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Science + Astronomy
Explore some of the mysteries of the cosmos. These news articles deal with all things science and astronomy. Black holes, gamma ray bursts, supernovas etc.
Some believe they were killed off by massive volcanoes , others that they were a victim of prehistoric climate change.
Now a major study claims to have conclusive proof that dinosaurs were wiped out within weeks of an asteroid the size of the Isle of Wight slamming into the Earth.
Researchers say the impact sent a vast flume of dust into the atmosphere 65 million years ago, unleashed a torrent of powerful earthquakes and triggered forest fires across North America, blocking out the sun and wiping out half of all species.
The panel of 41 international experts - including British researchers from Cambridge, Imperial College and the University of London - looked at 20 years of research to settle the long-running debate about what killed the dinosaurs.
The mass extinction event also wiped out the bird-like pterosaurs and the large marine reptiles - clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth.
A new tool for forecasting flares may soon be available to scientists, one that promises to be twice as accurate as current models. The new technique analyzes sound waves generated by magnetized fluids swirling inside the sun.
Forecasting a solar flare is a bit like predicting the path of a tornado: It's a lot easier once it makes an appearance.
Yet early warning is crucial. Solar flares can trigger disruptions and errors in GPS signals and other equipment receiving radio waves that bounce off or travel through the ionosphere — the layer of charged particles surrounding Earth's atmosphere that gets kicked up by solar activity.
That's a concern for activities requiring precision navigation, such as landing planes. Solar flares can even affect power grids on Earth.
"You get this faster, twisting motion that then slows down to almost nothing and then the flare. It tells us how big the flare is going to be and that it's coming — maybe a day or two in advance," said Alysha Reinard, a solar physicist with NOAA in Boulder, Colo.
A wispy comet, a star-forming cloud and the grand Andromeda galaxy are the first cosmic characters to be unveiled by Nasa's latest hi-tech space telescope.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which was launched into orbit in December 2009, is scanning the entire sky in infrared light.
The satellite has already beamed back more than a quarter of a million raw, infrared images. These first processed pictures show a sample of the mission's targets from individual comets and asteroids to huge galaxies. (Source : DAILYMAIL UK )
Astronomers who have long used supernovas as cosmic mile markers to help measure the expansion of the universe now have an answer to the nagging question of what sparks the massive stellar explosions.
"These are such critical objects in understanding the universe," lead author Marat Gilfanov of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany said Wednesday in describing his team's study.
"It was a major embarrassment that we did not know how they worked. Now we are beginning to understand what lights the fuse of these explosions."
A giant meteorite that broke in two as it crashed off Australia, could have been responsible for a mini-ice age that engulfed Britain in 535AD.
The claim was made by marine geophysicist Dallas Abbott at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union last month.
She found evidence of two substantial impact craters in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern Australian coast.
In the mid-sixth century, Europe and Asia experienced the most severe and protracted episode of cooling of the last 2,000 years.
Sources from the time refer to widespread crop failures and famines as the unseasonal weather took hold. The Gaelic Irish Annals recorded 'a failure of bread' from 536 to 539AD.
Tree ring analysis by Mike Baillie from Queen's University in Belfast also suggested a cool period. He found the Irish oak showed abnormally little growth in 536 and 542. This phenomenon was noted in trees in Sweden and Finland as well.
With all the talk of the current Yellowstone earthquake swarm, I thought it would worth it to write a post on the the structure and caldera - and why we get earthquake swarms that are structurally rather than magmatically-related.
First off, lets think about why calderas formed. This is relatively simple - at least superficially. The land (or volcano) above a magmatic system is partially supported by that magma, especially because magma is hot and buoyant. The isostatic support by the magma holds up the land surface or volcanic edifice, so when an eruption expels a large volume of magma, this support is removed. This collapse forms the caldera - the negative topographic expression of the eruption. The collapse of the land surface plays a dual role - not is it a result of the eruption, but also helps the eruption along, like a piston pushing of hot gas out of a cylinder. After the eruption, the collapsed caldera continues to subside as the isostatic equilibrium is reached. After the caldera-forming eruption {caution, large PDF}, the system may have eruptions that produce resurgent domes in the middle of the caldera as the last dregs of the caldera-forming magmatic system leak out. This is referred to as the "caldera cycle", originally defined by Howell Williams for the collapse of Mt. Mazama ~7,700 years b.p. (see below). (SOURCE : SCENCEBLOGS.COM )
A comet-like object has been created by the collision of two asteroids related to the one blamed for killing the dinosaurs millions of years ago.
