The First Stars?

NASA researchers say they have detected what may be the faint infrared glow of the first stars in the universe.
Known as population III stars, the distant bodies are thought to have formed just 200 million years after the big bang, the event that in theory created the universe some 14 billion years ago..........

National Geographic News


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Sources of Oxygen on the Moon?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - The Hubble Space Telescope, which normally surveys the edges of the universe, has turned its attention to our nearby Moon and found mineral concentrations that might prove to be sources of oxygen for human visitors, researchers said Wednesday..........

New York Times

NASA Takes Giant Step Toward Finding Earth-Like Planets

Are we alone in the universe? Are there planets like Earth around other "suns" that might harbor life? Thanks to a recent technology breakthrough on a key NASA planet-finding project, the dream of answering those questions is no longer light-years away..........

Science Daily

Exploring Mars With Balloons

Global Aerospace Corporation of Altadena, CA proposes that the Mars exploration vehicle combining the global reach similar to that of orbiters and high resolution observations enabled by rovers could be a balloon that can be steered in the right direction and that would drop small science packages over the target sites. The concept being developed by the Global Aerospace Corporation is funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)..........

Science Daily

Planet Baby Picture

............new findings not only reinforce the idea that giant planets, such as Jupiter, form much faster than scientists have traditionally expected, but one of the gas-enshrouded stars, called GM Aurigae, is analogous to our own solar system.

At only 1 million years of age, the star gives a unique window into how our own world may have come into being..........

News (WebIndia123.com)

Are Wormholes Tunnels for Time Travel?

As any self-respecting science fiction fan knows, wormholes—theoretical shortcuts through space and time—make for excellent time travel portals..........

National Geographic News

Explosion at the Edge of the Universe

Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite and several ground-based telescopes have detected the most distant explosion yet, a gamma-ray burst from the edge of the visible universe..........

ScienceDaily

The Sun Has a Binary Partner?

The ground-breaking and richly illustrated new book, Lost Star of Myth and Time, marries modern astronomical theory with ancient star lore to make a compelling case for the profound influence on our planet of a companion star to the sun. Author and theorist, Walter Cruttenden, presents the evidence that this binary orbit relationship may be the cause of a vast cycle causing the Dark and Golden Ages common in the lore of ancient cultures..........

EurekAlert

Space Elevators in Our Future?

Blasting a space shuttle away from Earth's gravity and through atmospheric friction at 15,000 miles an hour (24,140 kilometers an hour) is the most dangerous and costly part of every mission.
Why not just take an elevator instead? Thanks to a new development in the manufacture of molecule-size cylinders known as carbon nanotubes, that may one day be a viable option.
In theory, space elevators need a fixed line, or cord, that stretches from an anchor on Earth to a station out in space. The station acts like a counterweight, forever "held" above the planet by the centrifugal force from Earth's rotation.
A tram-like vehicle equipped with electric motors could climb this tether from Earth's surface into space at a safer speed than rocket alternatives..........

National Geographic News

The Star Bar

MILWAUKEE - (KRT) - Slowly, scientists are putting together the emerging bits of knowledge about the spiraling galaxy we call home, the Milky Way.

It is made up of as many as 100 billion stars. It's 100,000 light years across. It has rotated about 50 times during its lifetime. There most certainly is a super massive black hole at its center.

And now two Wisconsin scientists say they have revealing evidence on a long-suspected major feature of the Milky Way.

Writing in Astrophysical Journal Letters, their comprehensive structural analysis offers a wealth of new details on the long central bar of stars that runs across the center of the galaxy.

The bar, which has been suspected since the 1980s and was identified in a 2002 paper by other scientists, turns out to be longer than initially believed, according the work of Robert Benjamin, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Ed Churchwell, a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The bar is composed of older, so-called red stars, possibly millions of them...........

The Wichita Eagle

New Planet Discovered

A planet larger than Pluto has been discovered in the outlying regions of the solar system..........

