RECENT NEWS: 1
The Worlds of David Darling > Recent News: 1
RECENT NEWS: 2 | LATEST NEWS | NEWS ARCHIVES
(Oct 24, 2009) ESA's Rosetta comet chaser will swing by Earth on 13 November to pick up orbital energy and begin the final leg of its 10-year journey to the outer Solar System. Several observations of the Earth–Moon system are planned before the spacecraft heads out to study comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Read more. Source: ESA |
(Oct 23, 2009) Experts asked to review the US human spaceflight program have given strong support to the use of commercial services to launch astronauts. The Augustine panel published its final report on Thursday and said America could find cheaper, faster successors to the shuttle in the private sector. The US space agency is developing two new rockets and a crew capsule. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Oct 23, 2009) This is a composite image of the most distant galaxy cluster yet detected. This image contains X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, optical data from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and optical and infrared data from the Digitized Sky Survey. This record-breaking object, known as JKCS041, is observed as it was when the Universe was just one quarter of its current age. Read more. Source: NASA/Chandra |
(Oct 23, 2009) A deep hole on the Moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation and other hazards. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Oct 23, 2009) Microscopes revolutionized the study of life on Earth. Now a rugged, easy-to-use instrument is aiming to be equally influential in the search for alien life in locations such as the oceans beneath the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Called the digital inline holographic microscope, it consists of a pair of watertight compartments separated by a chamber into which water can flow. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Oct 22, 2009) Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, HD 209458b, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in the future, could indicate the presence of life. Read more. Source: NASA/JPL |
(Oct 21, 2009) Researchers are once again proposing that an orbiting telescope may have seen evidence for dark matter – the undetected material that is believed to permeate the Universe. The Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope has captured flashes of high-energy gamma rays that might come from dark matter, according to Lisa Goodenough of New York University in New York City and Dan Hooper at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Read more. Source: Nature |
(Oct 20, 2009) The US space agency will roll out its Ares 1-X test rocket later. The super-slim, 100m-tall launcher is a demonstrator for the vehicle NASA plans to use in the next decade to take its new astronaut crewship into orbit. The Ares I-X is expected to make an unmanned, two-minute flight at the end of the month to check out basic design concepts and gather engineering data. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Oct 19, 2009) Astronomers have announced a haul of planets found beyond our Solar System. The 32 "exoplanets" ranged in size from six times the mass of Earth to 5-10 times the mass of Jupiter, the researchers said. The objects were found using the HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory (ESO) 3.6m telescope at La Silla in Chile. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Oct 19, 2009) Do aliens pollute their planets? Let's hope they do, as this would give us a promising way of spotting where they live. Observed over interstellar distances, theylight from our cities would reveal to the observer the presence of a technology, says a team of astronomers led by Jean Schneider of the Paris Observatory at Meudon, France. In a paper to appear in Astrobiology, the team suggests we should look for a similar glow on alien planets. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Oct 18, 2009) The first image of lunar material kicked up by the impact of NASA's LCROSS mission has been released, a week after the impact occurred. It was taken by a spacecraft trailing behind the impactor, whose bird's-eye view allowed it to see what has so far eluded the best telescopes on Earth and in Earth-orbit. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Oct 17, 2009) Physicists have created a black hole for light that can fit in your coat pocket. Their device, which measures just 22 centimeters across, can suck up microwave light and convert it into heat. The hole is the latest clever device to use 'metamaterials', specially engineered materials that can bend light in unusual ways. Read more. Source: Nature |
(Oct 16, 2009) The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment has once again become one of the coldest places in the Universe. All eight sectors of the LHC have now been cooled to their operating temperature of 1.9 kelvin (-271C; -456F) – colder than deep space. The large magnets that bend particle beams around the LHC are kept at this frigid temperature using liquid helium. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Oct 16, 2009) Weeks before NASA's LCROSS mission crashed into the Moon, some scientists involved with the mission were predicting very little, if anything, would be seen from the impact – despite a well publicised observing campaign. Others now say the $79 million mission was ill conceived and will not deliver a meaningful result even if it manages to find evidence for water on the Moon. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
(Oct 15, 2009) The first results from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft have shown unexpected features at our Solar System's edge. IBEX was launched nearly one year ago to map the heliosphere, the region of space defined by the extent of our Sun's solar wind. IBEX's first glimpses show that the heliosphere is not shaped as many astronomers have believed. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Oct 15, 2009) Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones. The work is the first to make use of the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as spin ice. Writing in Nature journal, a team showed that monopoles gather to form a "magnetic current" like electricity. Read more. Source: BBC |
(Oct 15, 2009) It's emerging that an event around 25 years ago dramatically disrupted Saturn's rings – and all our telescopes and spacecraft missed it. This mysterious event suddenly warped the planet's innermost rings into a ridged spiral pattern, like the grooves on a vinyl record. The latest images reveal that the perturbation is so vast that only a profound change to the planet can have caused it. Read more. Source: New Scientist |
