The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel: Sci, Space, Tech

Weekend Feature: NASA Smackdown -- 2011 Mono Lake Arsenic-Based Life Claims Refuted

 

        

 

"We have cracked open the door to what is possible for life elsewhere in the universe," Felisa Wolfe-Simon of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and U.S. Geological Survey, who led the NASA Mono Lake study.

Rosie Redfield of the University of British Columbia has steadfastly raised doubts about the headline-grabbing news about arsenic-based life discovery at Mono Lake in November 2010. Redfield then she set out to replicate the initial findings, getting the original bacteria and seeing whether they can build DNA from arsenic when deprived of phosphorus. She then started to chronicle her experiences on her blog. 

Image of the Day: Pandora's Cluster --The Most Colossal Known Galaxy Mashup

 

          

This is the most colossal known smash-up observed in the universe. This awesome bundle of galaxies, nicknamed Pandora's cluster, turns out to be the result of a violent mashup between at least four separate galaxy clusters that occured over hundreds of millions of years.

Weekend Feature: Strange Red Galaxy --Harbors a Monster Black Hole 100 Million Times Mass of Sun

 

          

A monster black hole 100 million times the mass of the Sun is feeding off gas, dust and  a ring of stars at the centre of Galaxy NGC-1097 50 million light-years away. The star-ringed black hole forms the eye of the galaxy which was photographed by the US space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope in California.

NASA Solves Mystery of Earth's 'Missing Energy'

 

        

Two years ago, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., released a study claiming that inconsistencies between satellite observations of Earth's heat and measurements of ocean heating amounted to evidence of "missing energy" in the planet's system. 

Where was it going? Or, they wondered, was something wrong with the way researchers tracked energy as it was absorbed from the sun and emitted back into space? asked an international team of atmospheric scientists and oceanographers, led by Norman Loeb of NASA's Langley Research Center in and including Graeme Stephens of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

Was the Moon Once Powered by a Dynamo Core? MIT Research Says "Yes"

 

                 

MIT's research on an ancient lunar rock suggests that the moon once harbored a long-lived dynamo — a molten, convecting core of liquid metal that generated a strong magnetic field 3.7 billion years ago. The findings, published today in Science, point to a dynamo that lasted much longer than scientists previously thought, and suggest that an alternative energy source may have powered the dynamo.  

CERN Zeroes In on the 'Great Antimatter Mystery'

                    


The question of whether normal matter's shadowy counterpart anti-matter exerts a kind of "anti-gravity" is soonto be answered, according to researchers at the University of California Riverside, who are getting closer to addressing the question once and for all. The team says it has prepared stable pairs of electrons and their anti-matter particles, positrons. A beam of these pairs can be used to finally solve the anti-gravity puzzle.

EcoAlert: Bus-Sized Object Buzzed Earth Today

 

           

A small asteroid the size of a city bus zoomed between Earth and the moon's orbit today, Friday Jan. 25, days after its discovery, but it never posed a threat to our planet, NASA says.The asteroid, 2012 BX34 passed within 36,750 miles (59,044 kilometers) of Earth when it made its closest approach at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT). The space rock is about 37 feet (11 meters) wide and would have disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere long before it reached the ground, if it had reached the planet at all, NASA scientists said.

Image of the Day: Massive Elliptical Galaxy & Cosmic Wave a Million Light years Long

 

         

A Naval Research Laboratory scientist is part of a team that has recently discovered that vast clouds of hot gas are "sloshing" in Abell 2052, a galaxy cluster located about 480 million light years from Earth. The scientists are studying the hot (30 million degree) gas using X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from the Very Large Telescope to see the galaxies.

Mysterious Toxic Protein Plays Important Role in Cancer & Aging

 

                       


The toxic protein mitoNEET -- a mysterious but important player in diabetes, cancer and aging -- draws the eye with a flurry of movement in one location while the subtle, more crucial action takes place somewhere else.  Using a combination of laboratory experiments and computer modeling, scientists from Rice University and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have deciphered part of mitoNEET's movements to get a better understanding of how it handles its potentially toxic payload of iron and sulfur. 

