tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52645533570582201392024-03-13T19:24:13.224-07:00Beyond VersesThe Science beyond Astronomy and Space…A.Hassanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16099747932217777565noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-9566944138092469012011-08-13T07:49:00.000-07:002011-08-13T07:51:43.602-07:00NASA Opens New Office for Deep Space Missions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></span></div><div class="article_info" style="color: #999999; float: left; width: 574px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Artist's rendering of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle on a deep space mission." class="make_big quimby_search_image" height="239" rel="#custom0" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9818/i02/nasa-deep-space-vehicle-mpcv-art.jpg?1306257091" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #999999;">Artist's rendering of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle on a deep space mission.</span><br style="color: #999999;" /><span style="color: #999999;"> </span><span style="color: #999999; font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="color: #999999;"> </span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;">To embark on its next chapter in human space exploration, NASA has created a new department to oversee manned spaceflight in the post-space-shuttle era.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The department is called the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and combines two previous organizations, the Space Operations Directorate and the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The reorganization is part of top-to-bottom changes moving through the space agency, which finds itself at a turning point. This year NASA retired its 30-year-old<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/12166-space-shuttle-program-cost-promises-209-billion.html">space shuttle program</a>, which was the focus and most visible part of its activities over the last few decades. The agency is now gearing up for an era of human missions to deep space, including trips back to the moon, then on to asteroids and Mars.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">President Obama has charged NASA to put astronauts on a space rock by 2025, and on the Red Planet by the mid 2030s. To reach those goals, the United States must develop a new<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/12252-congress-nasa-chief-space-launch-system-designs.html">heavy-lift rocket</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>capable of traveling that far, and a capsule to bring people safely there and back again. [<a href="http://www.space.com/11768-photos-nasa-multi-purpose-crew-vehicle-deep-space.html">Photos: NASA's New Spaceship for Deep Space</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The new Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate will be responsible for overseeing all this and more.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"America is opening a bold new chapter in human space exploration," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "By combining the resources of Space Operations and Exploration Systems, and creating the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, we are recommitting ourselves to American leadership in space for years to come."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">While NASA is targeting human missions farther out into the solar system than ever before, it hopes to pass on the torch of low-Earth orbit travel to the private space industry. The new office will oversee NASA's <a href="http://www.space.com/11511-nasa-commercial-crew-spacecraft.html">Commercial Crew Development</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>program, which aims to stimulate the development of private spacecraft to carry people to orbit, as well as the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, which does the same for cargo.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Meanwhile, NASA will continue operating the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/12566-international-space-station-naming-history.html">International Space Station</a>. Until private spaceships are ready, U.S. astronauts will rent rides to the station aboard Russian rockets. The orbiting laboratory is planned to run through at least 2020. This, too, will be supervised from the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/12621-nasa-human-spaceflight-exploration-office.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a></div></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-60515263311243874852011-06-20T17:08:00.000-07:002011-06-20T17:33:59.159-07:00Bubbles in our outskirts?!<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>NASA's Voyager probes are truly going where no one has gone before. Gliding silently toward the stars, 9 billion miles from Earth, they are beaming back news from the most distant, unexplored reaches of the solar system.<br />
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Mission scientists say the probes have just sent back some very big news indeed.<br />
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It's bubbly out there.</i></span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/558158main1_bubbles-226.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><img border="0" src="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/558158main1_bubbles-226.jpg" /></i></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>According to computer models, the bubbles are large, about 100 million miles wide, so it would take the speedy probes weeks to cross just one of them. Voyager 1 entered the "foam-zone" around 2007, and Voyager 2 followed about a year later. At first researchers didn't understand what the Voyagers were sensing--but now they have a good idea.<br />
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"The sun's magnetic field extends all the way to the edge of the solar system," explains Opher. "Because the sun spins, its magnetic field becomes twisted and wrinkled, a bit like a ballerina's skirt. Far, far away from the sun, where the Voyagers are now, the folds of the skirt bunch up."<br />
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When a magnetic field gets severely folded like this, interesting things can happen. Lines of magnetic force criss-cross, and "reconnect". (Magnetic reconnection is the same energetic process underlying solar flares.) The crowded folds of the skirt reorganize themselves, sometimes explosively, into foamy magnetic bubbles.<br />
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"We never expected to find such a foam at the edge of the solar system, but there it is!" says Opher's colleague, University of Maryland physicist Jim Drake.<br />
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Theories dating back to the 1950s had predicted a very different scenario: The distant magnetic field of the sun was supposed to curve around in relatively graceful arcs, eventually folding back to rejoin the sun. The actual bubbles appear to be self-contained and substantially disconnected from the broader solar magnetic field.<br />
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Energetic particle sensor readings suggest that the Voyagers are occasionally dipping in and out of the foam—so there might be regions where the old ideas still hold. But there is no question that old models alone cannot explain what the Voyagers have found.<br />
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Says Drake: "We are still trying to wrap our minds around the implications of these findings."<br />
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The structure of the sun's distant magnetic field—foam vs. no-foam—is of acute scientific importance because it defines how we interact with the rest of the galaxy. Researchers call the region where the Voyagers are now "the heliosheath." It is essentially the border crossing between the Solar System and the rest of the Milky Way. Lots of things try to get across—interstellar clouds, knots of galactic magnetism, cosmic rays and so on. Will these intruders encounter a riot of bubbly magnetism (the new view) or graceful lines of magnetic force leading back to the sun (the old view)?</i></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/558156main1_old-new-heliopause-670.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/558156main1_old-new-heliopause-670.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">Old and new views of the heliosheath. Red and blue spirals are the gracefully curving magnetic field lines of orthodox models. New data from Voyager add a magnetic froth (inset) to the mix. Credit: NASA</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/558156main1_old-new-heliopause-670.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i></i></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>The case of cosmic rays is illustrative. Galactic cosmic rays are subatomic particles accelerated to near-light speed by distant black holes and supernova explosions. When these microscopic cannonballs try to enter the solar system, they have to fight through the sun's magnetic field to reach the inner planets.<br />
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"The magnetic bubbles appear to be our first line of defense against cosmic rays," points out Opher. "We haven't figured out yet if this is a good thing or not."<br />
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On one hand, the bubbles would seem to be a very porous shield, allowing many cosmic rays through the gaps. On the other hand, cosmic rays could get trapped inside the bubbles, which would make the froth a very good shield indeed.<br />
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So far, much of the evidence for the bubbles comes from the Voyager energetic particle and flow measurements. Proof can also be obtained from the Voyager magnetic field observations and some of this data is also very suggestive. However, because the magnetic field is so weak, the data takes much longer to analyze with the appropriate care. Thus, unraveling the magnetic signatures of bubbles in the Voyager data is ongoing.<br />
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"We'll probably discover which is correct as the Voyagers proceed deeper into the froth and learn more about its organization," says Opher. "This is just the beginning, and I predict more surprises ahead."</i></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>For more information on Voyager findings, pictures and videos, check the following link: </i></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><i><a href="http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010700/a010790/index.html">Voyager Satellites Find Magnetic Bubbles at Edge of Solar System</a></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><i><br />
</i></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Credit: NASA</span></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br />
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</span>A.Hassanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16099747932217777565noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-43480961211130803732011-06-03T07:53:00.000-07:002011-06-03T07:53:02.802-07:00NASA | Swift Finds Most Distant Gamma-ray Burst Yet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">On April 29, 2009, a five-second-long burst of gamma rays from the constellation Canes Venatici triggered the Burst Alert Telescope on NASA's Swift satellite. As with most gamma-ray bursts, this one -- now designated GRB 090429B -- heralded the death of a star some 30 times the sun's mass and the likely birth of a new black hole.<br />
"What's important about this event isn't so much the 'what' but the 'where,'" said Neil Gehrels, lead scientist for Swift at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "GRB 090429B exploded at the cosmic frontier, among some of the earliest stars to form in our universe."<br />
Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the universe means looking back in time. GRB 090429B gives astronomers a glimpse of the universe as it appeared some 520 million years after the universe began.<br />
Now, after two years of painstaking analysis, astronomers studying the afterglow of the explosion say they're confident that the blast was the farthest explosion yet identified -- and at a distance of 13.14 billion light-years, a contender for the most distant object now known.<br />
Swift's discoveries continue to push the cosmic frontier deeper back in time. A gamma-ray burst detected on Sept. 4, 2005, was shown to be lie 12.77 billion light-years away. Until the new study dethroned it, GRB 090423, which was detected just six days before the current record-holder, reigned a distance of about 13.04 billion light-years. All of these gamma-ray bursts were among the first 500 detected by Swift. <br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qomRweB6moc" width="415"></iframe><br />
<br />
For more information:<br />
GRB (Gamma-ray burst)<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst</a><br />
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And this is the Official NASA Swift Home Page<br />
<a href="http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/swift/swiftsc.html">http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/swift/swiftsc.html</a> <br />
</div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-33822919636103536872011-05-24T11:22:00.000-07:002011-05-24T11:22:34.584-07:00NASA Announces STS-134 Wakeup Song Winners; Face In Space Totals<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">HOUSTON -- NASA announced the winners of its "Original Song Contest" after six weeks of public voting. The songs will awaken the STS-134 astronauts aboard space shuttle Endeavour during their ongoing mission.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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"Sunrise Number 1" by Jorge Otero and the band Stormy Mondays from Oviedo, Spain, earned first place. Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Greg H. Johnson, Mission Specialists Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and Roberto Vittori of the European Space Agency will hear the song at 5:56 p.m. EDT on May 31 - the day before the crew returns to Earth. "Sunrise Number 1" received 787,725 votes, or 49.8 percent of the total ballots.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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"Dreams You Give" by Brian Plunkett from Halfway, Mo., earned second place with 612,959 votes, or 38.8 percent. It will wake the crew at 6:56 p.m. on May 30.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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The Original Song Contest received 1,350 entries for consideration, and NASA selected 10 songs as finalists. The public cast 1,581,531 votes for their favorite song from March 29 through May 16. To listen to the songs and see the all the results, visit:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"><a href="https://songcontest.nasa.gov/voteOrigResult.aspx" style="border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">https://songcontest.nasa.gov/voteOrigResult.aspx</a></span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">The winning songs also have videos. To view the video for "Sunrise Number 1," visit:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></u></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="365" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SeLWcCM5E4Y" width="415"></iframe><br />
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</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: small;"><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">To view the video for "Dreams you Give," visit:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></u></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="365" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/evry9loMlu4" width="415"></iframe></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">NASA also released the final tally of submissions to the Space Shuttle Program's "Face in Space" campaign for the STS-134 mission. Participants submitted 128,940 photos for uplink to Endeavour via the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The images will return to Earth through a data transmission, and contributors will be able to print certificates verifying their photos flew aboard Endeavour.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
