SuperWinds of the Cosmos

 

A superwind, such as the one in stunning spiral galaxy NGC 3079 originates in the center of the galaxy, either from activity generated by a central supermassive black hole, or by a burst of supernova activity. Superwinds are thought to play a key role in the evolution of galaxies by regulating the formation of new stars, and by dispersing heavy elements to the outer parts of the galaxy and beyond. These latest Chandra data indicate that astronomers may be seriously underestimating the mass lost in superwinds and therefore their influence within and around the host galaxy.

Chandra's X-ray image (blue) has been combined with Hubble's optical image (red and green) to compose this stunning and revealing picture of NGC 3079. Towering filaments consisting of warm (about ten thousand degrees Celsius) and hot (about ten million degrees Celsius) gas blend to create the bright horseshoe-shaped feature near the center.

 

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A Spectacular Ring of Black Holes Revealed

 

 

A pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147 contain the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical galaxy on the left,  producing an expanding wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars. These stars race through their evolution in a few million years or less and explode as supernovas, leaving behind neutron stars and black holes.

A fraction of the neutron stars and black holes will have companion stars, and become bright X-ray sources as they pull in matter from their companions. The nine brilliant X-ray sources scattered around the ring in Arp 147 are black holes, with masses that are likely ten to twenty times that of the Sun.

An X-ray source is also detected in the nucleus of the red galaxy on the left and may be powered by a poorly-fed supermassive black hole. This source is not obvious in the composite image but can easily be seen in the X-ray image. Other objects unrelated to Arp 147 are also visible: a foreground star in the lower left of the image and a background quasar as the pink source above and to the left of the red galaxy.

Infrared observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) have allowed estimates of the rate of star formation in the ring. These estimates, combined with the use of models for the evolution of binary stars have allowed the authors to conclude that the most intense star formation may have ended some 15 million years ago, in Earth's time frame..

Image at top of page: This composite image of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute.

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NASA Finds "The Hidden Galaxy"

 

Maffei 2 is the poster child for an infrared galaxy that is almost invisible to optical telescopes. Foreground dust clouds in our Milky Way galaxy block about 99.5 percent of its visible light. But this infrared image from NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope penetrates the dust to reveal the galaxy in all its beauty.

The astronomer Paolo Maffei first noted the galaxy as a mysterious smudge on an infrared photographic plate in 1968. Four years later, he identified the strange object to be a galaxy, now named after him. This discovery was made in the infancy of infrared astronomy, and it would take many technological innovations in the following decades to allow astronomers to study obscured objects like this one in detail.

Most other galaxies the size of Maffei 2 had been cataloged for over a century. Because this galaxy was hidden behind dust lanes in our own galaxy, it did not become one of the entries in the famous 18th century catalog of bright deep-sky objects compiled by Charles Messier.

This Spitzer image clearly shows the unusual structure of Maffei 2. The strong central bar and asymmetric spiral arms help identify why the galaxy also harbors a "starburst" in its very core. Such dramatic bursts of star formation occur when massive amounts of dust and gas are driven into the center of a galaxy, often by gravitational interactions that create the barred spiral structures.

 

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A Galaxy Cluster 1000 Times Size of Milky Way Confirms Dark Energy

 

 

European Space Agency's orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton provided astronomers a glimpse of the largest cluster of galaxies ever seen in the distant, early universe. The discovery of this far-off group, estimated to contain a thousand times the mass of our own galaxy, the Milky Way,offers further proof of the existence of enigmatic dark energy.

"This is the most luminous, and therefore probably the most massive, cluster of galaxies discovered at this epoch," said Georg Lamer of the Astrophysikalisches Institute Potsdam in Germany, who led the team. "The light we observe started about 7.7 billion years ago. This is about half of the age of the universe, so it is from quite long ago, and quite far away."

"The very presence of this cluster confirms the existence of a mysterious component of the Universe called dark energy." J083026+524133, as it's known, stood out because it was so bright. While checking visual images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the team could not find any obvious nearby galaxy in that location. So they turned to the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona and took a deep exposure, finding cluster of galaxies. So the team calculated a distance of 7.7 thousand million light-years and the cluster's mass using the XMM-Newton data. This was not a surprise because XMM-Newton is sensitive enough to routinely find galaxy clusters at this distance.

