| March 25, 2009
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There will be ... Great Signs from Heaven |
Isaiah 42:5a
Thus says God the LORD, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, ...
Luke 21:25-26
"There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
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Job 38:4
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding
Job 26:7
"He stretches out the north over empty space
And hangs the earth on nothing.
Isaiah 40:22
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
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Revelation 8:10-11
The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters. The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.
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John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
Colossians 1:16-17
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
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Isaiah 40:26
Lift up your eyes on high
And see who has created these stars,
The One who leads forth their host by number,
He calls them all by name;
Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power,
Not one of them is missing.
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| Shalom in Christ Jesus, |
The scriptures in the New Testament pertaining to "signs in the heavens" have always been some of the most fascinating to me. For those who do not know my testimony, my first exposure to Biblical prophecy came when I was approximately twelve years old and viewed the movie version of "The Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsey on HBO of all places. My life was never the same and I expected to someday see the fulfillment of those end-time prophesies in my lifetime. Growing up Roman Catholic, it took a long time to really get a true Scriptural understanding of things, however, I was fascinated by science and Astronomy as a teenager and between much reading and some college courses became well-grounded as a lay-man in understanding the nature of the physical universe. Needless to say, it was mind-blowing when I was saved and The Lord removed the blinders, opened my eyes and I began to see that not only was He the God of salvation, but the God of Creation and Science, and that this was blatant throughout the Scriptures. One beautiful example I recently viewed was an astro-psychicist explaining the biggest problem with the "Big-Bang" theory. The Big Bang, as with any explosion should have created a lumpy mess, i.e., a Universe that has clumps and lumps in some places and nothing in others. However, the Universe is just the opposite, it is nice and evenly spread out in all directions. Therefore, the scientists have to modify their theories to explain this. If however, they just read the scripture, they would find that The LORD, stretched out the heavens, like a scroll or a tent. I found as others have that this perfectly explains the problems the "wise men" of this age are having such a hard time understanding. There is much to this topic and I strongly encourage all to study it inductively, in context and with all co-text, to get a full Biblical understanding.
With that I will leave you again with a quote from Josephus regarding Jerusalem just prior to it's destruction in 70AD that so succinctly sums up a past fulfillment of one of "signs in the heavens", but it is only a type of the final one coming during the tribulation and the return of Christ.
Thus were the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers, and such as belied God himself; while they did not attend nor give credit to the signs that were so evident, and did so plainly foretell their future desolation, but, like men infatuated, without either eyes to see or minds to consider, did not regard the denunciations that God made to them. Thus there was a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year.
- Flavius Josephus
"Wars of the Jews"
Book VI, Chapter 5
BE/\LERT!
Scott Brisk
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Huge gamma-ray blast spotted 12.2 bln light-years from earth
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The blast was stronger than 9,000 supernovae - "This burst's tremendous power and speed make it the most extreme recorded to date"
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - February 19, 2009
WASHINGTON - The US space agency's Fermi telescope has detected a massive explosion in space which scientists say is the biggest gamma-ray burst ever detected, a report published Thursday in Science Express said.
The spectacular blast, which occurred in September in the Carina constellation, produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said.
"Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts," astrophysicist Frank Reddy of US space agency NASA told AFP.
"If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don't stop for anything -- they just bore through and that's why we can see them from enormous distances," Reddy said.
A team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics determined that the huge gamma-ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away.
The sun is eight light minutes from Earth, and Pluto is 12 light hours away.
Taking into account the huge distance from earth of the burst, scientists worked out that the blast was stronger than 9,000 supernovae -- powerful explosions that occur at the end of a star's lifetime -- and that the gas jets emitting the initial gamma rays moved at nearly the speed of light.
"This burst's tremendous power and speed make it the most extreme recorded to date," a statement issued by the US Department of Energy said.
Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions, which astronomers believe occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse.
Long bursts, which last more than two seconds, occur in massive stars that are undergoing collapse, while short bursts lasting less than two seconds occur in smaller stars.
In short gamma-ray bursts, stars simply explode and form supernovae, but in long bursts, the enormous bulk of the star leads its core to collapse and form a blackhole, into which the rest of the star falls.
As the star's core collapses into the black hole, jets of material blast outward, boring through the collapsing star and continuing into space where they interact with gas previously shed by the star, generating bright afterglows that fade with time.
"It's thought that something involved in spinning up and collapsing into that blackhole in the center is what drives these jets. No one really has figured that out. The jets rip through the star and the supernova follows after the jets," Reddy said. ...
The Fermi gamma-ray space telescope was developed by NASA in collaboration with the US Department of Energy and partners including academic institutions in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.
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Live Teaching Engagements
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IN HIM ALL THINGS HOLD TOGETHER
Galaxies Protected by Dark Matter |
SPACE.com [Gannett-NBC-Universal/GE] - By SPACE.com staff - March 12, 2009
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered new evidence that galaxies are embedded in and protected by halos of dark matter, the invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe's mass.
Dark matter is invisible and nobody even knows what it is, but it is evident by the fact that galaxies hold together at all. Some unseen substance lurks in space - concentrated in galaxies - and generated gravity in amounts well beyond the visible matter.
Peering into the tumultuous heart of the nearby Perseus galaxy cluster (located 250 million light-years away), Hubble discovered a large population of small galaxies that have remained intact while larger galaxies around them are being ripped apart by the gravitational pull of neighboring galaxies.
"We were surprised to find so many dwarf galaxies in the core of this cluster that were so smooth and round and had no evidence at all of any kind of disturbance," said astronomer Christopher Conselice of the University of Nottingham in England, and leader of the Hubble observations. "These dwarfs are very old galaxies that have been in the cluster a long time. So if something was going to disrupt them, it would have happened by now. They must be very, very dark matter-dominated galaxies."
The dwarf galaxies may have even higher amounts of dark matter than spiral galaxies like our Milky Way.
"With these results, we cannot say whether the dark-matter content of the dwarfs is higher than in the Milky Way Galaxy," Conselice said. "Although, the fact that spiral galaxies are destroyed in clusters, while the dwarfs are not, suggests that is indeed the case."
