Space

NASA's newly found planet Kepler-186f, is at most habitable, a "Snow Ball Earth".

The habitable zone planet announced by NASA today is most probably Mars Like...at best a frozen snowball or slushball.  I make this determination based on a sober reading of NASA'S press release.   Kepler-186f is a star approximately 500 light years a ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Apr 20 2014 - 2:20am

A better than 50/50 chance Kepler-186f has technological life. (Updated)

SETI Live's data on Kepler-186's solar system could be revealing evidence of extraterrestrial life. SETI may have seen ET's satellite signals already. Here is the data and my analysis.   From my own expertise and experience in astronomy, spe ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Jan 19 2018 - 12:09pm

Why Elon Musk's Colony on Mars in 2020s is Unfeasible- What Could We Do- Really?

Actually physically getting humans and their life support to Mars is likely to be feasible. But there is much more to it than that.  LANDING SAFELY First- they have to land there safely. Landing on Mars is far harder than anywhere else in the inner solar ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Jan 23 2017 - 12:22pm

Dignity, Impudence, And General Relativity

A Star that seems Brighter when Eclipsed This paradoxical phenomenon was brought to my attention by a recent article in Physics World.  Quite an informative article, but like some bard of old, with legendary tales of kings and heroes, I would like to tell ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Apr 22 2014 - 2:08am

Self-Lensing Binary System And The Upside-Down Planet

What looked at first like a sort of upside-down planet in the binary star system KOI-3278 has instead revealed a new method for studying binary star systems, according to a University of Washington team who writes of the first "self-lensing" bin ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 21 2014 - 7:53pm

Meteoroid Caught Free-Falling On Video? No, A Stone In The Parachute Pack

A meteor caught on film during its non-luminous free fall at terminal velocity? Or an elaborate hoax? Or something else? I must admit that when I saw the video posted in the internet a few weeks ago I was intrigued, and operated a willful suppression of di ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Apr 24 2014 - 1:01am

PS1-10afx Cosmic Illusion Revealed

A team of researchers led by Robert Quimby at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) has announced the discovery of a galaxy that magnified a background, Type Ia supernova thirtyfold through gravitational lensing. ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 27 2014 - 4:30am

Evidence Of Liquid Water On Mars

The southern hemisphere of Mars is home to a crater that contains very well-preserved gullies and debris flow deposits and he geomorphological attributes of these landforms provide evidence that they were formed by the action of liquid water in geological ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 25 2014 - 11:42am

WISE J085510.83-071442.5: Brown Dwarf Is Close Neighbor Of The Sun And The Coolest Of Its Kind

A "brown dwarf" star with the catchy name of  WISE J085510.83-071442.5 appears to be the coldest of its kind. When people think of stars, they think of hot fusion plasma bubbling and erupting.  WISE J085510.83-071442.5,  7.2 light-years away, ma ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 26 2014 - 10:42am

Cosmic Web Imager And The Intergalactic Medium Unveiled

Astronomers have taken unprecedented images of the intergalactic medium (IGM) — the diffuse gas that connects galaxies throughout the universe — with the Cosmic Web Imager, which was designed and built at the California Institute of Technology. Until now, ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 30 2014 - 10:21am