Written by: Samuel K. Sloan (FarPoint Media Executive News Director)
In humankind’s constant search for life beyond our own planet by the use of spacefarying probes launched from Earth’s atmosphere, SETI’s mutil-billion dollar arrays listening to every sound coming from the cosmos, lunar probes, International Space Station experiments in orbit around us and those two hard-working [...]
Written by: Robert Roy Britt (Senior Science Writer for Space.com)
A comet that has delighted backyard astronomers in recent weeks after an unexpected eruption has now grown larger than the sun.
The sun remains by far the most massive object in the solar system, with an extended influence of particles that reaches all the planets. But the [...]
Written by: Andrea Thompson (LiveScience Staff Writer)
Scientists Stop Light in ‘Trapped Rainbow’ — Theoretical scheme uses metamaterials to bring light to a stop.
Scientists have worked out how to bring beams of light to a screeching halt inside a material that would separate the light into its constituent colors, creating a rainbow—a trapped rainbow.
To bring light [...]
SCI-FI to SCI-FACT: World’s Most Important Experiments
November 11, 2007 || Category: Science News | 3 Comments
Written by: Emilio D’alise (SoSF Staff Journalist)
The 6 most important experiments in the world (excerpted from Discover Magazine – December 2007), and what they mean to the world of Science Fiction.
1) The Blue Brain Project
An ongoing project aimed at reverse engineering the function of mammalian brains. The project is named for IBM’s contribution of [...]
Is Yellowstone a Ticking Time Bomb With a Short Fuse?
November 9, 2007 || Category: Science News | 5 Comments
Source: Fox Science News
WASHINGTON — Yellowstone National Park, once the site of a giant volcano, has begun swelling up, possibly because molten rock is accumulating beneath the surface, scientists report.
But, “there is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption,” said Robert B. Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.
Many giant volcanic [...]
Source: Fox News
HOUSTON — Space shuttle Discovery and its crew returned to Earth on Wednesday and concluded a 15-day space station build-and-repair mission that was among the most challenging — and heroic — in shuttle history.
The space shuttle touched down just after 1 p.m., after safely crossing the continent in the first coast-to-coast re-entry since [...]
Source: Space.com
Written by: Ker Than
Scientists announced on Tuesday the discovery of a fifth planet in a distant star system that that now looks like a “cousin” to our own.
Known as 55 Cancri, the sun-like star harbors the most number of planets ever discovered outside our solar system.
“We now know that our sun [...]
King Tutankhamun, the young boy Pharoah of ancient Egypt and one-time ruler of most of the civilized Western and Middle Eastern world, was finally revealed for all to see. The ancient mask and linens have been removed and now we can see what the young ruler of the ancient world looked like. [...]
HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) — Astronauts stepped outside the international space station Saturday morning to fix a ripped solar wing in one of the most difficult and dangerous spacewalking repairs ever attempted.
1 of 2 NASA officials and the astronauts in orbit have worked day and night to plan every detail of the momentous repair mission. [...]
Sending the space race into full throttle, China announced it will launch its first lunar probe this week, an official told gathered press officials today. The launch will take place sometime between Wednesday and Friday of this week, depending on a variety of factors.
A few weeks ago Japan sent its own lunar orbitor into [...]
Source:
The switch has been thrown on a telescope specifically designed to seek out alien life.
Funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the finished array will have 350 six-metre antennas and will be one of the world’s largest.
The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) will be able to sweep more than one million star systems for radio [...]
Written by: Jeanna Bryner (LiveScience Staff Writer)
A paleontologist has discovered a giant footprint most likely left by a towering tyrannosaur as it pounded the Earth 65 million years ago. The footprint, which measures about 2.5 feet (74 centimeters) in length, was found in rocks in Montana’s Hell Creek Formation, a well-known site for [...]
“Star Trek”/”Heroes” actor and powerful human rights advocate George Takei has been immortalized in the heavens with his name permanently affixed to an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.
Last week the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union approved the name “7307 Takei” for the asteroid previously labeled “1994 GT9.” The Takei reference [...]
The high-definition video of Earth was processed into this still image. The west coast of South America is visible in the lower right portion of the planet.
[Photo Credit: JAXA/NHK]
SCI-FI to SCI-FACT: The Existence of Parallel Universes
September 26, 2007 || Category: Science News | 11 Comments
Right from the pages of a Star Trek script science is seriously looking into the feasiblity of co-existing parallel universes. In a story from The Press Association’s Breitbart.com comes this fascinating article about:
Parallel universes exist - study
Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one [...]
Scientists locked away in a remote secret laboratory load up a space craft with non to semi-deadly bacteria, viruses and germs of varying toxicity. They blast them off into the great regions of outer space. Eventually, the rocket tumbles into the planet Earth’s atmosphere with a cargo of super-charged, lethal, deadly germs out [...]
