NASA’s New Study Suggests Carbon Worlds May Be Waterless     According to a NASA-funded theoretical research carbon rich planets, such as diamond planets, may be waterless. By modelling the ingredients of a carbon planet the data shows that they would lack ocean reservoirs or icy water that supply said planets with oceans. Torrence Johnson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena says, “The building blocks that went into making our oceans are the icy asteroids and comets.” Then goes on to say “If we keep track of these building blocks, we find that planets around carbon-rich stars come up dry.” Torrence brings up an interesting point that from his observations he noticed that if the main building block, carbon, is too abundant then it will steal away all the oxygen that would have made water. This strikes me as thought provoking when...

NASA’s Observatories Begin Deepest Ever Look of the Universe     We’ve looked deep into the universe and almost at the point where we are getting closer to the birth of it. NASA’s Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra telescopes are teaming up to look deeper into the universe. Using the universe’s “zoom lenses” found in space these observatories should be able to uncover galaxies that are 100 times fainter than what we would normally see with these telescopes on their own. In a collaborative team effort called the Frontier Fields astronomers will record and observe data for the next three years. The way they are using the universe as a zoom lens is by using the gravitational fields caused by cluster of galaxies or targeting the most massive amount of matter in the universe. “The Frontier Fields program is exactly what NASA’s great...

How the Largest Star (W26) Known in the Universe is Tearing Itself Apart     A star called W26 located in a supercluster called Westerlund 1. W26 is located in our very own Milky Way and is considered a red supergiant and is 1,500 times bigger than our own sun! Just to humor you and try and give you some perspective think about this. Our Earth has a diameter of 12,742 km. Our sun has a diameter of 1,392,684 km and when we compare that to W26 it has a staggering diameter of 2,089,026,000 km! If W26 was placed in our solar system it would reach out to 13.9 AU (astronomical units – distance from sun to the Earth) which would be further out than Jupiter. That would mean every planet including Jupiter would be sitting inside W26! Now something interesting happened to W26 as astronomers were observing it using the VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile. Look at the photo above...