The Sky Tonight

April 29, 2016

Hiding in the Sunshine: The Search for Other Earths
Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 29, 2016
We humans might not be the only ones to ponder our place in the universe. If intelligent aliens do roam the cosmos, they too might ask a question that has gripped humans for centuries: Are we alone? These aliens might even have giant space telescopes dedicated to studying distant planets and searching for life. Should one of those telescopes capture an image of our blue marble of a planet, evidence of forests and plentiful creatures would jump out as simple chemicals: oxygen, ozone, water and methane. ... read more

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On the Road to Finding Other Earths Scientists are getting closer to finding worlds that resemble our own "blue marble" of a planet. NASA's Kepler mission alone has confirmed more than 1,000 planets outside our solar system - a handfu ... more		Superfast light source made from artificial atom All light sources work by absorbing energy - for example, from an electric current - and emit energy as light. But the energy can also be lost as heat and it is therefore important that the light so ... more		Elektra: A New Triple Asteroid Astronomers have discovered a new satellite orbiting the main belt asteroid (130) Elektra - the smallest object visible in this image. The team, led by Bin Yang (ESO, Santiago, Chile), imaged it usi ... more
				Fermi Telescope helps link cosmic neutrino to blazar blast Nearly 10 billion years ago, the black hole at the center of a galaxy known as PKS B1424-418 produced a powerful outburst. Light from this blast began arriving at Earth in 2012. Now astronomers usin ... more		Are we alone? Setting some limits to our uniqueness Are humans unique and alone in the vast universe? This question - summed up in the famous Drake equation - has for a half-century been one of the most intractable and uncertain in science. But ... more

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

Could Earth's light blue color be a signature of life? In 1990, Voyager 1 captured the most distant portrait of our planet ever taken, revealing that from beyond Pluto's orbit, Earth appears as nothing more than a "pale blue dot." In a new study, resear ... more		Japan abandons $250mn black hole satellite Japan is abandoning a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar satellite it sent to study black holes, disappointed space scientists said Thursday, after spending a month trying to save it. ... more		Russia offers to extend nuclear arms limits with US Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sign mutual defense pact Brazil, Chile sign defense agreement		Discovering the bath scum on Titan It's not everyday that you get to discover something new. But when you do it is a rather strange and quite brilliant feeling. You don't really cry out 'Eureka' (there's usually about a million thing ... more
				Profile of a methane sea on Titan Saturn's largest moon is covered in seas and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons - and one sea has now been found to be filled with pure methane, with a seabed covered by a sludge of organic-rich material, ... more		Hydrothermal systems show spectrum of extreme life on Earth The Danakil Depression in Ethiopia is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Water at near-boiling temperatures bubbles up from underground, high salt concentrations create multi-colored stru ... more

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

Transition from Operations to Decommissioning by Preparing a Safe, Cost-Effective Shut Down and Waste Management Strategy

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

Einstein's theory of relativity faces satellite test Einstein's theory of general relativity is to be put to the test by a newly launched satellite in an experiment that could upend our understanding of physics. ... more		Dutch-German impulse for gravitational wave research Prof. Dr. Karsten Danzmann, director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover and Prof. Dr. Stan Bentvelsen, director of the National Institute for Subatomic Physics have si ... 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		Physicists detect the enigmatic spin momentum of light Ever since Kepler's observation in the 17th century that sunlight is one of the reasons that the tails of comets to always face away from the sun, it has been understood that light exerts pressure i ... more
The atom without properties The microscopic world is governed by the rules of quantum mechanics, where the properties of a particle can be completely undetermined and yet strongly correlated with those of other particles. Phys ... more		First rocket made ready for launch at Vostochny spaceport A Soyuz-2.1a carrier rocket has been installed at Russia's new Vostochny Cosmodrome's launch site ahead of its first space launch, Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said Saturday in a statemen ... more		Zip software can detect the quantum-classical boundary Quantum physics has a reputation for being mysterious and mathematically challenging. That makes it all the more surprising that a new technique to detect quantum behaviour relies on a familiar tool ... more		New nanodevice shifts light's color at single-photon level Converting a single photon from one color, or frequency, to another is an essential tool in quantum communication, which harnesses the subtle correlations between the subatomic properties of photons ... more

	Dark matter does not contain certain axion-like particles Researchers at Stockholm University are getting closer to corner light dark-matter particle models. Observations can rule out some axion-like particles in the quest for the content of dark matter. T ... more		Cosmic beacons reveal the Milky Way's ancient core An international team of astronomers led by Dr. Andrea Kunder of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) in Germany has discovered that the central 2,000 light-years within the Milky Wa ... 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'

Kepler spacecraft recovered and returned to the K2 Mission		Herschel captures galactic panorama of the Milky Way		Microscopic 'clocks' time distance to source of galactic cosmic rays		Hubble sees a star 'inflating' a giant bubble		Microscopic 'timers' reveal likely source of galactic space radiation
Nearby supernova ashes continue to rain on Earth		Numerical simulations shed new light on early universe		Students observe damaged Hitomi X-ray satellite and debris		Thanks, actin, for the memories		In these microbes, iron works like oxygen

New Ceres Images Show Bright Craters

Fermi telescope poised to pin down gravitational wave sources

Probing the transforming world of neutrinos

NJIT high-resolution images capture a solar flare as it unfolds

Sorting the wheat from the chaff

Physicist analyzes first electron neutrino data from NOvA Experiment

HAWC Gamma-Ray Observatory's reveals the very-high-energy sky

A Space Spider Watches Over Young Stars

Lone planetary-mass object found in family of stars

NASA missions measure solar flare from 2 spots in space

Inside the fiery furnace

Little Lander That Could: The Legacy of Philae

NASA's Fermi telescope poised to pin down gravitational wave sources

Y Marks the Spot

Comets in the "X"-treme

New hypervelocity binary star challenges dark matter, stellar acceleration models

SDO captures images of a mid-level solar flare

Meteorites arrive at NASA's Johnson Space Center

Europa's heaving ice might make more heat than scientists thought

University of Massachusetts Lowell PICTURE-B Mission Completed

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