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More than 7,550 other photos already have been submitted to fly aboard the last shuttle mission targeted to launch July 8. Submissions will be accepted through the liftoff date. To take part in the STS-135 Face in Space campaign, visit:</span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"><a href="https://faceinspace.nasa.gov/" style="border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">https://faceinspace.nasa.gov</a></span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;">And by the way, I participate :) so may be I found My name there :D </span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">For more information about the Space Shuttle Program and the STS-134 mission to the International Space Station, visit:</span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle" style="border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle</a></span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">For more information about the space station, visit:</span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/station" style="border-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.nasa.gov/station</a></span></span></div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cccccc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/may/HQ_11-154_Wake_Up_Songs.html">Source</a> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"></span></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-56487326263438224212011-05-22T11:06:00.000-07:002011-05-22T11:06:11.322-07:00Radio Telescopes Capture Best-Ever Snapshot Of Black Hole Jets<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;">WASHINGTON -- An international team, including NASA-funded researchers, using radio telescopes located throughout the Southern Hemisphere has produced the most detailed image of particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy. <br />
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"These jets arise as infalling matter approaches the black hole, but we don't yet know the details of how they form and maintain themselves," said Cornelia Mueller, the study's lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. <br />
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The new image shows a region less than 4.2 light-years across -- less than the distance between our sun and the nearest star. Radio-emitting features as small as 15 light-days can be seen, making this the highest-resolution view of galactic jets ever made. The study will appear in the June issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is available online. <br />
<br />
Mueller and her team targeted Centaurus A (Cen A), a nearby galaxy with a supermassive black hole weighing 55 million times the sun's mass. Also known as NGC 5128, Cen A is located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus and is one of the first celestial radio sources identified with a galaxy. <br />
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Seen in radio waves, Cen A is one of the biggest and brightest objects in the sky, nearly 20 times the apparent size of a full moon. This is because the visible galaxy lies nestled between a pair of giant radio-emitting lobes, each nearly a million light-years long. <br />
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These lobes are filled with matter streaming from particle jets near the galaxy's central black hole. Astronomers estimate that matter near the base of these jets races outward at about one-third the speed of light. <br />
<br />
Using an intercontinental array of nine radio telescopes, researchers for the TANAMI (Tracking Active Galactic Nuclei with Austral Milliarcsecond Interferometry) project were able to effectively zoom into the galaxy's innermost realm. <br />
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"Advanced computer techniques allow us to combine data from the individual telescopes to yield images with the sharpness of a single giant telescope, one nearly as large as Earth itself," said Roopesh Ojha at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. <br />
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The enormous energy output of galaxies like Cen A comes from gas falling toward a black hole weighing millions of times the sun's mass. Through processes not fully understood, some of this infalling matter is ejected in opposing jets at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Detailed views of the jet's structure will help astronomers determine how they form.<br />
<br />
The jets strongly interact with surrounding gas, at times possibly changing a galaxy's rate of star formation. Jets play an important but poorly understood role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected much higher-energy radiation from Cen A's central region. <br />
<br />
"This radiation is billions of times more energetic than the radio waves we detect, and exactly where it originates remains a mystery," said Matthias Kadler at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany and a collaborator of Ojha. "With TANAMI, we hope to probe the galaxy's innermost depths to find out." <br />
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Ojha is funded through a Fermi investigation on multiwavelength studies of Active Galactic Nuclei. <br />
<br />
The astronomers credit continuing improvements in the Australian Long Baseline Array (LBA) with TANAMI's enormously increased image quality and resolution. The project augments the LBA with telescopes in South Africa, Chile and Antarctica to explore the brightest galactic jets in the southern sky. <br />
<br />
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the U.S. <br />
<br />
The Australia Long Baseline Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. </div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;">For more information and <span style="background-color: red; color: black; font-size: large;">images</span>, visit: </div><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/radio-particle-jets.html" style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline-width: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/radio-particle-jets.html</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></span> </span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-2355176442402108822011-05-21T06:44:00.000-07:002011-05-21T06:44:19.820-07:00Dark Energy Confirmed Again!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;">"We all need to look into the dark side of our nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying." -Sue Grafton<br />
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No, not the dark side of our nature, just the dark side of nature! Because if all our Universe were made out of were atoms and photons, we wouldn't get a Universe that looks like ours.<br />
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What do I mean? Let's take a look.<br />
<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/sim3dnew.png"><img height="258" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/sim3dnew-thumb-500x324-65159.png" width="400" /></a><br />
(Image credit: <a href="http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/data_vis/">MPA Garching and Volker Springel</a>.)<br />
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The Universe starts off as a very smooth place, where regions that are denser or less densethan average are only something like 0.003% away from average. To put it in economic terms, if the average salary were $50,000 a year, the richest person would make about $3 extra, and the poorest person would make about $3 less than average.<br />
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But that's the early Universe. Over time, those richer, denser regions attract more and more matter, growing in size and scope.<br />
<img height="330" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/animation%20of%20large-scale%20structure%20formation.gif" width="400" /><br />
(Animation credit: <a href="http://cosmicweb.uchicago.edu/sims.html">Center for Cosmological Physics</a>, National Center for Supercomputer Applications, and Andrey Kravtsov (U. Chicago) and Anatoly Klypin (NMSU).) <br />
<br />
<br />
Today, we see the very densest regions as being the places with the greatest concentrations of galaxies, and the least dense regions are devoid of almost all matter.<br />
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We can even still find galaxies merging today; evidence of the legacy of these small gravitational inequalities from when the Universe was billions of years younger than it is <br />
<img height="204" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/Spiral%20Galaxies%20in%20Collision-thumb-500x255-65162.jpeg" width="400" /><br />
(Image credit: <a href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/41/">NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI)</a>.)<br />
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But it isn't like we just get giant clumps of galaxies that fall in to one another, and collapse under gravity. As much as we like to pretend that gravity is the only thing that matters in the Universe, there's another force that's often just as important.<br />
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Don't believe me? Then think about the biggest, brightest, close object to you in the Universe. 300,000 times as massive as the planet Earth, the Sun's gravity is absolutely tremendous.<br />
<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/Sun_cutaway_NASA.jpeg"><img height="400" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/Sun_cutaway_NASA-thumb-500x500-65164.jpeg" width="400" /></a><br />
(Image credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss.)<br />
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And yet the Sun is less dense than the Earth is! That's because there's something holding the Sun up that the Earth doesn't have: radiation pressure!<br />
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All the nuclear fusion happening at the core of the Sun produces a gargantuan amount of energetic photons. It's so powerful that, at the Sun's surface, the outward pressure is enough to counteract the force of the Sun's gravity, and that's why the Sun doesn't contract or collapse.<br />
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And then we come to the Universe.<br />
<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/lss.jpeg"><img height="244" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/lss-thumb-500x306-65166.jpeg" width="400" /></a><br />
(Image credit: <a href="http://www-theorie.physik.unizh.ch/research_groups/astrophysics/images/press/lss.jpg">CCA Zurich</a>.)<br />
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Sure, today, the Universe looks a lot like this. The pressure from radiation is totally negligible except in the hottest and densest of objects, like stars.<br />
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But go back in time, to when the Universe was very young, and radiation was of incredibleimportance! In fact, for the first 10,000 years of the Universe or so, it was even more important than matter! Which means, during this time, if you were matter trying to collapse under the influence of gravity, radiation pressure would bounce you back out!<br />
<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/gasses-of-the-early-universe.jpeg"><img height="400" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/gasses-of-the-early-universe-thumb-500x500-65168.jpeg" width="400" /></a><br />
(Wish I could find the image credit for this one!)<br />
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This is part of why the early Universe is so smooth, for certain. But this feature -- matter trying to collapse under the influence of gravity vs. radiation pressure pushing it back out -- creates a "wave" or "ripple" like you see above. You can see a dense region at the center, you can see it get sparser and sparser as you move away, and then it gets denser once again.<br />
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This feature, created by normal atoms (baryons) and radiation (photons), is known as anacoustic oscillation. Why? Because it's a pressure wave, just like sound is! The only difference is, this type of wave determines how galaxies group together.<br />
<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/nature04803-f4.2.jpeg"><img height="297" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/nature04803-f4.2-thumb-500x372-65171.jpeg" width="400" /></a><br />
(Image credit: <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7088/fig_tab/nature04803_F4.html">Chuck Bennett and Nature</a>.)<br />
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So if we go and measure how far apart the galaxies in the Universe are spaced from one another, we can figure out:<br />
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What percentage of the matter is normal matter,<br />
What percent is dark (non-baryonic) matter, and<br />
How quickly the Universe has expanded since, or what percent of the Universe is dark energy<br />
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It's a very clever way to do it, and it's a brilliant way to check our laws of gravity. If we're doing it correctly, and General Relativity is right, we should, by measuring these galaxies, see how the Universe has expanded from the Cosmic Microwave Background over billions of years to form galaxies, and then from those galaxies to our eyes.<br />
<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/%5Bruler-cmb-today.jpeg"><img height="318" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/%5Bruler-cmb-today-thumb-500x398-65173.jpeg" width="400" /></a><br />
(Image credit: <a href="http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/10/27/evolving-search-2/">NASA's WMAP and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey</a>.)<br />
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Well, the WiggleZ team from Australia just released their results this week: the most comprehensive survey -- of 200,000+ galaxies -- designed to measure dark energy by this method.<br />
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Their results are a spectacular confirmation of the best prediction of our Universe: one where 70-75% of the energy is dark energy, and where the total amount of baryons is only about 4-5%, with the rest being dark matter. They also found, to the best of their measurements, that dark energy is, in fact, a cosmological constant, with no change over time and the correct equation of state. (I.e., it gives the right pressure/energy density combination to be a cosmological constant.)<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/wiggleZ.jpg"><img height="168" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/wiggleZ-thumb-500x211-65175.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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Led by Warrick Couch and Michael Drinkwater, and also with scientists such as Chris Blake and Karl Glazebrook, the <a href="http://wigglez.swin.edu.au/site/">WiggleZ</a> dark energy survey has been a smashing success, and I'm happy to report that the team appears to have done everything impeccably. Some good press coverage is available <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/05/19/science-dark-energy-einstein-blake.html?ref=rss">here</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13462926">here</a>, as well as the full press release <a href="http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=33600">here</a>.)<br />