"Such massive galaxy clusters are thought to be rare objects in the distant Universe. They can be used to test cosmological theories," says Lamer. Indeed, the very presence of this cluster confirms the existence of a mysterious component of the Universe called dark energy.
No one knows what dark energy is, but it is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. This hampers the growth of massive galaxy clusters in more recent times, indicating that they must have formed earlier in the Universe. "The existence of the cluster can only be explained with dark energy," says Lamer.

Yet he does not expect to find more of them in the XMM-Newton catalog. "According to the current cosmological theories, we should only expect to find this one cluster in the 1% of sky that we have searched," says Lamer.

European Space Agency's orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton provided astronomers a glimpse of the largest cluster of galaxies ever seen in the distant, early universe. The discovery of this far-off group, estimated to contain a thousand times the mass of our own galaxy, the Milky Way,offers further proof of the existence of enigmatic dark energy.

 

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Merging Galaxies Trigger a Raging Starburst

 

 

This image from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, features two stunning galaxies engaged in an intergalactic dance. The galaxies, Messier 81 and Messier 82, swept by each other a few hundred million years ago, and will likely continue to twirl around each other multiple times before eventually merging into a single galaxy.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer has captured a new view of two companion galaxies -- a somewhat tranquil spiral beauty and its rambunctious partner blazing with smoky star formation.

The unlikely pair, named Messier 81 and Messier 82, got to know each other a lot better during an encounter that occurred a few hundred million years ago. As they swept by each other, gravitational interactions triggered new bursts of star formation. In the case of Messier 82, also known as the Cigar galaxy, the encounter has likely triggered a tremendous wave of new star birth at its core. Intense radiation from newborn massive stars is blowing copious amounts of gas and smoky dust out of the galaxy, as seen in the WISE image in yellow hues.

The new image is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/pia13454.html . The Cigar galaxy is pictured above Messier 81.

"What's unique about the WISE view of this duo is that we can see both galaxies in one shot, and we can really see their differences," said Ned Wright of UCLA, the principal investigator of WISE. "Because the Cigar galaxy is bursting with star formation, it's really bright in the infrared, and looks dramatically different from its less active companion."

The WISE mission completed its main goal of mapping the sky in infrared light in October 2010, covering it one-and-one-half times before its frozen coolant ran out, as planned. During that time, it snapped pictures of hundreds of millions of objects, the first batch of which will be released to the astronomy community in April 2011. WISE is continuing its scan of the skies without coolant using two of its four infrared channels -- the two shorter-wavelength channels not affected by the warmer temperatures. The mission's ongoing survey is now focused primarily on asteroids and comets.

Because WISE has imaged the entire sky, it excels at producing large mosaics like this new picture of Messier 81 and Messier 82, which covers a patch of sky equivalent to three-by-three full moons, or 1.5 by 1.5 degrees.

It is likely these partner galaxies will continue to dance around each other, and eventually merge into a single entity. They are both spiral galaxies, but Messier 82 is seen from an edge-on perspective, and thus appears in visible light as a thin, cigar-like bar. When viewed in infrared light, Messier 82 is the brightest galaxy in the sky. It is what scientists refer to as a starburst galaxy because it is churning out large amounts of new stars.

"The WISE picture really shows how spectacular Messier 82 shines in the infrared even though it is relatively puny in both size and mass compared to its big brother, Messier 81," said Tom Jarrett, a member of the WISE team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

In this WISE view, infrared light has been color coded so that we can see it with our eyes. The shortest wavelengths (3.4 and 3.6 microns) are shown in blue and blue-green, or cyan, and the longer wavelengths (12 and 22 microns) are green and red. Messier 82 appears in yellow hues because its cocoon of dust gives off longer wavelengths of light (the yellow is a result of combining green and red). This dust is made primarily of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are found on Earth as soot.

Messier 81, also known as Bode's galaxy, appears blue in the infrared image because it is not as dusty. The blue light is from stars in the galaxy. Knots of yellow seen dotting the spiral arms are dusty areas of recent star formation, most likely triggered by the galaxy's encounter with its rowdy partner.
"It's striking how the same event stimulated a classic spiral galaxy in Messier 81, and a raging starburst in Messier 82," said WISE Project Scientist Peter Eisenhardt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "WISE is finding the most extreme starbursts across the whole sky, out to distances over a thousand times greater than Messier 82."

