal alloys and pure oxygen. The moon dirt in this process is used as a cathode, the electrode through which an electric current enters the electrolytic cell, releasing oxygen in the process.


----------



## ekim68

Distant star drowns its partner in gas, forming gorgeous 'Necklace Nebula'


----------



## ekim68

First images from China's Tianwen-1 Mars lander released



> The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has released images received from its Tianwen-1 Mars lander. The still and animated images sent from the Red Planet confirm the lander's successful touchdown in the Utopia Planitia region on May 14.
> 
> Though the Tianwen-1 lander carrying the Zhurong rover made an autonomous landing on the Martian surface last week, these are the first images of the landing to be released.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Galactic launches third successful spaceflight



> Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered plane, carrying two pilots, soared into the upper atmosphere on its third mission to reach space Saturday morning.
> 
> The success cues up Virgin Galactic to begin launching paying customers within the next year as the company works to finish its testing campaign at its new headquarters in New Mexico.
> 
> Spaceplane VSS Unity reached an altitude of 55.45 miles, according to the company. The US government recognizes the 50-mile mark as the edge of space.


----------



## ekim68

'Super Flower Blood Moon' webcasts: How to watch the supermoon eclipse of 2021 online



> The full moon on Wednesday (May 26) will be something to behold, as the only total lunar eclipse of 2021 arrives together with the year's biggest "supermoon."
> 
> Skywatchers in much of the world will have a chance to see a slightly larger-than-average full moon temporarily appear red during the so-called "Super Flower Blood Moon." But for those in parts of the world where the eclipse isn't visible - or where clouds foil the view - there will be several free webcasts showing live views of the eclipse online.


----------



## ekim68

Metals found in the atmospheres of comets in and beyond our solar system surprise scientists



> Metal atoms have surprisingly been discovered in the frigid atmosphere of the first known interstellar comet to visit our solar system, a new study finds.
> 
> Astronomers have also detected metal in the cold haloes surrounding comets local to the solar system, which suggest our solar system comets and the interstellar visitor may have similar origins, researchers add.


----------



## ekim68

Gamma rays 10 times more energetic than thought possible detected



> Astronomers have detected the highest-energy light ever seen, streaming in from near the center of the Milky Way. Hundreds of gamma ray signals were detected with ultra-high energies, with the most powerful signals crossing the Peta-electronvolt (PeV) threshold - much higher than thought possible in our galaxy.
> 
> Gamma rays are the most energetic type of electromagnetic radiation, released during extreme events like supernovae, matter-antimatter annihilation, and the activity of objects like pulsars. They're often detected with energies in the Giga-electrovolt (GeV) range, but they've been known to occasionally top the Tera-electronvolt (TeV) mark, which is 1,000 GeV.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists track meteor shower to unusual comet seen every 4,000 years



> Meteor showers are the dazzling result of cometary debris building up along well-worn paths through the solar system, then burning up in Earth's atmosphere as our planet crosses that dust trail.
> 
> It's hard to call a path well-worn when something passes by only once every 3,967 years. But it turns out that type of long-period comet can still be tied to a specific meteor shower, as scientists have done with Comet C/2002 Y1 Juels-Holvorcem and the UY Lyncids shower. The research that connected the long haul ice ball and the shower triples the number of celestial displays that scientists have tied to specific comets that take more than 250 years to orbit the sun.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble tracks five fast radio bursts back to their home galaxies 



> Astronomers are another step closer to solving one of the most intriguing cosmic mysteries of recent times - fast radio bursts (FRBs). A team has now traced five signals to their points of origin within the spiral arms of galaxies, narrowing down the list of suspects behind what causes them.
> 
> Scientists are nothing if not direct, and the name "fast radio burst" leaves little room for misunderstanding: they're bursts of radio signals that last mere milliseconds. Sometimes they repeat on a regular or irregular schedule, while others are one-hit wonders. Since the first detection in 2007, hundreds of FRBs have flooded in from all parts of the sky.


----------



## JCooper121

ekim68 said:


> First images from China's Tianwen-1 Mars lander released
> 
> View attachment 287861


On 22 May, the rover drove into the Mars surface and it was the first drive on the Chinese rover on another planet.


----------



## ekim68

Imaging breakthrough highlights atoms in highest resolution ever 



> Researchers at Cornell University have snapped the clearest images of atoms ever taken. Aided by new noise-reducing algorithms, the images are of such high resolution that, the team says, they almost reach the ultimate limit possible.
> 
> The images were taken of atoms in a praseodymium orthoscandate (PrScO3) crystal, zoomed in 100 million times. The atoms can be clearly seen as bright dots, surrounded by red "clouds", which, according to the researchers, are blurring created by the jiggling of the atoms themselves.


----------



## ekim68

A fun read.. 


10 mind-boggling things you should know about quantum physics



> From the multiverse to black holes, here's your cheat sheet to the spooky side of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

Space station robotic arm hit by orbital debris in 'lucky strike' (video)



> A piece of space junk smacked into the robotic arm on the International Space Station, but near-term operations should not be affected, according to the agencies involved.


----------



## ekim68

NASA selects two new Venus missions to investigate why it's so awful



> Venus should have been Earth's twin, but clearly that's not the case today, with its thick poisonous atmosphere and barren rocky surface. Now, as part of its Discovery Program, NASA has selected two new missions to Venus to investigate where it all went wrong.
> 
> Although it garnered a lot of attention during the early space age, Venus was soon discovered to be a very inhospitable place. The first probes to visit had to contend with clouds of sulfuric acid and the crushing pressures at the surface, which are 92 times stronger than Earth's at sea level. As such, modern space exploration is focused on our more friendly neighbor on the other side, Mars.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Juno to get a close look at Jupiter's moon Ganymede



> The first of the gas-giant orbiter's back-to-back flybys will provide a close encounter with the massive moon after over 20 years.
> 
> On Monday, June 7, at 1:35 p.m. EDT (10:35 a.m. PDT), NASA's Juno spacecraft will come within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of the surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. The flyby will be the closest a spacecraft has come to the solar system's largest natural satellite since NASA's Galileo spacecraft made its penultimate close approach back on May 20, 2000.


----------



## ekim68

How to watch the 'ring of fire' solar eclipse online on June 10



> If you can't catch the next solar eclipse in person, there are several places where you can watch the event live.
> 
> The 2021 "ring of fire" annular solar eclipse on Thursday (June 10) will be partially visible from the United States, northern Canada, Europe, northern Asia, Russia and Greenland, according to Time and Date. Space.com has a detailed guide about how to view the eclipse safely in the United States - make sure never to look at the sun without proper equipment, which is listed in the Space.com article.


----------



## ekim68

Particle seen switching between matter and antimatter at CERN



> A subatomic particle has been found to switch between matter and antimatter, according to Oxford physicists analyzing data from the Large Hadron Collider. It turns out that an unfathomably tiny weight difference between two particles could have saved the universe from annihilation soon after it began.


----------



## ekim68

Relativity Space's reusable Terran R rocket can be 3D-printed in 60 days



> 3D printing has come to play a significant role in modern rocket construction, with key players like Rocket Lab, NASA and SpaceX all leaning on the technology in producing their spacecraft. Startup Relativity Space is now coming to the party with its freshly unveiled Terran R rocket, which it describes as an entirely 3D-printed launch vehicle that can be created from raw materials in 60 days, and which is fully reusable.


----------



## ekim68

Toshiba breaks quantum communication record with 600 km of optical fibers



> A quantum internet could one day allow quantum computers to team up and tackle some gigantic problems. Now the world is a step closer to that reality, as researchers at Toshiba have demonstrated quantum communications sent over a record-breaking 600 km (373 miles) of optical fiber.
> 
> In traditional computers, information is encoded in bits represented as either a zero or one. But in quantum computers, information is encoded in quantum bits (or qubits) that can be either, or both at the same time. That drastically expands their potential computing power, meaning they could tackle problems beyond the scope of regular computers.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers discover dying echoes of a supermassive black hole



> Japanese astronomers have discovered the echoes of a "dying" supermassive black hole. While the object is quiet now, the team spotted the signatures of two huge radio jets that indicate it only recently fell silent after a bright, active phase.
> 
> It's thought that supermassive black holes lurk at the center of most galaxies. Some of them are more outgoing than others - the one at the heart of our own Milky Way, for instance, is pretty calm. But others work overtime, throwing off huge amounts of light and radiation as they chow down on matter. These are known as active galactic nuclei (AGN), or quasars if they're particularly bright.


----------



## ekim68

Mouse sperm thrived despite six years of exposure to space radiation



> The findings suggest that long-term space travelers may still give birth to healthy children


----------



## ekim68

China's Zhurong Mars rover takes a selfie


----------



## ekim68

First view of Nasa's assembled 'megarocket'



> Nasa has assembled the first of its powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rockets, which will carry humans to the Moon this decade.
> 
> On Friday, engineers at Florida's Kennedy Space Center finished lowering the 65m (212ft) -tall core stage in-between two smaller booster rockets.
> 
> It's the first time all three key elements of the rocket have been together in their launch configuration.


----------



## ekim68

"Rogue planet" exomoons could potentially harbor water and life



> Contrary to popular belief, not all planets orbit stars - some drift freely through the cosmos on their own. These cold, dark worlds don't make great candidates for hosting life, but a new study suggests that their moons could be more habitable than they might seem.


----------



## ekim68

Scientist map the boundary of interstellar space for the first time



> As a massive bubble encasing the solar system that stretches across tens of billions of miles and protects us from harmful interstellar radiation, there is a lot for us to learn about the heliosphere. Scientists have uncovered some new details around this complex patch of the universe, by producing the first ever map of its boundary, where solar winds are brought to a stop by the interstellar medium.
> 
> The groundbreaking map was produced by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), who tapped into a decade's worth of data collected over an entire solar cycle between 2009 and 2019. This intel was gathered by NASA's Earth-orbiting Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) satellite, which was launched in 2008 with the intention of studying the interactions between the interstellar medium and solar winds that emanate outwards from the Sun at up to one million mph (1.6 million km/h).


----------



## ekim68

World's first wooden satellite to launch later this year



> A first-of-a-kind spacecraft is set to make history later this year, but will do so using materials you could find at your local hardware store. The world's first wooden satellite will enter orbit as a box made largely of birch plywood, which will be packed with sensors from the European Space Agency (ESA) to study the potential of the material in space.


----------



## ekim68

Mushballs and a Great Blue Spot: What Lies Beneath Jupiter's Pretty Clouds



> NASA's Juno probe is beginning an extended mission that may not have been possible if it hadn't experienced engine trouble when it first arrived at the giant planet.


----------



## ekim68

The light galaxy at the heart of a dark dispute 



> Dark matter is considered the glue that holds galaxies together - but a few years ago, a team of astronomers claimed to have found a galaxy that didn't have any. Other scientists later argued it was a calculation error, but now the original team has used Hubble to make more robust observations and confirm their findings.


----------



## ekim68

'Divine Vessel' rocket launches China's first human spaceflight since 2016



> JIUQUAN, China - A Chinese rocket blasted off from a launch pad in the Gobi Desert on Thursday, sending three astronauts on a historic mission to an orbiting space station China is building.
> 
> Fire and huge clouds of dust could be seen in the distance when the Long March-2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-12 capsule roared away from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, as China's space race with the United States and Russia continues to gather pace.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Struggles to Fix Failure of Hubble Space Telescope's 1980s Computer



> NASA continues to work on resolving an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope. The operations team will be running tests and collecting more information on the system to further isolate the problem. The science instruments will remain in a safe mode state until the issue is resolved. The telescope itself and science instruments remain in good health.





> The payload computer is a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) system built in the 1980s that is located on the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit. The computer's purpose is to control and coordinate the science instruments and monitor them for health and safety purposes.


----------



## ekim68

Extremely eccentric minor planet to visit inner solar system this decade



> The outskirts of our solar system is teeming with mysterious objects - and now one of them is heading our way. Astronomers have discovered a minor planet that's about to make its closest pass to the Sun on its 600,000-year orbit.
> 
> The object in question is designated 2014 UN271, and it was only recently identified in data from the Dark Energy Survey captured between 2014 and 2018. Size estimates place it anywhere between 100 and 370 km (62 and 230 miles) wide. If it's a comet, it's quite a big one, especially for one coming from the outer solar system.


----------



## ekim68

15 Intriguing Facts About the Antikythera Mechanism



> The mysterious Antikythera mechanism, an unusual artifact found in an ancient Greek shipwreck, has intrigued archaeologists, classicists, historians, and the public for decades. Here are 15 facts about the strange object, sometimes called "the world's first computer."


----------



## ekim68

Is dark matter real, or have we misunderstood gravity?



> For many years now, astronomers and physicists have been in a conflict. Is the mysterious dark matter that we observe deep in the Universe real, or is what we see the result of subtle deviations from the laws of gravity as we know them? In 2016, Dutch physicist Erik Verlinde proposed a theory of the second kind: emergent gravity. New research, published in _Astronomy & Astrophysics_ this week, pushes the limits of dark matter observations to the unknown outer regions of galaxies, and in doing so re-evaluates several dark matter models and alternative theories of gravity. Measurements of the gravity of 259,000 isolated galaxies show a very close relation between the contributions of dark matter and those of ordinary matter, as predicted in Verlinde's theory of emergent gravity and an alternative model called Modified Newtonian Dynamics. However, the results also appear to agree with a computer simulation of the Universe that assumes that dark matter is 'real stuff'.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> 15 Intriguing Facts About the Antikythera Mechanism


That thing has always fascinated me.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists might have spotted tectonic activity inside Venus



> Venus might be hell, but don't call it a dead planet. Amid surface temperatures of up to 471 °C and surface pressures 100 times greater than those on Earth, new research suggests the planet might still be geologically active. That's encouraging news to people who think it could once have hosted life (or that it might still be able to).


----------



## ekim68

ekim68 said:


> NASA Struggles to Fix Failure of Hubble Space Telescope's 1980s Computer


More on this...


Operations Underway to Restore Payload Computer on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope


----------



## ekim68

Roll up, roll up! Get your tickets for the great space balloon ride



> Cape Canaveral's Space Perspective has officially started selling tickets for the highest balloon ride of them all: a six-hour floating journey to the edge of space, where you can watch the sunrise. At US$125,000 a seat, flights start in 2024.
> 
> Your ride is the Spaceship Neptune, which we first heard about last year. It's a pressurized (and hopefully well heated) capsule hanging from an "advanced spaceballoon" the size of a football stadium - presumably something even larger than the Big 60 zero-pressure scientific balloon NASA launched in September 2018.


----------



## ekim68

Boeing's Starliner capsule gears up for second attempt to reach ISS 



> An advanced spacecraft under development by Boeing is set to swing back into action, following a failed attempt to reach the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019. The Starliner capsule is undergoing final preparations ahead of a launch next week, which is hoped to demonstrate its ability to ferry astronauts to and from the orbiting laboratory ahead of crewed flights planned for later in the year.


----------



## ekim68

Oh yeah, about the laundry... 


P & G and NASA team up to tackle astronauts' dirty space laundry 



> Procter & Gamble, through its Tide brand, is working with NASA to develop special detergents and washing machines to launder clothes in space. Under a Space Act Agreement, the company's Mission PGTide (P&G Telescience Investigation of Detergent Experiments) will test detergent and other cleaning products aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2022.
> 
> Doing the laundry is a chore that most people take for granted, but for astronauts in space it is an unheard of luxury.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Galactic receives FAA approval to carry passengers into space 



> Virgin Galactic has made history, becoming the first spaceliner to be certified by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to carry passengers on its spaceplanes. The adjustment of the operator's license held by the company since 2016 comes as Virgin Galactic prepares for its last three test flights, including the first fully crewed test flight in the coming months.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX aims to launch first orbital Starship flight in July, company president says



> Elon Musk's SpaceX is "shooting for July" to launch the first orbital spaceflight of its Starship rocket, company president Gwynne Shotwell said Friday.


----------



## ekim68

Mars helicopter takes it to the limit with more groundbreaking flights



> Where are you now, Mars Ingenuity helicopter? While it seems like the little chopper has been quiet, it turns out that Ingenuity has aced more of its flights -- and even got a software update to fix an annoying issue that impacted some of its previous outings.
> The 4-pound helicopter has successfully flown eight times on Mars as of June 21, according to an update from Teddy Tzanetos, the helicopter operations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.


----------



## ekim68

China's Zhurong rover returns landing footage and sounds from Mars



> China has released landing process footage from its Zhurong rover as well as video and sounds of the vehicle roving on Mars.
> 
> Footage of the entry, descent and landing shows deployment of a supersonic disk-gap-band parachute, separation of the backshell, followed by powered descent, a hazard-avoidance hover phase, and landing.


----------



## ekim68

A Black Hole Feasted on a Neutron Star. 10 Days Later, It Happened Again.



> Astronomers had long suspected that collisions between black holes and dead stars occurred, but they had no evidence until a pair of recent detections.


----------



## ekim68

And more on that...


Gravitational wave trifecta completed as black holes eat neutron stars



> Detecting gravitational waves from collisions between two black holes or two neutron stars is becoming almost mundane, but now astronomers have detected the final piece of the trifecta - a black hole swallowing a neutron star. Two separate events rolled in just days apart, with the black holes gobbling up the stars like Pac-Man rather than Cookie Monster.
> 
> Gravitational waves are ripples in the very fabric of spacetime itself, caused by some of the most energetic cataclysms in the universe, such as collisions between massive objects like black holes and neutron stars. More than 50 of these events have been detected since the Nobel Prize-winning first detection in 2015.


----------



## ekim68

ESA uses spacecraft "housekeeping" data to measure cosmic rays 



> By studying the logs of computer malfunctions caused by high-energy particles striking their circuitry, ESA scientists have used "housekeeping" data from the Rosetta and Mars Express deep-space probes to shed new light on cosmic rays in the solar system.
> 
> The Earth is constantly being bombarded by high-energy particles popularly known as cosmic rays that are streaming in from the outside the solar system. We're not troubled by them on the surface because the Earth is protected by its atmosphere and magnetic field, but they can be a serious hazard to space missions, especially ones that travel beyond low-Earth orbit.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Self-Driving Perseverance Mars Rover 'Takes the Wheel'



> NASA's newest six-wheeled robot on Mars, the Perseverance rover, is beginning an epic journey across a crater floor seeking signs of ancient life. That means the rover team is deeply engaged with planning navigation routes, drafting instructions to be beamed up, even donning special 3D glasses to help map their course.
> 
> But increasingly, the rover will take charge of the drive by itself, using a powerful auto-navigation system. Called AutoNav, this enhanced system makes 3D maps of the terrain ahead, identifies hazards, and plans a route around any obstacles without additional direction from controllers back on Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Smallest, densest white dwarf ever packs 1.3 Suns into the Moon 



> Astronomers have discovered the smallest but most massive white dwarf ever found: the tiny star is only about the size of our Moon, but packs in more mass than the Sun. That means it's approaching the theoretical limit of what's possible without exploding.


----------



## ekim68

The motions of 66 nearby galaxies have now been reliably measured. Not stars. *Galaxies*. 



> Everything in space moves.
> 
> Planets orbit stars, moons circle planets, stars orbit inside galaxies. Even galaxies themselves - those immense structures of billions of stars, gas clouds, dark matter, and dust - all move through space, their trajectories determined by the force of gravity of other galaxies around them.


----------



## ekim68

CRISPR gene-editing tested in space for first time in DNA damage study



> The CRISPR gene-editing tool has been successfully used in space for the first time. Researchers onboard the International Space Station have edited colonies of yeast to study how they repair DNA damage, which could be the first steps towards finding ways to protect astronauts against the radiation of space.


----------



## ekim68

A 'strange signal' is coming from the Milky Way. What's causing it?



> On April 28, 2020, two ground-based radio telescopes detected an intense pulse of radio waves. It only lasted a mere millisecond but, for astonished astronomers, it was a major discovery, representing the first time a fast radio burst (FRB) had ever been detected so close to Earth.
> 
> Located just 30,000 light-years from our planet, the event was firmly within the Milky Way, and it was, to all intents and purposes, almost impossible to miss.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope passes key review ahead of fall launch



> NASA's next big space telescope just took a big step forward toward its planned launch this fall.
> 
> The $9.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope mission has passed a key launch review, keeping it on track to lift off atop an Ariane 5 rocket before the end of the year, European Space Agency (ESA) officials announced last week.


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre star may have been forged in a gigantic "hypernova" 



> A bizarre star may have its origins in one of the most energetic events in the cosmos. Astronomers have found that a star with a very unusual composition may have formed in the wake of a new type of hypernova - a stellar explosion with 10 times the energy of a supernova.
> 
> The story starts with a star designated SMSS J200322.54-114203.3, which lies in the halo of the Milky Way about 7,500 light-years away. It seems to be extremely old - a member of only the second-ever generation of stars born in the universe, dating back around 13 billion years.


----------



## ekim68

Europe will launch a new two-handed robotic arm to the International Space Station soon



> The robot resembles a pair of compasses with two symmetrical arms, each a little over 16 feet (5 meters) long. Fitted with a dexterous hand at the end of each arm, ERA will be able to move freely outside of the space station, attaching itself wherever it's needed, ESA said in a statement.


----------



## valis

https://gizmodo.com/an-estimated-1-billion-sea-creatures-cooked-to-death-in-1847244037

Yikes. But remember, climate change is fake news.


----------



## ekim68

Wow..... That's incredible... There's not gonna be a 'Normal' way of life anymore.. :down:


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Wow..... That's incredible... There's not gonna be a 'Normal' way of life anymore.. :down:


Its bizarre. I reckoned my son would see this, didnt think I would. Its definitely accelearating. Stay safe up there my friend.


----------



## ekim68

NASA, Northrop Grumman Finalize Moon Outpost Living Quarters Contract



> NASA and Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, have finalized a contract to develop the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) for Gateway, which will be a critical way station and outpost in orbit around the Moon as part of NASA's Artemis program.
> NASA and its commercial and international partners are building Gateway to support science investigations and enable surface landings at the Moon, which will help prepare astronauts for future missions to Mars.


----------



## ekim68

Teardrop-shaped star is driving another to go supernova 



> Supernovae usually appear suddenly in the sky, but now astronomers have spotted one in advance. The telltale sign is a star with a "teardrop" shape, as it gets stretched out by the gravitational pull of a companion.


*







*


----------



## valis

Okay that is cool....and here I am worrying about my gas mileage....makes one humble tell you what...


----------



## ekim68

Wow... 


Individual isotopes measured in exoplanet atmosphere for first time



> Astronomers have counted the number of neutrons inside carbon atoms from 2.8 quadrillion km away. The team managed to measure the ratios of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time, which can tell us about how it formed.


----------



## ekim68

NASA revives ailing Hubble Space Telescope with switch to backup computer



> The Hubble Space Telescope has powered on once again! NASA was able to successfully switch to a backup computer on the observatory on Friday (July 16) following weeks of computer problems.


----------



## ekim68

China launches secretive suborbital vehicle for reusable space transportation system



> China conducted a clandestine first test flight of a reusable suborbital vehicle Friday as a part of development of a reusable space transportation system.
> 
> The vehicle launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center Friday and later landed at an airport just over 800 kilometers away at Alxa League in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced.


----------



## ekim68

10 wild theories about the universe



> Why is the universe the way it is? Scientists have explored many ways to explain the cosmos, leading to some crazy-sounding ideas.


----------



## ekim68

Event Horizon Telescope snaps close-up of supermassive black hole jets



> Astronomers have taken a close-up image of a radio jet emitted by a supermassive black hole for the first time. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has zoomed in on this jet with 16 times the resolution and at 10 times higher frequencies than previous observations to learn more about this strange phenomenon.
> 
> By name and nature, black holes are pretty much invisible, but they can reveal themselves through the extreme environment they create. As they suck in dust and gas, this material heats up and glows in a disc, creating a bright background on which the silhouette of the black hole can be seen.


----------



## ekim68

The sky is filled with rivers of darkness



> Oh, certainly, if you happen to see the Milky Way stretched out above you as well it looks fuzzy, like a stream of milk that gives our galaxy its name (and even gives us the very word galaxy). But that's an illusion of sorts, the combined light of billions of individual stars too dim to see on their own. Even that just affirms the stellar predominance.
> 
> But while your eyes whisper lies, the sky tells the truth: There is more in the heavens above Earth than you have dreamt of. The sky is filled with dust.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers snap image of moon-forming disk surrounding an alien world



> Astronomers have captured the first clear images of a colossal moon-forming debris disk orbiting a distant alien planet. According to the authors of the new study, the disk has enough material to create three astronomical bodies the size of Earth's Moon.


