Tag: Astronomy

What’s New In Space?

Yep, the weekend has arrived and as per my tradition I will post on anything other than the pathetic crap the MSM gives us daily……today it is space and the new discoveries or such…….

In 2012, scientists discovered a giant exoplanet (one that orbits a star other than our sun) with a ring system so impressive it eclipses its own host star. Now, thanks to a recent eclipse where planet J1407b lined up in front of host star J1407, scientists at the University of Rochester analyzed the way the light signal changed and got a clearer picture of J1407b’s ring system. Their findings: It’s roughly 200 times as large as the rings around Saturn, each of its more than 30 rings are tens of millions of miles wide, and there are gaps between the concentric rings that suggest the presence of exomoons similar to Saturn’s “shepherd” moons. The planet’s mass is 10 to 40 times greater than Saturn’s.

“You could think of it as kind of a super Saturn,” one researcher said. “The details that we see in the light curve are incredible,” added another. “The eclipse lasted for several weeks, but you see rapid changes on time scales of tens of minutes as a result of fine structures in the rings.” This is the first evidence to support the long-held theory that moons can form from a planet’s circling debris, reports Discovery. The findings, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, are the result of a collaboration between the University of Rochester and the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands and use data from the SuperWASP project.

Cool, huh?  But wait!  There is more!

Just how ancient is a newly discovered solar system? “By the time the Earth formed, the planets in this system were already older than our planet is today,” University of Birmingham researcher Tiago Campante tells the BBC. The solar system—a star named Kepler-444 that’s orbited by five planets—was uncovered via an analysis of data gathered by the Kepler telescope over a four-year period. The work was published yesterday in the Astrophysical Journal. Why the find is attracting so much attention: It’s being described as a “replica” or “twin” solar system of our own. In terms of size, the planets fall between Mercury and Venus, making it the “oldest known system of terrestrial-sized planets,” per the study.

But likely not a life-sustaining one: The planets are too close to the star to permit life, with orbits about 10% of the distance Earth is from the sun. As far as age goes, the solar system came into being 11.2 billion years ago, a determination researchers made using asteroseismology (sound waves trapped within the star cause natural resonances that spur tiny changes in the star’s brightness; age is measured from these variations, reports YaleNews). And as far as distance goes, it’s 117 light-years away. How the researchers frame the significance of the discovery: “We thus show that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the universe’s 13.8 billion year history, leaving open the possibility for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy.” That leads Discovery News to ask, “Could alien life have already come and gone in our galaxy’s history?” (Another noteworthy find: the coldest spot in the universe.)

There you have it….all the worthless space info you did not ask for…..and YOU ARE WELCOME!

Earth 2 Found!

It is the weekend and the world is waiting smiling at the outcome of the stand off in France…..

But I will go off in a different direction……back in the 90’s there was an obscure sci fi show called Earth 2……humans go off the colonize a new Earth-like planet….it was pretty mundane most of the time but there were a few cool twists here and there……I bring this up because of the space news that came out recently…….

If you’re sick of Earth and have a spacecraft capable of traveling hundreds of light-years, astronomers have spotted the most promising destination yet. Kepler-438b is a newly-confirmed potential “Earth twin” detected by the Kepler Space Telescope, the BBC reports, one of eight confirmed new exoplanets. The planet, about 470 light-years away in the Lyra constellation, is the most Earth-like ever spotted outside our solar system. It’s only slightly larger than our planet, sits in the “Goldilocks zone” where the temperature is right for liquid water to flow, and probably has a rocky surface, researchers say. Its dwarf star gives it around 40% more heat than our planet receives from the sun, and its years are just 35 days long.

The latest find brings the number of confirmed worlds spotted by Kepler—including Kepler-186f, the previous most Earth-like find—to just over 1,000, with more than 3,000 still to be vetted, reports Scientific American. To search for clues that life may exist on Kepler-438b and other planets, researchers plan to examine Kepler data for signs of moons, which help stabilize orbits and temperatures, and for gas giants in the same solar system, which reduce the odds of catastrophic asteroid hits, the Guardian reports. (Last month, Kepler data revealed a possible water world, or “mini-Neptune,” 180 light-years away.)

Could it be life imitating art?

Look Up!

Are you a star gazer?  If so, then go outside this weekend and look up.

Sky watchers can ring in the new year again with the return of the annual Quadrantid meteor shower this weekend. An almost full moon might reduce visibility, but those willing to give it a try should bundle up Saturday night and head out between midnight and dawn Sunday, reports Earth & Sky. The advice at Space.com is a bit more specific: It pegs the best time as between midnight and 2am local time and advises star-gazers to “watch the sky in the east, about half way up to the zenith.”

Enjoy!

More Space Sciencey Stuff

It is the weekend after Xmas…..and it is time for me to do what I always do….give you stuff that is not your everyday posting on the internet…..I am a space geek since the days of Buster Crabbe as Buck Rogers in the Saturday Serials……

First, the space telescope Kepler…….and its newest findings…….

