Could other planets support life? It's likely, and there may be more in our very own galaxy than previously thought. Astronomers have found that there are about 100 million other places in the Milky Way galaxy that could support complex life.
The researchers surveyed more than 1,000 planets and used a formula that considered planet density, temperature, substrate, chemistry, distance from its central star and age. This gave scientists a good sense of whether the planet could potentially support life; from this, the researchers created the Biological Complexity Index (BCI).
For the first time ever, scientists have measured the corkscrew nature of a bright flash of light emitted from a dying star collapsing into a black hole. The new findings shed light on an event that happened almost 11 billion years ago.
In this case, the researchers spied Gamma-ray Burst 121024A, a bright flash of light emitted by the dying star. Because the burst was so powerful, the astronomers were able to clearly see it at an extraordinary distance. Yet this burst was unusual; it was circularly polarized.
Engineers are about to blast away the top of a Chilean mountain to create a site for the European Extremely Large Telescope. It will allow us, for the first time, to directly observe planets outside the solar system
Cerro Armazones is a crumbling dome of rock that dominates the parched peaks of the Chilean Coast Range north of Santiago. A couple of old concrete platforms and some rusty pipes, parts of the mountain's old weather station, are the only hints that humans have ever taken an interest in this forbidding, arid place. Even the views look alien, with the surrounding boulder-strewn desert bearing a remarkable resemblance to the landscape of Mars.
For the first time, scientists have discovered an Earth-size alien planet in the habitable zone of its host star, an "Earth cousin" that just might have liquid water and the right conditions for life.
The newfound planet, called Kepler-186f, was first spotted by NASA's Kepler space telescope and circles a dim red dwarf star about 490 light-years from Earth. While the host star is dimmer than Earth's sun and the planet is slightly bigger than Earth, the positioning of the alien world coupled with its size suggests that Kepler-186f could have water on its surface, scientists say. You can learn more about the amazing alien planet find in a video produced by Space.com.
Recent observations in Antarctica confirm the radical theory that the cosmos is part of a multiverse. Stanford Physicist Andrei Linde learns Big Bang Theory Inflation is True Nobel Prize Moment Stanford Physicist
Observations at many sites in South America, including ESO’s La Silla Observatory, have made the surprise discovery that the remote asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by two dense and narrow rings. This is the smallest object by far found to have rings and only the fifth body in the Solar System — after the much larger planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — to have this feature.
One thing that we should be seriously concerned about is astronomer’s nonchalant attitude in their observation of the encounter of the G2 cloud with our Galaxy’s core. As noted in the Galactic Pinball posting about the G2 cloud encounter, astronomers are actually hoping to see “fireworks” to learn more about how “black holes dine”.
Massive planets called "super-Earths" are common in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, though, scientists have found that these planets are far more likely to have an Earth-like climate than previously thought. The findings could help researchers in their hunt for habitable planets.
In previous research, scientists thought that super-Earths would be very unlike Earth; each would be a waterworld with its surface completely covered in water. This new study, though, challenges these findings.
In order to learn a bit more about super-Earths, the researchers created a model that treated these exoplanets like Earth, which has quite a bit of water in its mantle. This rock contains tiny amounts of water, which quickly adds up because the mantle is so large.
In addition, a deep water cycle moves water between oceans and the mantle. This idea actually showed that if super-Earths stored most of their water in their mantles, then they would have oceans and exposed continents. This would enable a stable climate, like Earth's.
Is there another you reading this article at this exact moment in a parallel universe?
Dr. Brian Greene, author of The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, believes that this freakish quirk of nature may exist; and he discusses its amazing possibilities in this 3-minute TV interview.
A growing number of cosmologists agree with Greene that we are but one of many universes and at least one of these other worlds lies close to ours, maybe only a millimeter away. We can't see this world, because it exists in a type of space different from the four dimensions of our everyday reality.
The International Space Station has been forced to shut down many of its systems after a coolant leak.
NASA has confirmed the station is having problems with its coolant system due to a faulty valves. Early reports of the difficulties appeared in tweets from the station's crew and support staff.
The crew are struggling to restore pressure to the coolant system that keeps the vital systems, including life-support, at a regular temperature. This can vary wildly depending on whether the space station is in sunlight or in the Earth's shadow.
