Saturn's Rings and Moons are Solar System Antiques

Saturn's Rings and Moons are Solar System Antiques - The dazzling rings of Saturn and its moons are likely more than 4 billion years old — the cosmic remnants of the solar system's birth, scientists say.

The finding comes after a new study of observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn, which suggests that the planet's rings and moons formed at the same time as the rest of the solar system's planetary bodies soon after the sun sparked into life. Since Saturn's rings and moons formed from the same planetary nebula of gas and dust around the early sun that led to the solar system's other planets, they are a time capsule of sorts for astronomers, the researchers said.

"Studying the Saturnian system helps us understand the chemical and physical evolution of our entire solar system," Cassini scientist Gianrico Filacchione, of Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, said in a statement. "We know now that understanding this evolution requires not just studying a single moon or ring, but piecing together the relationships intertwining these bodies."

Filacchione and his colleagues analyzed data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, or VIMS, to understand the distribution of water ice and colors across Saturn's rings and moons. Different colors in the rings and moons provide evidence of non-water organic materials, while water ice is a vital clue into the timeline that led to the formation of the Saturnian system, the researchers said.

Observations from VIMS showed that there is too much water ice in the Saturn system to have been dumped there by comets or other more recent means, leading the researchers to conclude that the water ice must have formed around the time the solar system did.

The researchers also discovered that the surfaces of Saturn's moons typically get redder the farther away they orbit the huge planet. Some of these outer moons, like Hyperion and Iapetus, may have been coated with reddish dust shed by Phoebe, a small, retrograde moon believed to have originated in the Kuiper Belt, the researchers said.

Meanwhile, parts of the planet's main ring system may have been painted with a more subtle reddish hue by meteoroids slamming into the Saturnian system. That red may be a sign of oxidized iron (rust) or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, compounds that could give rise to more complex molecules, the researchers said.

The scientists were surprised to observe reddish tones on the potato-shaped moon Prometheus, which orbits in an area where moons are generally more whitish in color. The finding hints that Saturn's rings may have given rise to some of the planet's moons.

"Scientists had been wondering whether ring particles could have stuck together to form moons — since the dominant theory was that the rings basically came from satellites being broken up," study researcher Bonnie Buratti, a VIMS team member based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "The coloring gives us some solid proof that it can work the other way around, too."

The research is detailed in the March 26 edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft launched toward Saturn in 1997 and arrived in orbit around the ringed planet in 2004. The spacecraft completed its primary mission in 2008 and is currently in the midst of its second extended mission, which runs through 2017. ( space.com )

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First 'Alien Earth' Will Be Found in 2013

First 'Alien Earth' Will Be Found in 2013, Experts Say - The first truly Earth-like alien planet is likely to be spotted next year, an epic discovery that would cause humanity to reassess its place in the universe.

While astronomers have found a number of exoplanets over the last few years that share one or two key traits with our own world — such as size or inferred surface temperature — they have yet to bag a bona fide "alien Earth." But that should change in 2013, scientists say.

"I'm very positive that the first Earth twin will be discovered next year," said Abel Mendez, who runs the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo.

Artist's concept of the potentially habitable planet candidate Tau Ceti f, which was detected in December 2012. The possible planet, which is found just 11.9 light-years from Earth, is at least 6.6 

Planets piling up

Astronomers discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star in 1995. Since they, they've spotted more than 800 worlds beyond our own solar system, and many more candidates await confirmation by follow-up observations.

NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope, for example, has flagged more than 2,300 potential planets since its March 2009 launch. Only 100 or so have been confirmed to date, but mission scientists estimate that at least 80 percent will end up being the real deal.

The first exoplanet finds were scorching-hot Jupiter-like worlds that orbit close to their parent stars, because they were the easiest to detect. But over time, new instruments came online and planet hunters honed their techniques, enabling the discovery of smaller and more distantly orbiting planets — places more like Earth.

Last December, for instance, Kepler found a planet 2.4 times larger than Earth orbiting in its star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances where liquid water, and perhaps life as we know it, can exist.

The Kepler team and other research groups have detected several other worlds like that one (which is known as Kepler-22b), bringing the current tally of potentially habitable exoplanets to nine by Mendez' reckoning.

Zeroing in on Earth's twin

None of the worlds in Mendez' Habitable Exoplanets Catalog are small enough to be true Earth twins. The handful of Earth-size planets spotted to date all orbit too close to their stars to be suitable for life.

But it's only a matter of time before a small, rocky planet is spotted in the habitable zone — and Mendez isn't the only researcher who thinks that time is coming soon.

"The first planet with a measured size, orbit and incident stellar flux that is suitable for life is likely to be announced in 2013," said Geoff Marcy, a veteran planet hunter at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the Kepler team.

Mendez and Marcy both think this watershed find will be made by Kepler, which spots planets by flagging the telltale brightness dips caused when they pass in front of their parent stars from the instrument's perspective.

Kepler needs to witness three of these"transits" to detect a planet, so its early discoveries were tilted toward close-orbiting worlds (which transit more frequently). But over time, the telescope has been spotting more and more distantly orbiting planets — including some in the habitable zone.

An instrument called HARPS (short for High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) is also a top contender, having already spotted a number of potentially habitable worlds. HARPS, which sits on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope in Chile, allows researchers to detect the tiny gravitational wobbles that orbiting planets induce in their parent stars.

"HARPS should be able to find the most interesting and closer Earth twins," Mendez told SPACE.com via email, noting that many Kepler planets are too far away to characterize in detail. "A combination of its sensitivity and long-term observations is now paying off."