The object, known as P/2010 A2, was circling 90 million miles from Earth in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter when it was spotted last week by the Hubble Space Telescope.
'The truth is we're still struggling to understand what this means,' lead scientist David Jewitt with the University of California at Los Angeles. 'It's most likely the result of a recent collision between two asteroids.
TVs around the world could go on the blink during the 2012 London Olympics, solar physicists warned today.
They were speaking ahead of the launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which will blast off on February 9.
Nasa's latest space mission will deliver high resolution images of the Sun ten times better than the average High-Definition television.
A picture using extreme ultra-violet light will be snapped every 0.75seconds. In a day the satellite will transmit the equivalent amount of data as 500,000 song downloads. It will produce more science data than any mission in Nasa history.
British scientists involved in the project said the observatory could help them predict solar storms that could disrupt communications on Earth.
This could prove crucial as solar activity is due to hit a peak in its eleven-year cycle during the Olympics in 2012.
NASA is to embark on one of its most ambitious missions in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the sun.
Following its launch in nine days’ time, the US space agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will spend five years in orbit trying to discover the causes of extreme solar activity, such as sun spots and solar winds and flares.
Scientists have long been aware that disturbances on the sun can trigger dangerous x-rays, charged particles and magnetic fields that can disrupt power supplies, communication signals and aircraft navigation systems on Earth.
By understanding how such solar phenomena are created, they hope to be able to produce reliable forecasts of “space weather” and provide advance warnings of any threat.
Well, an analyst on FOX news has stated in clear terms there theoretically should be a solar storm, increased activity, and a potential solar flare that could DRASTICALLY interfere with Earth.
This site does not make predictions. This is a clear cut interview from a leading theoretical physicist. There are so many 2012 predictions and 2012 prophecies being touted around, so we will as always leave this up to you to interpret.
International experts converged on Mexico City this month to discuss the best way to establish a global detection and warning network to monitor potential asteroid threats to all life on Earth.
The three-day workshop called together asteroid tracking specialists, space scientists, former astronauts and United Nations authorities, along with disaster management, risk psychology and warning communication experts.
"This workshop provided a major step forward in our thinking about the needed components of an information, analysis, and warning network for asteroids," said Ray Williamson, executive director of Secure World Foundation (SWF) in Superior, Colo., which organized the event.
The meeting ended Jan. 20 and was also coordinated by the Association of Space Explorers and the Regional Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (CRECTEALC). It ended just after a small meteorite crashed into a doctor's office in a small Virginia town, and just days ahead of the release of National Academy of Sciences report that found the United States is not doing enough to protect Earth from the danger posed by near-Earth asteroids and comets . The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted the workshop.
Cars run out of petrol, stars run out of fuel and galaxies collapse into black holes. As they do, the universe and everything in it is gradually running down. But how run down is it? Researchers from The Australian National University have found that the universe is 30 times more run down than previously thought.
PhD student Chas Egan and Dr Charley Lineweaver from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics have computed the entropy of the universe. Scientists compute entropy to find out how efficient an engine is or how much work can be extracted from a fuel or how run down and disordered a system is. Using new data on the number and size of black holes they found that the universe contains 30 times more entropy than earlier estimates.
"We considered all contributions to the entropy of the observable universe: stars, star light, the cosmic microwave background. We even made an estimate of the entropy of dark matter. But it's the entropy of super-massive black holes that dominates the entropy of the universe. When we used the new data on the number and size of super-massive black holes, we found that the entropy of the observable universe is about 30 times larger than previous calculations," said Mr Egan.