 

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Hubble Snaps Two Views of a Cosmic "Whirlpool"

 

These images by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show off two dramatically different views of the spiral galaxy M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. The image at left, taken in visible light, highlights the attributes of a typical spiral galaxy, including graceful, curving arms, pink star-forming regions, and brilliant blue strands of star clusters. In the image at right, most of the starlight has been removed, revealing the Whirlpool's skeletal dust structure, as seen in near-infrared light. This new image is the sharpest view of the dense dust in M51.The narrow lanes of dust revealed by Hubble reflect the galaxy's moniker, the Whirlpool Galaxy, as if they were swirling toward the galaxy's core.

To map the galaxy's dust structure, researchers collected the galaxy's starlight by combining images taken in visible and near-infrared light. The visible-light image captured only some of the light; the rest was obscured by dust. The near-infrared view, however, revealed more starlight because near-infrared light penetrates dust. The researchers then subtracted the total amount of starlight from both images to see the galaxy's dust structure.

The red color in the near-infrared image traces the dust, which is punctuated by hundreds of tiny clumps of stars, each about 65 light-years wide. These stars have never been seen before. The star clusters cannot be seen in visible light because dense dust enshrouds them. The image reveals details as small as 35 light-years across.

Astronomers expected to see large dust clouds, ranging from about 100 light-years to more than 300 light-years wide. Instead, most of the dust is tied up in smooth and diffuse dust lanes. An encounter with another galaxy may have prevented giant clouds from forming.

Probing a galaxy's dust structure serves as an important diagnostic tool for astronomers, providing invaluable information on how the gas and dust collapse to form stars. Although Hubble is providing incisive views of the internal structure of galaxies such as M51, Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to produce even crisper images.

Researchers constructed the image by combining visible-light exposures from Jan. 18 to 22, 2005, with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and near-infrared–light pictures taken in December 2005 with the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS).

 

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Beyond Human Comprehension: The Most Massive Black Hole in the Observable Universe -An Event Horizon 20 Billion Kilometers Across

 

The black hole at the center of galaxy M87 fifty million light-years away is the most massive black hole for which a precise mass has been measured -6.6 billion solar masses. Using the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a team of astronomers calculated the black hole’s mass, which is vastly larger than the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, which is about 4 million solar masses. Astronomer Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas, Austin, said that the black hole’s event horizon,  20 billion km across “could swallow our solar system whole.”

In order to calculate the black hole’s mass, the astronomers measured how fast surrounding stars orbit the black hole. They found that, on average, the stars orbit at speeds of nearly 500 km/Sec (for comparison, the sun orbits the black hole at the center of the Milky Way at about 220 km/Sec). From these observations, the astronomers could come up with what they say is the most accurate estimate for the mass of a supermassive black hole.

The team theorizes that the M87 black hole grew to its massive size by merging with several other black holes. M87 is the largest, most massive galaxy in the nearby universe, and is thought to have been formed by the merging of 100 or so smaller galaxies.

The M87 black hole’s large size and relative proximity, the astronomers think that it could be the first black hole that they could actually "see."

Future calculations may attempt to calculate the size of another black hole with a roughly estimated mass of 18 billion solar masses, which is located in a galaxy about 3.5 billion light-years away.

 

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Supermassive Black Holes Observed Devouring Entire Galaxies (Weekend Most Popular)

 

Black holes -Stephen Hawking's enigmatic "bad boys of the Universe"- have been discovered to have the ability to strip massive galaxies of the cool gases required to form new stars, leaving ageing red giants to fade out of existence with no stars to replace them.

The study, led by Asa Bluck of the University of Nottingham's School of Physics and Astronomy and a Fellow of the Royal Society, used images of unprecedented depth and resolution from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to detect black holes in distant galaxies. Researchers looked for galaxies emitting high levels of radiation and x-rays — a classic signature of black holes devouring gas and dust through accretion, or attracting matter gravitationally., used images of unprecedented depth and resolution from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory to detect black holes in distant galaxies. Researchers looked for galaxies emitting high levels of radiation and x-rays — a classic signature of black holes devouring gas and dust through accretion, or attracting matter gravitationally.

Funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council and NASA, the research led to some startling results: in supermassive black holes this radiation can reach huge proportions, emitting X-ray radiation in far greater quantities then is emitted by the rest of the objects in the galaxy combined — meaning that the black hole ‘shines’ far brighter than the entire galaxy it lies at the heart of. In fact, the amount of energy released is sufficient to strip the galaxy of gas at least 25 times over.

