The Daily Galaxy - Great Discoveries Channel -Your Daily Dose of Awe: Science, Space, Tech

Quasars Hint That the Laws of Nature Change Over Time

Precise measurements on the light from distant quasars suggest that the value of the fine-structure constant may have changed over the history of the universe. If the quasar results are eventually confirmed, our concepts of space and time are sure to change our fundamental understanding of the universe.

The fine-structure constant, or alpha, is the coupling constant for the electromagnetic force. If alpha were just 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars wouldn't be able to make carbon and oxygen, which would have made it impossible for life as we know it in our universe to exist.

Volcanoes Could Signal Presence of an Earth-like Planet

With the Kepler mission in an all out search for rocky, Earth-like planets, astronomers are asking the next logical questions: Do any of those worlds have volcanoes? And if so, could we detect them? Work by theorists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggests that the answer to the latter is a qualified "Yes."

"You would need something truly earthshaking, an eruption that dumped a lot of gases into the atmosphere," said Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger. "Using the James Webb Space Telescope, we could spot an eruption 10 to 100 times the size of Pinatubo for the closest stars," she added. The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines spewed about 17 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere - a layer of air 6 to 30 miles above Earth's surface. The largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, the 1815 Tambora event, was about 10 times more powerful.

A Black Hole With the Mass of a Galaxy (Today's Most Popular)

Located in the Cancer constellation about 3.5 billion light years away, an object dubbed OJ287 is part of a binary black hole system and produces a huge amount of light, fact that is usually associated with the formation of a new galaxy. Quasars mostly consist of a massive black hole, surrounded by a large accretion disk spinning around it, and are powered by the massive amounts of matter falling towards the black hole at its center. Although compacted into objects with a small size, during the feeding process quasars release enough energy to outshine an entire galaxy. 

OJ 287 has produced quasi-periodic optical outbursts going back approximately 100 years, as first apparent on photographic plates from 1891. Its central supermassive black hole is claimed to be the largest known, with a mass of 18 billion solar masses, more than six times the value calculated for the previous largest object.

NEO Watch: Two Asteroids Zipping Past Earth Today

Experts at a NASA lab have announced that two asteroids discovered on Sunday will pass close to Earth today, September 8. The two space rocks are in unrelated orbits, the team says, and pose no danger to Earth. What's unusual is that they will both zip past the planet the same day, even if they come from very different orbits. Astronomers estimate that the undiscovered population of near earth objects (NEOs) orbiting the solar system in our vicinity could number as much as 50 million members.

The image shows the paths that the two asteroids will take as they swing past Earth. When they are nearest, they should become visible to amateur astronomers with moderate-sized telescopes. 

Image of the Day: Our Solar System's Perilous 200-250 Million-Year Galactic Orbit

 

The dusty disk of the Milky Way contains billions of stars, including, of course our Sun which orbits the galaxy every 200-250 million years traveling at a velocity of about 155 miles per second (250 km/sec). It is extremely difficult to define the age of the Milky Way but the age of the oldest star in the Galaxy yet discovered, HE 1523-0901, is estimated to be about 13.2 billion years, nearly as old as the Universe itself.

Recent work at Cardiff University suggests that our solar system's orbit through the Milky Way encounters regular speedbumps - and by "speedbumps" we mean "potentially extinction-causing asteroids".

EcoAlert: New Map Helps Monitor Destruction of Amazon Basin

 

Scientists are studying the effects of global warming in a new high-resolution map that shows carbon locked up in tropical forest vegetation and emitted by land-use practices in Peru's Amazon. The maps were created with satellite mapping, airborne-laser technology, and ground-based plot surveys. And the images may help pave the way for a new United Nations monitoring system to curb deforestation and forest degradation.

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From the X File Dept: "Intelligent Species May Have Evolved Billions of Years Before Earth Came Into Existence."

Recent discoveries in genetics, microbiology, astrobiology, and astrophysics indicates that life in the Milky Way galaxy began n nebular clouds over 10 billion years ago. Given the trillions upon trillions of galaxies which exist in the Hubble length (observable) universe, and the trillions of trillions of supernovas which must have taken place in these galaxies collectively, and thus the innumerable stellar and nebular clouds filled with all the ingredients necessary for life, according to the controversial theories of Rhawn Joseph, of the Brain Research Laboratory and Rudolf Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "it can be deduced that life would have been created, independently, perhaps in numerous galaxies, including the Milky Way long before our planet was formed.

Sci, Space, Tech Fans: Win a $150 Amazon Electronics Gift Card!

Use it for a Free Kindle, Android X Smartphone, Apple iPod or Hundreds of Other Top Brand Electronics Products or Accessories.

