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Starts With A Bang!
18 May 2013, 00:32 UTC
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” -Albert Einstein Back when Einstein first proposed his theory of General Relativity, his revolutionary picture of the Universe was met with a mix of curiosity, awe, and intense skepticism. It isn’t every day that your most cherished of all physical theories — the theory of Newtonian Gravity that had ruled the cosmos for nearly two-and-a-half centuries — gets challenged by a newcomer. Image credit: Brooks/Cole – Thomson publishing, 2005. And yet, that’s exactly what Einstein did when he proposed General Relativity at the end of 1915, nearly a century ago. Newtonian gravity, according to Einstein, was just an illusion. Objects didn’t really exert gravitational forces on one another, which in turn caused accelerations/changes in momentum, but rather the entire Universe existed in a framework known as spacetime, and the presence of matter-and-energy curved the fabric of that spacetime, causing objects to move as they do. Image credit: WGBH Boston, retrieved from http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/. Einstein’s theory not only reduced to Newtonian gravity when gravitational fields were weak, it also predicted the orbital anomaly of Mercury, something that had puzzled astronomers and physicists alike for nearly 50 years. When the 1919 ...
“Einstein’s Greatest Blunder” was REALLY a blunder!
18 May 2013, 00:32 UTC
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” -Albert Einstein Back when Einstein first proposed his theory of General Relativity, his revolutionary picture of the Universe was met with a mix of curiosity, awe, and intense skepticism. It isn’t every day that your most cherished of all physical theories — the theory of Newtonian Gravity that had ruled the cosmos for nearly two-and-a-half centuries — gets challenged by a newcomer. Image credit: Brooks/Cole – Thomson publishing, 2005. And yet, that’s exactly what Einstein did when he proposed General Relativity at the end of 1915, nearly a century ago. Newtonian gravity, according to Einstein, was just an illusion. Objects didn’t really exert gravitational forces on one another, which in turn caused accelerations/changes in momentum, but rather the entire Universe existed in a framework known as spacetime, and the presence of matter-and-energy curved the fabric of that spacetime, causing objects to move as they do. Image credit: WGBH Boston, retrieved from http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/. Einstein’s theory not only reduced to Newtonian gravity when gravitational fields were weak, it also predicted the orbital anomaly of Mercury, something that had puzzled astronomers and physicists alike for nearly 50 years. When the 1919 ...
Discovery News - Space News
17 May 2013, 22:45 UTC
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has recreated the world's tiniest droplets of a primordial state of matter that last existed moments after the Big Bang, some 13.82 billion years ago. Continue reading →
LHC Creates Tiny Drops of Big Bang 'Blood Spatter'
17 May 2013, 22:45 UTC
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has recreated the world's tiniest droplets of a primordial state of matter that last existed moments after the Big Bang, some 13.82 billion years ago. Continue reading →
StarStruck
17 May 2013, 20:45 UTC
A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program. Some… An artist illustration of a meteor impacting the moon and resulting in an explosion that can be visible from Earth skies.Credit: NASA A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program. Some 300 lunar impact events have been logged over the years but this latest impact, from March 17, is considered many orders of magnitude brighter than anything else observed. “We have seen a couple of others in the ‘wow’ category but not this bright,” said Robert Suggs, manager of NASA’s Lunar Impact Monitoring Program at Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The blast lasted only about a single second and shone ...
NASA Announces Brightest Lunar Explosion Ever Recorded
17 May 2013, 20:45 UTC
A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program. Some… An artist illustration of a meteor impacting the moon and resulting in an explosion that can be visible from Earth skies.Credit: NASA A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program. Some 300 lunar impact events have been logged over the years but this latest impact, from March 17, is considered many orders of magnitude brighter than anything else observed. “We have seen a couple of others in the ‘wow’ category but not this bright,” said Robert Suggs, manager of NASA’s Lunar Impact Monitoring Program at Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The blast lasted only about a single second and shone ...