A team of solar scientists says they have improved on approaches that predict the eruption of solar flares, violent bursts of energy that can damage satellites, threaten astronauts in orbit and even disrupt the power grid on the ground. Space agencies, airlines, satellite operators and power utilities would like to have access to better forecasts of all kinds of space weather - the charged particles and streams of radiation spewed out in irregular burps and blasts by the sun.
To that end, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research scientist Alysha Reinard and her colleagues made use of data from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG), a set of six telescopes around the globe that together keeps a continuous watch on the sun. GONG takes helioseismology measurements, tracking oscillations on the sun's surface that point to its convective inner workings.
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has spotted its first never-before-seen near-Earth asteroid, the first of hundreds it is expected to find during its mission to map the whole sky in infrared light. There is no danger of the newly discovered asteroid hitting Earth.
The near-Earth object, designated 2010 AB78, was discovered by WISE Jan. 12. The mission's sophisticated software picked out the moving object against a background of stationary stars. As WISE circled Earth, scanning the sky above, it observed the asteroid several times during a period of one-and-a-half days before the object moved beyond its view. Researchers then used the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter (88-inch) visible-light telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea to follow up and confirm the discovery.
The asteroid is currently about 158 million kilometers (98 million miles) from Earth. It is estimated to be roughly 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter and circles the sun in an elliptical orbit tilted to the plane of our solar system. The object comes as close to the sun as Earth, but because of its tilted orbit, it will not pass very close to Earth for many centuries. This asteroid does not pose any foreseeable impact threat to Earth, but scientists will continue to monitor it.
The United States must do more to safeguard Earth against destruction by an asteroid than merely prepping nuclear missiles, a new report has found.
The 134-page report, released Friday by the National Academy of Sciences, states that the $4 million spent by the United States annually to identify all potentially dangerous asteroids near Earth is not enough to do the job mandated by Congress in 2005.
NASA is in dire need of more funding to meet the challenge, and less than $1 million is currently set aside to research ways to counter space rocks that do endanger the Earth — measures like developing the spacecraft and technology to deflect incoming asteroids — the report states.
An early draft of the report, entitled "Defending the Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard-Mitigation Strategies," was released in August 2009. The final report, written by a committee of expert scientists, says NASA is ill-equipped to catalog 90 percent of the nearby asteroids that are 460 feet (140 meters) across or larger, as directed by Congress.
The United States should also be planning more methods of defending Earth against an asteroid threat in the near-term. Nuclear weapons should be a last resort — but they're also only useful if the world has years of advance notice of a large, incoming space rock, the report states.
The United States must do more to safeguard the Earth against destruction by an asteroid than merely prepping nuclear missiles, a new report has found.
The 134-page report, released Friday by the National Academy of Sciences, states that the $4 million spent by the United States to identify all potentially dangerous asteroids near Earth is not enough to do the job mandated by Congress in 2005. NASA is in dire need of more funding to meet the challenge, and less than $1 million is currently set aside to research ways to counter space rocks that do endanger the Earth — measures like developing the spacecraft and technology to deflect incoming asteroids — the report states.
An early draft of the report, entitled "Defending the Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard-Mitigation Strategies," was released in August 2009. The final report, written by a committee of expert scientists, says NASA is ill-equipped to catalogue 90 percent of the nearby asteroids that are 460 feet (140 meters)across or larger as directed by Congress.
New genetic findings suggest that early humans living about one million years ago were extremely close to extinction.
The genetic evidence suggests that the effective population—an indicator of genetic diversity—of early human species back then, including Homo erectus, H. ergaster and archaic H. sapiens, was about 18,500 individuals (it is thought that modern humans evolved from H. erectus), says Lynn Jorde, a human geneticist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. That figure translates into a total population of 55,500 individuals, tops.
A near-Earth object that could be human-made has just been discovered hurtling toward us. On Wednesday, the object called 2010 AL30 will fly by Earth at a distance of just 80,000 miles (130,000 kilometers). That's only one-third of the way from here to the moon — that is, very close.
