Free Republic

A stunning new panoramic image of the Milky Way is revealing all sorts of fresh insight. The image shows the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, stretching about 600 light-years across, and reveals never-before-seen details of the Arches cluster, which is densest star cluster in our galaxy. And that bright white splotch in the middle of the image? That's the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, which is illuminated on all sides.

No one really knows what happens inside an atom. But two competing groups of scientists think they've figured it out. And both are racing to prove that their own vision is correct. Here's what we know for sure: Electrons whiz around "orbitals" in an atom's outer shell. Then there's a whole lot of empty space. And then, right in the center of that space, there's a tiny nucleus — a dense knot of protons and neutrons that give the atom most of its mass. Those protons and neutrons cluster together, bound by what's called the strong force. And the numbers...

...Earth was bombarded on a regular basis during its formative years -- by meteorites and other space rocks. Some of those collisions left behind evidence that is still observable today in the form of craters. One of them is Mistastin Lake crater located in Labrador Canada, which is approximately 28 kilometers across, suggesting that the object that struck the Earth there was large. The researchers dated the collision that caused the crater back to approximately 38 million years ago... In studying the crater, the researchers found evidence of zircon, a common mineral, being changed into cubic zirconia. Prior work with...

A massive lightning strike which hit the Isle of Lewis more than 3,000 years ago may have inspired ancient civilisations to build stone circles, academics believe. Scientists studying a prehistoric stone circle on the Outer Hebrides island discovered evidence of a lightning strike on a nearby site where a circle had been hidden beneath a peat bog. Just one stone remained standing at the site, known as Site XI or Airigh na Beinne Bige, which overlooks the main stone circle, Tursachan Chalanais, at Calanais on the Isle of Lewis. But it is believed that the single stone was once part...

A team of researchers with members from Singapore, the U.S., Thailand and Laos has concluded that the impact point of a meteorite that struck the Earth approximately 790,000 years ago lies buried beneath a volcanic field in southern Laos. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group outlines four lines of evidence that point to the Bolaven volcanic field as the likely site of the meteorite strike. Prior research has shown that approximately 790,000 years ago, a large meteorite (the largest known young meteorite impact) struck Earth in the Eastern Hemisphere. So great was...

Betelgeuse has gotten dramatically dimmer over the last few weeks, astronomers say the change probably isn’t a symptom of an impending stellar explosion. That’s good news for any planets in the star’s orbit... But it’s disappointing news for Earth-based astronomers and stargazers, who haven’t been able to watch the death of a star with their unaided eyes since 1987, and may not have another chance for centuries. In 1987, a supernova called SN 1987A, marked the death of a blue giant star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the dwarf galaxies that orbits the Milky Way. 168,000 years after...

Davenport Perihelion, or Earth's closest approach to sun in it's orbit, occurs tonight. Perihelion is the annual closest approach to the sun. The sun will be roughly 91.4 million miles away...

Including the two supermoons, there will be a total of 13 full moons during the year. There will also be two full moons in the month of October alone, the second of which is called a blue moon. Here's the special, and somewhat eerie, part. The blue moon will fall on Halloween night. Blue moons typically happen once every two or three years, but it's even more rare to have it on Halloween. The next blue moon to fall on Halloween will be in 2039.

Mission operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have lost contact with the ASTERIA satellite, a briefcase-sized spacecraft designed to study planets outside our solar system. The last successful communication with ASTERIA, short for Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics, was on Dec. 5; attempts to contact it are expected to continue into March 2020. ASTERIA belongs to a category of satellites called CubeSats, which vary in size but are typically smaller than a suitcase. Deployed into Earth orbit from the space station on Nov. 20, 2017, the technology demonstration mission showed that many technologies necessary for...

They come in the night: Drones — lots of them — flying in precise formations over the Colorado and Nebraska prairie. Whose are they? Unknown. Why are they there? Unclear. “It’s creepy,” said Missy Blackman, who saw three drones hovering over her farm outside Palisade, Neb., on a recent evening, including one that lingered right above her house. “I have a lot of questions of why and what are they, and nobody seems to have any answers.” Since before Christmas, sheriff’s departments in the region have been bombarded with reports of large drones with blinking lights and wingspans of up...

