Dark energy DOES exist and it's increasingly driving our universe apart, scientists claim - 20th May 2011

Dark energy is driving our universe apart at accelerating speeds, according to a five-year survey of 200,000 galaxies, stretching back seven billion years in cosmic time.

The study offers new support for the favoured theory of how dark energy works - as a constant force, uniformly affecting the universe and propelling its runaway expansion.

Its findings are based on results from Nasa's space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Anglo-Australian Telescope on Siding Spring Mountain in Australia.

But they contradict an alternate theory, where gravity, not dark energy, is the force pushing space apart.

According to this alternate theory, with which the new survey results are not consistent, Albert Einstein's concept of gravity is wrong, and gravity becomes repulsive instead of attractive when acting at great distances.

'The action of dark energy is as if you threw a ball up in the air, and it kept speeding upward into the sky faster and faster,' said Chris Blake of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Blake is lead author of two papers describing the results that appeared in recent issues of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

'The results tell us that dark energy is a cosmological constant, as Einstein proposed. If gravity were the culprit, then we wouldn't be seeing these constant effects of dark energy throughout time.'

Dark energy is thought to dominate our universe, making up about 74 per cent of it. Dark matter, a slightly less mysterious substance, accounts for 22 per cent. So-called normal matter, anything with atoms, or the stuff that makes up living creatures, planets and stars, is only approximately 4 per cent of the cosmos. Read More

Virgin Galatic: Astonishing video of the moment SpaceShipTwo made a near-vertical plunge towards Earth - 20th May 2011

It's a frighteningly fast plunge that is sure to leave all but the hardiest of flyers clutching their stomachs.

But if plummeting to Earth at a near-vertical angle sounds like your cup of tea, then this official video of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo 'maiden feathered flight' will whet the appetite for space travel.

Taped earlier this month, and released this week, the footage shows the rocket bend its wings into a near-right angle landing position after descending from 52,000ft.

Falling at 15.500ft per minute in this near-vertical state, SpaceShipTwo is slowed by the drag of the folded tail, similar to the way feathers slow a badminton shuttlecock.

Virgin Galactic's rocket plane deployed its twin tail sections in a position created to allow it a soft return to Earth's atmosphere from the vacuum of space.

During the test, SpaceShipTwo did not fire its rocket engine for a climb into space. Instead, a mothership lifted it to 52,000ft, where it was released.

It then rotated its twin tail booms upward 65 degrees during the test flight in the Mojave Desert in California.

The reconfiguration is a critical part of the spaceship's descent through Earth's atmosphere after suborbital trips into space. Read More

Unexplained Lights moving at High Speed Caught by NBC TV - 17th May 2011

These Unexplained Lights were recorded by NBC Cameras on the 17th May around 22:00 O'Clock

Free-floating lonely planets the size of Jupiter found in central 'bulge' of Milky Way - 19th May 2011

A new class of 'lonely planets' floating on their own in space has been found by astronomers.

The dark, Jupiter-like worlds are isolated and far from any host star.

Scientists believe they may have been ejected from developing planetary systems.

An international team of astronomers made the discovery from observations of the central 'bulge' of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

They found evidence of what appear to be ten free-floating planets with roughly the mass of Jupiter.

Dr David Bennett, from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said: 'Our results suggest that planetary systems often become unstable, with planets being kicked out from their places of birth by close encounters with other planets.'

The findings, published in the journal Nature, not only confirm that 'lonely planets' exist, but also that they are quite common.

Since they are very hard to spot, the discovery of ten at one time suggests they could be as common as those like Earth which orbit a host star. Read More

Solar storms will peak in 2013 and wreak havoc on Earth's electrical communications, top scientist warns - 18th May 2011

Solar storms could have 'devastating effects' on human technology when they hit a peak in two years' time, a leading scientist has warned.

U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration assistant secretary Kathryn Sullivan said the storms pose a growing threat to critical infrastructure such as satellite communications, navigation systems and electrical transmission equipment.

Solar storms release particles that can temporarily disable or permanently destroy fragile computer circuits.

Dr Sullivan, a former Nasa astronaut who in 1984 became the first woman to walk in space, yesterday told a UN weather conference in Geneva that 'it is not a question of if, but really a matter of when a major solar event could hit our planet'.

