2012
[ News Blog of Survive2012 ]
 
 

Gamma rays have a bit of kick


Some old (but important) news that has resurfaced:

"The formation of the Solar System was hurried along by a nearby gamma- ray burst, two astrophysicists in Ireland suspect. Rather than aborting the birth of planets, the flood of energy may have melted primordial dust grains, seeded the formation of meteorites and helped form the rocky planets, including Earth.

....calculate that a gamma-ray burst within 300 light years would have flooded the dusty disc circling the young Sun with enough energy to fuse up to 100 Earth masses of material into droplets that cooled into chondrules."

So we find ourselves asking:

  • if the gamma ray burst can fuse material in such a way that planets eventually form, how would it affect us if it happened today?
  • could it happen again in our lifetime?

There are more than 1,000 stars within 300 light years of Earth, with over 200 being closer than 30 light years, and the closest being just 4 light years from us. The galactic centre, at a distance of about 25,000 light years is outside of the nominated range.

Source: NASA

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Beagle landing on Mars, Xmas Day


I have always thought that you can't just rendevous with other planets on any day you choose, and that the motions of the solar system dictate it quite heavily. But I have no expertise in the matter.

What concerns me is that, in this era of "too good to be true" stories (finding Saddam looking like that in a hole), the fact that the European Space Agency's Beagle 2 spacecraft will be landing on Mars on Xmas Day has me scratching my head for two reasons:

  1. There was plenty of suspicion that NASA's venture to Mars never really happened, and they just showed red-filtered footage of a desert on Earth.

  2. When NASA landed on Eros, it just happened to be on Valentine's Day

Source: EarthFiles

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X-ray jet news


The above image is a NASA representation of "the most distant jet ever observed", spotted by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. It extends more than 100,000 light years from a supermassive black hole.

It's not just X-ray jets that explode out of black holes (like the one at the center of out galaxy), there are also gamma ray jets, X-ray jets, visible light jets and radio wave jets.

Now scientists have decided they are all the same jet, with the same amount of energy released, but for some reason each has different amounts of energy coming out in different ways. So, sometimes x-rays, sometimes gamma-rays, sometimes radio waves....or a mixture.

There is a good chance one of these jets of high energy particles will hit Earth one day (the year 2012?). Scientists don't think so, because for the pathetically short amount of time they have been watching the center of our galaxy, they haven't witnessed it.

Sources: Distant Jet & All jets are one

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A Galaxy with no stars?


"Astronomers have found the first "dark galaxy" - a black cloud of hydrogen gas and exotic particles, devoid of stars."

This pretty much solves the problem of where all the dark matter is - hanging out in invisible clumps.

It also brings up a worry, is there a dark galaxy nearby with a blackhole at its center? And could that black hole erupt?

Source: New Scientist

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XRays from Venus


It is not well known, but Venus emits X-Rays. The above photograph is the first to show it, because it had to be taken from space (Chandra). Follow the link below for a brief explanation.
Source: Space.com

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generation of stars


for the esteemed readers and others who know German über sternenentstehung it is an interesting online-article about how stars generate


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End is nigh?


This website...

Planet X: Fact or Fiction

...is promoting the idea that Planet X is heading our way in the next few weeks. I have yet to see any believable evidence for a Planet X, let alone any indication of when it is coming.


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Close-up of X-Ray Jet


This is the latest image of an X-Ray jet, this time from the closest radio-galaxy to us - Centaurus A which is only 10 million light years away
Source: BBC

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A new type of Supernova


A new type of supernova

Repeat after me: we've only observed a fraction of the weird events involving stars and galaxies - nothing can be ruled out.

"The outburst of V838 Mon was somewhat similar to that of a nova, a more common stellar outburst. A typical nova is a normal star that dumps hydrogen onto a compact white-dwarf companion star. The hydrogen piles up until it spontaneously explodes by nuclear fusion — like a titanic hydrogen bomb. This exposes a searing stellar core, which has a temperature of hundreds of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

By contrast, however, V838 Mon did not expel its outer layers. Instead, it grew enormously in size, with its surface temperature dropping to temperatures not much hotter than a light bulb. This behavior of ballooning to an immense size, but not losing its outer layers, is very unusual and completely unlike an ordinary nova explosion.

"We are having a hard time understanding this outburst, which has shown a behavior that is not predicted by present theories of nova outbursts," says Bond. "It may represent a rare combination of stellar properties that we have not seen before."