Volunteers are invited to discover, review and share Daily Galaxy posts you love on Reddit, Digg or StumbleUpon. Win one of three $150.00 Amazon Gift Card that we're awarding for generating the most views of Daily Galaxy posts in September. Use the gift card to buy a new Amazon Kindle, or Droid X smartphone, Apple iPod, or hundreds of other totally cool electronics brands and accessories. Send us copies of your Digg and/or Reddit or SU stats and email address on September 30. We'll announce the top three winners the 1st week of October. 

August's free Kindle contest was won by Daily Galaxy fans Nir Zahavi of Thornhill, Ontario, Canada; Ben Mesiner of Chicago, Ill; and Madison Pringle of Dallas, TX. 

Email copy(s) of your stats and email address on September 30 to: editor@dailygalaxy.com Winners will receive their gift cards via email from Amazon.com

"The Selfish Biocosm" -A Radical Theory Says We've Already Received a Message from ET

Most great scientific advances are first attacked by the the ruling status quo as heretical in either the religious or scientific sense or both: Giordano Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein are vivid examples.

A new theory of evolution proposed by complexity theorist James Gardner which he terms biocosm proposes that the universe is not a random collection of inorganic matter and life. That intelligence is not some cosmic accident, and that intelligence and life are preprogrammed into the physical laws of nature.

Gardner believes that we've already received a message from ET: a message coded into the laws and constants of our universe, including the inexplicable force we've named dark energy that's accelerating cosmic expansion. His theory makes sense of the observation that the constants seems rigged in favor of the emergence of life. The constants appear improbably favorable to carbon-based life, an unexplained oddity that many of the world's leading scientists have identified as the deepest mystery in all of science.

US Astronauts: "NASA should use private spaceships."

NASA should use private spaceships, according to USA's veteran astronauts. An open letter to Congress signed by 24 former NASA astronauts told Congress that privately owned spacecraft could carry people safely to the International Space Station with SpaceX's DragonLab, a private space taxi, in orbit, leading the way. Space X also signed the largest-ever commercial rocket launch deal for its Falcon 9.

The astronauts argue in favor of a new plan by President Barack Obama to encourage commercial companies to build spacecraft capable of replacing the space shuttles as NASA's means to reach the International Space Station. "We believe that the private sector, working in partnership with NASA, can safely develop and operate crewed space vehicles to low Earth orbit," the astronauts wrote.

Image of the Day: Immense Ring-Like Galaxy Mashup 100,000 Light Years Across

 

A collision of two galaxies has created a spectacular ring shape on a cosmic scale. The Cartwheel Galaxy is part of a group of galaxies about 500 million light years away in the constellation Sculptor. The Cartwheel's rim is an immense ring-like structure 100,000 light years in diameter composed of newly formed, extremely bright, massive stars. When galaxies collide, they pass through each other with their individual stars rarely coming into contact.The ring-like shape is the result of the gravitational disruption caused by a small intruder galaxy passing through a large one, compressing the interstellar gas and dust, and causing a wave of star formation wave to move out from the impact point like a ripple across the surface of a pond. In this case, the large galaxy may have originally been a spiral, not unlike our own Milky Way Galaxy, transformed by the collision.

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Supernova of 161,000 B.C. -Closest to Earth with a Glowing Ring 6 Trillion Miles in Diameter

Supernova 1987A, discovered in 1987, is the closest exploding star to Earth to be detected since 1604 and resides in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way Galaxy. In addition to ejecting massive amounts of hydrogen, 1987A has spewed helium, oxygen, nitrogen and rarer heavy elements like sulfur, silicon and iron. Supernovae are responsible for a large fraction of biologically important elements, including oxygen, carbon and iron found in plants and animals on Earth today. Since the supernova is roughly 163,000 light-years away, the explosion occurred in roughly 161,000 B.C. (One light year is about 6 trillion miles).

While there is, on average, only one supernova per galaxy per century, there is something on the order of 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe. Taking 10 billion years for the age of the Universe (it's actually 13.7 billion, but stars didn't form for the first few hundred million), Dr. Richard Mushotzky of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, derived a figure of 1 billion supernovae per year, or 30 supernovae per second in the observable Universe!

Cosmic 'Ghost': "Evidence of a supermassive black hole equal in power to a billion supernovas."

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory located a cosmic "ghost" that scientists think is evidence of a huge eruption produced by a supermassive black hole equal in power to a billion supernovas. The source, HDF 130, is over 10 billion light years away and existed at a time 3 billion years after the Big Bang, when galaxies and black holes were forming at a high rate. The X-ray ghost, so-called because a diffuse X-ray source has remained after other radiation from the outburst has died away, is in the Chandra Deep Field-North, one of the deepest X-ray images ever taken. 

