Free Republic

ASTROPHYSICS A team of University of Copenhagen astrophysicists has arrived at a major result regarding star populations beyond the Milky Way. The result could change our understanding of a wide range of astronomical phenomena, including the formation of black holes, supernovae and why galaxies die. The Andromeda galaxy, our Milky Way's closest neighbor, is the most distant object in the sky that you can see with your unaided eye. For as long as humans have studied the heavens, how stars look in distant galaxies has been a mystery. In a study published today in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of...

Closeup of the region on the sky, 1/250 of a degree across, where the gravity of a foreground cluster of galaxies magnifies the distant background star—nicknamed Earendil—thousands of times. With a fortuitous lineup of a massive cluster of galaxies, astronomers discovered a single star across most of the entire observable Universe. This is the farthest detection of a single star ever. The star may be up to 500 times more massive than the Sun. The discovery has been published today in the journal Nature. Gazing at the night sky, all the stars that you see lie within our own galaxy,...

Astronomers monitoring the Kepler space telescope have detected nearly 1,300 planets flying in orbit around distant stars, a cosmic search that began nearly 10 years ago inside a rusty old telescope dome at the Lick Observatory atop Mount Hamilton near San Jose. From the size and orbits of the new-found “exoplanets,” the astronomers said at least 550 could be rocky planets much like Earth, and at least nine are orbiting at just the right distance from their stars to lie inside their “habitable zones” where temperatures would be just right for liquid water, the one ingredient essential for life to...

CAMP DAVID -- Sixty-seven years to the day since Israel declared independence, and 37 years since it signed a peace accord with Egypt here at the American presidential retreat in Maryland, US President Barack Obama cast doubt on the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinian people on Thursday after meeting with Arab leaders. A final Israeli-Palestinian accord "seems distant now," Obama said from Camp David, reiterating the US position that an agreement recognizing two states for two peoples is "absolutely vital" for greater Middle East peace. "Since we're up here at Camp David, I think it's important to...

Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney may face even more opposition regarding his faith if he becomes the GOP nominee, according to polls and several interviews by the Huffington Post. The staunchest opposition against Romney because of his faith came from Rev. Robert Jeffress, who is the spiritual leader for the largest church in Texas. Jeffress, a supporter of GOP contender Rick Perry, called Mormonism a “cult,” and Perry – along with many Christian conservatives – publicly rebuked him. According to new polls and information from Evangelical leaders, Christian views might change if Romney is chosen as Obama’s adversary in 2012. Rev....

One wonders... Did the inhabitants of galaxy NGC 891 duck when Comet McNaught flew past the edge-on spiral on the morning of June 8th? Mike O'Connor and Tristan Dilapo took this picture of the cosmic close encounter from Colden, New York: (click on photo to enlarge) "The comet was only 10 degrees above the horizon," says O'Connor. "Nevertheless, we got a good picture using a 12-inch telescope and an SBIG ST9-E camera."And, no, the denizens of that distant galaxy did not flinch, flee, duck or take notice in any way. NGC 891 is 30 million light years away, far removed...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered both carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of a distant planet, in a key step for finding extraterrestrial life, the space agency said Tuesday. Detecting organic compounds that can be a by-product of life processes on an Earth-like body could one day "provide the first evidence of life beyond our planet," NASA said in a statement. The discovery was made on a Jupiter-size planet 63 light years away from Earth that is too hot for life, and is all gas and liquid. "We're not closer to discovering life on...

The most distant black hole ever found is nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth, astronomers announced today. The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope spotted the bright burst of light the black hole created as it sucked up nearby gas, heating it and causing it to glow very brightly in what's known as a quasar. The distance to the quasar, which sits in the constellation Pisces, was determined by measuring the amount of redshift in the lines of the quasar's spectrum, or prism of light. Because light is "redshifted" to longer wavelengths as an object moves away from an observer, the higher the redshift,...

WASHINGTON - The largest planet ever found orbiting another star is so puffy it would float on water, astronomers said Thursday. The newly discovered planet, dubbed HAT-P-1, is both the largest and least dense of the nearly 200 worlds astronomers have found outside our own solar system. HAT-P-1 orbits one of a pair of stars in the constellation Lacerta, about 450 light-years from Earth. "This new planet, if you could imagine putting it in a cosmic water glass, it would float," said Robert Noyes, a research astrophysicist with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. HAT-P-1 is an oddball planet, since it orbits...

Kennewick Man, meet your distant cousins By Kate Riley Monday, November 7, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM COLUMBIA, S.C. — Discerning the story of America's prehistoric past is a bit like groping through an unfamiliar room in the dark. One learned scientist's tattooing tool is another's piece of rock. Ask them to agree how long it has been there and you're bound to set off an argument that makes Seattle's whether-to-monorail conflict seem like a tea party. So it goes with evolving thought in archaeology. We all know the prevailing theory. Our children's high-school textbooks talk about the...