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The full WiggleZ team (as best as I can find) is pictured below.<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/Wigglezteam.jpg"><img height="84" src="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/upload/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again/Wigglezteam-thumb-500x106-65181.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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And I'd like to say, on a personal note, I'm really impressed, and I'm really happy for all of this!<br />
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Most of you don't know this, but before I turned the bulk of my energies towards communicating and teaching science, I was offered a job at Swinburne, working with the WiggleZ team. (Check it out on the old <a href="http://cdm.berkeley.edu/doku.php?id=astrojobs07">job rumor page</a>.) They were a great group, and they made the job decision an extremely difficult one for me, because I could tell they were doing exciting, top-notch science, and it's great to see it come to fruition like this, even if I wasn't a part of it. Every once in a while, I let my imagination wander to the life I would have had if I had taken it, and all I know is that it would be vastly different than the one I'm living now.<br />
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But who knew, more than four years ago when I made that decision, that I'd be telling thousands of you about their smashing success?!<br />
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This is another great success for dark matter, dark energy, and the standard big bang picture of the Universe, and yet another tremendous challenge for alternative theories to explain. All you have to do is measure how far apart galaxy pairs are, how that distance changes as the Universe expands, and that's one new way for you to measure dark energy,completely independently of <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/07/the_last_100_years_1998_and_th.php">supernovae</a>!<br />
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Congratulations to the entire WiggleZ team, and to all of you for learning about the latest, greatest confirmation of the most mysterious force in the Universe! </div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><a href="http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/05/dark_energy_confirmed_again.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss">Source</a><br />
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</div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-11993622556401305802011-05-15T06:37:00.000-07:002011-05-15T06:38:14.006-07:00NASA Clears Endeavour for Next-to-Last Shuttle Flight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"></span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="At NASA" class="make_big" height="266" rel="#custom0" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9596/i02/endeavour-launch-pad.jpg?1305297720" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space shuttle Endeavour awaits its final liftoff from Launch Pad 39A.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></td></tr>
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</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA officials have given the space shuttle Endeavour a "go" to launch on its final space voyage Monday (May 16).</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">The shuttle is now scheduled to lift off from here at Kennedy Space Center (KSC)'s Launch Pad 39A at 8:56 a.m. EDT (1256 GMT). [<a href="http://www.space.com/11221-photos-space-shuttle-endeavour-final-mission-sts134.html">Photos: Shuttle Endeavour's Final Mission</a>]</div><div style="color: #999999;"></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"></span></span></div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">We had "unanimous consent from the mission management team to press on with the launch countdown," mission management team chair Mike Moses said during a briefing today (May 14). "We should be in really good shape for launch Monday morning."</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">Weather forecasters predict a 70 percent chance the weather will cooperate for<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11448-endeavour-final-mission-objectives.html">Endeavour's launch</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>on Monday.</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">"Overall, it's looking promising for launch, with a 30 percent chance of KSC weather prohibiting launch," shuttle weather officer Kathy Winters said. The main concerns at launch time will be winds at the emergency landing site here at KSC, and the chance of a low cloud ceiling, she said.</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">This will be the shuttle's second launch try after an earlier attempt was foiled by a failed heater that insulates a critical power unit called an Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) on the shuttle.</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">Engineers replaced a faulty switch box that had sparked the heater problem, along with wiring to and from the box. [<a href="http://www.space.com/11668-shuttle-endeavour-construction-engineers.html">The People Behind Endeavour: Engineers Reflect on NASA's Youngest Shuttle</a>]</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">Mission managers have "really high confidence" the problem is fixed now, Moses said. "In our minds we are good to go and we have no problems expected with this APU heater anymore in this count."</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">This will be the last mission for shuttle Endeavour, and the next-to-last flight of NASA's 30-year space shuttle program. Endeavour's goal is to deliver a $2 billion<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11673-nasa-alpha-magnetic-spectrometer-antimatter-infographic-explainer.html">antimatter hunting experiment</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and a haul of spare supplies for the International Space Station.</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">Endeavour will spend about 16 days in orbit on a mission that includes four ambitious spacewalks to pack away the spare supplies and upgrade the exterior of the station.</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;">Commander Mark Kelly will lead Endeavour's veteran crew of six astronauts. Kelly's wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., is expected to attend the launch in person despite having been shot in the head in January. Giffords is undergoing rehabilitation at a hospital in Houston.</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11674-nasa-shuttle-launch-endeavour-final-voyage-sts134.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International"><span id="goog_1527408333"></span>Source<span id="goog_1527408334"></span></a> </div><div style="color: #999999;"></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-64768117885219698752011-05-14T13:28:00.001-07:002011-05-15T06:15:33.851-07:00How the Antimatter-Hunting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Works (Infographic)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.space.com/11673-nasa-alpha-magnetic-spectrometer-antimatter-infographic-explainer.html"> <img alt="See how the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer will hunt dark matter, cosmic rays and antimatter galaxies from the International Space Station in this SPACE.com infographic." border="1" height="640" src="http://www.space.com/images/i/9614/i02/ams02-alpha-magnetic-spectrometer-iss-experiment-infographic-110513c-02.jpg?1305393220" width="256" /></a><br />
Source <a href="http://www.space.com/">SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration</a> </div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-20068640426537442772011-04-15T07:55:00.000-07:002011-04-15T07:58:12.682-07:00Space-Time Around Black Holes Visualized<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.space.com/images/i/9153/i02/spiral-vortexes-110412.jpg?1302692857" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Two spiral-shaped vortexes (yellow) of whirling space sticking out of a black hole, and the vortex lines (red curves) that form the vortexes." border="0" class="make_big" height="320" rel="#custom0" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9153/i02/spiral-vortexes-110412.jpg?1302692857" width="316" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Two spiral-shaped vortexes (yellow) of whirling space sticking </span></span></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">out of a black hole, and the vortex lines (red curves) that form</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> the vortexes.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: The Caltech/Cornell SXS Collaboration</span></span></span></div></span></span></td></tr>
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For the first time, physicists have visualized what goes on during the collision of two black holes, providing insight into what one researcher calls the "stormy behavior" of space and time during such a merger.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The findings could help researchers interpret gravitational signals from space to reconstruct the cosmic events that created them, said study researcher Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. The study also opens up a new way to understand black holes, gravity and cosmology.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"It's as though we had only seen the surface of the ocean on a calm day," Thorne told LiveScience. "We'd never seen the ocean in a storm, we'd never seen a breaking wave, we'd never seen water spouts … We have never before understood how<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.livescience.com/13683-black-holes-warped-space-time-visualization.html">warped space and time</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>behave in a storm."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div></span></span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">Here's how black holes and space-time are linked: The<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.livescience.com/13129-physics-string-theory.html">theory of general relativity</a>, proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915, describes how gravity affects very massive, huge things such as black holes and the universe itself. According to this theory, gravity actually warps the fabric of space-time in such a way that massive objects bend the universe (think a Sumo wrestler on a soft mat) so that objects can't help but fall toward them. Even time can be bent by gravity, the theory goes.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><b>Vortex and tendex</b></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">In other words, researchers had a good handle on the forces created by a quietly spinning black hole. They were also able to simulate the results of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/9008-super-sized-black-holes-traced-collisions-earliest-galaxies.html">black hole collisions</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to see what type of gravitational waves the collisions create. "What we were not able to do is go down and look at the merger itself," Thorne said. [<a href="http://www.livescience.com/13677-black-holes-space-time-warps-simulated.html">See a video of the black hole collisions</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">To visualize a black hole merger, the researchers used two concepts, one old and one new: vortex lines and tendex lines. These lines are the equivalent of the lines drawn to represent magnetic fields, said study author Robert Owen, a postdoctoral researcher in astronomy at Cornell University.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Vortex lines represent a twisting force in space-time. If you were to fall into a vortex line, your body would be wrung like a wet dish towel, Owen said. Tendex lines, which are a new concept, represent a stretching or squeezing force. [<a href="http://www.livescience.com/13683-black-holes-warped-space-time-visualization.html">Visualization of vortex lines</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Tendex is actually a word that we had to invent because it didn't exist before this," Owen said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Using supercomputers, the researchers created simulations of the vortex and tendex lines that would be created when black holes merge. The patterns differ depending on how the merger happens, Thorne said. For example, a head-on collision of two black holes ejects doughnut-shaped vortexes from the merger. Two black holes spiraling into each other create a very different arrangement.[<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/31-black-holes-universe.html">Gallery: Black Holes of the Universe</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"This is where we see vortexes sticking out of the merged black hole that swing around the merged black hole like spiral arms of the galaxy or like water spraying out of a rotating sprinkler head," Thorne said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">In another simulation of spinning black holes orbiting into each other, the vortexes diffused into one another, Thorne said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><b>Tracing the source</b></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The researchers are working on three follow-up studies to explore the details of the dynamics involved, Owen said. He said the research team expects that tendexes and vortexes will be used to investigate lots of situations where gravitational forces are very strong, including just after<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/8066-big-bang-solid-theory-mysteries-remain.html">the Big Bang</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that may have created the universe about 13.7 billion years ago.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Whether any valuable insights will come out of the new visualization method has yet to be seen, University of Texas, Brownsville and Southmost Texas College physicist Richard Price told LiveScience. But the method has more potential than any other method he knows of, Price said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"My initial impression [upon hearing about the research] was, 'Yeah. This could work,'" said Price, who was not involved in the study.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"You can't calculate everything; you've got to know where to look," Price added. "And therefore, you need to have the ability to visualize."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The results may also help researchers understand the findings of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, an instrument that detects gravitational waves from space. Before, researchers knew enough about black hole collisions to figure out what sorts of waves LIGO should be looking for, Thorne said. Now, scientists can start interpreting those waves when they come in.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"We want to be able to look at the shapes of the waves and be able to go back and say what was happening to produce the waves," Thorne said.</div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-66250867408332630332011-04-11T04:52:00.000-07:002011-04-11T04:58:03.853-07:00Photos: NASA's First Space Shuttle Flight: STS-1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div class="album_imgslide" style="float: left; width: 574px;"><div class="album_imgprev" style="background-image: url("http://www.space.com/images/site/album/album-coverbg.jpg"); float: left; height: 65px; overflow: hidden; padding: 10px 0px 15px; width: 498px;"><div class="album_imghid" id="albumul" style="float: left; left: 0px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; visibility: visible; width: 510px; z-index: 2;"><ul class="albimg_ul" style="left: -1326px; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 3162px; z-index: 1;"><li class="image_preview" style="float: left; height: 65px; overflow: hidden; width: 102px;"><div id="ulimg_12" style="border: 1px solid rgb(91, 104, 87); float: left; margin-right: 12px; padding: 2px 2px 0px; width: 84px;"><img alt="View From a Space Plane" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9098/i84/NASA-sts1-view.jpg" style="border-style: none; cursor: pointer;" /></div></li>
