http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/haltonarp/ en-us Fri, 7 Nov 2008 23:21:52 GMT Focus Forum 15 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2128230/posts Nobody knows what dark matter is, but scientists may now have a clue where to look for it. The strange stuff makes up about 85 percent of the heft of the universe. It's invisible, but researchers know it's there because there is not enough regular matter -- stars and planets and gas and dust -- to hold galaxies and galaxy clusters together. Some other unseen material, dubbed dark matter, must be gluing things together... A new computer simulation of the evolution of a galaxy like our Milky Way suggests it might be possible to observe high-energy gamma-rays given off by... SPACE.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2128230/posts#comment Fri, 7 Nov 2008 23:21:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2128237/posts Everything in the known universe is said to be racing toward the massive clumps of matter at more than 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) an hour -- a movement the researchers have dubbed dark flow. The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger -- a multiverse -- and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland... Dark flow was named in a nod to dark energy and dark matter -- two... National Geographic News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2128237/posts#comment Fri, 7 Nov 2008 23:29:16 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2104311/posts You can manipulate a black hole as much as you like but you’ll never get rid of its event horizon, a new study suggests. This may sound a little odd, the event horizon is what makes the black hole, well… black. However, in the centre of a black hole, hidden deep inside the event horizon, is a singularity. A singularity is a mathematical consequence, it is also a point in space where the laws of physics do not apply. Mathematics also predicts that singularities can exist without an associated event horizon, but this means that we’d be able to physically... AstroEngine http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2104311/posts#comment Mon, 13 Oct 2008 07:28:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2104040/posts A new wider view of two very well-known galaxies has revealed a big surprise: They are connected by faint, starless filaments of hydrogen gas which trace back to a very high-speed intergalactic collision. The smash-up between galaxies M86 and NGC4438 not been suspected before, and may explain why M86, which is visible to the naked eye, is unable to give birth to new stars... During galactic smash-ups stars rarely collide, since there is so much space between them. But gases do slam into gases. The faster the collision, the higher the temperature the gases reach. In the case of M86,... Discovery News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2104040/posts#comment Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:30:21 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2092525/posts The standard model of cosmology predicts that the universe is infinite and flat. However, cosmologists in France and the US are now suggesting that space could be finite and shaped like a dodecahedron instead. They claim that a universe with the same shape as the twelve-sided polygon can explain measurements of the cosmic microwave background – the radiation left over from the big bang – that spaces with more mundane shapes cannot.Power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Data from WMAP have extended the accuracy of the spectrum far beyond what was known from earlier measurements. This plot... Weird News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2092525/posts#comment Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:26:40 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2082893/posts Don't get the idea that we've found every kind of astronomical object there is in the universe. In a paper to appear in the Astrophysical Journal, astronomers working on the Supernova Cosmology Project report finding a new kind of something that they cannot make any sense of. Now you don't see it, now you do. Something in Bootes truly in the middle of nowhere — apparently not even in a galaxy — brightened by at least 120 times during more than three months and then faded away. Its spectrum was like nothing ever seen, write the discoverers, with "five broad... Sky And Telescope http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2082893/posts#comment Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:47:36 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2057178/posts CHICAGO (Reuters) - A Dutch primary school teacher and amateur astronomer has discovered what some are calling a "cosmic ghost," a strange, gaseous object with a hole in the middle that may represent a new class of astronomical object. The teacher, Hanny van Arkel, discovered the object while volunteering in the Galaxy Zoo project, which enlists the help of members of the public to classify galaxies online. "At first, we had no idea what it was. It could have been in our solar system, or at the edge of the universe," Yale University astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski, a member and co-founder... Reuters on Yahoo http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2057178/posts#comment Wed, 6 Aug 2008 02:29:54 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2034094/posts Colorful Mystery Here's a new, truer-color rendering of the Voorwerp (lower center). Although it looked blue on the Sloan photo, the object actually now appears to be fairly green, observes Keel, who performed spectral analses of the huge mystery cloud.W. Keel Nearly a year ago, astronomers at several universities recruited citizen scientists to help them catalog distant galaxies that had recently been photographed as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A high-school physics teacher in the Netherlands who was participating in this project, known as Galaxy Zoo, appears to have scored a major coup. She brought a weird blue... Science News http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2034094/posts#comment Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:15:43 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1350015/posts Baffled by the expansion of the universe? You're not alone. Even astronomers frequently get it wrong. The expansion of the universe may be the most important fact we have ever discovered about our origins. You would not be reading this article if the universe had not expanded. Human beings would not exist. Cold molecular things such as