She is not the only expert to issue a warning about the threat posed by solar storms.

In February, astronomers warned that mankind is now more vulnerable to such an event than at any time in history - and that the planet should prepare for a global Hurricane Katrina-style disaster.

A massive eruption of the sun would save waves of radiation and charged particles to Earth, damaging the satellite systems used for synchronising computers, airline navigation and phone networks.

If the storm is powerful enough it could even crash stock markets and cause power cuts that last weeks or months, experts told the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Read More

One million amateur stargazers to help scientists try and spot advanced alien life on another planet - 18th May 2011

Stargazers around the world are helping scientists to try and detect signals from an advanced civilisation on another planet.

In February, Nasa announced that its Kepler space telescope had identified 1,235 possible planets, some of them 'habitable zones', during its first four months in orbit.

Now astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, are aiming a radio telescope at the most Earth-like of these worlds to see if the can spot any signs of life.

They began their search earlier this month, when the Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope – the largest steerable radio telescope in the world – dedicated an hour to eight stars with possible planets.

But that is only the beginning.

Once the scientists acquire 24 hours of data on a total of 86 Earth-like planets, they will initiate a preliminary analysis and then ask an estimated one million SETI@home users to conduct a more detailed analysis on their home computers. Read More

Gliese 581d - Scientists discover first planet outside our solar system that could support Earth-like life

An artist's impression of the possible surface temperatures of Gliese 581d. It orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581 (right), located around 20 light years from Earth. Cooler temperatures are represented with blue colours and warmer temperatures red. The arrows represent winds at two-kilometres altitude.

A planet 20 light years away is the first outside our solar system to be officially declared habitable by scientists.

The 'exoplanet' Gliese 581d has conditions that could support Earth-like life, including possible watery oceans and rainfall.

Yet any future space voyagers landing there would find themselves in truly alien surroundings. The sky is likely to be murky red, not blue, and gravity is twice what is on Earth, doubling the weight of anyone standing on the surface.

In addition, the planet's carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere would almost certainly not be breathable by humans.

Scientists were surprised by the discovery because Gliese 581d was previously ruled out as a habitable planet candidate.

But a new computer model capable of simulating extraterrestrial climates has shown the previous assumption to be wrong, and confirmed that Gliese 581d really could harbour life.

Scientists believe the findings could pave the way to more discoveries of potential havens for life among the stars, including some that are strange and unexpected.

Dr Robin Wordsworth, a member of the French team from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in Paris, said: 'This discovery is important because it's the first time climate modellers have proved that the planet is potentially habitable, and all observers agree that the exoplanet exists.

'If you look at the history of the search for habitable planets, there's been at least two instances so far when scientists have announced that a habitable world has been discovered, only to have the claim contradicted later, either by climate experts or by other observers.

'The Gliese system is particularly exciting to us as it's very close to Earth, relatively speaking. So with future generations of telescopes, we'll be able to search for life on Gliese 581d directly.

'This said, the fact that a planet so unlike the Earth could be habitable bodes pretty well for the search for life in general.

'I think it's becoming clearer with every discovery we make in exoplanet science that the variety of worlds out there in the universe is going to be far greater than the few examples we are used to from our Solar System.' Source

Endeavour viewed from 37,000 feet as commercial pilot snaps shots of shuttle launch

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Eruption of enormous flare from exploded supernova baffles Nasa scientists - 12th May 2011

An enormous flare which erupted from the remnants of an exploded star in a faraway constellation has left Nasa scientists baffled.

Last month, the famous Crab Nebula supernova, first observed in 1731, gave off a flare five times more powerful than any previously seen from the object.

On April 12, Nasa's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope first detected the outburst, which lasted six days.

The nebula is the wreckage of an exploded star that emitted light which reached Earth in the year 1054.

It is located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. At the heart of an expanding gas cloud lies what is left of the original star's core, a superdense neutron star that spins 30 times a second.

With each rotation, the star swings intense beams of radiation toward Earth, creating the pulsed emission characteristic of spinning neutron stars, known as pulsars.

Apart from these pulses, astrophysicists believed the Crab Nebula was a virtually constant source of high-energy radiation.

