HUNTSVILLE, Ala (WAAY)- When William Lucas was 13 years-old he did made a huge discovery before NASA, the US Air Force, or any other scientist around the world; he discovered a massive Gamma Ray burst.
William, a student at Whitesburg Middle, has long had a love for Science.
“It’s fun, it’s interesting, it’s something new, you get to explore new things that haven’t been discovered before,” said William while talking about his love for all things scientific. So when his 13th birthday rolled around in 2011 he had a big decision to make.
“My parents told me for my 13th birthday to either have a dirt bike or a Geiger counter and I chose a Geiger counter for good reasons,” he said while explaining the dirt bikes are a bit too dangerous and with a Geiger counter he could learn more.
A comet falling in from the distant reaches of the solar system could become a naked-eye object in early March. This is Comet Pan-STARRS’s first visit to the inner solar system, so surprises are possible as its virgin ices are exposed to intense solar heating.
A massive cosmic explosion in deep space sent out a pulse of high-energy radiation that hit the Earth in AD 774 and 775 when Charlemagne ruled much of Western Europe, scientists have found.
“Over the past 3,000 years this was the most energetic event to have hit the Earth,” said Professor Ralph Neuhauser of the University of Jena in Germany. Last year, scientists discovered rings in Japanese cedar trees that had much higher levels of radioactive carbon 14 than normal for the period. Professor Neuhauser believes the radiation came from a collision either between two black holes or two stars between 3,000 and 12,000 light years away.
Astronomers have discovered a Methuselah of stars — a denizen of the Solar System’s neighbourhood that is at least 13.2 billion years old and formed shortly after the Big Bang.“We believe this star is the oldest known in the Universe with a well determined age,” says Howard Bond, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, who announced the finding on 10 January at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California1.
The venerable star, dubbed HD 140283, lies at a comparatively short distance of 190 light years from the Solar System and has been studied by astronomers for more than a century. Researchers have long known that the object consists almost entirely of hydrogen and helium — a hallmark of having formed early in the history of the Universe, before successive generations of stars had a chance to forge heavier elements. But no one knew exactly how old it was. Continue reading »
A team of amateur astronomers has made a fascinating discovery, uncovering evidence of 42 alien planets, one of which is roughly the size of Jupiter and could potentially be habitable by humans.The 40 volunteers who staff the crowdsourcing project Planet Hunters made their discovery by sorting through data provided by NASA, Space.com reported.
Among the 42 planets discovered by the group, 15 have the potential to support human life. One in particular, named PH2 b, is roughly the size of Jupiter and has been confirmed to exist in its star’s habitable zone.
Astronomers have discovered the largest known structure in the universe, a clump of active galactic cores that stretches 4 billion light-years from end to end.
The structure is a large quasar group (LQG), a collection of extremely luminous galactic nuclei powered by supermassive central black holes. This particular group is so large that it challenges modern cosmological theory, researchers said.
“While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe,” lead author Roger Clowes, of the University of Central Lancashire in England, said in a statement. “This is hugely exciting, not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the universe.” Continue reading »
All eyes are set at the skies as a big hazardous asteroid is nearing Earth. According to scientists there is an actual possibility that the 300-meter-wide Apophis will eventually strike our planet, but the catastrophe is not imminent.
On Wednesday the dangerous space traveler is passing Earth at 14 million km – the distance which raises no concerns. Apophis near approach, which may have been observed around 00:00 GMT, was traced by Slooh Space Camera.
The asteroid is planning a series of come backs of which the one in 2036 is said to be most threatening.
Named after the Ancient Egyptian evil demon, Apophis was discovered in 2004. The initial estimations indicated the probability that in 2029 the asteroid would strike Earth. However, additional calculations lessened this possibility and postponed it till 2036.
One of the most exciting fields in astronomy—really, in all of science—is the search for alien worlds. The first planet around another star was found in 1992 (though the star was the remnant of a supernova, so not terribly Sun-like), and the first planet around a Sun-like star just three years later. Fast forward two decades, and we now know of hundreds of such planets, and have thousands more detected that have to be confirmed (the data look good, but we still call them candidates until confirmation).
In fact, there are enough that the field of exoplanets is in the next step of the scientific process past discovery: categorization. We have enough known planets orbiting other stars that we can start to plop different labels on them: massive, big, small, orbiting hot stars, orbiting cool ones, having tight orbits or wide-sweeping ones. And once you can do that some very, very interesting things start to fall in place.
For example, you can use some statistics to extrapolate how many planets there must be in our galaxy. A new study has done just that, and the number they get is stunning: they calculate there may be a hundred billion planets in the Milky Way, with 17 billion of them the size of Earth!
“The asteroid, known as DA14, will pass by our planet in February 2013 at a distance of under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is closer than the geosynchronous orbit of some satellites.
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There is a possibility the asteroid will collide with Earth, but further calculation is required to estimate the potential threat and work out how to avert possible disaster, NASA expert Dr. David Dunham told students at Moscow’s University of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM).”(Source: CIA – EU)
— Editor: The story below is based on NASA data available to the public, news stories released early last year but later suppressed and private reports from sources within NASA and the intelligence community. NASA indicated that the asteroid in question was “not on their radar” as it had been the result of an “unwanted visitor” in our solar system, the result of the collision of a rogue planet entering the asteroid belt OR a piece of said “rogue planet.”
The article below was submitted at my request by the European Counter Intelligence Agency in response to an interrogatory involving a “leak” received by Veterans Today. Sources within NASA had informed us that two “vehicles” had been launched on a mission. We were given no other information than this. We have NO confirmation that this mission is, in any way, related to the video below or the CIA – EU report published below.
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