"We'd seen this fuzzy object a few years ago, but didn't realize until now that we were seeing a ghost", said Andy Fabian of the Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. "It's not out there to haunt us, rather it's telling us something - in this case what was happening in this galaxy billions of year ago."

Image of the Day: The Weird Beauty of the Cone Nebula (Weekend Feature)

 

The Cone Nebula, part of a much larger star-forming complex, is at bottom with inverted Christmas Tree cluster NGC 2264 above the cone; the bright star just above the cone is the tree topper and the very bright star at the top of the image is the center of the tree trunk. The Fox Fur Nebula is at the top right corner. 

From the X Files Dept: "The Pandora Hypothesis"

"If every habitable world in the universe is unique, and the precise chemical conditions of a planet helps shape the life that evolves there, then avatars could allow aliens to visit other worlds from the safety of their spaceship. Could it be that all the stories of alien encounters on Earth were really encounters with alien avatars? Maybe aliens don't actually look like grey humanoids with large eyes and no noses. Instead, that haunting image may simply be what we look like to them."

Astrobiology Magazine

Darwin's Secret Island: A Model of How Human Exploration Could Transform Mars

Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island, one of a number of volcanic islands in the middle of the South Atlantic, located 1,600km (1,000 miles) from the coast of Africa and 2,250km (1,400 miles) from South America was a barren volcanic edifice on the mid-Atlantic ridge -a chain of underwater volcanoes formed as the ocean is wrenched apart. Fast forward to today: its sharp jagged peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest" -great little-known imperial experiment that may hold the key to the future colonisation of Mars.

What happened in the interim, reports the BBC, is the amazing story of how Charles Darwin, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.

"The Universe Exists Because of Spontaneous Creation" -Stephen Hawking

In "The Grand Design," Stephen Hawking and Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow suggest that physics and metaphysics (and religion) are merging. The grand design which we have taken for granted since Newton is more complex than anything we ever dreamed of. Models of the universe are changing radically. Many physicists doublt the reality of a Big Bang. We live in a world in which many physicists have come to believe there are not merely three dimensions plus time, but 10, or possibly 11 -a new world view world that encompasses that includes black holes, supermassive black holes, galaxy-mass black holes, dark matter, dark energy , string theory, M-theory, alternate pasts and alternate futures. 

EcoAlert: Will Earth Mirror the Fate of Easter Island? (Today's Most Popular)

“We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island."

Frank Fenner, virologist 

Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.

If past is prolgue, 70,000 years ago the human population was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis by researchers at Stanford University. The estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

Image of the Day: 3.8 Billion Year-Old Impact Crater on Moon's South Pole

 

A new geologic map of the moon's Schrodinger basin paints an instant, camouflage-colored portrait of the lunar surface after a huge object struck the moon, revealing a patchwork of material, including the peak ring (inner brown ring), recent volcanic activity (red), cratering (yellow) and plains material (dark green and kelly green). The geologic record at Schrödinger is still relatively fresh because the basin is only about 3.8 billion years old; this makes it the moon's second-youngest large basin (it's roughly 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, in diameter).

From the X Files Dept: China -"The UFO Capital of Planet Earth"

Yet another UFO sighting has been reported in Eastern China on August 31st in the southwestern Haiyan County of Zhejiang Province. The object sightedwas very bright, according to eyewitnesses. It was visible for at least three hours. It drew the attention of two reporters from Haiyan’s local television station. The reporters who followed the object by car were said to have taken relatively clear pictures of it. The reporters stated that the pictures they took show: “a round object that had shining blue lights, and several other flickering objects around it.”

The Nemesis Conjecture: Is an Unseen Binary Companion of the Sun Sending Comets Towards Earth?

Some scientists believe that something could be hidden beyond the edge of our solar system a distance of about 50,000 to 100,000 AU (about 1-2 light years), somewhat beyond the Oort cloud. Named “Nemesis” or “The Death Star,” this undetected object could be a red or brown dwarf star, or an even darker presence several times the mass of Jupiter. If our Sun were part of a binary system in which two gravitationally-bound stars orbit a common center of mass, their interaction could disturb the Oort Cloud on a periodic basis, sending comets whizzing towards us. Binary star systems are common in the Milky Way. It is estimated that one-third of the stars in the galaxy are either binary or part of a multiple-star system.

Evolution's 'Big Bang' Links Global Warming to Mass Extinctions

To understand the fossil record and the diversity at any given time, scientists need to gain insight into conditions and match them up with the fossil record.

