The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, Tech

Water! 140 Trillion Times Earth's Oceans--Surrounds a Voracious Black Hole at the Edge of the Universe (Today's Most Popular)

2012-02-21T10:38:46-08:00

In the summer of 2011, two teams of astronomers discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world's ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding...

NewsAlert: NASA Discovers a Water World --A 'New Species' "Unlike Any Planet We Know Of"

2012-02-21T07:48:32-08:00

"GJ1214b is like no planet we know of. A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water." Zachory Berta, astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Our solar system contains three types of planets: rocky, terrestrial worlds (Mercury,...

NewsAlert: China's Next Shenzhou Space Mission To Carry Three Astronauts

2012-02-21T05:30:00-08:00

China's space program has made continual progress since a 2003 launch that made it the third nation to put a human in space. Two more manned missions have followed, including a space walk, and China separately seeks to launch a...

Image of the Day: 4-Billion-Year-Old Volcano Soars 5 Miles Above Surrounding Mars Terrain

2012-02-21T05:09:00-08:00

Tharsis Tholus, an extinct 4-billion year old Martian volcano soars 8 kilometres above the surrounding landscape - almost the height of Earth's Mount Everest. The image was created using a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) obtained from the High Resolution Stereo...

Detecting Atmospheres of Alien Planets --Reflected Light Could Reveal a Lifezone

2012-02-20T10:59:41-08:00

The detection of scattered light from exoplanets gives direct access to physical conditions and composition of their atmospheres. Currently, most scattered light experiments focus on nearly edge-on, transiting systems. "We know of many other planets that do not transit their...

Primodial Black Hole Relics from the Big Bang --Are They a Source of Dark Matter? (Today's Most Popular)

2012-02-20T10:20:29-08:00

Scientists looking to capture evidence of dark matter -- the invisible substance thought to constitute much of the universe -- have unveiled a ready-made method for detecting the collision of stars with an elusive type of black hole that is...

Probing the Mystery of Dark Matter Stars --In Galactic Centers, Halos & Dwarf Galaxies

2012-02-20T09:59:52-08:00

Identifying the dark matter of the Universe is one of the most intruiging problems of modern cosmol- ogy and particle physics. Several Experiments are underway around the world, including tests to detect dark matter candidates known as Weakly Interacting Massive...

Image of the Day: The Mystery of Galaxy M106

2012-02-20T09:05:00-08:00

Using a quartet of space observatories, astronomers may have cracked a 45-year mystery surrounding two ghostly spiral arms in the galaxy M106 --a beautiful spiral galaxy 23.5 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. In visible-light images, two prominent...

"Dark Stars" of the Early Universe --Were They Powered by Antimattter?

2012-02-20T07:00:00-08:00

Dark matter stars: not an attempt to destroy the rebels in Star Wars IX, but gigantic stars fueled by the annihilation of dark matter. The "dark star" hypothesis proposes that the very first stars, formed when the universe was far...

EcoAlert: Arctic Plant Is Revived After 32,000 Years

2012-02-20T05:38:00-08:00

Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died in Siberia 32,000 years ago, according to a team of Russian scientists. The fruit was stored by an arctic ground squirrel in...

From the 'X-File' Dept: Michio Kaku --"Civilizations of the Cosmos"

2012-02-20T05:00:00-08:00

"What does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilization is a few hundred years old ... an advanced civilization millions of years...

'The Daily Galaxy' February Contest -- Win a Free $500 Apple Gift Card!

2012-02-20T00:00:00-08:00

Use it towards a purchase of an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Hundreds of Other Apple Products and Accessories. Users of Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon are invited to discover, review and share Daily Galaxy posts you love on...

Weekend Feature: Human Genome Reveals Entire Span of Species--From Near Extinction to Space Age

2012-02-18T08:56:34-08:00

Stored inside your genome are clues to the history of humankind, including global migrations and population crashes, according to researchers who have analyzed DNA pioneer, Craig Venter's publicly published DNA sequence, and those of 6 others, to reveal major milestones...

Weekend Feature: Phantom Black Holes of the Milky Way --Could They Pose a Danger to Our Solar System?

2012-02-17T20:38:46-08:00

The effect of a primordial black hole hitting the Sun ought to be easily observable, say physicists at New York University and Princeton University, noting what we think might be the obvious. But they go on to suggest that such...

Comment of the Day: "The Mystery Lies in the Nature of Dark Matter"

2012-02-17T17:05:00-08:00

"I wonder like other commentators if there is something missing about gravity as it's understood today. The first is the evolution of the Universe from a point that it took place too quickly on time scale, as if the force...