The Kepler spacecraft has had its shares of ups and downs since its 2009 launch. The downs have included a 2013 mechanical failure that left Kepler supposedly “beyond repair”. The ups have included a “resourceful strategy” that made use of pressure from sunlight to allow Kepler to be repurposed for a “K2 mission” announced a little more than a year ago. And that K2 mission has arrived at its first success: the confirmed discovery of an Earth-like planet, the New York Times reports. Kepler’s directive is to seek out new planets by basically staring at stars all day and watching for “transits,” those blips on the screen when a planet passes in front of its parent star. The newly discovered planet, called HIP 116454b, is said to be 2.5 times the size of our planet, 12 times the mass, and about 180 light-years from Earth, Universe Today reports.

“Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Kepler has been reborn and is continuing to make discoveries,” says Andrew Vanderburg, who led the team behind the find. Kepler sighted HIP 116454b during a February test run (the K2 mission officially began in May), and its existence was verified with ground telescopes and Canada’s MOST satellite. Astronomers are calling it a possible “water world or a ‘mini-Neptune,’ with a small core and a billowing gaseous atmosphere,” as per the Times. Because of its close, 9.1-day orbit around its star, the planet would be too hot to be habitable, scientists say. Still, Kepler’s mission continues. “K2 is uniquely positioned to … further define the boundary between rocky worlds like Earth and ice giants like Neptune,” a Kepler/K2 project scientist says in a NASA press release. (Astronomers think they found their first “exomoon” hovering around an exoplanet last year.)

Next is the Martian Rover…..it keeps finding groundbreaking stuff……its newest finding…..Mars is farting!

The Mars rover has delivered what a NASA scientist calls an “oh my gosh moment”—it detected methane on the red planet, reports the New York Times. The discovery is making headlines because the gas had to originate somewhere, and one possibility is that the source is some form of microbial life, reports the Guardian. “That we detect methane in the atmosphere on Mars is not an argument that we have found evidence of life on Mars, but it’s one of the few hypotheses that we can propose that we must consider,” says scientist John Grotzinger of the Curiosity team. The rover picked up spikes in the levels of methane that disappeared in a matter of weeks.

The source, however, could be geological rather than biological, explains National Geographic: “Interactions between water and rock could produce methane, as could sunlight cooking off meteorite debris on the Martian surface.” It’s also possible that even if microbes did create the methane, the bugs are long gone, reports the BBC. The gas could have been trapped underground eons ago, and it surfaces periodically because of thermal disturbances. The best hope for real answers is if Curiosity happens to detect a large amount of the gas that can be properly analyzed. Today’s news is all the more surprising because NASA announced just last year that the rover could find no methane at all.

Every year we expand our knowledge of the universe……and soon we will have confirmation of life beyond our little third rock from the sun…..

Some Say That Life Here Began Out There

Iconic opening dialog from Battle Star Galatica…..

Since the beginning of time there has been a debate as to where life began on the planet Earth……some say divine intervention…..others think it is just biology…..and others think that some alien had something to do with this…..

Recently the European Space Agency landed a probe on a comet but it was misplaced in iys landing and now the batteries are dead……part of its mission was to collect samples and to check for the building blocks of life…..

 

LBCI | Comet team detects organic molecules, basis of life on Earth.

Bizarre Things Spotted on Mars: Ball, Traffic Lights, Faces, Finger and Huge Penis

The weekend and abreak from the newest war that we all approve of ……..but I will talk about Mars today……

There have been a wealth of movies about Mars…..but some of the coolest stuff has come from the rovers that are trekking around the planet….

Take a look see and tell me what you think…..

 

Bizarre Things Spotted on Mars: Ball, Traffic Lights, Faces, Finger and Huge Penis.

Mars, The Magical Place

Today begins my traditional two days of rest and mental cleansing……..as usual I try to find a subject that will take my mind as far away from the insanity of the world and give me something cool to think about……..

MARS!  It has been a fascination of us earthlings for a long time….and since the 70’s we have been studying the planet, fist hand…….we have seen the ‘pyramids”, the shiny lights mystery and of course there is the famous “face”….now that one thing cause so much controversy that at times it got humorous…….and now we have yet another mystery for us to contemplate…….

First, Mars was thought to be invaded by jelly doughnuts. Now, some are claiming the latest photos from NASA’s Curiosity rover show proof of human or animal life on the Red Planet. UFO Blogger first discovered what it calls a “fossilized thigh bone” in a photo snapped by the rover’s MastCam on Aug. 14, and truly, the object looks like one. So what does NASA have to say of the find? So far, nothing. This is just the latest of many, um, interesting finds on Mars, including what some claim as an iguana, cat, two dinosaurs, a toy boat, and a mysterious light, the Houston Chronicle reports.

 

Okay, check out the pic and you tell me what you see…..time to get creative people!

Mars, The Red Planet

My weekend begins…..a leisurely two days where I do anything NOT related to politics…….

Remember War of the Worlds…….a Martian invasion began when Mars was at its closet point to the Earth…..well guess what?  It is close….again…….

