Astronauts Can Now Escape From An Exploding Rocket

NASA has spent $220 million on testing a new escape system rocket in New Mexico on this Thursday dummy crew module more than a mile up in just 20 seconds to demonstrate how a future manned spacecraft could be pulled to safety in the event of a catastrophic on-pad rocket failure.

A solid-fuel motor was used which generated some 500,000 pounds of thrust, the launch abort system ignited with a torrent of orange fire and smoke pulling the dummy crew module to nearly 450 mph in just 2.5 seconds with an acceleration of 16 times the force of gravity.

The heavily instrumented capsule, which will not be used again, hit the ground two minutes and 14 seconds or so after launch, 6,919 feet from its takeoff point. Touchdown velocity was 16 mph, about 6 mph slower than predicted.

"It's a great day for the country, for NASA and for industry," said NASA Test Conductor Don Reed. "It was absolutely successful. We didn't see anything anomalous. Everything worked as it was expected. In fact, we actually touched down at significantly less velocity than we predicted. The performance was absolutely astounding."

Now our astronauts can land safely in case of rocket failure.

Extraterrestrials Do Exist , But Don't Try Talking To Them

World's leading scientist Stefen Hawkins says that extraterrestrials are out there and we humans should avoid them . We are all aware of the fact that aliens are one of the biggest mysteries of our Universe. He believes that aliens are not just in planets but also in stars or may be even they are floating in interplanetary space .His logic is that the Earth is not the only place where life has evolved and we need to find out that how the aliens look like.

He has published his documentary series where in one scene shows nerds of two- legged herbivores browsing on an alien cliff - face where they are picked off by flying , yellow lizard- like predators . Another shows glowing fluorescent aquatic animals forming vast shoals in the oceans thought to underlie the thick ice coating Europa , which is one of the moon of Jupiter.

Hawkins is using these scenes to lead us to serious thought that the aliens could be intelligent and can pose threat to human lives.

He says that aliens could just raid our planet for resources and then move on.

Acoording to him , " We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet . I imagine they might exist in massive ships , having used up all the resources from their home planet . Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads , looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."

Hubble Finds A Planet With A Tail Like A Comet

Hubble Space telescope has discovered a planet which has a tail like a comet! HD 209458b planet is about 153 light years and was found in the year 2003.

Scientists have measured the gas coming out from the planet.

Scientists have used Hubble to find about the atmosphere of the planet as it crossed infront of its star.

HD 209458 b is an extrasolar planet (unofficially referred to as "Osiris") that orbits theSolar analog star HD 209458 in the constellation Pegasus, some 150 light-years from Earth's solar system, with evidence of water vapor. The radius of the planet's orbit is 7 million kilometres, about 0.047 astronomical units, or one eighth the radius of Mercury's orbit. This small radius results in a year that is 3.5 Earth days long and an estimated surface temperature of about 1,000 °C (about 1,800 °F). Its mass is 220 times that of Earth (0.69 Jupiter masses) and its volume is some 2.5 times greater than that of Jupiter. The high mass and great volume of HD 209458 b indicate that it is a gas giant.

HD 209458 b represents a number of milestones in extraplanetary research. It was the first of many categories: a transiting extrasolar planet discovered, an extrasolar planet known to have an atmosphere, an extrasolar planet observed to have an evaporating hydrogen atmosphere, an extrasolar planet found to have an atmosphere containing oxygen and carbon, and one of the first two extrasolar planets to be directly observed spectroscopically. Based on the application of new, theoretical models, as of April 2007, it is alleged to be the first extrasolar planet found to have water vapor in its atmosphere.

On 23 June 2010, astronomers announced they have measured a superstorm (with windspeeds of up to 7000 km/h) for the first time in the atmosphere of HD 209458 b. The very high-precision observations done by ESO’s Very Large Telescope and its powerful CRIRES spectrograph of carbon monoxide gas show that it is streaming at enormous speed from the extremely hot day side to the cooler night side of the planet. The observations also allow another exciting “first”—measuring the orbital speed of the exoplanet itself, providing a direct determination of its mass.

HD 209458 is an 8th magnitude star, visible from Earth with binoculars.

