Group items tagged

Ok, who tested the laser SPS?

or who was responsible for the calibration and testing?

Its doing it again. Anyone wants to play the "explain this" game?

New debates on 'old' topic: https://phys.org/news/2018-01-alien-megastructure-dimming-mysterious-star.html? see blog posts in link for more info

From my favourite, "applied science" series... "If you've ever had one too many and tumbled into bed with a vision, only to be greeted in the morning by a sight you'd gnaw off your own arm to escape, take heart". [Edit] Ah, and before you suggest this is AFD hoax, here's the ref: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22260359

A vast bubble of hot, rarefied gas has been revealed as a source of cosmic rays - the mysterious particles that batter the Earth continuously. The observation of the so-called superbubble, measuring more than 100 light-years across, was made using gamma rays collected by NASA's Fermi satellite and sheds light on the origin of cosmic rays in regions of massive-star formation.

...I told you we had to hurry up with our Ariadna! btw, they studied the coiling at the cellular level (but I am scared to read the paper to see if there is something left for us..)

read this

" However, Dr. Konig also found copper vases plated with silver in the Baghdad Museum, excavated from !!!Sumerian!!! sites in southern Iraq, dating back to at least 2500 BCE. When the vases were lightly tapped, a blue patina or film separated from the surface, which is characteristic of silver electroplated onto copper base. It would appear then that the Parthians inherited their batteries from one of the earliest known civilizations." ... they just mistyped the name ...

interesting .... have they so far been involved?

"Over the past few months, the European Space Agency's Rosetta space probe closely examined the type of comet that some scientists theorized could have brought water to our planet 4 billion years ago. It found water, but the wrong kind."

Scientists have discovered how algae that survive in very low levels of light are able to switch on and off a weird quantum phenomenon that occurs during photosynthesis. The function in the algae of this quantum effect, known as coherence, remains a mystery, but it is thought it could help them harvest energy from the sun much more efficiently. Working out its role in a living organism could lead to advances such as better organic solar cells.

very very nice! we tried already a few years back to find an angle to see how we could study quantum phenomena occuring in plants and photosynthsis is one of the great examples since somehow plants manage to make the phenomena work for them at elevated temperatures, a feat in itself ... any good idea most welcome!!!

Anna maybe? Joe?

'Whether mysterious high-energy photon emissions from our Galaxy come from dark matter or a more mundane source might be resolved by detecting their Doppler shifts along different lines-of-sight.'

Hundreds of hidden nearby galaxies have been studied for the first time, shedding light on a mysterious gravitational anomaly dubbed the Great Attractor. Despite being just 250 million light years from Earth-very close in astronomical terms-the new galaxies had been hidden from view until now by our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Using CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope equipped with an innovative receiver, an international team of scientists were able to see through the stars and dust of the Milky Way, into a previously unexplored region of space. The discovery may help to explain the Great Attractor region, which appears to be drawing the Milky Way and hundreds of thousands of other galaxies towards it with a gravitational force equivalent to a million billion Suns. Lead author Professor Lister Staveley-Smith, from The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), said the team found 883 galaxies, a third of which had never been seen before. "The Milky Way is very beautiful of course and it's very interesting to study our own galaxy but it completely blocks out the view of the more distant galaxies behind it," he said. Professor Staveley-Smith said scientists have been trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious Great Attractor since major deviations from universal expansion were first discovered in the 1970s and 1980s. "We don't actually understand what's causing this gravitational acceleration on the Milky Way or where it's coming from," he said. "We know that in this region there are a few very large collections of galaxies we call clusters or superclusters, and our whole Milky Way is moving towards them at more than two million kilometres per hour." The research identified several new structures that could help to explain the movement of the Milky Way, including three galaxy concentrations (named NW1, NW2 and NW3) and two new clusters (named CW1 and CW2).

Two ways of measuring the universe's expansion rate yield two conflicting answers. Many point to the possibility of new physics at work, but a new analysis argues that unseen errors could be to blame. See also this work based on GAIA data that, on the other hand, reinforces the discrepancy: Milky Way Cepheid Standards for Measuring Cosmic Distances and Application to Gaia DR2: Implications for the Hubble Constant https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.10655

Uneven gravity patterns on moon probably caused by asteroid impacts.

Nooo, it's TMA-1!

Really? Is this what we were all waiting for?

to be honest, while the alien megastructure is a cookie idea, I highly doubt that those aliens woke up one day and thought: "hm, let's send laser pulses at this particular random spot in space sometime in the next 6 days".

Earth's irregular natural satellites (NES) that are temporarily captured from the near-Earth-object (NEO) population. --> Possibly interesting for NEO exploration? http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3781

How early could we detect these coming?

The strange formation resembles a tiny spire surrounded by a webby picket fence and is about 2 centimeters wide. Apparently nobody knows what it is, but Tom said that it may actually come from a spider (according to the way the web was spun)!