The Sky Tonight

April 08, 2014

Orbital physics is child's play with 'Super Planet Crash'
Santa Cruz CA (SPX) Apr 08, 2014
Super Planet Crash is a pretty simple game: players build their own planetary system, putting planets into orbit around a star and racking up points until they add a planet that destabilizes the whole system. Beneath the surface, however, this addictive little game is driven by highly sophisticated software code that astronomers use to find planets beyond our solar system (called exoplanets). The release of Super Planet Crash (available online at www.stefanom.org/spc) follows the release of the la ... read more

Previous Issues

Apr 07

Apr 04

Apr 03

Apr 02

Apr 01

Watching for a black hole to gobble up a gas cloud Right now a doomed gas cloud is edging ever closer to the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. These black holes feed on gas and dust all the time, but astronomers rarely g ... more		The Importance of Planetary Plumes The Hubble Space Telescope is famous for finding black holes. It can pick out thousands of galaxies in a patch of sky the size of a thumbprint. The most powerful space telescope ever built, the Hubb ... more		BOSS quasars track the expanding universe -- most precise measurement yet The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), pioneered the use of quasars to map density variations in intergalactic ga ... more
				Science, Discovery Channels to broadcast private race to the moon Just a week after Google announced its Lunar X competition, teams of engineers and scientists are racing to build a robotic spacecraft that can successfully land on the moon. A prize of $30 million awaits the first to accomplish the feat - and so does television stardom. ... more		Galactic Serial Killer This new image from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile shows two contrasting galaxies: NGC 1316, and its smaller neighbour NGC 1317. These two are quite close to ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

India developing satellites to study stars India is developing satellites to study stars, including the Sun, a top space official has said. "The satellite, Astrosat, which will study stars, will be unique in three aspects - UV rays, v ... more		Monster "El Gordo" Galaxy Cluster Bigger Than Thought NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has weighed the largest known galaxy cluster in the distant universe, catalogued as ACT-CL J0102-4915, and found it definitely lives up to its nickname - El Gordo (Spa ... 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		Hubble Sees a Spiral Home to Exploding Stars In this Hubble image, we can see an almost face-on view of the galaxy NGC 1084. At first glance, this galaxy is pretty unoriginal. Like the majority of galaxies that we observe it is a spiral ... more
				Take the Plunge: LADEE Impact Challenge NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft is gradually lowering its orbital altitude over the moon. LADEE will continue to make important science observations before i ... more		New Zealand physicists split and collide ultracold atom clouds Physicists at New Zealand's University of Otago have pushed the frontiers of quantum technology by developing a steerable 'optical tweezers' unit that uses intense laser beams to precisely split min ... more

UAV Payloads 2014, 24 - 25 June - London, UK

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

A Question of Atmospheres: On Earth and Beyond Scientists recently discovered the source of naturally occurring aerosol particles in Earth's atmosphere that play an important role in cloud formation. The particles in questions are known as 'clim ... more		Overcoming structural uncertainty in computer models A computer model is a representation of the functional relationship between one set of parameters, which forms the model input, and a corresponding set of target parameters, which forms the model ou ... 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		Quantum Photon Properties Revealed in Another Particle-the Plasmon For years, researchers have been interested in developing quantum computers-the theoretical next generation of technology that will outperform conventional computers. Instead of holding data in bits ... more
				Video shows apparent meteor whiz by skydiver The chance of being hit by a meteorite is one in 20 trillion. But in 2012, one skydiver got closer than most. ... more		Tesearchers provide new insights into quantum dynamics and quantum chaos A team of researchers led by University of Notre Dame physicist Boldizsar Janko has announced analytical prediction and numerical verification of novel quantum rotor states in nanostructured superco ... more

Dwarf planet 'Biden' identified in an unlikely region of our solar system

Planet X myth debunked

WISE Finds Thousands Of New Stars But No Planet X

A Question of Atmospheres: On Earth and Beyond

Dwarf Planet Discovery Could Help Show Life's Spread Through Solar System

Don't forget F-type stars in search for life

The Importance of Planetary Plumes

Orbital physics is child's play with 'Super Planet Crash'

Lick's Automated Planet Finder: First robotic telescope for planet hunters

Opportunity Moves Further Southwest On Murray Ridge

NASA's rover Curiosity discovers Australia on Mars, sort of

What's so hard about counting craters?

	Gravity measurements confirm subsurface ocean on Enceladus In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft sent pictures back to Earth depicting an icy Saturnian moon spewing water vapor and ice from fractures, known as "tiger stripes," in its frozen surface. It w ... more		Ancient volcanic explosions shed light on Mercury's origins The surface of Mercury crackled with volcanic explosions for extended periods of the planet's history, according to a new analysis led by researchers at Brown University. The findings are surprising ... more		Fermi Data Tantalize With New Clues To Dark Matter A new study of gamma-ray light from the center of our galaxy makes the strongest case to date that some of this emission may arise from dark matter, an unknown substance making up most of the materi ... more		Land a Lunar Laser Reflector Now! As we consider the next spacecraft to land on the Moon, let's not overlook an increasing problem in scientific research. The laser reflectors already on the Moon are getting old, and need to be repl ... 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

New research finds 'geologic clock' that helps determine moon's age		Cassini reports sub-surface ocean on Enceladus		Galactic serial killer		Dawn draws ever closer to dwarf planet Ceres		Black hole makes 'String of Pearls' clusters
Scientists date Moon at 4.470 billion years		Misleading mineral may have resulted in overestimate of water in moon		Dwarf Planet Discovery Could Help Show Life's Spread Through Solar System		Record quantum entanglement of multiple dimensions		Hubble: Magnifying the Distant Universe

The Space Debris Radar Developed By Indra Passes ESA Tests

Intel bets big on cloud, with stake in Cloudera

Simple, like a neutron star

New way to filter light

Dark energy hides behind phantom fields

Cosmic barometer' could reveal violent events in universe's past

A Tetrad of Lunar Eclipses

The Search for Seeds of Black Holes

A close look a the nearest standard candle supernova in several decades

Creating virtual universes

Don't forget F-type stars in search for life

How to look into the Solar interior

Astronomers Looking for Clues to Water's Origins

First sightings of solar flare phenomena confirm 3-D models of space weather

Comet lander awakes from long hibernation

Solar System's edge redefined

Cosmic collision creates mini-planet with rings

Hubble Space Telescope Spots Mars-Bound Comet Sprout Multiple Jets

Scientists solve riddle of celestial archaeology

Big Data keeps complex production running smoothly

Free Newsletters - Space - Defense - Environment - Energy

Buy Advertising

Media Advertising Kit

Editorial & Other Enquiries

Privacy statement

The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.