Tag: revealed (page 3 of 11)

Our sun is five billion years younger than most other stars in our galaxy

April 9, 2015 / / 0 Comments






Excerpt from stgist.com



The sun, or the nearest star from Earth, was formed around 5 billion years after the Milky Way galaxy’s peak production of stars, a new research published in the Astrophysical Journal. 

Using multiple ground based, and space telescopes, including the Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory in South America, a new study was able to confirm that the closest star from us, the Sun, was formed after the so-called stellar “baby boom” of the Milky Way galaxy.

It’s like traveling back in time. Researchers from Texas A&M University in College Station, headed by astronomer Casey Papovich, were able to see the undepicted past of our own galaxy by observing similar regions located billions of light years away from us.

The “baby boom” happened around 10 billion years ago, the new study published in Astrophysical Journal revealed. At that time, the Milky Way galaxy was producing 30 times more stars than today. If so, then our solar system’s 4.6 billion years old Sun was formed more than 5 billion years after the production peak.

Sun’s late formation allowed the solar system we know today to produce planets with heavier elements. Scientists say elements heavier than hydrogen and helium became more abundant in “late to the game systems”, and the death of massive stars that were formed before the Sun had provided materials needed to form planets, including Earth and its complex life forms.

Scientists scanned through a collection of more than 24,000 galaxies, and took at least 2,000 snapshots of galaxies that closely resemble our own. The census has provided the most complete picture yet of how spiral galaxies similar to Milky Way form in the universe.

According to Mr. Papovich, the lead author of the study who also serves as an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at A&M University in Texas, they know where to find traces by analyzing how galaxies like our own were formed.

Papovich said his team has provided a data that clearly show the rapid phase of growth around 9 to 10 billion years ago, or at least more than 5 billion years after our Sun formed. They also found the connection between the size of the galaxy, and the formation of stars.

Surprisingly, the robust collection of distant galaxies confirmed that stars formed inside the Milky Way, instead of forming in other smaller baby galaxies that later merged to join the system.

In separate studies, scientists were able to confirm that our own solar system is wetter than thought. Beyond Earth, celestial objects like Jupiter’s Galilean moons Europa and Ganymede, Saturn’s Enceladus, and even the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt, are hosting fluid slightly similar to Earth’s — and it is highly possible that the Sun’s late formation allowed this setup to exist.

Papovich who worked alongside Texas A&M postdoctoral researchers Vithal Tilvi and Ryan Quadri, were joined by at least two dozen astronomers from other countries. The research is published April 9th entitled “ZFOURGE/CANDELS: ON THE EVOLUTION OF M* GALAXY PROGENITORS FROM z = 3 TO 0.5*.” The research was funded by NASA

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Buried Mars Glaciers are Brimming With Water

April 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Researchers have identified thousands of glacier-like formations on the planet.
NASA/Levy et al./Nanna Karlsson



Excerpt from news.discovery.com

Glaciers beneath the dusty sands of Mars contain enough water to coat the planet with more than three feet of ice, a new study shows.
“We have calculated that the ice in the glaciers is equivalent to over 150 billion cubic meters of ice — that much ice could cover the entire surface of Mars with 1.1 meters (3.6 feet) of ice,” Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson, a post-doctoral researcher the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement.

Radar images previously revealed thousands of buried glacier-like formations in the planet’s northern and southern hemispheres.
That data has now been incorporated into computer models of ice flow to determine the glaciers’ size and hence how much water they contain.

“We have looked at radar measurements spanning 10 years back in time to see how thick the ice is and how it behaves. A glacier is, after all, a big chunk of ice and it flows and gets a form that tells us something about how soft it is. We then compared this with how glaciers on Earth behave and from that we have been able to make models for the ice flow,” she said.

The glaciers are located in belts around Mars between 30 degrees and 50 degrees latitude, roughly equivalent to just south of Denmark’s location on Earth. The glaciers are found on both the northern and southern hemispheres.

