Astro-Physics

NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Captures Aurora’s On Saturn

March 28, 2012

Since the NASA / ESA Cassini-Huygens spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, astronomers and space scientists have been able to study the ringed planet and its moons in great detail. Now, for the first time, a team of planetary scientists have made simultaneous measurements of Saturn’s night side aurora, magnetic field, and associated charged particles. Together the fields and particle data provide information on the electric currents flowing that produce the emissions. Team leader Dr Emma Bunce of the University of Leicester will present the new work at the National Astronomy Meeting in Manchester on 27 March 2012. Generally,...

The Universe – Multiverse Parallel Universes

September 30, 2011

By Michael Muracco

The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

Is there another copy of you reading this article, deciding to put it aside without finishing this sentence while you are reading on? A person living on a planet called Earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and sprawling cities, in a solar system with eight other planets. The life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect until now, that is, when your decision to read on signals that your two lives are diverging. In this History Channel documentary theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku, astrophysicist Alex Filippenko and cosmologist Max Tegmark explore Multi-Universes, M-Therory, Extra Dimensions ...

A New Proposal On Extraterrestial Life – A Radical Theory for the ‘Great Silence’

September 26, 2011

By Michael Muracco

The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations. As Enrico Fermi asked if the Universe is conducive to intelligent life, “Where is everybody?” A new answer proposed by Adrian Kent of the University of Cambridge and Perimeter Institute, is that extraterrestial life sufficiently advanced to be capable of interstellar travel or communication must be rare, since otherwise we would have seen evidence of it by now. This in turn is sometimes taken as indirect evidence for the...

Neutron Star Study Challenges Current Models For Thermonuclear Explosions

September 15, 2011

By Michael Muracco

Amsterdam astronomers have discovered a neutron star that confounds existing models for thermonuclear explosions in such extreme objects. In the case of the accreting pulsar IGR J17480-2446, it seems to be a strong magnetic field that causes some parts of the star to burn more brightly than the rest. The results of the study, by Yuri Cavecchi et al. (2011), are to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The neutron star concerned is part of the X-ray binary IGR J17480-2446 (hereafter J17480). X-ray binaries consist of a neutron star and a companion star in orbit around each other. Neutron stars, which are about 1.5 times as massive as the Sun, with a diameter of about 25 km, have a strong gravitational field that can pull gas from the companion star. This gas can build up on the neutron star surface and explode in a fast, high-energy thermonuclear reaction. Normally, the entire surface of the star explodes uniformly. However, in about 10 percent of cases, some parts of...

University Of Massachusetts Astronomers Prove: We’re Not From Here!

September 13, 2011

By Michael Muracco

We are from another galaxy in the process of joining with the Milky Way. The Milky Way is actually not our parent galaxy. The mystery of why the Milky Way has always been sideways in the night sky has never been answered -- until now.

Imagine the shock of growing up in a loving family with people you call “Mum” and “Dad” and then, suddenly, learning that you are actually adopted! This same sense of shock came as scientists announced that the Sun, the Moon, our planet and its siblings, were not born into the familiar band of stars known as the Milky Way galaxy, but we actually belong to a strange formation with the unfamiliar name of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy! How can this be? Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky...

NASA’s WISE Space Telescope Discovers Y-Dwarf Stars As Cool As Human Body

August 24, 2011

By Michael Muracco

This artist's conception illustrates what a "Y dwarf" might look like. Y dwarfs are the coldest star-like bodies known, with temperatures that can be even cooler than the human body. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer uncovered these elusive objects for the first time, using its heat-sensing, infrared vision. The telescope found six Y dwarfs, ranging in atmospheric temperatures from 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 degrees Celsius) to less than about 80 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius).

Scientists using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see. WISE’s infrared vision allowed the telescope to finally spot the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to our sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years. “WISE scanned the entire sky for these and other objects, and was able to spot their feeble light...

New arm discovered in outer edge of the Milky Way Galaxy

May 23, 2011

By Michael Muracco

Barred Spiral Milky Way. Illustration Credit: R. Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA

Thomas Dame and Patrick Thaddeus, both of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have put forth in a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, the notion that a cluster of gas clouds they’ve discovered, that lies far from what is currently believed to be the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, is likely the extension of one of the great arms that form our galaxy. The researchers made their discovery by thinking outside of the box, so to speak; most research on our galaxy starts with the assumption that the spiral that swirls out...

Key Effects of General Relativity, Warping of Spacetime, Confirmed

May 13, 2011

By Michael Muracco

Frame dragging as measured by Gravity Probe B. Credit and copyright: James Overduin, Pancho Eekels, Bob Kahn.

Gravity Probe B has confirmed two of the most interesting effects predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The geodetic effect, which describes the warping of spacetime due to the mass of the Earth, has been confirmed to an accuracy of 0.28 percent. The frame-dragging effect, in which the Earth’s rotation drags or stirs local spacetime, is confirmed to 19 percent accuracy. All of this from a project that drew on 34 years of research and development, 10 years of flight preparation and 5 years of analysis of the data returned from a 1.5 year mission. They were a...

Merging Black Holes Twist And Stretch Space Time

April 15, 2011

By Michael Muracco

Two doughnut-shaped vortexes ejected by a pulsating black hole. Also shown at the center are two red and two blue vortex lines attached to the hole, which will be ejected as a third doughnut-shaped vortex in the next pulsation. Credit: The Caltech/Cornell SXS Collaboration

When black holes slam into each other, the surrounding space and time surge and undulate like a heaving sea during a storm. This warping of space and time is so complicated that physicists haven’t been able to understand the details of what goes on—until now. “We’ve found ways to visualize warped space-time like never before,” says Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). By combining theory with computer simulations, Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech, Cornell University, and the National Institute for Theoretical Physics in South Africa have developed conceptual tools...

“Beyond the Event Horizon of a Black Hole is the Beginning of Another Universe”

January 31, 2011

By admin

“Beyond the Event Horizon of a Black Hole is the Beginning of Another Universe”

Do black holes hold the key that could unlock the secrets of our patch of the universe? Some of the world’s leading physicists believe that in the event that quantum effects allow time to extend indefinitely into the past that it could be possible that beyond the event horizon of a black hole is the beginning of another universe. Embedded in the heart of each of the universe’s one trillion galaxies is a supermassive black hole that is roughly one million to one billion times the mass of the sun. About 10 percent of these giant black holes feature...