The results of the observations are detailed in the March 1 edition of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
First proposed about 80 years ago, dark matter is thought to be the "glue" that holds galaxies together. Astronomers suggest that dark matter provides vital "scaffolding" for the universe, forming a framework for the formation of galaxies through gravitational attraction.
Previous studies with Hubble and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory found evidence of dark matter in entire clusters of galaxies such as the Bullet Cluster. The new Hubble observations continue the search for dark matter in individual galaxies.
Because dark matter cannot be seen, astronomers detect its presence through indirect evidence. The most common method is by measuring the velocities of individual stars or groups of stars as they move randomly in the galaxy or as they rotate around the galaxy. But the Perseus Cluster is too far away for telescopes to resolve individual stars and measure their motions.
Instead, Conselice and his team derived a new technique for uncovering dark matter in these dwarf galaxies by determining the minimum mass the dwarfs must have to protect them from being disrupted by the strong tidal pull of gravity from larger galaxies.
Original Report |
| Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected |
There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
SPACE.com [Gannett-NBC-Universal/GE] - By Andrea Thompson - January 7, 2009
LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Space is typically thought of as a very quiet place. But one team of astronomers has found a strange cosmic noise that booms six times louder than expected.
The roar is from the distant cosmos. Nobody knows what causes it.
Of course, sound waves can't travel in a vacuum (which is what most of space is), or at least they can't very efficiently. But radio waves can.
Radio waves are not sound waves, but they are still electromagnetic waves, situated on the low-frequency end of the light spectrum.
Many objects in the universe, including stars and quasars, emit radio waves. Even our home galaxy, the Milky Way, emits a static hiss (first detected in 1931 by physicist Karl Jansky). Other galaxies also send out a background radio hiss.
But the newly detected signal, described here today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, is far louder than astronomers expected.
There is "something new and interesting going on in the universe," said Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
A team led by Kogut detected the signal with a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission). ...
ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for faint signs of heat from the first generation of stars, but instead they heard a roar from the distant reaches of the universe.
"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut said. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted." ...
The signal is measured to be six times brighter than the combined emission of all known radio sources in the universe.
For now, the origin of the signal remains a mystery.
"We really don't know what it is,"said team member Michael Seiffert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. ...
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| Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe, Study Says |
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS [National Geographic Society] - By John Roach - November 5, 2008
On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen "structures" are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says.
Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour-a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow.
The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger-a multiverse-and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The theory could rewrite the laws of physics. Current models say the known, or visible, universe-which extends as far as light could have traveled since the big bang-is essentially the same as the rest of space-time (the three dimensions of space plus time). ...
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What the Heck is it?
An image from the Hubble Space Telescope has astronomers baffled once again.
THUNDERBOLTS.info - September 19, 2008
The Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) recently announced the discovery of a "mystery object" that does not fit with observational data compiled by the Sloan Deep Sky Survey (SDSS). According to Kyle Barbary, an astrophysics graduate student with U.C. Berkeley and lead author of a paper appearing in The Astrophysical Journal, the observation is:
"...inconsistent with all known supernova types, is not matched to any spectrum in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey database" of vast numbers of objects. "We suggest that the transient may be one of a new class."
As Barbary and his colleagues indicate, the closest they can come to the characterists of SCP 06F6 are quasars whose "hot gas" envelopes absorb radiation emissions at specific frequencies. However, a spectrographic analysis of the newly found object reveals nothing recognizable to the team. They are unable to determine if it is in our own galaxy or somewhere much farther out in deep space. ...
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| Race Is On For Who Will Discover 'God Particle' First |
 Fermilab Closer To Discovering Higgs Boson 'God Particle'
RED ORBIT - By redOrbit Staff - March 14, 2009
The U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced on Friday that physicists have come closer to finding the elusive "God Particle," which could one day explain why particles have mass, the American Free Press reported.
The American research institute had previously claimed it was moving ahead of its European rival in the race to discover one of the biggest prizes in physics, the elusive Higgs Boson particle.
Fermilab reported that its researchers have managed to shrink the territory where they expect the so-called "God Particle" to be found.
British physicist Peter Higgs set out to answer the question that baffled physicists: how do particles acquire mass?
In 1964, he came up with the idea that a background field must exist that would act like treacle, meaning particles passing through it would acquire mass by being dragged through a mediator, which theoreticians dubbed the Higgs Boson.
The Higgs became known as the "God Particle" because it is everywhere but remains frustratingly elusive.
Finding confirmation of the Higgs would answer many questions about the so-called Standard Model, the theory that summarizes our present knowledge of particles . Scientists throughout the years have
narrowed down the ranges of mass that the Higgs is likely to have.
European physicists are also searching for the Higgs, amongst other things, with the Big Bang atom-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider.
However, the LHC suffered a months-long setback after being switched on in September 2008 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) below the Franco-Swiss border.
Researchers at the rival Fermilab have increased efforts to discover the Higgs before the LHC is back on track in September of this year. ...
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Physicist Wins $1.4 Million Award For Promoting Spiritual Reality
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KOINONIA HOUSE - from the March 17, 2009 eNews issue
A French physicist whose life's work points to evidence of a spiritual dimension has won this year's Templeton Prize and its £1 million ($1.4 million) award. On Monday, the Templeton Foundation announced that French physicist and philosopher Bernard d'Espagnat had won the world's largest monetary prize for his scientific contributions to progress in religion.
D'Espagnat is famous for his concept of a "veiled reality" - one that lies behind the world that we can touch and see. In his work on quantum mechanics, d'Espagnat did experiments that demonstrated that the essence of reality is far more than can be explained by the mere three dimensions we can directly experience. Subatomic particles behave in strange ways that can only be accounted for by additional dimensions beyond our direct touch.
For example, when the French physicist Alain Aspect and his team in France and Switzerland experimented on photons in the early 1980s, they found that a change in the polarization of one photon could be detected almost instantaneously (faster than light speed) in another photon miles away. Discoveries like this were not new; Niels Bohr had argued that subatomic particles were interconnected back in the early part of the 20th century, even while Einstein insisted that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. This insta-communication between particles has created a series of disturbing questions: How could two distantly separated photons communicate instantly? What connected them? Are the laws of physics absolute? What is the ultimate nature of reality?
