'Monster' cosmic blast zipped harmlessly by Earth. WASHINGTON (AP) — Astronomers call it the monster.
It was the biggest and brightest cosmic explosion ever witnessed. Had it been closer, Earth would have been toast. Orbiting telescopes got the fireworks show of a lifetime last spring when they spotted what is known as a gamma ray burst in a far-off galaxy. The only bigger display astronomers know of was the Big Bang — and no one, of course, was around to witness that. "This burst was a once-in-a-century cosmic event," NASA astrophysics chief Paul Hertz said at a news conference Thursday. But because this blast was 3.7 billion light-years away, mankind was spared. A gamma ray burst happens when a massive star dies, collapses into a brand-new black hole, explodes in what's called a supernova and ejects energetic radiation. A planet caught in one of these bursts would lose its atmosphere instantly and would be left a burnt cinder, astronomers say. Scientists might be able to detect warning signs of an impending gamma ray burst. View gallery. Zeta Reticuli.
Top 10 Mysteries Surrounding Ancient Aliens. Mysteries Ancient aliens is the idea that aliens visited earth in the past.
The idea of ancient aliens is not a new one either. Imagination is one of the most powerful tools in humanity’s evolutionary struggle for survival. As a race, we are hardwired to consider important concepts, such as the creation of life on Earth and the history of people on this planet. At some point, we are all presented with various explanations and theories regarding the expansion of human life on Earth.
The idea of evolution has been used to describe the gradual change of traits that living organisms undergo over time, which is related to the environment, but it doesn’t explain how the biological cells of human’s first ancestor were spawned. The idea surrounding ancient aliens is a basic one. This concept is related to the religious practice of a cargo cult, which can be seen in modern day pre-industrial tribal societies. How to Navigate by the Stars. Explorers have used the stars as a compass for millennia, and if you’re out having adventures at night, you should add the skill to your arsenal.
(If nothing else, it’s a killer party trick.) Here’s how to transform the night sky into your personal roadmap. 1) Learn the Big Three According to the Royal Naval Academy, 58 stars are handy for navigation. You need to know 38 different constellations to find all of them. 2) Find the North Star It’s always within one degree of true north. 3) Shoot for the Moon If you can find Orion’s sword, following its point will show you south. 4) Down Under? Suspicious0bservers. SKY-MAP.ORG. How Many Dimensions Does the Universe Really Have? - The Nature of Reality. An engineer, a mathematician and a physicist walk into a universe.
How many dimensions do they find? The engineer whips out a protractor and straightedge. That’s easy, she says. With her instruments she demonstrates the trio of directions at right angles to each other: length, width and height. “Three,” she reports. The mathematician gets out his notepad and creates a list of regular, symmetric geometric shapes with perpendicular sides. Credit: Sven Geier/Flickr, under a Creative Commons license. Finally it is the physicist’s turn. Let’s see how she reached her conclusions. In 1917, Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest wrote a thought-provoking piece, “In what way does it become manifest in the fundamental laws of physics that space has three dimensions?”
He noted, for example, that the stable orbits of planets in the solar system and the stationary states of electrons in atoms require inverse-squared force laws. Dark Plasma Theory. Gearing up to search for gravity waves. In the Newtonian view of the world, binary star systems should remain in a stable orbit in perpetuity, no matter how massive the objects or how close the orbit.
But with general relativity, that changes; energy gets carried away from the system in the form of gravity waves, which gradually causes the orbit to decay, ultimately leading to a merger. By observing binary systems of massive objects, we've determined that general relativity gets it right. These systems behave just as general relativity predicts, giving us confidence that the theory is correct. What's missing is the other half of the confirmation: gravity waves. We haven't detected any originating from these systems. It's not for lack of trying. LIGO's design is very simple. To increase sensitivity, the LIGO project also operated two detectors, one in Louisiana, the other in Washington. If LIGO didn't detect anything, there were two potential explanations.
Both of those issues are now being addressed.