Results have also shown that the vast majority of the X-ray radiation present in the universe is produced in these accretion discs surrounding supermassive black holes, with a small proportion produced by all other objects, including galaxies and neutron stars.

The accretions discs surrounding supermassive black holes produce so much energy that they heat up the cold gases lying at the heart of massive galaxies. The accretion disc shines across all wavelengths — from radio waves to gamma waves. This speeds up the random motions of the gas, making it rise in temperature and pushing it away from the galactic center, where it becomes less dense. Gas needs to be cold and dense to collapse under gravity to form new stars, this resulting hot, low-density material must cool down before gravity will take effect — a process which would take longer than the age of the universe to achieve.

Old stars are therefore left to die out with no new stars replacing them, leaving the galaxy to grow dark and die. And by pushing gas away from the galactic centre, the accretion disc starves the supermassive black hole of new material to devour, leading to its eventual demise.

“It’s thought that black holes form inside their host galaxies and grow in proportion to them, forming an accretion disc which will eventually destroy the host. In this sense they can be described as viral in nature,” said Asa Bluck. “Massive galaxies are in the minority in our visible universe — about one in a thousand galaxies is thought to be massive, but it may be much less. And at least a third of these have supermassive black holes at their centre. That’s why it’s so interesting that this type of black hole produces most of the X-ray light in the universe. They are the minority but they dominate energy output.”

 

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Massive New Supernova Shrouded in Shell of Gas & Dust

 

 

While searching for black holes using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers discovered a giant supernova that was smothered in its own dust. In this artist's rendering, an outer shell of gas and dust -- which erupted from the star hundreds of years ago -- obscures the supernova within. This event in a distant galaxy hints at one possible future for the brightest star system in our own Milky Way.

Most astronomers today believe that one of the most plausible reasons we have yet to detect intelligent life in the universe is due to the deadly effects of local supernova explosions that wipe out all life in a given region of a galaxy.

While there is, on average, only one supernova per galaxy per century, there is something on the order of 100 billion galaxies in the observable Universe. Taking 10 billion years for the age of the Universe (it's actually 13.7 billion, but stars didn't form for the first few hundred million), Dr. Richard Mushotzky of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, derived a figure of 1 billion supernovae per year, or 30 supernovae per second in the observable Universe!

Certain rare stars -real killers -type 11 stars, are core-collapse hypernova that generate deadly gamma ray bursts (GRBs). These long burst objects release 1000 times the non-neutrino energy release of an ordinary "core-collapse" supernova. Concrete proof of the core-collapse GRB model came in 2003. It was made possible in part to a fortuitously "nearby" burst whose location was distributed to astronomers by the Gamma-ray Burst Coordinates Network (GCN).

On March 29, 2003, a burst went off close enough that the follow-up observations were decisive in solving the gamma-ray burst mystery. The optical spectrum of the afterglow was nearly identical to that of supernova SN1998bw. In addition, observations from x-ray satellites showed the same characteristic signature of "shocked" and "heated" oxygen that's also present in supernovae. Thus, astronomers were able to determine the "afterglow" light of a relatively close gamma-ray burst (located "just" 2 billion light years away) resembled a supernova.

It isn't known if every hypernova is associated with a GRB. However, astronomers estimate only about one out of 100,000 supernovae produce a hypernova. This works out to about one gamma-ray burst per day, which is in fact what is observed.

What is almost certain is that the core of the star involved in a given hypernova is massive enough to collapse into a black hole (rather than a neutron star). So every GRB detected is also the "birth cry" of a new black hole.

 

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A 'Galaxy X' Found Orbiting the Milky Way

 

 

The search for a mystery Galaxy X orbiting the Milky Way may have been solved. Many large galaxies are thought to have dark matter satellite galaxies too dim to be detected. Theoretical astronomer Sukanya Chakrabarti explains how she has found a way to locate "dark" satellite galaxies by analyzing the ripples in the hydrogen gas distributed in spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way. Chakrabarti predicted the mass of Galaxy X to be one-hundredth that of the Milky Way, in a parabolic orbit around our galaxy, at a distance of about 300,000 light years from the galactic center.

The Milky Way is surrounded by some 80 known or suspected dwarf galaxies that are called satellite galaxies, even though some of them may just be passing through, not captured into orbits around the galaxy. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are two such satellites, both of them irregular dwarf galaxies.