Through his experiments testing the "Bell's inequalities" theorem during the 1960s-1980s, d'Espagnat sought to acquire greater understanding of the very strange properties of subatomic particles. He learned that the physical world seemed to be merely an appearance veiling a much greater reality. Science, he argues, can only go so far in helping us explain the nature of the universe.
"Quantum mechanics introduced another point of view, which consists essentially that the aim of science is not to describe ultimate reality as it really is," d'Espagnat told The Christian Science Monitor. "Rather, it is to make account of reality as it appears to us, accounting for the limitations of our own mind and our own sensibilities."
We are intuitively aware of this something more, d'Espagnat argues. He believes that art and music and spirituality are all ways we connect to the "veiled reality." Nidhal Guessoum, chair of physics at American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, wrote that d'Espagnat "has constructed a coherent body of work which shows why it is credible that the human mind is capable of perceiving deeper realities."
Metaphysical naturalists in the scientific community might reject the idea of the spiritual, but in the field of quantum physics, the spiritual can almost, just almost, be seen through the light of colliding atoms.
The Templeton Prize is awarded each year to a person whom the judges believe "has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works." Past winners of the Templeton Prize have included scientists like cosmologist John D. Barrow and physicist Paul Davies, as well as spiritual leaders like Mother Theresa and Billy Graham. The winners do not necessarily hold any specific theological views, but simply affirm that there is more to reality than meets the eye.
D'Espagnat will receive his prize at London's Buckingham Palace on May 5.
Original Report
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Bernard d'Espagnat wins £1m Templeton Prize
THE TIMES of LONDON [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent - March 16, 2009
A leading quantum physicist who believes science alone cannot explain "ultimate reality" has been awarded the world's largest monetary prize for his contribution to religious thought. ...
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| Two supermassive black holes spiraling towards collision |
ARS TECHNICA [Condé Nast/Advance/Newhouse] - By John Timmer - March 4, 2009
Black holes once existed exclusively in the realm of theory, but astronomers have become increasingly adept at spotting the telltale signs of objects that are hard to spot due to the fact that they suck in any light that happens to cross an event horizon. Black holes have fallen into two separate categories: relatively small ones formed by the collapse of massive stars, and supermassive ones, which appear to lie at the hearts of most galaxies. When provided enough fuel in the form of interstellar gas, these black holes power quasars (also termed active galactic nuclei) but, deprived of input, they tend to sit quietly, much like the one at the center of the Milky Way.
The presence of black holes at the center of galaxies has been made a bit more intriguing by the fact that astronomers have reached the conclusion that many galaxies have been built by mergers of smaller ones. This would suggest that once the chaos of the initial collision settles down, the resulting galaxy should contain two black holes, with gravitational attraction potentially prompting a collision. Today's issue of Nature describes what appears to be the best evidence yet for a supermassive black hole binary, one in which the two objects appear on course for an inevitable collision.
Finding it wasn't exactly easy. The authors relied on data that had been gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which currently contains over 900,000 galaxies. The authors selected a subset of the data that contains over 17,000 quasars, and sifted it using a principal components analysis that should identify outliers with unusual spectral properties. Out of that massive data set, a grand total of two objects were identified that appeared to emit light with more than one redshift. ...
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Comet Lulin: Green Comet Approaches Earth
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NASA - February 4, 2009
In 1996, a 7-year-old boy in China bent over the eyepiece of a small telescope and saw something that would change his life--a comet of flamboyant beauty, bright and puffy with an active tail. At first he thought he himself had discovered it, but no, he learned, two men named "Hale" and "Bopp" had beat him to it. Mastering his disappointment, young Quanzhi Ye resolved to find his own comet one day.
And one day, he did.
Fast forward to a summer afternoon in July 2007. Ye, now 19 years old and a student of meteorology at China's Sun Yat-sen University, bent over his desk to stare at a black-and-white star field. The photo was taken nights before by Taiwanese astronomer Chi Sheng Lin on "sky patrol" at the Lulin Observatory. Ye's finger moved from point to point--and stopped. One of the stars was not a star, it was a comet, and this time Ye saw it first.
Comet Lulin, named after the observatory in Taiwan where the discovery-photo was taken, is now approaching Earth. "It is a green beauty that could become visible to the naked eye any day now," says Ye. ...
The comet makes its closest approach to Earth (0.41 AU) on Feb. 24, 2009. Current estimates peg the maximum brightness at 4th or 5th magnitude, which means dark country skies would be required to see it. No one can say for sure, however, because this appears to be Lulin's first visit to the inner solar system and its first exposure to intense sunlight. Surprises are possible.
Lulin's green color comes from the gases that make up its Jupiter-sized atmosphere. Jets spewing from the comet's nucleus contain cyanogen (CN: a poisonous gas found in many comets) and diatomic carbon (C2). Both substances glow green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space. ...
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* Emphasis Added
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Comet Lulin Gallery
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SPACE WEATHER
Summary: Following its close encounter with Earth on Feb. 24th, Comet Lulin (C/2007 N3) is moving away and fading.
Page 1 of 19 pages in photo gallery
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March Aurora Photo Gallery
SPACE WEATHER
Summary: A solar wind stream hit Earth on March 12th. The impact sparked a geomagnetic storm ranking 5 on the 0-to-9 Kindex scale of geomagnetic activity. See also February 2009
Page 1 of 3 pages in photo gallery
Mega Aurora Gallery
See Here
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Comet's Heart May Have Struck Earth
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SPACE.com [Gannett-NBC-Universal/GE] - By Andrea Thompson - February 25, 2009
Bright lights that suddenly streak across the night sky with an accompanying boom tend to elicit a flurry of phone calls to local police departments.
These rare events aren't typically wayward missiles, or satellite debris (as was thought when one such streak recently lit up the skies over Texas), or alien invasions. But they do come from outer space.