----------



## ekim68

Mars InSight reveals first crust-to-core snapshot of Red Planet



> NASA's Mars InSight has provided … well, insight, into the inner workings of the Red Planet. By monitoring "marsquakes" over the past two years the instrument has allowed scientists to measure the thickness and composition of Mars' crust, mantle and core, revealing some surprises.
> 
> While InSight has so far detected 733 marsquakes in its two-year mission, the new studies focused on 35 of those quakes, all registering magnitudes between 3.0 and 4.0. That means they constitute some of the most powerful Mars has to offer - although they might sound pretty minor compared to what Earth is capable of.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Mars helicopter soars past 1-mile mark in 10th flight over Red Planet



> NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has flown its first mile on the Red Planet.
> 
> The small chopper surpassed the 1-mile (1.6 km) mark of its total flight distance on Saturday (July 24) when soared over a rocky region called "Raised Ridges" at its Jezero Crater home. The sortie was the 10th and highest trip yet for Ingenuity, which arrived on Mars with NASA's Perseverance rover in February. Ingenuity's first flight occurred in April.


----------



## RT

Rather late in posting this, but on July 20 2021, marking an anniversary of mankind's first step on the moon in 1969 - another milestone in space flight was achieved:
The youngest and oldest astronauts went to space and back again.

18 year old fellow and 82 year old woman makes history


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza just flew (safely) by Earth



> On its closest approach, the near-Earth asteroid, called 2008 GO20, swung within 2.8 million miles (4.5 million kilometers) of our blue marble. It flew at a whopping 18,000 mph (nearly 29,000 km/h), according to news reports.


----------



## ekim68

Russia discards Pirs docking port to clear way for new space station module



> It's been part of the International Space Station for nearly 20 years.


----------



## ekim68

NASA taps SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to launch Jupiter moon mission



> Jupiter's unusual icy moon Europa may be one of the best spots in the solar system to check for signs of alien life. But first we have to get there. NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will get a boost in the right direction from a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, one of the most powerful rockets ever built.


----------



## ekim68

50 Years Ago, NASA Put a Car on the Moon



> The lunar rovers of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 parked American automotive culture on the lunar surface, and expanded the scientific range of the missions' astronaut explorers.


----------



## ekim68

New exotic matter particle, a tetraquark, discovered



> Today, the LHCb experiment at CERN is presenting a new discovery at the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS-HEP). The new particle discovered by LHCb, labeled as Tcc+, is a tetraquark-an exotic hadron containing two quarks and two antiquarks. It is the longest-lived exotic matter particle ever discovered, and the first to contain two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks.


----------



## ekim68

Eternal Change for No Energy: A Time Crystal Finally Made Real



> Like a perpetual motion machine, a time crystal forever cycles between states without consuming energy. Physicists claim to have built this new phase of matter inside a quantum computer.


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab returns to service with "flawless" launch for U.S. military  



> Resuming launches after a mission failure two months ago, Rocket Lab successfully placed a small U.S. military research and development satellite into orbit Thursday following a fiery liftoff from New Zealand on a flight that was originally supposed to launch from the company's new pad in Virginia.


----------



## ekim68

2 Red Objects Were Found in the Asteroid Belt. They Shouldn't Be There.



> Two red things are hiding in a part of the solar system where they shouldn't be.
> 
> Scientists led by Sunao Hasegawa from JAXA, the Japanese space agency, reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on Monday that two objects spotted in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter appear to have originated beyond Neptune. The discoveries could one day provide direct evidence of the chaos that existed in the early solar system.


----------



## ekim68

Space station situation with Russian module misfire more serious than stated: report



> Last week, a Russian module accidentally pushed the International Space Station out of place. Now, a NASA flight director has revealed that the event was more serious than NASA initially reported.


----------



## valis

That mission has been a mess since jump.


----------



## ekim68

Venus will receive two visitors from Earth next week



> Next week, two deep-space probes will make flybys of Venus within 30 hours of each other on their way to the inner reaches of the solar system. On August 9, the Solar Orbiter will pass by the planet often called "Earth's twin", followed by the BepiColombo Mercury orbiter on August 10.


----------



## ekim68

This is the best time all year to see the ringed magnificence of Saturn



> On Sunday night, August 1, the incredible beauty that is Saturn will be the closest it gets to Earth all year.
> 
> At that time it will be about 1,336,700,000 kilometers from Earth. That's still a long way - space is big, hence its name - but the planet will look incredible and gorgeous even through a small telescope.


----------



## ekim68

V404 Cygni: Huge rings around a black hole



> This image features a spectacular set of rings around a black hole, captured using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The X-ray images of the giant rings reveal information about dust located in our galaxy, using a similar principle to the X-rays performed in doctor's offices and airports.


----------



## ekim68

Musk: 'Dream come true' to see fully stacked SpaceX Starship rocket during prep for orbital launch



> Elon Musk's SpaceX stacked a Starship prototype rocket on top of a Super Heavy rocket booster for the first time Friday morning, giving a look at the scale of the combined nearly 400-foot-tall vehicle.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Dragonfly to search Titan for life - Earth-like or otherwise 



> Saturn's moon Titan is one of the most intriguing places in the solar system, so much so that NASA is planning to send a rotorcraft there in the mid 2030s. Now the science team behind this Dragonfly mission has outlined its science goals and objectives, with the search for signs of life high on the list.


----------



## ekim68

Peek inside NASA's starchitect-designed condo for Mars



> What is it like to live in Mars? NASA is in the midst of recruiting four volunteers to find out during a year-long simulation at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The selected crew members will move into Mars Dune Alpha, a starchitect-designed habitat touted to be "the highest-fidelity simulated habitat ever constructed" for living on the red planet.


----------



## ekim68

Saturn's insides are sloshing around



> A new paper suggests Saturn's core is more like a fluid than a solid, and makes up more of the planet's interior than we thought.


----------



## ekim68

Never-before-detected gravitational waves hint at dark matter 



> A new type of gravitational wave detector running in Western Australia has recorded two rare events that might be signals of dark matter or primordial black holes. These high-frequency gravitational waves are beyond the range of most detectors and have never been recorded before.
> 
> Gravitational waves are ripples in the very fabric of spacetime, first predicted by Einstein over a century ago but not directly detected until 2015. In the years since, dozens of detections have been made, mostly by facilities like LIGO, which can detect waves with frequencies between 7 kHz and 30 Hz. That's in the range for waves produced by cataclysmic events like black holes and neutron stars colliding.


----------



## ekim68

Say hi to Hycean worlds, a new class of exoplanet that could host life 



> More than 4,400 exoplanets have been discovered to date, and in the hunt for whether there may be life out there most of our attention has been focused on Earth-like worlds. But now, astronomers have defined a new class of exoplanet called "Hycean" worlds that could be a promising place to find signs of life.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope completes its final testing phase



> We don't want to count our chickens just yet, but it looks like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) might actually launch in October, for real this time. The perennially delayed instrument has completed its final tests and is now being prepped for shipment to the launch facility.
> 
> Originally due to launch in 2007, the JWST underwent a drastic redesign and was given a new launch window of between 2015 and 2018. That later slipped to June 2019, then May 2020, then March 2021, and most recently to October 2021, thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Not to jinx it, but it's looking like this latest launch date might actually stick.


----------



## ekim68

Deflecting an Asteroid Before It Hits Earth May Take Multiple Bumps



> At the 84th annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society held in Chicago this month, researchers presented findings from all of that high-powered marksmanship. Their results suggest that whether we're able to knock an asteroid away from our planet could depend on what kind of space rock we're faced with, and how many times we hit it.


----------



## ekim68

Japan Tests Exploding Rocket Engine for the First Time in Space



> Japan's space agency JAXA has announced that is has successfully demonstrated the operation of a "rotary detonation engine" in space, a world's first.
> 
> Such an engine uses a series of controlled explosions that travel around a circular channel at its base. The result is a massive amount of thrust coming from a much smaller engine using significantly less fuel - a potential game changer for deep space exploration, according to JAXA.


----------



## RT

Have a look at these pics, because I'm pretty sure you guys didn't take them, and neither did I 

https://earthsky.org/todays-image/best-milky-way-pics-of-2021/


----------



## ekim68

Astra rocket fails to reach space during test launch for US military



> The third try wasn't the charm for Astra.
> 
> The California Bay Area startup attempted its third orbital test flight today (Aug. 28), sending its two-stage Launch Vehicle 0006 skyward from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Alaska's Kodiak Island at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT). The rocket suffered an anomaly about 2.5 minutes after liftoff, however, and the flight was terminated.


----------



## ekim68

New antimatter trap could help explain why cosmos didn't self-destruct 



> Antimatter is a tricky substance to study, not least because it will annihilate any container you try to put it in. But now, physicists at CERN have developed a new antimatter trap that can cool down samples in seconds, rather than hours. This advance allows scientists to study larger samples for longer, which could help unlock some of the biggest mysteries of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

ELSA-d spacecraft captures "space debris" in orbit for the first time



> Private orbital debris removal company Astroscale has validated its magnetic capture system that is designed to tackle the problem of space debris. Its End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) servicer satellite managed to capture a simulated piece of space debris in orbit for the first time using the system.
> 
> Space debris is a serious and growing problem as popular orbits around the Earth become increasingly cluttered with defunct satellites, boosters, and other flotsam that present the hazard of an increased probability of a bit of debris striking a working spacecraft at hypersonic speeds.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers Successfully Biomine Vanadium Aboard the Space Station



> For centuries, humans have mined materials to build the tools we use every day, from batteries and cell phones to airplanes and refrigerators. While the process of obtaining these important minerals used to rely entirely on heavy machinery, fire, and human labor, scientists have learned how to harness the natural power of microbes to do some of the work.
> 
> This process, called biomining, has become common as a cost efficient and environmentally friendly way to obtain the metals around us in nature. As humans plan expeditions deeper into space, biomining offers a way to obtain needed materials for use on other planetary bodies rather than transporting them from Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Want to find Planet Nine? Here's a treasure map.



> Do you want to be the first person in 175 years to discover a new planet in our solar system?
> 
> Just follow the map.
> 
> Well, it's not all _that_ easy. You'll need a huge telescope, lots of time, and at least some understanding of what you're looking for and why.


----------



## valis

RT said:


> Have a look at these pics, because I'm pretty sure you guys didn't take them, and neither did I
> 
> https://earthsky.org/todays-image/best-milky-way-pics-of-2021/


Whoa.....talk about humbling...some great shots there....


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Perseverance rover drills 1st Mars rock sample for an (eventual) return to Earth



> The second time seems to have been the charm for NASA's Perseverance Mars rover.
> 
> The car-sized robot has likely snagged its first-ever Red Planet sample, apparently socking away a drilled-out core of a rock dubbed "Rochette," mission team members announced Thursday (Sept. 2). They stressed, however, that a bit more data is needed before the sampling run can be conclusively declared a success.


----------



## ekim68

The mysterious troughs on giant asteroid Vesta keep puzzling scientists



> Vesta, a massive world in the solar system's asteroid belt, sports two huge trough features that have long puzzled scientists, and it doesn't look like the mystery will be solved anytime soon, at least not in a new study of the features.
> 
> NASA visited Vesta in 2011 and 2012 with the Dawn spacecraft, which mapped the large asteroid's surface in unprecedented detail.


----------



## ekim68

Radiation could restrict crewed Mars missions to less than four years 



> An international team of scientists has calculated that a crewed mission to Mars should only last a maximum of four years if the astronauts' health isn't to be endangered by prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation.
> 
> Planning a crewed mission to Mars would be one of the most daunting challenges of any exploration attempt ever made by humanity. Every aspect of such a multi-year adventure would have complex impacts on every other factor, producing a constant tug of war as scientists and engineers seek compromises to fulfill mission requirements.


----------



## ekim68

On this date back in 1977 Voyager was launched.... 


Voyager 1 Spacecraft's Road to Interstellar Space: A Photo Timeline


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> On this date back in 1977 Voyager was launched....
> 
> Voyager 1 Spacecraft's Road to Interstellar Space: A Photo Timeline


Pale Blue Dot is one of my all time favorite photos. Cant decide between that and Collins pic with the Apollo LM coming up and Earth in the background.


----------



## valis

But yeah...Voyager is humbling. Isnt it into interstellar space now? And still broadcasting?


----------



## valis

Yup on both. Also never heard of the Deep Space Network.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network


----------



## ekim68

Yep, it's into interstellar space now and haven't we been witnessing some fantastic things during our lifetimes... :up:


----------



## valis

Imagine what our kids and grandkids will see.....👍


----------



## ekim68

More icing on the cake is that Voyager 2 is undergoing diagnosis and repairs while outside the heliophere..


----------



## ekim68

And they're both working on 64 k of memory...


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> And they're both working on 64 k of memory...


Just freaking unbelievable....and Im typing this on a phone with a zillion times that....


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Perseverance Rover Collects First Mars Rock Sample



> NASA's Perseverance rover today completed the collection of the first sample of Martian rock, a core from Jezero Crater slightly thicker than a pencil. Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California received data that confirmed the historic milestone.
> 
> The core is now enclosed in an airtight titanium sample tube, making it available for retrieval in the future.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launch delayed to December



> NASA's long-awaited and high-powered James Webb Space Telescope won't begin observations this year after NASA and its counterpart the European Space Agency (ESA) announced another launch delay.
> 
> In coordinated statements, the two agencies announced that the observatory is now targeting a launch on Dec. 18, more than six weeks after its previously set liftoff date.


----------



## ekim68

What time is it? 

The New Thermodynamic Understanding of Clocks



> Studies of the simplest possible clocks have revealed their fundamental limitations - as well as insights into the nature of time itself.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists can now assemble entire genomes on their personal computers in minutes



> Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Institut Pasteur in France have developed a technique for reconstructing whole genomes, including the human genome, on a personal computer. This technique is about a hundred times faster than current state-of-the-art approaches and uses one-fifth the resources. The study, published September 14 in the journal _Cell Systems_, allows for a more compact representation of genome data inspired by the way in which words, rather than letters, offer condensed building blocks for language models.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX launches first all-tourist crew into orbit



> The crew of the Inspiration4, the first-ever orbital flight crewed entirely by tourists, is now officially in orbit, according to a livestream from SpaceX.
> 
> The SpaceX rocket blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center just after 8 p.m. ET.


----------



## ekim68

Dark matter detector may have accidentally detected dark energy instead



> Last year, physicists reported that an experimental dark matter detector picked up a strange signal that could hint at new physics, with several suspects highlighted. Now, Cambridge scientists have proposed an answer that wasn't considered at the time - the experiment may have picked up the first direct detection of dark energy, the mysterious force that's accelerating the expansion of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

More on the SpaceX launch... 


SpaceX's Inspiration4 crew is having a blast and doing science in orbit (video)


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX's private Inspiration4 mission splashes down safely in Atlantic Ocean



> SpaceX safely returned its Crew Dragon spacecraft from orbit on Saturday, with the capsule carrying the four members of the Inspiration4 mission back to Earth after three days in space.


----------



## ekim68

Not endorsing this, however it looks like a very cool set up.. 


Disney opens Space 220 restaurant with (g)astronomical menu, views


----------



## ekim68

The Astronomy Photo Awards features the greatest shots in the universe



> An incredible image of a solar eclipse has won this year's Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Selected from more than 4,500 entries, the stunning shot was awarded alongside other highlights, including a number of technically masterful photos of distant galaxies.


----------



## ekim68

On This Day in Space! Sept. 23, 1962: 'The Jetsons' premieres on ABC



> On Sept. 23, 1962, "The Jetsons" first debuted on ABC. The Jetsons are a family who live in a fictional place called Orbit City with their dog Astro.
> 
> George Jetson, the dad in the family, works for a company called Spacely Space Sprockets and commutes to work in a vehicle that looks like a flying saucer.


----------



## ekim68

The imaginary rocket driving a small-town spaceport



> TheThe latest launch attempt out of Kodiak, Alaska's spaceport shows in vivid detail just how quickly things can go sideways. In the video, rocket maker Astra's 3.3 skids horizontally for hundreds of yards, then shoots some 20 miles upwards, listing off course. Ground crew terminates the flight, and the craft free falls back to Earth in pieces, landing in a fireball.


----------



## ekim68

How many satellites are orbiting Earth?



> It seems like every week, another rocket is launched into space carrying rovers to Mars, tourists or, most commonly, satellites. The idea that "space is getting crowded" has been around for a few years now, but just how crowded is it? And how crowded is it going to get?


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab to launch space junk inspection mission for JAXA



> There are currently tens of thousands of pieces of manmade debris whizzing around the Earth at blazing fast speeds, the result of things like busted up rocket parts and fragmented satellites. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has grand plans that involve performing the first large-scale demonstrations of space junk removal, and startup Rocket Lab has just been enlisted to get its first efforts off the ground.


----------



## ekim68

FAST lets lunar landers make their own landing pads pre-touchdown



> Masten Space Systems is working on a way to protect future lunar landers from the regolith thrown up by their engines as they land, by injecting alumina ceramic particles into the rocket engine plume to glue together lunar dust and create their own landing pads just before touchdown.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists Found a Way to Mimic Neutron Stars in the Lab



> An international team of physicists have come up with a way to generate antimatter in the lab, allowing them to recreate conditions that are similar to those near a neutron star.


----------



## ekim68

A New Nikola Tesla? Engineer Devises "UFO Patents" for the U.S. Navy



> Theoretical inventions known as the "UFO patents" have been inflaming worldwide curiosity. A product of the American engineer Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, the patents were filed during his work for the U.S. Navy and are so ambitious in their scope and imagination that they continue to draw interest despite any clear evidence that they are feasible. The patents include designs for a futuristic hybrid vehicle with a radical propulsion system that would work equally well in the air, underwater, and in space, as well as a compact fusion reactor, a gravitational wave generator, and even a "spacetime modification weapon". The technology involved could impact reality itself, claims its inventor, whose maverick audacity rivals that of Nikola Tesla.


----------



## ekim68

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Is Spinning Faster



> NASA's Hubble Space Telescope keeps an eye on Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a 10,000-mile-wide storm system that has been swirling for at least 190 years and possibly much longer. Recent data from the telescope indicates that the spot's outer winds have picked up speed in the past decade.


----------



## ekim68

Mars on the cheap: Scientists working to revolutionize access to the Red Planet



> While officials at NASA and the European Space Agency, as well as planners in China, plot out ultra-expensive and complicated missions to return samples from Mars, there are an increasing number of researchers blueprinting low-cost and novel ways to further explore the Red Planet.
> 
> Be it via souped-up helicopters or inexpensive landers and orbiters, they say it's time to script new ways to gather more data from a variety of places on that remote world.


----------



## ekim68

This May Be the First Planet Found Orbiting 3 Stars at Once



> GW Ori is a star system 1,300 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion. It is surrounded by a huge disk of dust and gas, a common feature of young star systems that are forming planets. But fascinatingly, it is a system with not one star, but three.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers size up biggest-known comet as it approaches solar system



> An absolutely gigantic comet is currently barreling towards the solar system - and new observations have pinned down just how big it is. A team of astronomers has measured it to be about 150 km (93 miles) wide, making it comfortably the largest comet ever discovered.


----------



## ekim68

Mercury flyby tonight: Europe's BepiColombo spacecraft to attempt its 1st swing past the planet



> A spacecraft bound for the planet Mercury will take a first look at the target tonight, when it makes its first-ever flyby of the small rocky world during an incredibly close encounter tonight.


----------



## ekim68

Russia will launch a film crew to the International Space Station Tuesday and you can watch it live



> A cosmonaut, a film director and an actor will launch on a mission Tuesday (Oct. 5) in part to film a movie on the International Space Station (ISS), and you can watch it live.


----------



## ekim68

Watch live: The Royal Astronomical Society will stream live views of Uranus @ 4 am ET



> The first of three webcasts will begin on Friday (Oct. 8) at 4 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT).


----------



## ekim68

11 Scary Space Facts That'll Make You Appreciate the Earth We're Destroying



> These anomalies and space terrors will make you thankful you were born on the good ol' Blue Planet.


----------



## ekim68

Chang'e-5 samples reveal key age of moon rocks



> A lunar probe launched by the Chinese space agency recently brought back the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years. Now an international team of scientists -- including an expert from Washington University in St. Louis -- has determined the age of these moon rocks at close to 1.97 billion years old.


----------



## ekim68

Astronaut spots rare and ethereal 'transient luminous event' from ISS



> "Transient luminous event" sounds like a euphemism for a ghost, but it's actually a beautiful phenomenon that can sometimes be seen from the International Space Station. European Space Agency astronaut and current ISS resident Thomas Pesquet shared a view of an ethereal blue glow emerging over Europe.
> 
> Transient luminous events are caused by upper-atmospheric lightning. This one happened in early September and Pesquet tweeted about it this week, calling it "a very rare occurrence."


----------



## valis

I wonder what that looked like from the ground....probably blew a few minds...


----------



## ekim68

'Distant cosmic explosion' was actually Russian space junk, new studies argue



> Last year, a team of astronomers made a blockbuster claim, saying they had captured the most distant cosmic explosion ever-a gamma ray burst in a galaxy called GN-z11. But that flash of light-supposedly from the most distant galaxy known-has a far more prosaic explanation: It was a glinting reflection from a tumbling, spent Russian rocket that happened to photobomb observers at just the right moment, two new studies claim.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Invites Media to James Webb Space Telescope Launch



> Members of the media may now register their interest in attending the launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the premier space science observatory for the next decade. Webb, an international partnership with the ESA (European Space Agency) and Canadian Space Agency, is targeted for launch Dec. 18.


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre repeating radio signal near galactic center may be brand new object 



> Astronomers have detected a strange radio source coming from somewhere near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The signal repeats seemingly at random, and can't be neatly attributed to any known astronomical object, leading the team to consider that it might be something brand new.


----------



## valis

How the heck do they do that? The science behind it is, no pun intended, astronomical.


----------



## ekim68

Brain damage biomarkers detected in cosmonauts after long space jaunts



> Striking new research investigating blood samples taken from Russian cosmonauts before and after long stints on the International Space Station (ISS) has revealed significant elevations of several biomarkers that could indicate brain damage. The study adds to a small but growing body of research tracking the deleterious effects of space travel on the human body.


----------



## ekim68

FAST, the World's Largest Radio Telescope, Zooms in on a Furious Cosmic Source



> China's Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope has detected more than 1,600 fast radio bursts from a single enigmatic system


----------



## ekim68

Errant Russian spacecraft thruster firing tilts space station by accident again



> Unplanned thruster firings by a Russian spacecraft briefly knocked the International Space Station off-kilter today (Oct. 15), the second such incident in less than three months.
> 
> The spacecraft involved today was the Soyuz MS-18, which is scheduled to bring cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, film director Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild back to Earth early Sunday morning (Oct. 17). Russian flight controllers fired up the vehicle's thrusters at 5:02 a.m. EDT (0902 GMT) in a planned pre-departure test.


----------



## ekim68

Connectivity in Space: the Moon Will Soon Have Its Own Internet



> Astronauts will be able to use the LunaNet via numerous nodes and communicate with the crew on and around the Moon in the same manner that we use Wi-Fi here on Earth. In addition, missions using the network will have access to position and time signals, allowing astronauts and rovers to navigate the rugged lunar terrain and return to their base.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's pioneering Lucy probe takes off to study Trojan asteroids



> A first-of-a-kind NASA launch took place over the weekend, setting the agency's Lucy spacecraft on a pioneering path to study an unprecedented number of asteroids as part of a single mission. Among them are the Trojan asteroids that both trail and lead Jupiter around the Sun and are thought to be remnants of the primordial material from the formation of the Solar System's outer planets.


----------



## ekim68

Lockheed Martin plans to build Starlab commercial space station by 2027 



> Lockheed Martin, Nanoracks, and Voyager Space have entered into a partnership to launch a permanently crewed commercial space station by 2027. Called Starlab, the semi-inflatable platform will be available to the US government and private industry.
> 
> With the International Space Station (ISS) slated for retirement and disposal by 2030, the United States is looking to private companies to provide replacements before that date under NASA's Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Destination (CLD) project.


