Discover the brightest galaxy in the cosmos

Imagine what it would be three hundred billion (10 ^ 12) suns. If you look directly to our central star can blind us forever, the thought of a brilliant mass of this caliber is unimaginable. Well that's WISE J224607.57-052635.0. It is not the friendliest in the world name, but it is the brightest galaxy ever seen by mankind in our universe. And it has been recently discovered by the space telescope WISE, which has cataloged this and other giants like within a new category called ELIRGs or extremely bright infrared galaxies. These are the most luminous galaxies in the known space. And of them, this is the queen of all.

Photo: NASA

This is the brightest galaxy

The brightest galaxy in the universe is very, very far from here. We've detected only through the issuance of its infrared light. And the data, the researchers believe is a mass mammoth with a monstrous black hole at its center. So very huge and colossal revolves around a disk of matter heated plasma composed of billions of degrees. The amount of energy emitted such an object is simply indescribable. High energy jets consist of X-rays, visible light and ultraviolet. But if so, should not we see the visible light? At the end of the day, it is the brightest galaxy in the universe, observe how the galaxy was made 12.5 million añoses a galaxy right? Well, the visible light actually strikes the dust clouds around, warming.It is these that transmit infrared light outside. And it is thanks to that that WISE has detected the galaxy. WISE telescope carries the universe in infrared observing only since 2010. Since then discovered for the first time ELIRGs, galaxies hitherto never observed and are characterized by extremely bright. According to calculations, the light has traveled about 12.5 billion years to reach us, so we're seeing a galaxy of long ago. Yet even then this galaxy had a black hole equivalent to billions of solar masses about our sun and has since gone ten million years. Now simply it has to be tremendous.

ELIRGs and evolution of the universe

How can black holes become so huge? There are several hypotheses about which are the subject of study in this research and other partners. First, it could be that his "seed" was exceptionally large. That is, that the black hole from which embryonic were already huge. Much more than was thought until now. The other two explanations, as discussed from NASA involve breaking or forcing some laws on the limits of black holes. Specifically, it is explaining the Eddington limit which is the maximum size that should be able to reach a black hole feeding on surrounding matter. This limit, explained, "The ELIRGs are among the objects discovered more recently" has been overcome in other specific occasions. But achieving such a size required to "break the limit" several times.

On the other hand, the black hole could be feeding material much faster than expected (and what they thought could happen), forcing its growth limit. In any case, astrophysicists are fascinated with the implications this has on the cosmic evolution of galaxies. The ELIRGs are very new galactic objects, still not well understood and that keep many mysteries. Mysteries universally, that is. Understanding how it appears, how they develop and how they will end you can tell us much of our universe. So far, only they have been discovered about 20 ELIRGs, including the brightest galaxy is cosmos. But we have only begun to explore this aspect of the sky. There are still many surprises waiting in between the huge black holes and galaxies brighter.

Source(in spanish):http://hipertextual.com

NASA's plan to send a digital message to other beings on the spaceship 'New Horizons'

A team of researchers, professors, artists and engineers has proposed to NASA to rise an interstellar message to the New Horizons spacecraft, which is about Pluto.

This project, known as One Earth Message (The Message of the Earth), is being led by Jon Lomberg, who was design director for the gold discs that were placed aboard the Voyager spacecraft of NASA prior to release 1977, with the idea of ​​showing any aliens that might intercept the probes how humankind and its planet. We will never know if our initiative will reach extraterrestrials, but we do know that the people of Earth to participate can literally change your life.

 The goal now is similar, but the new project would be a more global and collaborative effort, asking people worldwide to contribute pictures, sounds and ideas for this 'message in a bottle'. "This is really an opportunity to try to think of ourselves from a broad perspective," said Lomberg to Space.com. "We will never know if our initiative will reach extraterrestrials, but we do know that the people of Earth to participate and play a role in it, you can literally change your life"

 Unlike metal discs with recordings of Voyager, Earth Message One would be digital. The space agency has expressed his enthusiasm, but has yet to officially approve it, Lomberg said. To have the approval, it will be allowed to team up 150 megabytes of data to the memory of the New Horizons spacecraft.