Scientists aptly call the objects fireballs because they are the brightest meteors, or "shooting stars," that fall to Earth.
A fireball as bright as the full moon raced across the Spanish skies on July 11, 2008, and was tracked by the Spanish Fireball Network (SPMN).
Researchers used the tracking data to trace the path of the comet backwards through the sky and space; they think the boulder may be a chunk of a comet that broke up nearly 90 years ago.
Their conclusions are detailed in the Feb. 11 online issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
It's possible that chunks of the fireball made it to the ground and are waiting to be picked up, the researchers said, which would give scientists a rare glimpse into the heart of a comet.
Meteors and fireballs
Earth and the other planets of the solar system are under constant bombardment from particles that range in size from a sand grain to a boulder and are collectively known as meteoroids. Many meteoroids are the detritus left over from collisions of asteroids and comets and impacts to other planets.
If a meteoroid enters Earth's atmosphere, it starts to burn up, forming a bright streak in the sky, called a meteor. Meteors can come from asteroid or comet fragments. If that meteor is brighter than any of the planets in the sky, it is deemed a fireball (also called a bolide).
A blazing bolide can also create a sonic boom that can be heard up to 30 miles away - these explosive noises were heard over Kentucky on Friday, Feb. 13, and over Texas on Sunday, Feb. 15, causing a number of startled citizens to call local law enforcement.
Initial speculation that these streaks of light and accompanying boom were caused by debris from the Feb. 10 collision of two satellites was later refuted by astronomers , who said it was likely a meteor. ...
Spanish sighting
The bolide that shot across the Spanish skies in July was also seen in Portugal and southern France.
At maximum intensity, it was 150 times brighter than the full moon. It was first picked up by the SPMN above Bejar in the western part of Spain at a height of about 61 miles (98 kilometers) and disappeared from view at about 13 miles (21 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth.
A professional photographer also snapped a picture of the streak from the north of Madrid.
From these images, astronomers Josep Trigo-Rodríguez of the Institute of Space Studies, CSIC-IEEC in Spain, Jose Madiedo of the University of Huelva-CIECEM in Spain and Iwan Williams of the University of London were able to deduce the trajectory and properties of the incoming fireball.
Their work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the National Institute of Aerospatial Technique, and the Junta de Andalucía.
The team thinks the bolide was a dense object, about 3 feet (about 1 meter) across with a mass of about 4,000 pounds (1.8 tonnes). This would be like squeezing an adult elephant down to the size of an armchair.
The rock would have been big enough that chunks of it may have survived the fiery passage through the atmosphere and hit the ground as meteorites. Finding these pieces would be a boon to science if they are, as the team suspects, remnants of a comet breakup.
The bolide traveled an unusual orbit around the sun, as determined by the astronomers, following a path that took it from beyond the orbit of Jupiter to the vicinity of Earth.
This orbit is similar to that of a cloud of dust particles known as the Omicron Draconids, which on rare occasions produce a minor meteor shower on Earth.
This collection of meteoroids is thought to originate from the breakup of Comet C/1919 Q2 Metcalf in 1920.
It has been proposed that comets consist of large boulders glued together by a mixture of smaller particles and ice. If the nucleus of the comet disintegrates, the boulders are set loose in space. Finding chunks of the Bejar bolide could help confirm this theory.
"Handling pieces of comet would fulfill the long-held ambitions of scientists - it would effectively give us a look inside some of the most enigmatic objects in the solar system," Trigo-Rodríguez said.
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Unseen dark comets 'could pose deadly threat to earth'
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LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH [Barclay] - By Kate Devlin - February 12, 2009
Unseen "dark" comets could pose a deadly threat to earth, astronomers have warned.
The comets, of which there could be thousands, are not currently monitored by observatories and space agencies.
Most comets and asteroids are monitored in case they start to travel towards earth.
But Bill Napier, from Cardiff University, said that many could be going by unnoticed.
"There is a case to be made that dark, dormant comets are a significant but largely unseen hazard," he said Scientists estimate that there should be around 3,000 comets in the solar system, but only 25 have so far been identified.
"Dark" comets happen when the water on their surface has evaporated, causing them to reflect less light.
Astronomers have previously spotted comets heading towards earth just days before they passed.
In 1983 a comet called IRAS-Araki-Alcock passed at a distance of just 5 million kilometres, the closest of any comet for 200 years, but it was noticed just a fortnight beforehand.
Tests on another comet, called Comet Borrelly, in 2001 revealed it to have large dark patches across much of its surface.
Steve Larson of the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, which monitors comets, said the idea of an unknown number of "dark" comets circling earth had "merit".
But Clark Chapman from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said that such comets "would absorb sunlight very well" and so could be detected by the heat they emit, reports New Scientist magazine.
Original Report
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Surprise Asteroid Makes Near-Miss of Earth
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FOX NEWS [News Corporation/Murdoch] - March 2, 2009Wait! Did you hear that whooshing sound? A small asteroid buzzed by Earth Monday, though only real astronomy geeks in the Pacific would have noticed. The rock, estimated to be no more than 200 feet wide, zoomed past our planet at an altitude of 40,000 miles at 1:44 p.m. universal time - or 8:44 EST. Dubbed 2009 DD45, it was discovered only on Friday by Australian astronomers. Forty thousand miles may sound like a lot, but it's only about one-seventh of the way to the moon, and less than twice as far out as many telecommunications satellites. Had 2009 DD45 hit the Earth, it would have exploded on or near the surface with the force of a large nuclear blast - not very reassuring when you consider humanity had only about three days' notice. According to the Australian news Web site Crikey, the asteroid is likely to be drawn in by Earth's gravity, meaning it may return for many more near misses in the future. Original ReportClose Call: Newly Discovered Asteroid Whizzes Past EarthASSOCIATED PRESS - March 18, 2009PASADENA, California - Scientists say a newly discovered asteroid whizzed harmlessly past Earth on Wednesday, the second close encounter in a month. The small space rock dubbed 2009 FH flew within 49,000 miles of the Earth's surface at 8:17 a.m. EDT. Don Yeomans, who heads NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, says there was never any chance of an impact. The asteroid, measuring 43 feet and 95 feet across, was spotted Monday night by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona. An asteroid this size usually comes this close to Earth every few months. Wednesday's flyby was farther away than another asteroid close call earlier this month. That asteroid was about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago came within 41,000 miles of Earth. Original Report
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Moon hides scars of a violent past
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NEW SCIENTIST - March 13, 2009
THE moon has been hiding the scars of its violent, asteroid-filled past.