The finding could be an important clue to what happened to Mars’ water. The planet, which is now a cold, dry desert, once had oceans, lakes and habitats suitable for microbial life, results from past and ongoing science missions show.

“The ice at the mid-latitudes is an important part of Mars’ water reservoir,” Karlsson said.

Scientists suspect the thick layer of dust covering the ice has saved if from evaporating out into space.

The study appears in this week’s Geophysical Research Letters.

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NASA submarine to Study Planet Saturn Moon Titan’s Sea

April 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments





dailysciencejournal.com 

An animated and dramatic 3D video released by NASA has revealed the international space agency plans of exploring the depths of largest sea on the Titan, Kraken Mare.

NASA is planning to launch a submarine in the Kraken Mare Sea with an aim of studying the depth.

Titan is one of the 62 moons of the planet Saturn. Titan has its own and interesting atmosphere compared to other 61. 



Click to zoom


A spacecraft named Cassini has been trying to study the Titan’s atmosphere since 2004. Most of the area of the moon Titan is covered by large bodies of methane and ethane in liquid form.

The submarine will definitely help more compared to Cassini spacecraft to measure and map the shorelines or sea.

While releasing the video the scientists from NASA has stated that the submarine will definitely help in exploring the history of the moon’s climatic conditions and could provide major breakthroughs among the discoveries made till date.

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UV light reveals hidden colors in ancient shells

April 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments



UV light revealed the way ancient shells looked millions of years ago.


Excerpt from perfscience.com


Using ultra-violet (UV) light, scientists have revealed astonishing colors of about 30 ancient seashells. According to PLOS, the seashells, which are estimated to be between 6.6 and 4.8 million years old, were looking white in regular white light. The true colors of the shells appeared in UV light.




According to the researchers, “The biology of modern Conidae (cone snails)-which includes the hyperdiverse genus Conus-has been intensively studied, but the fossil record of the clade remains poorly understood, particularly within an evolutionary framework”.

In the presence of UV light, the organic matter remaining in the shells fluoresces. With this, the shells appeared similar to what they looked when living creatures used to live in them. It is yet unclear which particular compounds in the shells are releasing the light when exposed to UV rays. With the help of the technique, the researchers were able to document the coloration patterns of 28 different cone shell species found in the Dominican Republic. Out of these 28 shells, 13 were found to be the species, which were not known earlier. And this could help know about the relationship between modern species.

San Jose State University geologist Jonathan Hendricks exposed over 350 fossil specimens to ultraviolet light. 

The coloration patterns of the ancient species were compared with existing animals and doing this, researchers found many displayed similarities. According to this finding, some modern species emerge from lineages. These lineages began in the Caribbean millions of years ago.

The newly distinguished species, Conus carlottae, was also among the newly distinguished species and it has a polka-dotted shell, which is not found in modern cone snails today. Researchers are now using UV light to emit color from porcelain white seashell fossils.

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VLA photos 18 years apart show dramatic difference in young stellar system

April 3, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from bulletinstandard.com  A pair of pictures of a young star, produced 18 years apart, has revealed a dramatic distinction that is giving astronomers with a exclusive, "real-time" appear at how enormous stars create in the e...

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Discovered: A ‘Treasure Chest’ of Ancient Galaxies

March 31, 2015 / / 0 Comments


full sky planck
The full visible sky as seen by the Planck space observatory. The band running through the middle corresponds to dust in our Milky Way galaxy. The black dots indicate the location of the proto-cluster candidates identified by Planck and subsequently observed by the Herschel space telescope. (Photo : ESA and the Planck Collaboration)


Excerpt from natureworldnews.com

Treasure seekers have found the haul of a lifetime, but it wasn't in some ancient temple or mysterious island. Instead, it was in the sky. Researcher using two of the European Space Agency's (ESA) impressive space telescopes have successfully identified what they are calling a "treasure chest" of ancient galaxy clusters, which could help explain how the Universe came to be the way it is today.

