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Old 04-11-2011, 13:07   #31
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15574646


Quote:
Six men locked away in steel tubes for a year-and-a-half to simulate a mission to Mars have emerged from isolation.
Quote:
The Mars500 project, undertaken at a Moscow institute, was intended to find out how the human mind and body would cope on a long-duration spaceflight
Quote:
For much of the Mars500 project, the six had only limited contact with the outside world. Their spaceship had no windows, and the protocols demanded their communications endured a similar time lag to that encountered by real messages as they travelled the vast distance between Earth and Mars

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15562928

Quote:
China has joined two space vehicles together in orbit for the first time.
Quote:
The unmanned Shenzhou 8 craft, launched earlier this week, made contact with the Tiangong-1 space lab at 1729 GMT. The union occurred over China itself.
Quote:
Shenzhou 8 and Tiangong-1 will spend two weeks circling the globe together before Shenzhou 8 heads back to Earth.
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Old 05-11-2011, 07:42   #32
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15572628

Quote:
The Fermi space telescope has spotted the youngest-ever millisecond pulsar - a fast-spinning cosmic "lighthouse" that is the leftovers from a supernova.
Quote:
Pulsars are what remains after a supernova collapses a burnt-out star to a dense, highly magnetised ball of neutrons - a neutron star.
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Old 10-11-2011, 06:48   #33
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15631472

Quote:
Russian engineers are fighting to save the country's latest mission to Mars.
Quote:
Russian space agency officials say the craft is currently stuck in an Earth orbit and that engineers have two weeks to correct the fault before the probe's batteries run out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15572634

Quote:
An asteroid that is 400m (1,300ft) wide has passed by Earth, much to the delight of astronomers.
Quote:
Asteroid 2005 YU55's was the closest an asteroid has been to Earth in 200 years, according to Nasa.
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Old 24-11-2011, 06:04   #34
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15863549

Quote:
Scientists have outlined which moons and planets are most likely to harbour extra-terrestrial life.
Quote:
Among the most habitable alien worlds were Saturn's moon Titan and the exoplanet Gliese 581g - thought to reside some 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.
Quote:
"The first question is whether Earth-like conditions can be found on other worlds, since we know empirically that those conditions could harbour life," said co-author Dr Dirk Schulze-Makuch from Washington State University, US.
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Old 24-11-2011, 11:13   #35
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Re: Astronomy

What amazes me is that we know more about whats in outer space than we do our oceans.

If I was an ET I'ld live in the Eaths oceans. (perhaps they do!)
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Old 24-11-2011, 11:19   #36
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Re: Astronomy

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hom3r View Post
What amazes me is that we know more about whats in outer space than we do our oceans.

If I was an ET I'ld live in the Eaths oceans. (perhaps they do!)
Yes l think we have only explored 5 to 10 per cent of the ocean and l remember watching a Attenborough program where they went into the abyss of the ocean and some of the fish or other sea creatures did look like aliens from outer space.
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Old 26-11-2011, 06:56   #37
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15882485

Quote:
All is set for one of the most ambitious space missions ever devised.

Quote:
Nasa is about to launch its latest Mars rover, nicknamed Curiosity, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Quote:
"MSL is an incredibly important flagship mission for this agency… as important as Hubble," observed Doug McCuistion, Nasa's Mars exploration programme director.
Quote:
MSL is being aimed at a deep equatorial depression called Gale Crater, which contains a central mountain that rises some 5km above the plain below.
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Old 26-11-2011, 08:58   #38
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Re: Astronomy

has anyone made a Uranus joke?
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Old 07-12-2011, 14:20   #39
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655

Quote:
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet in the "habitable zone" around a star not unlike our own.

Quote:
The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.
Quote:
The Kepler space telescope was designed to look at a fixed swathe of the night sky, staring intently at about 150,000 stars. The telescope is sensitive enough to see when a planet passes in front of its host star, dimming the star's light by a minuscule amount.
Quote:
In total, the results suggest that planets ranging from Earth-sized to about four times Earth's size - so-called "super-Earths" - may be more common than previously thought.
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Old 15-12-2011, 08:07   #40
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16178112

Quote:
Researchers have spotted a giant gas cloud spiralling into the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's centre.

Quote:
As it is torn apart, the turbulent area around the black hole will become unusually bright, giving astronomers a chance to learn more about it.
Quote:
It should spiral in to within about 40 billion kilometres of the black hole in the middle of 2013.
Quote:
As astronomer Mark Morris of the University of California Los Angeles put it in an accompanying article in Nature, "many telescopes are likely to be watching".