Most surveys of lunar impact craters have used photos, but Herbert Frey of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, wanted to know if there were any old craters buried beneath younger ones. So he studied elevation mapping data from the Clementine mission in the 1990s. He also used simulations to identify impact signatures, such as a roughly circular crater with a thin crust and a thicker rim. This approach uncovered 150 craters more than 300 kilometres wide instead of 45.
Frey is now trying to work out the age of the newly found craters. If they are the same age as the others, this would support the idea that asteroids bombarded the inner solar system for a particularly intense period about 4 billion years ago [Ed Note: From a literal Biblical time-frame, this period would be at the beginning of the Great Cataclysm, better known as the Flood at the time of Noah]. Some researchers think that life may have existed before this bombardment, but if so, its survival now seems less likely, says Andrew Valley of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. ...
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Destroyed Satellite's Debris Falling into Atmosphere
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SPACE.com [Gannett-NBC-Universal/GE] - By SPACE.com Staff - March 10, 2009
Ed Note: Pictured Left - Artist impression of catalogued objects in low-Earth orbit over Equator - European Space Agency Photo
Junk created by the collision of two satellites last month is poised to fall into Earth's atmosphere this week.
When the U.S. Iridium 33 communications satellite and the defunct Russian military communications satellite Cosmos 2251 collided and were destroyed, the smashup left a fresh sea of fragments orbiting at various angles. The collision occurred about 490 miles (790 km) over Siberia.
Engineers have been watching the debris, which has raised the risk of other collisions in space.
Now the U.S. Strategic Command says a fragment catalogued as 1993-036PX will re-enter the atmosphere Thursday, according to Spaceweather.com. Other bits are expected to take the plunge March 28 and March 30.
The fragments are small, however, perhaps just a centimeter or so. They should burn up on the way in and pose no threat to anyone on the ground.
"As of March 7, there were 355 catalogued fragments of Cosmos 2251 and 159 fragments of Iridium 33," said Daniel Deak, who prepared a map of the debris for Spaceweather.com. "The Cosmos fragments are not only more numerous, but also more widely scattered, ranging in altitude from 198 km to 1,689 km [123 to 1,049 miles]. For comparison, Iridium fragments are confined to altitudes between 582 km and 1,262 km."
Researchers don't know exactly why the debris spread out so differently. They suspect Cosmos 2251 might have ruptured (it was pressurized) and blown apart, the web site reports.
The risk of the Space Shuttle Discovery being struck by debris rose 6 percent due to the new debris, NASA has said. ...
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Satellites Collide in Low Earth Orbit
ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY/ ASD at NASA / GSFC - February 18, 2009
See Report and Picture Here
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| Satellites Destroyed in Orbital Collision |
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Andy Pasztor - February 12, 2009
A commercial satellite owned by a U.S. company was destroyed in a collision with a defunct Russian military satellite in what NASA said was the first such accident in orbit, raising new concerns about the dangers of space debris.
The crash, which happened Tuesday in low-earth orbit, involved one of the satellites owned by closely held Iridium Satellite LLC and a crippled Russian military satellite that apparently stopped functioning years ago, according to U.S. government and satellite-industry officials.
The collision created two large clouds of debris floating roughly 480 miles above Siberia, and prompted space scientists and engineers to assess the likelihood of further collisions.
The accident could have implications for U.S. space budgets and policy, partly because it comes amid a Pentagon campaign to increase spending on systems to protect U.S. high-tech space hardware by keeping better track of the thousands of pieces of debris and other satellites circling the Earth.
As more and more satellites are blasted into orbit, the challenges of keeping them from hitting debris or each other are growing. Military planners also worry about enemies jamming, disabling or potentially even ramming U.S. satellites.
Industry officials say Iridium has identified the Russian craft as a Cosmos series satellite launched in 1993, weighing more than a ton and including an onboard nuclear reactor. That couldn't be independently verified. Experts have said the chance of radioactive debris surviving a fall through the atmosphere and reaching inhabited areas is very small.
The Russian Embassy couldn't be reached for comment.
More than 220 active commercial satellites now orbit the globe, in addition to hundreds of military, spy and scientific satellites. Commercial satellites provide businesses with everything from data and video transmissions to support for consumer navigation devices.
The Russian craft was being monitored by Pentagon organizations that keep track of space debris in order to prevent in-orbit collisions from damaging or destroying both commercial and government satellites. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Pentagon track more than 10,000 pieces of high-speed debris, some no larger than a football.
Cosmos satellites have been designed for various uses, from spy missions to missile-warning systems to securing military communications. They have caused a number of scary incidents over the years, including a 1991 collision between one defunct model and debris from another; a near-collision with the space shuttle the same year; and another that crashed into Canadian wilderness in 1978. ...
Space collision worries gained momentum in January 2007, when China used a relatively simple antisatellite weapon to knock down one of its aged weather satellites.
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| 2 big satellites collide 500 miles over Siberia |
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Seth Borenstein in Washington and Peter Svensson in New York - February 12, 2009
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station. ...
The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. The Russian satellite was out of control, Matney said.
The Iridium craft weighed 1,235 pounds, and the Russian craft nearly a ton. ...
There have been four other cases in which space objects have collided accidentally in orbit, NASA said. But those were considered minor and involved parts of spent rockets or small satellites.
Nicholas Johnson, an orbital debris expert at the Houston space center, said the risk of damage from Tuesday's collision is greater for the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth-observing satellites, which are in higher orbit and nearer the debris field.
