Daily Galaxy

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Welcome to everyone in the team.
Sooo much is discovered daily about our galaxy it's nice to have a place to put it all and learn about the new discoveries
Happy Pearling Jul 3

The Supermassive Star Betelgeuse --Will Its Violent Death Impact Earth? (Today's Most Popular)

The red giant , once so large it would reach out to Jupiter's orbit if placed in our own solar system, has shrunk by 15 percent over the past decade in a half, although it's just as bright as it's ever been. "To see this change is very striking," said retired Berkeley physics professor Charles Townes, who won the 1964 Nobel Prize for inventing the laser. "We will be watching it carefully over the next few years to see if it will keep contracting or will go back up in size."

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/06/the-supermassive-star-betelgeuse-will-its-going-hypernova-impact-earth-todays-most-popular-.html

Figuring out exactly which molecules are leaving these clues, known as "diffuse interstellar bands" (DIBs), is a puzzle that initially seemed straightforward but has gone unsolved for nearly a hundred years.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/09/fingerprints-of-mystery-molecules-found-in-andromeda-triangulum-galaxies.html

Unsolved Mystery of Molecules Found in Andromeda & Triangulum Galaxies

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/08/ist-ever-methane-exhaling-microbes-discovered-on-earth-by-some-estimates-a-third-of-the-earths-organisms-by-mass-live-in-ou.html

First Ever Methane-Exhaling Microbes Discovered on Earth (Will Mars be Next?)

By some estimates, a third of the Earth's organisms by mass live in our planet's rocks and sediments, yet their lives and ecology are almost a complete mystery. This week, microbiologist James Holden at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and others report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the first detailed data about a group of methane-exhaling microbes that live deep in the cracks of hot undersea volcanoes.

Mars 'Curiosity' Science Lab Quickly Points to Water Flows at Gale Crater

Ancient Mars: "The Water Planet"? --'Curiosity' Mission May Provide Proof (Weekend Feature)

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/08/was-ancient-mars-the-water-planet-curiosity-may-provide-proof.html

"We can now say that the planet was altered on a global scale by liquid water about four billion years ago." John Carter of the University of Paris.

Looking like an image out of a video game, M 27, or NGC 6853 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula , at a distance of about 1,360 light years. Its central star, a white dwarf, is larger than any other known white dwarf in the universe.

The 'Vulpecula White Dwarf' --A Hot Zone for Habitable Planets?

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/08/the-largest-known-white-dwarf-in-the-universe-a-hot-zone-for-habitable-planets.html

Neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth, 41, recently of Harvard and a veteran of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory , believes that he can live forever, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. "The human race is on a beeline to mind uploading : We will preserve a brain, slice it up, simulate it on a computer, and hook it up to a robot body."

The Weird Neuroscience of Immortality --Uploading the Human Mind

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/07/the-weird-neuroscience-of-mind-uploading-part-of-our-evolutionary-future.html

Astronomers study these regions throughout the Milky Way and those easily seen in other galaxies to gauge the chemical makeup of cosmic environments and their influence on the formation of stars.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/07/image-of-the-day-vast-molecular-clouds-of-a-stunning-edge-on-galaxy-the-engines-of-life.html

The Vast Molecular Clouds of a Stunning 'Edge-On' Galaxy --'Engines of Life'

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/07/astrobiologists-resurrect-a-500-million-year-old-gene-a-new-insight-into-evolution.html

Using a process called paleo-experimental evolution, Georgia Tech researchers have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern-day Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria.

Astrobiologists Resurrect a 500-Million-Year-Old Gene --New Insights into Evolution

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile have discovered that planets orbiting the star Fomalhaut must be much smaller than originally thought.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/07/image-of-the-day-fomalhaut-a-spectacular-alien-star-system.html

'Fomalhaut' --A Spectacular Star System

An international team of researchers from the USA and Europe including from the University of Bonn under the direction of Dr.

Massive Stars Found to Orbit a Partner --New Discovery

Pulsars are superlative cosmic beacons that rotate about their axes many times per second, emitting radio waves and gamma radiation into space. Using ingenious data analysis methods, researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for Gravitational Physics and for Radio Astronomy discovered a very special gamma-ray pulsar out of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope . The pulsar J1838-0537 is radio-quiet, very young, and, during the observation period, experienced the strongest rotation glitch ever observed for a gamma-ray-only pulsar.

Fermi Sleuths Find 5,000-Year-Old Pulsar Rotating 7 Times per Second

Using combined data from a trio of orbiting X-ray telescopes, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Japan-led Suzaku satellite, astronomers have obtained a rare glimpse of the powerful magnetic fields that drive torrents of gas into the stellar surface, where they heat large areas to millions of degrees.

Rare Glimpse of a Spectacular Protostar

"Hacking the Universe"--Stephen Hawking Launches the Cosmos Supercomputer

Stephen Hawking has launched the most powerful shared-memory supercomputer in Europe, the COSMOS supercomputer, manufactured by SGI and the first system of its kind.

On July 4 at 9 a.m. in Geneva (3 a.m. in New York), officials at the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland are expected to present new results on, and possibly the discovery of, the Higgs boson, the final missing piece of the Standard Model of physics, which explains the interactions between all known subatomic particles and forces, and is required to give all other particles their mass.

News of the Century? CERN to Announce its Findings on Higgs Boson Tomorrow

Astronomers have found evidence of hundreds of black holes in a galaxy 250 million light years away. The discovery, made with a worldwide network of radio telescopes, gives scientists a new way to find out how black holes are created. These objects, known to astronomers as microblazars, were theoretically predicted over a decade ago.