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The Fabric of the Cosmos

The Fabric of the Cosmos
The Fabric of the Cosmos, a four-hour series based on the book by renowned physicist and author Brian Greene, takes us to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture yet of space, time, and the universe. With each step, audiences will discover that just beneath the surface of our everyday experience lies a world we'd hardly recognize - a startling world far stranger and more wondrous than anyone expected. Brian Greene is going to let you in on a secret: We've all been deceived. Our perceptions of time and space have led us astray. Much of what we thought we knew about our universe - that the past has already happened and the future is yet to be, that space is just an empty void, that our universe is the only universe that exists - just might be wrong. Watch the full documentary now (playlist)

Largest Ever Water Reservoir Discovered in Space The reservoir is gigantic, holding 140 trillion times the mass of water in the Earth's oceans, and resides 10 billion light years away. Since astronomers expected water vapor to be present even in the early universe, the discovery of water is not itself a surprise, the Carnegie Institution, one of the groups behind the findings, said. The water cloud was found to be in the central regions of a faraway quasar. Quasars contain massive black holes that are steadily consuming a surrounding disk of gas and dust; as it eats, the quasar spews out amounts of energy, the institution said in its statement. The quasar where the gigantic water reservoir is located is some 12 billion years old, only 1.6 billion years younger than the Big Bang. The discovery was part of a larger study of the quasar named APM 08279+5255, where the black hole is 20 billion times greater than the Sun. The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it's producing this huge mass of water.

Extensive water in Mars' interior -- Science & Technology © NASAMars, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. Until now, Earth was the only planet known to have vast reservoirs of water in its interior. Scientists analyzed the water content of two Martian meteorites originating from inside the Red Planet. They found that the amount of water in places of the Martian mantle is vastly larger than previous estimates and is similar to that of Earth's. The results not only affect what we know about the geologic history of Mars, but also have implications for how water got to the Martian surface. The data raise the possibility that Mars could have sustained life. The research was led by former Carnegie postdoctoral scientist Francis McCubbin, now at the University of New Mexico. The scientists analyzed what are called shergottite meteorites. "We analyzed two meteorites that had very different processing histories," explained Hauri. "There has been substantial evidence for the presence of liquid water at the Martian surface for some time," Hauri said.

Life on Mars found but destroyed by mistake - Sci/Tech Bungling NASA scientists are believed to have found tiny live microbes on Mars - but mistakenly killed them by boiling them alive, a media report said. Bungling NASA scientists are believed to have found tiny live microbes on Mars - but mistakenly killed them by boiling them alive, a media report said Saturday. Two spacecraft that landed on the Red Planet in 1976 are now thought to have detected microbes in Martian soil. But scientists at the time failed to spot the signs of life - and cooked the bugs at 160 degrees Centigrade during experiments, The Sun reported. Now an international team has used modern techniques to re-examine data collected by the two unmanned Viking probes. Biologist Joseph Miller, of the University of Southern California, said: "I'm 99 percent sure there's life there. During the 1976 mission, nutrients were added to the Martian soil. Experts dismissed the possibility that the gas came from bugs.

Meteoroid impact triggers bright flash on the moon CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An automated telescope monitoring the moon has captured images of an 88-pound (40 kg) rock slamming into the lunar surface, creating a bright flash of light, NASA scientists said on Friday. The explosion on March 17 was the biggest seen since NASA began watching the moon for meteoroid impacts about eight years ago. So far, more than 300 strikes have been recorded. "It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before," Bill Cooke, with NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said in a statement. A NASA satellite orbiting the moon is now on a hunt for the newly formed crater, which scientists estimate could be as wide as 66 feet. The flash was so bright that anyone looking at the moon at the moment of impact could have seen it without a telescope, NASA said. But not always. (Editing by Kevin Gray and Doina Chiacu)