The message would have the same amount of information as the gold records Voyager, maybe 100 pictures and about an hour of audio, Lomberg said. "We are writing a haiku, not a novel," he said. The digital format allow this message to be more flexible and integrated than was possible with gold records, Lomberg added. For example, the message can be changed over time by transmitting more files to New Horizons. It could also include a map of the world, and every image and sound could be labeled the place from which it came. There is another key difference between messages Voyager and New Horizons: While gold records carry information chosen by a small committee (which was chaired by astronomer Carl Sagan), One Earth Message be composed and funded with contributions from people all the world. "It is not just a photo contest" Lomberg said. "It's a process that will find out what people want to send." Lomberg and his colleagues hope to raise at least half a million people around the world through a campaign of Fiat Physica, to build and maintain a Web presence and to find the best way to program the message.


Source (in spanish):http://www.20minutos.es

NASA may have found a way to travel as fast as in 'Star Trek'

Fly to the moon in FOUR hours: The British scientist who says he's found the secret of Star Trek's 'warp speed'

Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Star Trek or a Star Wars film will know how it works.

The good guys are minding their business in outer space when suddenly the Klingons or the Dark Empire bear down on them out of nowhere.

There is only one way out. At the flick of a switch, our heroes are flashed — in a blur of passing stars — to safety elsewhere in the universe. 

Call it warp drive or a hyper drive, it adds up to the same thing: a miraculous power source that allows a spacecraft to fly at unimaginable speeds.

But while it’s so far confined to the realms of sci-fi, the concept could become reality.

U.S. space agency Nasa is thought to have successfully tested a revolutionary new power source that could enable spacecraft to travel to the Moon in just four hours instead of more than three days and to Mars in two or three weeks instead of seven months.

Compact enough to fit into a suitcase, this whizzy new device could — it is claimed — keep flying for eons, at the equivalent of an astonishing 450 million miles an hour.

Load up the spacecraft, we’re all off for a long weekend on Venus!

The invention fuelling such hopes is called an electromagnetic drive or EmDrive — and it’s powered by a device similar to that found in a microwave oven.

It was invented by British scientist Roger Shawyer, who has endured years of ridicule since he unveiled it nearly a decade ago.

Critics insisted his invention was a scientific impossibility because it broke one of the basic laws of physics governing the universe.

This rule is Sir Isaac Newton’s third law: that if you push in one direction, you accelerate in the opposite.

Indeed, every rocket engine ever made has fired burning rocket fuel out behind it, thus powering the craft forward.

But the EmDrive doesn’t use a propellent. It works by converting electric power — from solar panels or a small on-board nuclear reactor — into forward thrust. According to some scientists, it is the ‘impossible drive’.

The scepticism, however, hasn’t stopped EmDrive’s development rights being bought by aircraft giant Boeing and the UK Government funding the early development of Mr Shawyer’s ideas.

Now retired, he acts as a consultant to a British company that is continuing the research, and he says other countries are developing similar designs. In fact, five years ago the Chinese claimed they had built an EmDrive and proved it worked — but no one believed them.

It’s harder to be sceptical when the news comes from Nasa — an organisation that put men on the Moon and sent rockets to Mars.

According to Nasa engineer Paul March, it has conducted the first successful tests of an EmDrive in a vacuum, to recreate the emptiness of outer space.

Some suggest the EmDrive is set to become one of many wonderful British inventions which — for lack of investment and vision — end up being hijacked by someone else.

Examples of this lamentable tendency include the tank, the jet airliner and the programmable electronic computer.

When I tracked down Mr Shawyer to his base in Havant, Hants, he said he was pleased Nasa was ‘having fun’ with his creation and felt some vindication after years of scepticism.

That said, he seemed a bit peeved that the Americans were grabbing all the attention.

An aerospace engineer who worked for the Galileo space project to build a European satnav system, Mr Shawyer unveiled his idea in 2006.

He promised it would not only speed us to new galaxies, but ‘put an end to wings and wheels’ by making traditional forms of transport redundant.

His prototype looks like something sci-fi writer Jules Verne might have dreamt up to blast Victorians to the Moon.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3080846/Fly-moon-FOUR-hours-British-scientist-says-s-secret-Star-Trek-s-wrap-speed.html#ixzz3aApwtKSA

Giant asteroid will pass close to earth

A giant asteroid, measuring over a kilometer across, will pass very close to the Earth on Thursday (May 14, 2015), according to NASA.

asteroid image

The asteroid called 1999-FN53 is the largest object (more than 10 times bigger than other meteorites) currently visible on NASA's Near Earth Object radar.

