Joined: Feb 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 251 Location: Queensland Australia
Have European Astronomers found Dark Matter? « Result #1 on Dec 21, 2009, 6:03am »
Dark Matter?
After years and years of research, debates, and studies, European astronomers may have found dark matter. Several years ago a satellite has detected and abnormal energy which may be dark matter. According to the researchers, the Universe consists of 5% of ordinary material (atoms), 23% of dark matter, and 72% of dark energy.
Although dark matter and dark energy are a mystery, the astrophysicists have somehow calculated what you can find in the cosmos. Until now dark matter was observed indirectly thanks to the gravitational forces exerted on the visible matter. However, the European astronomers believe that dark matter is that mysterious energy signal that was detected by a satellite.
In the meantime, the Universe remains an infinite puzzle, and astronomers can only argue what can be found in the cosmos. Some say that darl matter is Universe’s new dimension, some say that the dark matter consists of a different type of particle called WIMPs, while others are convinced that the dark matter is based on sub-atomic or supersymmetric particles.
According to this new study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, the dark matter may have been detected by the orbiting satellite called “Pamela”. The leader of the team, Piergiorgio Picozza, says that they found a huge number of positrons in cosmic rays which is anomalous.
“Some scientists think this is dark matter, while others think we have to study contributions from other positron sources. We need much more verification, which can come from other observations,” said Picozza.
Joined: Feb 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 251 Location: Queensland Australia
Alien features - What would they look like « Result #2 on Dec 18, 2009, 2:42am »
Alien features - What would they look like. The building blocks of life give us a clue.
Thousands of years ago we were walking on all fours, then a wonderful thing happened to us - we stood up. When we did, two hands became free to hold things, study things and build things. Knowledge was passed from one generation to another and the industrial revolution began.
Pause for a moment and think of the hundreds of things you do with your hands every day, and how your mind is consentrating as you are doing them. So it was our hands that made the difference. This is how our brain developed and is still doing so to this very day. Computers are turning us into cybermen.
But hands are only part of the building process, we must be able to see what we are doing as well. So how many eyes has evolution provided us with and why. To find the answer, scientists studied thousands of different creatures, the animals, the birds, the insects and the crawly things. To their microscopes they went, down, down, and everything has two eyes. Two are in focus, one does not have a backup system, and three are not required. But where has evolution decided they should be, and why.
Here we have evolution in its finest form and in true theory of reason. If our eyes wre on our toes we couldn't see over a brick, and on our knees we couldn't see over a sinktop, but if they are on the highest part of our body we can see the mountains beyond.
Beside our eyes are our ears, nose and mouth, and close behind is our brain, for we are but mortal creatures and must be able to defend ourselves. We must be able to see danger, hear danger, smell danger and taste danger. Everything must be close so the danger signals can travel the shortest distance to our brain for instant reaction. Everything must be in a module says evolution, at the highest part of our body where the eyes are - we call it a head.
Now lets see about that said the scientists, and they did. Those creatures we can see, those we cannot, and everything has a head, every single one of them, moulded by the building blocks of life. This is why we loo k the way we do.
Worms have no eyes only because of their burrowing nature, and there are fish at the bottom of our deepest oceans that have no eyes because of tremendous pressure, but have two round bone indents where eyes would be.
Because the building blocks of life are abundant in the Universe, theory of reason tells us that there are basic trends in evolution. Aliens on other worlds may have heads four inches taller than ours, crammed with knowledge through the ages, but somewhere along the line they must have stood up, and from there their evolutionary path would not be much different from ours.
It is possible that intelligent alien civilizations may have evolved billions of years before us, so why have we not had a visit? Because they would be mortal creatures just like us. Distances are so vast that mortality would defeat them.
If we say that a lifespan on Earth is 80 years (three score and twenty) and we travelled across our galaxy from one end to the other at the speed of light, then 1,250 such three score and twnnty's would take place with life and death, before someone got there. - 100,000 years.
But if alienns did arrive at our solar system they would be peaceful for their species would have survived what our nuclear armed world is going through at the present time, mastered the art of global unison and evolved into the time of future man.
Joined: Feb 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 251 Location: Queensland Australia
Galaxy collision switches on Black Hole « Result #3 on Dec 13, 2009, 5:15am »
NGC 6872 & IC 4970
This composite image of data from three different telescopes shows an ongoing collision between two galaxies, NGC 6872 and IC 4970. X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is shown in purple, while Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared data is red and optical data from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) is colored red, green and blue.