And there are probably many alien Earths out there to be found in our Milky Way galaxy, researchers say.

"Estimating carefully, there are 200 billion stars that host at least 50 billion planets, if not more," Mikko Tuomi, of the University of Hertfordshire in England, told SPACE.com via email.

"Assuming that 1:10,000 are similar to the Earth would give us 5,000,000 such planets," added Tuomi, who led teams reporting the discovery of several potentially habitable planet candidates this year, including an exoplanet orbiting the star Tau Ceti just 11.9 light-years from Earth. "So I would say we are talking about at least thousands of such planets."

What it would mean

Whenever the first Earth twin is confirmed, the discovery will likely have a profound effect on humanity.

"We humans will look up into the night sky, much as we gaze across a large ocean," Marcy told SPACE.com via email. "We will know that the cosmic ocean contains islands and continents by the billions, able to support both primitive life and entire civilizations."

Marcy hopes such a find will prod our species to take its first real steps beyond its native solar system.

"Humanity will close its collective eyes, and set sail for Alpha Centauri," Marcy said, referring to the closest star system to our own, where an Earth-size planet was discovered earlier this year.

"The small steps for humanity will be a giant leap for our species. Sending robotic probes to the nearest stars will constitute the greatest adventure we Homo sapiens have ever attempted," Marcy added. "This massive undertaking will require the cooperation and contribution from all major nations around world. In so doing, we will take our first tentative steps into the cosmic ocean and enhance our shared sense of purpose on this terrestrial shore." ( space.com )

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5 Mars Myths and Misconceptions

5 Mars Myths and Misconceptions - Earth's neighbor Mars is perhaps the most-studied planet beside our own in the solar system, with two robot rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, exploring the surface since 2004.

With Spirit no longer sending communications back to Earth but Opportunity still chugging along, NASA plans to land a third rover on the Martian surface; on Sunday, Aug. 5 at 10:30 p.m. PDT (1:30 a.m. EDT, 0530 GMT), Curiosity will carry 10 times the mass of scientific instruments as the earlier rovers to Mars, offering an opportunity to learn more than ever about the Red Planet.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this shot of Mars on Aug. 26, 2003, when the Red Planet was 34.7 million miles from Earth. The picture was taken just 11 hours before Mars made its closest approach to us in 60,000 years.

Before Mars exploration began, though, limited information led to major misconceptions about the planet. Here are some of the myths that have persisted, and in some cases still persist, about Mars.

Myth #1: There's a face on Mars

In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft snapped a photo of a Martian mesa that turned out rather eerie. Staring back from the surface of Mars was what appeared to be a human face.

Scientists shrugged the images of the "Face on Mars" off as a trick of light and shadow, but the public went mad. Conspiracy theorists figured the face was evidence of life on Mars. Supermarket tabloids loved it. It even showed up in a 1993 episode of television show "The X-Files" (episode: "Space").

In 1998, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor flew over the face and snapped the first sharp images of the landform since the Viking missions. This time, the mesa looked decidedly less human. The face got one more blow in 2001, when the same spacecraft snapped yet more photographs. In high resolution, the Face on Mars turns out to be an ordinary butte.

Myth #2: Martians built complex canals

Long before the Face on Mars mystified the public, planet-gazers were convinced that strange features dotted the surface of the Red Planet. In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed what he called "canali," or canals, on the Martian surface. Could these features be evidence of irrigation and civilized life?

American businessman Percival Lowell certainly thought so. His drawings of the canals and his three books on the planet published between 1895 and 1908 spread the idea that intelligent life had built the canals in a desperate attempt to draw water from Mars' polar ice caps.

The first close-up pictures of Mars in 1965, taken by the spacecraft Mariner 4, put the canal theories to bed. It turns out no such features exist, and the canals are now known to be nothing but an optical illusion.

Myth #3: Mars has oceans

Less fanciful than the idea of canals on Mars, but still ultimately proven untrue, was the idea that Mars boasts oceans. In 1784, astronomer Sir William Herschel published a paper on his telescope observations of Mars. He got some things right, or at least close, including an axial tilt of 30 degrees (the actual number is 25.19).

But Herschel did make the mistake of assuming that the dark areas he saw on Mars were oceans, broken up by lighter regions representing land. The idea of Martian oceans would persist throughout the 1800s. Close-up looks at the planet would prove it to be arid, though some scientists think liquid water once flowed on the planet billions of years ago. As of today, the water found on Mars has all been locked up as ice in the soil, with evidence of liquid water at the surface still uncertain.

Myth #4: Mars will appear as big as the moon

Since 2003, an email forward has circulated claiming that on a certain date Mars "will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye." For extra urgency, the writer warns readers, "NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again."

No one alive today will ever see it at all, as it turns out. In fact, Mars' orbit did bring it close to the Earth on Aug. 27, 2003, but the planet looked only six times larger and 85 times brighter than it does normally — certainly not anything close to our view of the moon.

This close approach in 2003 was the nearest Mars has been in 60,000 years at about 35 million miles (56 million kilometers). In comparison, the moon is, on average, 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) from Earth. Even given its larger size, Mars would have to get pretty close to match the moon in the night sky.

Myth #5: Mars supports intelligent life

The possibility of life on Mars isn't ruled out, but these days, scientists tend to look for tiny microbes, not super-smart tentacle-armed Martians.