<li class="image_preview" style="float: left; height: 65px; overflow: hidden; width: 102px;"><div id="ulimg_13" style="border: 1px solid rgb(91, 104, 87); float: left; margin-right: 12px; padding: 2px 2px 0px; width: 84px;"><img alt="Touchdown" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9099/i84/NASA-sts1-touchdown.jpg" style="border-style: none; cursor: pointer;" /></div></li>
<li class="image_preview" style="float: left; height: 65px; overflow: hidden; width: 102px;"><div id="ulimg_14" style="border: 1px solid rgb(91, 104, 87); float: left; margin-right: 12px; padding: 2px 2px 0px; width: 84px;"><img alt="Home Again" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9100/i84/NASA-sts1-home.jpg" style="border-style: none; cursor: pointer;" /></div></li>
</ul></div></div></div><div class="article_info album_big" id="image_album_info" style="float: left; text-align: center; width: 574px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><img alt="The First Space Shuttle" class="make_big" rel="#custom" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9086/i02/NASA-sts1-prep.jpg" style="border-style: none;" /></div><div style="line-height: 20px; text-align: left;"><span style="clear: both; float: left; font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold;"> </span><span style="clear: both; float: left; font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold;">The First Space Shuttle</span><span id="image_credit" style="clear: both; float: left; font-size: 12px;">Credit: NASA</span><span style="clear: both; float: left; font-size: 14px;">The space shuttle Columbia, NASA's first orbiter, is showered with lights in this nocturnal scene at Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., during preparations for the first flight (STS-1) of NASA's new reusable spacecraft system. This photo was taken in March 1981 ahead of Columbia's April 12, 1981 launch</span><span style="clear: both; float: left; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span style="clear: both; float: left; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span style="clear: both; float: left; font-size: 14px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11345-photos-nasa-space-shuttle-1st-flight-sts1.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a> </span></div></div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-89267169239308415512011-04-11T04:48:00.000-07:002011-04-11T04:48:34.127-07:00SPACE MUSIC: SETI ARTIST IN RESIDENCE AND AN ORBITAL FLAUTIST<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;"><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;">We have some cool bits of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/tag/space-music/" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Space Music</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to roundup this week. First, we've already covered<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2010/09/28/space-music-vol-14-nasas-artist-in-residence/" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">NASA's first and last artist in residence</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(AIR), but what about<a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/seti.htm" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">SETI</a>?</div></span></span></div><div style="color: #999999; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;"><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;"> <img alt="Photo2736" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d8341bf67c53ef014e874897da970d" src="http://blogs.discovery.com/.a/6a00d8341bf67c53ef014e874897da970d-320wi" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px;" title="Photo2736" /></div></span></span></div><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;"><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;">The ET-seeking non-profit just signed on multimedia artist Charles Lindsay for a three year stint as its<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.seti.org/page.aspx?pid=1585" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">first AIR</a>, during which he'll grow the program and "encourage cross disciplinary artistic expression in order to explore and illuminate the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe."</div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;">As you see in the image above, Lindsay's work definitely has a spaced-out look to it. He uses a camera-less, carbon-based emulsion photographic process. His works also creates custom ambient soundscapes to accompany his work -- a process that includes processing samples from NASA's audio archives. Visit his<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.charleslindsay.com/" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">official website</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to hear some of this.</div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">As shared<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-04/4/iss-flute" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">over at Wired</a>, it was also a good week for live music aboard the International Space Station. In the following video, astronaut Catherine Coleman plays the flute for us in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/weightlessness.htm" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">microgravity</a>, continuing a long tradition of live music in orbit. In the past, humans have taken up. everything from synths to didgeridoos. In fact, ten days before Christmas 1965, the astronauts aboard Gemini 6 performed a rendition of the holiday tune "Jingle Bells" using a harmonica and bells. Anyway, here's Coleman (she whips it out around 1:20):</div><br />
<object height="390" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vy6uOooVFuw?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vy6uOooVFuw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="390"></embed></object><br />
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<div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;">What else is there to listen to this week? Well, Luke Twyman of Neverest Songs recently scored the film "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1594906/" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">All that Glitters</a>" and you can test drive the tracks<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://neverestsongs.com/shop/atg.html" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">right here</a>. I interviewed Twyman in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2010/04/07/the-artist-behind-solarbeat/" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">this previous space music post</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>about his excellent SolarBeat space music application. It's good stuff to drift away to.</div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://news.discovery.com/space/space-music-seti-artist-in-residence-and-an-orbital-flautist-110409.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1">Source</a> </div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-32895651051404397932011-04-11T04:42:00.000-07:002011-04-11T04:42:05.725-07:00Spaceships of the World: 50 Years of Human Spaceflight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://www.space.com/11348-spaceships-human-spaceflight-50th-anniversary-infographic.html"> <img alt="See the spaceships that have launched astronauts and cosmonauts into space in the first 50 years of human spaceflight." border="1" src="http://www.space.com/images/i/9129/i02/human-spaceflight-spaceships-50th-anniversary-110408f-02.jpg?1302372262" width="575" /></a><br />
Source <a href="http://www.space.com/">SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration</a> </div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-68385310155828534062011-04-07T08:52:00.000-07:002011-04-07T08:52:00.887-07:00Nobel Prize Winner Baruch Blumberg Dies of Apparent Heart Attack<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="color: #999999; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/533753main1_blumberg_226.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/533753main1_blumberg_226.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="img_comments_right">A NASA portrait of Dr. Baruch Blumberg in 1999.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="color: #999999;">Nobel Prize winner Dr. Baruch "Barry" Blumberg, who served as the first director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center, died of an apparent heart attack while attending a conference at Ames on Tuesday, April 5. He was 85. <br />
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Blumberg served as the first director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute from 1999 to 2002. He is best known as the winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Medicine for identifying the Hepatitis B virus. Blumberg shared the Nobel Prize with D. Carleton Gajdusek for their work on the origins and spread of infectious viral diseases. </div><div style="color: #999999;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="color: #999999; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/533990main2_blumberg_conf_226.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/533990main2_blumberg_conf_226.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="img_comments_right">Lynn Harper of NASA's Ames Research Center and Dr. Baruch Blumberg attended the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory Workshop in October 2007</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="color: #999999;"> Blumberg was a featured speaker and participant at the International Lunar Research Park Exploratory Workshop being held in the NASA Ames Conference Center when he was stricken. <br />
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"Barry Blumberg was a great biochemist and researcher," said Ames Center Director Pete Worden. "He was a leading light in the scientific community and a great humanitarian. He also was a loyal and supportive friend to NASA, Ames Research Center and the nation's space program." </div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="color: #999999; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/533992main1_blumberg_ISS_226.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/533992main1_blumberg_ISS_226.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="img_comments_right">Dr. Baruch Blumberg was introduced as the first director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute during a press conference held at NASA's Ames Research Center in May 1999. </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="color: #999999;">A native of New York, N.Y., Blumberg had been a member of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia since 1964 and held the rank of University Professor of Medicine and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania since 1977. Since 2005, he had served as president of the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learning society in the United States, dating back to 1743. He had been a member of the society since 1986. <br />
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Blumberg first entered the graduate program in mathematics at Columbia University, but soon switched to medicine and enrolled in Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, graduating with his M.D. in 1951. He remained at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center for the next four years, first as an intern and then as a resident. He began his graduate work at Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1957. </div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;">"The world has lost a great man," said former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, who served as NASA administrator from 1992 to 2001. "Barry saved lives through his research on the Hepatitis B virus. He also inspired a whole generation of people worldwide through his work in building the NASA Astrobiology Institute. On a personal level, he improved my life through his friendship. Our planet is an improved place as a result of Barry's few short days in residence."<br />
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For more information about Baruch Blumberg, visit: </div><div style="color: #999999; text-align: center;"><a href="http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/bios/baruch-blumberg">http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov/bios/baruch-blumberg</a> </div><div style="color: #999999;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/baruch_blumberg.html">Source</a> </div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-11189211446210296752011-04-07T08:18:00.000-07:002011-04-07T08:18:30.200-07:00NASA Braces for Possible Government Shutdown<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.space.com/images/i/6075/i02/con-role-2-capitol.jpg?1294413664" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/6075/i02/con-role-2-capitol.jpg?1294413664" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The U.S. Capitol</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;">NASA is once again bracing for a potential shutdown of the federal government, which could begin this weekend if Republicans and Democrats in Congress can't agree on a budget.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">U.S. lawmakers have<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/9712-nasa-stuck-limbo-congress-takes.html">yet to pass a budget</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>for fiscal year 2011, which began in October. As a result, the government has been operating under a series of stopgap funding measures called continuing resolutions. The latest of these is set to expire at 12:01 a.m. EDT Saturday (April 9).</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">NASA officials expressed hope that Democrats and Republicans can reach an agreement in time to forestall a<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/government-shutdown-effects-1400/">government shutdown</a>— but they're not necessarily counting on it.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Given the realities of the calendar, however, prudent management requires that we plan for an orderly shutdown should Congress be unable to pass a funding bill," NASA chief Charlie Bolden wrote in a recent memo to agency employees that was posted online by the website<a href="http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=36628">SpaceRef.com</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>today (April 6).</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Furloughs could be coming</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">At this point, Republicans are seeking deeper cuts in federal spending than Democrats are willing to concede. If the two sides can't come together by Friday, the federal government could shut down for the first time since 1995.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">Federal activities deemed essential to the nation's safety and economic well-being — such as air-traffic control and food inspection — would continue to receive funding. But many other operations would be suspended, and many federal employees furloughed.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">NASA has now begun the process of trying to figure out which of its operations and employees would be affected.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Our contingency planning for the potential funding lapse includes determining which agency functions are<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/10995-government-shutdown-budget-nasa.html">excepted from a furlough</a>," Bolden wrote. "Should it become necessary to implement our contingency plans, you will receive formal notice from your manager no later than Friday, April 8th regarding the designation of your position and furlough status."