The closest it is expected to get is four lunar distances -- about 1 million miles – at approximately 9 am EST. Tracking is available on The Sky Live, which calculates that 2019 AE3 will technically be visible from New York between around 1 a.m. and 10 am. The event is set to occur just three days after five sizeable NEOs flew by the earth on the same day...[including one] similar in size to 2019 AE3 practically skimmed it just 415,000 miles away.

The Marree Man is a geoglyph spanning 2.2 miles (or 3.5 kilometers) head-to-toe, and can be found in the middle of South Australia's desert near a town called Marree, itself 365 miles (589 kilometers) from the city of Adelaide. The image of a hunter with what might be a stick (or a boomerang) in his hand was chosen as NASA's Image of the Day on Sunday. It was taken by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on June 22, 2019. The mysterious figure was first spotted in 1998, when a pilot noticed the carvings on a plateau, but has faded as...

This illustration depicts the Sun-like star Kepler 51 and three giant planets that NASA's Kepler space telescope discovered in 2012–2014. These planets are all roughly the size of Jupiter but a tiny fraction of its mass. This means the planets have an extraordinarily low density, more like that of Styrofoam rather than rock or water, based on new Hubble Space Telescope observations. The planets may have formed much farther from their star and migrated inward. Now their puffed-up hydrogen/helium atmospheres are bleeding off into space. Eventually, much smaller planets might be left behind. The background starfield is correctly plotted as...

Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet. This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can “communicate” over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no...

Around 5PM Eastern,not long after sunset,I went outside and saw the moon,in a "crescent" phase and as clear as can be (not a cloud in the sky), with a small very bright light a bit above it. I waited for that light to move (assuming it was a plane) but for three minutes it didn't move a bit. Yes,I'm a city boy who never really studied science so please don't laugh...was that small bright light a planet? The only time in my life I've ever seen anything that compelling was the night,long ago,that we spent in the Florida Keys with...

More space rocks seem to be approaching Earth’s territory, and a new report reveals another one may bring in disasters. NASA has spotted an asteroid traveling at 63,000 miles per hour, and there is a possibility that it can impact the Earth. Express reports that the space agency recently tracked down an asteroid named 101955 Bennu but formally known as 1999 RQ36, hurtling towards Earth at a rapid speed of 63,000 miles per hour. NASA has not only labeled this a Potentially Hazardous Object or PHO, but they have also classified RQ36 with the second-highest rating on the Palermo Technical...

Christianity is the largest religion in the world, approximately a third of the world's population, according to Pew Research Center (2015). Christmas Day could possibly be considered the most celebrated religious holiday on the planet. The date of Christmas on December 25 has been studied for centuries. Some think that since it was in the winter, shepherds would not have been in the field with their flocks, but this argument loses credibility when one considers the moderate climate of Bethlehem in December, with an average daily temperature of around 50 degrees, similar to Florida or Texas. Some think December 25...

In the 8th century before Christ, the Prophet Isaiah wrote (7:14): "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The Gospel of Matthew, 1:20-23, relates: "The angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from...

A few minutes ago a strange, perfectly straight line of about 30 bright lights was visible moving across southern Wisconsin from the southwest to the northeast. They would appear just over the horizon and disappear as they came overhead. It was initially a quite shocking sight so Freepers might want to be on the lookout for them and know what they are before they first see them. These were the 60 or so SpaceX Starlink satellites orbiting at an altitude of 174 miles. They can be tracked using websites (https://www.satflare.com/track.asp?q=starlink and http://stuffin.space). They are visible only under clear skies shortly...

The massive space rock, which is known as 310442 (2000 CH59), will be closest to our planet on December 26 at 2:54 a.m. EST, according to NASA. The space agency's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) estimates its diameter will be in the range of 919 to 2,034 feet. Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS), told Newsweek. "So it is prudent to keep tracking [them] for decades to come and to study how their orbits might be evolving." CH59 will be about 4.5 million miles from our planet the morning...