The latter is the more common image when going back through the history of human imagination about Mars. Sir William Herschel, a great believer in extraterrestrial life, wrote in his 1784 paper that Martians "probably enjoy a situation similar to our own." The eventually overturned canal observations sparked widespread interest in the idea of an intelligent, perhaps ancient, civilization on the planet.

Perhaps the most famous Martian "encounter" was H.G. Wells' novel "The War of the Worlds," published in 1898. In 1938, a radio adaptation of the novel spawned panic when listeners assumed the invasion described was real. Who could blame them? Just 17 years before, the New York Times published an article declaring that the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., had received transmissions from Mars too regular to be natural occurrences.

"Now this much is known about Mars," the NY Times quotes Marconi wireless manager J.H.C. Macbeth as saying. "Astronomers assert their belief that life can be sustained on that planet. Whether human life and whether Martians, if they exist, have eyes in their foreheads or the backs of their heads, of course, is speculation." ( LiveScience.com )


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Parts of Mars Interior as Wet as Earth's

Parts of Mars Interior as Wet as Earth's - The interior of Mars holds vast reservoirs of water, with some spots apparently as wet as Earth's innards, scientists say.

The finding upends previous studies, which had estimated that the Red Planet's internal water stores were scanty at best — something of a surprise, given that liquid water apparently flowed on the Martian surface long ago.

"It’s been puzzling why previous estimates for the planet’s interior have been so dry," co-author Erik Hauri, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said in a statement. "This new research makes sense and suggests that volcanoes may have been the primary vehicle for getting water to the surface."

The scientists examined two Martian meteorites that formed in the planet's mantle, the layer under the crust. These rocks landed on Earth about 2.5 million years ago, after being blasted off the Red Planet by a violent impact.

Using a technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry, the team determined that the mantle from which the meteorites derived contained between 70 and 300 parts per million (ppm) of water. Earth's mantle, for comparison, holds roughly 50-300 ppm water, researchers said.

"The results suggest that water was incorporated during the formation of Mars and that the planet was able to store water in its interior during the planet’s differentiation," Hauri said.

Some of this water apparently made its made to the surface in the ancient past. NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on the Red Planet in 2004, have found plenty of evidence that Mars was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago than it is today.

The two golf-cart-size robots have even spotted signs of ancient hydrothermal systems, suggesting that some places on the Red Planet once had both water and an energy source — two key ingredients for the existence of life as we know it.

While the new results should help scientists better understand Mars and its history, they could also shed light on the evolution of large, rocky bodies in a more general sense, researchers said.

"Not only does this study explain how Mars got its water, it provides a mechanism for hydrogen storage in all the terrestrial planets at the time of their formation," lead author Francis McCubbin, of the University of New Mexico, said in a statement. ( SPACE.com )

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A 'super Earth' near a 'hot Neptune' in space

A 'super Earth' near a 'hot Neptune' in space - Not very long ago, space scientists expected that if other stars had solar systems, they'd be much like our own - small, rocky planets (like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) orbiting close to their host star, with gas giants (think of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) farther out. There were good reasons for this, not the least of which was that any self-respecting star would tear a Jupiter-sized planet apart if it were too close. Everything made sense.

So much for that.

Since the 1990s, astrophysicists report they have identified at least 600 stars with planets circling them and found that solar systems like ours are a rarity.

Take Kepler 36, reported Friday in the journal Science. It's a solar system about 1,200 light-years from our own, with two very different planets right on top of each other. One is a rocky "super Earth," about 1.5 times as large as our world. The other is a gaseous "hot Neptune," about 3.7 times as large.

"They are the closest to each other of any planetary system we've found," said Eric Agol of the University of Washington, one of the researchers. He and his colleagues spotted the planets using NASA's Kepler probe, which has been planet-hunting since 2009.

Both worlds are probably infernos, so close to their host star that they zip around it in 14 and 16 Earth-days, respectively. That means they pass very close to each other - less than five times as far apart as our moon is from us. If you've ever been struck by moonrise on a summer night, imagine a world about 12 times as large.

David Aguilar, a space artist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has done us the favor of imagining the scene himself. The result is the conception above.

Which is good, because the two planets are so close to their sun (11-12 million miles, compared to our 93 million) that you wouldn't want to go there yourself. ( ABCnews )

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Mysterious metal cylinder lands in Siberian town: Is it from space?

Mysterious metal cylinder lands in Siberian town: Is it from space? - The audio portion of this video may be difficult to hear, but the subject is compelling. A large, cylindrical object was caught on camera after it reportedly crashed into a tiny Siberian village. RT.com says Russian media outlets are calling the object a piece of "space debris" while other people think it might be the fuel tank of a ballistic missile.

The Russian Federal Space Agency says it's neither from space nor a rocket. At the same time, they admit they cannot verify exactly what the object is until they've had a chance to examine it more closely. If the video is authentic, is does appear to be a bit too large to be fuel tank of an Iskander or Tochka missile, two of the more common surface-to-surface missiles used by the Russian military.

Still, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility to think the mysterious object might be a piece of space debris that has fallen back to Earth. NASA estimates there are about 20,000 pieces of space debris currently in Earth's orbit, nearly all of which are capable of falling back to our planet's surface at some point. Rocket casings, broken satellites and debris jettisoned from spacecraft make up the bulk of this orbiting debris.

Even the smallest piece of fast-traveling space debris, as tiny as four inches wide, can be dangerous. Last year, Space.com reported that the astronauts aboard the International Space Station were prepared to evacuate when a piece of space debris nearly collided with the station. ( The Sideshow )

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Biggest solar storm in years races toward Earth

Biggest solar storm in years races toward Earth — The largest solar storm in five years was due to arrive on Earth early Thursday, promising to shake the globe's magnetic field while expanding the Northern Lights.