Big Bang Theory : An Overview

Have you ever given a thought that how our Universe came into be? Our Universe was created in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded at a rapid state and then cooled and it is expanding even now today.The fact is interesting isn't it?

When our Universe came into existence there was NOTHING at all and Big Bang theory gives an explanation to this.



Big Bang theory has been developed by taking theoretical assumptions and observations together by George Lemaitre in 1927 by taking into consideration Albert Einstein's equations of general relativity and proposed and this model was being called "explosion" of a "primeval atom" which later came to be known as Big Bang theory.


In the year 1929 Hubble suggested that the Universe was expanding, contracting the infinite and is changing the "static universe" theory as proposed by Einstein. In "static universe" theory Einstein explained that our Universe is neither expanding nor it is contracting.



According to Big Bang theory after a long period of time the dense matter due to gravitational pull formed stars, galaxies, planets and other heavenly bodies which we find today.

Universe is in the form of dark energy today and near about 72% of the energy of Universe is in this form.

Misconceptions of Big Bang theory:

The most common misconception about Big Bang is that we assume that there was an explosion in the Universe but the experts say that there is an "expansion" and due to this "expansion" things in Universe are moving away from us.

There is no evidence of Big Bang theory as there is no explanation to the concept of what could have caused "Big Bang".

Big Bang theory gives no explanation to the existence of God. It is being believed that the Universe is a super natural creation by God. It gives no explanation to the fact whether God created Universe.

What Lies Beyond the Observable Hubble Universe?

Few theories qualify for Nobel laureate Niels Bohr's famous question more than the current Big Bang Theory of the origin of the Universe: "We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct."

There is a growing body of data and theory which question whether the Universe may have begun with a Big Bang 13.75 billion years ago. Several leading cosmologists, such as Sean Carroll of CalTech and Neil Turok of Cambridge University challenge the prevailing model of a "Big Bang" and believe that in the future we will only look back in wonder at how anyone could have believed in a creation event which was refuted by so much evidence. 

The origin of the Big Bang (that is, the state of "existence" which resulted in a Big Bang) is a mathematically obscure state --- a "singularity" of zero volume that contained infinite density and infinite energy. Why this singularity existed, how it originated, and why it exploded has led many scientists to question and challenge the very foundations of the Big Bang theory. 

It has been pointed out that an accelerated expansion limited to the most distant regions of the known universe, is incompatible with an explosive origin, but instead is indicative of an attractive force --- a "universe-in-mass" black hole whose super-gravity is affecting red shifts and illumination --- creating the illusion of a universe which is accelerating as it speeds away, when instead the stars closest to the hole are speeding faster toward their doom. Other scientists observe that the interpretation of red shifts as supporting a Big Bang, is also flawed and lacking validity. Some experts believe that there is little evidence to support the belief that red shifts are accurate measures of distance or time; that they are so variable and affected by so many factors that estimates of age, time, and distance can vary by up to 3 billion years following repeated measurements of the same star over just a few years.

Although the "Big Bang" is often presented as if it is proven fact, there is a wealth of data, including recent revelations of the several space probes and findings in fundamental physics, which possibly tell a different story.

One of the first problems are found in the Large Scale Structures in the Universe. In recent years, there have been a number of very serious challenges to the current theory of cosmic evolution and the belief the universe began just 13.7 billion years ago. The existence of these "Superclusters", "Great Walls" and "Great Attractors" could have only come to be organized and situated in their present locations and to have achieved their current size in a universe which is at least 80 billion to 250 billion years in age. The largest superclusters --- for example, the  "Coma" --- extend up to 100 Mpc!

In 1986, Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii reported detecting superclusters of galaxies 300 million light years (mly) long and 100 mly thick - stretching out about 300 mly across. At the speeds at which galaxies are supposed to be moving, it would require 80 billlion years to create such a huge complex of galaxies.

In 1989 a group led by John Huchra and Margaret J. Geller at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered "The Great Wall", a series of galaxies lined up and creating a "wall" of galaxies 500 million light years (mly) long, 200 mly wide, and 15 mly thick. This superstructure would have required at least 100 billion years to form.