The shark may have made the journey to find a mate A great white shark crossed the Indian Ocean from South Africa to Australia and back again within just nine months. It was one of several great whites tagged by researchers in an attempt to improve conservation strategies. Writing in the journal Science, they say the journey is unparalleled among fish - only tuna come close. The mere act of tagging a great white is something of a feat; several people need to hold the creature still while the satellite tracker is attached. EPIC OCEAN JOURNEYIn picturesThe project will inform...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Astronomers said on Monday they have detected a cosmic explosion at the very edge of the visible universe, a 13-billion-year-old blast that could help them learn more about the earliest stars. The brilliant blast -- known as a gamma ray burst -- was probably caused by the death of a massive star soon after the Big Bang, but was glimpsed on September 4 by NASA's new Swift satellite and later by ground-based telescopes. The explosion occurred soon after the first stars and galaxies formed, perhaps 500 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang explosion that...

Phoebe probably distant traveller Cassini's images of Phoebe Images of Saturn's moon Phoebe from the Cassini spacecraft suggest it may be a relic of objects that formed billions of years ago in the outer Solar System. The pictures seem to show ice in its craters, boosting the theory that it is more similar to comets and very distant Solar System objects than to asteroids. Scientists think Phoebe migrated inwards and was probably captured by Saturn's gravity billions of years ago. Several tiny Saturn moons may have been blasted out of Phoebe by space impacts. "Battered and beat-up as [Phoebe] is,...

05/07/04 -- For the first time, UCLA neurobiologists have pinpointed a region of the brain called the anterior cingulate as responsible for retrieving and storing distant memories. Published in the May 7 edition of Science, the findings may suggest new ways of treating memory disorders, including Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. "Scientists have long understood that the hippocampus processes recent memory, but we did not know where the brain housed our oldest memories," explained Dr. Alcino Silva, principal investigator and professor of neurobiology, psychiatry and psychology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "We knew that the hippocampus...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 February 17 Galaxy Cluster Lenses Farthest Known Galaxy Credit: ESA, NASA, J.-P. Kneib (Caltech/Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees) & R. Ellis (Caltech) Explanation: Gravity can bend light, allowing whole clusters of galaxies to act as huge telescopes. Almost all of the bright objects in this just-released Hubble Space Telescope image are galaxies in the cluster known as Abell 2218. The cluster is so massive and so compact that its gravity...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 November 28 The Most Distant X-Ray Jet Credit: A. Siemiginowska (CfA) et al., CXC, NASAIllustration by M.Weiss (CXC) Explanation: A false-color x-ray image inset at upper left reveals emission from a cosmic jet of high-energy particles, 100,000 light-years in length, emerging from quasar GB1508+5714. An estimated 12 billion (12,000,000,000) light-years away, this appears to be the most distant energetic jet in the known Universe. Astrophysical jets of...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 April 14 A Gamma Ray Burst - Supernova Connection Credit: Al Kelly (JSCAS/NASA) & Arne Henden (Flagstaff/USNO) Explanation: New evidence has emerged that a mysterious type of explosion known as a gamma ray burst is indeed connected to a supernova of the type visible in the above image. Two weeks ago, the orbiting HETE satellite detected gamma-ray burst GRB030329. The extremely bright burst was found hours later...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 January 14 0313-192: The Wrong Galaxy Credit: W. Keel (Univ. Alabama), M. Ledlow (Gemini Obs.), F. Owen (NRAO), AUI,NSF, NASA Explanation: Centered above is distant galaxy 0313-192, some one billion light-years away. Radio emission from the galaxy has been mapped by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array and is shown in red, composited with a visible light image from the Hubble Space Telescope's new Advanced...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 December 19 RAPTOR Images GRB 021211Credit: P. Wozniak, W.T. Vestrand, et al., RAPTOR Project, LANL Explanation: On December 11 astronomers found one of the brightest and most distant explosions in the Universe - a gamma-ray burst - hiding in the glare of a relatively nearby star. The earliest image of the burst's visible light was caught by an earthbound RAPTOR (RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response). The two...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 November 2 NGC 604: Giant Stellar Nursery Credit: H. Yang (UIUC), HST, NASA Explanation: Scattered within this cavernous nebula, cataloged as NGC 604, are over 200 newly formed hot, massive, stars. At 1,500 light-years across, this expansive cloud of interstellar gas and dust is effectively a giant stellar nursery located some three million light-years distant in the spiral galaxy, M33. The newborn stars irradiate the gas with...