Astronomers think that supermassive black holes exist at the center of most galaxies. Not only do the galaxies and black holes seem to co-exist, they are apparently inextricably linked in their evolution. To better understand this symbiotic relationship, scientists have turned to rapidly growing black holes - so-called active galactic nucleus (AGN) to study how they are affected by their galactic environments.
The latest data from Chandra and Spitzer that IC 4970, the small galaxy at the top of the image, contains an AGN, but one that is heavily cocooned in gas and dust. This means in optical light telescopes, like the VLT, there is little to see. X-rays and infrared light, however, can penetrate this veil of material and reveal the light show that is generated as material heats up before falling onto the black hole (seen as a bright point-like source).
Despite this obscuring gas and dust around IC 4970, the Chandra data suggest that there is not enough hot gas in IC 4970 to fuel the growth of the AGN. Where, then, does the food supply for this black hole come from? The answer lies with its partner galaxy, NGC 6872.
These two galaxies are in the process of undergoing a collision, and the gravitational attraction from IC 4970 has likely pulled over some of NGC 6872's deep reservoir of cold gas (seen prominently in the Spitzer data), providing a new fuel supply to power the giant black hole.
Joined: Feb 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 251 Location: Queensland Australia
Mars - A tale of planetary woe « Result #4 on Nov 16, 2009, 9:41am »
A Tale of Planetary Woe
Echus Chasma
Planetary scientists believe that waterfalls may have once cascaded down these steep cliffs at Echus Chasma on Mars. Mars has many desiccated landscapes like this one, thought to have been sculpted by abundant water in the distant past.
Mars billions of years ago
Once upon a time - roughly four billion years ago - Mars was warm and wet, much like Earth. Liquid water flowed on the martian surface in long rivers that emptied into shallow seas. A thick atmosphere blanketed the planet and kept it warm. Living microbes might have even arisen, some scientists believe, starting Mars down the path toward becoming a second life-filled planet next door to our own.
Ancient mars
But that's not how things turned out. Mars today is bitter cold and bone dry. The rivers and seas are long gone. Its atmosphere is thin and wispy,and if Martian microbes still exist, they're probably eking out a meager existence somewhere beneath the dusty Martian soil.
The landscape
What happened? Why did Mars dry up and Freeze over? These haunting questions have long puzzled scientists. A few years from now we might finally know the answer, thanks to a new orbiter NASA will send to Mars called MAVEN (short For Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution).
Marven spacecraft
"The goal of MAVEN is to figure out what processes were responsible for those changes in the climate," says Bruce Jakosky, Principal Investigator for MAVEN at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
One way or another, scientists believe, Mars must have lost its most precious asset: its thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide. CO2 in Mars's atmosphere is a greenhouse gas, just as it is in our own atmosphere.
Over the last four billion years, Mars somehow lost most of that blanket. Scientists have proposed various theories for how that loss happened. Perhaps an asteroid impact blew most of the atmosphere into space in one catastrophic event. Or maybe erosion by the solar wind - a stream of charged particles emanating from the sun - could have slowly stripped the atmosphere away over eons. The planet's surface might also have absorbed the CO2 and locked it up in minerals such as carbonate.
MAVEN will be the first mission to Mars specifically designed to help scientists understand the ongoing escape of CO2 and other gases into space. The probe will orbit Mars for at least one Earth-year. At the elliptical orbit's low point, MAVEN will be 125 km above the surface; its high point will take it more tha n 6000 km out into space. This wide range of altitudes will enable MAVEN to sample Mars's atmosphere more thoroughly than ever before.
As it orbits, MAVEN's instruments will track ions and molecules in this broad cross-section of the Martian atmosphere, thoroughly documenting the flow of CO2 and other molecules into space for the first time.
Credits: These are NASA/ESA images. Mars express/ESA
Joined: Feb 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 251 Location: Queensland Australia
Examining the center of the Milky Way « Result #5 on Nov 11, 2009, 6:51am »
The Center Of The Milky Way
In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, NASA's Great Observatories - the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory - have collaborated to produce an unprecedented image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy.
For the first time, scientists have identified the cluster of Quintuplet stars in the Milky Way's galactic center, next to the super massive black hole, as massive binary stars nearing the end of their life cycle, solving a mystery that had dogged astronomers for more than 15 years.
In this spectacular image, observations using infrared light and X-ray light see through the obscuring dust and reveal the intense activity near the galactic core.