SPACE.com
17 May 2013, 20:02 UTC
Dream Chaser's first free-flight test is slated for later this year.
Private Space Plane Arrives in California for Key Flight Tests
17 May 2013, 20:02 UTC
Dream Chaser's first free-flight test is slated for later this year.
Universe Today
17 May 2013, 19:05 UTC
Have you seen Star Trek: Into Darkness yet? If so, did you see the NASA-themed trailer, too? A crowd-funded 30-second video called “We Are the Explorers” is debuting at theaters this week, shown before the new Trek film begins. It highlights America’s future in space and is narrated by actor Peter Cullen, the voice of head Transformer Optimus Prime. (...)Read the rest of This is the new ‘We Are the Explorers’ Video You’ll See at ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness” (156 words) © nancy for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: NASA, star trek: into darkness Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
This is the new ‘We Are the Explorers’ Video You’ll See at ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness”
17 May 2013, 19:05 UTC
Have you seen Star Trek: Into Darkness yet? If so, did you see the NASA-themed trailer, too? A crowd-funded 30-second video called “We Are the Explorers” is debuting at theaters this week, shown before the new Trek film begins. It highlights America’s future in space and is narrated by actor Peter Cullen, the voice of head Transformer Optimus Prime. (...)Read the rest of This is the new ‘We Are the Explorers’ Video You’ll See at ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness” (156 words) © nancy for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: NASA, star trek: into darkness Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
Astro Bob
17 May 2013, 16:57 UTC
Anyone looking at the moon at the right time on St. Patrick’s Day with a small telescope would have seen it. A pinpoint flash of light as bright as a 4th magnitude star suddenly appeared that evening in the lunar … Continue reading → Bright impact flash made by a 1-foot-wide rock that struck the moon on March 17, 2013. The moon was a crescent in the evening sky at the time. The impact occurred in the dark, earthlit part of the moon away from the sun-lit crescent. Credit: NASA Anyone looking at the moon at the right time on St. Patrick’s Day with a small telescope would have seen it. A pinpoint flash of light as bright as a 4th magnitude star suddenly appeared that evening in the lunar sea Mare Imbrium and faded away one second later. The St. Pat’s Day meteoroid strike occurred near the prominent crater Copernicus in Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Showers. Photo: Bob King “On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as ...
Meteoroid hits moon, goes boom!
17 May 2013, 16:57 UTC
Anyone looking at the moon at the right time on St. Patrick’s Day with a small telescope would have seen it. A pinpoint flash of light as bright as a 4th magnitude star suddenly appeared that evening in the lunar … Continue reading → Bright impact flash made by a 1-foot-wide rock that struck the moon on March 17, 2013. The moon was a crescent in the evening sky at the time. The impact occurred in the dark, earthlit part of the moon away from the sun-lit crescent. Credit: NASA Anyone looking at the moon at the right time on St. Patrick’s Day with a small telescope would have seen it. A pinpoint flash of light as bright as a 4th magnitude star suddenly appeared that evening in the lunar sea Mare Imbrium and faded away one second later. The St. Pat’s Day meteoroid strike occurred near the prominent crater Copernicus in Mare Imbrium, the Sea of Showers. Photo: Bob King “On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as ...
Universe Today
17 May 2013, 15:12 UTC
The Universe can be a very gray place. But this week, we’ll look at a fine example of a class of objects that defies this trend.(...)Read the rest of Seeing the Red of ‘La Superba,’ a Magnificent Springtime Carbon Star (886 words) © David Dickinson for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | [...] Finder chart for La Superba in Canes Venatici. (Photo by Author). The Universe can be a very gray place. But this week, we’ll look at a fine example of a class of objects that defies this trend.(...)Read the rest of Seeing the Red of ‘La Superba,’ a Magnificent Springtime Carbon Star (886 words) © David Dickinson for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: canes venatici, carbon star, cor caroli, herschel's garnet star, la superba, r leporis, Red Stars, springtime astronomy, Star Trek, v hydrae Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