It will miss us, and if it did hit us, it wouldn't do any damage anyway, but I managed to pick up on some chatter between planetary scientists and found out that the "asteroid," or whatever it is, gives us a new standard: A 10-meter-wide (33-foot-wide) asteroid can be detected two days before it potentially hits Earth. A pretty useful warning, if you ask me.
Expert astronomers will be able to observe it shining with a brightness of a 14th-magnitude star (the approximate brightness of Pluto's weak glow as seen from Earth) as it dashes through the constellations of Orion, Taurus, and Pisces. (Further details about the orbit of 2010 AL30 can be found on NASA's Solar System Dynamics Web site).
Studies of two supernova remnants using the Japan-U.S. Suzaku observatory have revealed never-before-seen embers of the high-temperature fireballs that immediately followed the explosions. Even after thousands of years, gas within these stellar wrecks retain the imprint of temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun's surface.
"This is the first evidence of a new type of supernova remnant -- one that was heated right after the explosion," said Hiroya Yamaguchi at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan.
A supernova remnant usually cools quickly due to rapid expansion following the explosion. Then, as it sweeps up tenuous interstellar gas over thousands of years, the remnant gradually heats up again.
Just how Earth survived the process of its birth without suffering an early demise by falling into the sun has been something of a mystery to astronomers, but a new model has figured out what protected our planet when it was still a vulnerable, baby world.
In short, temperature differences in the space around the sun, 4.6 billion years ago, caused Earth to migrate outward as much as gravity was trying to pull it inward, and so the fledgling world found equilibrium in what we now know to be a very habitable orbit.
Planets like the Earth are thought to form from condensing clouds of gas and dust surrounding stars. The material in these disks gradually clumps together, eventually forming planetesimals – the asteroid-sized building blocks that eventually collide to form full-fledged planets.
A STAR primed to explode in a blast that could wipe out the Earth was revealed by astronomers yesterday.
It will self-destruct in an explosion called a supernova with the force of 20 billion billion billion megatons of TNT.
New studies show the star, called T Pyxidis, is much closer than previously thought at 3,260 light-years away - a short hop in galactic terms.
So the blast from the thermonuclear explosion could strip away our ozone layer that keeps out deadly space radiation. Life on Earth would then be frazzled.
The doomsday scenario was described yesterday by astronomers from Villanova University, Philadelphia, US.
Russia’s space agency chief said yesterday a spacecraft may be dispatched to knock a large asteroid off course and reduce the chances of Earth impact, even though US scientists say such a scenario is unlikely.
Anatoly Perminov told Golos Rossii radio the space agency would hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis. He said his agency might eventually invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency, and others to join the project.
When the 885-foot asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated its chances of smashing into Earth in its first flyby, in 2029, at 1 in 37.
Further studies have ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles from Earth’s surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters.
NASA had put the chances that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 as 1-in-45,000. In October, after researchers recalculated the asteroid’s path, the agency changed its estimate to 1-in-250,000.
Did asteroid strikes during the earth's youth spawn the earliest fragments of today's landmasses?
Asteroid collisions rocked the earth for much more of its early history than previously thought.
New evidence reveals that nine major strikes occurred between 3.8 billion and 2.5 billion years ago—the eon during which the planet’s first continents were coming to be.
A bold, new hypothesis suggests these rogue space rocks were not totally destructive; they might have helped trigger the formation of continents.
The most detailed seismic images yet published of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano shows a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims that there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup.
A related University of Utah study used gravity measurements to indicate the banana-shaped magma chamber of hot and molten rock a few miles beneath Yellowstone is 20 percent larger than previously believed, so a future cataclysmic eruption could be even larger than thought.
The study's of Yellowstone's plume also suggests the same "hotspot" that feeds Yellowstone volcanism also triggered the Columbia River "flood basalts" that buried parts of Oregon, Washington state and Idaho with lava starting 17 million years ago.
Science + Astronomy 
Explore some of the mysteries of the cosmos. These news articles deal with all things science and astronomy. Black holes, gamma ray bursts, supernovas etc.
