Universe Today

Black holes are thought to exist throughout the universe, with the largest and most massive found at the centers of the largest galaxies. These supermassive black holes have been shown to have masses upwards of one billion times that of our own Sun. But an astronomer studying black holes says there's an upper limit to how big a black hole can get. Priyamvada Natarajan, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University has shown that even the biggest of these gravitational monsters can’t keep growing forever. Instead, they appear to curb their own growth – once they accumulate about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun.
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Filed under: Black Holes | 22 Comments »

OK, I've just wasted an hour in simulated space, checking out some of the active and junked satellites orbiting our planet. Google Earth can be an addictive thing at the best of times, but when 13,000 of the satellites in Earth orbit can be viewed by a new plug-in for the program, you may find yourself hooked for longer than usual. The United States Strategic Command keeps very close tabs on what is orbiting our planet and where they are at any given time, and now with the help of Google Earth, you can explore the satellites, plot their orbital trajectories and see just how crowded space can be. Never before have geostationary communication satellites been so interesting!
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Filed under: Earth, Earth Observation, Satellites | 2 Comments »

We don't mean to beat a dead horse – both Fraser and Ian have already covered this topic quite thoroughly — but just in case anyone still has any fears about the Large Hadron Collider meaning the end of the world, a new report published today provides the most comprehensive evidence available to confirm that the LHC's switch-on, due on Wednesday next week, poses no threat to mankind. A copy of the report is available HERE. In a nutshell, it says nature's own cosmic rays regularly produce more powerful particle collisions than those planned within the LHC, and nothing bad has happened to Earth from those quite natural and frequent events. The LHC will be studying nature's laws in controlled experiments. So just relax and watch the LHC rap video.
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Filed under: Physics | 25 Comments »

This has to be the sexiest looking spacecraft ever built by humankind. No, it's not a starship or battle cruiser (although it does look a little like the Eagle spacecraft from the old television show Space: 1999). This sleek, slender, sexy, shiny and sophisticated spacecraft is an Earth-orbiting satellite that will investigate our planet's gravitational field and map the reference shape of our planet – the geoid – with unprecedented resolution and accuracy. GOCE, or the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer is scheduled to launch on Wed. September 10 at 16:21 CEST (14:21 UTC). Why such a sleek design? As GOCE Systems Manager Michael Fehringer says, "Form follows function not only in the world of fashion! To fly low and avoid air drag, the best shape for the satellite to be is long, slender and absolutely symmetrical along the direction of flight."
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Filed under: Earth Observation, Satellites | 15 Comments »

Greetings, fellow Skywatchers! The weekend has arrived at last and with it… more lunar challenge studies. Are you ready to dance with the pie-eyed piper as we seek out Piccolomini? You'll find it to the southwest of the shallow ring of Fracastorius on Mare Nectaris' southern shore. How about seeing double as we take on a few binary stars? It's time to get out your binoculars and telescopes as we head to the Moon because… Here's what's up! Click to continue…

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Pamela left Fraser behind (with sorrow) and took on Dragon*Con and the facts (or lack there of) in Science Fiction. Helping her out were special guests Phil Plait and Kevin Grazier.

Click here to download the episode.

Or subscribe to: astronomycast.com/podcast.xml with your podcatching software.

Science Fiction at Dragon*Con with Plait and Grazier show notes.

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This week, the Carnival of Space is over at Free Space, the blog of Irene Klotz, a correspondent with Discovery News.

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #69

And if you're interested in looking back, here's an archive to all the past carnivals of space. If you've got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to carnivalofspace@gmail.com, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let me know if you can be a host, and I'll schedule you into the calendar.

Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.

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The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation provides the eclectic radio show Quirks & Quarks. In it, the hosts serve up hot scientific topics using everyday language so that a general audience can appreciate the significance of recently unravelled marvels. Using the same approach, Jim Lebans presents his book, ' The Quirks and Quarks Guide to Space – 42 Questions (and Answers) About Life, the Universe, and Everything'. And so, with some irreverence and tongue slightly in cheek, Lebans lays in print details of space for the mere mortals amongst us.
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Filed under: Book Reviews | 2 Comments »