Moon water came from young wet Earth - space - 09 May 2013 The notion that all Earth's water was delivered by comets or asteroids has just taken a hit. Chemical analysis of lunar rocks suggests that Earth was born wet, and it held on to its water long enough to donate some to the moon. The moon is thought to have formed after a massive collision between the infant Earth and another proto-planet around 4.5 billion years ago. Until a few years ago, most astronomers thought that the moon must be bone dry – any water would have been vaporised in the impact. That changed when Alberto Saal of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and colleagues studied rocks brought back from the Apollo 17 mission in the 1970s. In 2008 they found that crystallised magmas in the rocks – and not just a little. "The question became, where did the water come from?" Water level Several research teams had already tackled the question by measuring the ratios of hydrogen and its heavier isotope, deuterium, in primitive rocks from Earth and the moon. Impact rate

Scientist Claims Our Solar System Evicted A Planet So Earth Could Survive Colorado scientist David Nesvorny was running solar system evolutionary simulations recently when he realized that during 6,000 different simulations the Earth couldn’t survive during the system’s early years based on the current planetary count. Once Nesvorny added another planet to the system however Earth survived as expected. According to his work our solar system at one point had a ninth planet, a gas giant that was nudged out of the system billions of years ago to make room for Earth’s survival. According to the Mother Nature Network “gas giant number five” started off bound together with Saturn and Jupiter and pushed out lighter planets including Neptune and Uranus eventually to be pushed out of the system on its own after a collision with Jupiter. According to his work David said the planet was likely orbiting about 15 times further from the sun than our own planet.

Magnifying the Universe Embed this infographic on your site! <iframe width="500" height="323" scrolling="no" src=" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />Copyright 2012. <a href=" the Universe</a> by <a href=" Sleuth</a>. The above is an interactive infographic. We have also developed a complimentary poster that you can view here: Sizes of the Universe poster. Introduction: This interactive infographic from Number Sleuth accurately illustrates the scale of over 100 items within the observable universe ranging from galaxies to insects, nebulae and stars to molecules and atoms. While other sites have tried to magnify the universe, no one else has done so with real photographs and 3D renderings. How To Use: Step 1:To experience this interactive infographic in full screen (our recommendation) click the "Full Screen" button in the top right corner of the infographic. Credits:

Two New Alien Planets Discovered in Andromeda --"Resets the Bar for Weird" Astronomers are beginning to suspect that something unusual happens during the evolution of such solar systems that drives massive planets into kinds of close encounters. The presence of a stellar sibling orbiting both of the newly discovered solar systems may be a “smoking gun” clue that past interactions between the planets and these distant siblings is an important part of that process. One planet is located in the constellation Andromeda. Dubbed KELT-1b, it is so massive that it may better be described as a 'failed star' rather than a planet. A super hot, super dense ball of metallic hydrogen, KELT-1b is located so close to its star that it whips through an entire “yearly” orbit in a little over a day - all the while being blasted by six thousand times the radiation Earth receives from the sun. The planet appears to have been jostled in the past by a previously unknown distant binary companion star that is orbiting the KELT-1 solar system. The Daily Galaxy via Vanderbilt University

After a 14-Year Search --Elusive Ancient Galaxy Found In the Hubble Deep Field Region of the Universe (above), an international team of astronomers managed for the first time to determine the distance of the galaxy HDF850.1, well-known among astronomers as being one of the most productive star-forming galaxies in the observable universe. The galaxy is at a distance of 12.5 billion light years when the universe was less than 10 percent of its current age. For the past 14 years, HDF850.1 has remained strangely elusive. Its location in space, specifically its distance from Earth – the subject of many studies – ultimately remained unknown. How was that possible? "A vast cloud of dust keeps HDF850.1 hidden from telescopes searching the universe in the visible light range, so even the Hubble Space Telescope can't see it," Robertson said. "Any clue we can get about how those early galaxies formed helps us better understand this process," Robertson said. The galaxy HDF850.1 was discovered in 1998. "Stars form in dense clouds of gas and dust.

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