This handout image provided by NASA shows a solar flare heading toward Earth. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center said the sun erupted Tuesday evening and the effects should start smacking Earth late Wednesday night, close to midnight EST. They say it is the biggest in five years and growing. (AP Photo/NASA)

The storm started with a massive solar flare earlier in the week and grew as it raced outward from the sun, expanding like a giant soap bubble, scientists said. When it strikes, the particles will be moving at 4 million mph.

"It's hitting us right in the nose," said Joe Kunches, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo.

The massive cloud of charged particles could disrupt utility grids, airline flights, satellite networks and GPS services, especially in northern areas. But the same blast could also paint colorful auroras farther from the poles than normal.

Astronomers say the sun has been relatively quiet for some time. And this storm, while strong, may seem fiercer because Earth has been lulled by several years of weak solar activity.

The storm is part of the sun's normal 11-year cycle, which is supposed to reach peak storminess next year. Solar storms don't harm people, but they do disrupt technology. And during the last peak around 2002, experts learned that GPS was vulnerable to solar outbursts.

Because new technology has flourished since then, scientists could discover that some new systems are also at risk, said Jeffrey Hughes, director of the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling at Boston University.

A decade ago, this type of solar storm happened a couple of times a year, Hughes said.

"This is a good-size event, but not the extreme type," said Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the federal government's Space Weather Prediction Center.

The sun erupted Tuesday evening, and the most noticeable effects should arrive here between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. EST Thursday, according to forecasters at the space weather center. The effects could linger through Friday morning.

Center forecaster Rob Steenburgh said that as of 2:30 a.m. EST Thursday, there were no noticeable effects on Earth. But he said there were some indications from a satellite, which registered a slight rise in low energy particles.

The region of the sun that erupted can still send more blasts our way, Kunches said. He said another set of active sunspots is ready to aim at Earth right after this.

"This is a big sun spot group, particularly nasty," NASA solar physicist David Hathaway said. "Things are really twisted up and mixed up. It keeps flaring."

Storms like this start with sun spots, Hathaway said.

Then comes an initial solar flare of subatomic particles that resemble a filament coming out of the sun. That part already hit Earth only minutes after the initial burst, bringing radio and radiation disturbances.

After that comes the coronal mass ejection, which looks like a growing bubble and takes a couple days to reach Earth. It's that ejection that could cause magnetic disruptions Thursday.

"It could give us a bit of a jolt," NASA solar physicist Alex Young said.

The storm follows an earlier, weaker solar eruption that happened Sunday, Kunches said.

For North America, the good part of a solar storm — the one that creates more noticeable auroras or Northern Lights — will peak Thursday evening. Auroras could dip as far south as the Great Lakes states or lower, Kunches said, but a full moon will make them harder to see.

Auroras are "probably the treat we get when the sun erupts," Kunches said.

Still, the potential for problems is widespread. Solar storms have three ways they can disrupt technology on Earth: with magnetic, radio and radiation emissions. This is an unusual situation, when all three types of solar storm disruptions are likely to be strong, Kunches said. That makes it the strongest overall since December 2006.

That means "a whole host of things" could follow, he said.

North American utilities are monitoring for abnormalities on their grids and have contingency plans, said Kimberly Mielcarek, spokeswoman for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a consortium of electricity grid operators.

In 1989, a strong solar storm knocked out the power grid in Quebec, causing 6 million people to lose power.

Solar storms can also make global positioning systems less accurate and cause GPS outages.

The storm could trigger communication problems and additional radiation around the north and south poles — a risk that will probably force airlines to reroute flights. Some already have done so, Kunches said.

Satellites could be affected, too. NASA spokesman Rob Navias said the space agency isn't taking any extra precautions to protect astronauts on the International Space Station from added radiation. ( Associated Press )

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UFO 'Lands' Near Roswell Crash Site

UFO 'Lands' Near Roswell Crash Site - Gliding slowly against a backdrop of a rain-sodden sky, it looks completely at odds with its surroundings. Footage of a 'flying saucer' approaching and then landing at an industrial estate - supposedly near to the infamous Roswell alien landing site in New Mexico - has taken the Internet by storm.

The real deal The UFO hovers above an industrial estate - supposedly near to the infamous Roswell alien landing site in New Mexico - in amateur footage that has taken the Internet by storm

Final destination: The flying saucer, which looks to have a logo similar to the star that adorns U.S. military aircraft, slowly lands behind the estate

Heavens above: The footage was recorded by a passenger in a car driving along a motorway. The exact location and time of the sighting is unknown, but many claim the terrain is nothing like that found in New Mexico


Elaborate hoax: Some YouTube viewers spot what they claim are giveaway clues in the use of special effects to create the illusion of a UFO

It was recorded by a passenger in a car driving along a motorway. The exact location and time of the extra-terrestrial event is unknown. However, all may not be as it seems, with many online conspiracy theorists claiming the landing is nothing more than an elaborate hoax.

The video was uploaded to YouTube by Stephen Hannard of Alien Disclosure Group UK. He commented: 'Possible leaked footage of a UFO arriving then landing at an unknown location in New Mexico.

'Could be one of ours, CGI, or could be the real deal. As always you decide.'

The chief complaint from YouTube users unconvinced by the footage is that the terrain the UFO is hovering over looks distinctly like northern Europe, and nothing like the parched deserts of New Mexico.

