The Daily Galaxy: Great Discoveries Channel

"The METI Controversy": Should Detection by an Exo Civilization Be Viewed as a Threat?

If we should pick up signals from alien civilizations, Stephen Hawking, our century's Einstein, warns: "we should have be wary of answering back, until we have evolved" a bit further. Meeting a more advanced civilization, at our present stage,' Hawking says "might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don't think they were better off for it."

Mankind has always been driven by contradictory drives.  The relentless curiosity that pushes us forward and is directly responsible for our progress from caves to  cities.  The fear of change that tells us "hang on, these caves/cities are really nice, we don't want to risk losing them."  There isn't any greater potential threat to the status quo than the discovery of extraterrestrial life, which is why some people would prefer we didn't try.

The Odd Case of "0402+379": A Galaxy With Two Supermassive Black Holes

Scientist believe that most galaxies, certainly all the spiral ones, have such supermassive black holes in the center.  Several have been observed or inferred by their radiation signatures, polar jets or other massively energetic effects.  While the exact mechanics of such singularity-centrality have to be worked out, a simple picture can explain why they should be there.  Of all the places in the universe, a galactic core is the most likely place for a vast star to form (and then collapse into a black hole), or for a smaller black hole to consume enough matter to become supermassive.

Galileo's Mysterious Black Dot: Notebooks May Reveal His Discovery of New Planet

Galileo knew he had discovered a new planet in 1613, 234 years before Neptune's official discovery date, according to a new theory by David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne. Jamieson is investigating the notebooks of Galileo from 400 years ago and believes that buried in the notations is a mysterious black dot -evidence, it is believed, that he discovered a new planet that we now know as Neptune -the first such discovery of a planet since the ancient Greeks.

New Space Observations: Early Forms of Inorganic Extraterrestrial Life?

An international research team announced a breakthrough in self-replicating plasma crystals which could be an early form of inorganic life. New studies of dust that form lifelike structures suggest that extraterrestrial life may not be carbon-based at all. Researchers at the Russian Academy of Science, the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, and the University of Sydney observed particles of inorganic dust form helical structures and go through other "lifelike" changes.

Stars Zipping at One-Million MPH in Milky Way's Halo May Be From Other Galaxies (VIDEO)

Interstellar Highway Patrol take note: MIT astronomers announced that stars of a recently discovered type, tagged ultracool subdwarfs, take some pretty wild rides reaching speeds of one million mph as they orbit around the Milky Way, following paths very different from those of typical stars. One of them may actually be a visitor that originated in another galaxy.

Fermi Spacecraft: 1st to Use Gamma Rays to Identify Pulsars (VIDEO & SOUND)

With NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, astronomers now are getting their best look at those whirling death stars, the Cheshire Cat Smiles of the universe known as pulsars -.the rapidly spinning and highly magnetized core left behind when a massive star explodes. International teams have analyzed gamma-rays from two dozen pulsars.

Most of the 1,800 cataloged pulsars were found through their periodic radio emissions. Astronomers believe these pulses are caused by narrow, lighthouse-like radio beams emanating from the pulsar's magnetic poles.

AstroTwitter: Tweeting the Cosmos

The year is 2010 and the Lovell Radio Telescope - the flagship of the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics in Manchester, UK-  picks up a signal that's not a pulsar, but instead, finally, is a true signal from a civilization in a remote edge of the Milky Way.

If Stuart Lowe -a member of the ESA's Planck spacecraft's Core Team who runs a radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank- has his way the world will know of the discovery in realtime along with the Jodrell Bank team. The Jodrell Bank runs an array of seven radio telescopes distributed across the UK with a resolution greater than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Supermassive Black Hole Emitting Flares a Trillion Xs More Energetic Than Visible Light

Tossing around numbers beyond our human chimp-brain comprehension and using a worldwide combination of radio telescopes, astronomers have discovered that bursts of very high energy gamma rays are coming from a region very close to the supermassive black hole at the core of M87 more than six billion times more massive than the Sun. M87 is the largest galaxy in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, at the center of a supercluster of galaxies that includes the Local Group, of which is where the Milky Way is located. In 1998, astronomers found that M87 also was emitting flares of gamma rays a trillion times more energetic than visible light.

The Very Large Base Array (VLBA) is a system of ten radio-telescope antennas stretching from Hawaii to the Caribbean, operated by the NRAO from Socorro, New Mexico. The VLBA has resolution equal to the ability to read a newspaper in New York while standing in Los Angeles.

New Discovery Key to Supermassive Black Holes

A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers 290 million light years from Earth providing a key clue to the formation of supermassive black holes that exist at the centers of all known galaxies in the universe.

Blazars -New Clues to the Most Violently Energetic Objects in the Universe

An international team of researchers have stared down the barrel of one of the most violently energetic objects in the universe - and they didn't blink.  Instead, they've figured out the physics behind one of the most impressive astrophysical events in existence.

BL Lacertae is a blazar, a supermassive galactic-core black hole emitting vast and variable beams of energy.  Please understand that giving this thing a name like "blazar" is like calling a speeding sixteen wheeler truck full of professional wrestlers, grizzly bears and dynamite a "gentle prodder." The English language simply lacks the ability to get across the staggering scale of these events - because it doesn't have a case above upper or letters bigger than capital.  You can try writing down the values as numbers, but they end up being so stupidly huge that our monkey brains, programmed to deal with "one two three lots", just don't comprehend them.

