The Sky Tonight

December 03, 2015

LISA Pathfinder en route to gravitational wave demonstration
Kourou, French Guiana (ESA) Dec 03, 2015
ESA's LISA Pathfinder lifted off earlier today on a Vega rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on its way to demonstrate technology for observing gravitational waves from space. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published on 2 December 1915. Einstein's theory predicts that these fluctuations should be universal, generated by accelerating massive objects. However, they have ... read more

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What is the universe made of Matter known as ordinary, which makes up everything we know, corresponds to only 5% of the Universe. Approximately half of this percentage still eluded detection. Numerical simulations made it possi ... more		New law establishes ownership rights for space minerals A new public law signed by President Obama sets the stage for continued expansion of the U.S. space program and transforms the mining of space mineral resources (SMR). The President signed into law ... more		Half of Kepler's giant exoplanet candidates are false positives An international team led by Alexandre Santerne from Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciencias do Espaco (IA) made a 5-year radial velocity campaign of Kepler's giant exoplanet candidates, using the SOPHI ... more
				Researchers question results from the study of pulsating stars The movement of gas inside a star causes seismic waves which in turn cause irregularities on the star's surface. These 'earthquakes' (or pulsations) produce periodic variations in the brightness of ... more		LISA Pathfinder launch timeline On Thursday, a Vega rocket will boost LISA Pathfinder into space to pave the way to a future mission for detecting gravitational waves. Once aloft, ESA's mission control teams will pace the ultra hi ... more

'Fast radio burst' sheds new light on origin of these extreme events Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), brief yet brilliant eruptions of cosmic radio waves, have baffled astronomers since they were first reported nearly a decade ago. Though they appear to come from the distan ... more		Cosmic filaments exposed near huge cluster ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory has revealed three massive filaments of hot gas flowing towards a cluster of galaxies, uncovering a portion of the cosmic skeleton that pervades the entire Univers ... more		Greenland is helpful, but not vital, for US missile defense European military mission in Greenland as US aim 'remains intact' Amazon expands 'sovereign cloud' in Europe		New insights into the creation of heavy elements Alpha particles, as the nuclei of the helium atom are also called, play a decisive role in the formation of heavier elements. Carbon, for instance, is formed from the fusion of these alpha particles ... more
				A Look Back at NASA Solar Missions Twenty years ago, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a cooperative effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, launched into space and revolutionized our study of the sun and a scientifi ... more		SOHO Celebrates 20 Years of Space-based Science After 20 years in space, ESA and NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, is still going strong. Originally launched in 1995 to study the sun and its influence out to the very edges of th ... more

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Simulation shows key to building powerful magnetic fields When certain massive stars use up all of their fuel and collapse onto their cores, explosions 10 to 100 times brighter than the average supernova occur. Exactly how this happens is not well understo ... more		Exiled exoplanet likely kicked out of star's neighborhood A planet discovered last year sitting at an unusually large distance from its star - 16 times farther than Pluto is from the sun - may have been kicked out of its birthplace close to the star in a p ... more		China bids to host secretariat of new high seas treaty Protected forests under threat in DRC's lucrative mining belt Hundreds in London protest against Beijing 'mega embassy'		Collapsing super stars Hypernova or Gamma-Ray Bursts A supercomputer simulation of a mere 10 milliseconds in the collapse of a massive star into a neutron star proves that these catastrophic events, often called hypernovae, can generate the enormous m ... more
What Powers the Explosion of Stars Enormous amounts of energy are released when a massive star, many times heavier than our Sun, collapses. Some stars explode in a hypernova - ten times more powerful than a normal supernova - and may ... more		Jupiter's whirlwinds: Turning the other way The numerous whirlwinds covering Jupiter are caused by upward gas flows originating deep within the giant planet. This is the conclusion reached by scientists at the University of Alberta (Canada) a ... more		LISA Pathfinder - the countdown is running At 5:15 CET on December 2, a Vega rocket is scheduled for launch from the European spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana) to lift a "pathfinder" into space: LISA Pathfinder will demonstrate novel techn ... more		Many Worlds, Subterranean Edition One of the richest lines of research for those thinking about life beyond Earth has been the world of microscopic creatures that live in especially extreme and hostile environments here. The realm o ... more

	New U.S. space mining law may violate international treaty One company is especially happy with the space mining legislation signed into law on Wednesday, the company that stands to profit the most. ... more		Who owns space An event of cosmic proportions occurred on November 18 when the US congress passed the Space Act of 2015 into law. The legislation will give US space firms the rights to own and sell natural resourc ... more

Trump offers Egypt to mediate on Ethiopia dam

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CERN collides heavy nuclei at new record high energy		Using light-force to study single molecules		Looking back 3.8 billion years into the root of the 'Tree of Life'		The hottest white dwarf in the Galaxy		Simulating the Death of Stars
Aging star's weight loss secret revealed		Hubble captures a galactic waltz towards the end		NEOWISE observes carbon gases in comets		MUSE observations enable prediction of once-in-a-lifetime supernova replay		Neptune-size exoplanet around a red dwarf star

Scientists get first glimpse of black hole eating star, ejecting high-speed flare

CERN colliding lead ions at record energy using upgraded LHC

'Shrinking bull's-eye' data algorithm crunches days into hours

Quantum spin could create unstoppable, one-dimensional electron waves

President Obama signs bill recognizing asteroid resource property rights into law

Comet fragments best explanation of mysterious dimming star

Where Alice in Wonderland Meets Albert Einstein

Planetary nebulae map of the Milkyway gets distancing tweak

How DSCOVR Could Help in Exoplanet Hunting

Retro Exo and Its Originators

Supercomputing the strange difference between matter and antimatter

Earth Might Have Hairy Dark Matter

Composite images compare sunlit faces of Pluto

Forming planet observed for first time

VISTA pinpoints earliest giant galaxies

Radiation blasts leave most Earth-like planet uninhabitable, new research suggests

Stormy space weather puts equatorial regions' power at risk

Ultra-short X-ray pulses could shed new light on the fastest events in physics

UA researchers capture first photo of planet in making

Gravity, who needs it

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