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The Yutu-2 image of the ‘mysterious hut’. (CNSA/CLEP/Our Space) China's mysterious "Moon cube" is a mystery no longer. The big reveal: It's a rock that's not even shaped like a cube. The nation's Yutu-2 rover discovered the object – which appeared to be a gray cube looming on the lunar horizon – in early December. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) dubbed it 'mysterious hut', playfully speculating that the cube might be an alien house or spacecraft. News reports called it the 'Moon cube'. The CNSA estimated the object was about 80 meters (262 feet) away, according to the blog...

Explanation: What will become of Jupiter's Great Red Spot? Gas giant Jupiter is the solar system's largest world with about 320 times the mass of planet Earth. Jupiter is home to one of the largest and longest lasting storm systems known, the Great Red Spot (GRS), visible to the left. The GRS is so large it could swallow Earth, although it has been shrinking. Comparison with historical notes indicate that the storm spans only about one third of the exposed surface area it had 150 years ago. NASA's Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program has been monitoring the storm more...

[T]he meteor that exploded Saturday morning in the skies above Western Pennsylvania produced a blast that was equal to 30 tons of TNT. On New Year’s Day, a loud boom was heard and felt throughout the region, with some people reporting rumbles in their homes and rattling windows. NASA told The Post that the meteor was a yard in diameter, weighed 1,000 pounds, and hit the atmosphere at a staggering 45,000 mph. A meteor of that size travels through Earth’s atmosphere every three or four days, but because most of the planet is water-covered, the majority of those meteors fall...

For years, experts thought the biggest stars in the universe, red supergiants, died with a whimper. But in 2020, astronomers witnessed quite the opposite. One of these gleaming monsters -- 10 times more massive than the sun -- violently self-destructed after presenting the cosmos with a final, radiant beacon of starlight. ..Jacobson-Galán is the lead author of a paper published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal that documents the star's eruption as well as its last, 130-day hurrah.... ...The star's extreme illumination indicated it wasn't dormant, or quiescent, as previously observed red supergiants had been prior to their demise. This shiny...

An artist’s impression of a red supergiant star in the final year of its life emitting a tumultuous cloud of gas. This suggests at least some of these stars undergo significant internal changes before going supernova. Credit: W.M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko Astronomers Capture Red Supergiant’s Death Throes “For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode,” researcher says. For the first time ever, astronomers have imaged in real time the dramatic end to a red supergiant’s life — watching the massive star’s rapid self-destruction and final death throes before collapsing into a type II supernova. Led by researchers...

Last month, China's Yutu-2 rover sent home a striking image appearing to show—albeit very blurrily—a cube-shaped object off in the distance. Dubbed the "mystery house" by Chinese media (blissfully disinterested in how this would set off Western conspiracists, magonians and ironists) the object was tagged for closer inspection. Yutu-2 has now gotten closer, and, well, alas, sadly no.

Particles forming swirling, tornado-like structures. (Mukherjee et al, Nature, 2022 ============================================================================== Scientists have observed a stunning demonstration of classic physics giving way to quantum behavior, manipulating a fluid of ultra-cold sodium atoms into a distinct tornado-like formation. Particles behave differently on the quantum level, in part because at this point their interactions with each other hold more power over them than the energy from their movement. Then, of course, there's the mind-boggling fact that quantum particles don't exactly have a certain fixed location like you or I, which influences how they interact. By cooling particles down to as close to...

"Using two Hawaiʻi telescopes—the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS on Haleakalā, Maui and W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island—a team of researchers conducting the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) transient survey observed the red supergiant during its last 130 days leading up to its deadly detonation."

The remains of the young man were found at a dig site known as Çeşme-Bağlararası. It sits along a shoreline on Çeşme Bay in western Turkey. The dig site has been yielding Late Bronze Age artifacts for several years but it was only recently that the digging uncovered evidence of a tsunami—layers of ash and debris that were prevented from being washed back into the sea by a retaining wall. In addition to the remains of the young man, the researchers also found the remains of a dog. The evidence also showed that the area had been struck by several...

Asteroid 2021 YQThe asteroid is about the size of a large commercial airliner (~200 feet) is expected to approach within 1,330,000 miles of Earth on January 5, 2022. The last time 2021 YQ approached Earth's orbit was on December 7, 1902. Asteroid 2021 YX is also expected to approach Earth on January 5, 2022, though it will be a little further at 2,390,000 miles away. This rock is about 100 feet wide...This asteroid has never approached Earth before... Asteroid 2014 YE15This 24-foot wide rock is expected to approach Earth on January 6, 2022, and is about the size of a...