At the beginning of this year there were roughly 17,000 pieces of manmade debris orbiting Earth, Johnson said. The items, at least 4 inches in size, are being tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, which is operated by the military. The network detected the two debris clouds created Tuesday.
Litter in orbit has increased in recent years, in part because of the deliberate breakups of old satellites. It's gotten so bad that orbital debris is now the biggest threat to a space shuttle in flight, surpassing the dangers of liftoff and return to Earth. NASA is in regular touch with the Space Surveillance Network, to keep the space station a safe distance from any encroaching objects, and shuttles, too, when they're flying. ...
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| We need an astral air control |
THE TIMES of LONDON [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Giles Whittell - February 13, 2009
In space, no one can hear you scream, and no one can tell you where to park your satellite. If Tuesday night's orbital smash-up had occurred during the Cold War, it might have triggered a nuclear showdown. Instead it has brought renewed calls for a celestial equivalent of the world's air traffic control system.
Of the 6,000 satellites launched since the first Soviet Sputnik 52 years ago, few have been brought back to Earth. No international law requires it, and the process consumes rocket fuel that could otherwise be used to keep the satellites operational for longer.
Next week the UN's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space meets in Vienna to discuss getting satellite operators to put space safety before commercial factors. The committee will also address the even tougher question of how to persuade new space-faring nations, including Iran, to adopt internationally approved codes for licensing and disposing of their spacecraft.
"The UN has already agreed guidelines on what to do about space junk," said Professor Richard Crowther, who will represent Britain at the meeting. "The next step is to agree on how to deal with operational satellites."
Operators already need to get licences from the International Telecommunications Union before putting new satellites in orbit.
There is no incentive to dispose of satellites responsibly. ...
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Also:
Europe Plans to Monitor Space Junk
DER SPIEGEL [BMG: Bertelsmann Media Group/Gruner & Jahr Magazines] - By Christoph Seidler - February 17, 2009
Plans envision a network made up of several tracking stations that should be able to detect flying objects as small as 10 centimeters (four inches) across. Powerful radar installations are used to monitor objects orbiting within about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) of Earth. ...
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FAA Releases Conflicting Reports Regarding Fireball Over Texas
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Fireball over Texas may be from doomed satellites
WFAA-TV ABC DALLAS/FORT WORTH, TEXAS [Belo Corp] - February 16, 2009
Debris from two satellites apparently plummeted to Earth near Waco on Sunday. Numerous people in Austin reported seeing a fireball in the sky before plummeting to Earth. An Austin TV station broadcast images of the fireball's flight.
In addition to Austin, the fireball was seen in Houston, Plano and as far north as Nebraska. Radar images showed it enter the Texas skies over the small town of West just north of Waco.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a warning to pilots to be aware of satellite debris falling to the earth.
Roland Herwig, southwest region FAA spokesman, said that the debris is from a falling satellite but could not directly link it to the reported collision of Russian and U.S. communications satellites.
"It's yet to be proved it's those satellites," he said. ...
The government has issued a warning that if any debris is found, it shouldn't be touched.
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Officials say mystery fireball in sky was meteor
TIME WARNER NEWS 8 AUSTIN, TEXAS - February 16, 2009
The fireball that blazed across the Texas sky and sparked numerous weekend calls to law enforcement agencies now can be considered an identified flying object.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday the fireball was a natural phenomenon, not flying space junk, and a North Texas astronomer said more specifically that it was probably a pickup truck-sized meteor with the consistency of concrete. ...
The FAA backed off its weekend claim that the fireball was caused by falling debris from colliding satellites plummeting into earth's atmosphere.
The U.S. Strategic Command also said Monday that the weekend shower of fireballs over Texas was not debris from last week's collision of two satellites over Siberia. They also said it was a natural phenomenon. ...
Preliminary reports from Williamson County officials said a small aircraft went down, and then officials said it was likely space debris from two satellites crashing. ...
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FAA: Falling Metal Did Not Come From Airplane
CBS NEWS America [CBS Corporation] - February 19, 2009
JERSEY CITY - The Federal Aviation Administration says a piece of hot metal that crashed through the roof of a Jersey City business did not come from an airplane.
FAA spokeswoman Arlene Salac says investigators examined the metal and determined it is made of cast iron, which is not used in airplanes. She says it's up to local authorities to determine where the object came from. ...
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Meteorite over New York: Second Loud Boom Rattles Windows In NY Suburb
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CBS NEWS America [CBS Corporation]/ASSOCIATED PRESS - March 10, 2009
WHITE PLAINS - There's been another loud "boom." This time it rattled windows in parts of Rockland County.
Nanuet resident Keith Wallenstein said the mysterious noise woke him up at about 5:15 Monday morning and sounded like someone had flown an F-16 over his house.
Westchester County early Saturday might have been a meteorite.
Police and The Journal News got a flurry of reports from people in Scarsdale, Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Tuckahoe, Eastchester and Bronxville.
Weather officials say there was no thunder in the area at the time.
Liz Holland of Mount Kisco says she was looking out her window around 12:30 a.m. Saturday. She saw a brilliant yellow object streaking through the sky.
An official from the Rockland Astronomy Club says yellow is a typical color for a meteorite.
Original Report
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| Meteorites may be remnants of destroyed dwarf planet |
NEWSCIENTIST.com News Service - By David Shiga - March 13, 2008
HOUSTON -- Two rocks found together in Antarctica are chunks of a dwarf planet that was smashed apart early in the solar system's history, detailed studies suggest. Other remnants of the proto-world may still be floating around in the asteroid belt, and might be identifiable by the spectrum of the sunlight they reflect. ...
The two meteorite pieces, called GRA 06128 and GRA 06129 after the Graves Nunataks area of Antarctica where they were found together in 2006, show evidence of such differentiation - which suggests they came from a massive body.
That's because the two objects are made mostly of a mineral called feldspar, which constitutes about 75 to 90% of their volume.
Feldspar is even more abundant in some lunar rocks. That is thought to be the result of crystals of feldspar solidifying from the early magma ocean on the Moon. Because feldspar is a relatively lightweight mineral, it would have floated to the top of the magma ocean, allowing it to form a highly concentrated layer of the mineral.
