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New Study Finds Vast Galactic Network, No Sign of Dark Matter
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 04.25.2012 at 12:37 pm
Is dark matter in danger? A few days after scientists said there’s no dark matter near our sun, a team of researchers in Germany now says there’s no dark matter in our galactic neighborhood. The team found a vast structure of globular clusters and satellite galaxies surrounding the Milky Way in a smooth, evenly distributed pattern. Most models of galactic distribution and evolution require the gravitational effects of dark matter, but in this model, it doesn’t seem to exist.
James Cameron, Charles Simonyi, and Ross Perot, Jr. to Unveil Space Project
By Dan Nosowitz Posted 04.20.2012 at 5:30 pm
Planetary Resources, a mysterious organization whose investors include Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Microsoft alum and astronaut Charles Simonyi, director James Cameron, “space visionary” Peter Diamandis, and Ross Perot, Jr., is planning to announce more details of the project this coming Tuesday. We’ll be covering it, so we thought we’d give you a heads-up. It has something to do with space resources and exploration–its LinkedIn page says it “develops technologies and systems to enable low-cost commercial robotic exploration of the solar system,” and cofounder Peter Diamandis has hinted at asteroid mining–but we don’t know much more than that at the moment. Check in here on Tuesday (and, I mean, on Monday too, for other things) for the reveal.
Our Universe Is A Gigantic And Wonderfully Detailed Holographic Illusion
‘In our daily life we are not aware that we may, in fact, live in a hologram and our existence is a holographic projection, nothing more. All what we believe is real, our whole physical world, is – in fact – an illusion being proved by the holographic universe, one of the most remarkable theories of 20th century.
Energy fields are decoded by our brains into a 3D picture, to give the illusion of a physical world. Despite its apparent materiality, the universe is a kind of 3-D projection and is ultimately no more real than a hologram.
“Our brain mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond both space and time.’
Read more: Our Universe Is A Gigantic And Wonderfully Detailed Holographic Illusion
Cassini Flies Right By Saturn’s Moon Enceladus, Snapping New Up-Close Pics
The Cassini spacecraft has been busy over this past week, making close flybys of both Enceladus and and Tethys, two of Saturn’s moons. And we’re not using “close” as a relative term here. Cassini skimmed Enceladus in such proximity that it was literally able to taste the plume of water ice, vapor, and other organic compounds spewing from the moon’s south polar region.
That flyby was at an altitude of just 46 miles above Enceladus’s surface, a hair’s breadth as these sorts of things go. Unfortunately for us, Baghdad Sulcus–the fracture from which said plume emanates–is in darkness for this flyover, but Cassini was able to snap various high-res surface shots of the moon as it passed back into daylight.
For its Tethys encounter, Cassini took a bit more conservative approach, passing about 5,700 miles above the moon’s surface. It was the first imaging expedition to Tethys since 2005, when Cassini captured imagery from its Saturn-facing side. This time Cassini snapped views of Tethys’s other side, which should provide researchers with enough data to start building decent digital elevation maps of Tethys’s surface.
[JPL]
Mysteriously dark Mars regions are made of glass
15 April 2012
Hearts of glass (Image: NASA/University of Arizona)
THEY look dark, but mysterious expanses on Mars are mainly made of glass forged in past volcanoes.
The dark regions make up more than 10 million square kilometres of the Martian northern lowlands, but their composition wasn’t clear. Past spectral measurements indicated that they are unlike dark regions found elsewhere on the Red Planet, which consist mainly of basalt.
Briony Horgan and Jim Bell of Arizona State University in Tempe analysed near-infrared spectra of the regions, gathered by the Mars Express orbiter. They found absorption bands characteristic of the iron in volcanic glass, a shiny substance similar to obsidian that forms when magma cools too fast for its minerals to crystallise (Geology, DOI: 10.1130/G32755.1).
The glass likely takes the form of sand-sized grains, as it does in glass-rich fields in Iceland. The spectra suggest the grains are coated with silica-rich “rinds”.
On Earth, such rinds coat volcanic glass weathered by water. How the glassy grains formed on Mars is unknown, but Horgan says magma from Martian volcanoes interacting with water ice and snow is a possibility. That would make these regions (pictured right) potential hotspots for alien life because they would have held chemical-rich water – a key ingredient for life.