A team of astrophysicists at the German Aerospace Center, together with European colleagues, has discovered the most extensive planetary system to date, with striking similarity to our own Solar system! Seven planets circle the star KOI-351 – more than in other known planetary systems.
They are arranged in a similar fashion to the eight planets in the Solar System, with small rocky planets close to the parent star and gas giant planets at greater distances. Although the planetary system around KOI-351 is packed together more tightly, it provides an interesting comparison to our cosmic home.
Quantum entanglement is a part of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein once referred to as "spooky action at a distance." Now, though, scientists have discovered that this phenomenon could be even stranger than Einstein thought.
They've found that quantum entanglement may be intrinsically linked with wormholes, which are hypothetical features of space-time that that in popular science fiction can provide a much-faster-than-light shortcut from one part of universe to another.
Get ready, stargazers; you may be in for a treat. Astronomers have discovered that it's very possible that sometime during the next 50 years, a supernova occurring in our home galaxy will be visible from Earth.
In fact, they've found that the odds are nearly 100 percent that such a supernova would be visible to telescopes in the form of infrared radiation.
A massive star usually "goes supernova" at the moment when it's used up all its nuclear fuel and its core collapses, just before it explodes violently and throws off most of its mass into space. Yet actually catching this moment is difficult. It occurs relatively quickly, which means that capturing the beginning of a star's demise is near impossible. Yet in this case, it may very well be possible for astronomers to capture this moment.
You don't have to climb aboard a rocket ship to be a space tourist anymore.
World View Enterprises of Tucson, AZ, plans to offer suborbital spaceflight in a capsule lifted by balloon to 18.6 miles (30 km), which then glides back to Earth.
For $75,000, a company called World View Enterprises will loft you 19 miles (30 kilometers) up into Earth's atmosphere using a high-altitude balloon. While the gentle ride won't earn passengers their astronaut wings — outer space is generally considered to begin at an altitude of 62 miles (100 km) — it will afford spectacular views of the blackness of space and the curvature of our planet, World View officials say.
Scientists are getting a little help when it comes to exploring the universe. More than 83,000 volunteer citizen scientists have helped to catalog more than 300,000 nearby galaxies.
Named Galaxy Zoo 2, the project is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to help categorize the galaxies in our universe.
Crowdsourcing is becoming a new and useful tool for scientists. While computers are good at automatically measuring properties such as the size and color of galaxies, they're unable to tackle more challenging characteristics. For example, computers have a hard time determining the shape and structure of galaxies. That's where citizen scientists come in.
Virgin Galactic has made another leap forward when it comes to perfecting its fleet of spacecraft.
The company's SpaceShipTwo (SS2) has successfully completed its second rocket-powered, supersonic flight. That's not all, though; the company has also released some spectacular footage of this amazing flight.
SS2 is actually designed to ferry passengers into space. This latest flight, which occurred on September 5, demonstrated the vehicle's full technical mission profile in a single flight for the first time. This included a high altitude deployment of the unique wing "feathering" re-entry mechanism.
Ancient 5000-Year-Old Egyptian Beads Trace its Origin to Outer Space (Photo : UCL Petrie Museum/Rob Eagle)
Researchers have finally confirmed that ancient iron relics, which were unearthed in 1911 from two burial sites, are pieces of meteorites that were hammered carefully into thin sheets before being rolled into tubes.
This is an artist's concept of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft preparing to take a sample from asteroid Bennu.
Over the last hundred years, the human population has exploded from about 1.5 billion to more than seven billion, driving an ever-increasing demand for resources.
To satisfy civilization's appetite, communities have expanded recycling efforts while mine operators must explore forbidding frontiers to seek out new deposits, opening mines miles underground or even at the bottom of the ocean.
Asteroids could one day be a vast new source of scarce material if the financial and technological obstacles can be overcome. Asteroids are lumps of metals, rock and dust, sometimes laced with ices and tar, which are the cosmic "leftovers" from the solar system's formation about 4.5 billion years ago. There are hundreds of thousands of them, ranging in size from a few yards to hundreds of miles across. Small asteroids are much more numerous than large ones, but even a little, house-sized asteroid should contain metals possibly worth millions of dollars.
There are different kinds of asteroids, and they are grouped into three classes from their spectral type - a classification based on an analysis of the light reflected off of their surfaces. Dark, carbon-rich, "C-type" asteroids have high abundances of water bound up as hydrated clay minerals. Although these asteroids currently have little economic value since water is so abundant on Earth, they will be extremely important if we decide we want to expand the human presence throughout the solar system.