The red planet is coming in for a close-up with our night sky: As Sky & Telescope reports, Mars will be closer to Earth this month than it’s been since the end of 2007, appearing bigger and brighter in the night sky for the middle two weeks of April. It hits its “opposition”—the point at which it’s opposite the sun—on Tuesday, and zooms closest to Earth the following Monday, April 14.

For context, NBC notes that Mars’ elliptical orbit can take it as much as 250 million miles from Earth, while on April 14 that distance gets down to 57 million miles. “These opportunities only come about every two years,” says Sky & Telescope’s senior editor. “Most of the time, Mars is pretty darn far away.” For sky watchers in the southeast, the red planet is the brightest object in the sky this month; it appears as a yellow-orange color.

When Mars comes into range then maybe we can explain this………..

Is there life on Mars—and has it left its lights on? A strange blip of light in a photo snapped April 3 by NASA’s Curiosity rover has excited UFO enthusiasts, the Houston Chronicle reports. While experts suspect a pixel problem, some believe the light shining upward signals Martians. “This could indicate there there is intelligent life below the ground [that] uses light as we do,” writes the editor of UFO Sightings Daily. “This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process.”

The mysterious light, spotted in a photo taken by the rover’s right-hand navigation camera in a new area being studied known as the Kimberley, does not appear in the photo taken by the left-hand camera, suggesting the “light” is actually a speck of lost data, reports NBC News. It notes a photo taken the day before, again by the right navcam, shows a similar light that the left again did not capture. Whatever it is, the buzz about the blip shows that people are examining the rover photos very closely. An imaging expert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shares his theory: A “cosmic ray hit”affected Curiosity.

But wait!  There is an answer to the light mystery……….

NASA has offered a few more explanations for a strange beam of light spotted in a photo from its Curiosity rover—and none of them involve Martians. The bright spot that has excited UFO enthusiasts is probably either “the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun” or sunlight hitting the camera directly through a vent hole in the camera housing, a NASA imaging scientist tells Space.com. Cosmic rays hitting the camera are also a possibility, he says.

Whatever the cause, this is far from the first time such a light has appeared in images from the Mars rover. “In the thousands of images we’ve received from Curiosity, we see ones with bright spots nearly every week,” the NASA scientist says. The rover has now arrived in an area known as “the Kimberley” where four different types of rock intersect; there, it can study samples for clues to environments that might once have harbored life, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Maybe we can answer one of those big questions of life….Is There Life On Mars?

Life Is Where You Find It

The weekend and I will do as usual….I will post on something other than the sandal du jour or the latest talking points……

The common theory is that if we re to find life elsewhere in the universe a key ingredient will be…..water.  Water in various forms have been found in the planets of our solar system and the theory is that there maybe millions of other planets with this necessary ingredient……and then beyond……

(Newser) – It’s seen as more of a confirmation of theory than a startling discovery, but scientists have found water in the atmosphere of five huge planets outside our solar system. A potential sign of life? Not quite, explains the LA Times. These five gas giants (or “hot Jupiters”) are too close to their suns and thus way too hot for that. Still, researchers say the Hubble discovery is a “step forward” in the hunt for better-suited planets, reports Space.com. It’s also the first confirmed detection of such water vapor.

“It is one thing to say these planets should have water vapor and it’s another thing to actually measure it,” says a University of Maryland astronomer who co-authored the study in the Astrophysical Journal. And a NASA scientist says the discovery “really opens the door for comparing how much water is present in atmospheres on different kinds of exoplanets—for example, hotter versus cooler ones.” For the record, the five planets have the “unromantic” names of WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b, and XO-1b, notes National Geographic

Good news?  What will this knowledge accomplish?

Life Here Started Out There

Famous opening of the original scifi show, Battlestar Galactica…….but how true is it?  if you believe the ancient astronaut theory then we are all children of the stars………but does science back this up?

Newser) – Were our earliest ancestors Martians? A new study suggests that all life on Earth may have originated on the Red Planet, the BBC reports. That’s because Mars would have had plenty of the minerals that are best at forging RNA, which is one of the key components of life and is believed to have predated DNA. On Earth, those minerals would have dissolved into the ocean (water is “corrosive” to RNA, adds Space.com). But life could have formed on Mars, then headed here on meteorites, suggests US scientist Steven Benner; he’s not the first to propose such a theory, the BBC notes.

The investigation centers on how atoms were arranged to form RNA, DNA, and proteins. Benner says minerals containing the elements boron and an oxidized form of molybdenum were central to the process—but at the time, Earth was probably incapable of supporting enough of such minerals. He tells Space.com that analysis of a Martian meteorite revealed the presence of boron on Mars, and “we now believe that the oxidized form of molybdenum was there, too.” As such, “the evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock,” says Benner. “It’s lucky that we ended up here, nevertheless—as certainly Earth has been the better of the two planets for sustaining life.” Click for more on how nobody really wants to head back there.

So are we the children of organisms from mars or are we the product of some guy with an intelligent design in mind?  Or is it the same thing?

Thoughts?