The Sky Tonight

April 17, 2016

Sorting the wheat from the chaff
Munich, Germany (SPX) Apr 18, 2016
Physicists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich report that temperature gradients within pores in rock could have separated primitive biopolymers on the basis of their sequences - a vital precondition for the formation of self-replicating systems in the primordial ocean. The earliest phase in the process that gave rise to living organisms on our planet is thought to have involved selective interactions between simple prebiotic molecules that enabled them to form progressively more ... read more

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Inside the fiery furnace Galaxies, it seems, are sociable animals and they like to gather together in large groups, known as clusters. Actually it's gravity that holds the galaxies in the cluster close together as a single ... more		UCF gets grant to plan for space mining on NASA mission UCF physics professor Dan Britt has been named to the New Horizons mission team as the spacecraft heads to the Kuiper Belt. He's also just landed a grant to help create fake asteroid material, which ... more		Hidden galaxy found in ALMA gravitational lens image Researchers have uncovered the existence of a dwarf "dark galaxy" lurking nearly 4 billion light-years away from Earth. The discovery was made when a team of researchers, including astronomers at th ... more
				A single ion impacts a million water molecules Water is simple and complex at the same time. A single water molecule (H20) is made up of only 3 atoms. Yet the collective behavior of water molecules is unique and continues to amaze us. Water mole ... more		Russia to shift all Lunar launches to Vostochny Cosmodrome Russia will stop using the Soviet-era Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for lunar launches, according to Russian-based Rocket and Space Corporation (RSC Energia). Moscow made the decision to s ... more

Saturn Spacecraft Samples Interstellar Dust NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected the faint but distinct signature of dust coming from beyond our solar system. The research, led by a team of Cassini scientists primarily from Europe, is publi ... more		Supernova iron found on the moon A dying star ends its life in a cataclysmic explosion, shooting the majority of the star's material, primarily new chemical elements created during the explosion, out into space. One or more such su ... more		Russia offers to extend nuclear arms limits with US Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sign mutual defense pact Brazil, Chile sign defense agreement		New hypervelocity binary star challenges dark matter, stellar acceleration models A team of astronomers at the Friedrich Alexander University led by Peter Nemeth has discovered a binary star moving nearly at the escape velocity of our galaxy. There are about two dozen so-called h ... more
				Calcium isotope holds the secret to the mass of neutrinos Scientists around the world are being kept in suspense by the negligible mass of neutrinos, subatomic particles that could be matter and antimatter at the same time. Now, researchers from the Univer ... more		Are cosmic rays the key to galaxy formation The new Junior Research Group "High Energy Astrophysics and Cosmology" (HAC) has now started at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS). HITS astrophysicist Dr. Christoph Pfrommer ha ... 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

1917 astronomical plate has first-ever evidence of exoplanetary system You can never predict what treasure might be hiding in your own basement. We didn't know it a year ago, but it turns out that a 1917 image on an astronomical glass plate from our Carnegie Observator ... more		How to reach Alpha Centauri in just 20 years 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. ... 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		Three-way battles in the quantum world When water in a pot is slowly heated to the boil, an exciting duel of energies takes place inside the liquid. On the one hand there is the interaction energy that wants to keep the water molecules t ... more
Study finds unexpected long-range particle interactions Moving bodies can be attracted to each other, even when they're quite far apart and separated by many other objects: That, in a nutshell, is the somewhat unexpected finding by a team of researchers ... more		Quantum effects affect the best superconductor The theoretical results of a piece of international research published in Nature, whose first author is Ion Errea, a researcher at the UPV/EHU and DIPC, suggest that the quantum nature of hydrogen ( ... more		ORNL neutron 'splashes' reveal signature of exotic particles Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory used neutrons to uncover novel behavior in materials that holds promise for quantum computing. The findings, published in Natu ... more		Exotic quantum effects can govern the chemistry around us Objects of the quantum world are of a concealed and cold-blooded nature: they usually behave in a quantum manner only when they are significantly cooled and isolated from the environment. Experiment ... 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		The Missing Brown Dwarfs When re-analysing catalogued and updated observational data of brown dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood, astronomers from Potsdam have found that a significant number of nearby brown dwarfs should st ... 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'

Mysterious alignment of black holes discovered		Artificial comet holds clues to the origin of life		Changing the color of single photons in a diamond quantum memory		New tool refines exoplanet search		Solar storm researchers prepare for the 'big one' with new urgency
Cooked planets shrink due to radiation		Lunar lava tubes could help pave way for human colony		More accurately measuring distances between planetary nebulae and Earth		Behemoth black hole found in an unlikely place		Glass beads, meteorite fragments hold secret to working on asteroids

When will a neutron star collapse to a black hole

Saturn spacecraft not affected by hypothetical Planet 9

SwRI-led team identifies clathrate ices in comet 67P

Gravitational waves offer insights into galaxy evolution and mergers

Space weather satellite ICON on course for summer 2017 launch

The colour-changing comet

Young, unattached Jupiter analog found in solar neighborhood

GenDyn completes Space Fence radar array structure

The 'R' in RNA is likely abundant in space, scientists say

An Oasis in the brown dwarf desert - astronomers surprised, relieved

Supermassive black holes may be lurking everywhere in the universe

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

ALMA's most detailed image of a protoplanetary disc

RadioAstron Observations of the Extremely Hot Heart of Quasar 3C 273

Andromeda's first spinning neutron star

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

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