The Sky Tonight

April 12, 2016

How to reach Alpha Centauri in just 20 years
New York (AFP) April 12, 2016
Billionaire Russian investor Yuri Milner and British cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Tuesday announced an ambitious new space initiative for a mission to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth. Milner and Hawking are spearheading the "Breakthrough Starshot" team of scientists working on the bold research program to create a fleet of super-compact, ultra-light space vehicles or "nanocraft." The goal is to send the light-propelled mini-space vehicles - each no bigger than a cell phone - ... read more

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Artificial comet holds clues to the origin of life Researchers have for the first time shown that ribose, a sugar that is one of the building blocks of genetic material in living organisms, may have formed in cometary ices. To obtain this result, sc ... more		New tool refines exoplanet search Planet-hunting is an ongoing process that's resulting in the discovery of more and more planets orbiting distant stars. But as the hunters learn more about the variety among the tremendous number of ... more		Cooked planets shrink due to radiation Astrophysicists at the University of Birmingham have used data from the NASA Kepler space telescope to discover a class of extrasolar planets whose atmospheres have been stripped away by their host ... more
				Lunar lava tubes could help pave way for human colony Scientists have found evidence that the Moon's underground could have long tunnels of volcanic origin, which could potentially be repurposed to house human colonies. These channels (also called "lav ... more		More accurately measuring distances between planetary nebulae and Earth A way of estimating more accurate distances to the thousands of so-called "planetary nebulae" dispersed across our Galaxy has just been announced by a team of three astronomers based at the Universi ... more

Glass beads, meteorite fragments hold secret to working on asteroids The secret to planetary formation and working on asteroids lies in a handful of glass beads and meteorite fragments. These materials are the main component for the Astromaterials Research and ... more		Stars strip away atmospheres of nearby super-Earths Even a super-Earth can fly too close to the sun, according to a new study. An international team of astronomers has found a new category of planets beyond our solar system whose atmosphere has been ... more		Russia offers to extend nuclear arms limits with US Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sign mutual defense pact Brazil, Chile sign defense agreement		SwRI-led team identifies clathrate ices in comet 67P For decades, scientists have agreed that comets are mostly water ice, but what kind of ice - amorphous or crystalline - is still up for debate. Looking at data obtained by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft i ... more
				Solar storm researchers prepare for the 'big one' with new urgency The specter of a geomagnetic solar storm with the ferocity to disrupt communications satellites, knock out GPS systems, shut down air travel and quench lights, computers and telephones in millions o ... more		Behemoth black hole found in an unlikely place Astronomers have uncovered a near-record breaking supermassive black hole, weighing 17 billion suns, in an unlikely place: in the center of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe. The ... more

Human 2 Mars Conference May 17-19 2016 - Washington DC

Military Network Modernization 2016 - Washington DC - April 25-27

Space Tech Expo - Design - Build - Test - Pasadena CA - May 24-26, 2016

The World's Largest Commercial Drone Conference and Expo - Sept 7-9 - Las Vegas

Directed Energy And Next Generation Munitions - 20-22 June - Washington DC

When will a neutron star collapse to a black hole Neutron stars are the most extreme and fascinating objects known to exist in our universe: Such a star has a mass that is up to twice that of the sun but a radius of only a dozen kilometres: hence i ... more		Saturn spacecraft not affected by hypothetical Planet 9 Contrary to recent reports, NASA's Cassini spacecraft is not experiencing unexplained deviations in its orbit around Saturn, according to mission managers and orbit determination experts at NASA's J ... more		Ex-US climate envoy: Trump threatening 'consensus science' worldwide How did an Indian zoo get the world's most endangered great ape? Australian scientists grapple with 'despicable' butterfly heist		Space weather satellite ICON on course for summer 2017 launch NASA's newest space weather research satellite, the Ionospheric Connection Explorer, is on course for a summer 2017 launch after UC Berkeley scientists and their colleagues shipped its four instrume ... more
The colour-changing comet Rosetta's comet has been seen changing colour and brightness in front of the ESA orbiter's eyes, as the Sun's heat strips away the older surface to reveal fresher material. Rosetta's Visible and Inf ... more		Young, unattached Jupiter analog found in solar neighborhood A team of astronomers from Carnegie and the University of Western Ontario has discovered one of the youngest and brightest free-floating, planet-like objects within relatively close proximity to the ... more		GenDyn completes Space Fence radar array structure The construction and walk-through of a 7,000 square-foot ground radar array structure for the Space Fence system has been completed by General Dynamics. ... more		The 'R' in RNA is likely abundant in space, scientists say By simulating conditions in space, scientists in France say they found ribose - the 'R' in RNA - is potentially present throughout the universe. ... more

	RadioAstron Observations of the Extremely Hot Heart of Quasar 3C 273 The space mission RadioAstron employing a 10-meter radio telescope on board of the Russian satellite Spektr-R has revealed the first look at the finest structure of the radio emitting regions in the ... more		Supermassive black holes may be lurking everywhere in the universe A near-record supermassive black hole discovered in a sparse area of the local universe indicates that these monster objects - this one equal to 17 billion suns - may be more common than once though ... more

What to look for in China and Europe's climate plans

Chinese firms pay price of jihadist strikes against Mali junta

EU states agree broad UN emissions target avoiding 'embarrassment'

Physicists discover rare brown dwarf, essential for testing theoretical models		Searching for Far Out and Wandering Worlds		Galaxy with a huge black hole is a hermit		NASA celebrates 25 years of breakthrough gamma-ray science		Proof that ancient supernovae zapped Earth sparks hunt for after effects
Changing the color of single photons in a diamond quantum memory		Gravitational waves offer insights into galaxy evolution and mergers		An Oasis in the brown dwarf desert - astronomers surprised, relieved		ALMA's most detailed image of a protoplanetary disc		Andromeda's first spinning neutron star

Record-breaking steel could be used for body armor, shields for satellites

How deep does life go?

Asteroid-Hunting Spacecraft Delivers a Second Year of Data

WVU astrophysicists part of gravitational wave search

Planet formation in Earth-like orbit around a young star

Simulating supermassive black holes

Hubble's journey to the center of our galaxy

Elusive Japanese black hole seeking satellite breaks silence

One year on station at Ceres

Researchers demonstrate a new way to characterize twisted light

Electronic counterpart to ecological models revealed

NASA's Spitzer Maps Climate Patterns on a Super-Earth

New use for X-rays: A radar gun for unruly atoms

Magnetar could have boosted explosion of extremely bright supernova

'Smoothed' light will help search for Earth's twins

UWM to continue operating IceCube Neutrino Observatory

INTEGRAL sets limits on gamma rays from merging black holes

Trigger for Milky Way's Youngest Supernova Identified

The Moon thought to play a major role in maintaining Earth's magnetic field

Eindhoven and Mexican researchers prove Huygens was right

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