"Water is a critical life-support item for a spacefaring civilization, and it takes a lot of energy to launch it into space," says Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission. "With launch costs currently thousands of dollars per pound, you want to use water already available in space to reduce mission costs. The other thing you can do with water is break it apart into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, and that becomes rocket fuel, so you could have fuel depots out there where you're mining these asteroids. The other thing C-type asteroids have is organic material - they have a lot of organic carbon, phosphorous and other key elements for fertilizer to grow your food," said Lauretta.
Somewhat brighter asteroids have a stony composition. These "S-type" asteroids have very little water but are currently more economically relevant since they contain a significant fraction of metal, mostly iron, nickel and cobalt.
"However, there are a fair amount of trace elements that are economically valuable like gold, platinum and rhodium," said Lauretta. "A small, 10-meter (yard) S-type asteroid contains about 1,433,000 pounds (650,000 kg) of metal, with about 110 pounds (50 kg) in the form of rare metals like platinum and gold," said Lauretta.
There are rare asteroids with about ten times more metal in them, the metallic or "M-class" asteroids, according to Lauretta.
However, it currently costs hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to build and launch a space mission, so innovations that would make these costs fall dramatically are needed before it is profitable to mine asteroids for the value of their metals alone.
Another obstacle is simply our lack of experience with mapping and analyzing the resources in asteroids to extract material from them. This critical experience will be gained with NASA's asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security and Regolith Explorer).
The spacecraft, scheduled for launch in September 2016, will arrive at the asteroid Bennu in October 2018 and study it in detail before returning with a sample of material from its surface. Its primary purpose is scientific -- since asteroids are relics from our solar system's formation, analysis of the sample is expected to give insights into how the planets formed and life originated.
Also, the spacecraft will accurately measure how the tiny push from sunlight alters the orbit of Bennu, helping astronomers better predict this influence on the path of any asteroid that presents an impact risk to Earth. read more
The sun is a major source of visible light and energy on this planet. It represents all-pervading consciousness which animates all things providing us with what some believe to be unlimited energy.
According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun’s vast magnetic field is about to flip. What are the cosmic and personal implications of this? It is not such a unique phenomenon, as it happens every eleven years. Still, every eleven years, shifts in human consciousness around this period seem to occur like clock work.
It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of ‘Solar Max’ will be behind us, with half yet to come.
“It looks like we’re no more than 3 to 4 months away from a complete field reversal,” says solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University. “This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system.”
Hoeksema is the director of Stanford’s Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of the few observatories in the world that monitor the sun’s polar magnetic fields. The poles are a herald of change. Just as Earth scientists watch our planet’s polar regions for signs of climate change, solar physicists do the same thing for the sun. Magnetograms at Wilcox have been tracking the sun’s polar magnetism since 1976, and they have recorded three grand reversals–with a fourth in the offing.
A reversal of the sun’s magnetic field is, literally, a big event. The domain of the sun’s magnetic influence (also known as the “heliosphere”) extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field’s polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space.
The sun recently unleashed three X-class solar flares which were the strongest flares of the year so far. They signaled a significant increase in solar storms now supported by continued activity.
Maximum Sunspot Activity Correlates with Mass Human Excitability
Historically, research has been conducted to link the 11 year cycle of the sun to changes in human behavior and society. The most famous research was been done by professor A.L. Tchijevsky, a Russian scientist, who presented a paper to the American Meteorological Society at Philadelphia in the late 19th century. He prepared a study of the history of mass human movement compared to the solar cycle, beginning with the division of the Solar cycle into four parts: 1) Minimum sunspot activity; 2) increasing sunspot activity; 3) maximum sunspot activity; 4) Decreasing sunspot activity. He then divided up the agitation of mass human movements into five phases:
1) provoking influence of leaders upon masses
2) the “exciting” effect of emphasized ideas upon the masses
3) the velocity of incitability due to the presence of a single psychic center
4) the extensive areas covered by mass movements
5) Integration and individualization of the masses
By these comparisons he constructed an “Index of Mass Human Excitability” covering each year from 500 B.C. to 1922 A.D. He investigated the histories of 72 countries in that period, noting signs of human unrest such as wars, revolutions, riots, expeditions and migrations, plus the number of humans involved. Tchijevsky found that fully 80% of the most significant events occurred during the years of maximum sunspot activity. He maintained that the “exciting” period may be explained by an acute change in the nervous and psychic character of humanity, which takes place at sunspot maxima.