Note that the center of the galaxy is located within the bright white region to the right of and just below the middle of the image (labeled Sagitarrius A when you roll your mouse over the above composite image). The entire image width covers about one-half a degree, about the same angular width as the full moon.
Each telescope's contribution is presented in a different color:
+ Yellow represents the near-infrared observations of Hubble. They outline the energetic regions where stars are being born as well as reveal hundreds of thousands of stars.
+ Red represents the infrared observations of Spitzer. The radiation and winds from stars create glowing dust clouds that exhibit complex structures from compact, spherical globules to long, stringy filaments.
+ Blue and violet represents the X-ray observations of Chandra. X-rays are emitted by gas heated to millions of degrees by stellar explosions and by outflows from the supermassive black hole in the galaxy's center.
+ The bright blue blob on the left side of the full field image is emission from a double star system containing either a neutron star or a black hole.
When these views are brought together, this composite image provides one of the most detailed views ever of our galaxy's center.
Joined: Feb 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 251 Location: Queensland Australia
To glaxies deep into the Universe « Result #6 on Nov 8, 2009, 6:40pm »
Deep into the Universe
The Meade 16 inch LXD 200 telescope
This 16 inch cassegrain telescope with an 8,500 image databank and electronic go-to function will take you into the bowels of the universe. To galaxies deep into the void. To where the whispers of the cosmos are calling us, and to where ancient civilizations abound.
Here you will be able to extend your imagination and wonder at the make up of these civilizations, their landscapes, their features, their intelligence and their technology.
Although we may not be able to see their planets or their movements, but at lease we have the capacity to view the galaxies in which they live, and the comfort to sit back, gaze in awe, and wonder
Joined: Feb 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 251 Location: Queensland Australia
Missions to Mars wil use nuclear energy « Result #9 on Oct 28, 2009, 5:08am »
The Orion Project
Moscow, Russia (XNA) Oct 28, 2009 The future Mars manned exploration projects will only become true by using nuclear energy, said President and Chief Designer of Russia's Energia Aerospace Corporation Vitaly Lopota here on Monday.
Nucear pulse propulsion
Since current rocket technologies are not sufficient for the future exploration of Mars and the whole Solar system, and since no alternative energy resources have been found as of now, the only possible way to implement those projects would be by using nuclear energy, Lopota said at an academic conference on aerospace.
The Vasimr rocket
Lopota also believed that the Mars projects should be prioritized over the Lunar ones, because the technologies applied to the former could be used in the latter, but it would be more difficult to achieve the goal in the reversed order.
Joined: Feb 2008 Gender: Male Posts: 251 Location: Queensland Australia
Supercomputers study Black Holes « Result #10 on Oct 21, 2009, 7:51am »
Artist's rendering of a Black Hole
Scietists at the Rochester Institute of Technology have won several grants to further extend their own supercomputer and make use of two of the fastest supercomputers in the world in their quest to shine light on Black Holes.
Petascale supercomputer
Since light cannot escape from the surface of a Black Hole, scientists rely on computer algorithms to study the massive dark objects. Researchers in the Center for Computational relativity and Gravitation use computers to study what cannot be seen directly.
A Black Hole
"It is a thrilling time to study Black Holes." Says Manuela Campanelli, center director. "we're nearing the point where our calculations will be used to test out one of the last unexplored aspects of Einstein's general theory of relativity, possibly confirmng that it properly describes the strongest gravitational fields in the Universe."
Three National Science Foundation awards have brought the center's external funding total to $2.9 milion in the past 3 years. The awards - plus time won on a top supercomputer - will dramatically enhance the team's access to the most sophisticated computer power in the world.
RIT's center for computational relativity and gravitation is one of two relativity groups that won a National Science Foundation petascale computing resource allocation grant reserving time on a super- supercomputer called "Blue Waters."
The Machine is sheduled to begin production in 2011 at the University of Illinois' national center for supercomputing applications. Blue Waters, which will consist of more than 200,000 processing cores, is expected to be the most powerful supercomputer in the world for open scientific research.
Albert Einstein;s institute at Oak Ridge national laboratory developes tools for understanding many of the most energetic events observed inAstronomy, from millisecond long bursts of gamma rays to active galactic nuclei, that constantly emit more than a trillion suns' worth of energy.
"Computers are only going to get better and faster over the coming years, says Campanelli," And with these grants and allocations, RIT's numerical relativity group should stay at the forefront of scientific computation for years to come."
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