Astronomy: Tonite Trio Saturn, Moon and Star Spica Triple Threat

CREDIT: Starry Night Software

From Denny:  Does this month get any better?  We have a Super Moon on Saturday too.  Tonight, 3 May 2012, is a special treat for skywatchers about an hour after the sun sets.  Look up in the sky and you will get the special eye candy treat to behold a rare beautiful sight: a triple conjunction of the planet Saturn, the bright star Spica and our moon.

Astronomy: Sky Watch Biggest 2012 Super Moon Saturday

Photo by Tim McCord in Entiat, Washington on 19 March 2011

From Denny:  Look up in the night sky this weekend for the most awesome extra-large and extra-bright moon viewing for the entire year of 2012.  The spectacular Super Moon will be showing off its size and brightness on 5 May 2012 at 11:35PM EDT.  It will swing in closer at 221,802 miles (356,955 kilometers) from Earth.

Why will the moon appear to be so large and bright?  Turns out this month's full moon also coincides with the time when the moon is closest in its approach to Earth, called the moon's perigee.

Another factor for this Super Moon show is because the perigee in this month will be the closest to Earth of any for this year, varying only by three percent.  How is that so?  According to meteorologist Joe Rao, Space.com's skywatching columnist, "it happens because the moon's orbit is not perfectly circular."

How much brighter will the Super Moon be this month?  Try an extra 16 percent brighter than average.  Now that makes for great skywatching, even with the naked peepers (eyes).

2 Ideas: What Happened to Our Moons Magnetic Personality?

Apollo 11 mission in July 1969.

From Denny:  Apollo missions astronauts landed on the moon back in the 60's and 70's, gifting Earth's scientists with loads of moon rocks when they returned from their harrowing journeys.

Scientists were shocked to discover those rocks displayed magnetic properties.  How could that be?

They also figured out that some of those moon rocks could possess magnetic north and south as well as individual magnetic fields.  That sure started some serious scientific head scratching as to how this could be a fact.

Video: How Weird Would Earth Look with Saturns Rings?

From Denny: This was a curious video I ran across today on Digg. Someone decided to do an artist's rendering of what Earth might look like if we had the rings of Saturn. It's a bit disorienting, amusing and even eerily beautiful to see the images of various cities around the world with how the rings would look in their skyline.

If our night skies looked different all these centuries can you imagine how our religions and mythology stories might have taken a far different track from this astronomical influence?

Take a look at this wonderful video:



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Video: Greenlands Ice Melt to Create Colossal Oceans Rise Worldwide

From Denny: Great. Here we go again with the Doomsday reports. This one is trumpeting that if the ice on Greenland melts at a rapid rate we will see oceans rising at a colossol rate the world over.

Well, for the past 30 years this scientist has been studying the local ice, gasses and sediment trapped in the ice from the time of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompei. Much of the ice he studies is snow that fell over 60,000 years ago! His studies have taught him how the Earth's climate has changed over a long period of time.

Greenland's ice has gone through dramatic change in the past decade. Today the ice is 4500 feet shorter and a lot thinner. Clearly, the times they are a changing. All right, everyone, let's starting ordering the moving vans. All together now: moving to higher ground! (just like our ancestors probably did...)

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Top 10 Most Remote Extreme Observatories in the World

Photo of the South Pole Telescope at sunset by NSF (U.S. National Science Foundation)

From Denny: Brrrrr! Check out this article on the Top 10 Extreme Observatories in the world. Some of these stargazing facilities are truly one of a kind places around the globe. Remember, this is the Year of Astronomy.

This is the South Pole Telescope on the Antarctic Plateau where this place is so barren it sits atop a two mile thick glacier supporting little life.

What is their job down here in cold land? They are measuring cosmic background radiation that's been traveling for billions of years through space and is now bombarding Earth all over the place.

So, why here for this job? This barren place is perfect because you get a clear sky with very little, sometimes, no, moisture. That moisture can absorb the light.

What that amounts to is that this special place is like a perfect window out into space with a clear view without the expense and bother of having to leave the planet to get the same results. Not bad! Just don't go putting up a row of fast food chains, guys, as we all know that civilization lights are bad for stargazing...



