Posted on 11/20/2008 11:23:12 AM PST by TaraP
Nov. 19, 2008: An international team of researchers has discovered a puzzling surplus of high-energy electrons bombarding Earth from space. The source of these cosmic rays is unknown, but it must be close to the solar system and it could be made of dark matter. Their results are being reported in the Nov. 20th issue of the journal Nature.
"This is a big discovery," says co-author John Wefel of Louisiana State University. "It's the first time we've seen a discrete source of accelerated cosmic rays standing out from the general galactic background."
Galactic cosmic rays are subatomic particles accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions and other violent events. They swarm through the Milky Way, forming a haze of high energy particles that enter the solar system from all directions. Cosmic rays consist mostly of protons and heavier atomic nuclei with a dash of electrons and photons spicing the mix. To study the most powerful and interesting cosmic rays, Wefel and colleagues have spent the last eight years flying a series of balloons through the stratosphere over Antarctica. Each time the payload was a NASA-funded cosmic ray detector named ATIC, short for Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter. The team expected ATIC to tally the usual mix of particles, mainly protons and ions, but the calorimeter found something extra: an abundance of high-energy electrons
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A vessel that size could serve only one purpose, i.e. escape from a dying world of some sort. It would have been meant to carry EVERYBODY, and not just one or two of each kind or anything like that.
“Science!”
Well those photos are quite interesting. I wonder if that is where we come from? In any event, its not much wonder that China and other nations want to go to the moon.
That formation revealed by those photos would make a very interesting exploration.
I wonder what the NASA commentary about those photos would be.
No way to tell what it is definitively without walking on it.
Fred Nerks is pretty saavy about this kind of thing and so far , she treats it as a bit of a flummox.
Given the topic of this article, you'd think the reporter and/or editor might have modified this statement, or left it out altogether....
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