Earth, Space and Universe Secrets

'Deathstar' like object spotted near sun

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 08:20:00 +0000

Source: Yahoo!7 News
March 15, 2012, 11:28 am

A NASA video of a dark, disc shaped object hovering near the sun has set off a wave of speculation online as amateur astronomers try to figure out what the object could be.

The video, taken from a NASA satellite and uploaded to Youtube by a man calling himself SunsFlare, shows a huge round object floating near the sun, with a large 'twister tail' extending from it.

The video shows the sun's rays bursting out from the surface, but a large circular object remains black, with a dark 'twister tail' remaining connected to the sun.

"I have no idea what it is", SunsFlare says, "There's something in the plasma field that would definitely be affected by the [burst of energy]."

Over 380,000 people have viewed the video in the few days since it was uploaded.

Is it the Deathstar?

A NASA video of a dark, disc shaped object hovering near the sun has set off a wave of speculation online.

However NASA says it has an explanation for the anomaly.

It's not the Deathstar, another planet being born or a UFO full of little green men as some viewers suspected.
It's simply a filament, or prominence.

NASA says a filament is a "large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. [Filaments] are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona."

But NASA can't explain why the object is cooler than the energy around it, and therefore remains dark when viewed from NASA’s telescope.

A NASA astrophysicist says the image is completely normal.

"Filaments appear to be dark because they're cooler in relation to what's in the background. When you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you see is this spherical object and you're actually looking down the tunnel."

NASA says it is rare for a prominence to form as such a distinct shape however.
Generally, a prominence comes in the form of a violent outburst, rather than the sphere seen in the video above.

Space storm fizzles on arrival

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:30:00 +0000

Source: Yahoo! 7 News
AFP
Updated March 9, 2012, 5:45 am

A bit of a fizzer

A solar storm that shook the Earth's magnetic field has spared satellite systems, delivering only a glancing blow.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A space weather storm that was forecast to be the strongest in five years has fizzled out and ended up causing no impact to power grids or modern navigation systems, US experts said on Thursday.

A series of eruptions on the Sun this week sent radiation and solar plasma hurtling toward Earth at high speeds but in the end, the geomagnetic storm registered the lowest level, G1, on a five-step scale.

"Our forecasters really struggled with this one," said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist Joseph Kunches, comparing the bungled forecast to watching a pitcher toss a baseball but knowing nothing else until it reaches the catcher.

"We missed the spin on the ball," said Kunches.

NOAA had forecast the storm would be a level three, or "strong," and said it would be the worst since 2006. NASA had said it might even be "severe."

In this case, the "spin" that forecasters missed was contained in the orientation of the magnetic field inside the coronal mass ejection from the Sun that raced toward Earth and arrived early Thursday after a 34-hour journey.

"It is very difficult for forecasters, literally almost impossible, as you watch the coronal mass ejection come off the Sun to be able to predict the orientation of that embedded magnetic field," he said.
Kunches said there were no reports of GPS disruption, no reports of problems in terms of electric power, and that anticipated displays of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, would be visible further north than NOAA initially said.

However, the impacts could worsen over the next 24 hours as the storm continues, he said.
NOAA and NASA had warned on Wednesday that the storm could disrupt global positioning systems, satellites and power grids, and had already caused some air carriers to change their planes' polar flight paths.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station were not affected by the radiation storm, NASA said.

Geomagnetic and radiation storms are growing more frequent as the Sun leaves its solar minimum period and moves into a solar maximum over the coming years, but people are generally protected by Earth's magnetic field.

However, some experts are concerned that because the world is more reliant on GPS and satellite technology now than it was during the last solar maximum, more disruptions to modern life are likely.

The fuss began late Sunday at an active region on the Sun known as 1429, with a big solar flare that was associated with a coronal mass ejection that thrust toward the Earth at some four million miles (6.4 million kilometers) per hour).

A pair of solar flares and a CME followed overnight Tuesday-Wednesday.

NASA said the first of the two flares on March 6-7 -- classified in the potent X class and facing directly at the Earth -- was the biggest this year and one of the largest of this cycle known as the solar minimum, which began in early 2007.

In fact, it was second only to a stronger one that erupted in August.

The solar flares alone caused brief high frequency radio blackouts that have already passed, according to NOAA.

But while solar radiation storm registered a level 3, the geomagnetic storm ended up being the same minor level as a similar event in January, Kunches said.

Solar storm headed toward Earth

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:02:00 +0000

Source: Yahoo!7 News
AAPMarch 8, 2012, 4:01 am

Storm to hit Earth today

Power grids, GPS devices and plane flights may be disrupted by a solar storm headed towards Earth.

An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and aeroplane flights.

Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Centre said the sun erupted on Tuesday evening and the effects should start smacking Earth close to 1600 AEDT on Thursday. They say it is the biggest in five years and growing.
The magnetic storm has the potential to trip electrical power grids.
Its radio emissions can disrupt global positioning systems to make them less accurate. It also could damage satellites.
Scientists said communication problems and radiation from the storm will probably force aeroplanes to avoid flying over the north and south poles. Colourful auroras may be more visible.

Sun's deadly dance caught on camera

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:44:00 +0000

Source:
Yahoo!7
February 18, 2012, 9:40 am

Astronomers were given a spectacular show on the sun as a "solar tornado" made its way across the surface.

