Why did your zodiac sign change? We asked the astronomer who started it all [Mad Astronomy]
The internet is burning up with the news that the zodiac has been rearranged. There’s a 13th sign, Ophiuchus, and people who think they’re Virgos are actually Leos. What happened here? We talked to the astronomer who caused the fuss. More »
Heaviest Black Hole Yet Could Swallow Our Entire Solar System [Space]
The black hole in the nearby galaxy M87 weighs in at 6.6 billion suns, making it the local universe’s heavyweight champ. It’s big enough to swallow our solar system in one gulp. More »
10-year-old Canadian becomes the youngest person to discover a supernova [Amateur Astronomy]
Kathryn Aurora Gray, aged 10, discovered a magnitude 17 supernova on New Year’s Eve, in the constellation of Camelopardalis. Gray had learned a 14-year-old was the youngest to find a supernova and felt sure she could beat that. More »
Where No Google Android Has Gone Before [Video]
It’s not easy being an Android. Sure, you’re cute enough as a logo, but it’s still the phones that get most of the attention. Until this little guy took matters into his own hands, and into outer space. More »
NASA Engineers Propose Combining a Rail Gun and a Scramjet to Fire Spacecraft Into Orbit [Nasa]
NASA has been working on creating a new, cheaper method to launch spacecrafts. Their latest proposal involves train tracks, a rail gun and a scramjet. Here’s what they’re trying to do: More »
Voyager 1 will exit solar system soon, is so close to the void it can taste it
Endurance: it’s important in every race, including the space race, even though many pundits would argue that it kind of fizzled a long time ago. Thirty-three years prior to now, NASA‘s Voyager 1 began its journey to check in on the outer planets. It accomplished that goal in 1989, and has since moved on to bigger and better things — you know, like leaving the solar system. Ten billion miles away, Voyager 1’s Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument is spitting out “solid zeroes,” which means it’s not detecting any more outward movement from solar winds. The heliopause (read: the official edge of the solar system) is just a few short years away for the radioactive-powered spacecraft, which is frightening to think about regardless of your experience in Space Camp. What will happen once it enters interstellar space? We’re not sure, but we’re trying to set up radio comms with its earth-bound synthesizer progeny for some kind of freaky space jam. We’ll keep you posted.
[Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech]
Voyager 1 will exit solar system soon, is so close to the void it can taste it originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
NASA’s Space Shuttle launch videos are spectacularly incredible, incredibly spectacular
Did you know that it takes nearly seven and a half million pounds of thrust to get a Space Shuttle off the ground and into the final frontier? NASA opts to generate that power by burning through 1,000 gallons of liquid propellants and 20,000 pounds of solid fuel every second, which as you might surmise, makes for some arresting visuals. Thankfully, there are plenty of practical reasons why NASA would want to film its launches (in slow motion!), and today we get to witness some of that awe-inspiring footage, replete with a silky voiceover explaining the focal lengths of cameras used and other photographic minutiae. It’s the definition of an epic video, clocking in at over 45 minutes, but if you haven’t got all that time, just do it like us and skip around — your brain will be splattered on the wall behind you either way.
NASA’s Space Shuttle launch videos are spectacularly incredible, incredibly spectacular originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Dec 2010 07:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Did NASA Discover Life on One of Saturn’s Moons? [Aliens]
NASA is holding a press conference on Thursday “to discuss an astrobiology finding.” Are they going to announce that they’ve found evidence of extraterrestrial life? More »
Woman Registers Ownership of the Sun
The Incas and the Aztecs worshiped it. Ancient Europeans erected megaliths to it. Several civilizations based their calendars around it. Until now, however, no one has ever owned the sun.
Back in September, one Angeles Duran of Galicia, Spain took bold steps to change that. Following in the footsteps of an American man who claims to now own the moon, the 49-year-old Salvaterra do Mino resident registered ownership of the life-giving star at a notary public in her area.
The notarized document states that Duran is now the “owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the centre of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000 kilometers.”
