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NASA’s Voyager 1 Explores Final Frontier of Our ‘Solar Bubble’

By Guest PostJune 29, 2013Sciencecharged particles, cosmic ray, depletion region, ed stone, energetic particle data, final frontier, heliosphere, interstellar arrival, interstellar space, johns hopkins university, jupiter, leonard burlaga, magnetic field, magnetosphere, Milky Way, NASA, solar bubble, solar originating particles, stamatios krimigis, twin spacecraft, voyager 1, voyager project scientist

PASADENA, Calif. — Data from Voyager 1, now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, suggest the spacecraft is closer to becoming the first human-made object to reach interstellar space.

Research using Voyager 1 data and published in the journal Science today provides new detail on the last region the spacecraft will cross before it leaves the heliosphere, or the bubble around our sun, and enters interstellar space. Three papers describe how Voyager 1’s entry into a region called the magnetic highway resulted in simultaneous observations of the highest rate so far of charged particles from outside heliosphere and the disappearance of charged particles from inside the heliosphere. (more…)

Spiral galaxies like Milky Way bigger than thought, says CU-Boulder study

By Guest PostJune 28, 2013Scienceboulder, brian keeney, casa, charles danforth, circumgalactic gas, cos, cos on hubble, cosmic origins spectrograph, diameter, galaxy evolution, higgs centre, Hubble Space Telescope, intergalactic interactions, james green, john stocke, light year, michael shull, Milky Way, missing link, scotland, spiral galaxy, supermassive black holes, theoretical physics, university of colorado, university of edinburgh

Let’s all fist bump: Spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way appear to be much larger and more massive than previously believed, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

CU-Boulder Professor John Stocke, study leader, said new observations with Hubble’s $70 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, or COS, designed by CU-Boulder show that normal spiral galaxies are surrounded by halos of gas that can extend to over 1 million light-years in diameter. The current estimated diameter of the Milky Way, for example, is about 100,000 light-years. One light-year is roughly 6 trillion miles. (more…)

Search for Life Suggests Solar Systems More Habitable than Ours

By Guest PostDecember 7, 2012Sciencecayman unterborn, Chile, dataset, dynamic, earth, european southern observatory, Galaxy, geologically active, habitable, habitable zone, heat source, jennifer johnson, microbial form, Milky Way, ohio state university, planet, plate tectonics, potassium, radioactive decay, radioactive element, san francisco, search for life, solar systems, solar twin, subsurface heat, terrestrial planet, thorium, uranium, wendy panero

SAN FRANCISCO — Scattered around the Milky Way are stars that resemble our own sun—but a new study is finding that any planets orbiting those stars may very well be hotter and more dynamic than Earth.

That’s because the interiors of any terrestrial planets in these systems are likely warmer than Earth—up to 25 percent warmer, which would make them more geologically active and more likely to retain enough liquid water to support life, at least in its microbial form.

The preliminary finding comes from geologists and astronomers at Ohio State University who have teamed up to search for alien life in a new way. (more…)

Today in the Milky Way: Cloudy Skies

By Guest PostJune 30, 2012Scienceadam block, aquila dark cloud, aquila rift arcs, astronomy picture, cloudy skies, dust lanes, Galaxy, gas and dust, herbig haro object, hh32, infrared, ldn 673, light years, Milky Way, mount lemmon skycenter, radiation, radio wave, rno 109, schulmann telescope, stellar winds, summer triangle, university of arizona

Adam Block of the UA’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter brings us a rare view of the clouds wafting through our Milky Way in this Astronomy Picture of the Day.

In silhouette against the Milky Way’s faint starlight, its dusty molecular clouds likely contain raw material to form hundreds of thousands of stars, prompting astronomers to eagerly search the clouds for telltale signs of star birth.

This telescopic close-up looks toward the region at a fragmented Aquila dark cloud complex identified as LDN 673, stretching across a field of view slightly wider than the full moon.