The vehicles glimpsed in the footage also appear to be small European cars and lorries, as opposed to their larger American equivalents. One viewer, 3492crusherdestroyer, writes: 'Can tell this is in the UK, British road signs on the road, European models of cars and trucks in the car park.

'So it's fake but it's well done and still cool.'

However, some users dismiss the likelihood of the terrain being in Britain, citing the fact the car is driving along the right, and not left, side of the road.

Others spot what they claim are giveaway clues in the use of special effects to create the illusion of a UFO. Vented 10 writes: 'There are tracking issues. The car hits a bump and the UFO moves in time with this motion.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Extraordinary pictures of solar 'tornado' as large as the Earth moving at 300,000mph

Extraordinary pictures of solar 'tornado' as large as the Earth moving at 300,000mph - These amazing pictures, captured by a NASA satellite, show a gigantic tornado moving across the sun.

The tornado is larger than it might look - in fact, it is probably bigger than the Earth, and could extend hundreds of thousands of miles out into space.

And while its progress over the sun's surface seems almost stately, it is moving at 300,000 miles per hour.

Twister: This tornado, which is as large as the Earth, is moving at 300,000mph across the Sun

The extraordinary phenomenon - which cannot yet be fully explained by scientists - was filmed by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory over a 30-hour period earlier this month.

That satellite, known as the SDO, is in the middle of a five-year mission to monitor how solar activity affects the Earth, particularly changes in the sun's magnetic field.

While the tornado - called a 'solar prominence' by scientists - looks very similar to twisters here on Earth, its origins are completely different.

Rather than being the result of atmospheric pressure, the solar activity comes from fluctuations in the sun's magnetism.

Powerful: But scientists have not yet cracked all the mysteries of this unusual magnetic phenomenon

However, researchers cannot explain much more than that - Nasa's Terry Kucera told Fox News that she and her colleagues were 'still looking to understand what’s happening with these things'.

The tornado, at 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit (8,000C), is much cooler than its surroundings, which are around 2million degrees.

The phenomenon was not caught on camera until 1996. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Could the Milky Way's 'phantom black holes' pose a danger to our solar system?

Could the Milky Way's 'phantom black holes' pose a danger to our solar system? - If the latest simulation of what happens when black holes merge is correct, there could be hundreds of rogue black holes, each weighing several thousand times the mass of the sun, roaming around the Milky Way galaxy.

‘Rogue black holes like this would be very difficult to spot,’ said astronomer Kelly Holley-Bockelmann from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

‘Unless it's swallowing a lot of gas, about the only way to detect the approach of such a black hole would be to observe the way in which its super-strength gravitational field bends the light that passes nearby. This produces an effect called gravitational lensing that would make background stars appear to shift and brighten momentarily.’

Fast and dangerous: Scientists believe that hundreds of black holes could be zooming around the Milky Way at thousands of kilometres a second

The research focused on modelling ‘intermediate mass’ black holes, whose very existence was doubted by some until recently.

So far, only one medium-sized black hole has been confirmed. It was discovered three years ago by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope at the edge of the galaxy ESO 243-49, which is 290 million light-years from Earth.

The researchers looked at what happens when black holes of this size merge with other black holes, using Einstein’s theory of relativity.

One of the big surprises to come from this effort is the prediction that when two black holes that are rotating at different speeds or are different sizes combine, the newly merged black hole receives a big kick due to conservation of momentum, pushing it away in an arbitrary direction at velocities as high as 4,000 kilometres per second.

‘This is much higher than anyone predicted. Even the average kick velocity of 200 kilometres per second is extremely high when compared to the escape velocities of typical astronomical objects,’ said Holley-Bockelmann. ‘We realised that basically any black hole merger would kick the new remnant out of a globular cluster, because the escape velocity is less than 100 kilometres per second.’

Using the facilities of Vanderbilt’s Advanced Center for Computation, Research and Education, Holley-Bockelmann’s team ran a number of simulations of the growth of intermediate mass black holes as they combine with a number of stellar-sized black holes, which are plentiful in globular clusters, paying close attention to the kick they received after each merger.

She said: ‘We used different assumptions for the initial black hole mass, for the range of stellar black hole masses within a globular cluster, and assumed that the spins and spin orientations were distributed randomly.

This picture was the first evidence of a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The star closest to the galactic hub is orbiting a tiny central object containing 3.7 million times more mass than the Sun - a supermassive black hole

‘With our most conservative assumptions, we found that, even if every globular cluster started out with an intermediate-sized black hole, only about 30 per cent retain them through the merger epoch. With our least conservative assumptions, less than two per cent of the globular clusters should contain intermediate mass black holes today.’

If the roughly 200 globular clusters in the Milky Way have indeed spawned intermediate-sized black holes, this means that hundreds of them are probably wandering invisibly around the Milky Way, waiting to engulf the nebulae, stars and planets that are unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

Fortunately, the existence of a few rogue black holes in the neighbourhood does not present a major danger.

‘These rogue black holes are extremely unlikely to do any damage to us in the lifetime of the universe,’ Holley-Bockelmann stressed. ‘Their danger zone, the Schwarzschild radius, is really tiny, only a few hundred kilometres. There are far more dangerous things in our neighbourhood!’

The two biggest black holes ever discovered - are each about ten billion times bigger than the Sun.

They are so large they would dwarf our entire solar system and lie 270million light years from Earth in two elliptically shaped galaxies.

