The Big Bang and Beyond

Starts with a Bang has an very interesting post on the Big Bang called How Sure are we that the Big Bang is Correct? and after reading that, you should check out Echoes Of The Birth Of The Universe: New Limits On Big Bang’s Gravitational Waves at Science Daily.

Monkeys in Space!

I don’t know how I missed this, but yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the launching of Baker (a squirrel monkey) and Abel (a rhesus monkey) into space. They were the first primates to survive a trip into space (although Abel died a few days after the trip due to an infected electrode. National Geographic [...]

Arecibo To Close?

The world’s largest radio telescope is in danger of being closed due to lack of money according to this MSNBC article:

Dust With Life Like Qualities?

Science Daily has an interesting article up concerning the lifelike qualities of some inorganics caught in a plasma field:

Snakes on a (Galactic) Plane

Via the JPL comes this great picture of snakes on a galactic plane…

Earth’s Early Atmosphere and the Search for Life on Other Planets: One From the Archives

Another from the archives… Model Gives Clearer Idea Of How Oxygen Came To Dominate Earth’s Atmosphere Researchers interested in how earth’s atmosphere came to be dominated by oxygen have come up with an interesting model to explain why there was a lag between the origin of photosynthesis and the domination of earth’s atmosphere by oxygen. [...]

Hubble Telescope: Happy Sweet Sixteen!

The Hubble Telescope turned 16 today. To celebrate, this cool picture of Messier 82 – a galaxy some 12 million light-years away – was released ba NASA.

The Future of Space Science: Depressing

According to New Scientist the fate of NASA’s science budget is pretty gloomy: NASA’s proposed cuts to its science budget will have a devastating impact on astronomy and Earth-science research for years to come, an expert panel told a US congressional committee on Thursday. Panellists urged NASA to restore funding for research and analysis grants, [...]

Billion Pixel Picture of the Orion Nebula

According to National Geographic: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured one of the most detailed astronomical images in history. Released yesterday, the original of this Orion Nebula image is a mosaic of a billion pixels—nearly 5,000 times sharper than the 212,521-pixel version on this page. Despite their stunning depiction of stars still forming in wombs [...]

More Organic Chemicals Found in Space

Scientists associated with NASA’s Spitzer Telescope have discovered polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: “NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has shown complex organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are found in every nook and cranny of our galaxy. While this is important to astronomers, it has been of little interest to astrobiologists, scientists who search for life beyond [...]

Expansion of the Universe

This is cool (yes I know, I should be packing). Physicist Richard Price was asked a simple question by a high school student: “He asked me if, as space expands, we all get bigger too,” says Price. “I knew the standard answer was ‘no’, but I couldn’t explain why not. And when I consulted my [...]

Comets and Organic Molecules

Deep Impact collision ejected the stuff of life Millions of kilograms of fine dust particles and water and a “surprisingly high” amount of organic molecules sprayed into space when NASA crashed its Deep Impact spacecraft into Comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 4 July 2005, reveal a trio of new studies. The observations bolster theories that comets [...]

Cool Science: Part One

Saturn’s Rings Have Own Atmosphere which came as a surprise to me – but I’m not an astronomer or astrophysicist or anything. Apparently, due to some interesting properties concerning the way water (i.e. H20) behaves in the region of Saturn an atmosphere is generated: Water molecules are first driven off the ring particles by solar [...]

Earth’s Early Atmosphere and the Search for Life on other Planets

Model Gives Clearer Idea Of How Oxygen Came To Dominate Earth’s Atmosphere Researchers interested in how earth’s atmosphere came to be dominated by oxygen have come up with an interesting model to explain why there was a lag between the origin of photosynthesis and the domination of earth’s atmosphere by oxygen. There were several processes [...]

Organic Molecules in the Early Universe

Nasa’s infrared telescope (the Spitzer Telescope) has found traces of organic molocules that are believed to be about 10 billion years old: Using Spitzer, scientists have detected organic molecules in galaxies when our universe was one-fourth of its current age of about 14 billion years. These large molecules, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are comprised [...]