The footage, captured over a 30-hour period by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. captures the slow-moving solar flares as they danced across the surface.

The large solar "tornadoes" blasted across the surface of the sun on February 7 and 8, and are formed by the magnetic field created by the star.

"An active region rotating into view provides a bright backdrop to the gyrating streams of plasma," SDO mission scientists were quoted as saying on space.com. "The particles are being pulled this way and that by competing magnetic forces. They are tracking along strands of magnetic field lines."

NASA finds Earth-size planets outside solar system

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:42:00 +0000

NASA discivers Earth- size planets

Source:Yahoo!7
Reuters
December 21, 2011, 7:44 am

Super moon photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system, a milestone in the search for planets like the earth, the space agency said on Tuesday.

The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are the smallest planets outside the solar system confirmed around a star like the Sun, NASA said in a statement.

The planets are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.

"This discovery demonstrates for the first time that Earth-size planets exist around other stars, and that we are able to detect them," Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in the statement.

The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth.

Kepler-20f is slightly larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets are in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-20e orbits its parent star every 6.1 days and Kepler-20f every 19.6 days.

Kepler-20f, at 800 degrees Fahrenheit, is similar to an average day on the planet Mercury. The surface temperature of Kepler-20e, at more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, would melt glass.

The Kepler space telescope detects planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars as planets cross in front their stars.

NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Stormy sun could knock out power grids: report

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 05:04:00 +0000

Sourece: Yahoo!7
Ethan Bilby, Reuters

Bad space period ahead

A high impact sun storm could cause power blackouts and economic losses of over $1 trillion, a report has claimed.

LONDON (Reuters) - An upcoming cycle of stormy solar activity risks causing damage to electrical transformers and threatening vulnerable energy infrastructure around the globe, a report by an insurance group says.

The sun follows a predictable 11 year activity cycle, with the next period of stormy activity expected to begin in 2012-13.

The report by German insurance group Allianz said a high impact solar storm, not easily predicted due to its recorded rarity, could cause blackouts and economic losses of over $1 trillion and that the worst case scenario would be even worse.

"What we're coming into at the moment is the bad (space)weather period," Jim Wild of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in solar plasma physics, told Reuters.

A large explosion on the surface of the sun could release billions of tones of superheated magnetically charged gas at a speed of a million miles per hour, and when that gas hits the earth's magnetic field, it can trigger a big solar storm.

The severity of a potential disruption has made experts at insurance and national security institutions take notice.

"When you start to imagine not having electricity in a sizeable fraction of a country or a continent for weeks or even months ... it's serious business," Wild said.

SMALL LEAD TIME

The difficulty lies in predicting how often serious solar type events occur.

The small lead time given by satellites is also a problem for preventing solar storm damage, as currently no satellite is close enough to the sun to give more than an hour's warning, Wild said.
Updating the satellites to give the earth more preparation time would cost around $1 billion, he added.

Space weather is a relatively new area of study, with sophisticated observations going back only 50 years and lacking an international coordinated tracking system such as that found with normal meteorological weather.

"We have very little on a solar time scale," Wild said.

The most damaging storm in recent memory was a 1989 outage in Quebec, Canada, which affected six million people.

The first scientific recording of a large solar storm was made in 1859 by English astronomer Richard Carrington, who observed a white light explosion on the surface of the sun.

Wild said: "what they didn't know back then was why about two or three days later you could see the northern lights over Cuba and all of the telegraph system was disrupted by geomagnetic activity."

According to the Allianz report, an event on the same scale today would cause extensive damage to electrical infrastructure.

(Editing by Henning Gloystein and James Jukwey)

Scientists uncover 70-million-year old dinosaur nest

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:36:00 +0000

Excellent old dinosaur discover

Yahoo!7
November 19, 2011, 9:55 am

Nest full of baby dinosaurs found. Photo: Discovery News

Scientists have uncovered a 70-million-year old nest filled with 15 baby dinosaurs in Mongolia, Discovery News has reported.

The round nest contains at least 10 complete fossil sets and measures 2.3 feet in diameter, researchers have said.

The researchers conclude that all the 15 dinosaurs show juvenile characteristics including short snouts, large eyes, and no prominent horns and large frills associated with adults of this species.
The babies were identified as the Protoceratops andrewsi, which were four-legged herbivores.

Researchers say the find provides unique insights in to the parental behaviour of the adult dinosaurs and reveals that the babies were kept in the nest and taken care of before they were big enough.

According to Live Science, researcher David Fastovsky, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Rhode Island, said, "It's quite striking that there are 15 juvenile Protoceratops here - that seems like a lot to care for.”

“But they were living in a harsh environment, so perhaps mortality rates were high. The evidence suggests they may have been overrun by migrating dunes during a sandstorm,” he adds.

Discovery reported the nest and the fossils of the babies are currently housed at the Paleontological Center of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulan Baatar, Mongolia.

Sun's giant sunspot unleashes powerful flare

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 02:11:00 +0000

Spectacular Solar Fire Show from Sun

Source: yahoo 7 News
Space.com
November 6, 2011, 10:55 am

Fierce storm sparks massive solar flare

Yahoo!7 Technology News

Sun's spectacular fire show

The Sun has unleashed one of the most powerful storms ever, triggering massive solar flares.