Theoretical models of rotating spiral galaxies, however, predict that there should be many more satellite galaxies, perhaps thousands, with small ones even more prevalent than large ones. Dwarf galaxies, however, are faint, and some of the galaxies may be primarily invisible dark matter.
"The method is like inferring the size and speed of a ship by looking at its wake," said Chakrabarti's colleague Leo Blitz, a UC Berkeley professor of astronomy . "You see the waves from a lot of boats, but you have to be able to separate out the wake of a medium or small ship from that of an ocean liner."

Earlier this year, Chakrabarti used her mathematical method to predict that a dwarf galaxy sits on the opposite side of the Milky Way, but is not able to be seen due to gas and dust in the galaxy's disk.

Chakrabarti and Blitz also calculated that the predicted galaxy is in a parabolic orbit around the Milky Way, now at a distance of about 300,000 light years from the galactic center. The galactic radius is about 50,000 light years.

"Our paper is a proof of principle, but we need to look at a much larger sample of spiral galaxies with optically visible galactic companions to determine the incidence of false positives," and thus the method's reliability, Chakrabarti said.

Earlier this year, Chakrabarti used her mathematical method to predict that a dwarf galaxy sits on the opposite side of the Milky Way from Earth, and that it has been unseen to date because it is obscured by the intervening gas and dust in the galaxy's disk. One astronomer has already applied for time on the Spitzer Space Telescope to look in infrared wavelengths for this hypothetical Galaxy X.

"My hope is that this method can serve as a probe of mass distribution and of dark matter in galaxies, in the way that gravitational lensing today has become a probe for distant galaxies," Chakrabarti said.

Since her prediction for the Milky Way, Chakrabarti has gained confidence in her method after successfully testing it on two galaxies with known, faint satellites," a method that has broad implications for many fields of physics and astronomy – for the indirect detection of dark matter as well as dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxies, planetary dynamics, and for galaxy evolution driven by satellite impacts," she said.

Chakrabarti's colleague Leo Blitz, a UC Berkeley professor of astronomy, said that the method could also help test an alternative to dark matter theory, which proposes a modification to the law of gravity to explain the missing mass in galaxies."The matter density in the outer reaches of spiral galaxies is hard to explain in the context of modified gravity, so if this tidal analysis continues to work, and we can find other dark galaxies in distant halos, it may allow us to rule out modified gravity."

Chakrabarti and Blitz realized that dwarf galaxies would create disturbances in the distribution of cold atomic hydrogen gas (H I) within the disk of a galaxy, and that these perturbations could reveal not only the mass, but the distance and location of the satellite. The cold hydrogen gas in spiral galaxies is gravitationally confined to the plane of the galactic disk and extends much farther out than the visible stars – sometimes up to five times the diameter of the visible spiral. The cold gas can be mapped by radio telescopes.

"The method is like inferring the size and speed of a ship by looking at its wake," said Blitz. "You see the waves from a lot of boats, but you have to be able to separate out the wake of a medium or small ship from that of an ocean liner."

The technique Chakrabarti developed involves a Fourier analysis of the gas distribution determined by high-resolution radio observations for satellite galaxies as small as one-thousandth the mass of the primary galaxy. Her initial predication of Galaxy X around the Milky Way was made possible by of data already available on the atomic hydrogen in the Milky Way.

To test her theory on other galaxies, she and her collaborators used recent data from a radio survey called The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey (THINGS), conducted by the Very Large Array, as well as its extension to the Southern Hemisphere, THINGS-SOUTH, a survey carried out by the Australia Telescope Compact Array.

"Our paper is a proof of principle, but we need to look at a much larger sample of spiral galaxies with optically visible galactic companions to determine the incidence of false positives," and thus the method's reliability, Chakrabarti said.

 

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Image of the Day: Red Giant Devouring Its Solar System

 

 

An aging red giant star, BP Piscium (BP Psc), appears to be a more evolved version of our Sun, but with a dusty and gaseous disk surrounding it. A pair of jets several light years long blasting out of the system in opposite directions has also been seen in optical data. While the disk and jets are characteristics of a very young star, several clues -- including the new results from Chandra -- suggest that BP Psc is not what it originally appeared to be.

Instead, astronomers have suggested that BP Psc is an old star in its so-called red giant phase. And, rather than being hallmarks of its youth, the disk and jets are, in fact, remnants of a recent and catastrophic interaction whereby a nearby star or giant planet was consumed by BP Psc.

"It appears that BP Psc represents a star-eat-star Universe, or maybe a star-eat-planet one," said Joel Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology, who led the Chandra study. "Either way, it just shows it's not always friendly out there."