The amount of feldspar in the two meteorite fragments suggests they are remnants of a very large body that differentiated in a similar way, according to Allan Treiman of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, US, who led a study of one of the fragments.
'Strange new world'
Other studies of the meteorite, including one led by Richard Ash of the University of Maryland in College Park, another headed by Chip Shearer of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and a third helmed by Ryan Zeigler of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, all in the US, agree that the parent body must have been massive enough to have separated into layers. ...
"This is a piece of a dwarf-planet size body that apparently no longer exists," Treiman told New Scientist. "We have here a sample of a strange new world, a sample we've never seen before." ...
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The Day the Sun Brought Darkness
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ASTROBIOLOGY MAGAZINE - March 15, 2009
Based on a NASA news release
On March 13, 1989, the entire province of Quebec, Canada suffered an electrical power blackout. Hundreds of blackouts occur in some part of North America every year. The Quebec Blackout was different, because this one was caused by a solar storm.
On Friday March 10, 1989, astronomers witnessed a powerful explosion on the sun. Within minutes, tangled magnetic forces on the sun had released a billion-ton cloud of gas. It was like the energy of thousands of nuclear bombs exploding at the same time. The storm cloud rushed out from the sun, straight towards Earth, at a million miles an hour. The solar flare that accompanied the outburst immediately caused short-wave radio interference, including the jamming of radio signals from Radio Free Europe into Russia. It was thought that the signals had been jammed by the Kremlin, but it was only the sun acting up!
On the evening of Monday, March 12, the vast cloud of solar plasma (a gas of electrically charged particles) finally struck Earth's magnetic field. The violence of this 'geomagnetic storm' caused spectacular 'northern lights' that could be seen as far south as Florida and Cuba. The magnetic disturbance was incredibly intense. It actually created electrical currents in the ground beneath much of North America. Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than 2 minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power. During the 12-hour blackout that followed, millions of people suddenly found themselves in dark office buildings and underground pedestrian tunnels, and in stalled elevators. Most people woke up to cold homes for breakfast. The blackout also closed schools and businesses, kept the Montreal Metro shut during the morning rush hour, and closed Dorval Airport.
The Quebec Blackout was by no means a local event. Some of the U.S. electrical utilities had their own cliffhanger problems to deal with. New York Power lost 150 megawatts the moment the Quebec power grid went down. The New England Power Pool lost 1,410 megawatts at about the same time. Service to 96 electrical utilities in New England was interrupted while other reserves of electrical power were brought online. Luckily, the U.S. had the power to spare at the time...but just barely. Across the United States from coast to coast, over 200 power grid problems erupted within minutes of the start of the March 13 storm. Fortunately none of these caused a blackout.
In space, some satellites actually tumbled out of control for several hours. NASA's TDRS-1 communication satellite recorded over 250 anomalies as high-energy particles invaded the satellite's sensitive electronics. Even the Space Shuttle Discovery was having its own mysterious problems. A sensor on one of the tanks supplying hydrogen to a fuel cell was showing unusually high pressure readings on March 13. The problem went away just as mysteriously after the solar storm subsided.
Twenty years later, the March 1989 'Quebec Blackout' has reached legendary stature, at least among electrical engineers and space scientists. It is a dramatic example of how solar storms can affect us even here on the ground. Fortunately, storms as powerful as this are rather rare. It takes quite a solar wallop to cause anything like the conditions leading up to a Quebec-style blackout. Typical solar activity 'sunspot' cycles can produce least two or three large storms, so it really is just a matter of chance whether one will cause a blackout or not. As it is for hurricanes and tornadoes, the more we can learn about the sun's 'space weather,' the better we can prepare for the next storm when it arrives.
Original Report
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Power Grids In Peril
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SPACE WEATHER - January 7, 2009
The National Academy of Sciences has released an important new report detailing how geomagnetic storms could damage the infrastructure of modern society. An area of particular vulnerability is power grids. Ground currents induced during century-class storms can actually melt the copper windings of huge, multi-ton transformers at the heart of some power distribution systems. Because modern power grids are interconnected, a cascade of failures could sweep across the country, rapidly cutting power to tens or even hundreds of millions of people:
According to the report, "impacts would be felt on interdependent infrastructures with, for example, potable water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; immediate or eventual loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, transportation, fuel resupply and so on." Melted transformers can take months to repair or replace--so a single extreme storm could make itself felt long after solar activity subsides. Nothing, it seems, is immune from space weather. (audio)
Full report: Severe Space Weather Events--Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts (National Academy of Sciences)
Original Report
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| Once Every 28 Years: Blessing on the Sun |
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - March 12, 2009
Though the sun is some 400 times larger than the moon, a blessing over the latter is made nearly 350 times more often than over the former. This coming month will see that rare occasion when the Blessing Over the Sun is recited.
Jewish Law stipulates that a special blessing is to be recited when we see the sun at the same place, on the same day of the week, and the same time of day as when it was created. The first chapter in Genesis, which tells the story of Creation, tells us that the sun was created on a Wednesday. Precisely one solar year, or 365.25 days (52 weeks and 1.25 days) later, the sun was in the same place - but not on the same day of the week, nor at the same time of day; it was rather but rather a quarter of a day later.
The "quarter-day" problem is solved every four years, and the "same day of the week" issue is resolved every seven years - and both problems are solved simultaneously only once every 28 (4x7) years.
This year marks the culmination of a 28-year-cycle since Creation (5769-1= 5768 = 28x206). Thus, four weeks from now, on Wednesday, April. 8, the vernal equinox, the sun will be in the same position, on the same day of the week and the same approximate hour, as it was when it was created. This "starting position" actually occurs the previous evening, but we recite the blessing over the sun to mark this anniversary only when it is visible - that is, the next morning.
The special blessing - - "Blessed are You... Who fashions the work of Creation" - commemorates the vast greatness of G-d's Creation.
The last time this special blessing was recited, April 8,1981, special gatherings were held in various locations for the public recital of the prayer - including atop one of the Twin Towers of the no-longer-extant World Trade Center in New York. ...