Sun's earlier storms captured

Solar flare. Photo: space.com

A powerful solar flare that erupted on Nov 3 from a huge blemish on the sun's surface has been classified as an X1.9 flare, ranking it in among the most powerful types of storms from our star can unleash.

The flare originated in a humongous sunspot that was sighted earlier this week, which ranks as one of the largest sunspots seen in years.

The flare "triggered some disruption to radio communications on Earth beginning about 45 minutes later," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Scientists are continuing to watch this active region as it could well produce additional solar activity as it passes across the front of the sun."

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin Stereo sun-watching spacecraft snapped photos and video of the huge solar flare during solar storm.

A flare is a powerful release of energy that brightens the sun, and is often associated with an area of increased magnetic activity on the solar surface. This magnetic activity can also inhibit the flow of heat to the surface in a process called convection, creating darkened areas on the face of the sun called sunspots.

The huge active region on the sun right now, called AR11339, is about 80,000 km long, several times wider than the Earth.

"This large and complex active region just rotated onto the disk and we will watch it for the next 10 days," astronomers with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite wrote in an update.
Later on the same day as the flare, in another area of the sun, a burst of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection released from the surface.

More from Space.com
Strangest alien planets
Ten extreme planet facts

This eruption came from the back side of the sun and is headed toward the planet Venus, so should not pose any risk to Earth.

Because NASA has a suite of spacecraft observing the sun at all times from many directions, the agency was able to observe the coronal mass ejection as well as the solar flare.

Scientists say we probably haven't seen the last of activity from this dynamic region of the sun.
"The large, bright active region remains potent," officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Odds are good there's more to come."

And recent events are just part of a larger ramping up of action on the sun lately, as our star moves toward the peak of activity in its 11-year cycle around 2013.

Huge asteroid headed for close encounter with Earth

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 03:45:00 +0000

This Tuesday a huge asteroid will pass close to Earth

Source: Yahoo 7 News
Irene Klotz, Reuters
Updated November 5, 2011, 8:56 am

Giant asteroid headed Earth's way

Yahoo!7 Technology News

Close encounter

A space rock bigger than an aircraft carrier is set to get as close to the Earth as the moon in the next two days.
Strange planet blacker than coal

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A huge asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the moon Tuesday, giving scientists a rare chance for study without having to go through the time and expense of launching a probe, officials said.

Earth's close encounter with Asteroid 2005 YU 55 will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST (2328 GMT) Tuesday, as the space rock sails about 201,000 miles from the planet.

"It is the first time since 1976 that an object of this size has passed this closely to the Earth. It gives us a great -- and rare -- chance to study a near-Earth object like this," astronomer Scott Fisher, a program director with the National Science Foundation, said Thursday during a Web chat with reporters.

The orbit and position of the asteroid, which is about 1,312 feet in diameter, is well known, added senior research scientist Don Yeomans, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"There is no chance that this object will collide with the Earth or moon," Yeomans said.
Thousands of amateur and professional astronomers are expected to track YU 55's approach, which will be visible from the planet's northern hemisphere. It will be too dim to be seen with the naked eye, however, and it will be moving too fast for viewing by the Hubble Space Telescope.

"The best time to observe it would be in the early evening on November 8 from the East Coast of the United States," Yeomans said. "It is going to be very faint, even at its closest approach. You will need a decent-sized telescope to be able to actually see the object as it flies by."

Scientists suspect YU 55 has been visiting Earth for thousands of years, but because gravitational tugs from the planets occasionally tweak its path, they cannot tell for sure how long the asteroid has been in its present orbit.

"These sorts of events have been happening for most of the lifetime of the Earth, about 4.5 billion years," Fisher said.

Computer models showing the asteroid's path for the next 100 years show there is no chance it will hit Earth during that time, added Yeomans.

"We do not think that it will ever impact the Earth or moon (but) we only have its orbit calculated for the next 100 years," he said.

Previous studies show the asteroid, which is blacker than charcoal, is what is called a C-type asteroid that is likely made of carbon-based materials and some silicate rock.

More information about its composition and structure are expected from radar images and chemical studies of its light as the asteroid passes by the planet.

"I've read that we will be able to see details down to a size of about 15 feet across on the surface of the asteroid," Fisher said.

NASA is working on a mission to return soil samples from an asteroid known as 1999 RQ36 in 2020, followed by a human mission to another asteroid in the mid-2020s.

Japan also plans to launch an asteroid sample return mission in 2018.

(Corrects time element in paragraph 3)
(Editing by Tom Brown and Philip Barbara

The Big Bang: What really happened when Universe was born?

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 09:53:00 +0000

This article from space.com is very important for education and general knowledge.

Source: Yahoo 7 News
Space.com
October 22, 2011, 9:38 am

Understanding the Big Bang

Our universe was born about 13.7 billion years ago but would we ever know what really made it as it is today?

Related Links

Our universe was born about 13.7 billion years ago in a massive expansion that blew space up like a gigantic balloon.