Conceptual Mock Up of SS2 Ends Tour of National Space Centre
September 20, 2007 || Category: Space News | Leave a Comment
Virgin Galactic’s conceptual mock-up of the SpaceShip interior is still on tour, and has been on exhibit at the National Space Centre, Leicester, in the UK. The exhibt wrapped up yesterday, Wednesday, September 19.
Visitors to the Museum were be able see what the interior of SpaceShipTwo might look like, they were also given an [...]
Meteorite Crash Causes ‘Mystery Illness’ in Peru
September 19, 2007 || Category: Science News | 3 Comments
LIMA, Peru — A supposed meteorite that crashed in southern Peru over the weekend has caused hundreds of people to suffer headaches, nausea and respiratory problems, a health official said Tuesday.
Local media have reported eyewitness accounts of a fiery ball falling from the sky and smashing into the desolate Andean plain near the Bolivian border [...]
How to See Tuesday Morning’s Lunar Eclipse
August 27, 2007 || Category: Science News | Leave a Comment
By: Joe Rao for Space.com
Tuesday morning, Aug. 28, brings us the second total lunar eclipse of 2007. Those living in the Western Hemisphere and eastern Asia will be able to partake in at least some of this sky show.
The very best viewing region for viewing this eclipse will fall across the Pacific Rim, including the [...]
Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber is heading for outer space. The actual lightsaber used by Mark Hamill in the very first Star Wars movie will have a special place aboard the Discovery Space Shuttle when it heads into orbit and docks with the International Space Station this coming October.
This landmark event is being done as part [...]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A giant hole in the Universe is devoid of galaxies, stars and even lacks dark matter, astronomers said on Thursday.
The team at the University of Minnesota said the void is nearly a billion light-years across and they have no idea why it is there.
“Not only has no one ever found a void this [...]
In August of 2006, at the behest of Robert Rutledge of McGill University, a group of astronomers pointed their NASA sponsored Swift X-ray telescope array toward an area of the Milky Way where Rutledge first detected a curious X-ray source.
What the scientists found was a lone neutron star in the constellation of Ursa Minor and [...]
Written by: Samuel K. Sloan (Farpoint Media Exec. News Dir.)
After two weeks of nail-biting concern over whether or not the NASA shuttle Endeavour and its seven-astronaut crew should return to Earth in the damaged Shuttle with Hurricane Dean barrelling down on the Gulf, all those concerns were set aside today at 12:32 PM EDT as [...]
Egypt Discovers What May Be Oldest Human Footprint
August 21, 2007 || Category: Science News | Leave a Comment
Egyptian archaeologists have found what they said could be the oldest human footprint in history in the country’s western desert, the Arab country’s antiquities’ chief said on Monday.
“This could go back about two million years,” said Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. “It could be the most important discovery [...]
Time Travel Machine Outlined
A new concept for a time machine could possibly enable distant future generations to travel into the past, research now suggests.
Unlike past ideas for time machines, this new concept does not require exotic, theoretical forms of matter. Still, this new idea requires technology far more advanced than anything existing today, and major [...]
Well, maybe not quite yet. But, Albert’s place in the pantheon of godlike science may be in jeopardy if a pair of German physicists’ claim turns out to be true.
Yesterday, Dr. Gunter Nimtz and Dr. Alfons Stahlhofen made the claim that, within a controlled laboratory setting, they have broken the speed of light. [...]
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — In deep underground laboratories around the globe, a high-tech race is on to spot dark matter, the invisible cosmic glue that’s believed to keep galaxies from spinning apart.
Whoever discovers the nature of dark matter would solve one of modern science’s greatest mysteries and be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize. [...]
On Saturday morning, August 4th, 2007, NASA launched the Phoenix lander to Mars aboard a Delta II rocket. In addition to its payload of eight scientific instruments designed to search for ice in the polar regions of the Red Planet, Phoenix also carries a very special DVD.
The DVD, provided by the Planetary Society, has a [...]
Source: Space.com
Written by: Ker Than (Space.com Staff Writer)
Astronomers Witness Whopper Galaxy Collision
A major cosmic pileup involving four large galaxies could give rise to one of the largest galaxies the universe has ever known, scientists say.
Each of the four galaxies is at least the size of the Milky Way, and each is home to [...]
Increasingly, signs point to a “yes.”
Editor’s Note: We asked several scientists from various fields what they thought were the greatest mysteries today, and then we added a few that were on our minds, too. This article is one of 15 in LiveScience’s “Greatest Mysteries” series running each weekday.
Life can be found in almost every [...]