This new pair lie in galaxies known as NGC 3842 and NGC 4889 and are about one-and-a-half times bigger than the previous record holder which had a mass of 6.8 billion suns, a mere tiddler in comparison. ( dailymail.co.uk )

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Could a Super-Earth plus Triple Stars Equal Life?

New Planet Found: Could a Super-Earth plus Triple Stars Equal Life? - The search for exoplanets, or worlds orbiting other stars, is evolving so fast that discoveries that seemed exotic just a few months ago have become commonplace. Multiple-planet solar systems? Astronomers expected to find just a handful; now we know of more than 200. Planets orbiting double or even triple stars? It was big news when just one was announced back in September; we've already got several more examples in hand. In short, the unexpected is something planet hunters have learned to expect — and in most cases, these surprises have tended to expand the possibilities for finding worlds where life might thrive.

It's just happened again: astronomers from the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of California, Santa Cruz, writing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, have announced the discovery of yet another new world that defies everyone's expectations. Not only does the new planet orbit one of the suns in a triple-star system — rare enough in itself — but the stars in this system have surprisingly low levels of the heavy elements planets are made from. Theory suggests that such stars shouldn't form planets in the first place, so if this isn't a fluke, there may be many more planets in the Milky Way than anyone thought.

An artist depiction of the planet GJ667Cc and the three stars it orbits

That's not all: the new planet, called GJ667Cc, is just 4.5 times Earth's mass. That's big enough to qualify it for the astronomical label "super-Earth" but still quite small by exoplanet standards. Indeed, it's so small that GJ667Cc is thought to be made of earthlike rock rather than gas — even if those rocks had to coalesce from a smaller supply of raw material circling the parent sun. Beyond that, it orbits in its star's habitable zone: if there's water there, that water could be in life-friendly liquid form. GJ667Cc whips around its star once every 28 days or so; in our solar system, that would put it so scorchingly close to the sun that water would boil off. But the star in this case is an M-dwarf, much dimmer and redder than our own. Given its mass and its temperature, says co-discoverer Steve Vogt, of UC Santa Cruz, "I think it's going to be pretty historic. We've been gnawing at the bone of an earthlike planet in the habitable zone for years now, and I think we're just about there."

Actually, this isn't the first time he's said something like that. A bit over a year ago, Vogt and Paul Butler, of Carnegie, announced a similarly earthlike planet they called Gliese 581g, but other astronomers were (and remain) dubious about the legitimacy of the find. "We haven't backed off," says Vogt, "but that one will always be controversial, because it's a difficult measurement."

This one, he says, is a much more clear-cut case. Along with Butler, lead author Guillem Anglada-Escudé (now at the University of Göttingen, in Germany) and several others, Vogt combined data from three different ground-based telescopes, dating back 10 years, to come up with the solid signal of a planet. "We were basically able to say, stick a fork in this one and put it in a referred journal — it's done."

What's most exciting of all about GJ667Cc, though, is not just that it's a super-Earth in its star's habitable zone, nor that it was found in a solar system where planets have no right to be. It's that this new world is impressively close to our own Earth. The great majority of exoplanets known to date have been found by the Kepler space probe, but most of these are hundreds of light-years away. That's much too far away to search for even indirect signs of alien life — and that will continue to be true after the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble's successor, launches in 2018.

But GJ667Cc is a mere 22 light-years away — practically next door — and while the planet can't be seen directly yet, it's not impossible that the next generation of ground or space telescopes could take readings of its atmosphere to look for telltale signs of life. And we have the technology today, says Vogt, "to send a Droid cell phone out there to take closeup images. It would take about 200 years, plus another 20 to send the pictures back."

Nobody's actually planning to do that, but the fact that it's even possible speaks volumes about how close astronomers are to finding and studying places in the universe where life might be thriving at this very moment. In the world of exoplanet science, the improbable things don't seem to stay improbable for very long. ( time.com )

READ MORE - Could a Super-Earth plus Triple Stars Equal Life?

Russian scientist claims signs of life spotted on Venus

Russian scientist claims signs of life spotted on Venus - The Indo-Asian News Service reported Saturday that a Russian scientist has published what he claims is evidence of life on Venus, Earth’s nearest neighbor in the direction of the sun.

Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia’s Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during a 1982 during a mission to explore the heavily acid-clouded planet.

Venus is roughly the same size as Earth, but it has a thick atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide. With an atmospheric pressure 92 times Earth’s, a waterless and volcano-riddled surface and a surface temperature of 894 degrees, the planet has never been considered a serious target of research into the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

This photo of Venus was taken by the Galileo spacecraft's Solid State Imaging System on February 14, 1990, at a range of almost 1.7 million miles from the planet. (AP PHOTO/NASA)

But in his article, published in the magazine Solar System Research, Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a “disk,” a “black flap” and a “scorpion.”

“What if we forget about the current theories about the non-existence of life on Venus?” he wrote. “Let’s boldly suggest that the objects’ morphological features would allow us to say that they are living.”

Other research has suggested that liquid water may have once covered Venus, but the scientific consensus suggests that there have been no oceans there for at least 2 billion years.

The Venus Express spacecraft, built by European engineers, has been observing the planet since its 2005 launch. Scientists working on that project have not reported similar findings, but they also have not ruled out the possibility that life — albeit microscopic — could still lurk there beneath the clouds.

The project is largely dedicated to analyzing what its leaders describe as a “greenhouse effect”-related eco-catastrophe that once converted Venus into an uninhabitable wasteland.