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Search for Twin Earth Getting Hotter! --NASA Announces 11 New Planetary Systems Hosting 26 Confirmed Planets

 

                   

In the past year astronomers have discovered smaller planets are more numerous and diverse than anyone has expected --"Searing hot planets with iron rain, atmospheres with 1,000 mile an hour winds, planetary systems with two suns, a planet that literally skims the surface of its star once every three months," reports Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University.

NASA's Kepler mission's recent discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form. 

"The Earth Strain" --Could NASA's 'Curiosity' Probe on Its Way to Mars Contaminate the Planet?

 

                

Michael Crichton would have loved this: Bacteria common to spacecraft may be able to survive the harsh environs of Mars long enough to inadvertently contaminate the Red Planet with terrestrial life, "If long-term microbial survival is possible on Mars, then past and future explorations of Mars may provide the microbial inoculum for seeding Mars with terrestrial life," according to researchers from the University of Central Florida. "Thus, a diversity of microbial species should be studied to characterize their potential for long term survival on Mars." Off the record, many astrobiologists believe that we've already contaminated the planet.

Richard Dawkins: "On Life in the Universe" (Today's Most Viewed)

 

                     

It's no accident that we see stars in the sky, says famed Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins: they are a vital part of any universe capable of generating us. But, as Dawkins emphasizes, that does not mean that stars exists in order to make us."It is just that without stars there would be no atoms heavier than lithium in the periodic table," Dawkins wrote in The Ancestors Tale -A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, "and a chemistry of only three elements is too impoverished to support life. Seeing is the kind of activity that can go on only in the kind of universe where what you see is stars."

New Discovery: Why the Most Massive Galaxies in Universe Suddenly Stopped Creating Stars Billions of Years Ago

 

                     

By studying how distant starburst galaxies are clustered together, astronomers have found that they eventually become so-called giant elliptical galaxies -- the most massive galaxies in today's universe. The galaxies are so distant that their light has taken around ten billion years to reach us, so we see them as they were about ten billion years ago. 

Image of the Day: "Bright Blue Dot" --A Spectacular Life-Bearing Planet from Space

 

     

A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed 'Suomi NPP' on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin, who is recognized widely as "the father of satellite meteorology." 

1st Atomic X-Ray Laser Created --Opens New View into the World of Atoms and Molecules

 

                    


Scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and opening the door to a new range of scientific discovery. The researchers, reporting today in Nature, aimed SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at a capsule of neon gas, setting off an avalanche of X-ray emissions to create the world's first "atomic X-ray laser."

World's Most Powerful Laser Unlocks Clues to Extreme Matter in Stars & Giant Planets

                    


Researchers working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to create and probe a two-million-degree piece of matter in a controlled way for the first time. This feat takes scientists a significant step forward in understanding the most extreme matter found in the hearts of stars and gas giant exo planets, and could help experiments aimed at recreating the nuclear fusion process that powers the sun.

New Clue to the Origins of Carbohydrates --The building blocks of DNA and RNA

         

Organic chemists at the University of York have made a significant advance towards establishing the origin of the carbohydrates (sugars) that form the building blocks of life.  A team led by Dr Paul Clarke in the Department of Chemistry at York have re-created a process which could have occurred in the prebiotic world.  

"There are a lot of fundamental questions about the origins of life and many people think they are questions about biology. But for life to have evolved, you have to have a moment when non-living things become living -- everything up to that point is chemistry," Clarke said.

Image of the Day: Supergiant Galaxy Perseus A --Billions of Stars Being Sucked into Its Central Black Hole

 

                  

Chandra's X-ray image of the core of the Perseus galaxy cluster shows hot gas in and around the supergiant galaxy, Perseus A. The colors represent low (0.5 - 1 keV = red); medium (1-2 keV = green); and high (2-7 keV = blue) X-ray energies, corresponding to low, medium and high temperatures. The small dark patch (located at two o'clock from the center of the image) is due to the absorption of X rays by gas in a galaxy of about 20 billion stars that is falling into the central galaxy.

