'Super-Earth' with life-supporting climate discovered. NASA'S Spitzer Sees Light Of Lonesome Stars. PASADENA, Calif. - A new study using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggests a cause for the mysterious glow of infrared light seen across the entire sky. It comes from isolated stars beyond the edges of galaxies.
These stars are thought to have once belonged to the galaxies before violent galaxy mergers stripped them away into the relatively empty space outside of their former homes. "The infrared background glow in our sky has been a huge mystery," said Asantha Cooray of the University of California at Irvine, lead author of the new research published in the journal Nature. "We have new evidence this light is from the stars that linger between galaxies. Individually, the stars are too faint to be seen, but we think we are seeing their collective glow. " The findings disagree with another theory explaining the same background infrared light observed by Spitzer.
"A light bulb went off when reading some research papers predicting the existence of diffuse stars," Cooray said. NASA offers chance for Google-powered smartphones to be launched as spacecrafts. PhoneSat is designed to send cheapest and easiest-to-construct satellites into spaceSatellite could use phone's camera to take pictures of EarthNASA plans to publish blueprints to allow anyone to build their own satellite By Mark Prigg Published: 06:25 GMT, 29 August 2012 | Updated: 11:08 GMT, 29 August 2012 Apps may have already conquered earth, and now they are set to take on space as well.
NASA has unveiled a new project to create tiny, cheap satellites by using the innards of a mobile phone. Called PhoneSat, it will use a specially modified Nexus S handset running Google's Android software. Scroll down for video High-flying: The PhoneSat, pictured during a test flight, will be the cheapest and easiest-to-construct satellite to go into orbit PhoneSat is designed to send the cheapest and easiest-to-construct satellites into orbit while running on Google's Android operating system. It will also publish the plans to allow anyone to create their own satellites. NASA: Mars Curiosity on track. By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Updated 2012-08-17 5:35 PM NASA's newest Mars rover Curiosity looks ready to soon start investigations, engineers report.
Self-portrait of the Curiosity rover on Mars. "Things are going very well," says rover science team chief John Grotzinger of Caltech, who reported that instruments continue to check out aboard Curiosity. The rover landed on Mars on Aug. 6. After completing initial investigations of the rover's landing area, a flat, pebbly plain on the floor of Gale Crater on Mars, the team hopes to start driving toward Mount Sharp, or Aeolis Mons, around the end of the year. The landing site of NASA's Curiosity rover and destinations scientists want to investigate NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona A parachute shell and other landing debris is also near the landing site and if it is not too much trouble, the rover may drive, "near but not very close," Grotzinger says, to see how the landing technology fared on its entry into the atmosphere of Mars.
Foothills of Mt. Sun is too round, say scientists - Science - News. In fact the Sun turns out to be one of the roundest objects ever measured. Scaled down to the size of a beach ball, the difference between the Sun's widest and narrowest diameters would be far less than the width of a human hair. Having no solid surface, the Sun's rotation should make it slightly flattened.
But the new measurements show that the flattening is much smaller than expected. If the Sun was shrunk to a ball one metre across, its equatorial diameter would be only 17 millionths of a metre larger than the diameter between its poles. Scientists analysed data from the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite which is studying the Sun.
Previously it was thought that the shape of the Sun varied in cycles, but the new findings show it is remarkably constant. Lead researcher Dr Jeff Kuhn, from the University of Hawaii, said: "For years we've believed our fluctuating measurements were telling us that the Sun varies, but these new results say something different. 10451_earth.jpg (2560×1600) Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2. Nasa's Curiosity Rover undergoes 'brain transplant' after taking stunning panorama pictures of the Red Planet. Engineers updating the Curiosity's software to allow it to drive on Mars President Obama calls the project team to congratulate themReveals blast marks on surface caused by Curiosity's landing rocketsRover has also sent back first high resolution panorama as scientists test its instruments By James Nye and Mark Prigg and Daily Mail Reporter Published: 16:09 EDT, 12 August 2012 | Updated: 21:26 EDT, 13 August 2012 After releasing exciting images of Mars, NASA's Curiosity rover is undergoing a crucial four day ‘brain transplant’.
