Through a series of theoretical calculations and supercomputer simulations, astrophysicists have determined that new stars form by gravitational collapse rather than the widely held belief that they come from the buildup of unbound gas.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope image shows a panoramic portrait of a vast, sculpted landscape of gas and dust where thousands of stars are being born. This fertile star-forming region, called the 30 Doradus Nebula, has a sparkling stellar centerpiece: the most spectacular cluster of massive stars in our cosmic neighborhood of about 25 galaxies. Credit: NASA, N. Walborn and J. Maíz-Apellániz (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD), R. Barbá (La Plata Observatory, La Plata, Argentina)
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A rare volcanic eruption is expanding the size of an island in British Overseas Territory. Spectacular new satellite images show that Montagu Island, an erupting volcano in the South Sandwich Islands, South Atlantic has grown by 50 acres (0.2 km2), equivalent to 40 football pitches in the last month. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) were alerted to satellite data showing a large and fast flowing lava flow that is pouring into the sea like a huge waterfall.
The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey Supernova Program aims primarily at measuring the equation of state of Dark Energy. It is designed to precisely measure several hundred high-redshift supernovae.
The first results of the SNLS survey, to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, place strong constraints on cosmological models.
(Einstein introduced the cosmological constant in his General Theory of Relativity)
NASA’s Spirit rover completed completed one full turn around the Sun on Monday 21, exploring Mars.
With this event researchers a completed a martian-year-long look at the Martian seasons.
“We feel like, weather-wise, we’ve just about seen it all,” said Sharon Laubach, the rover’s integrating sequence team chief, in a telephone interview given to the Space.com site. “We’ve gone through all the seasons, we’ve survived Marti winterand gone through conjunction…yes, we’re having a party.”
One Mars year is about 687 Earth days.
"We don't have good observations for how the universe is expanding again so rapidly after a long period of slowing down," Hawking said, addressing a packed audience at Oakland's Paramount Theater, where he delivered a lecture called "Origin of the Universe.", according to the report on CNET News.
"We cannot be sure of the future of the universe: Is inflation the law of nature? Or will the universe eventually collapse again?" he said.
Hawking reassured the audience that these questions would soon have answers, thanks to the thriving study of cosmology. Scientists are now making use of ever-more-precise instruments and powerful telescopes to observe previously unknown aspects of the universe.
"We're getting close to answering the questions, Why are we here, and where did we come from?" he said.
Hawking give a talk on Oakland, California, in november 10, to an audience of about 3,000, drawing an eclectic crowd that included men in business suits, college students with dreadlocks, and children in wheelchairs who apparently suffer from the same debilitating disease as Hawking.
When asked about his thoughts on President Bush's proposal to put a man on Mars within 10 years, Hawking simply replied: "Stupid."
Hawking answered one question with more seriousness than others--that concerning his feelings about the U.S. government's policy on stem-cell research.
In Britain, he said, stem-cell research is seen as a great opportunity.
"America will be left behind if it doesn't change its policy," he said
This is the Eye of God.
An old picture, and an urban myth too.
This is indeed an authentic photograph — or rather, composite of photos — taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. It was featured on NASA's Website as an Astronomy Picture of the Day in May 2003 and thereafter posted on a number of Websites under the title "The Eye of God" (though I couldn't find evidence that NASA has ever referred to it as such). The awe-inspiring image has also been featured on magazine covers and in articles about space imagery.
The image depicts the so-called Helix Nebula, described by astronomers as "a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases." At its center is dying, Sun-like star which has ejected masses of dust and gas to form tentacle-like filaments stretching toward an outer rim composed of the same material. The Sun itself may look like this in several billion years.
Original Image Credit: NASA, WIYN, NOAO, ESA, Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), & T. A. Rector (NRAO).
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