Duran plans to charge for use of the sun. She won’t take all of the money herself, though. According to AFP, half of the money will go to Spain's government, 20 percent will go to the country's pension fund, 10 percent to research, 10 percent to world hunger. The other 10 she'll keep for herself.
A lady’s gotta make a living, after all.
Saturn’s moon Rhea may have a breathable atmosphere [Future Space Colony]
Saturn’s icy moon Rhea has an oxygen and carbon dioxide atmosphere that is very similar to Earth’s. Even better, the carbon dioxide suggests there’s life – and that possibly humans could breathe the air. More »
Giant Mystery Space Bubbles Discovered
Space. It’s an expansive cold place full of giant scary
things–huge terrifying object like these space bubbles. There are two of them,
jutting out on either side of the Milky Galaxy, north and south. The two
objects, taken together, measure 50,000 light years.
The giant space bubbles weren’t discovered until recently,
when astronomer Doug Finkbeiner happened upon them at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, thanks to NASA’s Fermi
Gamma-Ray Telescope.
So, what are they? Who knows? Not Finkbeiner. He told the press, "We don't fully
understand their nature or origin." We do know that they're big, however–they take
up roughly half of the visible sky. Apparently we've haven't seen them until
now, thanks to all of the gamma radiation in the sky.
International Space Station marks ten years of continuous habitation
It’s not often we get to mark a ten year anniversary… in space, but that’s just what the International Space Station is now celebrating. It was ten years ago today that the first crew arrived for a stay on the space station (which itself had been in orbit for two years prior), and it has been continuously occupied by humans ever since. It’s also, of course, expanded considerably during that time period, and seen its share of bumps along the way, but it’s not ready to de-orbit any time soon. The anniversary also marks the halfway point of the ISS’s expected lifetime and, if past history is any indication, it could well end up getting an extension beyond that — even if it’s with an all-robot crew. Hit up the source links below for NASA’s own retrospective on ten years of life on the station.
International Space Station marks ten years of continuous habitation originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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A Solar Eclipse Gets Its Close Up [Video]
The moon passed between NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and the sun for the first time last week, yielding this incredible eclipse photograph. Sorry, awesome solar flare in the bottom left corner, you’ll have to share the spotlight this time. More »
UFOs Neutered Nukes, Officers Claim [Aliens]
A group of retired Air Force officers say they’ve encountered UFOs, and surmise that the space creatures are trying to tell an obstinate human race to abandon its nuclear weapons. That’s right: Earth is being monitored by intergalactic hippies. More »
How a Tiny Magnet Could Produce a Force Field Big Enough To Protect a Space Ship [Forcefields]
While many hurdles are keeping us stuck here on Earth, our solar system’s deadly radiation is chief among them. But scientists now think that a thumb-sized magnet could produce a force field big enough to shield an entire spaceship. More »
Air Force’s Mysterious Space Plane Launches [Classified]
That’s the Air Force‘s super-secret unmanned X-37B space plane hitching a ride on an Atlas V rocket yesterday. No one knows what its mission is. Or even when it’s coming back. More »
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Voyager Unveils the Mystery of the Interstellar Fluff from Hell [Space]
For years, astronomers have been puzzled by the fact that our solar system is crossing a cloud of interstellar hell. One that shouldn’t be there at all. Intergalactic plot to keep us isolated or cosmic event? Voyager got the answer.
Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system. This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together—"The Fluff"—and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all.
The Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected. This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction.
The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff. But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it.
At least, that’s what NASA’s Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University Merav Opher says in the December 24 issue of Nature. I lean to the intergalactic plot to keep our primitive world from entering the Federation of Advanced Civilizations. That, or Ming of Mongo trying to crush our puny asses.
It’s ironic how the whole thing works. Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere protects us from the Sun’s magnetic field and radiation. Then, the Fluff is not destroying us thanks to the Sun’s magnetic field and the solar winds, which is what form the 6.2-billion-mile-wide heliosphere. So my question is: Who protects the Fluff?
I will leave you with that. Go think, my little Earthlings, go. [NASA]