Engineers were today continuing to update the rover’s software which is currently in its flight stage to prepare it for its further missions on Mars, NASA said. Today Nasa released the first high resolution Panorama from the craft. Scroll down for video The first high resolution panoramic shot from Curiosity's mast camera reveals its surrounding in stunning new detail 'The colors in the main image are unmodified from those returned by the camera. Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Great Big Universe / Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror.
How white holes (might) be created. ATV-3 Approaches the Station. When Runaway Planets Go 30 Million Miles Per Hour | Around The Mall. An artist's conception of a runaway hypervelocity planet. Image courtesy of David Aguilar, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics In 2005, Warren Brown of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory noticed something rather unusual in the sky: a star traveling out of the Milky Way galaxy at roughly 1.5 million miles per hour. The strange discovery could only be explained by an even stranger prediction, made nearly two decades earlier by an astronomer named J.G. Hills. “He predicted that if you have two stars orbiting each other—a so-called binary system—and they get too close to the central black hole in the Milky Way, they will get ripped apart,” says SAO astrophysicist Avi Loeb. Since Brown’s 2005 discovery, at least 21 hypervelocity stars (as they’ve come to be called) have been observed speeding out of our galaxy.
“We asked what would happen if there were planets around hypervelocity stars,” Loeb says. NASA probe offers new view of Mercury: an alien world right in our back yard. Now, after poring over 100,000 images and reams of other Messenger data, space scientists have achieved consensus: Mercury is one weird world. It is radically unlike the other rocky bodies of our solar system — Venus, Mars, Earth, the moon, and the moons of other planets. Its core is too big; its surface too scrunched. It looks shriveled, like a liposuction patient left with too much skin. It contains too much iron. “It’s been really spectacularly baffling,” said MIT’s Maria Zuber, of the Messenger data, which scientists reported on in two scientificarticles and 57 presentations at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference last week.
Mercury was long viewed as an inert lump, but Zuber and her colleagues now say it is still cooling and still shrinking, pushing up scarps — steep cliffs — that run for hundreds of miles. Massive interior forces have pushed and tilted huge stretches of the surface. Mercury might even experience Mercury-quakes. ‘Back to the drawing board’ New breed of steamy alien planet found - Technology & science - Space - Space.com. Cosmologists Try to Explain a Universe Springing From Nothing. Why Does Our Universe Have Three Dimensions? | Digg Mynews. WeAreStarStuff51's Channel. Dark energy: the universe is destined to become a very cold and lonely place. The 6 Most Mind-Blowing Things Ever Discovered in Space. It's actually really easy to think of space as boring. The planets in our own solar system all seem to be empty rocks or balls of gas, and you find a whole lot of nothing before you get to the next star. Meanwhile, Hollywood's most creative minds can't get past populating the place with planets that look a whole lot like Earth (and specifically, parts of California) featuring monsters, rapey aliens or Muppets.
But real space is far, far stranger. You just have to know where to look to find things like ... #6. Science fiction writers have this annoying thing they do where they can only think of like five different types of planets. But scientists have studied almost 700 real planets outside the solar system, and some of them are downright gaudy. Via Inewp.comIt's a wedding gem worthy of Jesus or the Sultan of Dubai. How Is This Even Possible? Via Spaceflightnow.comWhat a dick! Carbon is just a shitload of heat and pressure away from becoming a diamond. Photos.com"Yeah, that's cute. . #5. .
#4. Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment. NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment May 4, 2011: Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity. Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B). "The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission. "This is an epic result," adds Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis.
Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time. " If Earth were stationary, that would be the end of the story. The idea behind the experiment is simple: In practice, the experiment is tremendously difficult. What's next?
