The Sky Tonight

January 01, 2015

Tiny 'life detector' could sense alien movement: study
Miami (AFP) Dec 29, 2014
European researchers said Monday they have devised the first tiny motion detector that could help find microscopic life forms on distant planets. Until now, scientists have tried to find signs of extraterrestrial life by listening for sounds that might be emitted from an alien world, by scanning the skies with potent telescopes and by sending robotic probes and rovers to analyze the chemical fingerprint of samples from comets and planets. But researchers in Switzerland and Belgium were intereste ... read more

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Dawn Spacecraft Begins Approach to Dwarf Planet Ceres NASA's Dawn spacecraft has entered an approach phase in which it will continue to close in on Ceres, a Texas-sized dwarf planet never before visited by a spacecraft. Dawn launched in 2007 and is sch ... more		Solar Wind Workhorse Marks 20 Years of Science Discoveries The end of 2014 marks two decades of data from a NASA mission called Wind. Wind - along with 17 other missions - is part of what's called the Heliophysics Systems Observatory, a fleet of spacecraft ... more		Horsehead of a Different Color Sometimes a horse of a different color hardly seems to be a horse at all, as, for example, in this newly released image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The famous Horsehead nebula makes a ghost ... more
				Gecko Grippers Get a Microgravity Test Flight There are no garbage trucks equipped to leave the atmosphere and pick up debris floating around the Earth. But what if we could send a robot to do the job? Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion ... more		Week of excitement (meteors and moons) for sky-watchers This week is jam-packed with sky-gazing events - moons disappearing, meteors sparkling and comets whizzing. ... more

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Innovative use of Pressurant Extends Messenger's Mission The MESSENGER spacecraft will soon run literally on fumes. After more than 10 years traveling in space, nearly four of those orbiting Mercury, the spacecraft has expended most of its propellant and ... more		Risky Business In April 2013, NASA announced that it was in the early phases of planning a robotic mission to snag an asteroid and haul it into lunar orbit for study. At the time, NASA chief Charles Bolden said th ... more		EU states to hold talks on 'drone wall' to protect bloc Denmark military intel fails to identify source of drone flights Lithuania eases rules on shooting down drones		Stretched-out solid exoplanets Astronomers could soon be able to find rocky planets stretched out by the gravity of the stars they orbit, according to a group of researchers in the United States. The team, led by Prabal Saxena of ... more
				How electrons split: New evidence of exotic behaviors Electrons may be seen as small magnets that also carry a negative electrical charge. On a fundamental level, these two properties are indivisible. However, in certain materials where the electrons a ... more		Tales from a Martian Rock A new analysis of a Martian rock that meteorite hunters plucked from an Antarctic ice field 30 years ago this month reveals a record of the planet's climate billions of years ago, back when water li ... more

Startup in the Land of the Rising Sun; A Japanese Solar Venture - by Bradley L. Bartz

Barren Deserts Can Host Complex Ecosystems in Their Soils "Biological soil crusts" don't look like much. In fact, people often trample right over these dark, or green-tinted, sometimes raised patches in the desert soil. But these scruffy stretches can hous ... more		Scientists create human primordial cells in the lab The first time in history, researchers have successfully used human embryonic stem cells to create primordial germ cells, cells that divide and mature into egg and sperm. Previously, the feat had been accomplished using rodent stem cells - not those from a human embryo. ... more		NASA ISRO radar satellite beams first Earth images from space Morocco High Atlas whistle language strives for survival China warns Papua New Guinea over Australian defence deal		Half-light Half-matter Prospects of developing computing and communication technologies based on quantum properties of light and matter may have taken a major step forward thanks to research by City College of New York ph ... more
Quantum physics just got less complicated Here's a nice surprise: quantum physics is less complicated than we thought. An international team of researchers has proved that two peculiar features of the quantum world previously considered dis ... more		Comet probe in race against time to crown stellar feat Europe's deep-space robot lab Philae worked against the clock Friday, attempting to drill into a comet 510 million kilometres (320 million miles) from Earth to crown a historic exploration before its battery runs out. ... more		Philae probing comet with hours left on battery Europe's probe Philae was busily conducting experiments on a comet 510 million kilometres (320 million miles) from Earth with just hours of onboard battery life left, ground control reported of signals received Friday. ... more		Sun Sizzles in High-Energy X-Rays For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. NASA's Nuclear ... more

	Hubble Sees the Beautiful side of IC 335 This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the galaxy IC 335 in front of a backdrop of distant galaxies. IC 335 is part of a galaxy group containing three other galaxies, and located in th ... more		Exact Solution to Model Big Bang and Quark Gluon Plasma Unlike in mathematics, it is rare to have exact solutions to physics problems. "When they do present themselves, they are an opportunity to test the approximation schemes (algorithms) that are used ... more

JUNO begins decade-long mission to probe neutrino mysteries

SFL Missions to Deliver Spacecraft Buses for HawkEye 360 RF Signal Detection Expansion

Voyager debuts first space based multi cloud region to advance orbital data processing

Milky Way has new neighbor, KKs3		'Shooting the Moon' with Satellite Laser Ranging		NASA's Chandra Weighs Most Massive Galaxy Cluster in Distant Universe		Young Red Dwarf Stars could Host Habitable Worlds		The hot blue stars of Messier 47
Kepler Proves It Can Still Find Planets		Contamination of Impacted Meteorites Can Happen Quickly		NASA uses powerful X-ray telescope to take vibrant photo of the sun		Choreography of an electron pair		XMM-Newton spots monster black hole hidden in tiny galaxy

NASA's Kepler Reborn, Makes First Exoplanet Find of New Mission

Signs of Europa Plumes Remain Elusive in Search of Cassini Data

Rosetta comet-landing is Science's 2014 breakthrough

'Perfect Storm' Quenching Star Formation around a Supermassive Black Hole

NASA Satellites Measure Increase of Sun's Energy Absorbed in the Arctic

Surprising Theorists, Stars Within Middle-Aged Clusters Are of Similar Age

Rosetta Orbiter to Swoop Down On Comet in February

ESA scientists say Philae lander will wake up in 2015

Super-Earth spotted by ground-based telescope, a first

NASA is letting people name the craters of Mercury

Physicists explain puzzling particle collisions

Fermi brings deeper focus to thunderstorm gamma-rays

Moon Express testing compact lunar lander at Kennedy

NASA Voyager: 'Tsunami Wave' Still Flies Through Interstellar Space

Oil-dwelling bacteria are social creatures in Earth's deep biosphere

Fraud-proof credit cards possible with quantum physics

Researchers use real data rather than theory to measure the cosmos

Interstellar Mystery Solved By Supercomputer Simulations

Observing Solar System Worlds as if They Were Distant Exoplanets

SwRI develops solar observatory for use on suborbital manned space missions

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