A Previously Hidden Solar-System Particle in Earth's Atmosphere May Improve Weather Forecasting

 

                          


Space physicists have long lacked clues to how much electrically charged cold plasma exists tens of thousands of miles above Earth and how the stuff may impact our planet's interaction with the sun. A new method developed by Swedish researchers makes this gas measurable and reveals significantly more cold, charged ions in Earth's upper altitudes than previously imagined.  

What Would Earth Look Like to Alien Astronomers in the Age of Dinosaurs? --New Research Models History of Earth's Climate

 

         


What would Earth look like to alien astronomers in the Age of the Dinosaurs? Two astronomers from Spain -- Enric Palle and Esther Sanroma, of the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands (IAC)--are modeling the clouds at different periods in Earth's past to better understand what alien worlds might look like in different stages of their evolution. The results of their reserach would not only reveal how Earth would look to a distant observer, but could also help astronomers determine the layout of landforms on alien planets.

EcoAlert: Massive Solar Radiation Hitting Earth Now

        


A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) --a massive burst of solar wind, other light isotope plasma, and magnetic fields rising above the solar corona or being released into space--is expected to hit Earth at about 0900 EST (1400 GMT) today, according to the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The radiation storm has remained at the S3 (Strong) level, but should now be at or near its peak, and is expected to begin to decrease soon, NOAA says. The forecast is for Moderate level geomagnetic storming with higher levels possible.

Galaxy Clusters & Great Walls (The Largest Structures in the Universe)

 

          


A stunningly beautiful galaxy cluster 840 million light years from Earth with a few hundred galaxies gets its name from the strong radio source, Hydra A, above, that originates in a galaxy near the center of the cluster. 

Glowing Stellar Cluster Cloaks a Neutron Star

 

                      

This image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope shows the dusty skeleton of a collapsed star engulfing a nearby family of stars. Scientists think the stars in the image are part of a stellar cluster in which a supernova exploded.

Titan's Dunes --Clues to Its Climate & Geology

          


Huge dunes of tiny particles of carbon cover more than 20 percent of Titan's surface. A new analysis of radar data from NASA's Cassini mission has revealed regional variations among sand dunes on Saturn's moon Titan, providing new clues about the moon's climatic and geological history. 

Michio Kaku on The Search for Earth's Twin (VIDEO)

Death Valley's 800-Year-Old Volcano --Is It Primed for a Sequel?

 

   

Death Valley's half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater turns out to have been created 800 years ago -- far more recently than generally thought. Credit: Brent Goehring/Lamont-Doherty Earth ObservatoryIn California's Death Valley, death is looking just a bit closer. Geologists have determined that the half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater, formed by a prehistoric volcanic explosion, was created far more recently than previously thought—and that conditions for a sequel may exist today.

Image of the Day: Living Starbirth Lab in Cygnus

         


This infrared image shows of a cluster of new stars forming in a dark filament of gas and dust in Cygnu, a northern constellation lying on the plane of the Milky Way that contains the X-ray source Cygnus X-1, which is now thought to be caused by a black hole accreting matter in a binary star system.

EcoAlert: NEO Shield --Early Warning of the Potential Threat to Earth from a Comet or Monster Asteroid

          

NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision path with our planet. On average, an object about the size of car will enter the Earth’s atmosphere once a year, producing a spectacular fireball in the sky. Data from Nasa's Wise telescope suggests there are likely to be about 19,500 NEOs in the 100-1,000m size range, and the vast majority of these have yet to be identified and tracked. 

About every 2,000 years, a comet or asteroid the size of a football field will impact the Earth, causing significant damage. And then, every few million years, a mega rock turns up that has a width measured in kilometres that has the potential to change the course of Earth's evolutionary history.

Europe's Orbiting Observatories Capture Stunning New Images of the "Pillars of Creation"

     

 

Two of the European Space Agency's (ESA) orbiting observatories have captured new and spectacular views of the gas pillars in the Eagle Nebula (M16) that were the subject of the iconic 1995 Hubble images dubbed "Pillars of Creation."

In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope's 'Pillars of Creation' image of the Eagle Nebula became one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. Now, two of ESA's orbiting observatories --Stunning new Herschel and XMM-Newton-- have revealed new insights this enigmatic star-forming region.