That's at least according to a study recently published (PDF) in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, which details how cosmologists used the ESA's Planck space observatory to identify the distant precursor galaxy clusters, and then poured over data from the Herschel telescope for a closer look.

"Finding so many intensely star-forming, dust galaxies in such concentrated groups was a huge surprise," Hervé Dole, lead author of the report from the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in France, said in a statement. "We think this is a missing piece of cosmological structure formation."

So what does he mean by that? Let's turn back to the treasure chest metaphor for this one.  While Planck was the space observatory to dig up the chest, it was the Herschel data that allowed experts to look closely at each and every gold coin (galaxy cluster) inside. Now they are able to learn more about each coin's make, mint, and ultimately, its origins.

And that's a big step in better understanding the early Universe. Expects believe that it took a great deal of time after star and galaxies first sprung to life for them to assemble into large clusters. 

A summary of the 14 billion years out Universe has been in existence, as seen by the Plank space telescop. Light coming from some of the oldest parts of the Universe are just reaching the observatory now, allowing for experts to see the incredible uniformity of the early structure, compared to the chaotic beautify of star, galaxy, and cluster formation that crowd space today.
(Photo : ESA – C. Carreau) A summary of the 14 billion years out Universe has been in existence, as seen by the Plank space telescope. Light coming from some of the oldest parts of the Universe are just reaching the observatory now, allowing for experts to see the incredible uniformity of the early matter, compared to the chaotic beautify of star, galaxy, and cluster formation that crowds space today.
Once the clusters formed, their gravitational influence triggered the creation of new stars and galaxies. Dark matter - which is theorized to account for a great deal of each cluster's mass and influence - helped usher along the process of creating stars. But how these large clusters were ultimately assembled and grew is still a mystery.
That's why looking at some of the oldest 'coins' ever made - estimated to date back to up-to 11 billion light-years ago - could be exceptionally helpful.

"We still have a lot to learn about this new population," Dole said in an ESA release. "Hints of these kinds of objects had been found earlier in data from Herschel and other telescopes, but the all-sky capability of Planck revealed many more candidates for us to study."

"Even when we combined the powerful capabilities of Planck and Herschel, we were only scratching the surface of the phenomena taking place at this critical era in the history of our universe, when stars, galaxies and clusters seem to be forming simultaneously," 
added George Helou, director of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "That's one of the reasons this finding is exciting. It shows us that there is so much more to be learned.

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The Story of Human Evolution Now Challenged

March 29, 2015 / / 0 Comments



Story of Human Evolution Challenged


Excerpt from newhistorian.com

The history of the evolution of early humans has been challenged.
Until now, one of the most dominant theories about our evolution claimed that our genus, Homo, had evolved from smaller early humans becoming taller, heavier and longer-legged. This process eventually resulted in Homo erectus, which was able to migrate out of Africa and colonise Eurasia.

Whilst we know that small-bodied H. erectus, averaging less than five feet tall and weighing under 50 kilograms, were living in southern Europe by 1.77 million years ago, the origin of the larger body size associated with modern humans has been elusive.

The paucity of knowledge about the origins of larger members of the Homo genus is primarily a result of a lack of evidence. Previous estimates of body size had been based on well-preserved specimens which were easy to assign a species to. Since these samples are rare and disparate in terms of both space and time, little is known about geographical and chronological variation in the body sizes of the early Homo.

A joint study between the Universities of Cambridge and Tübingen has shown that increases in body size occurred thousands of years after H. erectus left Africa; this growth in Homo body sizes primarily took place in the Koobi Fora region in modern Kenya.

“The evolution of larger bodies and longer legs can thus no longer be assumed to be the main driving factor behind the earliest excursions of our genus to Eurasia,” said Manuel Will, co-author of the study which has been published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

By using tiny fragments of fossil, the team were able to estimate our earliest ancestors’ height and body mass. Their findings, rather surprisingly, indicate a huge diversity in body size; this is particularly surprising as the wide variation we see in humans today was thought to be a relatively recent development.