That, in a nutshell, is the Big Bang theory, which virtually all cosmologists and theoretical physicists endorse. The evidence supporting the idea is extensive and convincing. We know, for example, that the universe is still expanding even now, at an ever-accelerating rate.

Scientists have also discovered a predicted thermal imprint of the Big Bang, the universe-pervading cosmic microwave background radiation. And we don't see any objects obviously older than 13.7 billion years, suggesting that our universe came into being around that time.

"All of these things put the Big Bang on an extremely solid foundation," said astrophysicist Alex Filippenko of the University of California, Berkeley. "The Big Bang is an enormously successful theory."

So what does this theory teach us? What really happened at the birth of our universe, and how did it take the shape we observe today?

The beginning

Traditional Big Bang theory posits that our universe began with a singularity — a point of infinite density and temperature whose nature is difficult for our minds to grasp. However, this may not accurately reflect reality, researchers say, because the singularity idea is based on Einstein's theory of general relativity.

"The problem is, there's no reason whatsoever to believe general relativity in that regime," said Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech. "It's going to be wrong, because it doesn't take into account quantum mechanics. And quantum mechanics is certainly going to be important once you get to that place in the history of the universe."

So the very beginning of the universe remains pretty murky. Scientists think they can pick the story up at about 10 to the minus 36 seconds — one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second — after the Big Bang.

At that point, they believe, the universe underwent an extremely brief and dramatic period of inflation, expanding faster than the speed of light. It doubled in size perhaps 100 times or more, all within the span of a few tiny fractions of a second.

(Inflation may seem to violate the theory of special relativity, but that's not the case, scientists say. Special relativity holds that no information or matter can be carried between two points in space faster than the speed of light. But inflation was an expansion of space itself.)

"Inflation was the 'bang' of the Big Bang," Filippenko told SPACE.com "Before inflation, there was just a little bit of stuff, quite possibly, expanding just a little bit. We needed something like inflation to make the universe big."

This rapidly expanding universe was pretty much empty of matter, but it harbored huge amounts of dark energy, the theory goes. Dark energy is the mysterious force that scientists think is driving the universe's current accelerating expansion.

During inflation, dark energy made the universe smooth out and accelerate. But it didn't stick around for long.

"It was just temporary dark energy," Carroll told SPACE.com. "It converted into ordinary matter and radiation through a process called reheating. The universe went from being cold during inflation to being hot again when all the dark energy went away."

Scientists don't know what might have spurred inflation. That remains one of the key questions in Big Bang cosmology, Filippenko said.

Another idea

Most cosmologists regard inflation as the leading theory for explaining the universe's characteristics — specifically, why it's relatively flat and homogeneous, with roughly the same amount of stuff spread out equally in all directions.

More from Space.com

Images: Peerng back to Big Bang
Video: Fog of early Universe seen

Various lines of evidence point toward inflation being a reality, said theoretical physicist Andy Albrecht of the University of California, Davis.

"They all hang together pretty nicely with the inflationary picture," said Albrecht, one of the architects of inflation theory. "Inflation has done incredibly well."

However, inflation is not the only idea out there that tries to explain the universe's structure. Theorists have come up with another one, called the cyclic model, which is based on an earlier concept called the ekpyrotic universe.

This idea holds that our universe didn't emerge from a single point, or anything like it. Rather, it "bounced" into expansion — at a much more sedate pace than the inflation theory predicts — from a pre-existing universe that had been contracting. If this theory is correct, our universe has likely undergone an endless succession of "bangs" and "crunches."

"The beginning of our universe would have been nice and finite," said Burt Ovrut of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the originators of ekpyrotic theory.

The cyclic model posits that our universe consists of 11 dimensions, only four of which we can observe (three of space and one of time). Our four-dimensional part of the universe is called a brane (short for membrane).

There could be other branes lurking out there in 11-dimensional space, the idea goes. A collision between two branes could have jolted the universe from contraction to expansion, spurring the Big Bang we see evidence of today.

Looking for gravitational waves

Soon, scientists may know for sure which theory — inflation or the cyclic model — is a better representation of reality.

For example, inflation likely would produce much stronger gravitational waves than an ekpyrotic "bounce," Filippenko said. So researchers are looking for any signs of these theoretical distortions of space time, which have yet to be observed.

The European Space Agency's Planck satellite, which launched in 2009, may find the elusive gravitational waves. It may also gather other evidence that could tip the scales either way, Ovrut said.
"These are things that, within the next 10 years, will be discussed and hopefully decided," Ovrut told SPACE.com.

The universe we know takes shape

Cosmologists suspect that the four forces that rule the universe — gravity, electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces — were unified into a single force at the universe's birth, squashed together because of the extreme temperatures and densities involved.

But things changed as the universe expanded and cooled. Around the time of inflation, the strong force likely separated out. And by about 10 trillionths of a second after the Big Bang, the electromagnetic and weak forces became distinct, too.

Just after inflation, the universe was likely filled with a hot, dense plasma. But by around 1 microsecond (10 to the minus 6 seconds) or so, it had cooled enough to allow the first protons and neutrons to form, researchers think.

In the first three minutes after the Big Bang, these protons and neutrons began fusing together, forming deuterium (also known as heavy hydrogen). Deuterium atoms then joined up with each other, forming helium-4.