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Essential" employees exempt from a furlough would almost certainly include anyone involved with keeping astronauts safe and healthy in space, NASA officials said — not to mention the astronauts themselves.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Keeping astronauts safe</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">There are two NASA astronauts in space today – Cady Coleman and Ron Garan. They are two of the six spaceflyers making up the International Space Station's Expedition 27 crew.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Coleman and two crewmates are currently living on the station. Garan and two other crewmembers will arrive at the orbiting laboratory tonight. They launched into space Monday aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"We will take the steps necessary to ensure the safety of our astronauts on the International Space Station and our other missions," said NASA spokeswoman Katherine Trinidad. "Critical personnel will remain in place."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Engineers and technicians actually operating the various NASA spacecraft flying through the solar system could probably stay on as well, experts have predicted. Researchers analyzing spacecraft data, on the other hand, might have to go home for a spell — along with large numbers of support staff, from cafeteria workers to office managers.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">NASA's next space shuttle flight —<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11221-photos-space-shuttle-endeavour-final-mission-sts134.html">Endeavour's STS-134 mission</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to the space station — is slated to launch April 29. The space agency is looking into how a government shutdown might complicate preparations for that flight, the shuttle program's second-to-last before it retires later this year.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"NASA is still assessing the potential impact to orbiter processing and the upcoming STS-134 mission," Trinidad told SPACE.com.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>It's happened before</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">This is not the first time a possible government shutdown has loomed. Just last month, for example, lawmakers avoided a potential shutdown by passing another continuing resolution.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">And in November 1995, President Clinton and congressional Republicans — led by then House Speaker Newt Gingrich — couldn't come to an agreement in time. A shutdown ensued right in the middle of the space shuttle Atlantis' STS-74 mission to Russia's Mir space station.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">NASA employees considered essential to that mission stayed on. But many other workers were furloughed, including NASA's public affairs office.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The 1995 shutdown dragged on for three weeks. While NASA officials hope lawmakers can avert such an incident this time around, they're firming up employees' resolve just in case.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Your contributions touch people's lives in so many significant ways, and I want you to know how deeply I appreciate your dedication and your expertise," Bolden wrote in the memo. "We're a determined and resilient team and we'll get through this!"</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11317-nasa-government-shutdown-spaceflight.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-13427728407032727422011-04-07T08:01:00.000-07:002011-04-07T08:01:38.205-07:00Russian Spaceship 'Gagarin' Arrives at Space Station<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.space.com/images/i/9016/i02/soyuz-gagarin-approach.png?1302131976" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="253" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9016/i02/soyuz-gagarin-approach.png?1302131976" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The Soyuz spaceship "Gagarin" approaches the International Space Station for docking on April 6, 2011.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA TV</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;">A Russian spaceship bearing the name of history's most famous cosmonaut docked at the International Space Station late Wednesday (April 6) to deliver three new crewmembers to the orbiting lab.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The Soyuz TMA-21 — nicknamed "Gagarin" after Yuri Gagarin, who became the first person in space on April 12, 1961 — successfully docked with the station's Poisk module at 7:09 p.m. EDT (2309 GMT). The spacecraft had<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11294-soyuz-gagarin-launch-space-station.html">launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in Kazakhstan on April 4, blasting off from the same pad used for Gagarin's historic flight nearly 50 years ago.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Contact and capture — docking confirmed," a NASA official announced as the "Gagarin" sidled up to the orbiting lab. </div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The "Gagarin" launched into space Monday (April 4 EDT) carrying <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11290-soyuz-capsule-space-station-crew.html">two cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to join three other crewmembers already aboard the station, rounding out the orbiting lab's Expedition 27.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The three spaceflyers — NASA's Ron Garan and Russians Alexander Samokutyaev and Andrey Borisenko — will also stay on as part of the next station mission, Expedition 28.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"It was a great couple of days and we're ready to get to work," Garan said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">Garan and Samokutyaev will be flight engineers on both expeditions. Borisenko will serve as a flight engineer on Expedition 27 and later serve as the commander of Expedition 28. [<a href="http://www.space.com/11283-vote-human-spaceships-manned-spaceflight.html">Vote Now! The Best Spaceships of All Time</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The crew received a flood of congratulatory calls from Russia's Mission Control center near Moscow after docking at the space station. Russian space official and the families of the astronaut and cosmonauts were on hand to wish the crew well.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"We love you," Garan's wife Carmel told her husband and his crewmates after their arrival on the station. "We'll keep the fires burning at home, and we'll welcome you home with open arms at the end of your successful mission."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.space.com/images/i/9018/i02/soyuz-space-station-view.png?1302133085" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://i.space.com/images/i/9018/i02/soyuz-space-station-view.png?1302133085" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">The International Space Station seen from the Soyuz "Gagarin," as the spaceship approaches for docking on April 6, 2011.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA TV</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Marking many milestones</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">All three spaceflyers — and the "Gagarin" — will stay at the space station until September, when they'll come back down to Earth. They'll therefore be aboard the orbiting lab for a series of big spaceflight anniversaries and milestones.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">There's the 50th anniversary of Gagarin's flight and the 30th anniversary of the first space shuttle flight. Both of those events occurred on April 12 - Gagarin's mission in 1961 and the shuttle fleet's first launch 20 years later, in 1981. The three new crewmembers will also be aloft for the 50th anniversary of the first American in space — Alan Shepard's flight of May 5, 1961.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">They'll also bid farewell to NASA's space shuttle program from the orbiting lab. The space agency is<a href="http://www.space.com/11286-nasa-space-shuttles-musems-display-plans.html">retiring the workhorse vehicles</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>later this year after three decades of service. The last two shuttle flights — Endeavour's STS-134 mission and Atlantis' STS-135 flight — are slated to launch toward the station in April and June, respectively.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The three crewmembers already aboard the station — cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA astronaut Cady Coleman and European spaceflyer Paolo Nespoli — have been there since December. They're scheduled to return to Earth next month.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div></span></span></div></span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Gagarin's historic flight</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight was a significant victory for the Soviet Union in its escalating space race with the United States. It opened wounds first inflicted by the Soviets' surprise launch of Sputnik 1 — the world's first artificial satellite — in October 1957. [<a href="http://www.space.com/9703-top-10-soviet-russian-space-missions.html">The Top 10 Soviet and Russian Science Missions</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Gagarin launched in a spherical Vostok 1 capsule, orbited Earth once, then landed safely in a Russian field 108 minutes later.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">While Gagarin's name will live forever in the history books, the man himself died tragically young. His plane crashed during a military training exercise in 1968, killing the cosmonaut at the age of 34.</div></span></span></div></span></span> </div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11318-soyuz-gagarin-arrives-space-station.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a></div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-31156952452338730372011-04-05T06:18:00.000-07:002011-04-05T06:46:28.048-07:00The Most Memorable Space Shuttle Missions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #999999; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmAtrVyFwpFt8FnSt3kl6ZHru19l9ZDRx8FYCw5aWwClnu-JWqMCxDBOtVKm3vSu9QjcVqlhYvorIXS1_5BfcX0xbWaHFELGOdeaaudEtE1T1WyNzCKS2Jr4Q98MCJGN-tY6ZMmIco3R-0/s1600/1-shuttle-launch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmAtrVyFwpFt8FnSt3kl6ZHru19l9ZDRx8FYCw5aWwClnu-JWqMCxDBOtVKm3vSu9QjcVqlhYvorIXS1_5BfcX0xbWaHFELGOdeaaudEtE1T1WyNzCKS2Jr4Q98MCJGN-tY6ZMmIco3R-0/s320/1-shuttle-launch.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><div style="color: #999999;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">NASA's storied space shuttle program has seen some amazing highs, and a couple devastating lows over the course of its 30-year history. Soon, the world's first reusable spacecraft will retire to make way for NASA's next phase. But for now, here's a look back at the most memorable missions of the space shuttle's tenure.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11296-memorable-space-shuttle-missions.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a> </span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-31360325849150724182011-04-05T06:12:00.000-07:002011-04-05T06:12:27.265-07:00Russia, NASA to hold talks on nuclear-powered spacecraft<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,FreeSans,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Russia, the US and other nations are to discuss cooperation on building a nuclear-powered spacecraft, according to the head of Roscosmos – the Russian space agency.<br />
Anatoly Perminov, Roscosmos chief,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.rian.ru/science/20110404/163368160.html" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">tells</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>state-owned newswire RIA Novosti that nuclear spacecraft plans are to be discussed with NASA on April 15. Perminov added that "countries with a high level of reactor manufacturing technology" are to take part in the talks. The report mentions China, France, Germany and Japan: technically the UK can also make reactors but its capability is weak compared to the main nuclear players and its space presence even more so.<br />
<div id="article-mpu-container" style="margin-top: 1em;"><div style="margin-top: 0px;">Perminov went on to add that Russia intends to complete its design of a "nuclear engine" for use in space by 2012, and that in order to actually build this, funding of 17 billion roubles ($600m) will be required. He envisages this funding coming primarily from Rosatom, the state nuclear agency, rather than Roscosmos. The international discussions suggest that funding or at any rate cooperation will also be sought from overseas.</div></div>In previous reports, Perminov has been quoted as saying that the "engine" design now being worked on is of the type known as "megawatt-class nuclear space power systems" (MCNSPS). This refers specifically to use of a nuclear reactor to generate electricity, but other previous remarks regarding a propulsion capability suggest that the Russian engine could also use reactor heat to eject reaction mass, providing thrust as well as electrical power. Reactors normally generate a large surplus of heat energy over and above their electrical output, so the scope is there to do both propulsion and power generation at once: nuclear rockets using reactors to heat reaction mass were tested decades ago. Because they can use reaction mass selected to be good reaction mass – rather than being forced to accept what chemical fuels can produce – they can get much more shove out of a given weight of fuel.<br />
Modern thinking, however, usually favours nuclear-electric propulsion employing ion engines or plasma rockets rather than a nuclear rocket as such. These can't produce anything like as much thrust as thermal nuclear or chemical rockets – they could never lift themselves off the Earth – but they are far more reaction-mass efficient even than nuclear rockets. They could make interplanetary journeys lasting weeks rather than months, and allow spaceships to carry other things than fuel to a much greater extent.<br />
It's widely acknowledged in the space community that propulsion more powerful than chemical rockets and power generation more capable than solar panels will be necessary if travel beyond Earth orbit is to become a serious activity. From the earliest days of spaceflight and before, in fact, it was assumed that nuclear power would provide both – and that space travel, mining, industry and so forth would soon spread through most of the solar system.<br />
In the real world, humanity's deep-seated fear of nuclear power has meant that very few reactors have ever flown in space. The most powerful were the relatively puny Topaz units employed in Soviet radar-ocean-reconnaissance spysats of yesteryear: so, far from being megawatt-class, these could produce just a few kilowatts. Still feebler radioisotope power units have been used in spy satellites and some scientific projects intended to operate far from the Sun: for instance NASA's next Mars rover is intended to be radioisotope-powered in order to give it the ability to move faster than a very slow crawl. (Despite their tremendous longevity, the present solar-powered Martian rovers have yet to travel as far as the much shorter-lived Soviet moon rovers of the 1970s.)<br />
The Russians are showing every sign of being willing to finally break through the barriers of fear and deploy a powerful nuclear spaceship of the sort which might one day move the space operations of humanity beyond Earth orbit: what the Russians are not showing much sign of is having the money to do so.<br />
