Big Radio From the Stars -- Berardelli 2007 (927): 1 -- ScienceNOW

Blast from the Past!

Big Radio From the Stars -- Berardelli 2007 (927): 1 -- ScienceNOW


"By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
27 September 2007
Astronomers have a new mystery on their hands. A team studying data from a recent sky survey has spotted a huge burst of radio waves that came and went in the blink of an eye and has not returned since. Figuring out what caused the cosmic broadcast could provide new insights into the dynamics of neutron stars and black holes and perhaps give astronomers another tool to figure distances to the farthest galaxies."

From Science Magazine
comes this report about a blast from the past, a giant radio signal. No signs of intelligence in the signal, though. However, what would Art Bell say??

Discovery Channel :: News - Space :: Cave Entrances Found on Mars

Discovery Channel :: News - Space :: Cave Entrances Found on Mars

The Themis instruments on the Mars Odyssey, in orbit around Mars, shows what seem to be cave entrances. A number of proponents of manned exploration/settlement of Mars have long speculated about these features and hope to turn them into living and work quarters. However, these seem to be at high altitutes and not around the Martian equator as many have hoped. You can also see the Journal of Geophysical Research Letters for more information. See also the Mars Society's proposal or the Powerpoint proposal by Gus Frederick of Silverton, Oregon.

Antimatter molecule could lead to ultra-powerful laser - tech - 18 September 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Antimatter molecule could lead to ultra-powerful laser - tech - 18 September 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Just in time for talk like a pirate day! A pirate could sure make use of this short-lived anti-matter ray. This is from the magazine New Scientist.

"Antimatter molecule could lead to ultra-powerful laser


An exotic molecule built from electrons and antimatter is being touted as a route to powerful gamma-ray lasers.

An electron can hook up with its antiparticle, the positron, to form a hydrogen-like atom called positronium (Ps). It survives for less than 150 nanoseconds before it is annihilated in a puff of gamma radiation. It was known that two positronium atoms should be able to bind together to form a molecule, called Ps2, and now David Cassidy and Allen Mills from the University of California, Riverside, have made that happen. First, they trapped positrons in a thin film of porous silica. Those positrons captured electrons to form positronium atoms, and the pattern of decay rates signalled that some of these atoms had teamed up to form Ps2 (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06094)."

APOD: 2007 August 27 - Huge Void Implicated in Distant Universe

APOD: 2007 August 27 - Huge Void Implicated in Distant Universe

"Explanation: What has created this huge empty volume in the universe? No one is yet sure, and even the extent of the estimated billion-light year void is being researched. The void is not a hole in space like a black hole, but rather a vast region of the universe that appears to be mostly devoid of normal matter and even dark matter. The void is still thought to contain dark energy, though, and is clearly traversable by light. The void's existence is being postulated following scientific curiosity about how unusually cold spots came to appear on WMAP's map of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. One possibility was that this CMB region was not actually very cold but light from the spot somehow became more cosmologically redshifted than normal along the way.'

From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. That void is like my appetite is most of the time!! I still don't grasp the concept of Dark Energy or Dark Matter. Okay, maybe dark matter, but dark energy! These slow down the expansion of the universe. Also, see the Pioneer Anomaly.

Two Pioneer spacecraft, launched 30 years ago on a mission to the outer solar system, are now leaving the immediate vicinity of the solar system. While they are not yet in interstellar space, their speeds and trajectories do not match Newtonian and Einsteinian predictions. Either there is something new in gravity or problems in measurements or math. See the link for some new thoughts on the matter.