Author: Dr. The 2011 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition winners. Amateur astronomer Damian Peach has become the first British entrant to win the title of Astronomy Photographer of the Year, beating hundreds of photographers from around the globe in the 2011 competition. As well as securing the £1,500 top prize, his image takes pride of place in the exhibition of winning photographs opening at the Royal Observatory Greenwich on 9 September 2011. Competition for the 2011 prize was fierce with more pictures received than ever before; over 700 entries from all around the world. For more information see www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/astronomy-photographer-of-the-year/ Above: OUR SOLAR SYSTEM category winner and Overall Winner: Jupiter with Io and Ganymede, September 2010 by Damian Peach (UK).
Jupiter depicted along with two of its 64 known moons, Io and Ganymede, showing the surface of the gas giant streaked with colourful bands and dotted with huge oval storms; detail is also visible on the two moons. Picture: Damian Peach. Eso1133c - The star cluster NGC 2100 in context. Electric ice a shock to the solar system « Xenophilia (True Strange Stuff) Former Sun-like Star Is Now a Diamond Planet | 80beats. SolarBeat. The Oscar Wilde Collection. Graphene in space could hold clues to development of life on Earth. An artist's concept of graphene, buckyballs and C70 superimposed on an image of the Helix planetary nebula (Image: IAC/NASA/NOAO/ESA/STScI/NRAO) Human beings may have only discovered how to create the one-atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms known as graphene in 2004 but it appears the universe could have been churning out the stuff since much earlier than that.
While not conclusive proof its existence in space, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has identified the signature of graphene in two small galaxies outside our own. If confirmed, it would be the first-ever cosmic detection of the material and could hold clues to how carbon-based life forms such as ourselves developed. The infrared-sensing Spitzer telescope identified signs of graphene in planetary nebulae - the material shed by dying stars - within the Magellanic Clouds galaxies that orbit our Milky Way galaxy. Spitzer first definitively detected the presence of both buckyballs and C70 in space in July 2010. Source: NASA. The Carl Sagan Portal. Home. Hubble's greatest hits: Hubble space telescope images. Planets. Double eclipse: Moment Moon AND International Space Station cross face of Sun.
By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 20:58 GMT, 5 January 2011 Britons were only offered a clouded view of yesterday's partial solar eclipse owing to our typically dreary weather. But one lucky skywatcher in south-west Asia managed to catch a doubly striking glimpse of the natural phenomenon. After some careful calculations, photographer Thierry Legault decided to travel to just outside Oman's capital city of Muscat, where he knew he could catch both the Moon and the International Space Station briefly crossing the Sun. Photographer Thierry Legault captured both the Moon and the International Space Station (circled) crossing the face of the Sun His margin of error was miniscule since the space station sped across the face of our solar system's star in less than a second. However, Mr Legault's 1/5000th second exposure managed to perfectly capture Earth's two largest satellites against the glowing yellow backdrop.
Interactive 3D model of Solar System Planets and Night Sky. 8 Wonders of the Solar System, Made Interactive. Most Amazing Time Lapse Video of Milky Way Ever Made. Seriously. | ShutterSalt. Celestia: Home. Existence: Why is the universe just right for us? - space - 29 July 2011. Read more: "Existence special: Cosmic mysteries, human questions" IT HAS been called the Goldilocks paradox. If the strong nuclear force which glues atomic nuclei together were only a few per cent stronger than it is, stars like the sun would exhaust their hydrogen fuel in less than a second.
Our sun would have exploded long ago and there would be no life on Earth. If the weak nuclear force were a few per cent weaker, the heavy elements that make up most of our world wouldn't be here, and neither would you. If gravity were a little weaker than it is, it would never have been able to crush the core of the sun sufficiently to ignite the nuclear reactions that create sunlight; a little stronger and, again, the sun would have burned all of its fuel billions of years ago.
Such ...