Several pieces of information have led astronomers to rethink how old BP Psc might be. First, BP Psc is not located near any star-forming cloud, and there are no other known young stars in its immediate vicinity. Secondly, in common with most elderly stars, its atmosphere contains only a small amount of lithium. Thirdly, its surface gravity appears to be too weak for a young star and instead matches up with one of an old red giant.

Chandra adds to this story. Young, low-mass stars are brighter than most other stars in X-rays, and so X-ray observations can be used as a sign of how old a star may be. Chandra does detect X-rays from BP Psc, but at a rate that is too low to be from a young star. Instead, the X-ray emission rate measured for BP Psc is consistent with that of rapidly rotating giant stars.

The spectrum of the X-ray emission -- that is how the amount of X-rays changes with wavelength -- is consistent with flares occurring on the surface of the star, or with interactions between the star and the disk surrounding it. The magnetic activity of the star itself might be generated by a dynamo caused by its rapid rotation. This rapid rotation can be caused by the engulfment process.

"It seems that BP Psc has been energized by its meal," said co-author Rodolfo (Rudy) Montez Jr., also from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The star's surface is obscured throughout the visible and near-infrared bands, so the Chandra observation represents the first detection at any wavelength of BP Psc itself.

"BP Psc shows us that stars like our Sun may live quietly for billions of years," said co-author David Rodriguez from UCLA, "but when they go, they just might take a star or planet or two with them."

Although any close-in planets were presumably devastated when BP Psc turned into a giant star, a second round of planet formation might be occurring in the surrounding disk, hundreds of millions of years after the first round.

A new paper using observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope has reported possible evidence for a giant planet in the disk surrounding BP Psc. This might be a newly formed planet or one that was part of the original planetary system.

"Exactly how stars might engulf other stars or planets is a hot topic in astrophysics today," said Kastner. "We have many important details that we still need to work out, so objects like BP Psc are really exciting to find."

 

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From the 'X Files' Dept: "Source-Code" for Life Originated in Nebular Clouds 10 Billion Years Ago

 

Recent discoveries in genetics, microbiology, astrobiology, and astrophysics indicates that life in the Milky Way galaxy began in nebular clouds over 10 billion years ago. Given the trillions upon trillions of galaxies which exist in the Hubble length (observable) universe, and the trillions of trillions of supernovas which must have taken place in these galaxies collectively, and thus the innumerable stellar and nebular clouds filled with all the ingredients necessary for life, according to the controversial theories of Rhawn Joseph, of the Brain Research Laboratory and Rudolf Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "it can be deduced that life would have been created, independently, perhaps in numerous galaxies, including the Milky Way long before our planet was formed.

The cosmos may be awash with every conceivable form of life. It can be predicted that every planet orbiting a star in every galaxy in the cosmos might have been contaminated with life and that life would flourish, diversify, and then evolve into increasingly complex, sentient and intelligent animals on worlds which orbit within the habitable zone of their sun. This would mean that intelligent beings may have evolved on billions of planets and may have reached our own level of neurological and cognitive development billions of years before Earth came into being."

 

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10 Most Incredible Images of the Northern Lights

 

10 Most Incredible Images of the Northern Lights

Photo: Francis Anderson

Every year, people are inspired to brave freezing temperatures while attempting to capture the Aurora Borealis. This natural phenomenon beats any man-made light show. Here are ten of the best Aurora Borealis photographs that were taken in 2010 and posted to Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Photo: Thomas Roskifte

Photo: Visit Finland

No matter how many times we see stunning pictures of the aurora borealis, we are still amazed and entranced by its beauty.

Photo: Odd :)

Photo: Visit Finland

Solar winds flowing around the Earth provide the energy source behind auroras.

Photo: Tor Even Mathisen

Photo: Gunnar Þór Gunnarsson

Science can explain the varied colors through photon emissions, but the auroras were mystical and explained in varied shades of magic back in ancient times.

Photo: Nick Russill

Auroras were explained in Norse mythology as created by Valkyrior (warlike virgins) riding their horses in the sky while their spears and armor caused the colored flickering lights. Roman mythology credited Aurora, the goddess of dawn, as flying across the night sky, creating Northern Lights to announce the coming of dawn.

Photo: James Clear

Photo: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center

This is Earth as seen from the International Space Station. Auroras have also been seen around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune via the Hubble Space Telescope.

 

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