Posted on 01/23/2011 11:37:50 PM PST by LibWhacker
NASA is expected to announce a new discovery by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope on Wednesday (Jan. 26).
The space agency has scheduled a teleconference with reporters for 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) on Wednesday to announce and discuss the finding, which will also be published that day in the journal Nature.
"Astronomers have pushed the Hubble Space Telescope to its limits and have seen further back in time than ever before," NASA said in an announcement posted on its website today (Jan. 21).
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on the space agency's website, according to NASA's announcement. The briefing coincides with research that will be released by the science journal Nature on Wednesday, the space agency said.
The panelists participating in the press conference will be:
The Hubble Space Telescope, a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, launched in April 1990. In the two decades since, Hubble has revolutionized the way humanity views the cosmos.
The telescope's observations revealed, for instance, that the universe is expanding faster than anyone had realized. This finding helped lead astronomers to the probable chief cause of this accelerated expansion — the mysterious "dark energy" that makes up most of our universe.
For astronomers and laymen alike, Hubble's images have also helped bring the wonders of the cosmos closer. The telescope has been repaired five times over its long life, but it's expected to keep going strong until at least 2014.
If the last announcement is anything to judge by, they will announce that the Hubble Telescope saw a dune buggy and an aluminum American flag on the moon.
No, no, no. Sheila Jackson Lee needs to be bailed out for her JPL stupidity. They will announce they found the flag that Neil Armstrong planted on Mars.
They found Uhbummer’s throne?
No such thing as dark energy.
There is, however, something else I would chose to call dark momentum. Momentum that has been de-coupled from matter.
Another name for it is neutrinos.
When the “big-bang” happened, 94% of the mass was eradicated and turned into light energy and neutrinos.
In a kind of sense, the “big-bang” was actually a “big-collapse”.
I’m not a physicist but I play one in my dreams...
I knew if these guys looked back far enough they’d find that hammer and power drill I left behind. Now I’m going to have a lot of questions from the press and why did make black holes and when will this all end. Damn those guys! I never should have made astronomers!
Sounds like they discovered Obama’s birth certificate!
You were born yesterday, weren’t you? :)
I am not certain, and no physicist has ever told me this, but I believe they mean that dark energy makes up "most" (74%) of the stuff in the universe in the same sense that (because matter and energy are equivalent through E=mc2) if all the dark energy in the universe were converted to gorgonzola, then 74% of all the stuff in the universe would be gorgonzola.
Dark Energy and Dark Matter are two different things. There’s a lot more Dark Energy than Dark Matter, and we know even less about Dark Energy and what it might be than Dark Matter.
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