A team of the British, American, and Hungarian astronomers have reported even larger structures. As per their findings, the universe is crossed by at least 13 'Great Walls', apparent rivers of galaxies 100Mpc long in the surveyed domain of 7 billion light years. They found galaxies clustered into bands spaced about 600 million light years apart. The pattern of these clusters stretches across about one-fourth of the diameter of the universe, or about seven billion light years. This huge shell and void pattern would have required nearly 150 billion years to form, based on their speed of movement, if produced by the standard Big Bang cosmology.

Sloane_9, The "Sloan Great Wall" of galaxies as detected by the Sloan Digital Survey, has earned the distinction of being the largest observed structure in the Universe. It is 1.36 billion light years long and 80% longer than the Great Wall discovered by Geller and Huchra. It runs roughly from the head of Hydra to the feet of Virgo. It would have taken at least 250 billion years to form.

Then there is the problem of gravity. "Hubble length" Universe, which consists of those galaxies and stars which can be observed by current technology, appears, therefore, to be organized as titanic walls and clusters of galaxies separated by a collection of giant bubble-like voids. The Great Walls are far too large and massive to have been formed by the mutual gravitational attraction of its member galaxies alone.

Based on the cosmological principle, which is one of the cornerstones of the Big Bang model, cosmologists predicted the distribution of matter to be homogeneous throughout the universe, implying thereby that the distribution of the galaxies would be essentially uniform. There would be no large scale clusters of galaxies or great voids in space. Instead, contrary to the "Big Bang" universe, we exist in a very "lumpy" cosmos.

Many of the world's leading physicists believe we are entering  a "golden age" of cosmological discoveries. Astronomers working on the WMAP mission stunned the scientific community with their announcement that the first generation stars in the universe were surprisingly born just after 200 million years of the Big Bang birth of the cosmos. The age of the universe has been steadily pushed backwards in time, from 2 billion year to 8 billion after it was determined the Earth was 4.6 billion years in age, and now the estimates are 13.75 billion years.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), successor to the HST with ten times the light-gathering power due to be launched in 2014, may well detect ever more distant galaxies. Likewise, the ultra-high resolution radio telescopes such as Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile which is to become operational in 2012, will be peering still deeper into the universe, and probably pushing the hypothetical Big Bang further backward in time as ever more distant galaxies are detected.

Spiral Density Wave Theory

Spiral galaxies are one of the most captivating structures in astronomy, yet their nature is still not fully understood. Astronomers currently have two categories of theories that can explain this structure, depending on the environment of the galaxy, but a new study, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, suggests that one of these theories may be largely wrong.

For galaxies with nearby companions, astronomers have suggested that tidal forces may draw out spiral structure. However, for isolated galaxies, another mechanism is required in which galaxies form these structures without intervention from a neighbor. A possible solution to this was first worked out in 1964 by Lin & Shu in which they suggested that the winding structure is merely an illusion. Instead, these arms weren’t moving structures, but areas of greater density which remained stationary as stars entered and exited them similar to how a traffic jam remains in position although the component cars travel in and out. This theory has been dubbed the Lin-Shu density wave theory and has been largely successful. Previous papers have reported a progression from cold, HI regions and dust on the inner portion of the spiral arms, that crash into this higher density region and trigger star formation, making hot O & B class stars that die before exiting the structure, leaving the lower mass stars to populate the remainder of the disk.
One of the main questions on this theory has been the longevity of the overdense region. According to Lin & Shu as well as many other astronomers, these structures are generally stable over long time periods. Others suggest that the density wave comes and goes in relatively short-lived, recurrent patterns. This would be similar to the turn signal on your car and the one in front of you at times seeming to synch up before getting out of phase again, only to line up again in a few minutes. In galaxies, the pattern would be composed of the individual orbits of the stars, which would periodically line up to create the spiral arms. Teasing out which of these was the case has been a challenge.

To do so, the new research, led by Kelly Foyle from McMaster University in Ontario, examined the progression of star formation as gas and dust entered the shock region produced by the Lin-Shu density wave. If the theory was correct, they should expect to find a progression in which they would first find cold HI gas and carbon monoxide, and then offsets of warm molecular hydrogen and 24 μm emission from stars forming in clouds, and finally, another offset of the UV emission of fully formed and unobscured stars.