Photo of Svalbard EISCAT system (European Incoherent Scatter)

Remember hearing about the Doomsday Seed Vault located in Norway in case the world ended and we had to start over again? Yep, located in one inhospitable place in the Arctic Ocean! There are more polar bears than human in this frigid place, about 2100 humans to 2500 polar bears if you want the count. They study the auroral ionosphere here since those famous romantic northern lights are best visible in far northern locations. These scientists spend all their time observing the aurora borealis (northern lights) as they best reveal the interactions of the sun and Earth relationship in the atmosphere.

There are some really cool places and studies going on all over this planet! Let's see, there's Puerto Rico, Hawaii (volcano), Chile (desert), Japan (underground), Siberia (Lake Baikal, the largest fresh water lake in the world)and much more. Check out the How Stuff Works article from Discovery for the other observatories, go here.

Astronomy: Photo of Our Galactic Center!

From Denny: A very cool photo from the folks over at ESO.org (European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere). Taken during the ATLASGAL survey this is really a color composite image of the Galactic Center and Sagittarius B2. The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is home to a supermassive black hole. That's a bit scary! How big is it? (This is starting to sound like a fish story...) That huge black hole is four million times the mass of our very own Sun! This galactic center is only 25,000 light years from our planet Earth.

X-ray mosaic of Galactic Center: Chandra takes in the bright lights, big city of the Milky Way - Image by Smithsonian Institution via Flickr

OK, you ask, so who is this Sagitarrius B2 guy? It's one of the largest clouds of molecular gas in our Milky Way. Definitely one of the big guys on the block. According to the ESO, this Sagitarrius B2 is "rich in many different interstellar molecules" because it lies close to the Galactic Center. Sort of sounds like vitamins for the Universe, doesn't it? :)

Now who's who on this photo?

- the ATLASGAL submillimetre-wavelength data are shown in red, overlaid on a view of the region in infrared light

- from the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) in green and blue.

- Sagittarius B2 is the bright orange-red region to the middle left of the image, which is centered on the Galactic Center.

Galactic Center Milky Way Galaxy supermassive black hole Midcourse Space Experiment Sagittarius B2 ESO.org European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere Earth Sun infrared light black hole astronomy

Cool Erupting Volcano Photo Taken From Space!

From Denny: Did you see this awesome photo on the news last night? If you missed it then take a look.

From NASA's Earth Observatory site: "A fortuitous orbit of the International Space Station allowed the astronauts this striking view of Sarychev Volcano (Kuril Islands, northeast of Japan) in an early stage of eruption on June 12, 2009. Sarychev Peak is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, and it is located on the northwestern end of Matua Island.

Prior to June 12, the last explosive eruption occurred in 1989, with eruptions in 1986, 1976, 1954, and 1946 also producing lava flows. Ash from the multi-day eruption has been detected 2,407 kilometers east-southeast and 926 kilometers west-northwest of the volcano, and commercial airline flights are being diverted away from the region to minimize the danger of engine failures from ash intake.

This detailed astronaut photograph is exciting to volcanologists because it captures several phenomena that occur during the earliest stages of an explosive volcanic eruption. The main column is one of a series of plumes that rose above Matua Island on June 12. The plume appears to be a combination of brown ash and white steam. The vigorously rising plume gives the steam a bubble-like appearance. The eruption cleared a circle in the cloud deck. The clearing may result from the shockwave from the eruption or from sinking air around the eruption plume: as the plume rises, air flows down around the sides like water flowing off the back of a surfacing dolphin. As air sinks, it tends to warm and expand; clouds in the air evaporate.

In contrast, the smooth white cloud on top may be water condensation that resulted from rapid rising and cooling of the air mass above the ash column. This cloud, which meteorologists call a pileus cloud, is probably a transient feature: the eruption plume is starting to punch through. The structure also indicates that little to no shearing wind was present at the time to disrupt the plume. (Satellite images acquired 2-3 days after the start of activity illustrate the effect of shearing winds on the spread of the ash plumes across the Pacific Ocean.)

By contrast, a cloud of denser, gray ash—probably a pyroclastic flow—appears to be hugging the ground, descending from the volcano summit. The rising eruption plume casts a shadow to the northwest of the island (image top). Brown ash at a lower altitude of the atmosphere spreads out above the ground at image lower left. Low-level stratus clouds approach Matua Island from the east, wrapping around the lower slopes of the volcano. Only about 1.5 kilometers of the coastline of Matua Island (image lower center) are visible beneath the clouds and ash.