But in January, scientists associated with several orbiting observatories, including NASA's Fermi, Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, reported long-term brightness changes at X-ray energies.

'The Crab Nebula hosts high-energy variability that we're only now fully appreciating,' said Rolf Buehler, a member of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) team at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a facility jointly located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University. Read More

Meteor likely caused mysterious boom - NASA scientists say not uncommon - 12th May 2011

Meteor likely caused mysterious boom: wavy.com

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) - Virginia Beach is a city full of sound. Waves crash at the Oceanfront and fighter jets scream overhead. However, a boom Tuesday night caught hundreds of normally unfazed residents from Virginia Beach to the Eastern Shore completely off-guard.

"It shook my house," said one man.

"It almost felt like an earthquake and then I had to think about it. We're in Virginia Beach we don't get earthquakes," said Pam Trotter.

10 On Your Side called the military, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Energy. Turns out the answer may be found out of this world.

"It's most consistent with a meteor coming into the Earth's atmosphere and creating a large sonic boom," said NASA scientist Dr. Joe Zawodny.

Dr. Zawodny said sonic booms are not uncommon. Two years ago, hundreds of people across the region heard a similar boom most likely caused by a meteor.

This just happens to be a popular time of year for them said Dr. Zawodny.

"We're on the tail end of a meteor shower here which peaked last week. It could be associated with that," he said. Read More

Space captain's joy as 500,000 watch Endeavour blast off for final mission - 16th May 2011

Endeavour’s commander urged America to continue to ‘reach for the stars’ today as he led the orbiter on its 25^th and final journey into space.

U.S. Navy Captain Mark Kelly and his five crew blasted off from Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to tears, cheers and cries of ‘Go Endeavour’ from an estimated half a million viewers who watched from the ground as it roared into the sky above a giant ball of flame before disappearing into clouds. Read More

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Ground Breaking Nano-Satellite to Launch next year to Search for Alien Life - 16th May 2011

The world's first satellite the size of a loaf of bread is to explore the final frontier with one task: to hunt down extra terrestrial life.

The nano-satellite will launch next year with a sole purpose of finding 'Exoplanets' beyond our solar system which could support life like Earth.

Séamus Tuohy, director of space systems at Draper Laboratory, which has developed the ExoPlanetSat with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the mission was ground breaking.

He said: 'While there have been many small satellites, these are typically used to perform simple communication or observation missions.

'We are doing something that has not been done before.'

At just 10 centimetres wide and 30 centimetres long, the £3million device works by surveying the brightness of a star as an orbiting planet passes in front of it. By working out how much a star dims, scientists can work out the planet's size.

Calculations to work out how long the planet takes to orbit mean they can then work out how far that planet is from its star.

Measuring a star's brightness however means the spacecraft must be kept stable as any disturbances will blur the image making it unusable. Special technology has been developed to make sure movement is kept to a minimum. Read More

NASA Considers Lasers To Battle Space Junk

“Space junk” or debris has become an increasing threat to commercial satellites along with spacecraft and the International Space Station. Now NASA scientists may have a new option for reducing debris.

Collisions with debris, and the resulting damage, have the potential for being costly and difficult to repair.

During missions, astronauts aboard the International Space Station have had to take refuge in an escape capsule because they knew they were going to have a close encounter with space debris.

NASA scientists propose using a mid-power laser that could move the objects from their collision course. Unlike lasers that have been used in the past, this new laser would not be able to vaporize debris.

“Those lasers, when you shoot them all into space, are not capable of vaporizing or melting anything,” said scientist Creon Levit of the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View. “What they are capable of doing is giving a gentle push to space debris.”

This gentle push could move a piece of space debris about 650 feet a day, enough to avoid a collision.

Levit said 33 years ago, a NASA astronomer predicted we would be in this situation. He said most of the space junk is from earlier space launches when no one was concerned about debris control.

Levit says it is now the exact opposite.

“Nowadays when you launch something into space,” says Levit. “You have to have a debris mitigation plan.” (read more)

The final countdown: Endeavour prepares for blastoff on last ever mission - 16th May 2011

Space Shuttle Endeavour is being prepared to blast off on it's final mission today - after a heater problem delayed launch two weeks ago.

