Black Hole Hosts Universe's Most Massive Water Cloud. Weighing in at 40 billion times the mass of Earth, the giant cloud of mist swaddles a type of actively feeding supermassive black hole known as a quasar. Among the brightest and most energetic objects in the universe, quasars are black holes at the centers of galaxies that are gravitationally consuming surrounding disks of material while burping back out powerful energy jets. "As this disk of material is consumed by the central black hole, it releases energy in the form of x-ray and infrared radiation, which in turn can heat the surrounding material, resulting in the observed water vapor," said study co-author Eric Murphy, an astronomer with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. The vapor around this particular quasar represents enough water "to fill all the oceans on the Earth over 140 trillion times—that's a lot of water.
" (Also see "Star Found Shooting Water 'Bullets.'" ) Astrophysical Journal Letters . {sciences²} Einstein Les physiciens de l'expérience internationale Opera ont mesuré des particules allant plus vite que la lumière, pourtant considérée jusqu'à présent comme une limite infranchissable. De quoi chambouler la théorie de la relativité ? J'ai publié un article ce matin dans Libération, il sera en ligne demain sur le blog.
En attendant, voici le tchat réalisé cet après-midi sur le site web de Libération. Proton: la presse ne s’emballe t-elle pas un peu vite? Billboquet: Avant de se demander si on s’emballe, peut on savoir ce qui se passe? Or, lorsque, en mars dernier, le responsable de cette partie de l’expérience a regardé de près ses Schema OPERA mesures, il s’est rendu compte que les neutrinos arrivaient trop vite. Depuis mars dernier, l’équipe essayait donc de trouver l’origine de cette «erreur». lls ont mis sur pied une task force pour passer au crible tous les instruments. lls ont fait appel à des spécialistes extérieurs pour vérifier les horloges atomiques utilisées, etc. Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence--In Space. Scientists have found the biggest and oldest reservoir of water ever--so large and so old, it’s almost impossible to describe.
The water is out in space, a place we used to think of as desolate and desert dry, but it's turning out to be pretty lush. Researchers found a lake of water so large that it could provide each person on Earth an entire planet’s worth of water--20,000 times over. Yes, so much water out there in space that it could supply each one of us all the water on Earth--Niagara Falls, the Pacific Ocean, the polar ice caps, the puddle in the bottom of the canoe you forgot to flip over--20,000 times over.
The water is in a cloud around a huge black hole that is in the process of sucking in matter and spraying out energy (such an active black hole is called a quasar), and the waves of energy the black hole releases make water by literally knocking hydrogen and oxygen atoms together. The new cloud of water is enough to supply 28 galaxies with water. NASA research team reveals the Moon has earthlike core. State-of-the-art seismological techniques applied to Apollo-era data suggest our Moon has a core similar to Earth's.
Uncovering details about the lunar core is critical for developing accurate models of the Moon's formation. The data sheds light on the evolution of a lunar dynamo — a natural process by which our Moon may have generated and maintained its own strong magnetic field. The team's findings suggest the Moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles (240 kilometers) and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles (330 km). Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles (480 km). The research indicates the core contains a small percentage of light elements such as sulfur, echoing new seismology research on Earth that suggests the presence of light elements – such as sulfur and oxygen — in a layer around our own core.
Transparent Photovoltaic Cells Turn Windows Into Solar Panels. Paul Zerdin, ventriloquist without a dummy. 5347118082_fa66767410_z.jpg (JPEG Image, 640×318 pixels) News - Technology & Science - 1st habitable distant planet found. Two planets previously discovered around Gliese 581 had a very small chance of being habitable because they were right on the edge of the habitable zone. One of them is shown in this artist's concept. ((European Space Observatory)) Astronomers believe they have found the first Earth-sized planet outside our solar system that is likely to support liquid water and therefore life.
Planet "g," which orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, is right in the middle of the star's "habitable zone," reported a team led by Steve Vogt of the University of California Santa Cruz and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. Two of the planets previously discovered around that star were right on the edge of the zone around the star that has the possibility of supporting life, giving them only a small chance of being habitable. The "most habitable" zone would be right between the light and dark sides. Habitable planets likely common. Awesome death spiral of a bizarre star. I sometimes think I’ve seen everything there is in the sky, with nothing new left to see.
Then I get a rude — but welcome — wake-up call. Check. This. Out. [Click to enspiralnate.] When I first saw this picture, my reactions, in order, were: 1) What the frak is that? Followed immediately by 2) This must be a fake! But it’s not fake. The name of this thing is AFGL 3068. So what’s going on here? Red giants tend to blow a lot of their outer layers into space in an expanding spherical wind; think of it as a super-solar wind.
AFGL 3068 is a carbon star and most likely evolved just like this, but with a difference: it’s a binary. This is called the sprinkler-head effect. Going back to our sprinkler analogy, if you’re standing in the yard as the sprinkler spins, you get hit with a blast of water. The expansion rate of the spiral material is about 15 km/sec (9 miles/sec). But there’s more! Coooool. I think I know why. And also… this thing is faint. All in all, this is an amazing system. Related posts: Saturn's Strange Hexagon Recreated in the Lab. Saturn boasts one of the solar system's most geometrical features: a giant hexagon encircling its north pole. Though not as famous as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Saturn's Hexagon is equally mysterious. Now researchers have recreated this formation in the lab using little more than water and a spinning table—an important first step, experts say, in finally deciphering this cosmic mystery.
Saturn’s striped appearance comes from jet streams that fly east to west through its atmosphere at different latitudes. Most jets form circular bands, but the Voyager spacecraft snapped pictures of an enormous hexagonally shaped one (each side rivals Earth's diameter) when it passed over the planet's north pole in 1988. Stumped scientists first attributed the shape to a huge, stormlike vortex along one of the hexagon’s sides, which Voyager also spotted during its journey.
This item requires the Flash plug-in (version 8 or higher). JavaScript must also be enabled in your browser. Spinning 'round. Beginning and end of the universe. 8 Wonders of the Solar System, Made Interactive: Scientific Amer. U.K. astronomers find new type of star. Scale_of_universe.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)
10,000 Suns -Most Dense Star Cluster in Milky Way Located. With a mass of more than 10 000 suns packed into a volume with a diameter of a mere three light-years, the massive young star cluster in the nebula NGC 3603 is one of the most compact stellar clusters in the Milky Way and a natural lab to test theories for their formation, revealing whether the stars were in the process of drifting apart, or about to settle down. The cluster, formally known as the NGC 3603 Young Cluster, is about 20 000 light-years from the Sun which makes these measurements extraordinarily difficult. It is necessary to compare images that were made years or even decades apart. The telescope and camera used must give very sharp images and be extremely stable over long periods. A team of astronomers from the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg and the University of Cologne led by Wolfgang Brandner realized that the Hubble Space Telescope was the best for the job. Stars are born when a gigantic cloud of gas and dust collapses.
View the Universe in different wavelengths.