----------



## ekim68

Observations of Exploding Star in 'Real Time' Deemed a Major Step Towards Predicting Supernovas



> A star located 60 million light years away went supernova last year, and astronomers managed to capture all stages of the stellar explosion using telescopes both on the ground and in space.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble telescope spots a pair of 'squabbling' galaxies locked in cosmic dance



> The pair of objects is known as Arp 86 and includes two galaxies roughly 220 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. They are known individually as NGC 7753 and the much smaller companion NGC 7752.


----------



## ekim68

Blue Origin unveils plans to build a private space station called Orbital Reef by 2030



> The International Space Station may have a wealth of private successors.
> 
> Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Space and several other partners announced today (Oct. 25) that they plan to build a commercial off-Earth outpost called Orbital Reef, which is scheduled to be up and running by the late 2020s.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX's Latest Engineering Challenge: A Leaky Toilet



> A discussion of repairs of the waste management systems used aboard the company's passenger spacecraft offered rare insight into how it fixes things.


----------



## ekim68

This moon motorcycle concept by a Russian automotive designer is just wild


----------



## ekim68

Huge solar flare could supercharge northern lights on Halloween



> Auroras may be visible to stargazers in New York, Idaho, Illinois, Oregon, Maryland and Nevada.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists discover new phase of water, known as "superionic ice," inside planets



> Scientists have discovered a new phase of water - adding to liquid, solid and gas - know as "superionic ice." The "strange black" ice, as scientists called it, is normally created at the core of planets like Neptune and Uranus.
> 
> In a study published in Nature Physics, a team of scientists co-led by Vitali Prakapenka, a University of Chicago research professor, detailed the extreme conditions necessary to produce this kind of ice. It had only been glimpsed once before, when scientists sent a massive shockwave through a droplet of water, creating superionic ice that only existed for an instant.


----------



## valis

Ice-9....


----------



## ekim68

NASA Wants Your Help Improving Perseverance Rover's AI



> NASA's Perseverance rover is the most advanced machine ever sent to the red planet with a boatload of cameras and a refined design that should stand the test of time. Still, it's just a robot, and sometimes human intuition can help a robot smarten up. If you're interested in helping out, NASA is calling on any interested humans to contribute to the machine learning algorithms that help Perseverance get around. All you need to do is look at some images and label geological features. That's something most of us can do intuitively, but it's hard for a machine.


----------



## ekim68

Microbes could be used to make rocket fuel on Mars 



> A team of scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with a concept that would see bacteria shipped to Mars produce rocket fuel and liquid oxygen from atmospheric CO2 to power a spacecraft on its return journey to Earth.


----------



## ekim68

NASA proposes playbook for communicating the discovery of alien life



> Imagine you're the very first scientist to discover aliens. Maybe it's a clear message picked up by a radio telescope or life swimming through the ocean below Europa's icy crust, or perhaps it's signs of microbes wriggling in harsh Martian lakes or microscopic fossils in a meteorite.
> 
> But how do you go about telling the rest of the world about such a momentous discovery? And what happens if you're wrong?
> 
> NASA scientists have just published a commentary article in _Nature_ calling for a framework for reporting extraterrestrial life to the world.


----------



## ekim68

An asteroid barely missed Earth last week, and no one knew it was coming



> An asteroid about the size of a refrigerator shot past Earth last week, and astronomers didn't know the object existed until hours after it was gone.
> 
> It was a close call (from a cosmic perspective); the space rock's trajectory on Oct. 24 carried it over Antarctica within 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Earth - closer than some satellites - making it the third-closest asteroid to approach the planet without actually hitting it, CNET reported.


----------



## ekim68

NASA picks landing site at the moon's south pole for ice-drilling robot



> This week, the space agency and the company Intuitive Machines announced Shackleton Crater landing site at the south pole of the moon for a small lander set to launch next year. The location is called the "Shackleton connecting ridge" and NASA data hint at ice lurking below the surface, the agency said in a statement Wednesday (Nov. 3).
> 
> The robotic mission includes NASA's Polar Resources Ice-Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) that requires solar power and a view of Earth for communications. The ridge zone should provide both, NASA said.


----------



## ekim68

Star System With Right-Angled Planets Surprises Astronomers



> In 2016, astronomers discovered two planets orbiting the star HD 3167. They were thought to be super-Earths - between Earth and Neptune in size - and circled the star every one and 30 days. A third planet was found in the system in 2017, orbiting in about eight days.
> 
> What's unusual is the inclinations of the outer two planets, HD 3167 c and d. Whereas in our solar system all the planets orbit in the same flat plane around the sun, these two are in polar orbits. That is, they go above and below their star's poles, rather than around the equator as Earth and the other planets in our system do.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists detect a 'tsunami' of gravitational waves



> A team of international scientists, including researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), have unveiled the largest number of gravitational waves ever detected.
> 
> The discoveries will help solve some of the most complex mysteries of the Universe, including the building blocks of matter and the workings of space and time.
> 
> The global team's study, published on _ArXiv_, made 35 new detections of gravitational waves caused by pairs of black holes merging or neutron stars and black holes smashing together, using the LIGO and Virgo observatories between November 2019 and March 2020.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys Instrument Resumes Science, Investigation Continues 



> The Hubble team successfully recovered the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument Nov. 7. The instrument has started taking science observations once again. Hubble's other instruments remain in safe mode while NASA continues investigating the lost synchronization messages first detected Oct. 23. The camera was selected as the first instrument to recover as it faces the fewest complications should a lost message occur.
> 
> Over the past week, the mission team has continued investigating the root cause of the synchronization issues and has seen no additional problems. The team will continue looking into possible short-term solutions this week and develop estimates for implementation. Once this occurs, the team will discuss returning the other instruments to operational status and resuming their science observations.


----------



## ekim68

Adventures in Space... 


International Space Station to manoeuvre higher to swerve satellite junk



> MOSCOW, Nov 10 (Reuters) - The International Space Station will perform a brief manoeuvre on Wednesday to dodge a fragment of a defunct Chinese satellite, Russian space agency Roscosmos said.
> 
> The station crewed by seven astronauts will climb 1,240 metres higher to avoid a close encounter with the fragment and will settle in an orbit 470.7 km (292 miles) above the Earth, Roscosmos said. It did not say how large the debris was.


----------



## ekim68

SpinLaunch's rocket-free kinetic launch system conducts first test flight



> For more than half a century we've been sending vehicles and humans into space with the help of rockets, but what if there was another way? Startup SpinLaunch has been exploring such possibilities through the development of what it calls the world's first kinetic space launch system, and it's recently completed its first test flight.
> 
> SpinLaunch has been developing its alternative launch system since 2015, imagining a future where satellites and spacecraft can escape the Earth's atmosphere with zero emissions. It aims to achieve this with the help of a giant accelerator powered by an electric drive that it says could cut fuel use by four times and the costs by 10 times compared to traditional rocket launches, while also firing multiple payloads into orbit each day.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> SpinLaunch's rocket-free kinetic launch system conducts first test flight


Read that on Gizmodo. Something like 10k g so no meat based riders....


----------



## ekim68

Nope, only satellites.. Good idea to locate at 5,000 feet.


----------



## ekim68

Odd asteroid seems to be a broken piece of the Moon 



> The team measured the object's spectrum, the pattern of light that reflects off its surface. Because different elements reflect and absorb different wavelengths of light, scientists can use an object's spectrum to determine what it's composed of. In this case, Kamo`oalewa was mostly silicate-based.
> 
> That fingerprint didn't match any other known near-Earth asteroid, the team says. The closest match was to lunar rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts, suggesting Kamo`oalewa is a piece of the Moon that broke off at some point, perhaps during some kind of impact event. That would make it the first known asteroid of lunar origin, and its unusual orbit lends weight to that hypothesis.


----------



## ekim68

Chemists discover new way to harness energy from ammonia



> A research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has identified a new way to convert ammonia to nitrogen gas through a process that could be a step toward ammonia replacing carbon-based fuels.
> 
> The discovery of this technique, which uses a metal catalyst and releases-rather than requires-energy, was reported Nov. 8 in _Nature Chemistry_ and has received a provisional patent from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.


----------



## ekim68

Space debris from Russian anti-satellite test will be a safety threat for years



> The cloud of debris will increase the number of avoidance maneuvers performed by satellite operators all over the world by more than 100% in the next few years.


----------



## valis

Yeah...anytime an action threatens the ISS i classify it as 'stupid'. This qualifies.


----------



## ekim68

This is the third time in 6 months that the Russians have messed things up in Space..


----------



## ekim68

Space debris from Russian anti-satellite missile test spotted in telescope images and video



> The images were captured by Numerica Corp., a Colorado-based company provides tracking of space debris objects, and shared by the company's partner Slingshot Aerospace on Twitter. They show images and video of the debris in the wake of a direct-ascent anti-satellite test by Russia Monday that sent a missile from the ground to destroy a defunct satellite called Cosmos-1408.


----------



## ekim68

Northrop Grumman and partners to develop a new lunar rover for NASA



> Northrop Grumman has entered into an agreement with AVL, Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Michelin to design and build a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) to transport astronauts on the Moon's surface for NASA's Artemis project.


----------



## ekim68

IBM announces development of 127-qubit quantum processor



> IBM has announced the development of a 127-qubit quantum processor, both on its IBM Quantum page and during IBM Quantum Summit 2021. As part of its announcement, IBM also announced that computers running the new processor will be made available to IBM Quantum Network members and that the company has plans for launching two other, presumably more powerful processors it has named Osprey and Condor over the next two years. The current processor has been named Eagle.


----------



## valis

Whoa....


----------



## ekim68

LightSail 2 solar sail is still soaring above Earth more than two years after launch



> An experimental spacecraft testing solar sails as a means of cost-effective space propulsion that could power future missions to distant places is still riding the sunbeams in Earth's orbit more than two and a half years after its launch.
> 
> The spacecraft, called LightSail 2, is a cubesat about the size of a loaf of bread but fitted with a solar sail the size of a boxing ring: It covers about 433 square feet (32 square meters). This sail captures incoming photons from the sun, just as a wind sail catches the moving air, to propel the spacecraft.


----------



## ekim68

More on the Russian screw up.... :down:


Visualizations show the extensive cloud of debris Russia's anti-satellite test created



> It's going to be a problem for years, if not decades


----------



## ekim68

'Gas station in space': new plan to make rocket fuel from junk in Earth's orbit



> Japanese start-up Astroscale has already demonstrated how it can use satellites to capture bits of debris in space.
> 
> Nanorocks, in the US, is working on a plan using advanced robotics to store and cut up that debris while it is still in orbit. Another US company, Cislunar, is developing a space foundry to melt debris into metal rods.
> 
> And Neumann Space's propulsion system can use those metal rods as fuel - their system ionises the metal which then creates thrust to move objects around orbit.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble's Grand Tour of the Outer Solar System

(Video)


----------



## ekim68

Odd Martian meteorites traced back to largest volcanic structure in the solar system
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...ans-for-potential-ukraine-invasion/ar-AAQYl4e



> About a million years ago, an asteroid smacked into the normally tranquil surface of Mars. The impact released a fountain of debris, and some of the rocky fragments pierced the sky, escaping the planet's gravity to journey through the dark.
> 
> Some of the rocks eventually found their way to Earth and survived the plunge through our planet's atmosphere to thud into the surface-including a hefty 15-pound shard that crashed into Morocco in 2011.


----------



## ekim68

The space debris problem is getting dangerous



> Russia shot down one of its Soviet-era satellites in a weapons test on Monday, sending more than 1,500 pieces of trackable debris into space. This forced astronauts on the International Space Station to shelter for about two hours in two spacecraft that could return them to Earth in the event of an imminent collision. While the ISS appears to be in the clear for now, experts say the situation is still dangerous. Satellite operators will likely need to navigate around this new cloud of space junk for several years and possibly decades.


----------



## ekim68

Private space startup Astra reaches orbit for the first time 



> A new player has joined the ranks of private spacefaring outfits with the ability to reach orbit, following the successful lift-off for startup Astra's launch vehicle. The achievement comes just five years after the company was established, marking a rapid emergence for the aspiring provider of small satellite launch services.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb launch delayed following incident during preparations



> The launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has suffered yet another delay - but at least this time, it's only a matter of days. NASA says that additional testing of the instrument now needs to be conducted after an incident during launch preparations.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Mars lander makes 1st ever map of Red Planet underground by listening to winds



> Researchers have created the first-ever map of the Martian underground by listening to the sound of wind reverberating through the layers of soil and rock near Mars' equator.
> 
> The team used instruments on board NASA's InSight probe, which landed in the flat Elysium Planitia in 2018 to study weak "marsquakes" rippling through the planet. InSight's data has previously enabled scientists to get a rough idea of the size and composition of Mars' core, as well as the nature of its mantle and thickness of its crust.


----------



## ekim68

Happy Thanksgiving from Space..  (video)


Thanksgiving Message from the International Space Station


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers spot "invisible" galaxies at the dawn of the universe



> Astronomers have spotted two "invisible" galaxies hiding near the dawn of the universe. The team used radio waves to peer behind a curtain of dust that was obscuring them from view, and the find suggests that there were far more galaxies in the early universe than previously thought.
> 
> The Hubble Space Telescope is one of our most powerful cosmic eyes, able to see objects more than 13 billion light-years away. And because space and time are so intertwined, the objects it sees at that distance are seen as they were 13 billion years ago, allowing astronomers to effectively look back in time to the universe's early childhood.


----------



## ekim68

Parker Solar Probe sets new distance and speed records on solar slingshot 



> NASA's Parker Solar Probe has set a new pair of records after it survived its 10th close encounter with the Sun. On November 21, 2021 at 4:25 am EST (08:25 GMT), the robotic deep-space explorer came within 5.3 million miles (8.5 million km) of the Sun's surface and reached a speed of 363,660 mph (586,864 km/h), making it both the closest satellite to survive such a near pass of the Sun and the fastest-ever artificial object.


 *







*


----------



## ekim68

"Ghost particles" detected in the Large Hadron Collider for first time



> Physicists have detected "ghost particles" in the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. An experiment called FASER picked up telltale signals of neutrinos being produced in particle collisions, which can help scientists better understand key physics.
> 
> Neutrinos are elementary particles that are electrically neutral, extremely light and rarely interact with particles of matter. That makes them tricky to detect, even though they're very common - in fact, there are billions of neutrinos streaming through your body right now. Because of this, they're often described as ghost particles.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers Defeat Randomness to Create Ideal Code



> By carefully constructing a multidimensional and well-connected graph, a team of researchers has finally created a long-sought locally testable code that can immediately betray whether it's been corrupted.


----------



## ekim68

Closest pair of supermassive black holes headed for monster merger



> Astronomers have discovered the closest pair of supermassive black holes yet known - and that record has two meanings. Not only are they the closest pair to Earth, but they're the closest to each other as well, barreling towards each other for an eventual monster merger.
> 
> The two black holes are located in a galaxy called NGC 7727, about 89 million light-years from Earth. That might sound like a long way, but in cosmic terms it's a mere stone's throw, and far closer than the previous record holders at 470 million light-years. Of course, the closest single supermassive black hole is Sagittarius A*, which lurks at the center of the Milky Way just 26,000 light-years away.


----------



## ekim68

Simplified quantum computer can be made with off-the-shelf components 



> But the Stanford team says their new design is deceptively simple. It's a photonic circuit made using a few components that are already available - a fiber optic cable, a beam splitter, two optical switches and an optical cavity - and it can reduce the number of physical logic gates needed.


----------



## ekim68

It's getting crowded up there.. 


Space station dodges space debris from decades-old Pegasus rocket



> The International Space Station dodged a fragment of a decades-old rocket body early Friday morning, continuing a stretch of space debris threats to the orbiting laboratory.


----------



## ekim68

The Kardashev scale: Classifying alien civilizations



> The Kardashev scale is a classification system for hypothetical extraterrestrial civilizations. The scale includes three categories based on how much energy a civilization is using.
> 
> Kardashev describes type I as a "technological level close to the level presently attained on the Earth," type II as "a civilization capable of harnessing the energy radiated by its own star" and type III as "a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy."


----------



## ekim68

How NASA's new laser communications mission will work in space



> The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration will launch on the United States Space Force Space Test Program 3 (STP-3) mission no earlier than Dec. 5 at 4:04 a.m. EST (0904 GMT). You can watch the rocket launch Sunday online courtesy of United Launch Alliance, which is flying the mission on an Atlas V rocket.
> 
> "This will be our first foray into understanding, what does it mean to use lasers to communicate and really connect directly to Earth and space users?" Jason Mitchell, Director of SCaN Advanced Communications & Navigation Technology Division at NASA, told Space.com in a recent video interview.


----------



## ekim68

Mars Desert Research Station



> The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), owned and operated by the Mars
> Society, is a space analog facility in Utah that supports Earth-based
> research in pursuit of the technology, operations, and science
> required for human space exploration. We host an eight month field
> season for professional scientists and engineers as well as college
> students of all levels, in training for human operations specifically
> on Mars.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches NASA's new IXPE X-ray space telescope



> The IXPE satellite, which is roughly the size of a refrigerator, is a $214 million dollar mission that aims to probe the physics behind some of the universe's most dynamic objects: black holes and neutron stars. Astronomers are hoping that this satellite will be a new tool at their disposal to probe the mysteries of the universe.


----------



## ekim68

DARPA Funded Researchers Accidentally Discover The World's First Warp Bubble



> Warp drive pioneer and former NASA warp drive specialist Dr. Harold G "Sonny" White has reported the discovery of an actual, real-world "Warp Bubble." And, according to White, this first of its kind breakthrough by his Limitless Space Institute (LSI) team sets a new starting point for those trying to manufacture a full-sized, warp-capable spacecraft.


----------



## ekim68

> There are plenty of great books out there about space - so many, in fact, that it can feel a little overwhelming to figure out where to start, whether searching for a perfect gift or your next engrossing read. So the editors and writers at Space.com have put together a list of their favorite books about the universe.


 
Best space and sci-fi books for 2021


----------



## ekim68

Tachyons: Facts about these faster-than-light particles



> Traveling faster than light and time-travel could be real for tachyons. If one thing science fiction excels at, it's allowing us to marvel at the breaking of the physical laws of the universe. We watch and read in wonder as the warp engines of the starship Enterprise push it to beyond the speed of light, or as Barry or Wally  -  whoever is carrying the name of the Flash at the time  -  does the same in no more than a pair of yellow boots.


----------



## ekim68

Blue Origin launches Michael Strahan and crew of 5 on record-setting suborbital spaceflight



> From the tallest person to fly into space to the first parent-child pair to lift off together, the six newly-qualified astronauts made history on board Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. The crew included former football star-turned-TV anchor Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to fly into space and the namesake for Blue Origin's suborbital launch vehicle.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Next-Generation Asteroid Impact Monitoring System Goes Online



> To date, nearly 28,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) have been found by survey telescopes that continually scan the night sky, adding new discoveries at a rate of about 3,000 per year. But as larger and more advanced survey telescopes turbocharge the search over the next few years, a rapid uptick in discoveries is expected. In anticipation of this increase, NASA astronomers have developed a next-generation impact monitoring algorithm called Sentry-II to better evaluate NEA impact probabilities.


----------



## ekim68

Space law hasn't been changed since 1967 - but the UN aims to update laws and keep space peaceful



> The U.N. First Committee deals with disarmament, global challenges and threats to peace that affect the international community. On Nov. 1, the committee approved a resolution that creates an open-ended working group. The goals of the group are to assess current and future threats to space operations, determine when behavior may be considered irresponsible, "make recommendations on possible norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviors," and "contribute to the negotiation of legally binding instruments", including a treaty to prevent "an arms race in space".


----------



## ekim68

2023 mission to Venus will skim the acidic clouds for signs of life



> Is there microbial life floating around in the clouds of Venus? Scientists have long pondered this question and soon we may get some answers. A new report outlines the Venus Life Finder Missions, starting with a cloud-skimming mission in 2023 to search for signs of life.


----------



## ekim68

NASA probe "touches the Sun" with historic entry into solar atmosphere



> After setting off back in 2018 on a history-making mission to study the Sun by getting up close and personal with its atmosphere, NASA's Solar Parker Probe has entered this region for the first time. The craft's passage through the Sun's upper atmosphere, known as the corona, has enabled unprecedented sampling of its particles and magnetic fields, opening up a new chapter in the field of solar science and our understanding of how the solar system was formed.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Just Found a 'Significant' Volume of Water Inside Mars' Grand Canyon



> The Red Planet is hiding an appealing secret.
> 
> Scientists have discovered a world-historic discovery on Mars: "significant amounts of water" are hiding inside the Red Planet's Valles Marineris, its version of our grand canyon system, according to a recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA).
> 
> And up to 40% of material near the surface of the canyon could be water molecules.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope officially set to launch Dec. 24



> NASA's newest flagship observatory is about to begin an incredible journey and now has an official launch date.
> 
> The James Webb Space Telescope is expected to launch in a week, on Dec. 24 at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT or 9:20 a.m. local time in French Guiana), and has been packed up inside the nose cone of its Ariane 5 rocket for the trip.


----------



## ekim68

Science 2021 Breakthrough of the Year



> In his 1972 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, American biochemist Christian Anfinsen laid out a vision: One day it would be possible, he said, to predict the 3D structure of any protein merely from its sequence of amino acid building blocks. With hundreds of thousands of proteins in the human body alone, such an advance would have vast applications, offering insights into basic biology and revealing promising new drug targets. Now, after nearly 50 years, researchers have shown that artificial intelligence (AI)-driven software can churn out accurate protein structures by the thousands-an advance that realizes Anfinsen's dream and is _Science_'s 2021 Breakthrough of the Year.


----------



## ekim68

A good read.. :up:


James Webb Space Telescope vs. Hubble: How will their images compare?


----------



## ekim68

Vacuum-Sealed Container From 1972 Moon Landing Will Finally Be Opened



> Apollo mission planners were really smart. Recognizing that future scientists will have better tools and richer scientific insights, they refrained from opening a portion of the lunar samples returned from the historic Apollo missions. One of these sample containers, after sitting untouched for 50 years, is now set to be opened.


----------



## ekim68

This asteroid sample could reveal our solar system's origin story



> Just over a year after Japan's Hayabusa2 mission returned the first subsurface sample of an asteroid to Earth, scientists have determined that the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu is a pristine remnant from the formation of our solar system.
> This was the first material to be returned to Earth from a carbon-rich asteroid. These asteroids can reveal how our cosmic corner of the universe was formed.


----------



## ekim68

Imaginary numbers could be needed to describe reality, new studies find



> Imaginary numbers are what you get when you take the square root of a negative number, and they have long been used in the most important equations of quantum mechanics, the branch of physics that describes the world of the very small. When you add imaginary numbers and real numbers, the two form complex numbers, which enable physicists to write out quantum equations in simple terms. But whether quantum theory needs these mathematical chimeras or just uses them as convenient shortcuts has long been controversial.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope launches on epic mission to study early universe



> NASA just got a $10 billion space telescope for Christmas.
> 
> An Ariane 5 rocket launched today (Dec. 25) from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT; 9:20 a.m. local time in Kourou), carrying the highly anticipated, long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope - and the hopes and dreams of countless astronomers, astrophysicists and planetary scientists around the world - into the final frontier.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists finally solve the mystery of why comets glow green



> A team of chemists just solved the mystery of why comets' heads-but not their tails-glow green, which had puzzled researchers for decades. Studying an elusive molecule, which only fleetingly exists on Earth, was the key.


----------



## ekim68

NASA has a site that follows the Webb Telescope.. 

Where is Webb?


----------



## ekim68

Japan aims to put a person on the moon by late 2020s



> TOKYO, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Japan revised the schedule of its space exploration plans on Tuesday, aiming to put a Japanese person on the moon by the latter half of the 2020s.
> 
> "Not only is space a frontier that gives people hopes and dreams but it also provides a crucial foundation to our economic society with respect to our economic security," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a meeting to finalise the plan.


----------



## ekim68

The 10 biggest space science stories of 2021



> The year 2021 was one of major scientific expansion. Thanks to a variety of exploratory missions and their cutting-edge instruments, astronomers have been able to peer into the cosmos like never before.
> 
> Researchers have turned the Earth into a giant telescope to view powerful jets from a black hole. Solar system surveys have revealed new moons and massive comets previously lurking undetected by scientists. The sun has also been a main attraction for research as it reawakens from its recent slumber.