Recombination: The universe becomes transparent

These newly created atoms were all positively charged, as the universe was still too hot to favor the capture of electrons.

But that changed about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. In an epoch known as recombination, hydrogen and helium ions began snagging electrons, forming electrically neutral atoms. Light scatters significantly off free electrons and protons, but much less so off neutral atoms. So photons were now much more free to cruise through the universe.

Recombination dramatically changed the look of the universe; it had been an opaque fog, and now it became transparent. The cosmic microwave background radiation we observe today dates from this era.

But still, the universe was pretty dark for a long time after recombination, only truly lighting up when the first stars began shining about 300 million years after the Big Bang. They helped undo much of what recombination had accomplished. These early stars — and perhaps some other mystery sources — threw off enough radiation to split most of the universe's hydrogen back into its constituent protons and electrons.

This process, known as reionization, seems to have run its course by around 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The universe is not opaque today, as it was before recombination, because it has expanded so much. The universe's matter is very dilute, and photon scattering interactions are thus relatively rare, scientists say.

Over time, stars gravitated together to form galaxies, leading to more and more large-scale structure in the universe. Planets coalesced around some newly forming stars, including our own sun. And 3.8 billion years ago, life took root on Earth.

Before the Big Bang?

While much about the universe's first few moments remains speculative, the question of what preceded the Big Bang is even more mysterious and hard to tackle.

For starters, the question itself may be nonsensical. If the universe came from nothing, as some theorists believe, the Big Bang marks the instant when time itself began. In that case, there would be no such thing as "before," Carroll said.

But some conceptions of the universe's birth can propose possible answers. The cyclic model, for example, suggests that a contracting universe preceded our expanding one. Carroll, as well, can imagine something existing before the Big Bang.

"It could just be empty space that existed before our Big Bang happened, then some quantum fluctuation gave birth to a universe like ours," he said. "You can imagine a little bubble of space pinching off through a fluctuation and being filled with just a little tiny dollop of energy, which can then grow into the universe that we see through inflation."

Filippenko also suspects something along those lines might be true.

"I think time in our universe started with the Big Bang, but I think we were a fluctuation from a predecessor, a mother universe," Filippenko said.

Will we ever know?

Cosmologists and physicists are working hard to refine their theories and bring the universe's earliest moments into sharper and sharper focus. But will they ever truly know what happened at the Big Bang?

It's a daunting challenge, especially since researchers are working at a 13.7-billion-year remove. But don't count science out, Carroll said. After all, 100 years ago, people understood very little about the universe. We didn't know about general relativity, for example, or quantum mechanics. We didn't know the universe was expanding, and we didn't know about the Big Bang.

"We know all these things now," Carroll said. "The pace of progress is actually astonishingly fast, so I would never give in to pessimism. There's no reason in the recent history of cosmology and physics to be pessimistic about our prospects for understanding the Big Bang."

Albrecht voiced similar optimism, saying we may one day even figure out what, if anything, existed before the Big Bang.

"I base my hope on the fact that cosmology has been so successful," he told SPACE.com. "It seems nature has sent us a clear message that we really can do science with the universe."

Doomsday comet' to pass by Earth

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 06:55:00 +0000

Excellent article about the our universe
Source: Yahoo 7 News
Space.com
October 15, 2011, 7:52 am

The moment long feared by conspiracy theorists is nearly upon us: The "doomsday comet" Elenin will make its closest approach to Earth on Oct. 16.

Or what's left of it will, anyway.

Comet Elenin started breaking up in August after being blasted by a huge solar storm, and a close pass by the sun on Sept 10 apparently finished it off, astronomers say.

So what will cruise within 35.4 million kilometers of our planet Sunday is likely to be a stream of debris rather than a completely intact comet.

And the leftovers of Elenin won't return for 12,000 years, astronomers say.

"Folks are having trouble finding it, so I think it's probably dead and gone," said astronomer Don Yeomans of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
That means it probably won't present much of a skywatching show on Sunday, scientists have said.

The doomsday comet

Elenin's apparent demise may come as a relief to some folks, since apocalyptic rumors circulating on the Internet portrayed the comet as a major threat to Earth.

One theory claimed Elenin would set off havoc on Earth after aligning with other heavenly bodies, spurring massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Another held that Elenin was not a comet at all, but in fact a rogue planet called Nibiru that would bring about the end times on Earth.

More from Space.com
Top 10 strangest things in space
Fabulous deep space photos

After all, the comet's name could be taken as a spooky acronym: "Extinction-Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh."

Those ideas were pure nonsense, Yeomans said.

"Elenin was a second-rate, wimpy little comet that never should have been noted for anything, really," he told SPACE.com. "It was not even a bright one."

Elenin's remains will not be the only objects about to make their closest pass of Earth. One day after the Elenin flyby, the small asteroid 2009 TM8 will zip close by. Like Elenin, it poses no risk of striking our home planet.

Asteroid 2009 TM8 is about 6.4 meters wide and the size of a schoolbus. It will come within 212,000 miles of Earth – just inside the orbit of the moon – when it zips by on Monday morning (Oct. 17).
Say goodbye to Elenin

Elenin was named after its discoverer, Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin, who spotted it in December 2010. Before the icy wanderer broke up, its nucleus was likely 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 km) in diameter, scientists say.