For this image selected by NASA as the June 29 Astronomy Picture of the Day, astrophotographer Adam Block of the University of Arizona’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter remotely operated the 32-inch Schulmann Telescope to peer into the vast chasms of gas and dust wafting through the Milky Way, exposing for about 15 minutes at a time during several nights in April and May. (more…)

Clocking an Accelerating Universe: First Results from BOSS

By Guest PostApril 4, 2012Scienceaccelerate, adam riess, apache point observatory, bao, baryon acoustic oscillation, berkeley lab, beth reid, big bang, brian schmidt, cmb, cosmic microwave background, dan long, dark energy, david schlegel, density peak, einstein, eric huff, euclidean universe, Galaxy, george smoot, gravitational attraction, gravity, high z supernova, hubble, martin white, megaparsecs, Milky Way, new mexico, nobel prize, phenomenon, redshifts, saul perlmutter, scp, sdss, sloan telescope, spectrograph, statistical analysis, universe, zosia rostomian

Berkeley Lab scientists are the leaders of BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. They and their colleagues in the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey have announced the most precise measurements ever made of the era when dark energy turned on.

Some six billion light years distant, almost halfway from now back to the big bang, the universe was undergoing an elemental change. Held back until then by the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter it contained, the universe had been expanding ever more slowly. Then, as matter spread out and its density decreased, dark energy took over and expansion began to accelerate.

Today BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), announced the most accurate measurement yet of the distance scale of the universe during the era when dark energy turned on. (more…)

Rare Animal-Shaped Mounds Discovered in Peru by MU Anthropologist

By Guest PostApril 3, 2012Scienceandres ocas, animal shaped, bernardino ojeda, chan chan, charcoal eye, chillon valley, condor, egypt, google earth, image, june solstice, lucio laura, Milky Way, monstrous caiman, mounds, nazca, North America, ohio, omar ventocilla, peru, peruvian mounds, pyramids, robert benfer, serpent mound, south america, university of missouri

*Anthropology Helps Us Understand the Past and Allows for a Deeper Understanding of the Future.*

COLUMBIA, Mo. — For more than a century and a half, scientists and tourists have visited massive animal-shaped mounds, such as Serpent Mound in Ohio, created by the indigenous people of North America. But few animal effigy mounds had been found in South America until University of Missouri anthropology professor emeritus Robert Benfer identified numerous earthen animals rising above the coastal plains of Peru, a region already renowned for the Nazca lines, the ruined city of Chan Chan, and other cultural treasures.

“The mounds will draw tourists, one day,” Benfer said. “Some of them are more than 4,000 years old. Compare that to the effigy mounds of North America, which date to between 400 and 1200 AD. The oldest Peruvian mounds were being built at the same time as the pyramids in Egypt.” (more…)

Astronomy Team That Includes UCLA Finance Professor Discovers Nearby Dwarf Galaxy

By Guest PostFebruary 10, 2012Scienceaaron romanowsky, astronomer, big bang, c28 telescope, centurion 28, christine black, david martinez delgado, david reitzel, dwarf galaxy, francis longstaff, frazier park, Galaxy, gravitational attraction, gravitational tug, gravity, griffith observatory, halo population, Hubble Space Telescope, hydrogen gas, james riffle, kern county, light, light years, living fossil, michael rich, Milky Way, milky way galaxy, ngc 4449, night sky, polaris observatory association, r jay gabany, sagittarius dwarf galaxy, sky, star formation, telescope, transient stage

A team led by UCLA research astronomer Michael Rich has used a unique telescope to discover a previously unknown companion to the nearby galaxy NGC 4449, which is some 12.5 million light years from Earth. The newly discovered dwarf galaxy had escaped even the prying eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The research is published Feb. 9 in the journal Nature. (more…)

Yale Discovery of ‘Young’ Supermassive Black Holes Challenges Current Theory

By Guest PostDecember 9, 2011Scienceastronomers, big bang, black hole, brooke simmons, Chile, current theory, data, earth time, eilat glikman, ezequiel treister, fast growing, Galaxy, host galaxies, Hubble Space Telescope, kevin schawinski, mass range, Milky Way, priyamvada natarajan, supermassive black holes, universidad de concepcion, yale discovery, yale university

Astronomers at Yale University have discovered what appear to be three fast-growing supermassive black holes in a relatively young, still-forming galaxy.

The discovery raises the possibility that this type of black hole continues to form billions of years after the Big Bang, challenging current theory. Astronomers previously thought all supermassive black holes emerged soon after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. (more…)

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