----------



## ekim68

The space station race



> The International Space Station brings together astronauts from around the world to collaborate on cutting-edge research, and some have called it humanity's greatest achievement. But after two decades in orbit, the ISS will shut down, and a crop of several new space stations will take its place. While these new stations will make it easier for more humans to visit space, they're also bound to create new political and economic tensions.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope's smooth launch extended its life expectancy, NASA says



> The James Webb Space Telescope should be able to remain in orbit for more than 10 years, thanks to a fuel-efficient launch on Christmas Day, according to NASA.
> 
> The telescope was carried aboard the Arianespace Ariane 5. Despite two brief midcourse corrections, its launch used less propellant than initially expected. That will allow the $10 billion observatory "science operations in orbit for significantly more than a 10-year science lifetime," the US space agency said in a release on Wednesday


----------



## ekim68

10 weird things scientists calculated in 2021



> The world is full of beautiful equations, numbers and calculations. From counting beads as toddlers to managing finances as adults, we use math every day. But scientists often go beyond these quotidian forms of counting, to measure, weigh and tally far stranger things in the universe. From the number of bubbles in a typical glass of beer to the weight of all the coronavirus particles circulating in the world, here are 10 weird things scientists calculated in 2021.


----------



## ekim68

A good read... 


With Webb's Mid-Booms Extended, Sunshield Takes Shape



> With the successful extension of Webb's second sunshield mid-boom, the observatory has passed another critical deployment milestone. Webb's sunshield now resembles its full, kite-shaped form in space.


----------



## ekim68

The 10 strangest space structures discovered in 2021



> As a reminder that the universe just gets stranger and stranger the farther you get from Earth, here are 10 of the most awesome, extreme and enigmatic space structures discovered in 2021.


----------



## ekim68

China has moon's south pole in its sights with 3 missions launching this decade



> China has formally approved three missions targeting the south pole of the moon, with the first to launch around 2024.
> 
> The missions dubbed Chang'e 6, Chang'e 7 and Chang'e 8 will launch across the 2020s, each with different goals and an array of spacecraft. The trio make up the so-called fourth phase for the Chinese lunar exploration program, which most recently landed on the moon last December with a sample-return mission dubbed Chang'e 5.


----------



## ekim68

United States extends ISS operations through 2030



> The United States is extending its operations aboard the International Space Station through 2030, NASA confirmed Friday in a blog post. "The International Space Station is a beacon of peaceful international scientific collaboration and for more than 20 years has returned enormous scientific, educational, and technological developments to benefit humanity," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.


----------



## ekim68

China's Mars orbiter snaps amazing selfies above Red Planet



> China's Tianwen 1 spacecraft at Mars pulled a big New Year's surprise with stunning new images captured by a small camera that flew free of the orbiter to snap epic selfies above the Red Planet.


----------



## ekim68

Is the universe's dark matter hiding in primordial black holes? 



> A new model by a team of scientists led by Yale University suggests that the ever elusive dark matter that has so far escaped the detection of scientists may be trapped inside primordial black holes left over after the Big Bang.
> 
> If or when the James Webb Space Telescope is fully commissioned and begins its observations into the evolution of the early universe, it may be able to shed light on one of the great mysteries of modern physics: does dark matter exist and, if so, what is it?


----------



## ekim68

Jupiter's moons are about to get JUICE'd for signs of life



> The European Space Agency will soon send JUICE, or the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer on a mission to scout out Jupiter and three of its 79 moons: Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede.
> 
> Scheduled to launch in April 2023, JUICE will blast off from an Ariane 5 rocket before embarking on a 7.6-year journey to reach the gas giant. Broken up by multiple gravitational assists-or pushes that help adjust a spacecraft's speed and trajectory-from Venus and Earth, the explorer will carry some of the most powerful remote sensing and geophysical instruments ever flown to the outer solar system.


----------



## ekim68

Matter and antimatter respond to gravity in the same way, study finds



> Matter and antimatter behave the same way under the influence of gravity, a new study found, leaving scientists no wiser as to what makes the two different.
> 
> Antimatter is the puzzling stuff created during the Big Bang together with normal matter. It is virtually normal matter's mirror - exactly the same, only with the opposite electrical charge. For every proton, there should be an antiproton, for every electron an antielectron, which is also known as a positron.


----------



## ekim68

Ten Scientific Discoveries From 2021 That May Lead to New Inventions



> From nanobots to cancer treatments, nature inspires a wide variety of innovations


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest ever built, fully unfolds giant mirror to gaze at the cosmos


----------



## ekim68

Amazon teams up with Lockheed Martin and Cisco to put Alexa voice assistant on NASA's moon ship



> Putting Amazon's AI-enabled voice assistant on a moon-bound spaceship may sound like science fiction (hello, HAL!). But it's due to become science fact later this year when a radiation-hardened console rides along in NASA's Orion deep-space capsule for the Artemis 1 round-the-moon mission.
> 
> There'll be no humans aboard for the test flight, which will mark the first launch of NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket. Instead, Alexa's voice, and Echo's pulsing blue ring, will be interacting with operators at Houston's Mission Control for a technology demonstration created by Lockheed Martin, Amazon and Cisco.


----------



## ekim68

Yes, there is really 'diamond rain' on Uranus and Neptune



> The ice giants Uranus and Neptune don't get nearly enough press; all the attention goes to their larger siblings, mighty Jupiter and magnificent Saturn.
> 
> At first glance, Uranus and Neptune are just bland, boring balls of uninteresting molecules. But hiding beneath the outer layers of those worlds, there may be something spectacular: a constant rain of diamonds.


----------



## ekim68

China's Chang'E-5 lander finds first onsite evidence of water on the Moon



> Data from China's Chang'E-5 lunar lander analyzed by an international team led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows that the robotic spacecraft has, for the first time, detected traces of water in the rocks and regolith on the Moon's surface.


----------



## ekim68

Largest-ever 3D map of the universe reveals gigantic cosmic web



> Data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument's (DESI's) first survey run has produced the largest and most detailed 3D map of the universe so far. The stunning image reveals the gigantic cosmic web of galaxies across billions of light-years - and this is only the beginning for the project.
> 
> The image contains 7.5 million galaxies within a distance of about 5 billion light-years in the direction of the constellation Virgo, with Earth located at the lower left.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists wielded giant lasers to simulate an exoplanet's super-hot core



> A molten core creates Earth's magnetic field, which protects life as we know it.


----------



## ekim68

Even NASA Seems Surprised by Its New Space Telescope



> The $10 billion mission is working better than anyone could have predicted.


----------



## ekim68

Astronauts found to destroy 54 percent more red blood cells in space



> A study claimed to be the first of its kind has shed new light on the dangers posed by spaceflight, and the impacts on red blood counts for astronauts on long-duration missions. The research deepens our knowledge around a condition known as "space anemia," and has important implications for the future of space exploration.


----------



## ekim68

Newly discovered carbon may yield clues to ancient Mars



> NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and since then has roamed Gale Crater taking samples and sending the results back home for researchers to interpret. Analysis of carbon isotopes in sediment samples taken from half a dozen exposed locations, including an exposed cliff, leave researchers with three plausible explanations for the carbon's origin -- cosmic dust, ultraviolet degradation of carbon dioxide, or ultraviolet degradation of biologically produced methane.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX satellites now appearing in 1 in 5 of telescope's twilight images 



> SpaceX's aspirations to blanket the Earth in high-speed internet through a constellation of orbiting satellites continues apace, and a new study demonstrates the significant mark they are already making on the world of astronomical imaging. As the number of satellites in low-Earth orbit has grown rapidly over the past two years, researchers have found they are now affecting almost a fifth of important twilight observations, though they describe the overall scientific impacts as small, for now.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope marks deployment of all mirrors



> "Just in from the @NASAWebb team: All 18 primary mirror segments and the secondary mirror are now fully deployed!" NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote in a tweet posted on Wednesday (Jan. 19). "Congratulations to the teams that have been working tirelessly since launch to get to this point. Soon, Webb will arrive at its new home, L2!"


----------



## ekim68

Silicon quantum computing surpasses 99% accuracy in three studies



> Three teams of scientists from around the world have achieved a major milestone in quantum computing. All three groups demonstrated better than 99 percent accuracy in silicon-based quantum devices, paving the way for practical, scalable quantum computers that are error-free.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Solar Sail Mission to Chase Tiny Asteroid After Artemis I Launch



> Launching with the Artemis I uncrewed test flight, NASA's shoebox-size Near-Earth Asteroid Scout will chase down what will become the smallest asteroid ever to be visited by a spacecraft. It will get there by unfurling a solar sail to harness solar radiation for propulsion, making this the agency's first deep space mission of its kind.


----------



## ekim68

40 quintillion stellar-mass black holes are lurking in the universe, new study finds



> "Small" black holes are estimated to make up 1% of the universe's matter.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble finds a black hole igniting star formation in a dwarf galaxy



> Often portrayed as destructive monsters that hold light captive, black holes take on a less villainous role in the latest research from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. A black hole at the heart of the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 is creating stars rather than gobbling them up. The black hole is apparently contributing to the firestorm of new star formation taking place in the galaxy. The dwarf galaxy lies 30 million light-years away, in the southern constellation Pyxis.


----------



## jaymeson.sury

i am very curious about astronomy and stuff, if u do too check this artcle out, it is nice to read https://www.space.com/spaceflight-destroys-red-blood-cells


----------



## ekim68

Saturn's 'Death Star moon' Mimas wows in NASA image



> Out of Saturn's dozens of moons, one looks more ominous than the rest. Mimas has been hailed for its uncanny resemblance to Darth Vader's favorite spaceship, the Death Star from Star Wars. The Saturn-studying Cassini spacecraft caught a fresh look at the moon in October and NASA highlighted the image on Monday.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope arrives at new home in space



> After traveling almost a million miles, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reached its final destination today (Jan. 24).
> 
> The most powerful observatory ever to launch to space, the James Webb Space Telescope lifted off on Dec. 25, 2021 to explore the cosmos and our universe's earliest milestones. Since its successful takeoff, the $10 billion telescope has been busy deploying its various systems and structures and traveling over 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) to its new home: L2, the second sun-Earth Lagrange point, which it will orbit. Lagrange points are gravitationally stable points in space.


----------



## ekim68

Researchers Build AI That Builds AI



> By using hypernetworks, researchers can now preemptively fine-tune artificial neural networks, saving some of the time and expense of training.


----------



## ekim68

Discarded SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the Moon 



> Showing that space junk isn't a local problem, observations by amateur astronomers have determined that the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched in 2015 will impact the Moon on March 4 at 12:25 GMT.
> 
> A spacecraft impacting the Moon isn't new. In fact, the first probes to reach the lunar surface in the 1950s and '60s were deliberately designed to crash to either show the ability to reach the Moon or to gather data to plan for later soft robotic and crewed landings.


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre radio signal repeating every 18 minutes discovered in Milky Way



> The object was discovered by a team using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope in Western Australia, which scans large areas of the sky in radio waves. Curtin University Honors student Tyrone O'Doherty was searching for transient objects within the plane of the Milky Way, comparing pairs of images taken 24 hours apart to find things that change in brightness in that time.
> 
> And sure enough, one signal stood out with a huge spike of radio waves. When the team searched older data from the same region, they discovered more pulses with stunning regularity. Whatever it was, the object gave off bursts every 18.18 minutes like clockwork, with each pulse lasting between 30 and 60 seconds.


----------



## ekim68

Innovative chemical heating system keeps lunar landers warm at night



> With temperatures plunging to -232 °C (-387 °F), the lunar night is not a friendly place for electronics. Space technology company Masten has developed a new way to tackle this problem in the form of its Nighttime Integrated Thermal and Electricity (NITE) system, which uses chemical reactions to keep lander electronics warm until the lunar dawn.


----------



## ekim68

Water on Mars may have flowed for a billion years longer than thought



> Observations by a long-running Mars mission suggest that liquid water may have flowed on the Red Planet as little as 2 billion years ago, much later than scientists once thought.


----------



## ekim68

The Pentagon is looking for garbage collectors in space



> The Pentagon wants to clean up space. Well, not all of it. But at least the increasingly polluted region in low Earth orbit, where thousands of bits of debris, spent rocket stages and dead satellites whiz uncontrollably, like so much flotsam.


----------



## lunarlander

ekim68 said:


> Bizarre radio signal repeating every 18 minutes discovered in Milky Way


Wish SETI project was still alive.


----------



## ekim68

They're still around and I'm not sure if they still operate the same way.

SETI

:up:


----------



## lunarlander

ekim68 said:


> They're still around and I'm not sure if they still operate the same way.
> 
> SETI


Yeah, they no longer do the sky search with openings for home contributions of CPU power.


----------



## ekim68

Earth has an extra moon, a Trojan asteroid that will hang around for 4,000 years



> Trojan asteroids are small space rocks that share their orbit with a planet, circling whatever host star that planet does in a stable orbit. While we have spotted Trojan asteroids around other planets in our solar system and others, until now only one of these objects, called 2010 TK7, has been confirmed to orbit along the same path as Earth. In a new study, researchers confirmed that an asteroid spotted in 2020, called 2020 XL5, is the second object of its kind, called an Earth Trojan asteroid. Think of it as an extra moon of Earth, albeit a very tiny one.


----------



## ekim68

Gravitational Waves Should Permanently Distort Space-Time



> The first detection of gravitational waves in 2016 provided decisive confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity. But another astounding prediction remains unconfirmed: According to general relativity, every gravitational wave should leave an indelible imprint on the structure of space-time. It should permanently strain space, displacing the mirrors of a gravitational wave detector even after the wave has passed.


----------



## ekim68

NASA plans fiery end for International Space Station in 2030



> NASA has released its updated plans that outline the International Space Station's (ISS) final years leading up to its eventual disposal in 2030, when it will plunge into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up somewhere over the South Pacific Ocean.


----------



## ekim68

Simulation reveals origin of strange flares from supermassive black holes



> Contrary to their name, black holes are known to fire off flares from time to time, but exactly how this happens is shrouded in mystery. High-resolution simulations have now revealed how twisting magnetic fields can throw off huge amounts of energy.


----------



## ekim68

First-ever "rogue" black hole discovered zipping through the galaxy



> Astronomers believe they've detected the first "rogue" black hole, roaming the galaxy alone. The object made itself known when it passed in front of a background star, bending the light with its extreme gravity.
> 
> There's a serious undercount between how many black holes we've found out in the cosmos, compared to how many are expected to exist. But that's not too surprising really - these are the darkest objects possible, set against the inky void of space. Many black holes make their presence known through other means, such as hot bright disks of material orbiting them, flashes of light as they gobble up stars, or gravitational waves as they collide. But it's long been predicted that many more are lurking out there far from other objects, essentially invisible.


----------



## ekim68

NASA outlines cost savings from ISS transition



> WASHINGTON - NASA expects that retiring the International Space Station in favor of leasing capacity on commercial space stations will ultimately save the agency up to $1.8 billion per year.


----------



## ekim68

Rugged Mars has taken big bites out of the Curiosity rover's wheels



> NASA's Curiosity rover has left plenty of marks on Mars over the past nine-plus years, and the Red Planet is returning the favor.
> 
> The rugged landscape inside Mars' Gale Crater has taken some substantial bites out of Curiosity's six aluminum wheels, as CNET recently pointed out. The damage looks dramatic, but don't panic; Curiosity should be able to keep trundling along for a while yet.


----------



## ekim68

A geomagnetic storm may have effectively destroyed 40 SpaceX Starlink satellites



> Elon Musk's satellite internet service Starlink just got dealt an expensive blow - the company's currently estimating that 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites it launched on February 3rd will be destroyed because of a geomagnetic storm.


----------



## ekim68

Possible 3rd planet spotted around Proxima Centauri, the sun's nearest neighbor star



> The sun's nearest neighbor may actually host three planets, a new study reports.
> 
> Astronomers have found evidence of a third planet circling Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star that lies a mere 4.2 light-years from our solar system. The candidate world, known as Proxima d, is estimated to be just 25% as massive as Earth, making it one of the lightest known exoplanets if it ends up being confirmed.


----------



## ekim68

The out-of-control rocket about to hit the moon is not a SpaceX Falcon 9, astronomers now say: report



> A rocket stage set to hit the moon March 4 might not be from SpaceX after all.
> 
> The astronomer credited with discovering the forthcoming impact, Bill Gray, announced Saturday (Feb. 12) that he made an error in identifying the rocket as an old SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage that helped launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite in 2015.


----------



## ekim68

1st image from NASA's new IXPE X-ray telescope looks like a ball of purple lightning


----------



## ekim68

First quadruple asteroid discovered in the solar system 



> Astronomers have discovered the first known quadruple asteroid system. A team from Thailand and France spotted a third moon orbiting the main-belt asteroid Elektra, moving the object into the record books.
> 
> Most asteroids are solo travelers, but some are gravitationally bound in pairs - usually with one small object orbiting a larger one. On rare occasions, triple asteroid systems have been found, with two moons orbiting a bigger primary body. That was as complex as asteroid systems got, until now.


----------



## ekim68

Happy birthday Perseverance... 


NASA's Perseverance rover marks its first year hunting for past life on Mars



> It's been one year since a nuclear-powered, one-armed, six-wheeled robot punched through the Martian atmosphere at a blazing 12,000 miles per hour, and a supersonic parachute slowed it way down until a rocket-powered "jetpack" could fire its engines and then gently lower it onto the surface.
> 
> NASA's Perseverance rover was too far away for engineers on Earth to control it in real time - which meant that the spacecraft had to execute that daredevil maneuver all by itself.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Make Breakthrough in Warping Time at Smallest Scale Ever



> Now, in a major breakthrough, scientists at JILA, a joint operation between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder, have measured time dilation at the smallest scale ever using the most accurate clocks in the world. The team showed that clocks located just a millimeter apart-about the width of a pencil tip-showed slightly different times due to the influence of Earth's gravity.


----------



## ekim68

The Sun Has Erupted Non-Stop All Month, And There Are More Giant Flares Coming



> The past few weeks or so have been a very busy time for the Sun. Our star has undergone a series of giant eruptions that have sent plasma hurtling through space.
> 
> Perhaps the most dramatic was a powerful coronal mass ejection and solar flare that erupted from the far side of the Sun on February 15 just before midnight. Based on the size, it's possible that the eruption was in the most powerful category of which our Sun is capable: an X-class flare.


----------



## ekim68

More from that:


Solar Orbiter snaps giant solar eruption in unprecedented image


----------



## ekim68

Cygnus Installed to Station for Cargo Transfers


----------



## ekim68

The Biggest Galaxy Ever Found Has Just Been Discovered, And It Will Break Your Brain



> Astronomers have just found an absolute monster of a galaxy.
> 
> Lurking some 3 billion light-years away, Alcyoneus is a giant radio galaxy reaching 5 megaparsecs into space. That's 16.3 million light-years long, and constitutes the largest known structure of galactic origin.


----------



## ekim68

Video...


Mars looks STUNNING in 8K! Perseverance Rover sol 354


----------



## ekim68

The tense journey from "riskiest asteroid in a decade" to no threat 



> Astronomers had a tense few days in January, as a newly discovered space rock became the riskiest asteroid in a decade - and then hid behind the Moon for a week. Thankfully, further observations have now found that it poses no risk to Earth when it swings by next year.


----------



## ekim68

Death Spiral: A Black Hole Spins on Its Side - "Completely Unexpected"



> Researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, found that the axis of rotation of a black hole in a binary system is tilted more than 40 degrees relative to the axis of stellar orbit. The finding challenges current theoretical models of black hole formation.


----------



## ekim68

Space is turning into a dangerous junkyard



> And it's not just that there are more satellites than there used to be. There are also many more players operating them, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and space chronicler at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Back in the day it was either the US or the Soviet government," he says. "Now it is literally hundreds of startup companies and universities and developing countries - and that's a huge problem because it's much harder to coordinate hundreds."


----------



## ekim68

Ultra-fast radio burst could usher in whole new class of space signals 



> As mysterious as fast radio bursts (FRBs) are, they're now so common that they're at risk of becoming mundane. But a newly discovered signal deepens the mystery with a few oddities - it hails from an unexpected region of space, and its pulses are about a million times shorter than most, which could indicate many others like it are going undetected.
> 
> Fast radio bursts are very true to their name - they're energetic bursts of radio signals from deep space that last just milliseconds. Thousands of FRBs have been detected since they were first identified in 2007, with some being one-time events and others repeating either randomly or in a predictable rhythm. While their origins are still unclear, each new detection adds more clues - and this latest find brings a lot to the table.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX to launch Northrop Grumman's robotic satellite repair spacecraft



> Northrop Grumman's SpaceLogistics subsidiary has signed an agreement with SpaceX and Australian telecommunications company Optus to put its Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) spacecraft and Mission Extension Pod (MEP) into regular commercial service.


----------



## ekim68

Largest shock wave in the universe is 60 times larger than the Milky Way, new study finds



> The wave has been blasting through space at near-light-speed for 200 million years.


----------



## ekim68

First Platforms are Retracted Ahead of Artemis I First Rollout to Launch Pad



> The Artemis I Moon rocket is getting closer to rolling out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first time.


----------



## ekim68

A cool read... 


Thumbing through a 2022 Estes rocketry catalog



> A month or so ago, in my online travels, I ran across an offer to get a "free, full-color" Estes rocketry catalog. I was shocked and delighted to learn that a proper paper catalog still existed.


----------



## ekim68

Just so you know... 


Fly your name
around the
Moon!



> Artemis I will be the first uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The flight paves the way toward landing the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon!
> 
> Add your name here to have it included on a flash drive that will fly aboard Artemis I.


----------



## ekim68

Space Force plans to send a patrol probe out past the moon



> The U.S. military is planning to extend its reach in space to one day patrol the area around the moon.
> 
> In a new video, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) revealed the U.S. military's big plans for its future work in space. These plans, the video showed, include extending space awareness capabilities beyond geostationary orbit with the help of a new satellite called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS). This is a moon-patrolling probe that the military plans to launch to cislunar space, a vast area around Earth that stretches out past the moon's orbit.


----------



## ekim68

2 black holes collided billions of years ago. The spectacle is just beginning to reach Earth.



> In a galaxy far, far away, two giant black holes appear to be circling each other like fighters in a galactic boxing ring.
> 
> Gravity is causing this death spiral, which will result in a collision and formation of a single black hole, a massive event that will send ripples through space and time.
> 
> The collision itself happened eons ago - the two black holes are located about 9 billion light years from Earth. Scientists won't be able to document it for 10,000 years.


----------



## ekim68

Privateer unveils technology for improved tracking of space objects



> WASHINGTON - A new venture that emerged from stealth this week promises better information about objects in orbit and more tailored space situational awareness services for satellite operators.
> 
> Privateer, based in Maui, Hawaii, unveiled its first product March 1, a visualization tool called Wayfinder that combines data from several sources, including data from U.S. Space Command and data provided directly by satellite operators.


----------



## ekim68

Space shotgun could destroy dangerous asteroids just hours before impact



> Wayward asteroids pose a serious threat to life on Earth, and we may not have long to react should we discover one on a collision course. NASA is now investigating a proposal for a defense system that could break apart a hazardous space rock just days or even hours before a potential Earth strike.


----------



## ekim68

Russian space chief, former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly trade barbs on Twitter



> A war of words has erupted between Dimitry Rogozin and Scott Kelly.


----------



## ekim68

Corrosive Martian and lunar soils could be used to farm oxygen



> Research sponsored by ESA aims to develop a method to not only detect dangerous superoxide soils on the Moon and Mars that could imperil astronauts, but also a way to turn these hazards into oxygen farms for future missions.


----------



## ekim68

:up:


NASA's human Moon lander program finally gets full funding in new budget bill



> If Congress' sweeping new spending bill is signed, it would finally provide full funding to some major NASA projects that have been underfunded over the last few years. Notably, NASA's program to develop a new human lunar lander would be fully funded as the president's budget requested, as will a program to develop new commercial space stations in low Earth orbit.