“If someone asked you ‘are modern humans 6 foot tall and 70kg?’ you’d say ‘well some are, but many people aren’t,’ and what we’re starting to show is that this diversification happened really early in human evolution,” said Dr Jay Stock, co-author of the study.

Stock and Will are the first scientists in 20 years to compare the body size of humans from between 2.5 and 1.5 million years ago. They are also the first to use fragmentary fossils – many as small as toes, none longer than 5cm – to estimate body sizes.

By comparing measurements of fossils from sites in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Georgia, the researchers have revealed substantial regional variation in the size of early humans. Groups who lived in South African caves, for example, were 4.8 feet tall on average. Some of the skeletons found in Kenya’s Koobi Fora region would have stood nearly 6 feet tall, a height comparable to the average height of modern British males.
“Basically every textbook on human evolution gives the perspective that one lineage of humans evolved larger bodies before spreading beyond Africa. But the evidence for this story about our origins and the dispersal out of Africa just no longer really fits,” said Stock.

It appears that Stock and Will have rewritten the history of the development of early humans; diversity has deep roots amongst the Homo genus.

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Mystery space explosion in 1670 solved

March 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments


Nova Vulpeculae 1670


By Kathy Fey

A mystery explosion in the night sky turns out to have been caused by colliding stars.

One of history’s mysteries revolved around a strange explosion observed in the sky in 1670, long thought to have been the first nova on record. Recent research suggests that this enigmatic event was actually a rare stellar collision.

According to a report by Astronomy Magazine, the so-called Nova Vulpeculae of 1670 was more likely the collision of two stars, which shines brighter than a nova but not as brightly as a supernova.

Observations made with various telescopes including the Submillimeter Array, the Effelsburg radio telescope and APEX have revealed the more unusual nature of the light source – a violent collision.

When the event first occurred, it would have been visible from Earth with the naked eye. Now, submillimeter telescopes are needed to detect the traces left in the aftermath of the event.

When first observed, 17th century astronomers described what they saw as a new star appearing in the head of Cygnus, the swan constellation.

“For many years, this object was thought to be a nova, but the more it was studied, the less it looked like an ordinary nova, or indeed any other kind of exploding star,” said Tomasz Kaminski of the European Southern Observatory.

Having observed the area of the supposed nova with both submillimeter and radio wavelengths, scientists “have found that the surroundings of the remnant are bathed in a cool gas rich in molecules with a very unusual chemical composition,” said Kaminski.

Researchers concluded that the amount of cool material they observed was too much to have been produced by a nova. The nature of the gas debris best fit with the rare scenario of two stars merging in an explosive collision.

The team’s report was published in the journal Nature.

Karl Menten of the Max Planck Institute called the discovery “the most fun – something that is completely unexpected.”

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Ancient supernova had enough dust to make 7,000 earths

March 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments


The Cassiopeia A nebula is the gaseous remnant of a supernova explosion whose light reached the Earth around the year 1680.


Excerpt from sciencerecorder.com


A recent discovery has revealed that a supernovae is capable enough producing such quantities of cosmic dust that it can yield thousands of Earths.

An international team of researchers analyzed data obtained by SOFIA – a NASA and German Aerospace Center’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy project – which took images of a cosmic dust cloud.

Supernova remant. Image Credit: NASA/CXO/Herschel/VLA/Lau et al

“This discovery is a special feather in the cap for SOFIA, demonstrating how observations made within our own Milky Way galaxy can bear directly on our understanding of the evolution of galaxies billions of light years away,” said Pamela Marcum, one of the researchers.
The team made measurements of long infrared wavelengths of the Supernova Remnant Sagittarius A East, gaining an estimate for the total mass of dust within the cloud based on what it released.
SOFIA, an enhanced Boeing 747 with high end telescope, flies in altitudes between 39,000 to 45,000 feet to capture its images.