Amazing space photos. Photo: Getty Images

Elenin never posed any threat to life on Earth, Yeomans said. It was far too small to exert any appreciable influence on our planet unless it managed to hit us.

"Just driving to work every day in my subcompact car is going to have far more of a gravitational effect on Earth than this comet ever will," Yeomans said.

Elenin's supposed connection to earthquakes was just a correlation, and a weak one at that, he added. Relatively strong earthquakes occur every day somewhere on Earth, so it's easy — but not statistically valid — to blame some of them on the comet's changing position.

Yeomans views the frenzy over Elenin as a product of the Internet age, which allows loud and often uninformed voices to drown out the rather more prosaic results that scientists publish in peer-reviewed journals.

"It's a snowball effect on the Web," Yeomans said. "You get one or two folks who make an outrageous claim, and a bunch of others pile on. Some folks are actually making a living this way."
Elenin's crumbs will soon leave Earth in the rear-view mirror, speeding out on a long journey to the outer solar system. But Yeomans doesn't think the departure will keep the conspiracy theorists down for long.

"It's time to move on to the next armageddon," he said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Comets a water source for thirsty early Earth

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:48:00 +0000

Excellent discover in the space
Source: Yahoo 7 News
Ben Hirschler, Reuters
October 6, 2011, 3:11 am

LONDON (Reuters) - Astronomers have found the first comet with ocean-like water in a major boost to the theory that the celestial bodies were a significant source of water for a thirsty early Earth.

The intense heat of the planet immediately after it formed means any initial water would have quickly evaporated and scientists believe the oceans emerged around 8 million years later.

The puzzle is where the water, which is vital for life on Earth, came from.

Reuters ©

Past analysis of water-ice from far-flung comets suggested they could have delivered no more than 10 percent of today's oceans because the chemical "fingerprints" did not match up.

But research from Paul Hartogh of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and colleagues published on Wednesday showed a comet called 103P/Hartley 2 has the same chemical composition as the Earth's oceans.

The finding substantially increases the amount of water that could have originated from comets, which are made up of rock and ice with a characteristic tail of gas and dust. Previous models of the early Earth implied most water came from asteroids.

In the case of Hartley 2, researchers using infrared instruments on the Hershel Space Observatory found that ice on the comet has a near identical "D/H" ratio to seawater. D/H measures the proportion of deuterium -- or heavy hydrogen, which has an extra neutron -- compared to ordinary hydrogen in water.

"It was a big surprise when we saw the ratio was almost the same as what we find in the Earth's oceans," Hartogh told Reuters.

"It means it is not true any more that a maximum of 10 percent of water could have come from comets. Now, in principle, all the water could have come from comets."

Hartogh, whose research was published online in Nature, believes Hartley 2, whose current orbit around the sun does not extend much beyond Jupiter, started life in a different part of the solar system than other comets studied.

It probably formed in the Kuiper belt, which lies about 30 to 50 times further from the sun than the Earth, while the others come from the Oort Cloud, some 5,000 times further away.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

NASA satellite plunges into Pacific off California

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 06:43:00 +0000

Source: Yahoo 7 news

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A bus-sized US satellite that hurtled unpredictably toward Earth crossed over Africa and the northern Atlantic before likely plunging into the Pacific Ocean off California, NASA said on Saturday.

The six-tonne Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell from the sky between 11:23 pm Friday and 1:09 am Saturday (0323-0509 GMT Saturday), the space agency said, but there were no sightings or reliable accounts of damage.

"We have got no reports of anyone seeing anything that we believe are credible," NASA chief orbital scientist Nick Johnson said, noting that the "vast majority" of its flight track had been over water.

The best and latest estimate, made by the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at two hours before entry, put the re-entry time at 0416 GMT.
"If the re-entry point was at 0416 GMT, then all that debris wound up in the Pacific Ocean," said Johnson.

NASA had maintained that the risk of the satellite causing harm to people on land was remote.
Since the satellite was circling Earth just about every hour and a half before it fell, it covered a vast amount of territory in its final loop, according to a map NASA posted on its website at nasa.gov/uars.
It started off on the eastern coast of Africa before going over the Indian Ocean, up the Pacific over Canada, over the northern Atlantic and then down western Africa before ending in the Indian Ocean again, Johnson said.

The final resting place of the 20-year-old satellite's remains could stay shrouded in mystery.
"We may never know," Johnson said, noting that NASA relies on the public as well as aviation and naval personnel to report evidence of satellite debris.

The satellite was expected to break into 26 pieces as it plummeted toward Earth, with surviving parts including titanium fuel tanks, beryllium housing and stainless steel batteries and wheel rims.
"Twenty-six satellite components, weighing a total of about 1,200 pounds (550 kilograms), could have survived the fiery re-entry and reach the surface of Earth. However, NASA is not aware of any reports of injury or property damage," the space agency said.

UARS was launched in 1991 to measure the ozone layer and other atmospheric conditions and was decommissioned in 2005. The last of its fuel was used up to change its orbit so it would return to Earth sooner.

Influence from solar activity and the tumbling motion of the satellite made it difficult to narrow down where it would penetrate Earth's atmosphere, and it was expected to leave a 500-mile (800-kilometer) debris footprint.