Ksanfomaliti cautioned that the objects he wrote about seem to “emerge, fluctuate and disappear” in different photographs taken from a variety of vantage points. ( The Daily Caller )

READ MORE - Russian scientist claims signs of life spotted on Venus

Satellite duo picture entire far side of our sun for the FIRST TIME

Satellite duo picture entire far side of our sun for the FIRST TIME - Back in 1959 the Soviet Luna probe was the first to snap images of the far side of the Moon.

Now more than 50 years later scientists have finally captured the entire far side of our Sun.

The composite image was captured by Nasa's two Stereo spacecraft on June 1, 2011.

Far side: This image taken on June 1 was the first to show the side of the Sun facing away from Earth. Nasa Stereo scientists can now see most of the surface of our star at any one time

The space observatories are circling the Sun with one travelling ahead of Earth in its orbit and the other trailing behind.

The STEREO spacecraft reached their respective positions 180 degrees apart on February 6 but part of the star was inaccessible to their combined view until June 1.

This image represents the first day when the entire far side could be seen between the two. The picture is aligned so that solar north is directly up.

The seam between the two images is inclined because the plane of Earth’s orbit, known as the 'ecliptic', is inclined with respect to the Sun's axis of rotation.

The data was collected using extreme ultraviolet imagers on board the spacecraft, which were launched in October 2006.

Dr Robert Massey from the Royal Astronomical Society said that unlike the moon, which rotates with its near side always facing Earth, we do get to see the entire surface of the Sun over the course of a month.

However, the new STEREO pictures give us 'complete coverage all at once.'

The Nasa satellite-duo 'Stereo', pictured in 2006, orbit ahead and behind on Earth's orbit. They created the first three-dimensional photos of the Sun

'With data like these, we can fly around the sun to see what's happening over the horizon - without ever leaving our desks, added STEREO scientist Lika Guhathakurta at NASA headquarters.

'I expect great advances in theoretical solar physics and space weather forecasting.'

In the past, an active sunspot could emerge on the far side of the sun completely hidden from Earth. Then, the Sun's rotation could turn that region toward our planet, spitting flares and clouds of plasma, with little warning.

'Farside active regions can no longer take us by surprise,' said Bill Murtagh, a forecaster at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

'Thanks to STEREO, we know they're coming.'

Although Dr Massey cautioned: 'This situation isn't stable though as the two satellites will continue to change their positions so there may only be a brief period when the whole Sun can be seen at once.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Satellite duo picture entire far side of our sun for the FIRST TIME

Earth facing a mini-Ice Age 'within ten years' due to rare drop in sunspot activity

Earth facing a mini-Ice Age 'within ten years' due to rare drop in sunspot activity - The sun is heading into an unusual and extended period of hibernation that could trigger a mini-Ice Age on Earth, scientists claim.

A decrease in global warming might result in the years after 2020, the approximate time when sunspots are expected to disappear for years, maybe even decades.

While the effects of a calmer sun are mostly good - there'd be fewer disruptions of satellites and power systems - it could see a sharp turnaround in global warming.

A giant magnetic loop (right) filled with glowing-hot gas blasts away from the sun in 2003, while two Jupiter-sized sunspots also erupt. Within ten years the sun will be in an unusual and extended period of hibernation that could trigger a mini-Ice Age on Earth, scientists claim

An absence of sunspots is not an unprecedented situation. It has happened before, but not since the early 18th century.

Lead researcher Frank Hill, of the National Solar Observatory, said: 'The solar cycle is maybe going into hiatus, sort of like a summertime TV show.'

While scientists don't know why the sun is going quiet, all the signs are that it will.

Dr Hill and his team have based their prediction on three changes in the sun spotted by scientific teams - weakening sunspots; fewer streams spewing from the poles of the sun's corona; and a disappearing solar jet stream.

Dr Richard Altrock, the study's co-author and an astrophysicist at the Air Force Research Laboratory, said these three cues show that 'there's a good possibility that the sun could be going into some sort of state from which it takes a long time to recover'.

Their prediction is specifically aimed at the solar cycle starting in 2020.

Experts say the sun has already been unusually quiet for about four years with few sunspots - higher magnetic areas that appear as dark spots.

The enormous magnetic field of the sun dictates the solar cycle, which includes sunspots, solar wind and ejection of fast-moving particles that sometimes hit Earth.

Every 22 years, the sun's magnetic field switches north and south, creating an 11-year sunspot cycle.

The sun has already been unusually quiet for about four years with few sunspots - higher magnetic areas that appear as dark spots. Scientists predict the solar cycle starting in 2020 will see sunspots disappear altogether for a period of decades

At peak times, like 2001, there are sunspots every day and more frequent solar flares and storms that could disrupt satellites.

Earlier this month, David Hathaway, Nasa's top solar storm scientist, predicted that the current cycle, which started around 2009, will be the weakest in a century.

Mr Altrock also thinks the current cycle won't have much solar activity, after tracking streamers from the solar corona, the sun's outer atmosphere seen during eclipses.

The streamers normally become busy around the sun's poles a few years before peak solar storm activity.

That 'rush to the poles' would have happened by now, but it hasn't and there's no sign of it yet. That also means the cycle after that is uncertain, he said.

Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory, another study co-author, said sunspot magnetic fields have been steadily decreasing in strength since 1998.

If they continue on the current pace, their magnetic fields will be too weak to become spots as of 2022 or so, he said.

Jet streams on the sun's surface and below are also early indicators of solar storm activity, and they have not formed yet for the 2020 cycle. That indicates that there will be little or delayed activity in that cycle, said Hill, who tracks jet streams.