The necessary $600m isn't a lot of money to NASA: but in fact NASA has plenty of nuclear space engine designs of its own on file if it wanted to build one. It's hard to see the discussions later this month bearing much fruit, much though space enthusiasts might hope for such. ®</span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-8439408251839053802011-04-04T09:44:00.000-07:002011-04-04T09:44:50.075-07:00SECRET MILITARY SPACE PLANE STRUTS ITS STUFF<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #999999; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #999999; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj14sIuQAx91G5cPiivXzrGheAMRaDGYL7OLsOYrfLtAPetvyum0e7CSad6CZMH0nTkAcIFev1z9zxM5EdcPQDFWrNzYPR-FCB6tYgowkPK3G1Cbqv7sm43-FIfqUUFt8QR4guEqNIwMgr/s1600/6a00d8341bf67c53ef014e8735c18f970d-800wi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj14sIuQAx91G5cPiivXzrGheAMRaDGYL7OLsOYrfLtAPetvyum0e7CSad6CZMH0nTkAcIFev1z9zxM5EdcPQDFWrNzYPR-FCB6tYgowkPK3G1Cbqv7sm43-FIfqUUFt8QR4guEqNIwMgr/s320/6a00d8341bf67c53ef014e8735c18f970d-800wi.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;"><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;">The U.S. military’s secret space plane, a robotic demonstrator version of a next-generation space shuttle, has been spotted by astronomers. It flashed.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=03&month=04&year=2011" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">SpaceWeather.com</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>got the story.</div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;">From<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://spaceweather.com/" style="border-style: none; border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">SpaceWeather.com</a>:</div><div style="color: cyan; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;">The US Air Force's X-37B space plane is circling Earth and, although it is on a classified mission with an officially unpublished orbit, sky watchers have spotted it. "I saw the X-37B from my home in Pasadena, California, around sunrise on March 31st," reports Anthony Cook of the Griffith Observatory. "The spacecraft's appearance was remarkable. When overhead it was a little brighter than a 2nd magnitude star with a slight yellow hue. Then it flared. As the X-37B moved toward the horizon it became silvery and brightened to around magnitude -6, far outshining Venus below it." The flare was presumably caused by sunlight glinting from some flat surface on the shuttle-shaped spacecraft, but no one can say for sure because it<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">is</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>a classified mission.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;">So, speculate all you like. It's classified.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"><a href="http://news.discovery.com/space/secret-spaceplane-struts-its-stuff-110403.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1">Source</a> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-44390552931982004632011-04-04T09:40:00.000-07:002011-04-04T09:40:24.244-07:00Russian Rocket to Launch New Space Station Crew Today<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="color: #999999; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPJiBO90wtwCCHP_3iATZ03KG0txLR7KC2x5IvJK50ujxpNkgjq7UGX9VsUhOAV6XZrqkCLtdvMc-Z_2yi4rKobr-JeTCuJoQ983lZfvyc-HGJ2y_orgM7YlDKx2lwQjRJTrnAepqxQ-j/s1600/exp27-crew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvPJiBO90wtwCCHP_3iATZ03KG0txLR7KC2x5IvJK50ujxpNkgjq7UGX9VsUhOAV6XZrqkCLtdvMc-Z_2yi4rKobr-JeTCuJoQ983lZfvyc-HGJ2y_orgM7YlDKx2lwQjRJTrnAepqxQ-j/s320/exp27-crew.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">At the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, NASA astronaut Ron Garan (left), Expedition 27 flight engineer; along with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev (center), Soyuz commander; and Andrey Borisenko, flight engineer, pose for pictures outside their Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft during a check of its systems March 22, 2011.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA/Victor Zelentsov</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">A veteran NASA astronaut and two rookie cosmonauts are poised to begin their journey into space today (April 4) by launching into orbit aboard a Russian spaceship named Gagarin.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The spaceflyers are due to liftoff from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome at 6:18 p.m. EDT (2218 GMT) aboard the Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft, nicknamed the Yuri Gagarin in honor of the 50th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's first human spaceflight on April 12, 1961. [<a href="http://www.space.com/11288-russian-soyuz-yuri-gagarin-human-spaceflight.html">Russia Honors First Man in Space With Rocket Launch</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Flying on the Soyuz Gagarin will be NASA astronaut Ron Garan and cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko and Alexander Samokutyaev, who are beginning a planned six-month mission to the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/50-building-international-space-station.html">International Space Station</a>. They will join three other crewmembers already living aboard the orbiting laboratory. [<a href="http://www.space.com/50-building-international-space-station.html">Photos: Building the International Space Station</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">Here's a brief look at the veteran astronaut and two first-time flyers set to launch aboard the Gagarin today:</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>The gee whiz factor</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Ron Garan, a native of Yonkers, N.Y., will be making his second trip to space after riding the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/10832-sts-133-discovery-final-mission.html">space shuttle Discovery</a>on the STS-124 mission in 2008. He will join the station crew as an Expedition 27 and Expedition 28 flight engineer.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Garan's mission is expected to overlap with the final flight of the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11221-photos-space-shuttle-endeavour-final-mission-sts134.html">space shuttle Endeavour</a>, which is set to launch on the STS-134 mission April 19. After that, NASA has only one more shuttle mission planned before the three-orbiter fleet is retired.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"It's going to be a sad day when it's retired," Garan, 49, told SPACE.com. "I think it's going to be many generations before we have the capability that the space shuttle provides us right now. It's an amazing vehicle."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Garan is a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force. He was selected as an astronaut in July 2000.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Garan has dreamed about becoming an astronaut since watching the first moon landing on a black and white TV at a family party when he was a child, he said. He's still amazed at his luck in landing the job.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"The gee whiz factor, it's never worn off," he said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">He and his wife Carmel have three sons: two 20-year-old twins and a 16-year-old.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"For them this is really all they’ve ever known, to them this is just what I do for a living," Garan said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>First-time commander</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Andrey Borisenko, who was selected as a cosmonaut in May 2003, will be making his first trip to space when the Gagarin lifts off today.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"I greatly look forward to the flight itself," Borisenko, 35, told SPACE.com. "I think every minute of our flight will bring something new and something amazing. From what I have heard from other crewmembers, it is quite possible that the six-month increment will fly by as one minute."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">He is due to serve as an Expedition 27 flight engineer, and then transition to the role of commander of Expedition 28 in May. </div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Borisenko and his wife Zoya have a son, Ivan. The proud father said it is unlikely his son would ever choose to become a cosmonaut, but he'd be pleased if he did.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"My stories of spaceflight have not been very exciting for him and I'm worried that he watches too much television and is not interested in what we are doing in space," he said. "He has seen Star Wars by George Lucas so the actual cosmonaut life does not seem very exciting to him."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>In Gagarin's shadow</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The third member of the Soyuz Gagarin flight, Alexander Samokutyaev, will also be making his rookie trip to orbit and will command the Soyuz trip to the International Space Station.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Samokutyaev, 41, said it was a special honor to be flying aboard Gagarin, because he was particularly inspired by Gagarin's groundbreaking Vostok 1 mission as a child.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"I was born 10 years after flight of Yuri Gagarin," Samokutyaev said."All I know is based on what I heard. Quite often thousands of people would gather on the streets to listen to the radio. Everyone back then wanted to become cosmonauts."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">He and the other space station crewmembers will spend most of their time running the station and conducting scientific research.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Personally for me, I'm most interested in Earth monitoring experiments where you monitor Earth's surface and try to predict natural disasters," Samokutyaev said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Samokutyaev, a lieutenant-colonel in the Russian Air Force,was selected as a cosmonaut candidate in 2003. He and his wife Oksana have a 16-year-old daughter, Anastasia.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">He said his family's experience throughout his busy training schedule for the mission would help them get through the long months with only the phone and e-mail to communicate.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"My wife and daughter were always with me wherever I would go," Samokutyaev said. "They have been supporting me here throughout my training in Houston. At this point I think they'<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">re so much used to all of this."</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11290-soyuz-capsule-space-station-crew.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a> </span></span></div></span></span> </div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-29161540187052739792011-03-31T11:30:00.000-07:002011-03-31T11:30:07.273-07:00NASA Extends Contract For Supercomputing Support Services<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">WASHINGTON -- NASA will exercise the third one-year option on a contract with Computer Sciences Corp. in Lanham, Md., to provide supercomputing support services at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. The option is valued at approximately $58.6 million. <br />
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The option exercised on the cost-plus-award-fee contract begins April 1 and continues until March 31, 2012. The contract consists of a two-year base period, which began Aug. 1, 2007, and eight one-year priced options with a maximum value of approximately $597 million if all options are exercised. <br />
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The company will continue to support supercomputing services provided by the agency's primary high performance computing facility operated by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames. The facility serves as the supercomputing pathfinder for the agency and develops and operates some of the largest, most advanced and productive supercomputers in the world. <br />
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The contract is structured so the company also may provide supercomputing services to the NASA Center for Computational Sciences facility at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and additional high performance computing support to other agency field centers as needed. <br />
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For more information about high performance advanced supercomputing at Ames, visit: <br />
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<div align="center"><a href="http://www.nas.nasa.gov/">http://www.nas.nasa.gov</a></div><div align="center"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/mar/HQ_C11-015_Supercomputing.html">Source</a> </div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-18949242363589452062011-03-31T11:27:00.000-07:002011-03-31T11:27:55.833-07:00Ice on Mercury? NASA Probe May Solve That Mystery and Others<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2sc59UD9pyqnZraD9UsFNcgx9jjb_lpaQCKkF_5wxQTaaym9VLs5mfbQzxdg-NF6X7ERiCZgld91EhwqbN0zlYo1daN1WAWQV0gT7QGm_iocXwSnXzhUXiY1KzPCGMkrMPjq1gBRwYUfj/s1600/messenger-mercury-horizon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2sc59UD9pyqnZraD9UsFNcgx9jjb_lpaQCKkF_5wxQTaaym9VLs5mfbQzxdg-NF6X7ERiCZgld91EhwqbN0zlYo1daN1WAWQV0gT7QGm_iocXwSnXzhUXiY1KzPCGMkrMPjq1gBRwYUfj/s400/messenger-mercury-horizon.jpg" width="397" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">A view of the horizon of Mercury, taken by NASA's Messenger spacecraft on March 29, 2011. The picture shows a stretch of land about 750 miles long, from top to bottom.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;"> A NASA spacecraft now circling Mercury is set to tackle some big mysteries of the scorched, tiny world – including whether or not water ice lurks in its shadowy craters.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">NASA's Messenger probe became the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury when it<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11160-nasa-spacecraft-mercury-orbit-messenger.html">arrived at the planet</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>on March 17. While the spacecraft won't officially start its yearlong science mission until April 4, the observations it's already made hint at many discoveries to come, researchers said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"We're really seeing Mercury now with new eyes," Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, told reporters today (March 30). "As a result, an entire global perspective is unfolding, and will continue to unfold over the next few months." [<a href="http://www.space.com/11072-photos-mercury-nasa-messenger-mission.html">New Photos of Mercury From Messenger</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">The search for water ice on the blisteringly hot planet is one of the mission's driving motivations. Though Mercury's surface temperatures can top 842 degrees Fahrenheit (450 degrees Celsius), ice may survive on the floors of permanently shadowed polar craters.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">And about 20 years ago, radar data first picked up intriguing evidence of reflective materials at Mercury's poles that might just be water ice, researchers said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Could ice be trapped there? The thermal models say yes, it's possible," Solomon said. "But is it water ice? There are alternative ideas."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Messenger will also investigate other questions about Mercury — why it's so much denser than the other rocky planets, for example. Also, the mission team wants to learn more about how the planet's core is structured, the nature of its global magnetic field and other aspects of Mercury's composition and history.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">That work will start in earnest next week. In the meantime, scientists are sifting through the spacecraft's increasing pile of new Mercury photos. By the end of tomorrow, it will have snapped 1,500 photos of the planet from orbit, researchers said — more than it captured during its three previous flybys of the planet in 2008 and 2009.