The Sky Tonight

July 24, 2014

Are we alone? Alien pollution might reveal the answer
Washington (AFP) July 23, 2014
Earthlings often wonder if life exists on other planets, and researchers said Wednesday that hunting for traces of pollution from distant worlds could provide the answer. Under certain conditions, astronomers in the next decade might be able to detect the presence of an industrialized alien society, according to a study by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Already, astronomers can study the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system for the presence of oxygen and methane, whi ... read more

Previous Issues

Jul 23

Jul 22

Jul 21

Jul 18

Jul 17

China's biggest moon challenge: returning to earth China's lunar probe, Chang'e-5, will be launched around 2017 and its mission to collect samples from the moon and return to earth is the most challenging yet, according to Wu Weiren, chief designer ... more		Transiting Exoplanet with Longest Known Year Astronomers have discovered a transiting exoplanet with the longest known year. Kepler-421b circles its star once every 704 days. In comparison, Mars orbits our Sun once every 780 days. Most of the ... more		Seeing Earth As An Exoplanet: What Signs Of Life Are Visible? An extraterrestrial spacecraft lurking in a satellite's orbit near Earth would be able to see city lights and pollution in our atmosphere. But what if it searched for signs of life on Earth from afa ... more
				Voyager Spacecraft Might Not Have Reached Interstellar Space In 2012, the Voyager mission team announced that the Voyager 1 spacecraft had passed into interstellar space, traveling further from Earth than any other manmade object. But, in the nearly two years ... more		UEA research shows oceans vital for possibility of alien life Researchers at the University of East Anglia have made an important step in the race to discover whether other planets could develop and sustain life. New research published in the journal Astrobiol ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

William Cress Corporation - We Build To Last

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Comet ISON's Dramatic Final Hours A new analysis of data from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft has revealed that comet 2012/S1 (ISON) stopped producing dust and gas shortly before it raced past the S ... more		Chelyabinsk Meteorite Sheds Light on Dinosaur Extinction Mystery A long-standing debate about the source of the asteroid that impacted the Earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs has been put to rest thanks to the Chelyabinsk meteorite that disintegrated ... more		Sierra Space clears design milestone for missile tracking satellites in SDA Tranche 2 Top diplomats of North Korea, China agree to oppose 'hegemonism' The Surprising Overlap In Skills Required To Fly An Aircraft And To Excel At iGaming		Is The Universe A Bubble? Let's Check Never mind the big bang; in the beginning was the vacuum. The vacuum simmered with energy (variously called dark energy, vacuum energy, the inflation field, or the Higgs field). Like water in a pot, ... more
				It's go time for LUX-Zeplin dark matter experiment From the physics labs at Yale University to the bottom of a played-out gold mine in South Dakota, a new generation of dark matter experiments is ready to commence. The U.S. Department of Energ ... more		Peering into giant planets from in and out of this world Lawrence Livermore scientists for the first time have experimentally re-created the conditions that exist deep inside giant planets, such as Jupiter, Uranus and many of the planets recently discover ... more

Lunar Pits Could Shelter Astronauts, Reveal Details of How 'Man in the Moon' Formed While the moon's surface is battered by millions of craters, it also has over 200 holes - steep-walled pits that in some cases might lead to caves that future astronauts could explore and use for sh ... more		Now can we test for Multiple universes The question of the size and limits of our universe can fry our mind without reading into it. Still more amazing, some among us always believed that we live in multiple, parallel universes. Now scie ... more		The first animals on Earth may have been sea sponges, study suggests Small Satellite Contracted to Probe Climate Effects of Space Radiation Fengyun satellite strengthens China global weather forecasting capacity		Scientists Find Way to Maintain Quantum Entanglement in Amplified Signals Physicists Sergei Filippov (MIPT and Russian Quantum Center at Skolkovo) and Mario Ziman (Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, and the Institute of Physics in Bratislava, Slovakia) have found ... more
19th Century Math Tactic Tweak Yields Answers 200 Times Faster A relic from long before the age of supercomputers, the 169-year-old math strategy called the Jacobi iterative method is widely dismissed today as too slow to be useful. But thanks to a curious, num ... more		Space Systems/Loral conducting technology studies for NASA Space Systems/Loral reports it has been chosen by NASA to study system concepts and technologies for the NASA Asteroid Redirect Mission. ... more		Brown Dwarfs May Wreak Havoc on Orbits of Nearby Planets Planets that move around their stars in circular orbits are a better bet for life than those in elongated orbits when it comes to creating habitable climate conditions, according to a new study.That ... more		Dash cam captures meteor streaking across North Carolina sky A barrage of meteors splashed across the night sky late Thursday along the Eastern Seaboard, and one meteor burned particularly bright as it disintegrated in the Earth's atmosphere. ... more

	NASA Mission To Reap Bonanza of Earth-sized Planets Set to launch in 2017, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will monitor more than half a million stars over its two-year mission, with a focus on the smallest, brightest stellar obje ... more		Manned mission to Moon scheduled by Roscosmos for 2020-2031 Russia is planning a manned mission to the Moon in 2030-2031, Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) First Deputy Head Alexander Ivanov said on Monday, July 14, reports TASS. "In our program this (m ... more

Worlds most powerful centrifuge begins operations in China

Breakthrough in UAV swarm intelligence as SRI redefines topology mapping

China factory activity shrinks in September for sixth straight month

NASA Seeks Proposals for Europa Mission Science Instruments		Looking Back at the Jupiter Crash 20 Years Later		No-wait data centers		Computing Paths to Asteroids Helps Find Future Exploration Opportunities		Asteroid Vesta to reshape theories of planet formation
Probe is headed for duck-shaped comet, images show		Twin comets discovered by ESA space probe Rosetta		Diving for pearls with the Hubble Space Telescope		Small, faint but plentiful galaxies illuminated the early universe		Sun-like Stars Reveal Their Ages

Friction from Tides Could Help Distant Earths Survive, and Thrive

NASA says it's close to finding alien life, Earth's twin

Sky-gazers can expect one 'Supermoon' per month for the next three months

Out of An Hours-long Explosion, A Stand-In For The First Stars

Landsat Looks to the Moon

Hubble Spots Spiral Bridge of Young Stars Linking Two Ancient Galaxies

Merging galaxies and droplets of starbirth

Ferromagnetism at 230 K found in diluted magnetic semiconductor

Astronomers Bring The Third Dimension To A Doomed Star's Outburst

Newfound Frozen World Orbits in Binary Star System

Cosmic grains of dust formed in supernova explosion

Supermassive black hole blows molecular gas out of galaxy

VLT clears up dusty mystery

Perspective of the PandaX dark matter experiment

Carbon monoxide predicts 'red and dead' future of gas guzzler galaxy

Messenger and Stereo Open New Window Into Solar Processes

Speeding up data storage by a thousand times with 'spin current'

Models suggest stretching forces shaped Ganymede's surface

When Life Went Global

Sun Sends More 'Tsunami Waves' to Voyager 1

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.