If all goes to plan the shuttle should set off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida to the International Space Station at just after 8.56am (1.56pm UK time).

It is to be Endeavour's 25th and final mission. After returning to earth in 16 days time she will be retired to a Los Angeles museum.

But it's no routine mission. Endeavour will be carrying her most expensive payload ever - a $2billion particle physics experiment known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) designed to probe the unknown reaches of space and help us understand the secrets of the universe.

The seven-ton machine, which was built through a collaboration of 16 nations, will carry out a comprehensive survey of cosmic rays as it studies the universe with, scientists hope, far more detail than is possible from earth.

The AMS project involved 600 physicists in 60 research organizations around the world and is spearheaded by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It will test the long-standing Big Bang theory - by checking for any large quantities of anti-matter - which theorists suspect was created when the universe was born.

It will also be used to examine the nature of dark matter, the material that makes up most of the universe.

Scientists hope it might help them to understand how the Universe came into being and how it is constructed? Read More

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The inhospitable terrain where Nasa hopes to land new Mars Rover in hunt for extraterrestrial life - 16th May 2011

These pictures show the four potential landing sites that NASA scientists will try and send the new rover, Curiosity, which is tipped to become the next Mars explorer.

The robot will replace the Phoenix Mars lander after recent photos taken of it from orbit revealed that it had been damaged on its latest voyage.

Curiosity is due to land in one of four key locations across the red planet known as Mawrth Vallis, Gale crater, Holden crater and Eberswalde crater in the near future.

The rover will determine whether Mars is or ever was habitable to microbial life. New technical improvements to the spacecraft mean landing sites will also be more scientifically rich than anywhere the landers have gone before.

Using new technology called 'guided entry, the spacecraft will be able to steer itself through the atmosphere like a guided missile instead of flying passively like a shuttlecock.

This is the first time the technology has been used and means Curiosity requires a much smaller landing area than its predecessor.

This latest rover is also designed to slow down much quicker than other spacecrafts and will be able to land on higher terrain which opens up bigger areas of exploration. It is also designed to operate in extreme cold. Read More

How Rogue Alien Planets Could Host Extraterrestrial Life - 14th May 2011

Interstellar planets — those without stars to orbit — could serve as havens for life, according to a new study.

They are often thought to be nearly invisible, since they are much dimmer than stars and do not have any suns nearby to illuminate them. Now, however, research suggests these worlds might be detected by their auroras.

Interstellar planets might either be rogue planets that were originally born around a star and were later cast out by gravitational tugs of war, or sub-brown dwarfs that formed alone in interstellar space. Scientists have suggested that interstellar planets could support life under or even on their surfaces.

"It has been speculated that Earth-like rogue planets could have very thick atmosphere that keeps them relatively warm, or moons of giant rogue planets could experience tidal heating and have oceans beneath their icy surface," said planetary scientist Heikki Vanhamaki at the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki.

Planet hunters have used a variety of methods to detect the indirect effects extrasolar planets have on their host stars, because the planets themselves are too small and dim to be seen by our telescopes. For example, the slight gravitational wobble an orbiting planet induces in its parent star -- called the radial velocity method -- is one way to detect a far-off world. Another way to find a planet is when it passes directly in front of its star from our point of view, causing a momentary dimming of starlight.

Scientists recently suggested that alien worlds around distant stars also could be detected by looking for radio waves given off by their auroras. Now Vanhamaki calculates the same technique might work for interstellar planets. Read More

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Space Shuttle Endeavour to take Baby Squid into space – for the sake of humanity - 13th May 2011

If the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavour goes ahead as planned next week, it will be carrying an unusual cargo: baby squid.

This is not because the astronauts want a change in their menu: the squid could help us understand how "good" bacteria behave in the microgravity of space. As Jamie Foster of the University of Florida in Gainesville, who is running the experiment, puts it: "Do good bacteria go bad?"

We already know that disease microbes grow faster and become more virulent if they are sent into space. In 2006 Salmonella bacteria were sent up on a space shuttle, and when they returned to Earth they were almost three times as likely to kill mice as normal (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707155104). Escherichia coli also changes its behaviour.

These studies all focused on harmful bacteria. "This is the first to look at beneficial bacteria," Foster says.