First discovered in March 1999, will brush close to Earth at a distance of 26.4 lunar distances, about 10 million kilometers from Earth, said NASA.

There are speculations that if the asteroid strikes the Earth, the impact would be catastrophic, leading to the deaths of 1.5 billion people.

According to Bill Napier, a professor of astronomy at the University of Buckinghamshire, if the asteroid were to hit the sea, it would send a plume of halogen gasses into the stratosphere destroying the ozone layer.

“This would allow unrestricted sunlight to hit the Earth, the sky would heat up becoming strong enough to burn vegetation,” he added.

The asteroid 1999-FN53, which is currently dashing through space at a speed of about 14 kilometers per second, is an eighth of the size of Mount Everest.

In March, asteroid 2014-YB35, came within 3 million miles of Earth.

NASA predicted that the next huge asteroid to hurtle past Earth is Icarus, which is also a kilometer across and will fly by our planet on June 16 at just 21 lunar distances.


source:http://zeenews.india.com/news/space/huge-asteroid-to-pass-close-to-earth-on-thursday_1594676.html

Mysterious sound captured by NASA

Eerie sounds from the edge of space were recorded for the first time in 50 years aboard a NASA student balloon experiment.

Infrasound microphones captured the mysterious hisses and whistles 22 miles (36 kilometers) above the Earth's surface last year. Daniel Bowman, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, designed and built the equipment. The instruments eavesdropped on atmospheric infrasound, or sound waves at frequencies below 20 hertz. Infrasound is below human hearing range, but speeding up the recordings makes them audible.

 

The infrasound sensors were dangling from a helium balloon that flew above New Mexico and Arizona on Aug. 9, 2014. The experiment was one of 10 payloads flown last year on the High Altitude Student Platform (HASP). The high-altitude balloon flight is an annual project conducted by NASA and the Louisiana Space Consortium that is meant to spark student interest in space research. Since 2006, HASP has launched more than 70 experiments designed by college students across the United States.

During the 9-hour flight, the balloon and its payloads floated some 450 miles (725 km) and reached a height of more than 123,000 feet (37,500 meters). This is a region of near space — above where airplanes fly, but below the boundary marking the top of the stratosphere, 62 miles (100 km) above the Earth's surface.

No infrasound experiment has ever reached such high altitudes, Bowman said. (Interest in atmospheric infrasound peaked in the 1960s as a way to detect nuclear explosions, but then died off as scientists switched to ground-based sensors.)

As the HASP balloon drifted over New Mexico, the infrasound sensors picked up a knotty mix of signals that the scientists are working to interpret, Bowman reported April 23 at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America in Pasadena, California. The researchers had never "heard" many of the stratospheric signals.

Here are some of their guesses so far: There were signals from a wind farm under the balloon's flight path, crashing ocean waves, wind turbulence, gravity waves, clear air turbulence, and vibrations caused by the balloon cable. The scientists have another payload planned for the 2015 HASP balloon launch, which could help reveal more about strange infrasound sources.

Bowman, who has been building and launching his own high-altitude balloons since high school, hopes that his experiment will revive interest in atmospheric infrasound. "There haven't been acoustic recordings in the stratosphere for 50 years. Surely, if we place instruments up there, we will find things we haven't seen before," he said.

Infrasound carries for long distances. (Think of how the deep rumble of faraway thunder travels farther than a high-pitched lightning crack.) Storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, avalanches and meteors all produce infrasonic sound waves. There's even potential for monitoring clear air turbulence or wake vortices from jets, Bowman said. With his faculty adviser, Jonathan Lees, Bowman hopes to record infrasound above an erupting volcano.

Scientists have even proposed sending infrasound sensors to Mars and Venus, where the microphones could detect unusual weather or earthquakes.

Some natural infrasound signals may be clearest in the atmosphere, noted Omar Marcillo, a geophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who was not involved in the study. The atmosphere refracts some sound waves away from the ground, so some infrasound signals may never reach the ground. In the sky, there is also less interference from human noise.