Universe
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HOW STUFF WORKS is about the ingredients that make the world go round. ItÕs truly incredible to see the ingenious lengths people go to in order to extract from the earth rubber and cotton, iron and gold, corn and wheat, water and salt.
Cosmic Journeys - YouTube
Comet Hartley 2 was also the subject of the Deep Impact probe study Comet Hartley 2 contains water more like that found on Earth than all the comets we know about, researchers say. A study using the Herschel space telescope aimed to measure the fraction of deuterium, a rare type of hydrogen, present in the comet's water.
BBC News - Comet's water 'like that of Earth's oceans'
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Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground.
Welcome to the Possibilium
The Milky Way galaxy may be filled with millions upon millions of Jupiter-sized planets that have escaped their solar systems and are wandering freely in space, researchers said Wednesday in a finding that seems certain to make astronomers rethink their ideas about planetary formation. Scientists had previously thought that about 20% of stars had massive planets attached to them, but the new results reported in the journal Nature suggest that there are at least twice as many planets as stars, and perhaps several times as many. The finding "is a revelation in the sense that it looks like a quintupling of the number of gas giants in the universe," said astronomer Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who was not involved in the research.
Astronomy: Planets in our galaxy may be vastly more numerous than believed - latimes.com
A red dwarf star 20 light-years away is again providing hints that it hosts the first definitively habitable planet outside our Solar System. Gliese 581d is less controversial; it was discovered along with the planet Gliese 581c in 2007, occupying the outer and inner edges of the Goldilocks zone, respectively. Conversely, the outlying planet 581d - with a mass about six times that of the Earth and twice its size - was initially taken to be too cold to have liquid water. Now, French researchers have run computer simulations of the planet's atmosphere, arguing that it is likely to contain high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Robin Wordsworth, a member of the team from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, said that the findings were further evidence that the sheer variety of planets and environments far outpaced that which we see in our own Solar System. Dr Wordsworth said that the simulations are tantamount to a first definitive claim for a habitable exoplanet.
BBC News - Exoplanet near Gliese 581 star 'could host life'
The Disclosure Project is a nonprofit research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems. We have over 500 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret. Dr.
The Disclosure Project
Well I guess it is not a big deal like the the US gov thought. There is only about 40% of people even believe that other world people visit here. Of those even fewer have ever been visited or seen a other world craft. Unless they take a person for a trip I don't think it makes much of an impression. Brazil is the one of the few government that have acknowledged their existance. by Jun 8
Are We Really All Made of Stars? | Cosmos, Moby’s Song ‘We Are All Made of Stars’, Universe & Solar System | Life's Little Mysteries
The theory that everyone and everything on Earth contains minuscule star particles dates back further than Moby's popular 2002 song "We Are All Made of Stars." In the early 1980s, astronomer Carl Sagan hosted and narrated a 13-part television series called "Cosmos" that aired on PBS. On the show, Sagan thoroughly explained many science-related topics, including Earth's history, evolution, the origin of life and the solar system.How Was the Solar System Formed? | What Created the Solar System | Life's Little Mysteries
Scientists aren't completely sure how the solar system formed, but most agree the best explanation is that a cloud of molecules collapsed inward on itself, forming our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Some evidence, such as a 2010 study from scientists at the Carnegie institution, suggests this contraction could have been spurred by a burst from nearby supernovas . Other forces like differences in density could also have caused the cloud begin collapsing according to "From Suns to Life: A Chronological Approach to the History of Life on Earth" (Springer, 2004), an astronomy review text. Initially, gas collected in the dense center of this spinning disk, creating a protosun. Collisions between molecules heated things up, eventually raising temperatures to about ten million degrees Celsius. These increasingly hot and violent crashes sparked nuclear reactions, which turned the protosun into a star.
What Does the Sun Burn? | Life's Little Mysteries
For millennia, people have looked up to the sky and wondered about celestial bodies. The sparkling stars and fiery sun hold mystery and wonder. To astronomers, the sun is just another dying star, but to everyone else it’s a huge burning ball that gives heat, light, and life.
Ever wondered why Mars is red? One scientists thinks he knows | Mail Online
According to Dr John Brandednberg, about 180 million years ago, a planet-shattering yet naturally occurring nuclear reaction may have wiped out everything on Mars, sending a shockwave that turned the planet into dry sand. Surface: Mars is covered with a thin layer of radioactive substances including uranium, thorium and radioactive potassium He told Fox News: 'The Martian surface is covered with a thin layer of radioactive substances including uranium, thorium and radioactive potassium - and this pattern radiates from a hot spot on Mars. 'A nuclear explosion could have sent debris all around the planet. 'Maps of gamma rays on Mars show a big red spot that seems like a radiating debris pattern ... on the opposite side of the planet there is another red spot.'
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Near Earth Objects: AKA Asteroids
The Wall Street Journal - The Weekend Interview (A version of this article appeared March 10, 2012, on page A11 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Captain Michio and the World of Tomorrow: Humans are born with the curiosity of scientists but switch to investment banking by Brian Bolduc (former Robert L.
Welcome to Explorations in Science with Dr. Michio Kaku
'Brown dwarf' has chance to shine after new telescope sees beyond brighter companion | Mail Online
But with new, more powerful telescopes, astronomers were able to see the star, which is almost five times dimmer and 130 degrees cooler than the previous record. The brown dwarf may represent a new class of cosmic objects straddling the division between stars and planets. 'We were very excited to see that this object had such a low temperature, but we couldn't have guessed that it would turn out to be a double system and have an even more interesting, even colder component,' said star-gazer Philippe Delorme of the Institut de planétologie et d'astrophysique de Grenoble which studied the brown dwarf. Stars, such as their cousins, white dwarfs, can do this and consequently can burn for more than 4.5billion years at a temperature of 5,500C. What separates brown dwarfs from huge planets is not yet defined. However, planets are generally not big enough to generate their own heat by fusing deuterium.Titan’s Haze Could Hold Recipe for Life, No Water Needed | Wired Science | Wired.com
When it comes to determining exactly where in the solar system life began, things have never been so up in the air.Dark-Matter Galaxy Detected: Hidden Dwarf Lurks Nearby?
The invisibility of "Galaxy X"—as the purported body has been dubbed—may be due less to its apparent status as a dwarf galaxy than to its murky location and its overwhelming amount of dark matter, astronomer Sukanya Chakrabarti speculates. Detectable only by the effects of its gravitational pull, dark matter is an invisible material that scientists think makes up more than 80 percent of the mass in the universe. (See "Dark Matter Detected for First Time." )Dark Matter
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