Squid are cephalopods, a group of relatively intelligent animals that also includes octopuses and cuttlefish. Cephalopods have never been into space before – not in reality, at least.

Foster has arranged to send up the bobtail squid Euprymna scolopes, a Pacific species that carries a cargo of bacteria called Vibrio fischeri in its body. The microbes colonise young squid soon after the squid hatch and set up home in their light organs. The squid use the bacteria to generate light, which they shine downwards to ensure they don't cast a visible shadow.

This is a classic example of mutualism: the two species cooperate and each benefits. Humans have similar relationships with microbes, which help shape our immune and digestive systems, but thousands of species are involved with us rather than just one. "Humans are way too complex," Foster says. Read More

Fermi gamma-ray image updates 'extreme Universe' view

The Fermi space telescope has yielded the most detailed gamma ray map of the sky - representing the Universe's most violent and extreme processes.

The telescope's newest results, as well as the map, were described at the Third Fermi Symposium in Rome this week.

Gamma rays are the highest-energy light we know of, many millions of times more energetic than visible light.

The Fermi collaboration will soon release a full catalogue of all the gamma ray sources discovered so far.

The space telescope was launched in 2008, and the Rome meeting gathered together the hundreds of scientists who worked with the data it produces.

Every three hours, the telescope gathers up a full scan of the sky, spitting out 40 million bits of information each second that it beams back to the Earth.

One of its two instruments, the Large Area Telescope (Fermi-Lat), has already identified some 1,400 gamma ray sources - a number that will jump significantly with the publication of the next catalogue.

Meanwhile, its Gamma Ray Burst Monitor has caught hundreds of the bursts - occasional outpourings of gamma ray energy that can release in hours more energy than our Sun will ever produce.

"When you look at the Universe with gamma-ray eyes what you're seeing is the 'extreme Universe'," said Julie McEnery, Fermi project scientist. (read more)

Wet Dwarf: Icy surface of mini-planet Haumea discovered - 13th May 2011

A ‘dwarf planet’ in the deepest reaches of our solar system is covered in crystalline ice, it has been revealed.

Haumea was discovered in 2004 but new findings from European scientists have now offered new details of the tiny planet orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune.

According to the European Southern Observatory, the mini-planet is the shape of a ‘flattened rugby ball’ and 75 per cent of its surface is covered with a reflective surface of water ice.

The entire surface of Hi’iaka, one of Haumea’s two satellites along with Namaka, is also covered in this icy shell.

The surface of the dwarf planet and its moon is unusual as it is crystalline and possesses an ordered structure, rather than being shapeless, amorphous ice.

The ESCP team believe this means Haumea has a frozen outer surface and a largely rock inner structure.

‘Since solar radiation constantly destroys the crystalline structure of ice on the surface, energy sources are required to keep it organised,’ said Benoit Carry, co-author of the study and a researcher at the ESAC Centre of the European Space Agency in Madrid.

‘The two that we have taken into consideration are that able to generate radiogenic elements (potassium-40, thorium-232 and uranium-238) from the inside, and the tidal forces between Haumea and its satellites (as seen between the Earth and the Moon)’ he told Spanish outlet SINC. Read More

A Sea of Magma Feeds Hundreds of Volcanoes on Jupiter's Moon - 12th May 2011

New data confirms that an ocean of magma under the surface of Jupiter's moon, Io, feeds the moon's many active volcanoes.

Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system, with about 100 volcanoes erupting at any one time. New measurements containing the first direct evidence of a sea of magma help to explain this phenomenon, along with the moon's high heat flow and unusual pattern of volcanic activity. The data was captured by the spacecraft Galileo during four flybys and published on Thursday in the journal Science.

"We used Jupiter's magnetic field as a sounding signal," said Krishan Khurana professor of geophysics and planetary physics at UCLA, and lead author of the study. "The principle we used is the same as what is used in metal detectors at the airport."

Metal detectors work by bouncing magnetic waves off metal objects, like metallic coins in your pocket, he explained. Similarly, while Jupiter's magnetic field penetrates most dry rock, it reflects off molten rock, which is an excellent conductor of electricity.

"We were looking for bounced-off signals from Io," Khurana said. We found them about 30 to 50 kilometers under the surface." Read More