News

**•REC** · (This post was last modified: 01-08-2013 11:31 PM by •REC.)

Latet Updates: First 'Bone' of the Milky Way Identified
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...ce+News%29

Newly spotted comet may outshine the full moon
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shorts...utshi.html

NASA considers orbital outpost near moon as next big project
http://newyork.newsday.com/news/world/na...-1.4030202

Asteroid Vesta's hydrogen suggests role in water-delivery to Earth
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22...-role.html

The Universe Isn't a Fractal, Study Finds
http://www.space.com/17234-universe-frac...heory.html

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Some of us have noticed science threads tend to quickly fall of the front page.

My solution is to post articles in the same thread so people who are interested know where to find such reports.

I will populate the thread with a few articles from the last week.

ALL contributions are welcome - the more the better. Cheers

Member posted links-

My best sources for these topics are-

http://www.sciencedaily.com
http://www.space.com
http://www.nasa.com
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RedShift has posted a bunch of links at post #19 including-

http://www.sciencemag.org/
http://www.astronomynow.com/

http://lunaticoutpost.com/Topic-Science-...pid4003206
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Spank The Monkey has posted a couple of links-

http://esciencenews.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/

**•REC** · **•REC** 14877 User ID: 14877 08-21-2012 12:26 PM **Posts: 21,077**

Big Bang theory under threat from quantum graphity breakthrough

AUSTRALIAN researchers believe they may be on the brink of rewriting the history of the universe.

A paper being published in a US physics journal suggests it may be possible to view "cracks" in the universe that would support the theory of "quantum graphity", considered to be the holy grail of physics.

The team of researchers from the University of Melbourne and RMIT say that instead of thinking of the start of the universe as being a big bang, we should imagine it as a cooling of water into ice.

"Think of the early universe as being like a liquid," Melbourne University theoretical physics researcher James Quach said.

"Then as the universe cools, it `crystalises'.

"The reason we use the water analogy is water is without form.

Their research rests on a school of thought that has emerged recently to suggest space is made of indivisible building blocks, like atoms, that can be thought of as similar to pixels that make up images on a computer screen.

Mr Quach says the standing model for the origins of the universe, the big bang, needs to be rewritten.

He hopes experimentalists will be able to find evidence to support the theory put forward by the Melbourne team of researchers, that would replace it.

"The biggest problem with the big bang model is the bang itself," Mr Quach says.

"At the bang, physics breaks down.

"The model cannot make any predictions at what occurs at the big bang. You can't use any of the mathematics (or) any of the theories."

More-
http://mobile.news.com.au/technology/sci...6454428502

**•REC** · **•REC** 14877 User ID: 14877 08-21-2012 12:27 PM **Posts: 21,077**

The Sun is the most perfect sphere ever observed in nature

The sun is the most perfectly round natural object known in the universe, say scientists who have conducted precise measurements of its dimensions.

As a spinning ball of gas, astronomers had always expected our nearest star to bulge slightly at its equator, making it very slightly flying-saucer shaped. The planet Jupiter demonstrates this effect well. Its high rate of spin - once every 10 hours - means that it is almost 7% wider across its equator than the distance from pole to pole.

Now a team led by the University of Hawaii's Dr Jeffrey Kuhn have made the first precise measurement of the sun's equatorial bulge, or its "oblateness". The results were a big surprise. "We were shocked," says Kuhn. The sun doesn't bulge much at all. It is 1.4m kilometres across, but the difference between its diameter at the equator and between the poles is only 10 kilometres.

Scaled to the size of a beachball, that difference is less than the width of a human hair. Only an artificial sphere of silicon that was created as a standard for weights is known to be more perfectly spherical.

The observations are key to learning about the sun's interior, which rotates at different speeds like traffic moving at different speeds on a motorway. This speed distribution can be inferred from measurements of the star's shape and the way that it wobbles. The new measurement indicates that the outer layers are moving more slowly than expected: Kuhn suggests that turbulence under the surface is probably the cause.

The team also searched for changes in the sun's width over the two years of the observations that would correlate with its 11-year activity cycle, but found that if those variations are there, they are too tiny to detect.

Kuhn accepts that more surprises may be in store, noting that the sun often confounds those who try to predict its behaviour. "It's fooled us every time we've looked."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/a...CMP=twt_fd

**•REC** · **•REC** 14877 User ID: 14877 08-21-2012 12:28 PM **Posts: 21,077**

Newly-discovered galaxy births 740 stars each year

SCIENTISTS have found a cosmic supermum. It's a galaxy that gives birth to more stars in a day than ours does in a year.

Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope to spot the distant galaxy creating about 740 stars a year. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy spawns about one star each year.

The galaxy is about 5.7 billion light years away. It is in the centre of a recently discovered cluster of galaxies that give the brightest X-ray glow astronomers have seen.

MIT astronomer Michael McDonald says the galaxy is strange in another way. It's about 6 billion years old, and this type of galaxy normally doesn't birth stars at that advanced age.

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/wor...z23debE6lY

The Remarkable Phoenix Cluster
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandr...uster.html

Artist's impression
[Image: 1CDC_502BE354.jpg]

**•REC** · **•REC** 14877 User ID: 14877 08-21-2012 12:28 PM **Posts: 21,077**

Dark Matter Likely Common Near Our Sun

The area around our sun is probably rife with dark matter, the pervasive invisible stuff that populates the universe, a new study suggests.

Some past measurements have suggested the vicinity of our sun is chock-full of dark matter, while a 2011 study with new data predicted a relative dearth of the stuff near us.

Now astronomers have used a new mass-measuring technique to tackle the problem. To test their method, the researchers tried it first on a simulation of our whole galaxy. The results suggested that this and other past methods have been undercounting dark matter, so the team adjusted their technique to correct for the bias.

They then applied their measurement algorithm to real data, using the known positions and velocities of thousands of orange K dwarf stars near the sun to estimate the density of invisible matter nearby.

The new calculation suggests that dark matter almost definitely exists around the sun, and there's a 90 percent chance it is more abundant than thought.

Full-
http://www.space.com/17035-dark-matter-c...r-sun.html

**•REC** · **•REC** 14877 User ID: 14877 08-21-2012 12:30 PM **Posts: 21,077**

Nanoparticle 'risk' to food crops

A pair of widely used chemicals in the form of tiny "nanoparticles" have been shown to spread throughout a crop plant or affect growth and soil fertility.

The use of nanoparticles is increasing, yet their environmental impact is poorly understood.

A report published in PNAS shows that nanoparticles present in exhaust gases and some fertilisers adversely affect soybean growth and surrounding soil.

The nanoparticles harmed bacteria that the plant relies on for growth.

Whilst many of their effects have been well documented, some of their mechanisms of action are not fully understood. Concern has arisen that widespread long-term nanoparticle use may "trickle down" into the environment, sparking unforeseen effects on plant or animal, or even human, health.

Continued-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19320267

**LOPastor**

Awesome Thread Idea!

**Axx** lop guest User ID: 115035 08-21-2012 01:48 PM

•REC Wrote:

Big Bang theory under threat from quantum graphity breakthrough

Big bang theory has been completely debunked and discredited for the NWO propaganda that it is.

**Axx** lop guest User ID: 115035 08-21-2012 01:53 PM

•REC Wrote:

Newly-discovered galaxy births 740 stars each year

An artist impression is not science. There are no new stars born, ever. They claim stars form but as others have pointed out these are only opinions. In fact what happens is a star only becomes visible from behind a cloud.

http://creation.com/astronomy-and-astrop...nd-answers

Suggest you figure out planet earth before looking at the heavens.