The team examined 12 nearby spiral galaxies, including M 51, M 63, M 66, M 74, M 81, and M 95. These galaxies represented several variations of spiral galaxies such as grand design spirals, barred spirals, flocculent spirals and an interacting spiral.

When using a computer algorithm to examine each for offsets that would support the Lin-Shu theory, the team reported that they could not find a difference in location between the three different phases of star formation. This contradicts the previous studies (which were done “by eye” and thus subject to potential bias) and casts doubt on long lived spiral structure as predicted by the Lin-Shu theory. Instead, this finding is in agreement with the possibility of transient spiral arms that break apart and reform periodically.

Another option, one that salvages the density wave theory is that there are multiple “pattern speeds” producing more complex density waves and thus blurs the expected offsets. This possibility is supported by a 2009 study which mapped these speeds and found that several spiral galaxies are likely to exhibit such behavior. Lastly, the team notes that the technique itself may be flawed and underestimating the emission from each zone of star formation. To settle the question, astronomers will need to produce more refined models and explore the regions in greater detail and in more galaxies.

UK and European Space Agencies Give a Go For Skylon Spaceplane

After 30 years of development, the UK and European space agencies have given a go for the Skylon Space-plane.
The Skylon, which is being developed at the Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines in the UK, is an unpiloted and reusable spacecraft that can launch into Low Earth Orbit after taking off from a conventional runway.
Looking like something out of Star Wars, Skylon is a self contained, single stage, all in one reusable space vehicle. There are no expensive booster rockets, external fuel tanks or huge launch facilities needed.

The vehicle’s hybrid SABRE engines use liquid hydrogen combined with oxygen from the atmosphere at altitudes up to 26km and speeds of up to Mach 5, before switching over to on-board fuel for the final rocket powered stage of ascent into low Earth orbit.
The Skylon is intended to cut the costs involved with commercial activity in space, delivering payloads of up to 15 tons including satellites, equipment and even people into orbit at costs much lower than those that use expensive conventional rockets.

Once the spacecraft has completed its mission, it will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and return to base, landing like an airplane on the same runway, making it a totally re-usable spaceplane, with a fast mission turn around.

Skylon has received approval from a European Space Authority panel tasked with evaluating the design. “No impediments or critical items have been identified for either the Skylon vehicle or the SABRE engine that are a block to further development,” the panel’s report concludes.
“The consensus for the way forward is to proceed with the innovative development of the engine which in turn will enable the overall vehicle development.”
The UK Space Agency says that Reaction Engines will carry out an important demonstration of the SABRE engine’s key pre-cooler technology later this summer.

End of the Road for Spirit Rover

In the wee hours of May 25, 2011 the scientists and engineers of the Mars Exploration Rover team will send the last command in attempt to contact the Spirit rover. Over the past year, they have sent over 1,200 commands and haven’t heard anything in reply from the stuck and likely frozen rover. “We have exhausted all the likely scenarios for contacting Spirit, and the likelihood of success is now practically zero,” said John Callas, Project Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover mission. “And at this point, the season is declining and we couldn’t do any of the planned science objectives even if we heard from her now. The Deep Space Network will occasionally listen for Spirit when resources permit, but we have decided not to do anything past the last commands that will done tonight.”

 Spirit, the plucky rover that landed on Mars on January 3, 2004, overcame many difficulties and endured way past her 90-day warranty. For nearly six years, she traveled long distances, climbed hills — something the rovers weren’t really designed to do — she roved and stopped at interesting rocks along the way, all the while beaming back the information she garnered, enlightening us all about the nature of Mars, past and present.
Spirit became embedded in soft Martian soil in May of 2009 and that was the beginning of the end. The team spent months planning for her extrication, and then months again attempting to drive her out, but they ran out of time and power in the approaching Martian winter. The team was unable to put the rover in a favorable position to catch rays of sunlight on her solar panels, and after another freezing, grueling winter, Spirit has now likely succumbed to the harsh environment on Mars.