Astronaut photograph ISS020-E-9048 was acquired on June 12, 2009, with a Nikon D2XS digital camera fitted with a 400 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 20 crew. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, NASA-JSC."

Astronomy: Meteorite Grains Divulge Earth's Cosmic Roots

From Denny: A short article from the folks over at Science Daily. It seems like every few years there comes along a group of scientists telling us the Universe is either older or younger than previously thought. Who said Nature's laws are written in stone? Our maybe it's just our understanding is in a fluid state...

Pair of the grains Image via Wikipedia

Here's an excerpt:

"The interstellar stuff that became incorporated into the planets and life on Earth has younger cosmic roots than theories predict..."

"Heck and his colleagues examined 22 interstellar grains from the Murchison meteorite for their analysis. Dying sun-like stars flung the Murchison grains into space more than 4.5 billion years ago, before the birth of the solar system. Scientists know the grains formed outside the solar system because of their exotic composition."

For the rest of the article just click on the title link.

Science: Earth Gets Billion-Year Life Extension

From Denny: It seems like every few years scientists decide the Earth is really an older planet and, oh, by the way, they think the sun will exist for a few million or so years longer. Not to worry, folks, we will still have a home for mankind for a little while longer! :) Here's the latest from Wired.com's Wired Science blog.

"The Earth could be habitable for another 2.3 billion years, extending previous estimates of life’s horizon by more than 1 billion years.

King Fai Li and his colleagues at Caltech hypothesize that Earth’s atmospheric pressure has always varied, and that it could fall in the distant future, keeping Earth from frying for far longer than previous research had shown.

If the new idea proves correct and can be extended to other planets with biospheres, it could increase the chances that earthly civilization finds extraterrestrial life by doubling the percentage of time that planets could be inhabited.

“[T]he Earth will be identifiable as an inhabited planet for nearly half the total lifetime of the Sun, an important point to consider in the search for life on extrasolar planets,” the authors write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Over the next hundreds of millions of years, the sun will continue to get brighter until eventually, Earth becomes too hot to inhabit. Previous calculations had pegged that time at about a billion years from now, but the new paper argues that earlier models had neglected the role of atmospheric pressure in regulating the temperature of the planet on astronomical time scales.

Atmospheric pressure is a key variable in the overall greenhouse-gas effect because it determines how much infrared radiation greenhouse gases absorb. Higher pressures mean more absorption and consequently, more heat. Lower pressures have the opposite effect.

Life itself would be the mechanism for these temperature changes. By “fixing” nitrogen, pulling it out of the air and eventually into the Earth’s deep ocean, microbes could be making the atmosphere lighter one atom at a time.

“I am glad that Li and colleagues have raised the issue of how overall variation in atmospheric pressure may have affected past and may affect future climate,” ecologist Ken Caldeira of Stanford University said in an e-mail. “This could be relevant for understanding climate change on the billion-year time scale.”"

For the continuation of this article just click on the title link.

Science: Sun Induces Strange ‘Breathing’ of Earth’s Atmosphere

From Denny: Seems like I'm still getting caught up on what's going on in our solar system, published in December 2008. This was a fascinating article about something I had never given thought: there is a rhythmic contraction and expansion of the Earth's atmosphere in relation to the sun. I find it interesting that the scientist being interviewed has the last name of Solomon, after the wisest man ever to walk the Earth. Read on from Wired.com's Wired Science blog:

NASA Seal Image via Wikipedia

"SAN FRANCISCO — New satellite observations have revealed a previously unknown rhythmic expansion and contraction of Earth’s atmosphere on a nine-day cycle.

This "breathing" corresponds to changes in the sun’s magnetic fields as it completes rotations once every 27 days, NASA and University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists said Monday at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting.

The sun’s coronal holes, seen as dark regions in the image above, direct plasma away from the sun and out into the solar system. When these particles get to the Earth, they heat the upper atmosphere, causing the outer atmosphere to expand and contract.