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div></span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>The first photos</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Messenger — whose name is short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging — is still officially in a commissioning phase, during which time mission scientists are checking out its cameras and other instruments.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">But the probe has not been idly waiting for its main mission to start. Messenger snapped the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11254-nasa-photos-mercury-orbit-messenger-spacecraft.html">first photos of Mercury from orbit</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>yesterday (March 29), imaging previously unseen areas of the planet — terrain near the poles that Messenger missed on its three flybys.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEippHCLDM9vk1WKtRIOfZJMgf8vFFNWExbhggEZaKDmyBb4KQHS0QCdOwvYgBLeOJNqrmYseD7J5eRmIon69V-zS60pZT5lF0tohVdb82rzGnzZzKA92yOa7gPEekPfUlJSCsZyqgXO_XvL/s1600/messenger-mercury-debussy-crater.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEippHCLDM9vk1WKtRIOfZJMgf8vFFNWExbhggEZaKDmyBb4KQHS0QCdOwvYgBLeOJNqrmYseD7J5eRmIon69V-zS60pZT5lF0tohVdb82rzGnzZzKA92yOa7gPEekPfUlJSCsZyqgXO_XvL/s320/messenger-mercury-debussy-crater.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">Bright rays, consisting of impact ejecta and secondary craters, radiate from Mercury's Debussy crater, located at the top. The image, acquired by NASA's Messenger spacecraft on March 29, 2011, shows a small portion of Debussy's large system of rays in greater detail than ever before.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">The pictures show the battered, crater-strewn surface of Mercury in great detail.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"We are delighted to be able to see the surface at the very high latitudes," Solomon said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">So far, everything is going well with Messenger's mission and its instruments.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"All subsystems and instruments are on and operating nominally, within specifications," said Messenger mission systems engineer Eric Finnegan, of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. "This is a tremendous achievement for the entire Messenger team."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Much more to come</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Over the next 12 months, Messenger will continue taking pictures and peering at Mercury with its seven instruments, mapping the planet's surface and helping scientists better understand its composition, tenuous atmosphere and geologic history. [<a href="http://www.space.com/11002-enduring-mercury-mysteries.html">Most Enduring Mysteries of Mercury</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">This information could shed light on how our solar system formed and evolved — and perhaps, by extension, how alien planetary systems have come about as well, researchers said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">The observations Messenger has<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11132-messenger-mercury-orbit-insertion.html">made from orbit</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>thus far suggest the probe will beam home all sorts of eye-opening information, researchers said. It may, for instance, help researchers learn why Mercury — like Earth — has a global magnetic field, while its rocky planet cousins Mars and Venus do not.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">In its first five days in orbit, Messenger tripled the number of spacecraft observations of Mercury's magnetic field available to astronomers, researchers said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"We are rapidly ramping up a much larger dataset with which to characterize the geometry of Mercury's magnetic field," Solomon said. "That will tell us a lot about Mercury's internal structure and dynamics."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>A busy year ahead</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The $446 million Messenger probe launched in August 2004. The spacecraft is now in an extremely elliptical orbit that brings it within 124 miles (200 kilometers) of Mercury at the closest point and retreats to more than 9,300 miles (15,000 km) away at the farthest point.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">While Messenger is the first mission ever to orbit Mercury, it is not the first spacecraft to visit the planet. NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft flew by the planet three times in the mid-1970s.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">On April 4, Messenger will start mapping and studying the entire surface of Mercury, a process that is expected to require about 75,000 images. But the early science returns have whetted the appetites of mission scientists, who can't wait for the data to really start pouring in.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"It's just a wonderful adventure for those of us on the science team that have front-row seats for these new data that are coming down," Solomon said. "It's a wonderful time in the history of exploration of planet Earth's neighborhood, and we are delighted to be a part of that."</div></span></span> </div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11263-nasa-mercury-photos-results-messenger.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29">Source</a></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-7972388236463075912011-03-31T11:22:00.000-07:002011-03-31T11:22:11.631-07:00Dark Matter Could Be the Life of the Party for Starless Planets<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCZOvxodZPHWl7jGSPMwHkVv7NL2oJlK08bT7dnLX0Rc-yMzkhlEBaE6HVTTk5D9G72Km3owQ6pVHFjq-j0aoKmq6awlDdo3sVcN_6IYzl6PoBTEsrFahpZ4jmbGFKZF6WjNQdJsLN6RaD/s1600/hubble-dark-matter-101112-2-02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCZOvxodZPHWl7jGSPMwHkVv7NL2oJlK08bT7dnLX0Rc-yMzkhlEBaE6HVTTk5D9G72Km3owQ6pVHFjq-j0aoKmq6awlDdo3sVcN_6IYzl6PoBTEsrFahpZ4jmbGFKZF6WjNQdJsLN6RaD/s320/hubble-dark-matter-101112-2-02.jpg" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the distribution of dark matter in the center of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 1689, containing about 1,000 galaxies and trillions of stars.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA, ESA, D. Coe (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, and Space Telescope Science Institute), N. Benitez (Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, Spain), T. Broadhurst (University of the Basque Country, Spain), and H. Ford</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;"> There may be worlds that float through intergalactic space in darkness without stars to warm them. Such lonely planets, endlessly adrift in night, might seem too cold and dark to ever serve as homes for life.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">But mysterious, unseen<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/9405-dark-matter-finally-time.html">dark matter</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>could help make warm these starless planets and make them habitable, a new study suggests. The idea may be a bit out there, but it’s not impossible, researchers say.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Scientists think invisible, as-yet-unidentified dark matter makes up about 85 percent of all matter in the universe. They know it exists because of the gravitational effects it has on galaxies. [<a href="http://www.space.com/10329-dark-matter-3.html">Video: Dark Matter in 3-D</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Warmth from dark matter?</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Among the leading candidates for what dark matter is are massive particles that only rarely interact with normal matter. These particles could be their own antiparticles, meaning they annihilate each other when they meet, releasing energy.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">If these dark matter particles do exist, they could get captured by a planet's gravity and unleash energy that could warm that world, reasoned physicist Dan Hooper and astrophysicist Jason Steffen at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Although this amount of energy would be negligible when it<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div></span></span> </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7V3pNCZlomuOtAXlARo3EZCKh78i7UbzjWbzfFCrwogCHT1c6SWRkT8pTvJMkuwzpDmBXV3qy3EFR5pNuPNDeryNSLCIyjNxhMNPqx6veZ4OG4sUjFm_ntICfs8JZm0lbP874UU1WyPme/s1600/070108_3D_dmap_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7V3pNCZlomuOtAXlARo3EZCKh78i7UbzjWbzfFCrwogCHT1c6SWRkT8pTvJMkuwzpDmBXV3qy3EFR5pNuPNDeryNSLCIyjNxhMNPqx6veZ4OG4sUjFm_ntICfs8JZm0lbP874UU1WyPme/s400/070108_3D_dmap_02.jpg" width="353" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">Researchers created a 3D map of dark matter in a large portion of the universe by combining gravitational lensing data from more than half a million galaxies scattered across a range of distances from Earth. The three axes of the box (bottom) correspond to sky position, and distance from Earth, increasing from left to right.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA, ESA, R. Massey (Caltech)</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">comes to Earth — a few megawatts at most — they calculate that larger, rocky "<a href="http://www.space.com/7680-nearby-super-earth-waterworld.html">super-Earths</a>" in regions with high densities of slow-moving dark matter could be warmed enough to keep liquid water on their surfaces, even in the absence of additional energy from starlight or other sources.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The density of dark matter is expected to be hundreds to thousands of times greater in the innermost regions of the Milky Way and in the cores of dwarf spheroidal galaxies than it is in our solar system.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"We are talking about rare and special environments, but not implausible ones," Hooper told SPACE.com. [<a href="http://www.space.com/159-strangest-alien-planets.html">The Strangest Alien Planets</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The scientists surmised that on planets in those areas, it may be that dark matter rather than light makes it possible for life to develop and survive. After all, on Earth, there is life virtually wherever there is water.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"You can have all the basic elements you need for organic life without a star," Hooper said.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8xqDw27MnSOvcvfYxvOh3Bc6eZvTTMoahbIBLGV6JbBixNUUWmx5f1T3I6vEmJnTC-R9Hg1hPt_ugSYwZ6uwn2bghdFBaHuuYp7_s2Bcj4-j439VUgo4oa__SlTLjMa6F-0X5nlaNFHU/s1600/kepler-planets-illustration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8xqDw27MnSOvcvfYxvOh3Bc6eZvTTMoahbIBLGV6JbBixNUUWmx5f1T3I6vEmJnTC-R9Hg1hPt_ugSYwZ6uwn2bghdFBaHuuYp7_s2Bcj4-j439VUgo4oa__SlTLjMa6F-0X5nlaNFHU/s400/kepler-planets-illustration.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">An artist's illustration of the extrasolar planets discovered around the star Kepler 11 by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: Nature</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Dark matter: Better than a star</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Indeed, dark matter could keep the surfaces of such warm for trillions of years, outliving all regular stars, the researchers suggested. Given their extremely long lifetimes, such planets may prove to be the ultimate bastion of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11188-alien-earths-planets-sun-stars.html">life in our universe</a>, they added. For comparison, the universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"I imagine 10 trillion years in the future, when the universe has expanded beyond recognition and all the stars in our galaxy have long since burnt out, the only planets with any heat are these ones here, and I could imagine that any civilization that survived over this huge stretch of time would start moving to these dark-matter-fueled planets," Hooper said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">However, the scenario lies in the more optimistic end of models calculating how dark matter behaves.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Also, assuming that such planets exist, "there probably aren't many of them," Hooper cautioned. Also, current planet-hunting missions focus on worlds that starlight can help detect — dark-matter-fueled planets not only might lie far away from any stars, but are not especially hot, making them difficult to see. "I don't see us discovering planets like this anytime soon," he said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The scientists detailed their findings online March 25 in a paper submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.</div></span></span></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-46542953446035751352011-03-31T11:17:00.000-07:002011-03-31T11:17:35.458-07:00Searching for Alien Life? Try Failed Stars<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg080skiLpQbphMHgsAOITYe0wYLRwTKhhCYQRIOTYvaGluR4FbOhhjg1z2q5PzqY2boQ-kzig48kKUefnT-fDOBS9FkT6BOVcRnVy5itOkHx4o9-aAlTtlfEW98W7DqQNkdMCHQP75RTnV/s1600/brown-dwarf-conception.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg080skiLpQbphMHgsAOITYe0wYLRwTKhhCYQRIOTYvaGluR4FbOhhjg1z2q5PzqY2boQ-kzig48kKUefnT-fDOBS9FkT6BOVcRnVy5itOkHx4o9-aAlTtlfEW98W7DqQNkdMCHQP75RTnV/s400/brown-dwarf-conception.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">This artist's illustration shows a brown dwarf with a disk of planet-forming material around it. Brown dwarfs are bodies without enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion and become stars.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;">The search for alien life usually focuses on planets around other stars. But a lesser-known possibility is that life has sprung up on planets that somehow were ejected from their original solar systems and became free-floating in the universe, as well as on small bodies called sub-brown dwarfs, which are stars so small and dim they are not really stars at all, but function more like planets.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Studies show these bodies could potentially host atmospheres and surfaces where some form of<a href="http://www.space.com/11209-mars-earth-life-origins-evolution.html">extraterrestrial life</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>could take hold.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Researcher Viorel Badescu of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest in Romania recently investigated the possibilities for life on free-floating planets (FFPs) and sub-brown dwarfs (SBDs) that might contain<a href="http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/2829/titans-ethane-lake">lakes of the chemical ethane</a>. He found that such life is not impossible, though it would be significantly different from life on Earth.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">His findings were detailed in the August 2010 issue of the journal Planetary and Space Science.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Failed stars</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Sub-brown dwarfs are not large enough to generate the nuclear fusion that powers normal stars. Having<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11204-coldest-star-discovered-brown-dwarf.html">failed as stars</a>, they slowly radiate their internal thermal energy as heat and very dim light – hence, they are extremely hard to detect. Both free-floating planets and sub-brown dwarfs don't always orbit around a parent star, and can be found in interstellar space.