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| Earth-Like Planet Found Orbiting Far-Off Star |
SPACE.com [Gannett-NBC-Universal/GE] - February 3, 2009
What may be the smallest extrasolar planet, measuring less than twice the size of Earth, has been discovered orbiting a sun-like star.
The world is far hotter than ours, however. And controversy over the size claim has heated up, too.
Astronomers used the COROT space telescope (a mission led by the French Space Agency, and also involving the European Space Agency and others) to detect the new planet as it transited its parent star, dimming the light from the star as it passed in front of it.
The host star is located 457 light-years from Earth, where one light-year is the distance light will travel in a year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
"For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is 'rocky' in the same sense as our own Earth," said Malcolm Fridlund, ESA's COROT Project Scientist. "We now have to understand this object further to put it into context, and continue our search for smaller, more Earth-like objects with COROT." ...
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Astronomers discover 3 'super-Earths'Astronomers discover 3 'super-Earths'
WORLDNETDAILY - June 17, 2008
For the first time in history, scientists have discovered three Earth-sized planets orbiting a solitary star that is slightly less massive than the sun.
Astronomers believe the planets, called "super-Earths," could be very similar in composition and size to Earth itself, more so than any other planet in our solar system.
The smallest of the trio is approximately four times the size of Earth, and scientists believe its blistering climate is far too hot to sustain life.
The "super-Earths" are only three new additions to a list of 45 planet candidates with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period of less than 50 days, the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, or ESO, reports. ...
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Proof of Water on Mars?
Blobs in Photos of Mars Lander Stir a Debate: Are They Water?
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Kenneth Chang - March 16, 2009
Several photographs taken by NASA's Phoenix Mars spacecraft show what look like water droplets clinging to one of its landing struts.
Some of the scientists working on the mission are asserting that that is exactly what they were. They contend that there are pockets of liquid water just under the Martian surface even though the temperatures in the northern plains never warmed above minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit during the six months of Phoenix's operations last year.
The scientists believe that salts may have lowered the freezing temperature of the Martian water droplets to perhaps minus 90 degrees, or more than 120 degrees colder than the usual freezing temperature of 32 degrees for pure water.
Nilton O. Renno, a professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan who
proposed the hypothesis, was careful to say, "This is not a proof."
But he added: "I think the evidence is overwhelming. It's not circumstantial evidence."
Dr. Renno will present his data and arguments this month in a talk at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, and he is the lead author among 22 authors of a scientific paper submitted to The Journal of Geophysical Research.
Others are completely unconvinced. "There are simpler explanations," said Michael H. Hecht, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a co-investigator of the Phoenix's wet chemistry instrument. ...
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Related:
NASA's Mars Exploration Program Page at JPL
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U.S. Mars lander Phoenix sees falling snow
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XINHUA - September 29, 2008
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds, the U.S. space agency NASA announced on Monday.
A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars, detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers above the spacecraft's landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground.
"Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars," said Jim Whiteway, of York University, Toronto, lead scientist for the Canadian-supplied Meteorological Station on Phoenix. "We'll be looking for signs that the snow may even reach the ground."
In the meantime, spacecraft soil tests experiments also have provided evidence of past interaction between minerals and liquid water, processes that occur on Earth.
Phoenix experiments also yielded clues pointing to calcium carbonate, the main composition of chalk, and particles that could be clay. Most carbonates and clays on Earth form only in the presence of liquid water. ...
Since landing on May 25, Phoenix already has confirmed that a hard subsurface layer at its far-northern site contains water-ice.
Determining whether that ice ever thaws would help answer whether the environment there has been favorable for life, a key aim of the mission. ...
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New data pinpoint Mars' wet and balmy past
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AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - July 16, 2008Water bathed the surface of southern Mars for millions of years, helping to create an environment theoretically capable of nurturing life, according to a new study into the planet's mysterious oceans. Scientists at Brown University in Rhode Island used an instrument aboard a US spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, to hunt for traces of phyllosilicates, or clay-like minerals that preserve a record of water's interaction with rocks. They found phyllosilicates in thousands of places, in valleys, dunes and craters in the ancient southern highlands, pointing to an active role by water in Mars's earliest geological era, the Noachian period, ... Read Full Report Also:Liquid flowing on surface of Saturn moon: NASAAGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - July 30, 2008NASA scientists said Wednesday they had found liquid on Saturn's moon Titan, only the second body in the solar system after Earth to have fluid on its surface. The groundbreaking discovery was made after analysis of instruments on the US-European Cassini probe, the spacecraft that has been orbiting Saturn since 2004 following a 3.5 billion-kilometer (2.2 billion miles) voyage. NASA said in a statement that information from Cassini indicated that large lakes on Titan contained liquid hydrocarbons and ethane. "This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," said University of Arizona scientist Bob Brown, team leader of Cassini's visual and mapping instrument. NASA said large dark areas on Titan's surface had been spotted during numerous close flybys of the moon. However until now it had not been possible to determine whether they were liquid or solids. ... Read Full Report
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Red Rain: Unusual Red Glow - Minneapolis, MN, USA in 09-23-2002 8:07pm CST
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ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY/ ASD at NASA / GSFC - February 17, 2009
When landing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA in 2002, just before his flight ascended above cloud level in the early evening, passenger Tyler Blessing saw and photographed "huge curved sheets of glowing light extending from cloud to ground." The glow appeared unlike other unusual lights more typically seen, including crepuscular rays, anticrepuscular rays and the glory. A leading possibility, mentioned initially by the photographer, is that the light sheets are setting sunlight scattered off of falling rain. Alternatively, the phenomenon could just be a peculiar window reflection. APOD readers, who have previously shown an impressive ability to pool their collective intelligence to create a better understanding of photographed sky anomalies, are invited to discuss this online. It might help to know that EXIF data indicates that the image was captured on 2002 September 23 at about 8:07 pm in the evening (local time), and that the camera was reported to be pointing north of west at that time. The oval on the ground, visible in the lower right of the above image, is Canterbury Downs race track.
See Picture Here
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