COMETS POSSIBLY THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

Dateline - August 1, 2009   The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply. The formation of the solar system itself is thought to have been triggered by shock waves that emanated from the explosion of a nearby supernova. The supernova injected radioactive material such as Aluminium-26 into the primordial... Read more

ASTRONOMERS OBSERVE BLACK HOLE IN GALAXY 1H0707-495

X-rays, produced as matter swirls into the supermassive black hole,  illuminate the matter before its eventual accretion. Iron atoms in the flow imprint characteristic iron lines on the reflected light. The iron lines are distorted in a number of characteristic ways: they are affected by the speed of the orbiting iron atoms, the energy required for the X-rays to escape the black hole’s gravitational field, and the spin of the black hole. ... Read more

TITAN MAY HAVE SUBSURFACE HYDROCARBON OCEAN

The new findings may help explain the presence of large lakes of hydrocarbons at both of Titan’s poles.  Read More →

KEPLER BEGINS SEARCH FOR EARTH-LIKE PLANETS

Kepler - the NASA spacecraft launched March 6th - has the unique ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans.  Read More →

DARK MATTER EXPLANATION NARROWED BY REFINED EXPANSION RATE

Refined calculations made by the Hubble telescope of the expansion rate of the universe (more than twice as precise as previous calculations) are used to test and constrain the properties of dark energy.  Read More →

Lightest Exo-Planet Found

The discovery of the lightest exoplanet ever found, less than twice the mass of the Earth, has electrified a week-long meeting on astronomy and space science in Europe. The stunning finding was made by a team headed by Michel Mayor of the Geneva Observatory. The icing on the cake is a related discovery that a previously discovered “super-Earth” orbiting the same star appears to reside in the habitable zone…full article from Space... Read more

The Faith of Dark Matter

Rational atheists constantly rail on Christians and theists for believing in things for which there are proofs, but scientists are doing the same thing with dark matter.   There’s no proof that it exists, but the concept can explain a lot of things, beyond what we can see and measure here on this earth.    See Study Plunges Standard Theory Of Cosmology Into Crisis  Read More →

Most Distant Source of Water in the Universe Discovered

As reported by Science Daily, it’s in the lensing galaxy at the edge of the visible cosmos, in a jet emitted from a supermassive black hole (quasar MG J0414+0534).    The radiation indicative of the water was emitted when the universe was 2.5 billion years old; it has taken 11.1 billion years to reach the earth.   Of the find Dr John McKean of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) states:  “This means that the abundance... Read more