----------



## ekim68

Building the first experimental payload to make oxygen on the moon 



> The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced it has chosen a team to make oxygen on the moon. The team, led by aerospace manufacturer Thales Alenia Space, will design and build a payload to create oxygen from lunar soil.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb snaps first in-focus image - and photobombs another spacecraft



> The James Webb Space Telescope has snapped its first in-focus image. The milestone comes after the mission team spent the last few weeks aligning its mirrors, and the telescope is now set to meet or even exceed its original science goals. It was also recently spotted by another spacecraft in the area.


----------



## MisterEd51

ekim68 said:


> James Webb snaps first in-focus image - and photobombs another spacecraft


The control teams will now focus on the telescope's four science instruments. First scientific images are expected to be released in June or July. NASA is keeping the celestial object that will become the first target of Webb's scientific exploration secret until then.

James Webb Space Telescope's 1st view of the cosmos has scientists thrilled for more


----------



## ekim68

ExoMars Rover Mission Officially Suspended as Europe Cuts Ties With Russia



> Today, the European Space Agency leadership took steps toward suspending the ExoMars mission, a joint project with Russian space agency Roscosmos. It's the latest scientific fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has forced institutions collaborating with Russian entities to reevaluate their positions.


----------



## ekim68

Absolutely bonkers experiment measures antiproton orbiting helium ion



> In Wednesday's issue of Nature, a new paper describes a potentially useful way of measuring the interactions between normal matter and exotic particles, like antiprotons and unstable items like kaons or elements containing a strange quark. The work is likely to be useful, as we still don't understand the asymmetry that has allowed matter to be the dominant form in our Universe.
> 
> But the study is probably most notable for the surprising way that it collected measurements. A small research team managed to put an antiproton in orbit around the nucleus of a helium atom that was part of some liquid helium chilled down to where it acted as a superfluid. The researchers then measured the light emitted by the antiproton's orbital transitions.


----------



## ekim68

NASA spacecraft snaps gorgeous new photo of Jupiter's moons Io and Europa



> Juno's latest view of the two moons was captured during the spacecraft's 39th close flyby of Jupiter on Jan. 12. At the time, the spacecraft was about 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops, at a latitude of about 52 degrees south.


----------



## ekim68

Our universe may have a twin that runs backward in time



> A wild new theory suggests there may be another "anti-universe," running backward in time prior to the Big Bang.
> 
> The idea assumes that the early universe was small, hot and dense - and so uniform that time looks symmetric going backward and forward.
> 
> If true, the new theory means that dark matter isn't so mysterious; it's just a new flavor of a ghostly particle called a neutrino that can only exist in this kind of universe.


----------



## ekim68

Firing lasers at the Moon to detect early-universe gravitational waves



> A team of European researchers has suggested that the Moon's orbit could be used as a gigantic detector for gravitational waves - ripples in the very fabric of spacetime itself. These waves, much smaller than those that existing detectors can pick up, could originate from the early universe.


----------



## ekim68

New data reveals secrets of million-light-year-wide "odd radio circles"



> Astronomers may be a step closer to solving a cosmic mystery known as odd radio circles (ORCs). New images, captured by the MeerKAT radio telescope, are the clearest and most detailed yet taken of an ORC, helping to narrow down the list of suspects as to what creates them.
> 
> Like many astronomical anomalies, the name tells you pretty much everything you need to know about odd radio circles - they're round blobs of radio emissions that can't be explained by known objects or phenomena. They're a pretty recent mystery too, with the first only being discovered in September 2019 and a total of just five confirmed so far.


----------



## ekim68

UK-backed OneWeb to use rival SpaceX rockets after Russian ban



> Satellite firm to partner with Elon Musk's company after being forced to abandon launch plans in Russia


----------



## ekim68

NASA confirms discovery of 5,000th exoplanet - with billions more to find



> The hunt for planets beyond our solar system has now reached a major milestone. Astronomers report the discovery of the 5,000th exoplanet - with potentially hundreds of billions left to find.
> 
> The milestone was crossed this week after a new batch of 65 exoplanets was confirmed from candidate signals in data from the second mission of the Kepler Space Telescope, K2, bringing the total discovered so far to 5,005. Among them is a new system of five small planets orbiting a red dwarf star called K2-384, in a similar fashion to the famous TRAPPIST-1 system. Most of the other newcomers are Super-Earths and mini-Neptunes, as well as a few Jupiter-sized worlds.


----------



## MisterEd51

ekim68 said:


> NASA confirms discovery of 5,000th exoplanet - with billions more to find


What most people want is the "holy grail" exoplanet. That is, one that is close to earth conditions. For now it would be enough to know one exists. If one exists then the race would be on to find one that would be close enough for potential future colonization.


----------



## valis

Here ya go....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOI_700_d


----------



## MisterEd51

valis said:


> Here ya go....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOI_700_d


Unfortunately, the composition of its atmosphere is not known at this time. I will have to classify this as a maybe.


----------



## valis

Just that fact that we can pick a 'possible' at 100 light years fascinates me....


----------



## ekim68

How eating lettuce could help deep-space astronauts fight bone loss



> Thanks to research at the University of California, Davis, future astronauts could eat salads containing genetically engineered lettuce to get their dose of a drug designed to ward off the effects of weightlessness on bone loss.


----------



## ekim68

Solar Orbiter probe snaps the sharpest ever image of the Sun's corona



> Since launching in February of 2020, the Solar Orbiter probe has been zeroing in on the Sun with a suite of instruments designed to unravel some of its secrets. Among those is an advanced ultraviolet imager, which mission control has now used to capture the highest-resolution image ever of the Sun's outer atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

NASA to Provide Live Coverage of Record-Setting US Astronaut Return



> NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two Roscosmos cosmonauts are scheduled to end their mission aboard the International Space Station and return to Earth on Wednesday, March 30.


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX and Northrup Grumman earn new resupply contracts for the ISS



> With a view to shoring up the supply of scientific cargo to the International Space Station, NASA has awarded contracts for 12 further flights to SpaceX and Northrup Grumman. This extends agreements with two of the agency's key partners in its ongoing resupply efforts, and are designed to keep the station stocked through to 2026.


----------



## ekim68

Quantum physics sets a speed limit to electronics



> How fast can electronics be? When computer chips work with ever shorter signals and time intervals, at some point they come up against physical limits. The quantum-mechanical processes that enable the generation of electric current in a semiconductor material take a certain amount of time. This puts a limit to the speed of signal generation and signal transmission.
> 
> TU Wien (Vienna), TU Graz and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have now been able to explore these limits: The speed can definitely not be increased beyond one petahertz (one million gigahertz), even if the material is excited in an optimal way with laser pulses. This result has now been published in the scientific journal _Nature Communications_.


----------



## ekim68

Pluto's peaks are ice volcanoes, scientists conclude



> Existence of volcanoes makes idea that dwarf plant is inert ball of ice look increasingly improbable


----------



## ekim68

HB11's hydrogen-boron laser fusion test yields groundbreaking results 



> HB11 is approaching nuclear fusion from an entirely new angle, using high power, high precision lasers instead of hundred-million-degree temperatures to start the reaction. Its first demo has produced 10 times more fusion reactions than expected, and the company says it's now "the only commercial entity to achieve fusion so far," making it "the global frontrunner in the race to commercialize the holy grail of clean energy."


----------



## ekim68

Dramatic dying star blows smoke rings in unique celestial show


----------



## ekim68

Watch as a million galaxies form in the first billion years of the cosmos 



> We do have some clues, though. The sky glows in microwaves, the leftover energy from the Big Bang redshifted by a factor of a thousand. The structure we see in that glow tells about the seeds of galaxy superclusters before they even formed. And we have theoretical models for how matter - including dark matter - behaved at the time, giving us at least a framework of understanding of what was going on back then.


----------



## ekim68

Sound travels much slower on Mars than on Earth, researchers find



> Using recorded sounds generated by the rover - like shock waves from the rover's laser that was used to cut rocks, and flight sounds from the Ingenuity helicopter - the researchers were able to compare the Martian sounds to Earth sounds. They determined that sound travels 100 meters per second slower on Mars than on Earth.


----------



## ekim68

Rocket Lab ready to attempt midair recovery of Electron booster



> WASHINGTON - Rocket Lab says it's ready to move to the next step in its efforts to recover and reuse Electron first stages by attempting to catch a booster in midair on an upcoming launch.
> 
> Rocket Lab announced Nov. 23 that, after three launches where Electron boosters splashed down in the ocean and were recovered, it is now ready to take the next step and use a helicopter to catch a booster descending under parachute, a measure that would allow the company to reuse that booster on a later launch.


----------



## ekim68

Sounds of Mars reveal secrets of the Red Planet's atmosphere



> The sounds between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, within the range of human hearing, were both exciting and disappointing. Mars turned out to be remarkably silent to the point where Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California thought the microphone wasn't working.


----------



## MisterEd51

ekim68 said:


> Sounds of Mars reveal secrets of the Red Planet's atmosphere


I wonder if a dust storm makes much noise. A dust storm with 60mph winds might not make much noise because of how low the atmospheric pressure is.

The Average Wind Speed on Mars
https://sciencing.com/mars-earth-common-10034859.html

The Fact and Fiction of Martian Dust Storms
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/the-fact-and-fiction-of-martian-dust-storms/


----------



## ekim68

Impulse Space is betting on a future where launch is cheap



> Impulse Space announced Tuesday that it has raised $20 million in seed funding, led by the venture capital firm Founders Fund. The in-space propulsion company, started by noted rocket scientist Tom Mueller, plans to use the funding to accelerate growth as it moves toward delivering its first orbital transfer vehicle.


----------



## ekim68

New Chinese small sat manufacturing capacity could have international ramifications



> HELSINKI - Two new Chinese factories capable of producing hundreds of small satellites per year could help China achieve space objectives and impact the international market.
> 
> Production trials are now underway at a new facility belonging to the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). The plant, situated within CAST's aerospace industrial base in Tianjin, north China, will be capable of producing more than 200 satellites per year according to the company.


----------



## ekim68

The most precise-ever measurement of W boson mass suggests the standard model needs improvement



> After 10 years of careful analysis and scrutiny, scientists of the CDF collaboration at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today that they have achieved the most precise measurement to date of the mass of the W boson, one of nature's force-carrying particles. Using data collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab, or CDF, scientists have now determined the particle's mass with a precision of 0.01%-twice as precise as the previous best measurement. It corresponds to measuring the weight of an 800-pound gorilla to 1.5 ounces.


----------



## MisterEd51

ekim68 said:


> The most precise-ever measurement of W boson mass suggests the standard model needs improvement


I am glad to see Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory still producing good science. 25 years ago I wondered about its future when they shut down the main ring. BTW, 40 years ago I used to drive by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory every day driving to work. Even long after I moved away from there I still miss seeing the Bison grazing in the middle of the ring.


----------



## valis

Watching the Axiom launch....stoked too.


----------



## valis

T-19 minutes.


----------



## valis

Man our kids are gonna have a VASTLY different space age than we did.


----------



## ekim68

I agree. I remember a conversation we had about ten years ago on whether a Government or Private Business was better for instituting Space Travel and you said that you believed that it was a combination of both. I have since come around to that line of thinking..  It's fascinating with all of the technology coming from all the different Players now.. :up:


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> I agree. I remember a conversation we had about ten years ago on whether a Government or Private Business was better for instituting Space Travel and you said that you believed that it was a combination of both. I have since come around to that line of thinking..  It's fascinating with all of the technology coming from all the different Players now.. :up:


It is just amazing. We are launching crewed privateers to orbit.

Imagine saying that in, say, 1980 or so...


----------



## MisterEd51

Big government agencies like NASA are slow and cumbersome. They are risk adverse so progress is snail-paced at best.

On the other hand private companies like SpaxeX in comparison are quick and nimble. SpaceX is not afraid to try new ideas even if it means that a test looks like a failure. As long as lessons are learned and changes made quickly then they can make progress much faster than any government agency.

Governments have the advantage of deep pockets. If you add to that the ability to collaborate with multiple countries they can fund a project larger than any one company can.

Usually big visions best come from private companies because ideas from governments are many time tainted by politics and short-term thinking.

The best of both private and governments when brought together can lead to a collaboration which takes advantages of the strengths of both. Hopefully, Artemis is one of them.

Hopefully, the replacement for the ISS and the first manned mission to Mars will be made by private-government partnerships.


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> It is just amazing. We are launching crewed privateers to orbit.
> 
> Imagine saying that in, say, 1980 or so...


As an aside, I was convinced that I would go into Space when I got older. I was influenced by Star Trek and the Apollo program when I was in my teens.. After the Shuttle program everything came to a halt or at least a slow down. It's good to see the revitalization..... :up:


----------



## ekim68

Mysterious ancient galaxy becomes most distant object ever seen



> Astronomers have discovered the most distant object ever seen - a strange galaxy some 13.5 billion light-years away. Known as HD1, the galaxy may house a never-before-seen population of stars, or a supermassive black hole mysteriously ahead of its time.


----------



## MisterEd51

ekim68 said:


> As an aside, I was convinced that I would go into Space when I got older. I was influenced by Star Trek and the Apollo program when I was in my teens.. After the Shuttle program everything came to a halt or at least a slow down. It's good to see the revitalization.....


I was more influenced by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey when I first saw it in 1968. Remember in the movie in 2001 they had a commercially operated space station, several moon bases, routine trips back and forth to the moon, and a manned mission to Jupiter. Note in the original story they went to Saturn but the special effects were so challenging they changed the movie screenplay so they went to Jupiter instead.

I only wished I lived long enough to see the technology in 2001: A Space Odyssey become a reality. I hope to see a new lunar mission in a few years but even that is not certain. I don't expect to see a Mars mission before 2030. If SpaceX is involved chances are more certain. if not then I don't know who else has the initiative or drive to make sure it happens.

BTW, between 1979 and 1993 I got to see a lot from the inside when I worked at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. I got to work with a number of the rocket engineers that supported the Space Shuttle program.


----------



## ekim68

Spacewatch: French firm raises €2m to sail on sunlight



> The French aerospace company Gama has raised €2m to deploy a solar sail in space.
> 
> Solar sails require no engines to move. Instead, they are pushed around by the pressure of sunlight. The angle of the sail determines the direction of motion.


----------



## ekim68

Is the origin of dark matter gravity itself?



> A new model of the very early universe proposes that the graviton, the quantum mechanical force carrier of gravity, flooded the cosmos with dark matter before normal matter even had a chance to get started.
> 
> The proposal could be a way to connect two of the biggest outstanding puzzles in modern cosmology: the nature of dark matter and the history of cosmic inflation.


----------



## ekim68

NASA will test SpinLaunch's ability to fling satellites into orbit



> NASA has signed up to test SpinLaunch's extraordinary whirl 'n' hurl space launch technology, which accelerates a launch vehicle to hypersonic speeds using an electric centrifuge instead of a rocket, hurling it skyward like a space discus.


----------



## ekim68

'Megacomet' Bernardinelli-Berstein is largest ever seen, Hubble telescope confirms



> A gigantic comet is actually the largest ever seen, new observations by the Hubble Space Telescope confirm.
> 
> Stretching about 80 miles (129 kilometers) across, the nucleus (or solid center) of the comet, known as C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), is larger than the state of Rhode Island, according to a statement from NASA. And it's about 50 times larger than the average comet core.


----------



## ekim68

Webb Telescope's Coldest Instrument Reaches Operating Temperature



> NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will see the first galaxies to form after the big bang, but to do that its instruments first need to get cold - really cold. On April 7, Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) - a joint development by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) - reached its final operating temperature below 7 kelvins (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 266 degrees Celsius).


----------



## ekim68

Scientists spot elusive mini red giant stars, victims of stellar stealing



> A tug-of-war between neighboring stars led to the formation of two strange types of red giant star, as seen in the eyes of a lost telescope.
> 
> Astronomers reported finding 40 examples of two different varieties of slimmed-down red giant stars. Scientists expected that such objects existed, since red giants are often in binary systems next to the dense core of a dead star, called a white dwarf, that can sometimes be a greedy neighbor. (These mismatched pairs arise because red giants form together; then, late in their lives, each sheds its layers of gas to become a white dwarf.)


----------



## ekim68

Researchers create a magnet made of one molecule



> Sometimes making a brand-new type of box requires outside-the-box thinking, which is exactly what Spartan chemists used to create an eight-atom, magnetic cube
> That tiny box is at the heart of a new magnetic molecule that could power future technologies for data storage, quantum computing and more.


----------



## ekim68

The sun has blasted Mercury with a plasma wave



> A gigantic plasma wave that launched from the sun smashed into Mercury Tuesday (April 12), likely triggering a geomagnetic storm and scouring material from the planet's surface.
> 
> The powerful eruption, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), was seen emanating from the sun's far side on the evening of April 11 and took less than a day to strike the closest planet to our star, where it may have created a temporary atmosphere and even added material to Mercury's comet-like tail, according to SpaceWeather.com.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> The sun has blasted Mercury with a plasma wave
> 
> View attachment 295895


One of my biggest fears...a blast like that would set us back to the stone age. Quite literally.


----------



## ekim68

5 failed alternatives to the Big Bang theory and why they didn't work



> In a nutshell, the universe began as an extremely hot and dense point that inflated over roughly 13.8 billion years, becoming bigger and colder. That's the Big Bang theory.
> 
> But to make a cosmic omelet, you have to break a few eggs. And over the decades, the Big Bang theory has taken on some pretty heavy challengers. Let's explore those alternatives and why they didn't work.


----------



## ekim68

Gamma-ray telescopes may help scientists catch more gravitational waves



> Pulsars rotate at very precise intervals, and scientists can track those intervals from Earth thanks to the beams pulsars emit. As gravitational waves wash over a pulsar, they might subtly alter those pulsars' timing, and astrophysicists think they can observe those subtle changes and thus trace the gravitational waves that created them.


----------



## ekim68

I've always thought that Pulsars would make great Universal Clocks... :up:


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Perseverance Rover Arrives at Delta for New Science Campaign



> After collecting eight rock-core samples from its first science campaign and completing a record-breaking, 31-Martian-day (or sol) dash across about 3 miles (5 kilometers) of Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover arrived at the doorstep of Jezero Crater's ancient river delta April 13. Dubbed "Three Forks" by the Perseverance team (a reference to the spot where three route options to the delta merge), the location serves as the staging area for the rover's second science expedition, the "Delta Front Campaign."


----------



## ekim68

Potential for shallow liquid water on Jupiter's moon Europa, study suggests



> Shallow liquid water may be present on Jupiter's moon Europa, data based on the Greenland ice sheet suggests.
> 
> Europa is a prime candidate for life in the Solar System, and its deep saltwater ocean has captivated scientists for decades.
> 
> The giant planet's moon has been visited by the Voyager and Galileo spacecrafts, and data collected on these missions, together with modelling, indicates the potential presence of a liquid water ocean beneath a 20-30km thick ice shell.


----------



## valis

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA.
ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE


----------



## ekim68

Perseverance captures clearest video yet of a solar eclipse on Mars 



> A solar eclipse on Earth is usually a sight to behold, and for NASA rovers tasked with exploring Mars, alignments of its moons and the Sun are also good reason to look upward. The Perseverance rover has used its advanced camera system to capture the clearest view yet of a solar eclipse on Mars, which will aid scientists in better understanding the behavior of its doomed moon, Phobos.


*







*


----------



## ekim68

Pow! Scientists spot new 'micronova' stellar explosion



> An international team of astronomers has observed and identified a new type of stellar explosion - a micronova.
> 
> Using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), the researchers witnessed never-before-seen small thermonuclear explosions on white dwarf stars that lasted only a matter of hours. A white dwarf is the dense core of a star like our sun that has run out of fuel but does not explode, as a larger star would.


----------



## ekim68

The Large Hadron Collider is about to turn back on after a 3-year hiatus



> The world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator is about to turn back on.
> 
> In December of 2018, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, shut down so that improvements and updates could be made to the facility. After the more than three-year planned hiatus, the LHC is ready to turn back on for Run 3, its third round of operation.
> 
> CERN expects the particle accelerator to restart sometime between April 22 and April 24, a CERN representative told Space.com in an email. Run 3 will follow the successful Run 1 (2009-2013) and Run 2 (2015-2018).


----------



## ekim68

US Navy wirelessly beams 1.6 kW of power a kilometer using microwaves



> In what it describes as the most significant demonstration of its kind in half a century, the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) beamed 1.6 kW of power over a kilometer (3,280 ft) using a microwave beam at the US Army Research Field in Maryland.





> The principle is simple enough. Electricity is converted to microwaves, which are then focused in a tight beam at a receiver made up of what are called rectenna elements. These are very simple components that consist of an x-band dipole antenna with an RF diode. When microwaves strike the rectenna, the elements generate DC current.


----------



## ekim68

All-private SpaceX astronaut mission to return home from the ISS after week-long delay



> The first all-private mission to the International Space Station is slated to complete the final leg of its journey in the next few days, capping off what turned into a longer-than-expected journey after bad weather kept the passengers on the space station for several extra days.
> 
> The mission, called AX-1, was brokered by the Houston, Texas-based startup Axiom Space, which books rocket rides, provides all the necessary training, and coordinates flights to the ISS for anyone who can afford it.


----------



## valis

This is gonna be sooo cool...

https://gizmodo.com/the-webb-telescope-is-almost-fully-aligned-1848829442


----------



## ekim68

US science advisors desperately want to probe Uranus



> The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have released their newest decadal survey. Apparently, at the top of the list of priorities is a goal to probe Uranus. The report, which was published this year, calls for a spacecraft to orbit Uranus. That spacecraft would then map its gravitational and magnetic fields. It would circle the planet for multiple years. During that time, it could deliver an atmospheric probe to the planet to study it.


----------



## ekim68

China Hopes to Redirect a Nearby Asteroid Within the Next Four Years



> Speaking to China Central Television on Sunday, Wu Yanhua, deputy head of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), described China's preliminary plans to embark on the planetary defense project, according to Chinese state-owned news agency Global Times. Wu's comments coincided with Space Day, an annual event that commemorates the 1970 launch of China's first satellite, Dongfanghong-1, in 1970.
> 
> For the proposed test, Wu said a probe would closely survey a near-Earth object prior to smashing into it. Known as kinetic impaction, the idea is to alter the orbital trajectory of a threatening asteroid by directing a large, high-speed spacecraft into the object. NASA is currently running a similar test, known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, which seeks to deliberately crash a space probe into Dimorphos-a tiny asteroid-later this year.


----------



## ekim68

NASA extends OSIRIS-REx asteroid-sampling mission to visit Apophis 



> A history-making NASA spacecraft has just received a new lease on life. OSIRIS-REx, which is currently on its way back to Earth with rock samples from asteroid Bennu, will now have its mission extended to visit another asteroid, Apophis.
> 
> After arriving at Bennu in December 2018, OSIRIS-REx spent more than two years in a close rendezvous with the asteroid, studying it before eventually swooping in and stirring up surface materials to collect samples of dust and rock. In May 2021 it began its 2.5-year journey back to Earth, to drop off these samples for close study by scientists.


----------



## ekim68

All five of life's base units have now been found in meteorites 



> How life on Earth first arose is one of the most profound mysteries of science, and evidence is mounting that the key building blocks may have been delivered to our home planet from space. A new study makes that scenario seem even more likely, as scientists have now identified in meteorites the last two DNA nucleobases that hadn't yet been found in extraterrestrial samples.
> 
> DNA and RNA are made up of five organic molecules called nucleobases - adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine and uracil. That's the ACGT letter code used to represent DNA, while RNA swaps thymine for uracil. Adenine, guanine and uracil have all previously been discovered in meteorite fragments, but the researchers on the new study have now found the last two, cytosine and thymine, for the first time.


----------



## ekim68

valis said:


> This is gonna be sooo cool...
> 
> https://gizmodo.com/the-webb-telescope-is-almost-fully-aligned-1848829442


More on this: 


Sharp pictures! James Webb Space Telescope completes alignment in huge milestone


----------



## ekim68

Ingenuity Mars helicopter visits Perseverance landing gear crash site



> On April 19, 2022, the one-year anniversary of its first flight, NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter visited and took images of the crash site of the protective aeroshell and parachute that helped deliver it and the Perseverance rover to the Red Planet.