Tchijevsky discovered that the solar minimum is the lag period when repression is tolerated by the masses, as if they lacked the vital energy to make the needed changes. He found that during the sunspot maximum, the movement of humans is also at its peak. Tchijevsky’s study is the foundation of sunspot theory on human behavior, and as Harlan True Stetson, in his book Sunspots and Their Effects, stated, “Until, however, someone can arrive at a more convincing excitability quotient for mass movements than professor Tchijevsky appears yet to have done, scientists will be reluctant to subscribe to all the conclusions which he sets forth.” Stetson did acknowledge that the mechanism by which ultraviolet radiation is absorbed was still a puzzle biologists had to solve.
Shumilov looked at activity in the Earth’s geomagnetic field from 1948 to 1997 and found that it grouped into three seasonal peaks every year: one from March to May, another in July and the last in October.
Surprisingly, he also found that the geomagnetism peaks matched up with peaks in the number of suicides in the northern Russian city of Kirovsk over the same period.
Shumilov acknowledges that a correlation like this does not necessarily mean there is a causal link, but he points out that there have been several other studies suggesting a link between human health and geomagnetism.
For example, a 2006 review of research on cardiovascular health and disturbances in the geomagnetic field in the journal Surveys in Geophysics (DOI: 10.1007/s10712-006-9010-7) concluded that a link was possible and that the effects seemed to be more pronounced at high latitudes.
Twinned peaks
The review’s author, Michael Rycroft, formerly head of the European Geosciences Society, says that geomagnetic health problems affect 10 to 15% of the population.
“Others have found similar things [to Shumilov's results] in independent sets of data,” says Rycroft. “It suggests something may be linking the two factors.”
A 2006 Australian study, for example, also found a correlation between peaks in suicide numbers and geomagnetic activity (Bioelectromagnetics, vol. 27 p 155).
Brain storms
Psychiatrists too have noticed a correlation between geomagnetic activity and suicide rates. A review of 13 years of South African data on suicides and magnetic storms in South African Psychiatry Review, vol. 6 p. 24) suggested a link.
Geomagnetic storms – periods of high geomagnetic activity caused by large solar flares – have also been linked to clinical depression.
In 1994, a study was published suggesting a 36.2% increase in the number of men admitted into hospital for depression in the second week after geomagnetic storms (British Journal of Psychiatry vol 164, p 403).
What may be the cause of the link, if there is one, remains unknown. “The intriguing correlation between geomagnetism and suicide justifies more research into its mechanism,” says Rycroft.
Environmental cue?
“The most plausible explanation for the association between geomagnetic activity and depression and suicide is that geomagnetic storms can desynchronise circadian rhythms and melatonin production,” says Kelly Posner, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in the US.
The pineal gland, which regulates circadian rhythm and melatonin production, is sensitive to magnetic fields. “The circadian regulatory system depends upon repeated environmental cues to [synchronise] internal clocks,” says Posner. “Magnetic fields may be one of these environmental cues.”
Geomagnetic storms could disrupt body clocks, precipitating seasonal affective disorder and therefore increase suicide risk, Posner stated.
There seems little doubt that the brain responds to electromagnetic fields – coils that generate electromagnetic fields can trigger muscular twitches when placed over a person’s skull.
However, Shumilov, who was presenting his data at the European Geoscience Union (EGU) annual meeting in Vienna, Austria, last week, does not believe geomagnetic activity influences everyone equally.
Suicide statistics
He also presented hospital data from 6000 pregnant women who had routine scans of their fetus’s heart rates between 1995 and 2003. In 15% of the fetuses, periods of disturbances in their heart rates coincided with periods of high geomagnetic activity.
Shumilov accepts that light levels in northern countries can influence depression, but believes that geomagnetism may be another factor, and one that is under-appreciated.
"The trouble with studying the causes of suicide is that it is a rare condition," says Klaus Ebmeier, a psychiatrist at the University of Oxford. “You are bound to get spurious effects. A study of the causes would have to enrol a country’s entire population.”