Source: HubbleSite

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Space Nasty


"The Black Widow pulsar is emitting intense high-energy radiation that appears to be destroying a companion star through evaporation. It is one of a class of extremely rapid rotating neutron stars called millisecond pulsars."

How scary is that? I feel uncomfortable being even as far away as 5,000 light years.

Source: Chandra

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Scary galaxy


Could Eta Carinae explode soon? Scientists have noticed that it is pumping out X-Rays every 5.52 years, which means it will do so again in the Nothern Hemisphere summer of 2003, then winter of 2008/2009, then summer 2014.

Anyone looking at it can sense that it is soon to blow, and possibly directly affect us, or trigger something else.

Eta Carinae Pic

Source: NASA

"Giant jets of subatomic particles moving at nearly the speed of light have been found coming from thousands of galaxies across the Universe, but always from elliptical galaxies or galaxies in the process of merging — until now. "

But now, for the first time, jets have been observed from a spiral galaxy. And guess what type of galaxy we live in???

Source: HubbleSite

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Star to supernova soon


"The star, called Rho Cassiopeia, is a hypergiant with 20 to 40 times the mass of the sun. "

"Eventually, perhaps in a few thousand years, Dupree said Rho Cas will erupt into a supernova explosion, one of the most powerful releases of energy in the universe. That will rip the star apart in one final, gigantic spasm of violence."

In a few thousand years, or perhaps tomorrow?

Source: AP / SFGate

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NASA radiation studies


NASA is spending $44 million to simulate the effects of various types of space radiation - presumably because the only other examples of harm from radiation come from atomic bomb survivors. It's quite possible that they'll discover that low-energy, long-term radiation exposure can cause beneficial mutations.

Also in the article, he best shielding against cosmic radiation is liquid hydrogen.

Source: UPI

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Galileo wakes up


I'm very wary of these types of announcements from NASA. Spaceships that work fine until there is data they don't wish to share with the public.

"The Galileo spacecraft, which went silent November 5 after making its closest approach to Jupiter, is now in good working order, except for its tape recorder, mission scientists said this week."

The same thing happened on Eros, spacecraft miraculously starts working again...

Source: CNN

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Milky Way black hole evidence


"It comes from observations of a fast-moving star which orbits close to the hole, referred to by astronomers as Sagittarius A* (its location in the sky is in the southern constellation Sagittarius).

Calculations based on the behaviour of the star suggest the black hole has a mass roughly 2.6 million times that of the Sun."

Source: BBC

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Less cosmic rays, hotter Earth


Researchers studying global warming have often been confounded by the differences between observed increases in surface-level temperatures and unchanging low-atmosphere temperatures.

A study in the July 2002 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics, published by the American Geophysical Union, proposes for the first time that interstellar cosmic rays could be the missing link between the discordant temperatures observed during the last two decades ...indications of Earth's warming have coincided with decreased cosmic ray intensity during the 20th century.

Source: Space Daily

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Jurassic Park for Mammoths


Yep, although they don't have any actual mammoths yet, they are planning a park to put them in - in Siberia.

"Those behind the planned park are already populating the site in north-east Siberia with other species from the Ice Age in hopeful anticipation of the mammoth's arrival.

There are currently hundreds of wild horses and musk ox grazing the land by the River Kolyma, and talks to import bison from Canada are already underway."

Source: CNN

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Cosmic Rays kill cameras


But not this one...

A single instrument aboard SNAP, the proposed SuperNova/ Acceleration Probe, will make it unique among satellites: its billion-pixel astronomical camera, the GigaCAM - the largest and most sensitive astronomical CCD imager ever constructed.

Standard astronomical CCDs are fragile affairs, and their ability to obtain high-quality images degrades quickly in the hostile radiation environment of space -- one reason why astronauts have already replaced all of the Hubble Space Telescope's original imaging instruments.

Source: Science Beat

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NASA bullshit?


Jupiter moon Amalthea Larger image

The NEAR spacecraft came back to life, when there should have been no reason to do so, and now, when NASA have a wonderful chance to snap some close-ups of the Jovian moon Amalthea, they cite lack of funds.

Maybe they just don't want to share what they think they are going to see?

Source: Space Daily

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Massive solar eruption, July 1st, 2002


Sun going mental Bigger version of pic is here
Source: Cosmiverse

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