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Interesting new paper coming out in Nature this week, presenting early scientific results from LIGO on the amplitude of stochastic gravitational radiation background of cosmological origin.

The Bolshoi simulation is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet made ("bolshoi" is the Russian word for "great" or "grand").  The first two of a series of research papers describing Bolshoi and its implications have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The first data release of Bolshoi outputs, including output from Bolshoi and also the BigBolshoi or MultiDark simulation of a volume 64 times bigger than Bolshoi, has just been made publicly available to the world's astronomers and astrophysicists.

I confine these remarks to lessons to be drawn on the state of our subject from the histories of research in three Windows on the Universe: cosmology, our extragalactic neighborhood, and life in other worlds.

In this week's edition of Nature, a cohort of researchers report the latest findings from two of the major players in this search for gravitational waves - The LIGO Scientific Collaboration located in the US and the Virgo Collaboration in France and Italy. The paper reports the latest data from these two experiments collected 2005 - 2007, and discusses the implication of these results for the standard picture of cosmology.

People should not be afraid of dark energy. Remember that the problem with the cosmological constant isn't that it's mysterious and ill-motivated - it's that it's too small! The naive theoretical prediction is larger than what's required by observation by a factor of 10^120. That's a puzzle, no doubt, but setting it equal to zero doesn't make the puzzle go away - then it's smaller than the theoretical prediction by a factor of infinity.

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/23/Marcus_Chown_in_Conversation_with_Fred_Watson Marcus Chown, author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: A Guide to the Universe, discusses the mechanics behind quantum computers, explaining that they function by having atoms exist in multiple places at once. He predicts that quantum computers will be produced within 20 years. ----- The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einsteins general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world in which we live. But almost a century after their advent, most people havent the slightest clue what either is about. Radio astronomer, award-winning writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown talks to fellow stargazer Fred Watson about his book Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, he is now cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist. The Magic Furnace, Marcus' second book, was chosen in Japan as one of the Books of the Year by Asahi Shimbun. In the UK, the Daily Mail called it "a dizzy page-turner with all the narrative devices you'd expect to find in Harry Potter". His latest book is called Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You.

Halo and Galaxy Formation Histories from the Millennium Simulation Public release of a VO-oriented and SQL-queryable database for studying the evolution of galaxies in the ΛCDM cosmogony

This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of what our universe actually looks like. There are nine main maps on this web page, each one approximately ten times the scale of the previous one. The first map shows the nearest stars and then the other maps slowly expand out until we have reached the scale of the entire visible universe.

Planetary Resources is establishing a new paradigm for resource discovery and utilization that will bring the solar system into humanity's sphere of influence. Our technical principals boast extensive experience in all phases of robotic space missions, from designing and building, to testing and operating.

SETILive is taking the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) directly to you by presenting radio frequency signals LIVE from the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array (ATA) while it's pointed at stars that, based on Kepler exoplanet discoveries, have the best chances of being home to an alien civilization. We'll also be putting you "in the loop" where if enough of you see a potential extraterrestrial (ET) signal in the same data, then within minutes, the ATA will be interrupted and sent back to take a second look. The data you see will be from frequencies where human-made Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) crowds them and we believe the human eye will have a better chance than SETI's computer algorithms to find ET signals there.

SpaceEngine - is a free space simulation software that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions, starting from planet Earth to the most distant galaxies. Areas of the known universe are represented using actual astronomical data, while regions uncharted by human astronomy are generated procedurally. Millions of galaxies, trillions of stars, countless planets!

The Open Data project is part of the NASA Open Government Initiative, and is intended to improve access to NASA data. This data catalog is a continually-growing listing of publicly available NASA datasets.

Building on the legacy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and SDSS-II, the SDSS-III Collaboration is working to map the Milky Way, search for extrasolar planets, and solve the mystery of dark energy.