Greg Retallack of the University of Oregon in Eugene suggests that climate, and specifically global warming, may have contributed to fossil preservation. Retallack scanned through a database of 500 million years’ worth of fossils and found 41 individual episodes of “exceptional preservation” of organisms such as fish, crustaceans, insects and starfish scattered throughout the world. 

Image of the Day: NASA Space Time-Lapse of Earth

EcoAlert: Road Will Cut Off Main Serengeti Wildlife Migration Route

A new form of gridlock may be coming to the Serengenti. The Tanzania government plans to build a commercial road in the north of Serengeti National Park, cutting through the annual migratory route of two million wildebeest and zebra severing the animals from their dry-season watering holes, causing the wildebeest population to dwindle to just a quarter of current levels, says the Frankfurt Zoological Society in Germany. The region could also be a collision zone for humans and animals, leading to casualties on both sides, and there is a risk that transported livestock would spread disease, the society adds.

NASA's History Captured In Awesome Photograph Collection

As a teaser, we've showcased the Gossamer Penguin, an experimental solar-powered aircraft cruising above a dry lakebed at NASA Dryden's Flight Research Center in July 1979 -one of many strange, woot images of NASA's early days.

The images come from NASA Commons, a joint effort by NASA, Flickr, and Internet Archive to round up 50 years of photographic history of the venerable agency. The collection comprises three sections: Building NASA, Launch/Takeoff, and NASA Center Namesakes, which include pictures of experimental crafts, a variety of launches, and the people who had the Right Stuff to made it all happen. 

NASA Commons with thanks to our friends at gizmodo.com

You Create the Caption

 

The Daily Flash -Eco, Space, Tech (9/02)

New Technique Finds Gaseous Metals in Exoplanet Atmospheres

A previously undetected element has been found in the atmospheres of two different extrasolar planets. Using a new technique at a new telescope, two separate groups of exoplanet scientists have discovered potassium in the atmospheres of two hot Jupiters more than 190 light-years from Earth.“I’m really excited about this,” exoplanet expert Sara Seager of MIT, who was not involved in the new discoveries, said in an e-mail. “Together with other ground-based advances it is changing exoplanet atmosphere studies in a huge way.” The two groups, one led by exoplanet scientist David Sing of the University of Exeter and the other led by University of Florida grad student Knicole Colón, used the 34-foot-wide Gran Telescopio Canarias in the Canary Islands to observe the planet XO-2b, located around 500 light-years from Earth, and the planet HD 80606b, about 190 light-years from Earth.

Marine animals Point to a trans-Antarctic Seaway

A tiny marine filter-feeder, that anchors itself to the sea bed, offers new clues to scientists studying the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This new finding, published this month in the journal Global Change Biology, leads the science team to conclude that these animals could have spread across both seas only by means of a trans-Antarctic seaway through what is now a 2 km solid layer of ice. They suggest also that this seaway opened up during a recent interglacial (warm period between ice ages) perhaps as recently as 125,000 years ago when sea level was about 5 metres higher than today.

China’s Secret Satellite Rendezvous ‘Suggestive of a Military Program’

Earlier this month, two Chinese satellites met up in orbit. Depending on who you believe, it’s either a sign of China’s increasingly-sophisticated space program — or a sign of its increasingly-sophisticated space warfare program. A well-regarded Russian space watcher was the first to note that the two satellites, newly-launched SJ-12 and two-year-old SJ-06F, had performed maneuvers indicating a cutting edge procedure called non-cooperative robotic rendezvous. A loose network of amateur space spectators and astronomers soon congregated online, and confirmed that the sats had, indeed, converged.

9 Netflix Classics Worth Streaming on Your Puny iPhone

Now that Netflix has released an iPhone app that allows mobile cinephiles to stream their instant queues, it's worth considering reorganizing those queues for smartphone screening. So we put together a handy list of films across all genres that ought to look just fine on the iPhone's comparatively tiny display. Once they're all available, that is. As expected, there's not a flick among them that contains ubiquitous subtitles or indispensable minutiae. They're all wide-screen blasts, whose broad strokes and deceptively simple compositions screen nicely on handsets.

Mystery of India's "Red Rain" of 2001 Points to Extraterrestrial Origin

New evidence has been discovered that reinforces the panspermia thoery that the red rain which fell in India in 2001, contained cells unlike any found on Earth.  Panspermia is the idea championed by physicist Fred Hoyle that life exists throughout the universe in comets, asteroids and interstellar dust clouds and that life of Earth was seeded from one or more of these sources.

In 1903, in the German journal Umschau, Svante Arrhenius removed the meteors from the equation. Instead, he wrote, individual spores wafted throughout space, colonizing any hospitable planet they lit on. Arrhenius named the theory panspermia.

A growing body of evidence suggests that it might be Hoyle and Arrhenius might have been correct.