----------



## ekim68

Happy birthday Hubble...  (Video)


Hubble: Not Yet Imagined


----------



## ekim68

NASA to repurpose OSIRIS-REx for second asteroid encounter



> A NASA mission to return samples from one near Earth asteroid will get an extended mission to visit a second asteroid under a plan approved by the agency April 25.
> 
> NASA announced that the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft, on its way back to Earth after collecting samples from the asteroid Bennu, will travel to the asteroid Apophis after returning samples in September 2023.


----------



## ekim68

Finally... 


NASA's James Webb Space Telescope completely aligned and fully focused



> Scientists working on NASA's James Webb Telescope have reached an important milestone, completely aligning the space observatory's massive mirrors. The achievement means the team can now move ahead with configuring the onboard instruments and prepare them to begin capturing sharp and in-focus images of the cosmos.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Visualization Rounds Up the Best-Known Black Hole Systems



> Nearby black holes and their stellar companions form an astrophysical rogues' gallery in this new NASA visualization.
> 
> Stars born with more than about 20 times the Sun's mass end their lives as black holes. As the name implies, black holes don't glow on their own because nothing can escape them, not even light. Until 2015, when astronomers first detected merging black holes through the space-time ripples called gravitational waves, the main way to find these ebony enigmas was to search for them in binary systems where they interacted with companion stars. And the best way to do that was to look in X-rays.


(video)


----------



## ekim68

Canada considers adding moon crimes to its Criminal Code



> Canada is working on legislation that would allow legal action against crimes committed on the moon, among other space locations.
> 
> A budget bill containing the proposed space law amendment for the moon passed its first reading April 29 in the country's House of Commons. (The Commons is somewhat akin to the U.S. House of Representatives.)


----------



## ekim68

Water from Earth's atmosphere may be raining onto the Moon



> The Moon may look like a big dry ball, but there's more water up there than you might expect. In a new study, scientists have shown that at least some of it could have been showered onto the lunar surface from the Earth's atmosphere.


----------



## ekim68

Record-breaking 'black-widow' pulsar found just 3,000 light-years from Earth



> A fast-spinning pulsar hungrily feeding on a close companion star has been found 3,000 light-years from Earth in a rare type of cannibalistic system known as a black-widow binary.
> 
> Around two dozen black-widow binaries are currently known in the Milky Way galaxy. They typically feature a pulsar, which is the spinning neutron-star remnant of a massive star that exploded in a supernova, stealing matter from a companion star. As the infalling matter accumulates onto the surface of the pulsar, a torrent of X-rays and gamma rays are unleashed, which further erodes and destroys the companion.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Record-breaking 'black-widow' pulsar found just 3,000 light-years from Earth
> 
> View attachment 296351


Okay, that's pretty cool...


----------



## ekim68

Seashell-inspired material makes for strong, light spacecraft shielding



> Inspired by seashells, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have engineered a versatile new material that's incredibly inexpensive, strong, lightweight, and heat resistant. The material could find use in shielding for spacecraft or fusion facilities.
> 
> Seashells are notoriously tough, and that's thanks to their unique structure of alternating layers of organic and inorganic materials. Layers of inorganic nanograins provide strength, while organic proteins "glue" them together, provide cushioning and prevent cracks from propagating between layers.


----------



## ekim68

NASA Needs Your Help Building A VR Mars Simulator



> NASA today announced the NASA MarsXR Challenge, a new crowd-funding competition hosted on *HeroX* that tasks participants with creating realistic assets and scenarios one may encounter while stationed on the big red planet. The idea is that by developing a realistic VR simulation of the planet, NASA can better prepare its future astronauts for extravehicular activities.


----------



## ekim68

New video gives first-person view of what it's like to be SpinLaunched



> SpinLaunch has released on-board footage from its eighth suborbital flight test, giving us a unique opportunity to imagine what it'd be like to be hurled skyward out of a centrifugal accelerator at more than a thousand miles per hour.


----------



## ekim68

A pulsar is firing a 7-light-year-long antimatter stream into space 



> There's an aphorism I've seen used here and there which goes, "Nature never draws in a straight line."
> 
> It turns out that's only _mostly_ true, because sometimes it does, or gets pretty close. For example, a tiny BB of a star just a couple of dozen kilometers across has shot out a pretty straight beam of matter and antimatter that stretches for a staggering 7 light-years - 70 _trillion_ kilometers!


----------



## ekim68

Listen to the spooky sounds of a black hole



> NASA astrophysicists have sped up the sound waves of the Perseus black hole so that humans can hear the spacey moans.


----------



## ekim68

Cosmic timekeeping tech works underground or underwater 



> For most of us, everyday timekeeping can be out by a few seconds without causing any major dramas. But in more scientific, industrial and technological scenarios, differences on the scale of nanoseconds can be crucial. Keeping time this precisely requires networks of GPS and atomic clocks, but these systems are expensive and don't work everywhere - particularly underground or underwater.
> 
> The new technology outlined by the U Tokyo researchers is designed to solve both of those problems. They call it cosmic time synchronization (CTS), and it works by tracking cosmic ray events in the sky.


----------



## ekim68

World's most powerful X-ray laser now fires a million bursts per second



> The world's most powerful X-ray laser is ready for operation after a massive overhaul. A powerful upgrade to Stanford's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), LCLS-II uses temperatures colder than deep space to accelerate electrons to near light-speed and fire off a million X-ray bursts per second.
> 
> LCLS-II is what's known as a hard X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL), an instrument designed to snap images of microscopic objects in high resolution and at ultrafast time scales. Its predecessor was used to image viruses, recreate the conditions at the center of a star, boil water into plasma states hotter than Earth's core, create the loudest sound possible, and make the kind of "diamond rain" that could fall on planets like Neptune.


----------



## ekim68

Behold! Milky Way's monster black hole imaged for the 1st time.



> The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has captured a historic first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
> 
> The image, which was taken in the light of submillimeter radio waves, confirms that there is a black hole in the heart of the Milky Way that is feeding on a trickle of hydrogen gas.


----------



## ekim68

Cress seeds grown in moon dust raise hopes for lunar crops



> The prospect of growing crops on the moon has edged a little closer after researchers nurtured plants - some more successfully than others - in lunar soil for the first time.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Mars helicopter was supposed to fly five times. It's flown 28.


----------



## ekim68

The Super Flower Blood Moon lunar eclipse of 2022 occurs tonight!



> The event, known as a lunar eclipse, will see the full Flower Moon temporarily turn red overnight on Sunday (May 15) and Monday (May 16), depending on where you are standing. You can watch the Flower Blood Moon eclipse in webcasts, starting at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT).


----------



## ekim68

Sandia developing micro-grids to power future Moon base 



> To keep the lights on in NASA's Artemis human lunar outpost, Sandia National Laboratories is developing electrical micro-grids to handle the power distribution from the Moon base's mini nuclear reactors to the various living and support facilities.


----------



## ekim68

New US lab to create versions of atoms never recorded on Earth



> From carbon to uranium, oxygen to iron, chemical elements are the building blocks of the world around us and the wider universe. Now, physicists are hoping to gain an unprecedented glimpse into their origins, with the opening of a new facility that will create thousands of peculiar and unstable versions of atoms never before recorded on Earth.
> 
> By studying these versions, known as isotopes, they hope to gain new insights into the reactions that created the elements within exploding stars, as well as testing theories about the "strong force" - one of the four fundamental forces in nature, which binds protons and neutrons together in an atom's nucleus. The facility could also yield new isotopes for medical use.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> The Super Flower Blood Moon lunar eclipse of 2022 occurs tonight!


Did anyone here see it/check it out ?
Photos?
I did step out side near the peak of the event, but clouds were in the way.
'


----------



## ekim68

We had clouds here, too. NASA offers some streaming events on these eclipses at their home site just for people like us..


----------



## ekim68

NASA's InSight Mars lander set to shut down by December



> It looks as though NASA's InSight Mars lander's days are numbered after the space agency announced that the spacecraft is gradually losing power due to dust building up on its solar panels, already reducing their output by 90 percent.
> 
> After touching down on the Red Planet on November 26, 2018, the InSight lander deployed two circular solar arrays with a diameter of 7 ft (2.2 m) each. At first, these generated 5,000 Wh of power each Martian day, but over the last three and a half years dust has accumulated on the panels, cutting power down to a mere 500 Wh per day, and it's getting worse.


----------



## valis

Yeah saw that...*sniff*


----------



## RT

isn't a Martian windstorm supposed to clear that off?
Like what was speculated happened to the rover Opportunity?

Ok, we can time astronomical events down to the second, but can't predict the weather on Earth within hours,....sometimes.
Look forward to the first weatherman broadcasting from the Red Planet...

"Good Morning earthlings, it's minus 200 for our low and hope to see ~42 by noon...with winds strong and variable..."


----------



## ekim68

The Little Satellite that could... 


Voyager 1 glitch? Strange signals from venerable probe has NASA baffled



> Spending 45 years traversing the solar system really does a number on a spacecraft.
> 
> NASA's Voyager 1 mission launched in 1977, passed into what scientists call interstellar space in 2012 and just kept going - the spacecraft is now 14.5 billion miles (23.3 billion kilometers) away from Earth. And while Voyager 1 is still operating properly, scientists on the mission recently noticed that it appeared confused about its location in space without going into safe mode or otherwise sounding an alarm.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble's "magnum opus": most precise measurement of universe's expansion



> NASA has released a huge new report that astronomers are calling Hubble's magnum opus. Analyzing 30 years of data from the famous space telescope, the new study makes the most precise measurement yet of how fast the universe is expanding.
> 
> Astronomers have known for the better part of a century that the universe is expanding, thanks to the observation that galaxies are moving away from us - and the farther away they are, the faster they're traveling. The speed at which they're moving, relative to their distance from Earth, is a figure called the Hubble constant, and measuring this value was one of the primary missions of the space telescope of the same name.


----------



## ekim68

9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven't Found Aliens Yet 



> Today, scientists know that there are millions, perhaps billions of planets in the universe that could sustain life. So, in the long history of everything, why hasn't any of this life made it far enough into space to shake hands (or claws … or tentacles) with humans? It could be that the universe is just too big to traverse.


----------



## ekim68

NASA praises Boeing's 'picture-perfect' Starliner mission



> Boeing's Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) is officially a success.
> 
> That's the verdict that leaders at NASA and Boeing gave during a press briefing on Wednesday night (May 25), a few hours after the aerospace giant's Starliner capsule returned to Earth to wrap up OFT-2, a crucial uncrewed demonstration mission to the International Space Station (ISS).


----------



## ekim68

Elon Musk Reveals Details of Next-Generation Starlink Satellites



> The next generation of Starlink satellites are going to be larger, and more powerful, designed to provide internet access to remote parts of the world, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The space billionaire recently discussed the details of the Starlink Gen2 System on the popular YouTube show, Everyday Astronaut.
> 
> In the 32 minute clip, Musk reveals that SpaceX has already produced the first Starlink 2.0 satellite. The new generation satellite is 7 meters (22 feet) long and weighs about 1.25 tons (approximately 2,755 pounds or 1,250 kilograms). Starlink 1.0, by comparison, weighs about 573 pounds (260 kilograms). The extra weight accounts for a more effective satellite, according to Musk.


----------



## MisterEd51

ekim68 said:


> Elon Musk Reveals Details of Next-Generation Starlink Satellites


FAA delays environmental review of SpaceX's Starship 2 more weeks, to June 13
https://www.space.com/faa-spacex-starship-review-delayed-june-13

SpaceX requires Starship to launch Starlink 2.0 satellites into orbit. Until Starship is ready all Starlink 2.0 satellites will be grounded.


----------



## ekim68

NASA to make big announcement about Artemis moon spacesuits today. Watch the reveal live.



> NASA will apparently reveal today (June 1) who's going to make the spacesuits for its Artemis moon program, and you can watch the unveiling live.
> 
> The news will come during a press conference that starts at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency (opens in new tab).


----------



## ekim68

Space Is a Fragile Ecosystem



> Outer space isn't what most people would think of as an ecosystem. Its barren and frigid void isn't exactly akin to the verdant canopies of a rainforest or to the iridescent shoals that swim among coral cities. But if we are to become better stewards of the increasingly frenzied band of orbital space above our atmosphere, a shift to thinking of it as an ecosystem-as part of an interconnected system of living things interacting with their physical environment-may be just what we need.


----------



## ekim68

Why Boeing's successful Starliner test is a big deal



> Starliner, a space capsule designed by Boeing, landed safely in the New Mexico desert early Wednesday evening. The vehicle's return to Earth came after a nearly weeklong trip to the International Space Station. This journey made history, as it marked the first time that a private American company not named SpaceX successfully reached the ISS.


----------



## ekim68

Rare sight for amateur astronomers as five planets align



> Amateur astronomers are preparing for a heavenly treat from Friday as the five planets visible to the naked eye line up in order of their distance from the sun across the pre-dawn sky.
> 
> For those who can face the early start, and have an unobstructed view of the horizon to the east and south-east, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, could all be visible before the faintest, Mercury, vanishes in the glare of sunrise.


----------



## ekim68

Over 100 hidden asteroids detected thanks to new algorithm studying old telescope data



> The 104 previously undiscovered asteroids were detected using a new algorithm called Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery (THOR), which is a part of the Asteroid Institute's Asteroid Discovery Analysis and Mapping (ADAM) cloud-based astrodynamics platform. This algorithm recognizes asteroids and calculates their trajectories by linking points of light in different sky images that are consistent with asteroid orbits, according to a statement from the B612 Foundation, a nonprofit that supports research and technologies for mapping and navigating the solar system.


----------



## ekim68

NASA just bought the rest of the space station crew flights from SpaceX



> NASA said this week that it plans to purchase five additional Crew Dragon missions from SpaceX to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.
> 
> Although the space agency's news release does not specifically say so, these may be the final flights NASA needs to keep the space station fully occupied into the year 2030. As of now, there is no signed international agreement to keep the station flying until then, but this new procurement sends a strong signal that the space agency expects the orbital outpost to keep flying that long.


----------



## ekim68

New trove of data from Europe's Gaia mission will lead to best Milky Way map ever



> The European Space Agency's Gaia mission will release new data on June 13, and scientists can't wait.
> 
> The coming data dump will contain information about nearly two billion of the brightest objects in the sky. The release will supercharge the mapping of our Milky Way galaxy, experts say, allowing astronomers to see to the farthest fringes of the galaxy and also distinguish much finer details in its structure than ever before.


----------



## RT

New arcade style game from NASA

Probablly should post in the Games thread...


----------



## ekim68

Webb: Engineered to Endure Micrometeoroid Impacts



> Micrometeoroid strikes are an unavoidable aspect of operating any spacecraft, which routinely sustain many impacts over the course of long and productive science missions in space. Between May 23 and 25, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope sustained an impact to one of its primary mirror segments. After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements despite a marginally detectable effect in the data. Thorough analysis and measurements are ongoing. Impacts will continue to occur throughout the entirety of Webb's lifetime in space; such events were anticipated when building and testing the mirror on the ground.


----------



## ekim68

Optical brain-like chip processes almost 2 billion images per second



> Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a powerful new optical chip that can process almost 2 billion images per second. The device is made up of a neural network that processes information as light without needing components that slow down traditional computer chips, like memory.
> 
> The basis of the new chip is a neural network, a system modeled on the way the brain processes information. These networks are made up of nodes that interconnect like neurons, and they even "learn" in a similar way to organic brains by being trained on sets of data, such as recognizing objects in images or words in speech. Over time, they become much better at these tasks.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars has a 'pet rock' along for the ride



> NASA's Perseverance rover has picked up a rocky hitchhiker on Mars.
> 
> The rover has collected a "pet rock" tucked inside its left front wheel that has been riding along with Perseverance since early February. So far, its ridden across 5.3 miles (8.5 kilometers) with the Perseverance rover as it drives across its Jezero Crater home on Mars.


----------



## ekim68

Returned asteroid sample unlocks time capsule older than the Sun



> A six-year round trip to an asteroid and back has yielded unprecedented insights into the formation of the solar system. Scientists have conducted the first comprehensive analysis of samples returned from asteroid Ryugu, finding a detailed history starting with the oldest material ever found.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers may have detected a 'dark' free-floating black hole



> Astronomers may have discovered the first free-floating black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, thanks to a technique called gravitational microlensing. With new observations, they hope to find many more such ghost stars.


----------



## ekim68

That's not a bad pixel. That small dot is Mercury in front of the Sun.


----------



## ekim68

Gaia maps two billion Milky Way objects in unprecedented detail 



> The most comprehensive picture of the Milky Way galaxy just got even more detailed, as ESA's Gaia mission has unveiled its third data release. The new dataset updates information on almost two billion stars, including their makeup and movements, as well as new catalogs of starquakes, binary systems, variable stars and other objects.


----------



## ekim68

Explosion at Chinese space launch center revealed by satellite imagery



> HELSINKI - An explosion severely damaged rocket facilities at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in October 2021, commercial satellite imagery shows.
> 
> Jiuquan spaceport is situated in the Gobi Desert and hosts major orbital launches including all of the country's Shenzhou human spaceflight missions. Established in 1958 it is the first of China's four national spaceports to be constructed.


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre blue blobs in space may be born from galactic "belly flops"



> Five of these blue blobs, as they appear in telescope images, were found in the Virgo galaxy cluster, using observations from Hubble and the Very Large Array. They seem to be a new type of stellar system composed of only young, blue stars, spread out in an irregular pattern. That's a fairly strange arrangement - how they became isolated from any older stars was a mystery. And isolated they were, since the closest possible parent galaxy was hundreds of lightyears away.
> 
> On closer inspection, the team found more oddities about the blue blobs. Spectroscopy revealed that there was very little atomic hydrogen gas in the systems, which is strange because that's a key ingredient for forming stars.


----------



## ekim68

Fastest-growing black hole ever seen is devouring the equivalent of 1 Earth per second



> This behemoth has been powering an ultrabright quasar for 9 billion years.


----------



## ekim68

Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else



> A decade ago, particle physicists thrilled the world. On 4 July 2012, 6000 researchers working with the world's biggest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, announced they had discovered the Higgs boson, a massive, fleeting particle key to their abstruse explanation of how other fundamental particles get their mass. The discovery fulfilled a 45-year-old prediction, completed a theory called the standard model, and thrust physicists into the spotlight.
> 
> Then came a long hangover.


----------



## ekim68

Chemical analysis may close the case on life on Venus



> Whether or not there's life on Venus is the subject of much debate among scientists, but a new study may close the case. Researchers at Cambridge have analyzed the Venusian atmosphere and found no sign of the chemical fingerprints microbes would be expected to produce - but it doesn't rule out life on other similar planets.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Space Telescope starstruck by a mysterious globular cluster



> A celestial workhorse and its dedicated team of astronomers are at it again by delivering a hypnotic new image of a globular cluster and its infinite depth of stars.


----------



## ekim68

Astroscale to launch space-junk-removing test mission in 2024



> The space cleanup company is partnering with OneWeb, which is putting a broadband satellite fleet into space.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists link two time crystals in seemingly impossible experiment



> The laws of physics are symmetric through space. That means that the fundamental equations of gravity or electromagnetism or quantum mechanics apply equally throughout the entirety of the volume of the universe. They also work in any direction. So, a laboratory experiment that is rotated 90 degrees should produce the same results (all else being equal, of course).
> 
> But in a crystal, this gorgeous symmetry gets broken. The molecules of a crystal arrange themselves in a preferred direction, creating a repeating spatial structure. In the jargon of physicists, a crystal is a perfect example of "spontaneous symmetry breaking" - the fundamental laws of physics remain symmetric, but the arrangement of the molecules is not.


----------



## ekim68

Physicists Say They've Built an Atom Laser That Can Run 'Forever'



> A new breakthrough has allowed physicists to create a beam of atoms that behaves the same way as a laser, and that can theoretically stay on "forever".
> 
> This might finally mean the technology is on its way to practical application, although significant limitations still apply.
> 
> Nevertheless, this is a huge step forward for what is known as an "atom laser" - a beam made of atoms marching as a single wave that could one day be used for testing fundamental physical constants, and engineering precision technology.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Physicists link two time crystals in seemingly impossible experiment


Okay....thats pretty neat....


----------



## ekim68

If aliens are calling, let it go to voicemail



> Receiving signals from extraterrestrial civilizations could pose an existential risk. Really.


----------



## ekim68

NASA pursues nuclear option for providing power on the Moon 



> NASA is turning to nuclear power will keep the lights on in tomorrow's Moon bases. The space agency has awarded US$15 million in contracts to three preliminary designs for 40-kW nuclear fission reactors to be tested on the lunar surface by 2030.


* 
*


----------



## ekim68

Record-Breaking Voyager Spacecraft Begin to Power Down



> Their remarkable odyssey is finally winding down. Over the past three years NASA has shut down heaters and other nonessential components, eking out the spacecrafts' remaining energy stores to extend their unprecedented journeys to about 2030. For the Voyagers' scientists, many of whom have worked on the mission since its inception, it is a bittersweet time. They are now confronting the end of a project that far exceeded all their expectations.


----------



## valis

*sniff*


----------



## ekim68

Office of Space Commerce on a "listening tour" for civil space traffic management



> The new head of the Office of Space Commerce says he's talking with industry on how his office can best take over civil space traffic management while also potentially taking on more regulatory responsibilities.


----------



## ekim68

The Mars Express spacecraft is finally getting a Windows 98 upgrade



> Engineers at the European Space Agency (ESA) are getting ready for a Windows 98 upgrade on an orbiter circling Mars. The Mars Express spacecraft has been operating for more than 19 years, and the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument onboard has been using software built using Windows 98. Thankfully for humanity and the Red Planet's sake, the ESA isn't upgrading its systems to Windows ME.


----------



## ekim68

Atomic-scale quantum circuit marks major quantum computer breakthrough



> Engineers in Sydney have demonstrated a quantum integrated circuit made up of just a few atoms. By precisely controlling the quantum states of the atoms, the new processor can simulate the structure and properties of molecules in a way that could unlock new materials and catalysts.
> 
> The new quantum circuit comes from researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and a start-up company called Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC). It's essentially made up of 10 carbon-based quantum dots embedded in silicon, with six metallic gates that control the flow of electrons through the circuit.


----------



## ekim68

Wild solar weather is causing satellites to plummet from orbit. It's only going to get worse.



> The change coincided with the onset of the new solar cycle, and experts think it might be the beginning of some difficult years.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> Wild solar weather is causing satellites to plummet from orbit. It's only going to get worse.


Oh great...more stuff to worry about


----------



## ekim68

I guess I gotta get me a Hard Hat...


----------



## ekim68

Rogue rocket's moon crash site spotted by NASA probe



> The grave of a rocket body that slammed into the moon more than three months ago has been found.
> 
> Early this year, astronomers determined that a mysterious rocket body was on course to crash into the lunar surface on March 4. Their calculations suggested that the impact would occur inside Hertzsprung Crater, a 354-mile-wide (570 kilometers) feature on the far side of the moon.


----------



## ekim68

BioFinder detects organic molecules in fossils, could help find aliens



> Our first encounter with extraterrestrial life isn't likely to be a spaceship landing on the White House lawn, but tiny fossils in the rocks of another planet. To aid in that search, scientists at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa have developed a portable device called the Biofinder that can highlight organic residue in fossils tens of millions of years old.


----------



## ekim68

NASA reveals plan to squeeze last drop of science from failing rover



> NASA's InSight Mars lander is trading less life for more science after the space agency decided to let the spacecraft's remaining science instrument run until the lander's solar power system fails completely sometime in August or September.
> 
> The InSight lander has been on Mars since November 2018 and has been supplied with power by two circular solar arrays with a diameter of 7 ft (2.2 m) each. When first deployed, these generated 5,000 Wh of power each Martian day, but over the last three and a half years dust has accumulated on the panels. As a result, the spacecraft is now subsisting on less than 500 Wh per day as the output falls on a daily basis.


----------



## ekim68

Cygnus cargo ship allows US to control ISS orbit without Russian help



> For the first time since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the United States now has the ability to control the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) without Russian cooperation after a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully boost the space lab into a higher orbit.


----------



## ekim68

NASA's CAPSTONE CubeSat lifts off to test orbit of future space station



> NASA took its first step today in establishing its Gateway orbital lunar outpost with the launch at 5:55 am EDT of its Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) CubeSat atop a Rocket Lab Electron rocket at the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand.
> 
> As part of its Artemis program to establish a permanent presence on the Moon, NASA plans to construct a small space station called Gateway in cislunar space to serve as a base for crewed expeditions to the Moon and Mars. One feature of Gateway is that it won't orbit the Earth or the Moon, but a spot in empty space called a Lagrange point where the gravitational pull of the Moon and Earth balance each other out.