Hypernuclei Discovered --The Core of Strange Matter that May Exist in Distant Reaches of the Universe

2012-02-17T08:37:14-08:00

Physicists in Italy have discovered the first evidence of a rare nucleus that doesn’t exist in nature and lives for just 10-10 seconds before decaying. It’s a type of hypernucleus that, like all nuclei, contains an assortment of neutrons and...

Saturn's Titan: Clues to the Origins of Life in the Universe?

2012-02-17T08:02:54-08:00

"Titan is just covered in carbon-bearing material -- it's a giant factory of organic chemicals," according to Ralph Lorenz of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. "We are carbon-based life, and understanding how far along the chain of complexity towards...

NASA: "The Conditions for the Emergence of Life were Present on Mars — Period, End of Story" (Today's Most Popular)

2012-02-17T06:57:22-08:00

“Based on evidence, what we do have is, unequivocally, the conditions for the emergence of life were present on Mars — period, end of story,” according to Michael J. Mumma, a senior scientist for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight...

Black Hole "Information Leaks" Hint Gravity May Not be a Fundamental Force of Nature

2012-02-17T06:30:00-08:00

Back in 2011, ground-breaking research by scientists at the University of York provided a new perspective on the physics of black holes. Black holes are objects in space that are so massive and compact they were described by Einstein as...

Image of the Day: Europe's "Very Large Telescope" --A Giant Eye on the Cosmos

2012-02-17T06:00:00-08:00

This aerial photograph of the home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the Paranal Observatory In the foreground, located at an altitude of 2,600 meters on Mount Paranal in the Atacama Desert in Chile. In the background you can...

Atacama Desert's "Extreme Microbial Oasis" --A Preview of Future Mars Discoveries?

2012-02-16T09:45:24-08:00

Mars may have been arid for more than 600 million years, making it too hostile for any life to survive on the planet’s surface, according to researchers who have been carrying out the painstaking task of analysing individual particles of...

Beyond DNA! Prions Point to a New Form of Evolution in Nature (VIDEO)

2012-02-16T08:53:08-08:00

In 2010 scientists from the Scripps Research Institute showed for the first time that 'lifeless' organic substances with no genetic material — prions similar to those believed responsible for Mad Cow disease and similar, rare conditions in humans — are...

The Unidentified Object of Galaxy M82 (Today's Most Popular)

2012-02-15T13:08:16-08:00

M82, a starburst galaxy was previously believed to be an irregular galaxy. In April 2010, radio astronomers working at the Jodrell Bank Observatory of the University of Manchester reported an unknown object in M82. The object has started sending out...

The Great Eruption of Eta Carinae --One of the Most Massive Stars in the Milky Way

2012-02-15T08:45:00-08:00

Eta Carinae, one of the most massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy, unexpectedly increased in brightness in the 19th century. For ten years in the mid-1800s it was the second-brightest star in the sky. (Now it is not even...

Black Hole from a Destroyed Dwarf Galaxy Found in a Spectacular 'Edge-On' Galaxy

2012-02-15T07:24:56-08:00

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found a cluster of young, blue stars in the spectacular edge-on galaxy (ESO 243-49 above), encircling the first intermediate-mass black hole ever discovered. The presence of the star cluster suggests that the black...

DNA-Sized Diamonds Created from Supernova Shock Waves Abound in Outer Space

2012-02-15T07:00:00-08:00

For years, scientists have been puzzled by DNA-sized diamonds in meteorites on Earth. New research suggests that these diamonds spring from violent cosmic collisions, which may help scientists unravel mysteries surrounding exploding stars -- the supernova birthplaces of ancient materials...

"Missing Matter of the Universe" Found in Massive Wall of Galaxies 400-Million-Light Years Away

2012-02-15T06:45:00-08:00

In 2010, scientists used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and European Space Agency's XMM-Newton to detect a vast reservoir of gas lying along a wall-shaped structure of galaxies about 400 million light years from Earth. In this artist's impression, a close-up...

Image of the Day: "The Dark Clouds of Taurus"

2012-02-15T06:00:00-08:00

This image from the (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment) telescope in Chile (APEX) telescope, of part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud, shows a sinuous filament of cosmic dust more than ten light-years long, where newborn stars are hidden, and dense clouds of...

The Violent Birth of the 13-Billion-Year-Old Globular Star Clusters Orbiting the Milky Way

2012-02-14T08:58:46-08:00

When the Milky Way first formed, thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy. Today, there are perhaps 200 remaining, with most destroyed over the eons by repeated fateful encounters with each other or the Galactic center. The surviving clsuters are...

"No Empty Space in the Universe" --Dark Matter Discovered to Fill Intergalactic Space

2012-02-13T21:38:20-08:00

New research concludes that instead of "edges," galaxies have long outskirts of dark matter that extend to nearby galaxies and that the intergalactic space is not empty but filled with dark matter.Researchers at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for the...