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Lacking a star, life on FFPs and SBDs would have to rely on the body's internal heat and the decay of radioactive elements for energy. "One may expect a rather stable heat release for long periods of time, exceeding two or three times the present age of the solar system," said Badescu. Though meager, this heat could be trapped on the object by an optically thick atmosphere.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">But life needs more than just heat to thrive. Another important ingredient for habitability is a solvent – a liquid environment where important chemical reactions can occur. Life on Earth uses water as a solvent, but that's not the only option.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Synthesis of observational data makes it possible to conceive chemical reactions that might support life involving non-carbon compounds, occurring in solvents other than water," Badescu wrote in his paper.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">In particular, Badescu found that ethane – a compound of carbon and hydrogen – could function well as a solvent for alien life. [<a href="http://www.space.com/11057-science-claims-alien-life.html">5 Bold Claims of Alien Life</a>]</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdx8XsIuRUnCiy-EDw-8ESu6K5pcdOxRAjWFm2NM52NvMTvmHbrhNM_60blEi2HRcq5g6HW_8Q_2vKN1BUq89tqgirnoN4SQ69tnIztv-wqEw3Pu3wLqwbo0UDMnG0kmGPdDtMyY_l6Jm8/s400/Dim-Dwarfs.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">In this illustration, twin brown dwarfs orbit each other. Despite the name "brown dwarf", these objects cool and change over time, and therefore do not have a definitive color.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech</span></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 11px;"> </span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><div style="line-height: 20px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Life without water</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">It seems odd to consider the possibility of life on an object more massive than Jupiter or Saturn, especially since most scientists think such gas giant planets -- with their high radiation, hostile atmospheres and potential lack of a planetary surface -- would not harbor life as we know it. </div><div style="line-height: 20px;">But Badescu said that some sub-brown dwarfs might have<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3165/exotic-life-could-sprout-from-chemistry-on-titan-">lakes or oceans of liquid ethane</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that could prove quite homey to alien microbes.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The main difference between water and ethane for use as a solvent is that water is a polar molecule, meaning one end of the molecule is positively charged, and one end of it is negatively charged. This has proven integral to Earth life, because the polar properties of water enable certain kinds of molecules to dissolve easily in water, while others remain stable.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The molecules that code for life – DNA and RNA – have electrical charge properties that allow them to change their internal structure – the specific order of the base molecules within them – and still have the same overall physical properties. This is all enabled by the way their charge properties interact with the polar quality of water.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">That would not be the case with ethane, which is a non-polar molecule. With DNA and RNA in this situation, "small changes in molecular structure may create large changes in molecular behavior," Badescu said. "That is not acceptable in an encoding biopolymer that must support Darwinian evolution, in which case, the molecule's physical properties must remain relatively constant when the informational content changes."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">However, the challenge is not insurmountable – a completely different type of molecule could be used to code life's blueprint on a FFP or SBD.</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCpvZkxNKiF_BAgJ_pG_rp-sGADJUPo_vDkR1TQTM3ERzKPuz1nUrr7MJrGJ4wGxeahdqLGG7kzd7uG4Ss3-7WTEZIKBebF0BZkiwUSpLnKTZLfsul3dBduXLOKqKc53fdKWCqYvbBAZ20/s1600/titan-ethane-lake-conception.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCpvZkxNKiF_BAgJ_pG_rp-sGADJUPo_vDkR1TQTM3ERzKPuz1nUrr7MJrGJ4wGxeahdqLGG7kzd7uG4Ss3-7WTEZIKBebF0BZkiwUSpLnKTZLfsul3dBduXLOKqKc53fdKWCqYvbBAZ20/s400/titan-ethane-lake-conception.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;">Scientists think sub-brown dwarfs or free-floating planets might contain lakes of ethane that could host life. This artist's concept shows similar lakes of ethane thought to exist on Saturn's moon Titan.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: NASA/Karl Kofoed</span></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 11px;"> </span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="line-height: 20px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Searching for life</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Ultimately, free-floating planets and sub-brown dwarfs could prove a fertile place to look for extraterrestrial creatures.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Besides their habitable qualities, these bodies seem to be quite common in the universe. Sub-brown dwarfs weighing between 1 and 13 Jupiter masses may be about as common as stars, Badescu said.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"The total number of FFPs and SBDs may exceed the number of stars by two orders of magnitude, although most of them should be low-mass rock/ice planetary embryos ejected from planetary systems in formation," i.e. not the type with large gaseous atmospheres that would retain the heat required for life, Badescu said. "Thus, it might be conceivable that FFPs and SBDs are the most common sites of life in the universe."</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Given this fact, he advocated ramping up our efforts to search for<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/2046/free-floating-twins-test-theories">free-floating planets</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and sub-brown dwarfs and to characterize them to determine which might be habitable.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">"Present day technology does not allow a systematic search for habitable FFPs and SBDs," Badescu said. "However, the existing observation programs of young star forming regions should be supplemented with activities related to FFP and SBD identification and characterization."</div></span></span></div></span></span> </div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11268-alien-life-brown-dwarfs-failed-stars.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a></div></span></span></div></span></span> </div></span></span> </div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-76300112737853568322011-03-30T11:41:00.000-07:002011-03-30T11:41:59.815-07:00Venus and the Moon to Shine Together Thursday Morning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqdUl_6xqQXi-gY7tr8FEgZCT0aFkiNLLiWmNm_RfDQbRiIUYYKxds-8NQbrNNRFAxQJ23tocT-xlmRWEPo-F0GLko7SaQwnnzbUMJNhYwn1BmSw3ChQxqyRIvRzirz4l4WeOl-b7IQKB_/s1600/venus-moon-sky-map-march31-2011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqdUl_6xqQXi-gY7tr8FEgZCT0aFkiNLLiWmNm_RfDQbRiIUYYKxds-8NQbrNNRFAxQJ23tocT-xlmRWEPo-F0GLko7SaQwnnzbUMJNhYwn1BmSw3ChQxqyRIvRzirz4l4WeOl-b7IQKB_/s400/venus-moon-sky-map-march31-2011.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">This sky map shows how Venus and the crescent moon will appear just before sunrise on March 31, 2011 as viewed under clear morning conditions.<br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: Starry Night Software</span></span></span></td></tr>
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</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Early-bird skywatchers graced with clear weather tomorrow morning (March 31) will get a celestial treat before sunrise, when Venus and the moon appear together in the east-southeast sky. </div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Venus will be low onthe horizon,a brilliant “morning star,” with a lovely waning crescent moon hovering less than 5 degrees (about half the width of a human fist) above the planet and to its left. The moon will be just 9 percent illuminated, since it is less than three days before its new phase. [<a href="http://www.space.com/62-earths-moon-phases-monthly-lunar-cycles-infographic.html">Moon Phases Explained</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">While not an exceptionally close conjunction, the cosmic event should not disappoint skywatchers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/8438-moon-appears-eat-venus-photos.html">Venus and the moon</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>are the two brightest luminaries of the night sky, and the pair should make for a striking sight in the dawn twilight.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>How to see Venus and the moon</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Make sure there are no tall obstructions like buildings or trees, since by sunup Venus will only be about 12 degrees above the horizon. Your clenched fist held at arm’s length covers about 10 degrees of the sky, so Venus will only be a little higher than one fist above the horizon at daybreak. The moon will appear a bit above that.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">This<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/11260-venus-moon-visible-sunrise.html">sky map of Venus and the moon</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>shows how they will appear during their March 31 rendezvous.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Considering that we’re now back on daylight saving time, and sunrise is coming rather late again, there will no doubt will be a number of morning commuters heading out to work and school who might wonder what that “bright light” below and to the right of the slender sliver of moon is. [<a href="http://www.space.com/11178-supermoon-photos-2011-skywatcher-images.html">Amazing Moon Photos</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">Then again, those who only now might notice Venus probably haven’t been paying much attention to what has been visible in the early morning skyof late. </div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><strong>Dance of Venus</strong></div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Venus has been<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/10967-venus-moon-skywatching-tips.html">putting on a dazzling show</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in the pre-sunrise eastern sky since November. During December and January, it soared high into the sky and was visible for nearly four hours before sunrise.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">But from now through the month of April, Venus will linger low in the eastern predawn sky. The brilliant orb will rise like clockwork just over an hour before sunrise, but still can be easily identified as the brightest thing besides the moon.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">Late in April, Venus will be joined by three other planets – Mercury, Mars and Jupiter.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">All four planets ultimately will converge in an unusual planetary gathering that will persist through much of May.But more on that next month. </div></span></span> </div></span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">Do you plan to photograph Venus and the moon? Do you have skywatching photos you'd like to share with SPACE.com? If so, feel free to send them to managing editor Tariq Malik at: tmalik[at]space[dot]com for potential galleries or stories.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><em>Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for The New York Times and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, New York.</em></div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.space.com/11260-venus-moon-visible-sunrise.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a><em> </em></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5264553357058220139.post-90262357967958427072011-03-30T10:58:00.000-07:002011-03-30T10:58:19.968-07:00Cosmic Rose Blooms in Star Cluster Photo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="color: #999999;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm4KZcuxwXJtEawKKgRQv-nK6xgoq3nGx3AxM74eSNzrwNfW6NyMRjvAsKfwxNcsrk1E1-mW3DtE-SrysbCiU9jCY4VuO0cBO1w58oNAafQaKh-xROs9cClspOY5Z2TPBjx-vXUuNH-Hxw/s1600/rose-red-stars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm4KZcuxwXJtEawKKgRQv-nK6xgoq3nGx3AxM74eSNzrwNfW6NyMRjvAsKfwxNcsrk1E1-mW3DtE-SrysbCiU9jCY4VuO0cBO1w58oNAafQaKh-xROs9cClspOY5Z2TPBjx-vXUuNH-Hxw/s400/rose-red-stars.jpg" width="398" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The star cluster NGC 371 appears in this new image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11px;">CREDIT: ESO/Manu Mejias, images</span></span></span></td></tr>
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</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">A bright star cluster surrounded by iridescent red gas looks like a blooming cosmic rose in a new photo from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The photo depicts the star cluster NGC 371, a stellar nursery in our neighboring galaxy the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy about 200 000 light-years from Earth. Such regions of ionized hydrogen — known as HII regions — are sites of recent star birth. [<a href="http://www.space.com/10728-cosmic-visions-paranal-observatory.html">More Photos by the Very Large Telescope</a>]</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">NGC 371 is an<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/10710-orion-taurus-star-cluster-skywatching-tips.html">open cluster</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>surrounded by a nebula. The stars in open clusters all originate from the same diffuse HII region, and over time the majority of the hydrogen is used up by star formation, leaving behind a shell of hydrogen such as the one in this image, along with a cluster of hot young stars.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px;">This cluster is of particular interest to astronomers due to the unexpectedly large number of variable stars it contains. These are stars that change in brightness over time. Variable stars play a pivotal role in astronomy: Some types are invaluable for determining distances to far-off galaxies and the age of the universe.</span></span> </div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><div style="line-height: 20px;">The<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/10617-galaxyx-milkyway-discovery.html">Small Magellanic Cloud</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>contains stars at all stages of their evolution, from the super-bright young stars found in the NGC 371 cluster to the supernova remnants of long-dead stars.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">The energetic young stars emit copious amounts of ultraviolet radiation, causing surrounding gas, such as leftover hydrogen from the stars' parent nebula, to light up with a colorful glow that extends for hundreds of light-years in every direction.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;">This new image was created using the FORS1 instrument on the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.space.com/9789-james-bond-penetrates-large-telescope.html">Very Large Telescope</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>at the Paranal Observatory in Chile's Atacama desert.</div><div style="line-height: 20px;"> </div><div style="line-height: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.space.com/11251-photo-red-rose-star-cluster.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+spaceheadlines+%28SPACE.com+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+International">Source</a></div></span></span></div></span></span></div></div>Ahmed Hamdyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10318214638388046912noreply@blogger.com0