----------



## ekim68

Harvard's acoustic computer chip uses sound waves to encode data



> Computer chips and circuits send and process data by modulating a particular medium. Most of the time that medium is electrons, the flow of which is modulated by components like transistors to encode data as ones and zeroes - high or low current. More recently, photonic chips have been developed that modulate photons of light and send them down narrow channels called waveguides to transmit data around the chip.
> 
> The new acoustic chip works in a similar way to the latter, only with sound waves instead of light waves. The team fashioned a modulator out of a material called lithium niobate, which changes its elasticity in response to an electric field and produces acoustic waves. By carefully adjusting that field, the modulator can control the phase, amplitude and frequency of the acoustic waves, encoding data in them before sending them down waveguides.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> I guess I gotta get me a Hard Hat...


Or high tech umbrella 

My bad for not posting sooner, this already happened...about an ~100 year event, when the planets line up (just from our perspective, doncha know)

I did go out to see it, but with trees in full foliage... no joy 

I hope some of you were able to notice *THIS*


----------



## ekim68

Meet the explorer that could be 1st to search for life in Martian caves



> Before humans land on Mars and explore its subsurface, a group of scientists want to send ReachBot -- a robot designed to crawl and climb through extraterrestrial caves.


----------



## ekim68

Virgin Orbit carries out its first night mission for the US Space Force



> Virgin Orbit has ticked off another milestone for its fledgling launch business, successfully carrying out its first night-time mission over the weekend and deploying satellites into low-Earth orbit. The flight is the first of three the company will carry out for the United States Space Force as it eyes international expansion of its operations.


----------



## ekim68

Never-before-seen crystals found in perfectly preserved meteorite dust



> Researchers have discovered never-before-seen types of crystal hidden in tiny grains of perfectly preserved meteorite dust. The dust was left behind by a massive space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, nine years ago.


----------



## ekim68

The Large Hadron Collider returns in the hunt for new physics



> Ready, steady, go: the race to discover new physics returns today as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is re-ignited, firing heavy ion particles into one another at 99.99% the speed of light to recreate a state of primordial matter not seen since just after the Big Bang.


----------



## ekim68

LHCb discovers three new exotic particles



> The international LHCb collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has observed three never-before-seen particles: a new kind of "pentaquark" and the first-ever pair of "tetraquarks", which includes a new type of tetraquark. The findings, presented today at a CERN seminar, add three new exotic members to the growing list of new hadrons found at the LHC. They will help physicists better understand how quarks bind together into these composite particles.


----------



## ekim68

CAPSTONE lunar probe phones home after dramatic day of silence



> The mission operations team says that the initial data from the spacecraft indicates that it is healthy and functioning as expected. While communications were interrupted, CAPSTONE continued to function autonomously, maintaining its proper attitude and pointing its antenna toward the Earth. In addition, it maintained its battery charge and carried out a momentum desaturation maneuver to remove excess spin from the reaction wheels used by the craft to keep the probe stable.


----------



## ekim68

Record-setting quantum entanglement connects two atoms across 20 miles



> Researchers in Germany have demonstrated quantum entanglement of two atoms separated by 33 km (20.5 miles) of fiber optics. This is a record distance for this kind of communication and marks a breakthrough towards a fast and secure quantum internet.
> 
> Quantum entanglement is the uncanny phenomenon where two particles can become so inextricably linked that examining one can tell you about the state of the other. Stranger still, changing something about one particle will instantly alter its partner, no matter how far apart they are. That leads to the unsettling implication that information is being "teleported" faster than the speed of light, an idea that was too much for even Einstein, who famously described it as "spooky action at a distance."


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid Bennu nearly swallowed up NASA's sampling spacecraft



> NASA's asteroid-sampling spacecraft had a near-death experience at Bennu, according to the mission team.
> 
> In October 2020, the agency's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft nearly sank into the surface of the rubbly asteroid while picking up rocks for shipment to Earth in 2023, team members revealed Thursday (July 7). The spacecraft only escaped getting stuck or sinking into oblivion within Bennu by firing its thrusters at the right moment.


----------



## ekim68

First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope


----------



## ekim68

Famous Higgs boson behaves just as expected, 'most comprehensive studies' confirm



> The "most comprehensive studies" of the Higgs boson conducted to date reveal that the particle behaves just as expected and could help unlock some of the greatest mysteries of physics, including the nature of dark matter, scientists say.
> 
> Two new studies, based on 10,000 trillion proton-on-proton collisions conducted inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during its second run, which ended in 2018, analyzed 8 million Higgs boson particles detected by the LHC's ATLAS and CMS detectors.


----------



## ekim68

First Webb images! Wow!



> NASA - with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) - released the first images from the mighty James Webb Space Telescope during a televised broadcast today, July 12, 2022.


----------



## ekim68

Nanoracks takes out the ISS trash in orbital reentry bags 



> Nanoracks, in conjunction with NASA's Johnson Space Center, has successfully expelled 172 lb (78 kg) of trash from the International Space Station (ISS) in a high-tech bin liner that was ejected using the station's Bishop Airlock on June 2 to then burn up in the atmosphere.


----------



## Johnny b

* 35 Pictures That Will Make You Stop And Reevaluate Literally Every Single Decision You've Made In Life *
https://news.yahoo.com/35-pictures-stop-reevaluate-literally-185337078.html

Everything is relative.


----------



## valis

Johnny b said:


> * 35 Pictures That Will Make You Stop And Reevaluate Literally Every Single Decision You've Made In Life *
> https://news.yahoo.com/35-pictures-stop-reevaluate-literally-185337078.html
> 
> Everything is relative.


Very humbling. My all time fave is the Pale Blue Dot and Sagan's quote.


----------



## valis

https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot


----------



## ekim68

Thanks Tim, I'm keeping that.. :up:


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre radio burst with "heartbeat" rhythm is longest detected by far



> Astronomers have detected an extremely strange radio signal from a distant galaxy that pulses with a heartbeat-like rhythm. This signal lasted about 1,000 times longer than other fast radio bursts (FRBs), and had a clear periodic pattern to its pulses.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers measure strongest magnetic field ever detected



> Astronomers have measured the strongest magnetic field ever found in the universe. The honor goes to a powerful type of neutron star, with a surface magnetic field of over 1.6 billion Tesla.


----------



## ekim68

A brief history of the Higgs boson, the Holy Grail of physics



> This month marks the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson, a true "Holy Grail" of science that had eluded detection for almost 50 years. But what exactly is this particle, and why is it so important? What has it taught us in the decade since its discovery - and more importantly, what could it teach us in the next decade?
> 
> The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that the universe is made up of 12 elementary matter particles, four force carriers and one final particle that holds it all together - the Higgs boson.


----------



## ekim68

US, Russian astronauts will swap seats on rockets again



> CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA astronauts will go back to riding Russian rockets under an agreement announced Friday, and Russian cosmonauts will catch lifts to the International Space Station with SpaceX beginning this fall.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Telescope turns its infrared eyes on Jupiter



> Last week the James Webb Space Telescope made history with its first images, showing a galaxy cluster billions of light-years away, but now it's turned its sights on something much closer to home. NASA has released infrared images Webb snapped of Jupiter to test its instruments.


----------



## ekim68

What goes up must come down: Study looks at risk of orbital debris casualties



> It's only a matter of time before someone is killed by falling space junk.
> 
> The toll taken by space debris so far includes an Indonesian livestock pen's fence crushed by a stray fuel tank, a house in the Ivory Coast damaged by a chunk of a first stage, and a woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, walking in the park who felt a piece of rocket tap her on the shoulder.


----------



## RT

ekim68 said:


> What goes up must come down: Study looks at risk of orbital debris casualties


Matter of time isn't ? Probability ensues statics and it could be space junk or that big old asteroid that dino DNA had in it's sights, and we're the dinos 
Even random things have happened:
This happened.

Oh, Random things happen more often than you think.....
OK maybe that's a one 'r two off, statistically 

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/explore-night-bob-king/random-
meteors-arent-random02112015/


----------



## ekim68

SpaceX breaks launch record as it sends 46 Starlink satellites into space Friday



> The launch allowed SpaceX to surpass its 31 record launches of 2021 with a 32nd record launch in 2022, and still counting.


----------



## ekim68

Chemistry breakthrough offers unprecedented control over atomic bonds 



> In what's being hailed as an important first for chemistry, an international team of scientists has developed a new technology that can selectively rearrange atomic bonds within a single molecule. The breakthrough allows for an unprecedented level of control over chemical bonds within these structures, and could open up some exciting possibilities in what's known as molecular machinery.


----------



## ekim68

The end of everything: 5 ways the universe could be destroyed



> Everything has to end eventually - but does that include the universe itself? And if so, how? And when? It might be hard to imagine a catastrophe big enough to affect the entirety of existence, but physicists do expect it all to end at some point - and it may come sooner than we think. Here are some of the leading hypotheses about how the universe could end, and when.


----------



## ekim68

'We Still Need Hubble': Why NASA's Revolutionary Space Telescope Is Not Dead Yet



> The legacy of Hubble, which redefined our view of the cosmos, is still being written


----------



## MisterEd51

In November 2021, NASA extended the service contract for Hubble until June 2026. Support beyond 2026 is unknown. Still Hubble could have an equipment problem and fail any time. That became apparent when Hubble was down from June until December 2021 because of hardware problems. If Hubble fails then it would have to be decided whether a repair mission was worth it. Currently there are no plans.

Based on solar activity and atmospheric drag, or lack thereof, a natural atmospheric reentry for Hubble will occur between 2028 and 2040. If NASA decided that it wanted to de-orbit Hubble before then it would have to plan a mission to it to attach a rocket motor to it so a planned de-orbit could be done.

When we lose Hubble there is another telescope in the works called the Roman Space Telescope.



> NASA has chosen SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket to launch its next major space telescope, a wide-field observatory that should directly complement the brand new James Webb Space Telescope.
> 
> Originally known as the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST), NASA recently renamed the mission in honor of Nancy Grace Roman, a foundational force behind the Hubble Space Telescope. Fittingly, the Roman Space Telescope's basic design is reminiscent of Hubble in many ways, owing to the fact that the mission exists solely because the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) chose to donate an unused multi-billion-dollar spy satellite - a satellite that was effectively a secret Earth-facing version of Hubble.
> 
> However, thanks to decades of improvements in electronics, electromechanics, and the instrumentation side of spacecraft and space telescopes, RST will be dramatically more capable than the Hubble telescope it resembles. And now, after a several-year fight for survival, the Roman Space Telescope officially has a ride to space - SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket.


SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to launch NASA's Roman Space Telescope
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-nasa-roman-space-telescope/


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope beats its own record with potential most distant galaxies



> Astronomers are now discovering record-breaking distant galaxies by the dozen while sifting through the treasure trove of data now being collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb). Among them are several galaxies dating back to just over 200 million years after the Big Bang.
> 
> Prior to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the most distant confirmed galaxy known was GN-z11, which astronomers saw as it was about 420 million years after the Big Bang, giving it what astronomers call a redshift of 11.6. (Redshift describes how much the light coming from a galaxy has been stretched as the universe expands. The higher the redshift, the farther back in time we see a galaxy.)


----------



## ekim68

See Mars' Grand Canyon in stunning new photos



> Mars is smaller than Earth (about half Earth's size). But its vast canyon system called Valles Marineris dwarfs even our earthly Grand Canyon.


----------



## ekim68

Moon caves may offer year-round jeans-and-jacket temperatures



> The Moon isn't the most hospitable place, but that's not stopping NASA from sending humans back there soon. Thankfully, an orbiter has now found a region of the Moon with year-round jeans-and-jacket weather - underground caves.


----------



## ekim68

South Korea to Send Its First Mission to the Moon



> On Tuesday, August 2, a South Korean spacecraft carrying scientific instruments will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and begin charting a course to the moon.
> 
> The spacecraft is expected to arrive at its destination in mid-December and enter an orbit about 100 kilometers above the lunar surface, where its instruments will study the moon for at least a year, reports _Science_Insider's Dennis Normile.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb keeps breaking records for most distant galaxies ever seen



> Even though it hasn't been collecting data for very long, the James Webb Space Telescope keeps breaking its own records for peering deeper into space and time. The telescope has now detected a galaxy candidate that lies 35 billion light-years from Earth, which if confirmed would make it the most distant galaxy ever found. At least, for now.


----------



## ekim68

Perseverance Mars rover bags 12th Red Planet rock sample



> NASA's Perseverance rover has now collected a dozen Martian rocks.
> 
> The car-sized Perseverance drilled out and sealed up its 12th rock sample on Wednesday (Aug. 3), mission team members announced via Twitter (opens in new tab) today (Aug. 5) - its fourth such operation in less than a month.


----------



## ekim68

At Long Last, Mathematical Proof That Black Holes Are Stable



> In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein's equations that precisely described the space-time outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn't be coined for a few more years.) In the nearly six decades since his achievement, researchers have tried to show that these so-called Kerr black holes are stable. What that means, explained Jérémie Szeftel, a mathematician at Sorbonne University, "is that if I start with something that looks like a Kerr black hole and give it a little bump" - by throwing some gravitational waves at it, for instance - "what you expect, far into the future, is that everything will settle down, and it will once again look exactly like a Kerr solution."


----------



## ekim68

FCC votes to boost manufacturing in space



> The FCC may have just advanced the industrialization of space. Commissioners have voted in favor of an inquiry that will explore in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing (ISAM). The move would both help officials understand the demands and risks of current in-space production technology while facilitating new projects. This could help companies build satellites and stations in orbit, for instance, while finding new ways to deal with growing volumes of space debris.


----------



## ekim68

Russian Military Satellite Appears To Be Stalking A New U.S. Spy Satellite



> A recently launched Russian satellite with capabilities unknown is getting suspiciously close to what is reportedly a new U.S. spy satellite.


----------



## ekim68

A good read.. 


NASA Team Troubleshoots Asteroid-Bound Lucy Across Millions of Miles



> Following the successful launch of NASA's Lucy spacecraft on Oct. 16, 2021, a group of engineers huddled around a long conference table in Titusville, Florida. Lucy was mere hours into its 12-year flight, but an unexpected challenge had surfaced for the first-ever Trojan asteroids mission.
> 
> Data indicated that one of Lucy's solar arrays powering the spacecraft's systems - designed to unfurl like a hand fan - hadn't fully opened and latched, and the team was figuring out what to do next.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Space Telescope captures photo of a dazzling star cluster



> Sure, the Webb telescope is getting most of the attention these days - and it should. It's a monumental achievement!
> 
> But the James Webb Space Telescope's predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, is showing us why it shouldn't be forgotten.


----------



## ekim68

China launches secretive reusable test spacecraft



> China sent a highly-classified reusable experimental spacecraft into orbit Thursday, two years after a similarly clandestine mission.
> 
> A Long March 2F rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert Aug. 4, sending a "reusable test space" into low Earth orbit, Chinese language state media Xinhua reported.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Sees Red Supergiant Star Betelgeuse Slowly Recovering After Blowing Its Top



> Analyzing data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories, astronomers have concluded that the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse quite literally blew its top in 2019, losing a substantial part of its visible surface and producing a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection (SME). This is something never before seen in a normal star's behavior.


----------



## ekim68

Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition



> Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.
> 
> Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars: heavy hydrogen atoms collide with enough force that they fuse together to form a helium atom, releasing large amounts of energy as a by-product. Once the hydrogen plasma "ignites", the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, with the fusions themselves producing enough power to maintain the temperature without external heating.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition


Holy cow that is awesome.

What a time to be alive, quite literally.


----------



## ekim68

I agree and when you think about it, we've lived through some amazing technological times.. :up:


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> I agree and when you think about it, we've lived through some amazing technological times.. :up:


My dad's mom had the Wright Brothers flight AND saw men walk on the moon in her life, and I find that cool as all get out. This is the stuff OUR grandkids will talk about and that is just so awesome. Wish I could see what THEIR grandkids will find astounding.


----------



## ekim68

A good read.. 


How American Spaceflight Entered Its Era of Compromise



> Looking back at the shuttle program at 50.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> A good read..
> 
> 
> How American Spaceflight Entered Its Era of Compromise


Thanks man...adding that book to my short-list. Dad (mine) broke in with Rockwell, but that was in the 60's. Ended up at Lockheed though. Gonna shoot him a copy of this as well, do again, thanks.


----------



## ekim68

World's strongest steady magnetic field generated in China



> Scientists in China have set a new world record for the strongest steady magnetic field ever generated on Earth. The hybrid magnet managed to produce a field measuring 45.22 Tesla (T), which is over a million times stronger than the planet's own.
> 
> The record was set at the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) in Hefei, China, using a magnet with a hybrid design that's been operating since 2016. The structure includes a resistive magnet sitting in a 32-mm (1.3-in) gap in the center of a superconducting magnet, allowing the two to join forces to produce an incredibly strong magnetic field.


----------



## ekim68

Voyager, NASA's Longest-Lived Mission, Logs 45 Years in Space



> NASA's twin Voyager probes have become, in some ways, time capsules of their era: They each carry an eight-track tape player for recording data, they have about 3 million times less memory than modern cellphones, and they transmit data about 38,000 times slower than a 5G internet connection.


----------



## ekim68

Redwire to launch first commercial space greenhouse in 2023



> Aug 16 (Reuters) - Redwire Corporation (RDW.N) said on Tuesday it would launch the first commercial space greenhouse in Spring next year to boost crop production research outside Earth and support exploration missions.


----------



## ekim68

Australian dark matter detector joins the hunt with unique advantage



> The first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere has been officially opened. The Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) is built in a disused gold mine in Australia, and the aim is to use its unique position on the globe to finally pick up signals from the mysterious material thought to pervade the universe.
> 
> Decades of astronomical observations indicate that there's much more to the cosmos than meets the eye. Gravitational effects don't make sense based on the amount of mass from matter we can see, leading astrophysicists to infer that there's far more matter out there that we _can't _see. This so-called dark matter doesn't emit or interact with light, and rarely interacts with normal matter.


----------



## ekim68

Webb Telescope Shatters Distance Records, Challenges Astronomers



> The very first results from the James Webb Space Telescope seem to indicate that massive, luminous galaxies had already formed within the first 250 million years after the Big Bang. If confirmed, this would seriously challenge current cosmological thinking. For now, however, that's still a big "if."
> 
> Shortly after NASA published Webb's first batch of scientific data, the astronomical preprint server arXiv was flooded with papers claiming the detection of galaxies that are so remote that their light took some 13.5 billion years to reach us. Many of these appear to be more massive than the standard cosmological model that describes the universe's composition and evolution.


----------



## ekim68

One more clue to the Moon's origin



> Researchers discover the first definitive proof that the Moon inherited indigenous noble gases from the Earth's mantle. The discovery represents a significant piece of the puzzle towards understanding how the Moon and, potentially, the Earth and other celestial bodies were formed.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb's dreamy view of Jupiter reveals "remarkable" new detail 



> The James Webb Telescope has provided another mesmerizing perspective of the universe, this time turning its near-infrared camera on a target much closer to home. The instrument's imagery of Jupiter presents an awe-inspiring look at the gas giant, and reveal its array of hazy auroras and rings in incredible new detail.


 *







*


----------



## ekim68

NASA Invites Media to Witness World's First Planetary Defense Test



> NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world's first mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, will impact its target asteroid-which poses no threat to Earth-at 7:14 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 26.


----------



## ekim68

Countdown on as NASA declares mega Moon rocket "go" for launch



> NASA is inching closer to the commencement of a new chapter in lunar exploration, with its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule now declared "go" for launch. The call was made following a Flight Readiness Review earlier this week, and sets the stage for a dramatic lift-off on Monday if all goes to plan.


----------



## ekim68

Sharpest image of most massive known star reveals its true size



> R136a1 is a colossal star that lies about 160,000 light-years away from Earth, in the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits our own Milky Way. Previous observations have estimated its mass to be between 250 and 320 times that of the Sun, making it comfortably the most massive known star.


----------



## ekim68

A video worth the 16 minutes.. 


What's The Big Deal About Artemis - NASA's New Massive Moon Rocket


----------



## ekim68

Quantum entanglement record set with largest cluster of photons so far



> The team started with a single rubidium atom, trapped in an optical cavity that bounces electromagnetic waves around in certain patterns. The atom is struck by a laser at a particular frequency, which prepares the atom to have a given property. Then another control pulse is beamed at it, which causes the atom to emit a photon that's entangled with the atom.
> 
> This process is repeated, with the atom rotated between each photon emission, until a whole chain of photons are produced that are all entangled with each other. The process is far more efficient than existing techniques, producing photons more than 43% of the time, or almost one photon for every two laser pulses.


----------



## ekim68

What Drives Galaxies? The Milky Way's Black Hole May Be the Key.



> Over the past quarter century, astrophysicists have come to recognize what a tight-knit, dynamic relationship exists between many galaxies and the black holes at their centers. "There's been a really huge transition in the field," says Ramesh Narayan, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard University. "The surprise was that black holes are important as shapers and controllers of how galaxies evolve."


----------



## ekim68

MIT's Mars oxygen factory is now matching the output of a small tree



> The lunchbox-sized Moxie, which standards for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, traveled to Mars aboard the Perseverance rover in 2020. After touching down in the Jezero crater in February of 2021, the unit was soon put to work and around two months later produced its first oxygen, around 5.4 grams (0.2 oz) of the stuff.
> 
> Moxie does this by drawing in air from the planet's carbon-rich atmosphere, passing it through a filter to remove contaminants, compressing it and then heating it up. At this point, a solid oxide electrolyzer electrochemically splits the carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen ions. These ions are then isolated and recombined to form molecular oxygen, or breathable O2.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb Space Telescope snags its 1st direct photo of an alien world



> The James Webb Space Telescope took its first direct image of a planet orbiting a distant star, proving its potential to revolutionize exoplanet research.


----------



## ekim68

My how time (and satellites) fly... 


Pioneer 11 swept past Saturn 43 years ago today



> On today's date - September 1 - in the year 1979, NASA's plucky Pioneer 11 spacecraft became the first earthly craft ever to sweep past the ringed planet Saturn. Incredibly, the spacecraft came within 13,000 miles (21,000 km) of Saturn, crossing the plane of the planet's rings. In the process, Pioneer 11 found a new ring for Saturn - now called the "F" ring - and two new moons. In fact, the spacecraft almost smacked into one of these unknown moons, as it soared past.


----------



## ekim68

Engineers Solve Data Glitch on NASA's Voyager 1



> Engineers have repaired an issue affecting data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft. Earlier this year, the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS), which keeps Voyager 1's antenna pointed at Earth, began sending garbled information about its health and activities to mission controllers, despite operating normally. The rest of the probe also appeared healthy as it continued to gather and return science data.
> 
> The team has since located the source of the garbled information: The AACS had started sending the telemetry data through an onboard computer known to have stopped working years ago, and the computer corrupted the information.


----------



## RT

Thanks for that Mike, I was actually wondering about Voyager the other day, but was too garbled to check it out


----------



## ekim68

The interesting thing is; Why did the computer that was kerblunked come to life just in time? Cool stuff..


----------



## ekim68

NASA Scrubs Artemis I Again, Says Rocket May Not Launch Until Later This Year



> On Saturday morning, NASA scrubbed its second attempt to launch the Artemis I mission into lunar orbit. This time, the culprit was a liquid hydrogen leak that showed up while the team was loading the rocket's core stage. During a press conference later in the day, Jim Free, an associate administrator at NASA Headquarters, said we shouldn't expect to see a third attempt within this launch period, which culminates Tuesday.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists Found Genetic Mutations in Every Astronaut Blood Sample They Studied



> When they examined decades-old blood samples from 14 NASA astronauts who flew Space Shuttle missions between 1998 and 2001, researchers found that samples from all 14 astronauts showed mutations in their DNA.
> 
> While these mutations are likely low enough not to represent a serious threat to the astronauts' long term health, the research underlines the importance of regular health screenings for astronauts, especially as they embark on longer missions to the Moon and beyond in coming years.