"What’s going on in the solar side is indeed mysterious and challenges the solar physics understanding," said Stan Solomon, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not involved in the research.

The finding emphasizes the many ways that solar activity impacts the Earth — and its increasingly space-utilizing humans.

"From the Earth’s perspective, we’re in the sun’s outer atmosphere," said Jeffrey Thayer, an aerospace engineer at UC-Boulder.

The new discovery could help scientists and engineers design better satellites that account for the changing conditions in the ionosphere. Eventually, it might be possible to predict the severity of ionospheric storms and protect the world’s communication infrastructure.

The scientists used changes in the density of the Earth’s atmosphere to pinpoint this previously unknown pattern. As the atmosphere contracts or expands, it also gets more or less dense, respectively. In response to the "hills and valleys of density," satellites subtly speed up or slow down, recording those motions with on-board accelerometers. And that’s the data that allowed the scientists to back into the discovery of this new atmospheric cycle.

Solomon said that while the cycle on Earth is interesting, the really strange aspect of this work is what it says about our local star.

"What’s going on in the sun that’s causing all this?" Solomon said. "It’s not entirely clear. That part of it is quite mysterious.""

Astronomy Video: Amazing Moon Images From Space

From Denny: These moon photos were released last November and maybe you missed them or would enjoy seeing them again. On the video is pictured the very rare event that only happens a couple of times a year - as if you are on the moon and looking at the Earth rise on the horizon! Instead of viewing the sun rise you see the Earth rise, quite disconcerting. That was cool enough for me!

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Astronomy: Google Maps Space Junk

From Denny: Have you seen this new Google map? What will they map next? It's as alarming as it is a bit amusing how our Earth's culture is lousy at good cosmic housekeeping!

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Astronomy: The eta Aquarid Meteor Shower

Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower in 1995. Perseid meteor shower, richest shower of the year, peaks in August. Image via Wikipedia

From Denny: You will want to get out of bed early come Wednesday morning to see the meteor showers! You can have your coffee later.

SpaceWeather.com is reporting:

Forecasters expect the 2009 eta Aquarid shower to peak on Wednesday morning, May 6th, with as many as 85 meteors per hour over the southern hemisphere. Sky watchers in Australia, New Zealand, South America and southern Africa are favored. Rates in the northern hemisphere will be less, 20 to 30 per hour. The best time to look is during the moonless hour before local sunrise. That is when the shower's radiant is high in the sky and the nearly-full Moon will have set, leaving the sky dark for meteors.




Sky Map for the Northern Hemisphere

Eta Aquarids are flakes of dust from Halley's Comet, which last visited Earth in 1986. Although the comet is now far away, beyond the orbit of Uranus, it left behind a stream of dust. Earth passes through the stream twice a year in May and October. In May we have the eta Aquarid meteor shower, in October the Orionids. Both are caused by Halley's Comet.

The shower is named after a 4th-magnitude star in the constellation Aquarius. The star has nothing to do with the meteor shower except that, coincidentally, meteors appear to emerge from a point nearby. Eta Aquarii is 156 light years from Earth and 44 times more luminous than the Sun.

The constellation Aquarius does not rise very far above the horizon in the northern hemisphere, and that's why northerners see relatively few meteors. But the ones they do see could be spectacular Earthgrazers.



Sky Map for Southern Hemisphere

Earthgrazers are meteors that skim horizontally through the upper atmosphere. They are slow and dramatic, streaking far across the sky. The best time to look for Earthgrazers is between 2:00 to 2:30 a.m. local time when Aquarius is just peeking above the horizon.

Experienced meteor watchers suggest the following viewing strategy: Dress warmly. Bring a reclining chair, or spread a thick blanket over a flat spot of ground. Lie down and look up somewhat toward the east. Meteors can appear in any part of the sky, although their trails will point back toward Aquarius.

Tidbits:

Eta Aquarid meteoroids hit Earth's atmosphere traveling 66 km/s.

Typical eta Aquarid meteors are as bright as a 3rd magnitude star.

Astronomy: New Signs of Hidden Sea on Saturn Moon

From Cosmic Log at MSNBC.com:

"New research suggests the ice volcanoes blasting off Saturn's moon Enceladus are rooted in an underground sea, a finding that raises the prospect for microbial life.