There are questions about what this means for Earth's climate. Three times in the past the regular 11-year solar cycle has gone on an extended vacation - at the same time as cool periods on Earth.

Sceptics of man-made global warming from the burning of fossil fuels have often pointed to solar radiation as a possible cause of a warming Earth, but they are in the minority among scientists.

Earth has warmed as solar activity has decreased.

Mr Hill and his colleagues wouldn't discuss the effects of a quiet sun on temperature or global warming.

'If our predictions are true, we'll have a wonderful experiment that will determine whether the sun has any effect on global warming,' he said. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Earth facing a mini-Ice Age 'within ten years' due to rare drop in sunspot activity

Research finds young stars blast water into space at 120,000mph

Research finds young stars blast water into space at 120,000mph - Research has uncovered that young stars blast huge jets of water into space at a speed 80 times faster than a bullet.

The discovery was uncovered by scientists at the Leiden University in The Netherlands who focused on a protostar located in the constellation Perseus, which is around 750 light years from earth.

The star is aged at no more than 100,000 years and still remains surrounded by a large gas-cloud and dust from which the star was born.

Research has uncovered that young stars blast huge jets of water from their north and south poles (pictured in blue) into space at a speed 80 times faster than a bullet

During the research the scientists used an infrared instrument at the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory to look through the cloud.

In doing so they detected both hydrogen and oxygen atoms moving on and around the star.

They then traced the path of these atoms and concluded that water forms on the star at a few thousand degrees Celsius.

As they are blasted out of the star’s north and south poles they face temperatures of 100,000 degrees Celsius which turned the water back into gaseous form.

Once these gases hit the surrounding material they cool quickly and condense, reforming as liquid water.

Lars Kristensen, who led the study told National Geographic: 'If we picture these jets as giant hoses and the water droplets as bullets, the amount shooting out equals a hundred million times the water flowing through the Amazon River every second.

'We are talking about velocities reaching 200,000 kilometers (124,000 miles) per hour, which is about 80 times faster than bullets flying out of a machine gun.'

Kristensen and his team are particularly excited by the discovery as it could shed new light on the early stages of the sun's life.

'We are only now beginning to understand that sunlike stars probably all undergo a very energetic phase when they are young,' Kristensen said.

'It's at this point in their lives when they spew out a lot of high-velocity material—part of which we now know is water.'

The phenomenon seen in Perseus is 'probably a short-lived phase all protostars go through,' Kristensen said.

'But if we have enough of these sprinklers going off throughout the galaxy—this starts to become interesting on many levels.' ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Research finds young stars blast water into space at 120,000mph

How a lunar eclipse and volcanic ash create colourful phenomenon for moon-gazers

How a lunar eclipse and volcanic ash create colourful phenomenon for moon-gazers - Sky watchers were treated to a stunning lunar eclipse last night as ash in the atmosphere from a Chilean volcano turned it blood red.

Scientists said the specific phenomenon - known as a 'deep lunar eclipse' - often exudes a coppery colour. But the intensity of the colour depends on the amount of ash and dust in the atmosphere.

Luckily for moon-gazers, there was plenty of ash in the air so the moon appeared orange or red, especially in Asia.

Scroll down for video

The moon, photographed by an observer in Tel Aviv, exudes a reddish colour during a deep lunar eclipse last night

A composite picture showing the total lunar eclipse in the east of Beirut, Lebanon yesterday. People in the eastern half of Africa, the Middle East, central Asia and western Australia were able to enjoy the entire event

The lunar eclipse is seen over the Atomium in Brussels, in the early hours of the morning, local time

Air travellers haven't been so lucky: The ash has grounded hundreds of flights around the region.

The dramatic event, the longest total lunar eclipse since 2000, turned the moon blood red for 100 minutes during the period of totality.

But Europeans missed the early stages of the eclipse because they occurred before moonrise.

The eclipse began at 6.24pm and ended at midnight but sunset didn't occur in the UK until 9.19pm.

The Staten Island Ferry cruises along the water as the moon rises over Brooklyn as seen from Liberty State Park

The total lunar eclipse is seen above the old city walls during the Jerusalem Festival of Lights

The moon is seen during different stages of the total lunar eclipse in Gaza town in the Gaza Strip, which borders Egypt and Israel

A boat sails by Manila Bay, Philippines, at dawn this morning under a red moon, while an airplane lands at Fiumicino International airport in Rome, Italy, during the lunar eclipse

Scientists had reassured sky watchers that the eclipse could be safely observed with the naked eye.

People in the eastern half of Africa, the Middle East, central Asia and western Australia were able to enjoy the entire event.

However, those in the U.S. missed out as the eclipse occurred during daylight hours.

Moon caught in a crescent shape above Skopje, Macedonia

A partially eclipsed moon rises in the sky over Moscow, Russia, last night

This graph shows when the total lunar eclipse was visible on Earth

Today's Google Doodle paid tribute to the lunar eclipse with a video graphic

The moon is normally illuminated by the sun. During a lunar eclipse the Earth, sun and moon are in line and the Earth’s shadow moves across the surface of the full moon.

Sunlight that has passed through the Earth’s atmosphere makes the moon appear red, brown or black.

The moon travels to a similar position every month, but the tilt of the lunar orbit means that it normally passes above or below the terrestrial shadow. This means a full moon is seen but no eclipse takes place. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - How a lunar eclipse and volcanic ash create colourful phenomenon for moon-gazers