Astronomers already knew that the shock waves of supernovas produce high concentrations of dust when they move outward.
The question was whether the cosmic particles could withstand the intense shock waves.

“The dust survived the later onslaught of shock waves from the supernova explosion, and is now flowing into the interstellar medium where it can become part of the ‘seed material’ for new stars and planets,” said Ryan Lau, of Cornell University, who led the research team.

This new discovery encouraged the idea that the vast quantities of dust seen in remote yet fairly young galaxies may have been produced by the explosions of large stars that were actually much older.

The research was published in Science magazine on Thursday.

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Rosetta Coming Closer to Comet 67P ~ Philae Lander Still Snoozing Away

March 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments


Rosetta photo of Comet 67P/C-G.
March 9 Rosetta was 45 miles from Comet 67P/C-G when it photographed the comet’s head ringed with a halo of gas and dust. These jets extend from active areas of the comet’s surface and will become much more prominent over the next few months as the comet approaches the sun.


Excerpt from dailytimesgazette.com

Astronomers have been on a mission to tail a slow moving comet in the outer space. Their mission started early last 2014, and they are getting better observations than they thought they would.
The comet, Comet 67P, would take 12.4 hours to complete one rotation in the circular path it’s moving in. Controllers of Rosetta are noticing that the icy ball approximately a second every day before it completes a rotation. The flight director of Rosetta – Andrea Accomazzo, said that, “The gas jets coming out of the comet, are acting like thrusters and are slowing down the comet.”
During the Royal Aeronautical Society in London earlier this week, the European Space Agency officially revealed some juicy details on how their team learned to maneuver Rosetta to fly precisely around the massive astral body. Comet 67P is said to weigh 10-billion tons with 4-km size in width.

The controllers and navigators use the landmark-method on the comet to understand its rotation. The team is moving around the outer space relying only on the information provided by the model. Both the model and information guides them in accurately projecting the trajectory of the satellite in the best position.

As they were trying out the model, the ESA team noticed that the landmarks were not following the usual track at the expected time.
During September 2014, the team were determined and very convinced that comet’s rotation period lengthen by 33 milliseconds per day. At present, the comet is approaching the Sun. As it does, it releases great volumes of gas and dust as a result of the so-called Spin-Down effect; further lengthening the rotation period to a second per day.

Accomazzo clarified that Comet 67P is not going to slow down in a slow motion. But its current speed allows them achieve the great magnitude of accuracy in navigating the spacecraft around the comet.

Rosetta made significant observations of the comet last December and January as it moves like an orbit within 30 km distance from the comet. However, this movement is no longer going to happen because Rosetta has retreated from the comet as the gas and dust are being released.

But it does them well as Accomazzo said that, “The aerodynamic effects are now more and more important. The jets are getting stronger and stronger… To give you an idea, these gases come out of the comet for a few kilometers and are moving at 800 meters per second. We definitely have to take this into account. We are a big spacecraft with 64 square meter s of solar panels. We’re like a big sail.”

The trackers were confused during the recent weeks because they have mistaken the dust particles for stars. It was due to the fact that the dusts in the atmosphere were moving around the comet.

Now, Rosetta is using its propulsion system to move in a hyperbolic orbital rotation around Comet 67P. It approaches the comet no closer than 60 to 70 km. With the slowdown of the comet, the ESA team is planning to fly closer.

They were estimating a flight as close as 20 km to get a better look at the surface of the comet and find their lost landing probe, Philae. They lost contact with the robotic probe since November 12 due to lost battery power only days after it successfully landed on the comet.

The slowdown gives them an opportunity to search for Philae. As it moves closer to the Sun, lighting conditions are definitely better than their previous runs. The controllers are now calling onto Philae using radio shout outs.