UARS was the biggest NASA spacecraft to fall since the 85-ton Skylab crashed into western Australia in 1979.

A 40-tonne Russian space station Salyut 7 scattered over Argentina in 1991 after an uncontrolled return to Earth.

Despite the media frenzy that surrounded the UARS landing, orbital debris experts said space junk actually falls from the sky regularly, even weekly, according to Johnson.

"This is not an unusual event. We do not always know where these re-entries occur," he said.

'Small chance' satellite may hit Australia

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:16:00 +0000

Source: yahoo 7 NewsBy Matthew Sadler, AAP
September 23, 2011, 5:17 pm

Australians may want to keep an eye on the sky this weekend with space junk set to crash back to Earth in the next 24 hours.

Scientists say there is a small chance debris from a satellite due to crash to Earth this weekend could land in Australia.

NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), which weighs more than five tonnes, is expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere at 1058 AEST on Saturday.

The US-based Centre for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies estimates that re-entry could occur up to seven hours before or after this time.
The satellite's flight path includes several passes over Australia.

The Australian Space News website said the satellite poses a negligible threat to life and property on Earth.

"Most of the satellite will burn up on re-entry, with perhaps as many as 26 stronger or harder small pieces surviving to reach the surface," editor Jonathan Nally said in a statement.

"But with the majority of the Earth comprising oceans or uninhabited (or very sparsely populated) remote regions, the chances are overwhelming that any pieces of UARS that survive re-entry will fall harmlessly and never be seen again."

The UARS was launched in September 1991 and was decommissioned in December 2005.
After the satellite's productive days were over, NASA deliberately placed it into an orbit about 200 kilometres lower than its operational orbit.

"This was done to accelerate its eventual demise and means it is re-entering the atmosphere 20 years earlier than it would otherwise have done," explains Mr Nally.

"This was a very responsible thing to do. The longer a spacecraft stays in orbit, the more chance it has of being hit by other orbital debris, leading to a destructive breakup and therefore more bits of debris."

Debris from SkyLab, another satellite which plunged to Earth, was scattered over parts of Western Australia in 1979. Skylab weighed about 77 tonnes, many times more than the UARS.

Dr Alice Gorman of the Department of Archaeology at Flinders University in Adelaide said the re-entry of the UARS brings back memories of Skylab 32 years ago.

"There is the same exaggeration of the hazard through the media, public anxiety as the advance warning allows for speculation, and a lack of understanding of what the risks actually are," Dr Gorman said in a statement.

"Should it land in Australia, we might expect the same rush for souvenirs as we saw with Skylab, as anything that has been in space has a special meaning on Earth."

Thousands of ticking time bomb stars set to explode

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 21:45:00 +0000

Look and read this important article about the universe

Source: space.com and yahoo 7 news

Thousands of ticking time bomb stars set to explode at any moment are hidden throughout our galaxy, according to a new study.

When massive stars reach the end of their lives, they can explode in fiery fits called supernovas. Astronomers calculate that about three stars explode in a specific category of supernova called Type 1a every thousand years in the Milky Way.

That means that within a few thousand light-years of Earth there should be dozens of stars on the verge of exploding.

Yet while scientists know these stars are out there, they've had trouble so far identifying which stars are nearing the explosion point. But the new research offers hope of finding the ticking time bombs more easily by looking for features that had previously been ignored.

"We haven’t found one of these 'time bomb' stars yet in the Milky Way, but this research suggests that we've been looking for the wrong signs," astrophysicist Rosanne Di Stefano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said in a statement. "Our work points to a new way of searching for supernova precursors."

Unsolved mysteries

Di Stefano and her colleagues offer a new model for how these stars explode that could explain some niggling unsolved mysteries.

More from Space.com

Strangest alien planets
Ten extreme planet facts

The reigning theory behind Type 1a supernovas is that they are caused when old, dense stars called white dwarfs slowly steal mass from nearby companion stars until they reach a tipping point, becoming too massive to fight against the inward pull of gravity, and collapse.

This weight limit, about 1.4 times the mass of the sun, is called the Chandrasekhar mass.
But if that is the case, scientists would expect to find these companion stars left over after supernovas fade from sight.

They also predict small amounts of hydrogen and helium gas would have been left nearby, representing material that wasn't sucked into the white dwarf, or that was dislodged from the companion in the explosion.

Amazing space photos. Photo: Getty Images

Yet none of these smoking gun clues appear to be present around known supernovas.
'''Slowing down'''
Perhaps, Di Stefano and her colleagues propose, white dwarfs are able to reach the Chandrasekhar mass but postpone the inevitable by spinning quickly.

As a star gobbles up more mass, it also increases its angular momentum, which causes it to spin up. This increased spin can act as a stabilizing force, allowing the white dwarf to tip the scales over the Chandrasekhar mass without exploding.

After the star stops eating its neighbor's mass, however, it will gradually slow down, and eventually succumb to gravity in a supernova.

Yet the spinning effect could give the star a buffer, perhaps of up to a billion years, between when the white dwarf stops accreting mass, and when it explodes. During this lag, the leftover gas from the companion star may dissipate, and the companion could evolve into a white dwarf itself.