life-forms and terrestrial planets could not have come into existence unless the universe, starting from a hot big bang, had expanded and cooled. The formation of all the structures in the universe, from galaxies and stars to planets and Scientific American articles, has... Scientific American http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1350015/posts#comment Thu, 24 Feb 2005 11:54:37 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2021747/posts An x-ray pulsar pulls matter from its stellar companion. Artistic rendition: NASA/Dana Berry May 26, 2008 Predictions, Falsifiability and the Standard Model of Stellar EvolutionNew information about an odd pair of stars has contradicted the expectations of astronomers and called into question the Standard Model.Several Thunderbolts Pictures of the Day articles have covered the topics of variable stars, neutron stars and magnetars from the standpoints of electrical engineering and plasma physics. Reports have repeatedly demonstrated the surprise and bewilderment exhibited by astronomers at heavenly objects that have defied various theoretical expectations.Now it seems that the discovery of a pulsar... Thunderbolts.info http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2021747/posts#comment Tue, 27 May 2008 03:52:58 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2020587/posts picture of the day             archive             subject index           Solar flare seen through a hydrogen-alpha filter. Credit: Big Bear Solar Observatory May 23, 2008 Colossal Flare Erupts from EV LacertaeAn explosion thousands of times greater than anything seen on our Sun has been detected bursting from a neighboring star. In a March 19, 2008 press release, NASA officials from the Goddard Space Flight Center announced that their SWIFT satellite detected a stellar flare with x-ray emissions larger than anything they expected to witness from... Thunderbolts.info Thunderblogs http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2020587/posts#comment Sat, 24 May 2008 04:31:06 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2020601/posts Hoag’s Object glares balefully across the light-years. Credit: Hubble Heritage May 19, 2008 Is Hoag’s Object a Dense Plasma Focus? What force swept away the stars and formed this 120,000 light-year-wide ring in space? This could be one of electrical energy’s protean forms.There are places in the cosmos where stars form up into ranks that stretch in lines for thousands of light-years. Elsewhere, rings of stars can be found encircling compact structures that have been measured at over 10,000 light-years in diameter.Art Hoag discovered the galaxy that bears his name in 1950 and by conventional redshift-equals-distance calculations, it is approximately... Thunderbolts.info http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2020601/posts#comment Sat, 24 May 2008 05:21:26 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1986453/posts Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Mar 03, 2008Mira: The Tale of a Giant StarThe light-years long plume of ionized gas from this red giant star provides evidence suggesting its electrical nature.NASA launched the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) spacecraft on April 28, 2003 from the Cape Canaveral launch facility in southern Florida. Equipped with advanced near and ultraviolet detectors, GALEX was scheduled to remain in orbit for about 29 months studying galaxies in the hundreds of thousands. The mission has been extended and GALEX continues to return images such as the one of Mira, a red-giant star with a trail of material extending from... thunderbolts.info http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1986453/posts#comment Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:11:17 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1951810/posts A new study using results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory provides one of the best pieces of evidence yet that many supermassive black holes are spinning extremely rapidly. The whirling of these giant black holes drives powerful jets that pump huge amounts of energy into their environment and affects galaxy growth. A team of scientists compared leading theories of jets produced by rotating supermassive black holes with Chandra data. A sampling of nine giant galaxies that exhibit large disturbances in their gaseous atmospheres showed that the central black holes in these galaxies must be spinning at near their maximum rates.... ScienceDaily http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1951810/posts#comment Fri, 11 Jan 2008 03:47:48 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1951067/posts CHICAGO (AFP) - Hundreds of rogue black holes may be roaming around the Milky Way waiting to engulf stars and planets that cross their path, US astronomers said Wednesday. The astronomers believe these "intermediate mass" black holes are invisible except in rare circumstances and have been spawned by mergers of black holes within globular clusters -- swarms of stars held together by their mutual gravity. These black holes are unlikely to pose a threat to Earth, but may engulf nebulae, stars and planets that stray into their paths, the researchers said. "These rogue black holes are extremely unlikely to do... AFP on Yahoo http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1951067/posts#comment Wed, 9 Jan 2008 23:07:12 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1951627/posts The quasar OJ287 contains two black holes (this slightly dated illustration lists the larger black hole's mass as 17 billion Suns, though researchers now estimate it is 18 billion Suns). The smaller black hole crashes through a disc of material around the larger one twice every orbit, creating bright outbursts (Illustration: VISPA) The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered, weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein's theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever... New Scientist http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1951627/posts#comment Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:52:18 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1940835/posts WASHINGTON - The latest act of senseless violence caught on tape is cosmic in scope: A black hole in a "death star galaxy" blasting a neighboring galaxy with a deadly jet of radiation and energy. A fleet of space and ground telescopes have captured images of this cosmic violence, which people have never witnessed before, according to a new study released Monday by NASA. "It's like a bully, a black-hole bully punching the nose of a passing