Beautiful Reflection Nebula of M78

By on Oct 26, 2013 in Pictures | 1 comment

Beautiful Reflection Nebula of M78     This is a beautiful image of a reflection nebula called M78. It’s located in the constellation Orion and is 1600 light years away from Earth. A reflection nebula is a cloud of interstellar dust that reflects the light of nearby stars. The nebula itself is 5 light years across and glows blue because it’s reflecting blue light from young hot stars in the region. Dark dust lanes can be easily traced through this beautiful skyscape. An interesting antidote about reflection nebulas is that the energy from nearby stars are insufficient to ionize the gas of the nebulae to create an emission nebula. However, when you do see ionized gas in a nebulae it is giving you clues that a hot star is entering the stages of a dying star. M78 is a beautiful example of a reflection nebula and is one breath taking image. For more information you...

NASA’s Observatories Begin Deepest Ever Look of the Universe

By on Oct 24, 2013 in Breaking News | 0 comments

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...

Evidence of Other Universes Pulling on Our Own

By on Oct 24, 2013 in For Your Information | 0 comments

Evidence of Other Universes Pulling on Our Own     One theory that is by far mind boggling and perhaps one of the most interesting is the multiverse theory or M theory. It says that there could hypothetically be more than one universe other than our own. It may sound ludicrous to you but just think back to when we believed there was only one our one Sun and then we realized most of those bright dots in the sky are suns or stars! Think about when we felt that Earth was the only planet that had water then we discovered Europa (a moon not even a planet!) has water as well (even more than we do). It seems that whenever we believe something is rare and unique we get slapped by the universe as a reminder that the possibilities are endless and we only just scratched the surface.     Moving along straight to the reported evidence of possible universes pulling on our own....

How the Largest Star (W26) Known in the Universe is Tearing Itself Apart

By on Oct 20, 2013 in Breaking News | 1 comment

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...

Do Black Holes Live Forever?

By on Oct 15, 2013 in Cosmology | 1 comment

Black holes are one of the most scariest cosmic creatures that roam the vast universe. They have a gravitational force so strong that even light cannot escape from it. To even destroy a black hole it’s highly improbable. So a question arises and maybe you have thought it too, do black holes live forever? Well there is an answer to that and the short version is no they don’t live forever. We now know that black holes actually evaporate over time and shrink. The man who finally answered this question for us is none other than Stephen Hawking (you may have heard of him). In 1974 he studied the region close to the black holes horizon using the laws of quantum mechanics. For those of you who don’t know, quantum mechanics describes what happens on the smallest scale possible. When we talk about the smallest scale, we are talking about on atomic levels or even subatomic...

Two Key Ingredients for Habitable Planets Found for First Time Beyond Our Solar System

By on Oct 14, 2013 in Astonishing Discoveries | 0 comments

Two Key Ingredients for Habitable Planets Found for First Time Beyond Our Solar System     Located 150 light years away astronomers have discovered two main ingredients for habitable planets circling around a star. The white dwarf star known as GD 61 is at its end of its life but when astronomers were observing it they found fragments of an asteroid with significant amounts of water orbiting the star. With these findings it is very possible that this planetary system could have harboured habitable planets at one point. This is indeed the first time scientists have found these two ingredients for the first time beyond our solar system. “These water-rich building blocks, and the terrestrial planets they build, may in fact be common — a system cannot create things as big as asteroids and avoid building planets, and GD 61 had the ingredients to deliver lots of water...

The Ultimate Fate of the Universe

By on Sep 29, 2013 in Cosmology | 1 comment

One question that humankind has pondered is what is the ultimate fate of the universe? It’s a question that is difficult to fathom. Imagining no more life, stars, planets, black holes or galaxies. Everything would be gone.     Well there are a few theories on how the universe will end. However, there are scientific theories that actually rival each other because it depends on whether the universe expands infinitely or not. Once the Big Bang theory came into play the question of the ultimate fate of the universe became a valid cosmological question. This all depends on the physical properties of the universe such as mass, energy, average density, and the rate of expansion.   The Geometry of Our Universe in Three Forms:   Currently the growing consensus is that the universe is flat1 and will continue to grow on forever. To understand this idea let’s look...

Curiosity Rover Makes Amazing Discovery of Finding Water in Martian Soil

By on Sep 27, 2013 in Breaking News | 0 comments

Curiosity Mars Rover Discovers Water in Martian Soil     The Mars rover called Curiosity has been revealing a great deal about the conditions and topography of Mars. Curiosity has been examining loose rocks, sand and dust which has helped us understand the global changes on Mars. One of the biggest discoveries is finding water in the martian soil. It accounts for 2% of the soil or rather 1 liter of water from 1 cubic foot of soil they dig up. This is truly a wow moment because water is a valuable resource and being able to find it anywhere on Mars makes it a little easier for humans to live on Mars or stay there for long periods of time. This is just 1 out of 5 papers published in the journal Science for September 26 2013. The data is actually from the first 100 days that Curiosity was on Mars. The soil was found on the Gale crater where Curiosity landed. It was charged with...