Scientists have been trying to figure out what is happening on Enceladus to generate the icy geysers that have been photographed, analyzed and sampled by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft.

"This debate has been going on for years — whether there has been liquid water, whether there could be an underground ocean," Cassini scientist team member Candice Hansen-Koharcheck told Discovery News.

Astronomers used ground-based telescopes to look for molecules of sodium, which should be present if rock had mingled with liquid water. They didn't find any, silencing proponents making a case for a subsurface sea on Enceladus.
That point is now moot. At a meeting of European geoscientists in Vienna last week, Frank Postberg with Germany's Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and colleagues explained that the sodium is, in fact, there — it was simply bound in a form (sodium chloride) not detectable by Earth-bound telescopes.

"This is only possible if the plume source is liquid water that is or has been in contact with the rocky material of Enceladus' core," the scientists wrote in the EGU General Assembly's 2009 Geophysical Research Abstracts.

Added Carolyn Porco, head of the Cassini imaging team, "Suffice it to say the prospects of a subsurface sea on Enceladus are excellent."

For the rest of this very interesting article just click on the title link. (Jury duty starts today for me - apologies for not being able to re-write this into a condensed form for you!)

Astronomy: Nebulas - nature's wonders hidden from many.

Nebulas - nature's wonders hidden from many:

"What are Nebulas?

Nebulas are interstellar bodies; clouds of dust, (hydrogen, alpha and beta) gas and plasma. The mixture attracts other matter and finally beautiful stars are formed. Some nebulas form while the stars are in the process of formation and others are formed while stars undergo destruction. You can often sight them in a dark night."

By nazishnasim @ HubPages

Eagles Head Image via Wikipedia

From Denny: This is a great basic introduction to the subject of nebulas. A lot of nebula photos to stare at in wonderment!

Photos of Crab Nebula and Pillars of Creation (Eagles Head) Nebula

Astronomy Blog Review: Nite Sky Girl

Image by Royalty-free image collection via Flickr

Nite Sky Girl Blog for Beginner Astronomers!

When you first land on this blog it feels like you just got dropped out into space and are floating in the vast blue ocean of space viewing the planets and galaxy! Your fun greeting welcome when you arrive on this Canadian astronomer’s blog? “Astronomy rocks and so do you for orbiting my blog!”
Curious about a particular planet? There is a section for that where you can click on your favorite planet and find out the latest news. There are also sections to find out and view photos of comets and meteors. She has sky videos galore as well.

Especially for the beginner astronomer and kids is a question and answer area about space and astronomy you will enjoy. Most of the material is geared for older kids who can learn some of the astronomy specifics and vocabulary.

Not to be missed are her very readable extensive listings on the Astronomy News Page, as it is on a separate blog, go here.

If you need night sky help she answers email questions about what is the right telescope or binoculars for you.

Nite Sky Girl is a rocking blog you will enjoy visiting again and again!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Clouds frustrate comet watchers (telegraph.co.uk)
• World's largest telescope will search heavens for habitable planets like Earth (telegraph.co.uk)
• Sunny Salvation for Planet Earth (geeksugar.com)
• The Galileoscope, a Telescope for Everyone (wired.com)
• Wolf-Rayet Stars (via The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009) (c4.libsyn.com)
• More booming fireballs (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

Astronomy: Another Astreroid Buzzed Earth Today

From Denny: Apologies to everyone who has been looking for recent brain and astronomy articles from me. Spent the past couple of weeks recovering from allergy season which usually never affects me. Must be the global warming or something equally geeky...

Anyway, I'm getting back to finding more than just videos for you. Though I have recently discovered a real treasure chest of well-produced videos from reputable sources. YouTube may have quantity but it suffers from quality and a plethora of inaccurate, misleading or downright bad information that in good conscience I just can't put up here for the public. I vett everything that goes up here on all my blogs, especially keeping in mind that parents and children are a big part of my audience. Thanks for supporting this blog! Now on to the latest news to almost affect our little planet called Earth.

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Image by anomalous4 via Flickr

Another so-called small asteroid buzzed us today of April 8th – welcome to the celestial Easter season – apparently, this size of asteroid whizzes past the Earth every few months. For a post by a Canadian astronomer, Nite Sky Girl, go here.