galaxy," said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, who wasn't involved in the research. But ultimately, this... AP on Yahoo http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1940835/posts#comment Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:48:05 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1831966/posts Long before our solar system formed and even before the Milky Way assumed its final spiral shape, a star slightly smaller than the Sun blazed into life in our galaxy, formed from the newly scattered remains of the first stars in the universe. Employing techniques similar to those used to date archeological remains here on Earth, scientists have learned that a metal-poor star in our Milky Way called HE 1523 is 13.2 billion years old-just slightly younger than 13.7 billion year age of the universe. Our solar system is estimated to be only about 4.6 billion years old. The findings... www.space.com http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1831966/posts#comment Fri, 11 May 2007 15:09:45 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1679425/posts A project aiming to create an easier way to measure cosmic distances has instead turned up surprising evidence that our large and ancient universe might be even bigger and older than previously thought. If accurate, the finding would be difficult to mesh with current thinking about how the universe evolved, one scientist said. A research team led by Alceste Bonanos at the Carnegie Institution of Washington has found that the Triangulum Galaxy, also known as M33, is about 15 percent farther away from our own Milky Way than previously calculated. The finding, which will be detailed in an upcoming issue... Space.com on Yahoo http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1679425/posts#comment Mon, 7 Aug 2006 20:55:19 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1928969/posts HAVE we hastened the demise of the universe by looking at it? That’s the startling question posed by a pair of physicists, who suggest that we may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, which is thought to be speeding up cosmic expansion. Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and colleague James Dent suggest that by making this observation in 1998 we may have caused the universe to revert to a state similar to early in its history, when it was more likely to end. “Incredible as it seems, our... EurekAlert http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1928969/posts#comment Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:55:16 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1921709/posts These supermassive entities are known as high-energy quasars. These are a type of black hole, found in young galaxies, that are surrounded by a thick halo of gas and dust, which produces X-rays as it is sucked into the void. The presence of X-rays, even when the quasars themselves cannot be seen, is what tipped off the scientists to the fact they had stumbled across something extraordinary... The newfound quasars will help answer fundamental questions about how massive galaxies evolve. Astronomers now know, for example, that most of these galaxies steadily generate stars and black holes simultaneously until the latter... Cosmos magazine http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1921709/posts#comment Tue, 6 Nov 2007 16:24:39 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1740084/posts NEW YORK - The Hubble Space Telescope has shown that a mysterious form of energy first conceived by Albert Einstein, then rejected by the famous physicist as his "greatest blunder," appears to have been fueling the expansion of the universe for most of its history. This so-called "dark energy" has been pushing the universe outward for at least 9 billion years, astronomers said Thursday. "This is the first time we have significant, discrete data from back then," said Adam Riess, a professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins University and researcher at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute. He and several colleagues... AP on Yahoo http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1740084/posts#comment Fri, 17 Nov 2006 05:07:52 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1317954/posts An international team of astronomers has discovered within the heart of a nearby spiral galaxy a quasar whose light spectrum indicates that it is billions of light years away. The finding poses a cosmic puzzle: How could a galaxy 300 million light years away contain a stellar object several billion light years away? The team’s findings, which were presented today in San Diego at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society and which will appear in the February 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, raise a fundamental problem for astronomers who had long assumed that the “high redshifts” in... University of California, San Diego http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1317954/posts#comment Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:30:09 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1914617/posts The result of the measurements, the team reports in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal, is that the nebula is only 1270 light-years away, or about 20&percent; closer than previous estimates. "We were surprised by the new distance, although in retrospect, we shouldn't be," says astronomer and co-author Geoffrey Bower. The new measurement fits with previous estimates when their margin of error is considered, he says. Because distance measurements are used to calculate the brightness--and hence age--of stars, the new data indicate that Orion's stars are older than previously thought, which makes them consistent with current theory about stellar... ScienceNOW http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1914617/posts#comment Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:44:16 GMT http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1913491/posts Astronomers had identified I Zwicky 18 as one of the youngest galaxies in the universe. But Hubble astronomers have discovered it is, in fact, much older and farther away from Earth than thought... Hubble has found fainter older red stars contained within the galaxy, suggesting its star formation started at least 1 billion years ago and possibly as much as 10 billion years ago... also suggests I Zwicky 18 is 59 million light-years from Earth, nearly 10 million light-years more distant than believed. United Press International http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1913491/posts#comment Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:30:38 GMT