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has imaged a faint, partial ring orbiting with one small moon of Saturn, and has confirmed the presence of another partial ring orbiting with a second moon. This is further evidence that most of the planet's small, inner moons orbit within partial or complete rings. Recent Cassini images show material, called ring arcs, extending ahead of and behind the small moons Anthe and Methone in their orbits. The new findings indicate that the gravitational influence of nearby moons on ring particles might be the deciding factor in whether an arc or complete ring is formed.
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NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has a fork-like conductivity probe on it's robotic arm, and results from the instrument are presenting a bit of a quandary for mission scientists. The thermal and electroconductivity probe has sensed humidity rising and falling in the air the near the lander, but when stuck into the ground, its measurements so far indicate soil that is thoroughly and perplexingly dry. "If you have water vapor in the air, every surface exposed to that air will have water molecules adhere to it that are somewhat mobile, even at temperatures well below freezing," said Aaron Zent, lead scientist for the probe. While Phoenix has other tools to find clues about whether water ice at the site has melted in the past, the conductivity probe is the main tool for checking for present-day soil moisture.
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Filed under: Mars, Missions | 23 Comments »

Thursday afternoon space shuttle Atlantis rolled out to Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, making it's slow 5.1 km (3.2 mile) journey along the crawlerway from the Vehicle Assembly Building. NASA mission managers cleared the shuttle’s move after a weather briefing on the status of Tropical Storm Hanna which determined the storm would remain far enough off shore to not cause any problems for the shuttle exposed out on the pad. Atlantis' seven-member crew are set for an equipment test Friday at Kennedy in preparation for their mission to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope has already rewritten the books on astronomy and will remain operational for at least another five years following the upgrades. Atlantis is targeted to launch Oct. 8 on mission STS-125. However, another hurricane, Ike, lurks out in the waters of the Atlantic, and could cause problems. But NASA is betting it won't turn north and head for Florida.
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We already know that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the biggest, most expensive physics experiment ever carried out by mankind. Colliding relativistic particles at energies previously unimaginable (up to the 14 TeV mark by the end of the decade) will generate millions of particles (known and as yet to be discovered), that need to be tracked and characterized by huge particle detectors. This historic experiment will require a massive data collection and storage effort, re-writing the rules of data handling. Every five seconds, LHC collisions will generate the equivalent of a DVD-worth of data, that's a data production rate of one gigabyte per second. To put this into perspective, an average household computer with a very good connection may be able to download data at a rate of one or two megabytes per second (if you are very lucky! I get 500 kilobytes/second). So, LHC engineers have designed a new kind of data handling method that can store and distribute petabytes (million-gigabytes) of data to LHC collaborators worldwide (without getting old and grey whilst waiting for a download).
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Filed under: Physics, Science | 17 Comments »

Because of stalled legislation that is needed to allow NASA to pay the Russian Space Agency to ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station on board the Soyuz spacecraft, the US section of the space station may have to go unmanned in at least part of 2012. In an interview with CBS's Bill Harwood, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said because of the of the three-year lead time needed to build Soyuz vehicles, contracts must be in place by early 2009. But because of Russia's invasion of Georgia, Congress is unlikely to extend an exemption that allows money to be paid to Russia for high technology goods. Griffin said the problem is very serious, and new legislation would have to be approved within the next few weeks to prevent an interruption in NASA astronauts being on board the ISS.
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Filed under: NASA, Space Station | 39 Comments »

If an alien species wanted to communicate with Earthlings, or any other civilization that might be out there, how might they do it? Some have proposed microwaves, neutrinos or lasers, or even moving stars around into patterns. But why wouldn't aliens just use the internet? The Cepheid Galactic Internet, that is. A group of scientists has proposed that a sufficiently advanced civilization could use Cephied variable stars as beacons to transmit information throughout the galaxy and beyond. These stars can be seen from long distances and, the scientists say, any technologically advanced civilization would likely observe Cepheids as distance markers. The group of physicists and astronomers from Hawaii and California propose that Cepheids and any other regular variable stars should be searched for signs of phase modulation and patterns which could be indicative of intentional signaling.
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Filed under: SETI | 31 Comments »

Last year, students from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) were set one of the best coursework projects I've ever heard of. The project title was called "Design for extreme environments" and it was sponsored by NASA. By extreme environments, we are talking about the Moon, and by design, we are talking about arriving at new concepts as to how to prevent lunar dust contamination inside future lunar habitats. Since the task was first set, the enthusiastic RSID team have arrived at a concept that NASA will be using in the planning of the 2020 return to the lunar surface…
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Filed under: Moon, NASA | 13 Comments »