Saturday, November 29, 2008
Key Molecule for Life Found in Habitable Region of the Galaxy
A sugar molecule linked to the origin of life was discovered in a potentially habitable region of our galaxy.
The molecule, called glycolaldehyde, was spotted in a large star-forming area of space around 26,000 light-years from Earth in the less-chaotic outer regions of the Milky Way. This suggests the sugar could be common across the universe, which is good news for extraterrestrial-life seekers.
"This is an important discovery as it is the first time glycolaldehyde, a basic sugar, has been detected towards a star-forming region where planets that could potentially harbor life may exist," Serena Viti of University College London said in a press release. - Wired
Labels: Astronomy, Science
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Virtual Telescopes Tweaked
Just as space telescopes are getting better and better, so are the telescopes you can download onto your computer over the Internet. The software packages are becoming more and more like video games, letting you zoom out from Earth to explore a 3-D universe - while keeping the science rock-solid enough for professional astronomers to use.
Microsoft Research has made a splash in the past couple of weeks with the "Autumnal Equinox Beta" release of its WorldWide Telescope. (Microsoft is a partner in the msnbc.com joint venture.) We reviewed WorldWide Telescope six months ago, and since then, Microsoft has smoothed out some features and added others.
One of the coolest features is a 3-D rendering of the universe that lets you fly away from Earth, out of the solar system and into the stars that surround us. "You understand that the stars aren't just flat spots painted on the dome of the sky," Jonathan Fay, one of the lead developers for the software, told me during a demo this week.
The 3-D views are integrated all the way up from Microsoft's Virtual Earth database to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's map of large-scale structure in the universe. "We just went from looking at Building 99 [the home of Microsoft Research] to a view of about 21 gigaparsecs," Fay said after zooming out to the max. "This basically lets you go anywhere in the universe." - MSNBC
The article goes on to review - and link - to a few other services as well. Pretty cool stuff.
Labels: Astronomy, Science
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Mysterious Dark Blue Material
A couple o'cool space articles...
WASHINGTON - Earth's first nearly full look at Mercury reveals the tiny lifeless planet took a far greater role in shaping itself than was thought, with volcanoes spewing "mysterious dark-blue material." New images from NASA's Messenger space probe should help settle a decades-old debate about what caused parts of Mercury to be somewhat smoother than it should be. NASA released photos Wednesday, from Messenger's flyby this month, that gave the answer: Lots of volcanic activity, far more than signs from an earlier probe revealed. - Seattle Times
Wouldn't that be a cool name for a back up band? "Your name here" and the Mysterious Dark-Blue Material.
WASHINGTON - For the first time, astronomers think that they've found evidence of an alien solar system around a star close enough to Earth to be visible to the naked eye.
They say that at least one and probably three or more planets are orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani, 10.5 light-years - about 63 trillion miles - from Earth. Only eight stars are closer.
The host star, slightly smaller and cooler than our sun, is in the constellation Eridanus - the name of a mythological river - near Orion in the northern sky.
Epsilon Eridani is much younger than the sun, about 850 million years old compared with 4.5 billion years for our system. - Yahoo
I wanna see it.
Labels: Astronomy, Science
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Very Cool
NASA scientists said Wednesday they had found liquid on Saturn's moon Titan, only the second body in the solar system after Earth to have fluid on its surface.
The groundbreaking discovery was made after analysis of instruments on the US-European Cassini probe, the spacecraft that has been orbiting Saturn since 2004 following a 3.5 billion-kilometer (2.2 billion miles) voyage. - AFPLabels: Astronomy, Science
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Erie Effect
"Scientists say it's a mirage, but others swear that when the weather is right, Clevelanders can see across Lake Erie and spot Canadian trees and buildings 50 miles away.
Eyewitness accounts have long been part of the city's history. "The whole sweep of the Canadian shore stood out as if less than three miles away," a story in The Plain Dealer proclaimed in 1906. "The distant points across the lake stood out for nearly an hour and then faded away." "I can see how this could be possible," said Lawrence Krauss, chairman of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University." - Yahoo
Labels: Cleveland, Science
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Excerpt - Relevance
"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness." - Carl Sagan from The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Labels: Excerpt, Science
Sunday, May 16, 2004
UFO's & Ball Lightning
Nearly lost amongst the ugliness surrounding the beheading in Iraq was this little news item...
- A videotape aired Monday on national television showed a series of brilliant objects flying at more than 11,480 feet over southern Campeche state. The tape was filmed March 5 by air force pilots using a video camera equipped with an infrared lens.
The objects appear to accelerate rapidly and change course suddenly. At least one crew member testified in a videotaped interview that the objects encircled the military jet at a distance of at least two miles. - KTVU
I'm not a believer in aliens (Hell, I was pissed off during Muppets in Space when the Great Gonzo was revealed to be an alien instead of a Whatever). But I'd like to be. Because let's face it, how frigging cool would that be? My current belief system is split evenly between wanting to believe, a healthy amount of skepticism and a deep appreciation for the possibilities of unreal things suddenly becoming real. Remember the Coelacanth? Thought to be extinct for millions of years until some guy caught one while fishing. The Megamouth shark did not exist in the minds of men until the Navy pulled anchor one sunny afternoon in Hawaii. Giant squids were regulated to fiction until they started washing up on shore.
So I try to keep an open mind when it comes to this kind of stuff. Besides, it's a lot of fun to read about. Which brings us back to the Mexican UFO's.
What the hell are those things? Believers will tell you this is the most significant advancement in the pursuit of extraterrestrial life since the award-winning documentary Men in Black. Not to be left out, scientists are developing a few theories of their own.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A cluster of mysterious objects that surrounded a Mexican Air Force plane, alarming the pilots and sparking a UFO scare, could be a weather phenomenon known as ball lightning, a scientist said on Friday.
"Just as you have lightning between clouds and ground, you can also have it within the clouds and sometimes ball lightning can develop. I feel this is one of these rare events," said Herrera, based at Mexico's National Autonomous University. - Reuters
Ball lightning is interesting stuff, some scientists don't even believe it exists. So we're down to UFO's, which most people believe don't exist, or ball lightning, which may or not exist. That really clarifies things. Whatever they are, it'll be fun to see where (if anywhere) the investigations into this will go.
Labels: Science, UFOS
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