Science Daily

Local Man Has Own Launch Pad to Stars

PLEASANTON — When a team of planet hunters announced the discovery of a new extrasolar planet on June 30, it was already old news to amateur astronomer Ron Bissinger.
The day before the announcement, Bissinger, tipped off by a member of the research team, had detected evidence of planet HD 149026b from an elaborate miniature observatory he built in his back yard..........

Tri-Valley Herald

Dust-enshrouded Star Like the Sun

Astronomers report tremendous quantities of warm dusty debris surrounding a star with luminosity and mass similar to the sun's, but located 300 light-years from Earth. The extraordinary nature of the dust indicates a violent history of cosmic collisions between asteroids and comets, or perhaps even between planets. The discovery is published July 21 in Nature..........

ScienceDaily

A New Planet in a Three Star System

A newfound planet has three suns, a scientist says—a discovery that highlights the unimagined beauties the cosmos still has in store for us, suggests planets are even more common than previously believed, and could rewrite theories of planet formation..........

World Science

A New Planet With Massive Core

Astronomers have discovered an extrasolar planet with the largest core of any known planet. The discovery is especially exciting to planet formation theorists, because it provides extremely strong observational evidence in support of the "core accretion" theory, one of two main theories for how giant planets form..........

Read More Tim Stephens and Denize Springer, UC Santa Cruz Currents, July 11, 2005

Minerals on Mars

From space and even on the surface, Mars just looks dry, reddish and rocky as far as the camera can see. But there's actually a pretty complex world of minerals under that surface layer of basalt. By studying the surface of Mars with Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, NASA scientists have turned up very interesting surface features which hint at the hidden minerals underneath. This research is published in the latest edition of the Journal Nature. Read More

Universe Today July 7, 2005

Comet Impact Succeeds

IMPACT! Scientists blast projectile into comet

July 4, 2005
Special to World Science

Scientists shot a washing machine-sized projectile into a comet, eight times faster than a rifle bullet. The impact created an enormous blast visible on images sent back to Earth, and whose size surprised even some mission scientists.

This image from NASA TV is a view from Deep Impact's flyby showing the impactor colliding with comet Tempel 1. (NASA)

NASA researchers confirmed the impact at 1:58 a.m. Eastern U.S. time, in a project designed to better understand what comets are made of.

A sequence of images sent back by cameras on the projectile revealed growing amounts of detail on the rocky-looking comet as a huge crater came to view. Later, images showed a bright blast showering off the speeding, potato-shaped object.

Now, the task of analyzing the images and other data from the mission begins..........Read More

Top 25 Unanswered Science Questions

The journal, Science, has posted it's top 25 unanswered science questions. Just reading the questions is an education in itself.

Deep Impact Spacecraft Detects Comet Outbursts

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft observed a massive, short-lived outburst of ice or other particles from comet Tempel 1 that temporarily expanded the size and reflectivity of the cloud of dust and gas (coma) that surrounds the comet nucleus.

The outburst was detected as a dramatic brightening of the comet on June 22. It is the second of two such events observed in the past two weeks. A smaller outburst also was seen on June 14 by Deep Impact, the Hubble Space Telescope and by ground based observers..........Read More

ScienceDaily June 29, 2005

Solar Sails Set to Debut

The Planetary Society, a U.S. nonprofit group devoted to space exploration, plans to launch the world's first solar sail spacecraft tomorrow.
Cosmos 1 will be launched from a submerged Russian submarine in the Barents Sea and carried into orbit by a converted intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Initially orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 500 miles (800 kilometers), the spacecraft will gradually move outward by solar sailing—propelled by the pressure of light particles from the sun striking the craft's eight triangular sails.
The journey has no destination. The mission's goal is simply to prove that solar sail technology works.
Space sails carry no fuel and can continue accelerating over almost unlimited distances. This prompts scientists to envision a time when the technology may be used for future travel between planets in our solar system. Someday solar sails might be used to send astronauts to new worlds around other stars..........

National Geographic News, June 20, 2005 Read More