Cosmo Hallstrom, a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, agrees. “You have to be very careful with suicide statistics,” he says. “Countries report them differently. Catholic countries are very reluctant to diagnose suicide. Scandinavian countries consider it a social injustice not to.”
Photonic energy inevitably affects Consciousness and influences our health
While the mechanism behind the stimulation of human behavior is still a mystery, many are now accepting that humanity is receiving the highest support from the consciousness of the cosmos, allowing us to wake up to our magnificence and divine connection to each other and the universe. The Sun is only assisting in this inevitable process.
It will be traumatic for many when those revelations of why human consciousness if shifting at the same time major changes are being introduced. Knowing that all of the confusion and turmoil is heralding Earth’s exit from third density, how will we be prepared to weather the coming months and to help those who are foundering.
The interesting fact about this energy is that since it is of a higher frequency it creates the power of instant manifestation of our thoughts, which means whatever we think, we create instantly. This never before happened in our lifetime and that is why many people are writing books on the subject on the Power of Attraction.
Photonic energy connects to our thoughts so it is important that we know what we want, rather than we don’t want, otherwise, we will manifest more of what we don’t want. If you are in the process of change and transformation this energy works well for you. On the other hand, if you are stuck in the past through victimization and anger, you will simply manifest more reasons to remain stuck in victimization until you are ready to release it.
There is some Russian research that shows an increase in cardiac problems during sunspot maxima. The solar activity probably sets off a preexisting condition and no one is suggesting that people will drop dead in the streets. We could see the stress of solar activity on the biology of living things as an evolutionary agent weeding out the old and sick and strengthening those who can resonate with its radiations.
There will also be an increased frequency of deaths worldwide following the solar maxima. These may take place through accidents, illness and other factors which will be attributed to chance, however most of these deaths will be related to an acceleration of consciousness and self-imposed termination for those not willing or ready to experience a fourth dimensional experience.
Professor d’Arsonval gives several examples of research done in the last hundred years that shows the most malefic effects from solar activity come at the sunspot minima. He notes from the British Medical Journal, March 7th & 14th of 1936 that both Colonel C.A. Gill and Dr. Conyers Morrel found increases in pandemics of deadly diseases during the period of minimal sunspot activity.
In Gill’s study he showed that every pandemic of malaria since sunspot records were taken had occurred when sunspot numbers were lowest. Similar trends were observed in East Africa and elsewhere with Yellow fever epidemics since 1800 occur during the sunspot minima. Dr. Conyers Morrel also finds that, “…waves of epidemic diseases covering considerable periods exhibit a very close correspondence with the phases of sunspot periods. Diphtheria, Typhus, and Dysentery seemed to prosper when there was an absence of solar activity. We also see an increase in disease in Solco W. Tromp’s study. Without the stimulation from the Sun human health seems to diminish. The immune system seems to grow unresponsive during the solar lull and diseases can more easily gain a foothold in the body.
Not only human health but Life itself seems hampered by the lack of solar activity. William Hershel wrote in 1801, “It seems probable analyzing the period between 1650 and 1713, and judging by the normal yields of wheat, that a scarcity of vegetation occurred whenever the sun appeared to be free from spots.” The depressed state of metabolism and lack of food in agricultural centers may have seemed very inviting to the Mongols. Goncharov, in an abstract on the “Asian Nomadic Invasions and Solar Cycles”, aid, “From the 4th to the 16th centuries the Central Asian Steepe was the cradle of the series of great nomadic tribal invasions into agricultural regions of Europe, China, and South Asia. Those invasions had similar features. They arose in middle latitudes and recurred every 160-220 years — exactly after solar abatements.”
What we will be experiencing in 2013 and 2014 more than anything else is a constant upgrade to our current belief systems, collective consciousness and awareness of earth’s true history from the constant bombardment of solar activity.
There will be no more major wars but a shift with no central ideology. This ideology will grow and spread worldwide with no exception. The shared understanding is arising from different economic sectors, cultures and regions. Our economic landscape will change, and although a planned one-world currency will be enacted, we will quickly dismiss this new system within a short period of time and move toward non-monetary systems.
All these information packets from the Sun will make us feel like we need to find a new center of truth. As galactic connections increase around the 2012 summer solstice and then again for the universal collective around the 2012 winter solstice, we must all listen intently to our intuition and trust it. If it doesn’t feel right, switch over to something that does. It’s that simple.