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• Scientists team up with B.C. firm to build biggest-ever optical telescope (cbc.ca)
• Asteroid Nearly Misses Earth Monday (geeksaresexy.net)
• Odd Asteroid Hangs Out with Earth (space.com)

Historical April Fools Day Funnies

April Fools Day

At the Museum of Hoaxes are collected some amusing funnies through the decades played by scientists and mathematicians!

Alabama Changes the Value of Pi

Happened in 1998:

The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the American Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0.

Soon the article made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly spread around the world, forwarded by email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation.

The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by physicist Mark Boslough.

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Especially like this one as it has timeless appeal:

Drunk Driving on the Internet

Happened in 1994:

An article in PC Computing magazine written by John Dvorak described a bill going through Congress that would make it illegal to use the internet while drunk, or to discuss sexual matters over a public network.

The bill was supposedly numbered 040194 (i.e. 04/01/94), and the contact person was listed as Lirpa Sloof (April Fools backwards). The article said that the FBI was going to use the bill to tap the phone line of anyone who "uses or abuses alcohol" while accessing the internet.

Passage of the bill was felt to be certain because "Who wants to come out and support drunkenness and computer sex?" The article offered this explanation for the origin of the bill: "The moniker 'Information Highway' itself seems to be responsible for SB 040194, which is designed to prohibit anyone from using a public computer network (Information Highway) while the computer user is intoxicated. I know how silly this sounds, but Congress apparently thinks being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is. The bill is expected to pass this month."

The article generated so many outraged phone calls to Congress that Senator Edward Kennedy's office had to release an official denial of the rumor that he was a sponsor of the bill.

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Here's a good one for the wonderfully gullible:

Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers

Happened in 1995 (the 90's were great!):

Discover Magazine reported that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had found a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer.

These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them.

After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history.

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This one must have really brought out the overly impressionable.

Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity

Happened in 1976:

The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity.

Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

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The Discovery of the Bigon

Happened in 1996 (how do they come up with these things?):

Discover Magazine reported that physicists had discovered a new fundamental particle of matter, dubbed the Bigon. It could only be coaxed into existence for mere millionths of a second, but amazingly, when it did materialize it was the size of a bowling ball.

Physicist Albert Manque and his colleagues accidentally found the particle when a computer connected to one of their vacuum-tube experiments exploded. Video analysis of the explosion revealed the Bigon hovering over the computer for a fraction of a second.

Manque theorized that the Bigon might be responsible for a host of other unexplained phenomena such as ball lightning, sinking souffles, and spontaneous human combustion. Discover received huge amounts of mail in response to the story.

Astronomy: New Effective Technique to Better Measure Asteroids

Tired of hearing about all those asteroid near-misses almost hitting our beloved planet Earth? Everyone on the planet is affected by scientists' new development!

photo of our main asteroid belt called Barbara from ESO.org


From Denny:

Apologies for getting this post out late this morning. Yesterday Louisiana had flooding rain and then lightning all afternoon and night. The internet was so slow yesterday was only able to pre-load a few blogs. Oh, that I could have the fun of blogging in real time but such is life on the Gulf Coast in the hurricane zone! Usually, I'm successful enough to at least get one post per blog scheduled a day...

On to astronomy news that relates to every person on the planet:

Lately, we are often hearing on the global news that an asteroid just barely missed colliding into planet Earth. Now for the good news! A team of scientists from France and Italy figured out how to increase the number of asteroids measured by a factor of several hundred. For some time traditional measuring techniques have prevented us from measuring asteroids too small or too far away to predict what might affect us.

The new technique is so powerful it has been likened to measuring an asteroid the size of a tennis ball from 1,000 kilometers away. The new technique is called interferometry.

Until now, the method of direct imaging, with adaptive optics, only allowed for measuring the 100 largest asteroids of the main belt called Barbara. With the other technique called radar measurements it is limited to those near-misses you keep hearing about: “asteroid near-miss to planet Earth” and scaring the hell out of everyone!

This new and powerful interferometric technique now combines the light from two or more telescopes. They have since applied this new technique to the main asteroid belt to discover it has unusual properties and shape never before seen.

For the infinitesimal astronomy and gadget details only science and astronomy buffs salivate over please click on the title link.