Bomb squad

The new model suggests a new tack for hunting impending supernovas. According to the research, astronomers could start to look for white dwarf stars that have already reached the Chandrasekhar limit, and are in the process of spinning down. [Video: Supernovas: Destroyers and Creators]
"We don’t know of any super-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarfs in the Milky Way yet, but we're looking forward to hunting them out," said co-author Rasmus Voss of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

The researchers reported their findings in the Sept. 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

An out-of-this-world view. Photo: Getty Images

'Invisible' alien planet discovered

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:33:00 +0000

Impacting news from NASA's Kepler telescope was detected new planets in the universe UJWQ2TFPABYK

Source: Yahoo 7 News
space.com
September 9, 2011, 2:22 pm

For the first time, scientists have definitively discovered an "invisible" alien planet by noticing how its gravity affects the orbit of a neighboring world, a new study reports.
NASA's Kepler space telescope detected both alien planets, which are known as Kepler-19b and Kepler-19c. Kepler spotted 19b as it passed in front of, or transited, its host star. Researchers then inferred the existence of 19c after observing that 19b's transits periodically came a little later or earlier than expected. The gravity of 19c tugs on 19b, changing its orbit.

The discovery of Kepler-19c marks the first time this method — known as transit timing variation, or TTV — has robustly found an exoplanet, researchers said. But it almost certainly won't be the last.
"My expectation is that this method will be applied dozens of times, if not more, for other candidates in the Kepler mission," said study lead author Sarah Ballard, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

Finding two new planets

The Kepler spacecraft launched in March 2009. It typically hunts for alien worlds by measuring the telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet crosses the star's face from the telescope's perspective, blocking some of its light.

Five bold claims of alien life

Ten strangest alien planets

Kepler has been incredibly successful using this so-called transit method, spotting 1,235 candidate alien planets in its first four months of operation. That's the way it detected Kepler-19b, a world 650 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-19b has a diameter about 2.2 times that of Earth, researchers said, and orbits 8.4 million miles (13.5 million kilometers) from its parent star. The planet likely has a surface temperature around 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius).

Kepler-19b transits its host star once every nine days and seven hours. But that number isn't constant, Ballard and her team found; transits can occur up to five minutes early or five minutes late. That variation told them another planet was tugging on 19b, alternately speeding it up and slowing it down.

In our own solar system, scientists used similar methods to predict the existence of the planet Neptune. Astronomers noticed that Uranus did not orbit the sun exactly as expected, and surmised that an unseen planet was pulling on it. This prediction was borne out when telescopes confirmed Neptune in 1846.

Researchers know little about Kepler-19c at the moment. It takes the alien world 160 days or less to zip around its host star, and 19c's mass could range from a few times that of Earth to six times that of Jupiter, researchers said.

But 19c should start coming into clearer focus soon.

"It's a mystery world, but of course we don't expect it to remain a mystery," study co-author David Charbonneau, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com in an email. "Kepler, and large ground-based telescopes, should help us figure out its true identity soon enough!"
The study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

A first for a new method

The new study isn't the first to report evidence of a new alien planet using the TTV method. Last year, for example, a different research team announced the possible discovery of a planet called WASP-3c using the technique.

But WASP-3c is still somewhat ambiguous, researchers said.
"The authors consider that result tentative, though, and are collecting more data to confirm that there are timing variations," study co-author Daniel Fabrycky, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com in an email. "The detection is much more certain in our case, as the data come from a single instrument and nearly every transit has been detected over a few cycles of the signal."
Ballard voiced similar sentiments, saying other potential TTV exoplanet finds — such as another possible world in the WASP-10 star system — aren't quite definitive.

"We are just claiming that the Kepler-19 system is the first robust discovery," Ballard told SPACE.com. "The detection we have is a better-sampled one, and it's also higher signal to noise."
Further, she added, in all other potential TTV finds, the "perturbed" alien planet has been a gas giant orbiting extremely close to its parent star — a so-called "hot Jupiter." But the Kepler mission has shown that hot Jupiters tend to be singletons, circling their stars alone.

"It puts doubt in my mind about the likelihood of an additional perturbing planet in a hot Jupiter system," Ballard said. "I'm not saying it's impossible, but it makes it a little more unlikely."
That's in contrast to Kepler-19b, which is a so-called "super-Earth" just 2.2 times wider than our own planet.

Hunting for alien Earths

Kepler's first TTV exoplanet discovery is in the books, but many more could be coming. Charbonneau, for example, estimated that Kepler might eventually discover hundreds of planets using the technique.

Many of these finds would likely not be possible using the traditional transit method, which requires a precise alignment of star, planet and spacecraft to work, he added.

The TTV technique is also sensitive enough to find smaller planets — those that are closer to Earth-size, some of which may even be Earth-like.

"That is the promise of transit timing variations," Ballard said. "I do believe it could discover Earth-mass planets, to say the least. Whether they're Earth-like, I don't know. That would require a lot more study."

NASA space storm captured from the sun

noreply@blogger.com (digitalantennastv.bloger.com) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 07:08:00 +0000

For the first time a spacecraft able to witness how a solar storm surrounds our planet. The video shown today by NASA in a press conference, has surprised the experts.
Sourse: RPP