"The METI Controversy": Should Detection by an Exo Civilization Be Viewed as a Threat?

If we should pick up signals from alien civilizations, Stephen Hawking, our century's Einstein, warns: "we should have be wary of answering back, until we have evolved" a bit further. Meeting a more advanced civilization, at our present stage,' Hawking says "might be a bit like the original inhabitants of America meeting Columbus. I don't think they were better off for it."

Mankind has always been driven by contradictory drives.  The relentless curiosity that pushes us forward and is directly responsible for our progress from caves to  cities.  The fear of change that tells us "hang on, these caves/cities are really nice, we don't want to risk losing them."  There isn't any greater potential threat to the status quo than the discovery of extraterrestrial life, which is why some people would prefer we didn't try.

The Odd Case of "0402+379": A Galaxy With Two Supermassive Black Holes

Scientist believe that most galaxies, certainly all the spiral ones, have such supermassive black holes in the center.  Several have been observed or inferred by their radiation signatures, polar jets or other massively energetic effects.  While the exact mechanics of such singularity-centrality have to be worked out, a simple picture can explain why they should be there.  Of all the places in the universe, a galactic core is the most likely place for a vast star to form (and then collapse into a black hole), or for a smaller black hole to consume enough matter to become supermassive.

Galileo's Mysterious Black Dot: Notebooks May Reveal His Discovery of New Planet

Galileo knew he had discovered a new planet in 1613, 234 years before Neptune's official discovery date, according to a new theory by David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne. Jamieson is investigating the notebooks of Galileo from 400 years ago and believes that buried in the notations is a mysterious black dot -evidence, it is believed, that he discovered a new planet that we now know as Neptune -the first such discovery of a planet since the ancient Greeks.

New Space Observations: Early Forms of Inorganic Extraterrestrial Life?

An international research team announced a breakthrough in self-replicating plasma crystals which could be an early form of inorganic life. New studies of dust that form lifelike structures suggest that extraterrestrial life may not be carbon-based at all. Researchers at the Russian Academy of Science, the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, and the University of Sydney observed particles of inorganic dust form helical structures and go through other "lifelike" changes.

Stars Zipping at One-Million MPH in Milky Way's Halo May Be From Other Galaxies (VIDEO)

Interstellar Highway Patrol take note: MIT astronomers announced that stars of a recently discovered type, tagged ultracool subdwarfs, take some pretty wild rides reaching speeds of one million mph as they orbit around the Milky Way, following paths very different from those of typical stars. One of them may actually be a visitor that originated in another galaxy.

Fermi Spacecraft: 1st to Use Gamma Rays to Identify Pulsars (VIDEO & SOUND)

With NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, astronomers now are getting their best look at those whirling death stars, the Cheshire Cat Smiles of the universe known as pulsars -.the rapidly spinning and highly magnetized core left behind when a massive star explodes. International teams have analyzed gamma-rays from two dozen pulsars.

Most of the 1,800 cataloged pulsars were found through their periodic radio emissions. Astronomers believe these pulses are caused by narrow, lighthouse-like radio beams emanating from the pulsar's magnetic poles.

AstroTwitter: Tweeting the Cosmos

The year is 2010 and the Lovell Radio Telescope - the flagship of the Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophysics in Manchester, UK-  picks up a signal that's not a pulsar, but instead, finally, is a true signal from a civilization in a remote edge of the Milky Way.

If Stuart Lowe -a member of the ESA's Planck spacecraft's Core Team who runs a radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank- has his way the world will know of the discovery in realtime along with the Jodrell Bank team. The Jodrell Bank runs an array of seven radio telescopes distributed across the UK with a resolution greater than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Supermassive Black Hole Emitting Flares a Trillion Xs More Energetic Than Visible Light

Tossing around numbers beyond our human chimp-brain comprehension and using a worldwide combination of radio telescopes, astronomers have discovered that bursts of very high energy gamma rays are coming from a region very close to the supermassive black hole at the core of M87 more than six billion times more massive than the Sun. M87 is the largest galaxy in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, at the center of a supercluster of galaxies that includes the Local Group, of which is where the Milky Way is located. In 1998, astronomers found that M87 also was emitting flares of gamma rays a trillion times more energetic than visible light.

The Very Large Base Array (VLBA) is a system of ten radio-telescope antennas stretching from Hawaii to the Caribbean, operated by the NRAO from Socorro, New Mexico. The VLBA has resolution equal to the ability to read a newspaper in New York while standing in Los Angeles.

New Discovery Key to Supermassive Black Holes

A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers 290 million light years from Earth providing a key clue to the formation of supermassive black holes that exist at the centers of all known galaxies in the universe.

Blazars -New Clues to the Most Violently Energetic Objects in the Universe

An international team of researchers have stared down the barrel of one of the most violently energetic objects in the universe - and they didn't blink.  Instead, they've figured out the physics behind one of the most impressive astrophysical events in existence.

BL Lacertae is a blazar, a supermassive galactic-core black hole emitting vast and variable beams of energy.  Please understand that giving this thing a name like "blazar" is like calling a speeding sixteen wheeler truck full of professional wrestlers, grizzly bears and dynamite a "gentle prodder." The English language simply lacks the ability to get across the staggering scale of these events - because it doesn't have a case above upper or letters bigger than capital.  You can try writing down the values as numbers, but they end up being so stupidly huge that our monkey brains, programmed to deal with "one two three lots", just don't comprehend them.