First Phobos, now Mars too has a monolith.
By Natalie Wolchover | LiveScience.com – Wed, Apr 11, 2012
http://news.yahoo.com/monolith-object-mars-could-call-214004772.html
discuss at: http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=206925
Amateur stargazers have discovered an intriguing object jutting out from the surface of Mars. The seemingly perfectly rectangular, upright structure, found in NASA images of the Red Planet, bears a striking resemblance to the monoliths planted on Earth and the moon by aliens in the classic sci-fi film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
The object in question was first spotted several years ago after being photographed by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a NASA space probe; every so often, it garners renewed interest on the Internet. But is it unnatural — a beacon erected by aliens for mysterious reasons, and even more mysteriously paralleled in the imaginations of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, creators of “2001”? Or is this rock the work of nature?
According to Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, who processes many of the images taken during NASA’s Mars missions, the object in question is no more than a roughly rectangular boulder.
The HiRISE camera that photographed it has a resolution of approximately 1 foot (30 centimeters) per pixel — impressive considering the 180-mile (300-kilometer) altitude from which it photographs the Martian surface, but not quite sharp enough to capture the cragginess of a mid-size boulder. “When your resolution is too low to fully resolve an object, it tends to look rectangular because the pixels in the image are squares. Any curve will look like a series of straight lines if you reduce your resolution enough,” Hill told Life’s Little Mysteries.
The location of the boulder at the bottom of a cliff near many other boulders suggests it broke off the cliff and tumbled to its current spot sometime in the distant past, Hill said. Such a perilous location is itself an argument against deliberate placement by aliens: “If I was going to build a monolith somewhere, that’s the last place I would put it!” he said. “The debris falling from the cliff would cover it up pretty quickly, on geologic timescales.”
Hill added that the height of the boulder is being exaggerated in the photo by a low sun angle. Photographed when the sun was near the horizon, the boulder casts an especially long shadow.
The ufologists aren’t necessarily wrong in calling it a monolith — the word simply translates from Latin as “one stone.” But this monolith isn’t the masonry of Martians.
Water On Mercury: Images From Nasa’s Messenger Probe Shows ‘Ice’ At Planet’s Poles
Fresh Evidence has emerged that indicates the existence of water on Mercury.
Despite the planet’s blistering surface temperatures of more than 400 degrees, a Nasa satellite has discovered so-called “cold traps” at the planet’s poles, areas that live permanently in shadow.
The Messenger probe mapping Mercury
According to data from the space agency’s Messenger probe, radar signals are reflected from the “cold traps”, a characteristic indicative of ice.
Messenger, launched in 2004, is only on the second probe to map the sun-scorched planet, performing several flybys since 2008.
Mercury is the planet closest to the sun
According to Dr Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the Messenger images “show that all the radar-bright features near Mercury’s south pole are located in areas of permanent shadow.
“Near Mercury’s north pole such deposits are also seen only in shadowed regions, results consistent with the water-ice hypothesis.”
However, the scientist added that the images were not conclusive and that further research was necessary.
The findings were announced at the 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
An image of Mercury taken by Messenger in 2008
Unknown planet(Elenin/Nibiru?) and two companions rise before the sun; Tues 10th May 2011
Captured on Hawaii Telescope, Nibiru + 3 Planets,
At 02:17 (followed by the Sun) – Video captured by The CFH observatory that hosts a world-class, 3.6 meter optical/infrared telescope.
Bill Gates in Global Push to Vaccinate Every Child on the Planet
Tuesday, 05 July 2011 09:05
‘Microsoft guru Bill Gates is busy rallying the troops to bring about what he calls “vaccine equity,” which is his plan to vaccinate every single child in the world. Manipulating the heart strings of his listening audience, Gates stated at a recent Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) conference that “rich” kids take for granted the vaccines they receive, and that now is the time to provide the same vaccines for the world’s poorest children.
“It’s now that we’re gonna start to get the last two vaccines that rich kids take for granted, the pneumococcal and rotavirus, and over these next five years, get them out to every child everywhere,” said Gates. “That means for the first time ever that we have equity in vaccines.”‘
Read more: Bill Gates in Global Push to Vaccinate Every Child on the Planet
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