This animation shows an artist’s rendition of the cloudy structure revealed by a study of data from NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer satellite. Credit: Wolfgang Steffen, UNAM ======================================================================== Upending textbook explanations, astrophysicists from the University of Miami, Yale University, and the European Space Agency suggest that primordial black holes account for all dark matter in the universe. Proposing an alternative model for how the universe came to be, a team of astrophysicists suggests that all black holes—from those as tiny as a pinhead to those covering billions of miles—were created instantly after the Big Bang and account for all dark...

(LOFAR/LOL Survey) The image above may look like a fairly normal picture of the night sky, but what you're looking at is a lot more special than just glittering stars. Each of those white dots is an active supermassive black hole. And each of those black holes is devouring material at the heart of a galaxy millions of light-years away – that's how they could be pinpointed at all. Totaling 25,000 such dots, astronomers created the most detailed map to date of black holes at low radio frequencies in early 2021, an achievement that took years and a Europe-sized radio...

Source:   University Of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.umr.edu) Date:   Posted 7/17/2002 The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper presented before the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at UMR, says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. Manuel claims that hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun's heat, as hydrogen -- the lightest of all elements -- moves to the sun's surface. But most of the heat comes from the core of an exploded supernova...

The night sky has several treats in store for 2022: Expect lunar eclipses, a planetary alignment and meteor showers! The new year brings not one, but two total lunar eclipses -- the first on the night of May 15-16 and the last on Nov. 8... The May total lunar eclipse will be visible throughout the entire contiguous U.S., weather permitting of course. Unfortunately for West Coasters, the eclipse will only be visible briefly. The Western U.S., however, has an advantage for the November lunar eclipse, as the moon will set just before the height of the eclipse on the East...

SCIENTISTS have proved for the first time that bacteria can survive in outer space, supporting the theory that life on Earth began with extra-terrestrial microbes. Researchers showed that spores could stay alive when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the Sun if they were protected by particles of clay and red sandstone commonly found in meteorites. The tests, in which spores were released from a Russian satellite, suggest that the 'panspermia' theory that life began elsewhere and was carried to Earth on meteorites is plausible. The hypothesis was first proposed by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, in 1903 and was ...

Heavenly bodies stir up routine catastrophes March 18 2003 at 01:30PM By Graeme Addison Legend has it that when two people get together and er... bond, the Earth will move – at least in a metaphorical sense. Likewise, it takes two heavenly bodies, an impactor and a target, to come together with Earth-shattering force to form a crater. There’s nothing dreamlike about this: it happens, frequently, throughout the solar system. Impact catastrophes are routine. Just over two-billion years ago, a chunk of asteroid at least the size of Table Mountain struck the landmass that is now South Africa. It hurtled...

LONDON (Reuters) - Could SARS have come from outer space? Some scientists think so. Instead of jumping from an unknown animal host in southern China, a few researchers in Britain believe the virus that has baffled medical experts descended from the stratosphere. "I think it is a possibility that SARS came from space. It is a very strong possibility," Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe told Reuters. The director of the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology in Wales and a proponent of the theory that life on Earth originated from space, admits the theory defies conventional wisdom. But in a letter published in The...

Searching for 'our alien origins' By Andrew Thompson BBC Horizon Dr Wickramasinghe thinks life could have originated in space In July 2001, a mysterious red rain started falling over a large area of southern India. Locals believed that it foretold the end of the world, though the official explanation was that it was desert dust that had blown over from Arabia. But one scientist in the area, Dr Godfrey Louis, was convinced there was something much more unusual going on. Not only did Dr Louis discover that there were tiny biological cells present, but because they did not appear to...

The human race began as microbes brought to Earth by comets millions of years ago according to a British scientist, The Sun reported Wednesday. British professor Chandra Wickramasinghe said: "We are all aliens. We share a cosmic ancestry. "Each time a new planetary system forms, a few surviving microbes find their way into comets. "These then multiply and seed other planets. We are thus part of a connected chain that extends over a large volume of the cosmos. Evidence is pointing inexorably in this direction." Prof Wickramasinghe, an astrobiologist at Cardiff University, believes the first "seeds of life" were deposited...

Sir Fred Hoyle Vindicated (Via Dr. Benny Peiser of the GWPF) According to new research to be published in Nature Geoscience  (embargoed until 1800 GMT/10AM PST, Sunday 8 January 2012), the next ice age could set in any time this millennium where it not for increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions that are preventing such a global disaster from occurring. The new research confirms the theory developed by the late Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe in the 1990s that without increased levels of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere ‘the drift into new ice-age conditions would be inevitable.’Hoyle and Wickramasinghe...