Recently, water has been found on two of our closest neighbors in space. In fact, the TimesOnline reports that the moon ''has a litre of water for every tonne of soil' I find this to be very interesting. The implications could be far-reaching. What if water were this common throughout the universe? I have even heard talk of certain corporate and government entities wanting to start mining operations on the moon.
Read more on the recent findings of water on our moon and Mars:
According to a recent article on Reuters, astronomers have found a huge hole in the universe where nothing, not even dark matter exists. "A giant hole in the Universe is devoid of galaxies, stars and even lacks dark matter, astronomers said on Thursday.
The team at the University of Minnesota said the void is nearly a billion light-years across and they have no idea why it is there."
The guys over at BEAR (Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio) have released a really interesting video. They placed a camera in a box with radio controls and hooked it up to a large balloon...then they let it go.
The balloon makes it to heights over 100,000 ft. That's roughly 75+ miles, clear into the edge of space. What happens then? You'll have to watch and see.
Excerpt from the BEAR homepage:
"Near space is within the Stratosphere and Ozone layers, from 75,000 feet to the beginning of space at 62.5 miles. The earth's curvature and thin blue layer of atmosphere hugging the earth can easily be seen from here and at 117,000 ft. the horizon is at 460 miles, rather then only 2-3 miles when standing at ground level, and the air pressure is less then 1% of that at sea level. With so little atmosphere there is no filtering of cosmic rays or ultraviolet light, blue sun light is not scattered, the sky is inky black, stars are visible and there's no weather, so always bright and sunny, but very cold at -60 to -90 degrees Fahrenheit."
Gravity...What is it? That's the million dollar question isn't it! As a kid in school you were most likely told that gravity is an attractive force between bodies with mass, and as far as I know that answer still holds true. So why do we also hear that Einstein overturned Newtons theories on Gravity?
This is a question that I have asked myself for some time now. In doing so I have come to a few possible conclusions.
Einstein's theory of General Relativity states that bodies with mass warp the fabric of space. It is almost as if a large body 'displaces' space as it would with water. This is an interesting thought. For instance, it implies that the Earth doesn't pull us towards itself. According to Einsteins theory, it is space itself that pushes us towards the Earths surface.
In a sense, Einstein said that gravity isn't the result of an attractive force between bodies with mass, but that these bodies warped the fabric of space and it was this warped space that has an effect on the other surrounding/passing bodies.
This is all fine and great, but really, how does Einsteins version/concept of gravity explain the effect that our moon has on our tides? It seems clear that the moon pulls on our tides, i.e. our moon has a Newtonian attractive force on our tides.
So what does this mean?
In a nutshell, two separate theories exist. Both theories make verifiable predictions. Both theories are sound but describe two separate phenomenon. Can they both be called gravity? It seems apparent that bodies with mass do in fact warp the fabric of space, and at the same time attract other bodies due to some invisible, yet calculable force. We just lump it all together and call it all gravity.
I believe that gravity needs to be seriously redefined...That is if we can ever figure out what it is! If you have any graduate level astronomy or physics knowledge I would love to hear your replies on this.
As of now, this is fairly breaking news. Google has gone forward with their third UFO related doodle. As of this moment this doodle is not available on the U.S. version of Google. In order to see the doodle, visit the Australian version of the site www.google.com.au. So what do these latest doodles mean?
So what's the reason for these latest 'sightings'
Well, a simple mouse over the new image reveals that H.G. Wells' birthday is the reason for all the hoopla. Good call from the folks at the Guardian:
I am a regular reader of Discover magazine. Over the years I have read many great articles, but recently I read an article that really hit home for me. It was entitled, "Is the universe made of math?" I love working through mathematics problems. I know it sounds weird but to me math seems to speak 'the language' of the cosmos. I can't really explain it but mathematics seems to be much more that what we use it for. Below are two minor papers/notes I wrote on mathematics:
This is a very interesting theory. One that I am following quite closely. "New evidence is suggesting that time is slowly disappearing from our universe, and will one day vanish completely. This radical new theory may explain a cosmological mystery that has baffled scientists for years." states the Daily Galaxy. What does all this mean?
For starters it would mean that our current concept of dark-energy needs to be re-written. And we were all ready to give Einstein credit for his cosmological-constant blunder!
But on a serious note, science is progressive and the models currently being constructed are quite intriguing. Keep in mind this is purely theoretical, but this is the basic idea:
Our universe is expanding (presumably initiating at the big-bang). Now this expansion rate appears to be exponential. In other words, the further out the other galaxy is (the one we are measuring), the faster it is moving away from us. This new theory states that the expansion rate is an illusion. that in reality, it is time that is slowing down.
What happens next?
Well, for us nothing. But according to this theory, eventually time will just stop...The End.
"The planet, called CoRoT-7b, is the first planet beyond our solar system with a proven density similar to Earth's, astronomers say. Most known exoplanets are large gas giants like Jupiter." According to a recent article on space.com scientists have located the first known rocky planet orbiting another star. This is a huge breakthrough but I expect most astronomers are really not that surprised. There is undoubtedly a huge number of planets within the vast expanse of the cosmos. I can even safely assume that there are many Earth like planets - somewhere.
What does this mean for us?
Well, for now, not much. We can at least have the knowledge that there are other planets out there. This in itself gives us more hope that there are Earth like planets to be found too.
The real problem comes when you try to establish a means to travel to these other planets. Even if we found a way to travel at the constant velocity of 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light), we would still be ages away from reaching any of these planets. In fact, let's just assume we found a planet on the other end of our own Milkyway galaxy. Traveling at the speed of light it would take around 100,000 years to arrive!
I would like to hear your thoughts on these matters. If we do find other planets capable of supporting life, should we think it is a big deal, even if we can never go there in our lifetime?
Example:
What if: Another civilization arose on a distant planet long before we did and already figured out how to beat the speed-of-light problem or even possibly the time-travel paradoxes.
Between 1949 and 1961 the gravity of planet Jupiter grabbed the comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu and held it in orbit. Scientists say that this will happen again within a few decades. So what happened to the comet once it left Jupiter's orbit?
"...comet Kushida-Muramatsu eventually escaped Jupiter's gravity. It currently circles the sun in the solar system's asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter." (http://news.nationalgeographic.com)
The comets orbital path around Jupiter
The comet orbited the planet twice before being flung out into space. The estimated path of comet Kushida-Muramatsu:
Search engine giant Google often times will replace their standard logo with a Doodle. These doodles generally represent Holidays or some other important event. Recently Google featured UFO related artwork on two of their doodles. I have spent a lot of time staring at the skies and I have never seen a UFO, so needless to say I am not really a believer. Nonetheless, even non-ufologists can speculate on the meaning(s) of these latest doodles.
Doodle one:
Doodle two:
An interesting note is that on each doodle, an individual letter is missing (or being removed). Apparently we will learn what this means sometime next week.