----------



## ekim68

Chinese scientists declare discovery of new moon mineral from lunar rock samples brought back in 2020



> Chinese scientists have discovered a new mineral on the moon, making China the third nation after the United States and Russia to have discovered a lunar mineral, officials reported on Friday.


----------



## ekim68

Google spins out secret hi-speed telecom project called Aalyria, and keeps stake in startup



> Inside Google, a team of techies has been working behind the scenes on software for high-speed communications networks that extend from land to space.
> Codenamed “Minkowski” within Google, the secret project is being unveiled to the public on Monday as a new spinout called Aalyria.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists fire up the most powerful laser in the US



> The US is all set to kick off a new era in high-powered laser experimentation this week, with scientists moving the final pieces into place for the Zetawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System (ZEUS) at the University of Michigan. The instrument is described as the most powerful laser system in the US, and will help researchers explore a wide range of phenomena, including quantum physics, space and next-generation cancer treatment.


----------



## ekim68

Nanoracks cut a piece of metal in space for the first time



> Nanoracks just made space construction and manufacturing history with the first demonstration of cutting metal in orbit. The technique could be critical for the next generation of large-scale space stations and even lunar habitats.


----------



## ekim68

"Lost" moon could explain several Saturn mysteries, say astronomers



> Saturn is home to several solar system mysteries. Using data from Cassini, astronomers now suggest a simple answer to a few questions – a lost moon once orbited the planet before being torn to shreds.
> 
> Saturn’s most striking feature is its rings, made mostly of small chunks of ice. It was long thought that these rings were leftover material from the formation of Saturn itself some 4.5 billion years ago, but recent studies suggest they’re much younger – between 10 and 100 million years old. If that’s the case, they could have formed from an icy comet or moon that wandered too close.


----------



## ekim68

Voyager 1: 1st portrait of Earth and moon 45 years ago today


----------



## ekim68

Extraordinary image of Neptune's rings as seen by Webb Telescope


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Voyager 1: 1st portrait of Earth and moon 45 years ago today
> 
> 
> View attachment 300515


Humbling as all get out.


----------



## ekim68

We've lived through some amazing times... 🆙 I just recently saw the Apollo Moon trip on PBS TV and it was fantastic. Talk about winging it at times...


----------



## ekim68

James Webb, Hubble space telescopes will try to watch DART asteroid impact



> When NASA's DART mission slams itself into an asteroid called Dimorphos next week, three different science spacecraft will be trying to watch the action.
> 
> The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is designed to test a planetary defense technique that could be put to use if humans discover a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The spacecraft carried with it a tiny cubesat to document its dramatic end, but three other eyes in the sky will also attempt to watch the impact: the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes and another NASA asteroid mission, Lucy.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> We've lived through some amazing times... 🆙 I just recently saw the Apollo Moon trip on PBS TV and it was fantastic. Talk about winging it at times...


My gramma was born in 1901, died in 1996. Rode in a covered wagon moving to Minnesota, thence Cali. The stuff she saw in her lifespan is incredible. I doubt there will be a century like that again.

Took her first plane ride in 1982....


----------



## ekim68

Hilton and Voyager Space to Design Crew Lodging and Hospitality Suites Aboard Starlab



> DENVER and MCLEAN, Va., Sept. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Voyager Space (“Voyager”), a global leader in space exploration, today announced Hilton will be the official hotel partner of Starlab, Voyager’s planned free-flying commercial space station. Hilton will bring the company’s renowned hospitality expertise and experience to support the design and development of crew suites aboard Starlab, helping to reimagine the human experience in space, making extended stays more comfortable.


----------



## valis

Read that too fast and got 'Skylab', and was like 'wait a minute'....lol


----------



## ekim68

NASA Invites Media to Witness World’s First Planetary Defense Test



> NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, will impact its target asteroid—which poses no threat to Earth—at 7:14 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 26.
> 
> Among other activities, NASA will host a televised briefing beginning at 6 p.m. on Sept. 26 from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. APL is the builder and manager of the DART spacecraft for NASA.


----------



## ekim68

This jaw-dropping Jupiter photo is a photographer's sharpest ever and made of 600,000 images


----------



## valis

The gas giants always remind me of Magic Window, that 70s toy. Just fascinating with the shifting scapes.


----------



## ekim68

NASA’s Juno Shares First Image From Flyby of Jupiter’s Moon Europa


----------



## ekim68

Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket reaches orbit for 1st time



> Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket aced a test flight today (Oct. 1), successfully delivering a handful of tiny satellites to Earth orbit for the first time ever.
> 
> The 95-foot-tall (29 meters) rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 3:01 a.m. EDT (12:01 a.m. local California time; 0701 GMT), kicking off a demonstration mission that Firefly called "Alpha Flight 2: To The Black."


----------



## ekim68

New study adds compelling evidence for lake of liquid water on Mars 



> New evidence has emerged in the ongoing debate about whether or not there’s water on Mars. In a study led by the University of Cambridge, scientists examined the topology of Martian ice sheets and found signatures that match subglacial lakes here on Earth.


----------



## ekim68

ISRO confirms Mangalyaan mission over, Mars Orbiter craft non-recoverable



> The Indian Space Research Organisation on 3 October confirmed that the Mars Orbiter craft has lost communication with ground station, it's non-recoverable and with this the Mangalyaan mission has attained end-of-life.
> 
> Giving an update on the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), ISRO was celebrating the completion of its eight years in the Martian orbit and commemorate MOM.


----------



## ekim68

Satellite-flinging SpinLaunch puts NASA payload through the wringer



> Startup SpinLaunch is working on an alternative way of firing things into space that doesn’t involve first-stage rockets, but instead a launch system that spins payloads around in a centrifuge and hurls them into the sky. Those payloads will need to be capable of enduring 10,000 g and speeds of 5,000 mph (8,000 km/h), and in this regard the company may have just passed its biggest test yet.


----------



## ekim68

DART impact gave asteroid Dimorphos a debris tail thousands of miles long


----------



## ekim68

Crew Dragon launches safely, carrying first Russian from US soil in 20 years



> On Wednesday, Crew Dragon carried astronauts into space for an eighth time, with the fifth operational mission for NASA. This Crew-5 flight was commanded by Nicole Mann, a NASA astronaut making her first flight into space. "Whooo, that was a smooth ride uphill!" she exclaimed upon reaching orbit.
> 
> Among the four Dragon riders was a cosmonaut, Anna Kikina, also making her debut flight into space.


----------



## ekim68

Hubble Snaps a Pair of Interacting Galaxies


----------



## ekim68

NASA Confirms DART Mission Impact Changed Asteroid’s Motion in Space



> Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft's kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit. This marks humanity’s first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology.


----------



## ekim68

1 million-mile-long plasma plume shoots out of the sun in stunning photo


----------



## ekim68

World's fastest internet network upgraded to staggering 46 Terabit/s



> The fastest internet network in the US just got a bit faster. The Energy Sciences Network (Esnet) has been upgraded to ESnet6, boasting a blistering bandwidth of 46 Terabits per second (Tbps). But don’t warm up your downloading fingers just yet – it’s strictly scientists only.


----------



## ekim68

Astronomers can't explain a black hole "burp" years after it ate a star 



> Black holes have been seen to chow down on stars that wander too close, resulting in a bright stellar show. But now a black hole has been seen doing something nobody’s ever seen before – it “burped up” material several years after eating a star, leaving astronomers baffled.


----------



## ekim68

"Attoclock" measures electrons moving at quintillions of a second



> Electrons zip around in electronic devices extremely quickly, which can make it hard to see what’s going on in there. Now, engineers at the Universities of Michigan and Regensburg have developed an “attoclock” that can take snapshots of electrons in increments as small as quintillionths of a second.


----------



## ekim68

DeepMind breaks 50-year math record using AI; new record falls a week later



> Matrix multiplication is at the heart of many machine learning breakthroughs, and it just got faster—twice. Last week, DeepMind announced it discovered a more efficient way to perform matrix multiplication, conquering a 50-year-old record. This week, two Austrian researchers at Johannes Kepler University Linz claim they have bested that new record by one step.


----------



## valis

ekim68 said:


> Astronomers can't explain a black hole "burp" years after it ate a star



Read that on Gizmodo today...still boggling they can figure that out. 

Imagine...how the HECK do they do that??


----------



## ekim68

Love Technology...... That thing is 665 million light-years away..


----------



## ekim68

Extremely powerful gamma ray burst sweeps across Earth



> Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are among the most energetic explosions since the Big Bang – and now astronomers have detected the most powerful one yet. A beam of high-energy radiation up to 18 times more powerful than the previous record swept over Earth last weekend.


----------



## ekim68

Final results of MICROSCOPE mission achieve record levels of precision



> The MICROSCOPE mission has delivered its latest results and has confirmed the equivalence principle with unprecedented accuracy of 10-15. These results show that bodies fall in a vacuum with the same acceleration regardless of their composition or mass, meaning that the principle of equivalence remains unwavering today, to mark yet another victory for the Theory of General Relativity as proposed by Albert Einstein more than a century ago.


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre blue blobs hover in Earth's atmosphere in stunning astronaut photo. But what are they?


----------



## ekim68

Saturn's moons: Facts about the weird and wonderful satellites of the ringed planet



> Saturn officially has 63 moons, with another 20 currently awaiting confirmation of their discovery and subsequent naming by the International Astronomical Union. The ringed planet has more moons than any other planet in the solar system.


----------



## ekim68

Asteroid grows two tails after DART spacecraft collision 



> Astronomers have been keenly watching the asteroid Didymos since the historic DART mission successfully crashed a spacecraft into it last month. And now, Hubble has detected something unexpected – the asteroid has sprouted two tails.


----------



## ekim68

"Monster" black hole may be the closest to Earth found so far



> Astronomers may have discovered a monster black hole that’s one of the closest to Earth known. With a mass equivalent to 12 Suns, the black hole was found to be quietly lurking “practically in our backyard,” according to the team.


----------



## ekim68

'Wobbling black hole' most extreme example ever detected



> Researchers at Cardiff University have identified a peculiar twisting motion in the orbits of two colliding black holes, an exotic phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of gravity.
> 
> Their study, which is published in _Nature_ and led by Professor Mark Hannam, Dr. Charlie Hoy and Dr. Jonathan Thompson, reports that this is the first time this effect, known as precession, has been seen in black holes, where the twisting is 10 billion times faster than in previous observations.


----------



## ekim68

Why the James Webb Space Telescope's amazing 'Pillars of Creation' photo has astronomers buzzing


----------



## ekim68

A skyscraper-sized 'potentially hazardous' asteroid will zip through Earth's orbit on Halloween



> The asteroid, called 2022 RM4, has an estimated diameter of between 1,083 and 2,428 feet (330 and 740 meters) — just under the height of Dubai's 2,716-foot-tall (828 m) Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It will zoom past our planet at around 52,500 mph (84,500 km/h), or roughly 68 times the speed of sound, according to NASA .
> 
> At its closest approach on Nov. 1, the asteroid will come within about 1.43 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) of Earth, around six times the average distance between Earth and the moon. By cosmic standards, this is a very slender margin.


----------



## ekim68

Strange material demonstrates exotic quantum state at room temperature 



> A topological insulator is a material with a structure that conducts electrons in a unique way. The bulk of the material is an insulator, completely preventing the flow of electrons through it. However, thin layers at its surface and along its edges are highly conductive, allowing electrons to flow freely at high efficiencies. Given these weird properties, topological insulators can host some intriguing quantum states that could be useful for building future quantum technologies.


----------



## 2twenty2

*Scientists Find Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Hiding in the Sun’s Glare*



https://gizmodo.com/scientists-find-potentially-hazardous-asteroid-hiding-i-1849722873


----------



## ekim68

The Vela supernova remnant imaged by the VLT Survey Telescope


----------



## ekim68

Scientists discover largest gas cloud in space that's 20 times bigger than the Milky Way




> Glowing in the Pegasus constellation are five apparently closely packed galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet, whispering the secrets of galactic evolution to scientists.


----------



## ekim68

Whew! 23-ton Chinese rocket debris falls to Earth over Pacific Ocean



> A 23-ton piece of space debris from China's launch of a Long March 5B rocket has fallen safely into the south-central Pacific Ocean after creating questions over where it will come down once again.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists are working on an official 'alien contact protocol' for when ET phones Earth



> We're unprepared for when E.T. reaches out to us. A team of experts is determined to change that with the first new alien "contact" protocol in 35 years.


----------



## ekim68

On a lighter note.. 


Sweet launch system: Celebrity chef Duff Goldman makes NASA SLS rocket-shaped cake


----------



## ekim68

NASA needs a new moon car for off-roading astronauts at the lunar south pole



> The search for the next-gen buggy for the upcoming Artemis moon missions has begun.
> 
> While the previous lunar vehicles, used during the 1970s Apollo missions, were designed for the relatively balmy climate of the moon's equatorial region (or slightly north of there), NASA's Artemis missions are planned for the lunar south pole, where conditions are expected to be much harsher.


----------



## ekim68

10-billion-year-old ruins of Earth-like planet found around nearby star 



> It’s easy to forget our place in the universe, but planets have been born, lived and died long before Earth even existed. Now astronomers have detected the ruins of ancient planets around two unusual white dwarf stars, including an Earth-like world that existed almost 10 billion years ago.


----------



## ekim68

Bizarre star may have a solid surface, according to X-ray observations 



> Stars are big hot balls of plasma, but astronomers have now spotted a super strange one that seems to have a solid surface. Its intense magnetic field is strong enough to overcome its blistering temperatures and “freeze” its outer layers into a solid crust.


----------



## 2twenty2

*Debris from destroyed Space Shuttle Challenger found on ocean floor 36 years on*



https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/debris-space-shuttle-challenger-atlantic-1.6648027


----------



## ekim68

Artemis 1 is go for launch tonight



> Despite Hurricane Nicole blowing through Florida a week ago, the launch of Artemis – our human return to the moon – is still on. NASA said early on Monday, November 14 that conditions remain 90% favorable for the Artemis I launch based on the most recent forecasts for Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Then, Monday afternoon, NASA’s Mission Management Team met and gave the go for launch at 1:04 a.m. ET (6:04 UTC) Wednesday, November 16, 2022, with a two-hour launch window.


----------



## ekim68

And then: 


NASA launches Artemis 1 moon mission on its most powerful rocket ever



> With a mighty roar, the most powerful NASA rocket ever built — the Space Launch System (SLS) — soared into the Florida early morning sky on the Artemis 1 mission, a risky and long-delayed test flight to send a next-generation space capsule to the moon and back. Liftoff occurred today (Nov. 16) at 1:47 a.m. EST (0647 GMT) from NASA's Pad 39B here at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb captures stellar "burps" of a baby star 



> Since swinging into action in July, the James Webb Space Telescope has already begun to reshape our perspective of the universe in some spellbinding ways. The latest image from the instrument’s infrared cameras continues this theme with a dramatic look at star formation, which presents as a mesmerizing hourglass-like portrait of glowing cosmic debris.



*







*


----------



## valis

Yeah, i dont see myself tossing that over my shoulder and patting it on the back.


----------



## ekim68

LightSail 2 mission reaches fiery end after 3-year solar sailing demo



> After more than three years circling the Earth, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission has come to an end following a fiery reentry. The satellite was an important tech demo for the idea of solar sailing, which could eventually propel spacecraft to other stars.


----------



## ekim68

James Webb captures complete chemical profile of exoplanet atmosphere



> NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided the most detailed look at the atmosphere of an exoplanet ever. Analyzing data from four instruments, a team of astronomers was able to compile a complete molecular and chemical profile of the planet, including signs of active chemistry.


----------



## ekim68

Europe names world's first disabled astronaut



> PARIS, Nov 23 (Reuters) - The European Space Agency on Wednesday named the first ever "parastronaut" in a major step towards allowing people with physical disabilities to work and live in space.
> The 22-nation agency said it had selected former British Paralympic sprinter John McFall as part of a new generation of 17 recruits picked for astronaut training.


----------



## ekim68

Scientists make unprecedented detection on a planet 700 light-years away



> Now, for the first time, they've discovered "a full menu" of atoms and molecules in an exoplanet's clouds, and some are interacting. This latest detection proves that astronomers can peer into the atmospheres of strange exoplanets and decipher what's transpiring or being made chemically — and if these worlds might then contain conditions that could potentially harbor life. (On our planet, atmospheric chemistry, which is responsible for creating the likes of an insulating atmosphere and the protective ozone layer, is vital for life.)


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## ekim68

China launches 3 astronauts to Tiangong space station for 1st crew handover



> China's fourth crew has reached the nation's newly completed Tiangong space station.
> 
> A Long March 2F rocket topped with the Shenzhou 15 spacecraft lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert today (Nov. 29) at 10:08 a.m. EST (1508 GMT; 11:08 p.m. local time). Spacecraft separation occurred some 10 minutes later.


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## ekim68

Two new minerals discovered in huge meteorite 



> Scientists have discovered at least two new minerals inside one of the largest meteorites ever found. The iron-based minerals have never been spotted in nature, and could hint at unknown geological processes and new material uses.


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## ekim68

Bill Nye’s experimental spacecraft that sails on sunlight declares mission success



> About 450 miles above Earth, a small satellite is drifting deeper into the cosmos — powered not by rocket fuel, thrusters or other contraptions. This satellite, called LightSail 2, is sailing on a sunbeam.


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## ekim68

Flash of light as bright as a quadrillion Suns dazzles astronomers



> Astronomers have spotted an incredibly bright flash of light beaming halfway across the universe. The strange light was estimated to throw off more light than one quadrillion Suns, and in an ironic twist came from one of the darkest objects possible.


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## ekim68

Construction begins on the world's largest radio observatory



> The SKA Observatory is around three decades in the making and is the brainchild of astronomers from around the world, who came together in the 1980s to explore how radio waves can tell stories about the history of the universe. In 2012, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation settled on two sites in South Africa and Australia to co-host the facility, taking advantage of the lack of human-generated radio waves in remote regions for clear observations of the cosmos.


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## lunarlander

Will that bring back the SETI project ?


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## ekim68

It could be part of it, I believe the SETI project is coming back bigger and better.. 🆙


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## valis

SETI is a whole nother discussion. I do not agree with them or their methodology and have contacted them a few times about it with zero response.

As for the telescope, that is awesome. The Arecibo collapse anniversary was this week, and I hope this can replace it.


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## ekim68

I'm curious about why you don't agree with the methodology and what you said to them. I really haven't thought a lot about the program.


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## valis

I've shared thus with you before....https://timothypierce.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/86/


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## ekim68

Ah, I remember that... Thanks..


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## ekim68

Giant magma plume reveals Mars may not be a dead planet after all



> Mars is usually considered a geologically dead planet, but a new study challenges that idea. Multiple lines of evidence reveals a giant plume of magma is forcing its way up through the Red Planet’s mantle and producing seismic activity in one particular region of the surface.


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## valis

Whoa....https://gizmodo.com/internet-speed-faster-twice-global-speed-fiber-optic-1849875228


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## valis

Splashdown. Welcome back to lunar exploration America!


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## ekim68

Right on..!! Artemis splashes down


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## ekim68

Eerie "ghost light" detected emanating from within the solar system



> Astronomers have detected an eerie glow of “ghost light” that could represent a previously unknown component of the solar system. Comparing data from two distinct viewpoints – Hubble and New Horizons – the researchers subtracted light from known objects and discovered a dim, unexplained glow still remained.


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## ekim68

Sun unleashes barrage of 8 powerful solar flares



> The sun unleashed at least eight solar flares on Wednesday (Dec. 14), and more are expected after a crackling sunspot emerged on the star's face.


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## valis

Those are deep concerns of mine. If one like the Carrington Event hit we would be back in the stone age.


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## ekim68

Biggest marsquake on record marks InSight's swansong 



> NASA’s InSight lander has detected the strongest and longest quake on Mars so far. The event was five times more powerful than any previous marsquake, unleashing as much energy as all others combined, and with the lander failing the record is unlikely to topple.
> 
> The record-breaking quake, designated S1222a, occurred on May 4, 2022, and registered a magnitude of 4.7. That’s not huge as far as regular old earthquakes go, but for the far less seismically active Mars, that’s pretty powerful. In fact, it’s five times stronger than the previous record-holder – a magnitude 4.2 quake detected in August 2021.


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## RT

valis said:


> Those are deep concerns of mine. If one like the Carrington Event hit we would be back in the stone age.


I sure would miss all you guys on TSG if that were to happen...
assuming we all survived...
I'd send smoke signals from the highest mountain...


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## ekim68

Don’t Get Too Excited About That Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough




> It's a cool scientific achievement, but no, it does not mean we're close to unlimited clean energy.


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## ekim68

Inside-out asteroids: A practical method for creating space habitats



> You can't build space cities on the surface of asteroids, or even inside them, really, but you _could_ turn them inside out to become the ground layers of spinning ring-type space stations, says a Rochester team, and it'd be a relatively cheap and easy way to build yourself a space habitat for humanity


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## ekim68

NASA's asteroid-slamming spacecraft dislodged 2 million lb of debris



> The collision between NASA’s DART spacecraft and the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos was always going to be a spectacle. By analyzing data from telescopes and tiny satellites lurking nearby, scientists are now piecing together some fascinating new details around the event, including the estimation that six rail cars worth of rock and debris were jettisoned into space.


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## ekim68

After a long struggle with Martian dust, NASA’s InSight probe has gone quiet



> NASA's InSight lander has probably phoned home for the last time from the planet Mars.
> 
> The space agency said the spacecraft did not respond to communications from Earth on Sunday, December 18. The lack of communications came as the lander's power-generating capacity has been declining in recent months due to the accumulation of Martian dust on its solar panels.


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## valis

ekim68 said:


> After a long struggle with Martian dust, NASA’s InSight probe has gone quiet


Well, poop.


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## ekim68

An Astronomical and Historic 2022 – What We Did This Year @ NASA –


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## ekim68

10 weird things about SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites



> SpaceX's Starlink satellites are among the most well-known spacecraft in the world.
> 
> There are currently over 3,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, and SpaceX plans to launch many more. The satellites are primarily designed to provide broadband internet to remote or underserved locations, yet there are many other uses for the revolutionary constellation both planned and already in use.


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## ekim68

Best Space Station Science Imagery of 2022



> The *International Space Station* continues its scientific journey orbiting over 200 miles above the Earth’s surface.
> 
> Spacecraft carried crew from around the world to and from the space station, where they participated in and supported hundreds of scientific investigations and technology demonstrations this past year. From deploying CubeSats to studying fluid dynamics in space, the orbiting lab expanded its legacy of science and discovery for the benefit of humanity.
> 
> Look back at some of the best photos of breakthrough science the crew members conducted in 2022.


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## ekim68

The year in science 2022



> It was another bumper year for breakthroughs, records, and firsts for science, in fields ranging from conception to death, with some freak waves and prehistoric fish hearts thrown in for good measure. New Atlas looks back at the year in science for 2022 and selects some of the most interesting stories to grace our pages.


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## ekim68

SpaceX caps 2022 with record-setting 61st Falcon 9 launch



> Since the rocket's debut in 2010, SpaceX has chalked up 194 Falcon 9 launches overall — 198 including four triple-core Falcon Heavies — putting together a string of 179 straight successful flights since the company's only in-flight failure in 2015.


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## ekim68

2022’s extraordinary cosmic revelations and moments in space exploration



> “There is no doubt that 2022 was out of this world,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “2022 will go down in the history books as one of the most accomplished years across all of NASA’s missions.”


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## ekim68

The 12 best night sky events to see in 2023



> Another year of skywatching is upon us, and there's a lot to look forward to in 2023!


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## ekim68

NASA images showcase eerie beauty of winter on Mars


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## ekim68

A bright green comet will soon make its first and likely only appearance in recorded history — and it may be visible to the naked eye



> The new year has just begun, but the cosmos are already set to make history in 2023. A comet discovered less than a year ago has traveled billions of miles from its believed origins at the edge of our solar system and will be visible in just a few weeks during what will likely be its only recorded appearance.


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## ekim68

How to use EarthSky’s lunar calendar


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## ekim68

Curiosity finds opal on Mars – a possible water source for astronauts 



> Opal is formed when water weathers silica-rich rocks, forming a solution that settles into cracks and crevices in the rock. Over time, this solution hardens into a solid lump that can be cloudy and dull or a dazzling display of color. Most supplies come from either Australia or Ethiopia, but now a new source has been discovered – Mars.


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