“We drove it, literally, until its wheels came off and at the beginning of the mission, we never expected that would be the way this project would end up,” said Dave Lavery, MER program director at NASA Headquarters.

The last commands will be sent early on May 25, 0700 UTC, which is just after midnight at JPL in Pasadena, California.

So, this is it. This is end of the Spirit rover mission.

“We always knew we would get to this point,” Callas said during a teleconference with the press, “and really, that’s what we wanted to do, to utilize these rovers as much as possible and wear them out. We are here today because we really wore Spirit out. If on sol 90 (the 90th Martian day of the mission) someone would have said this was going to last another 6 years, we just wouldn’t have believed it.”

Multi-Planet Systems Common in Kepler Findings

Of the 1235 planetary candidates that NASA’s Kepler space telescope has found so far, 408 reside in multiple-planet systems – a growing trend that indicates planets do, in fact,  like company.

The systems observed also seem to behave quite differently than our own solar system. In particular many are flatter than ours; that is, the planets orbit their stars in more or less the same exact plane. This, of course, is what allows Kepler to see them in the first place… the planets have to transit their stars perpendicular to Kepler’s point of view in order for it to detect the oh-so-subtle change in brightness that indicates the likely presence of a planet. In our solar system there’s a variation in the orbital plane of some planets up to 7º – enough of a difference that an alien Kepler-esque telescope might very well not be able to spot all eight planets.

The reason for this relative placidity in exoplanet orbits may be due to the lack of gas giants like Jupiter in these systems. So far, all the multiple-planet systems found have planets smaller than Neptune.
Without the massive gravitational influence of a Jupiter-sized world to shake things up, these exosystems likely experience a much calmer environment – gravitationally speaking, of course.

“Most likely, if our solar system didn’t have large planets like Jupiter and Saturn to have stirred things up with their gravitational disturbances, it would be just as flat. Systems with smaller planets probably had a much more sedate history.”

– David Latham, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA

Systems containing large gas giants have also been found but they are not as flat as those without, and many smaller worlds are indeed out there… “probably including a lot of them comparable in size to Earth,” said planet-hunter Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley.

While multiple-planet systems were expected, the scientists on the Kepler team were surprised by the amount that have been discovered.

“We didn’t anticipate that we would find so many multiple-transit systems. We thought we might see two or three. Instead, we found more than 100,” said Latham.

A total of 171 multiple-planet systems have been found so far… with many more to come, no doubt!

Announced yesterday at the American Astronomical Society conference in Boston, these findings are the result of only the first four months of Kepler’s observations. There will be another news release next summer but in the meantime the team wants time to extensively research the data.

“We don’t want to get premature information out. There’s still a lot of analysis that needs to be done.”

– Kepler principal investigator William Borucki

Carina Nebula: Pumping More Than Just Iron

We are all just star stuff… But when it comes to the elements produced by a star, it just doesn’t get any heavier than iron. So how do more exotic elements come into existence? Try the Great Cosmic Recycler – supernova. Its energy disperses newly synthesized materials right into the interstellar neighborhood where an enriched generation of stars begin life again.

 The beautiful Carina Nebula may very well be a literal supernova factory. Encompassing a large field of 1.4 square degrees, Chandra made of a mosaic of 22 individual pointings. In total, the image represents 1.2 million seconds – or nearly two weeks – of Chandra observing time. In addition, multi-wavelength data, such as infrared observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), were then added to the mix to reveal that the supernova process has already begun. Clues, such as the lack of bright x-ray sources from Trumpler 15, suggest its massive stars have already been destroyed. In addition, six candidate neutron stars – instead of just one – provide additional evidence that supernova activity is gearing up in Carina.


But stellar destruction isn’t the only evidence Chandra has found. A new population of young massive stars has also been detected… potentially doubling the number of known young, massive stars which are usually destined to be destroyed later in supernova explosions. In the composite image, they appear as bright X-ray sources scattered across the x-ray emission like freckles on a child’s face. But what really holds our interest is the infamous Eta Carinae – a massive, unstable star on the brink of extinction.
Thanks to this latest research, we now know it’s not alone…