The Sky Tonight

March 26, 2014

First Ring System Around Asteroid
La Silla, Chile (ESO) Mar 27, 2014
Observations at many sites in South America, including ESO's La Silla Observatory, have made the surprise discovery that the remote asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by two dense and narrow rings. This is the smallest object by far found to have rings and only the fifth body in the Solar System - after the much larger planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - to have this feature. The origin of these rings remains a mystery, but they may be the result of a collision that created a disc of debris ... read more

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Exploding stars prove Newton's gravity unchanged over cosmic time Australian astronomers have combined all observations of supernovae ever made to determine that the strength of gravity has remained unchanged over the last nine billion years. Newton's gravit ... more		A Wet Moon The Moon's status as a "dry" rock in space has long been questioned. Competing theories abound as to the source of the H20 in the lunar soil, including delivery of water to the Moon by comets. ... more		Plugging the hole in Hawking's black hole theory Recently physicists have been poking holes again in Stephen Hawking's black hole theory - including Hawking himself. For decades physicists across the globe have been trying to figure out the myster ... more
				Comet-probing robot to wake from hibernation A fridge-sized robot lab hurtling through the Solar System aboard a European probe is about to wake from hibernation and prepare for the first-ever landing by a spacecraft on a comet. ... more		Hunt for an unidentified electron object Researchers have developed a new mathematical framework capable of describing motions in superfluids - low temperature fluids that exhibit classical as well as quantum behavior. The framework was us ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Researchers see Kelvin wave on quantum 'tornado' for first time Draining the water from a bathtub causes a spinning tornado to appear. The downward flow of water into the drain causes the water to rotate, and as the rotation speeds up, a vortex forms that obeys ... more		Two Suns Could Make More Habitable Moons Moons in close binary solar systems have a better chance of hosting life than those in single-star systems, new research has shown. Binary stars dampen each other's solar radiation and stellar ... more		Northrop Grumman Hypersonic Navigation System Exceeds Rocket Test Milestones We can build fighter jet without Germany: France's Dassault Moldova backs EU in elections marred by Russian interference		Expeditions to the Moon: beware of meteorites Experts say that future expeditions to the Moon may face quite a few dangers. One of them is meteorite attacks. The Moon has practically no atmosphere that would have braked the flights of meteorite ... more
				There must be particles out there smaller than Higgs particle Now it is more likely than ever: There must be particles out there smaller than Higgs particle. Nobody has seen them yet; particles that are smaller than the Higgs particle. However theories predict ... more		NASA Seeks Proposals on Asteroid Redirect Mission Concepts Development In support of NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission - a key part of the agency's stepping stone path to send humans to Mars - agency officials are seeking proposals for studies on advanced technology dev ... more

Developing the Next-Generation Military Radar while Maintaining Current Systems; IDGA�s Military Radar Summit - April 2014

International Conference on Protection of Materials and Structures From Space Environment

Nuclear Supply Chain Summit - April 28-29 Greenville SC

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Hubble Peers at the Heart of NGC 5793 This new Hubble image is centered on NGC 5793, a spiral galaxy over 150 million light-years away in the constellation of Libra. This galaxy has two particularly striking features: a beautiful dust l ... more		ASU camera creates stunning mosaic of moon's polar region the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), run by the Arizona State University-based team under professor Mark Robinson, released what very well may be the largest image mosaic available on the ... more		The first animals on Earth may have been sea sponges, study suggests Wildfire-induced thunderstorms recreated in Earth system models for first time Fengyun satellite strengthens China global weather forecasting capacity		New hypothesis explains Earth's continued habitability Researchers from USC and Nanjing University in China have documented evidence suggesting that part of the reason that the Earth has become neither sweltering like Venus nor frigid like Mars lies wit ... more
				Fierce 2012 magnetic storm barely missed Earth Earth dodged a huge magnetic bullet from the sun on July 23, 2012. According to University of California, Berkeley, and Chinese researchers, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections - the most i ... more		Could Alien Life Cope with a Hotter, Brighter Star? The stars in the night sky shine in myriad hues and brightnesses-piercing blues, clean whites, smoldering crimsons. Every star has a different mass, the basic characteristic that determines its size ... more

Planet X myth debunked

WISE Finds Thousands Of New Stars But No Planet X

New Horizons Reaches the Final 4 AU

Two Suns Could Make More Habitable Moons

Could Alien Life Cope with a Hotter, Brighter Star?

New hypothesis explains Earth's continued habitability

Space Sunflower May Help Snap Pictures of Planets

NRL Researchers Detect Water Around a Hot Jupiter

UK joins the planet hunt with Europe's PLATO mission

Helpful Wind Cleans Solar Panels On Opportunity Mars Rover

NASA Mars Rover's Next Stop Has Sandstone Variations

Mars-mimicking chamber explores habitability of other planets

	Cisco pushes into 'cloud' with $1 bn investment Cisco Systems announced plans Monday to invest $1 billion to step up its cloud computing with several global partners. ... more		Unique camera from NASA's moon missions sold at auction The only camera to return from NASA's moon missions in 1969-1972 was sold at an auction in Vienna Saturday for 550,000 euros ($760,000), far outdoing its estimated price. ... more		Major discovery bolsters Big Bang theory of universe Waves of gravity that rippled through space right after the Big Bang have been detected for the first time, in a landmark discovery that adds to our understanding of how the universe was born, US scientists said Monday. ... more		NASA's STEREO Studies Extreme Space Weather On July 22, 2012, a massive cloud of solar material erupted off the sun's right side, zooming out into space and passing one of NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, spacec ... more

NASA ISRO radar satellite beams first Earth images from space

India plans mega-dam to counter China water fears

Breakthrough in UAV swarm intelligence as SRI redefines topology mapping

Space Sunflower May Help Snap Pictures of Planets		Dramatic new portrait helps define Milky Way's shape and contents		Surface of Titan Sea is mirror smooth, Stanford scientists find		NRL Researchers Detect Water Around a Hot Jupiter		Hubble Nets an Interstellar Butterfly
An experiment recreates the crust of the moon Europa		Mercury's contraction much greater than thought		Mercury contracted more than prior estimates		Mercury, the incredible shrinking planet		Herschel completes largest survey of cosmic dust in local Universe

How Did Life Arise? Fuel Cells May Have Answers

China's Jade Rabbit lunar rover rouses from latest slumber

Scientists using UNH detector illuminate cause of sun's 'perfect storm'

New view of supernova death throes

First Direct Evidence of Inflation and Primordial Gravitational Waves

Your 15 Minutes of 'Frame' - from NASA's Cassini

NASA Technology Views Birth of the Universe

ISS dodges space junk

NASA Releases First Interactive Mosaic of Lunar North Pole

Study on lunar crater counting shows crowdsourcing effective, accurate tool

Reducing debris threat from satellite batteries

MUSE Envisions Mining "Big Code" to Improve Software Reliability and Construction

VLT spots largest yellow hypergiant star

Astronomers reveal 'largest yellow star ever'

These aren't the voids you're looking for

Some galaxies in the early universe grew up quickly

Astronomer maps out Earth's place in the universe among 'Council of Giants'

Be an Asteroid Hunter in NASA's First Asteroid Grand Challenge Contest Series

Galaxies in the early Universe mature beyond their years

Extraordinary momentum and spin discovered in evanescent light waves

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