Philae is solar powered so the team hopes that enough solar energy falls on the panels awaking the probe. But one problem still persist, “The problem is that even if Philae hears Rosetta, it has to have enough charge to turn on its radio transmitter.”

The flight director is quite doubtful if Philae will be awakening. Andrea suggested, “I put it at 50-50, but I will be the happiest person in the world if it happens,”

Their mission achieved great progress and observation of a comet. The team is wishing for better things as the 67P slow down leaving them with more advantage

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If the Moon Landings Were Real, Then Why is NASA Stumped by This?

March 21, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Buck Rogers, Staff WriterWaking TimesDuring the cold war era the Soviet Union and the United States were locked in an arms and technology race, each nation wanting to prove their dominance over the other, each striving to be the next reigning superpower in a world still shattered by the second world war. The Soviet’s took the lead when in April of 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin successfully orbited the earth and returned home safely. In May, president John F. Kennedy ma [...]

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Water and Unique Lifeforms are Highly Possible in Countless Unexplored Planets Within our Galaxy

March 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments





Excerpt from esbtrib.com 

Imagine the distinct possibility that among the billions of stars located in our vast Milky Way Galaxy, there might be a habitable zone where water probably exists and life as we know it as well.
Scientists have studied more than 150 exoplanetary systems with more than one planet circling the host star, thru the Kepler space telescope of NASA.
The new research, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, revealed the thousands of planets orbiting stars in our Milky Way galaxy.  Researchers were able to compute that the stars in the Milky Way have one to three planets orbiting the habitable zone.
PhD student in the research group Astrophysics and Planetary Science at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Steffen Kjær Jacobsen said, “In these 31 planetary systems located near the habitable zone, our calculations showed that there was an average of two planets in the habitable zone. According to statistics and the indications we have, a good share of the planets in the habitable zone will be solid planets where there might be liquid water and where life could exist.”
He added,   “In 124 of the planetary systems, the Titius-Bode law fit with the position of the planets as good as or better than our own solar system. Using Titus-Bode’s law we tried to predict where there could be more planets further out in the planetary systems. But we only made calculations for planets where there is a good chance you can see them with the Kepler satellite,”
Researchers urged other scientist to look further  into the records from the Kepler satellite again for more signs of the planetary systems they have predicted, as a number  of them should be quite apparent.
Will this change our perception of religion? That we are not God’s only living creation?

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Incredible pictures show best views of Mercury’s scorched surface and ice-filled craters

March 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments




A heat map of Mercury's surface
In this heat map red represents the areas of Mercury's surface where temperatures are up to 126C





Excerpt from express.co.uk


The detailed shots were taken by Nasa's Mercury Messenger spacecraft which is orbiting close to the planet and will crash into it once it runs out of fuel.

The spacecraft will hit into Mercury's surface on April 30 after almost four years exploring the planet closest to the Sun.

The images were revealed at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas.

Dr Nancy Chabot, the instrument scientist for Messenger's Mercury Dual Imaging System, said: "We're seeing into these craters that don't see the Sun, at higher resolution than was ever possible before."

One shot taken by Messenger shows deep craters on the face of Mercury.

The planet's lack of atmosphere means any space debris that hits the planet leaves large craters.
The Fuller crater on MercuryNASA
The 16mile-wide Fuller crater is among those seen in much more detail on Mercury

We're seeing into these craters that don't see the Sun, at higher resolution than was ever possible before
Dr Nancy Chabot
These are so deep that sunlight does not penetrate all the way down.

Researchers have suggested that would allow ice carried by asteroids to remain there without melting.

While another image taken from Mercury's north polar region shows a heat map of the surface where red represents temperatures up to 126C.

In the shot the vast majority of the planet's surface is red which shows its scorchingly hot surface temperatures.

Sean Solomon, a principal investigator for the mission, added: "We’re able to see at close range portions of the planet we haven’t seen in such detail before."

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