---------- Post added at 07:07 ---------- Previous post was at 07:05 ----------

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16183378

Quote:
Nasa is developing a harpoon capable of taking samples from comets.
Quote:
Nasa said that the samples could reveal the origins of the planets and how life was created on Earth.
Quote:
To gather more material, the agency is developing a sample-collecting space harpoon which could be projected "with surgical precision" from a spacecraft hovering above the target.
Quote:
The researchers said the work could also help discover the best way to destroy comets.
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Old 12-01-2012, 07:29   #41
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16515944

Quote:
Every star twinkling in the night sky plays host to at least one planet, a new study suggests.

That implies there are some 10 billion Earth-sized planets in our galaxy.

Using a technique called gravitational microlensing, an international team found a handful of exoplanets that imply the existence of billions more.

The findings were released at the 219th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting, alongside reports of the smallest "exoplanets" ever discovered.
Quote:
Most news of exoplanets in recent years has come from the Kepler telescope, which spots planets by looking for the slight dimming of their host stars' light as planets pass in front of them.

That method is better at finding large planets close to their host stars.

While a more difficult effect to catch, gravitational microlensing is better at finding planets of all sizes and distances.

It can currently spot a planet as small as Mercury, orbiting at a similar distance to its host star, or as far away as Saturn.
Quote:
In December, the Kepler team announced the first Earth-sized planet, the smallest yet detected.

At the AAS meeting on Wednesday, the Kepler team announced even smaller planets, all three orbiting a tiny red dwarf star called KOI-961.

The planets are just 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth.
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Old 15-01-2012, 06:38   #42
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16491457

Quote:
The failed Russian Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt, continued its descent to Earth on Saturday, losing hundreds of metres in height every hour.

By 23:00 Saturday (GMT), the 13-tonne spacecraft was circling the planet at a mean altitude of 147km.

It is likely to impact the thicker parts of the atmosphere and burn up sometime late on Sunday, according to orbital tracking experts.

The Russian space agency says little of the probe will survive to the surface.

It calculates no more than 200kg in maybe 20-30 fragments.

Precisely where on the Earth's surface - and when - this material could impact is impossible to say, however. There are huge uncertainties in forecasting the final moments of a re-entry.
Quote:
This is the third high-profile spacecraft re-entry in four months, following the return in September of the American UARS satellite and the German Rosat telescope in October. Both fell over the ocean.
Quote:
The mission was supposed to be the most exciting Russian space science venture in decades - an audacious bid to scoop up rocky fragments from the Martian moon Phobos and bring them back for study in Earth laboratories.
Quote:
The Russians have had a torrid run of space failures recently, leading the head of the country's space agency to wonder even if saboteurs were at work.

Western countries, which use Russian rockets to launch their satellites, are just worried though that some systematic failures have started to appear in what has traditionally been a highly regarded space industry.
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Old 26-01-2012, 09:36   #43
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16702962

Quote:
Frenetic star-forming activity in the early Universe is linked to the most massive galaxies in today's cosmos, new research suggests.

This "starbursting" activity when the Universe was just a few billion years old appears to have been clamped off by the growth of supermassive black holes.

An international team gathered hints of the mysterious "dark matter" in early galaxies to confirm the link
Quote:
Using the 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope in Chile, an international team led by Ryan Hickox of Dartmouth College studied the way distant galaxies from the early Universe grouped together
Quote:
"This is the first time that we've been able to show this clear link between the most energetic starbursting galaxies in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies in the present day," said Dr Hickox.
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Old 31-01-2012, 13:30   #44
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16787636

Who, What, Why: Is the Earth getting lighter?

Quote:
The recent crash landing of Russian spacecraft Phobos-Grunt has focused attention on the increasing amount of space junk orbiting the planet. So does this mean the Earth has been getting lighter? The BBC's Radio 4 programme More or Less turned to a group of Cambridge University academics for the answer.

There are factors that are causing Earth to both gain and lose mass over time, according to Dr Chris Smith, a medical microbiologist and broadcaster who tries to improve the public understanding of science
Quote:
"The Earth is acting like a giant vacuum cleaner powered by gravity in space, pulling in particles of dust," says Dr Smith.

Another much less significant reason the planet is gaining mass is because of global warming
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Old 07-02-2012, 07:09   #45
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Re: Astronomy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16906740

Quote:
The American space agency looks set to pull the plug on its joint missions to Mars with the European Space Agency.

Nasa has told Esa it is now highly unlikely it will be able to contribute to the endeavours, which envision an orbiting satellite and a big roving robot being sent to the Red Planet.

The US has yet to make a formal statement on the matter but budget woes are thought to lie behind its decision.

Europe is now banking on a Russian partnership to keep the missions alive.

A public announcement by Nasa of its withdrawal from the ExoMars programme, as it is known in Europe, will probably come once President Obama's 2013 Federal Budget Request is submitted.

This request, expected in the coming days, will give the US space agency a much clearer view of how much money it has to implement its various projects.
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