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NASA Releases Atlas of the Entire Sky
Launched in 2009, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or WISE methodically snapped an infrared picture about once every 11 seconds for ten months — totaling around 2.7 million images — in an attempt to compile an atlas of the entire sky. This past Wednesday, NASA released the final version of their all-sky atlas and catalog of objects, which should keep scientists and astronomers busy for quite some time.
Comprising 15 trillion bytes of information, the individual pictures from the WISE probe were stitched together into a collection of 18,000 mosaic images with over 560 million individual stars and galaxies, many of which have never been seen before. The image above is one such mosaic image, showing the entire 360º view of the sky in a single shot.
The hope is that this collection of images and catalog of objects will spur further discoveries, as the head of the data processing and archiving effort for WISE Roc Cutri said:
“It will be exciting and rewarding to see the innovative ways the science and educational communities will use WISE in their studies now that they have the data at their fingertips.”
Though the all sky-atlas is only just now released, preliminary data from WISE has already turned up some startling discoveries. For instance, the first “trojan asteroid” — that is, an asteroid which has the same orbital path around the sun as the Earth — was found using information from the WISE survey. A new class of stars called “Y-dwarfs,” which are the darkest and coldest stars yet seen, were also discovered using WISE data. Information from WISE was also used in a survey of near Earth asteroids that comfortingly found that NASA has already tracked over 90% of space rocks close to our planet.
With so much valuable scientific work already made by the program, it’s no surprise that NASA has high hopes now that all the information has been released. Who knows what startling new finds will come next?
(via NASA, Wikipedia, image via NASA)
MAR. 12: Massive triangle shaped hole in the Sun’s corona recorded by NASA
Don`t know what to say about this, it seems to have happened at the same time with the other solar event, posted here 2 posts back. You can see the other event at 1:20 in the lower left corner and pictures of this huge triangle on the SDO site http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/about.php
http://solen.info/solar/images/AR_CH_20120312.jpg
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/goes15/latest.html
http://solen.info/solar/
http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/37955/Earth_sized_Ufo_s_using_the_sun…
Plans to Strip Mine the Moon May Soon be More Than Just Science-Fiction
Friday, 08 July 2011 07:20
‘It may not be long before we start mining the moon for its resources, particularly the rare Helium-3 for its use in nuclear fusion.
Billions of tonnes of resources, ranging from water to gases to metals, have been detected on the Moon and further out into space, and both governments and private companies are navigating the ambiguous legal parlance to determine how to reach, extract and distribute it all.’
Read more: Plans to Strip Mine the Moon May Soon be More Than Just Science-Fiction
davidicke.com/headlines
We Are The Aliens (BBC 2006)
Mysterious Disc Found on Baltic Seabed
The object is located at a depth of 87 meters and is circular in shape with an estimated diameter of 60 metres.
Curiously, there is a 300m long sliding track behind the object, suggesting that the object slid along the seabed into it’s current position.
Peter Lindburg, a member of the “Ocean Explorers” said
“You see a lot of strange things in this profession, but in my 17 – 18 years working as a professional wreckage hunter, I have never seen anything like this. The shape, the totally unique and completely round circle makes this find totally unique.”
The objects location and photographs have been passed to the Swedish State Marine Museums to investigate – who have commented that it is too early to determine what the object is, however, the most believable explanation at this time is that it is a natural formation of some sort.
This does not however explain the trail in the sea bed.
Reference: http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article13263359.ab
Thorium Revolt: Mineral to Replace Uranium as Nuclear Power Source?
Saturday, 02 July 2011 06:33
Holometer experiment to test if the universe is a hologram
October 28, 2010 by Lisa Zyga 
Enlarge
A conceptual design of Fermilab’s holometer. Image credit: symmetry magazine
(PhysOrg.com) — Many ideas in theoretical physics involve extra dimensions, but the possibility that the universe has only two dimensions could also have surprising implications. The idea is that space on the ultra-small Planck scale is two-dimensional, and the third dimension is inextricably linked with time. If this is the case, then our three-dimensional universe is nothing more than a hologram of a two-dimensional universe.
This idea of the holographic universe is not new, but physicists at Fermilab are now designing an experiment to test the idea. Fermilab particle astrophysicist Craig Hogan and others are building a holographic interferometer, or “holometer,” in an attempt to detect the noise inherent in spacetime, which would reveal the ultimate maximum frequency limit imposed by nature.
As Hogan explains in a recent issue of Fermilab’s symmetry magazine, the holometer will be “the most sensitive measurement ever made of spacetime itself.” Hogan and others have already built a one-meter-long prototype of the instrument. They have just begun building the entire 40-meter-long holometer and plan to start collecting data next year.
The holometer consists of two completely separate interferometers positioned on top of one other. In each interferometer, a light beam is split into two different parts that travel in different directions. After bouncing off a mirror, the light beams are brought back together where the difference in their phases is measured. Even the smallest vibration will interfere with the light’s frequency during its travels and cause the two light beams to be out of sync.
While interferometers have been used for more than 100 years, the key to the holometer is achieving extreme precision at high frequencies. The scientists say that the holometer will be seven orders of magnitude more precise than any atomic clock in existence over very short time intervals. By having two interferometers, the researchers can compare them to confirm measurements. In addition, the scientists are making sure that any vibration that is detected isn’t coming from the holometer itself. They will arrange sensors outside the holometer to detect normal vibrations, and then cancel these vibrations by shaking the mirrors at the same frequency.
After taking these precautions, any detected high-frequency noise could be the jitter of spacetime itself, or “holographic noise.” The noise is expected to have a frequency of a million cycles per second, which is a thousand times higher than what the human ear can hear, noted Fermilab experimental physicist Aaron Chou. If the experiment does find this holographic noise, it would be the first glimpse beyond our three-dimensional illusion and into the universe’s true two-dimensional nature at the Planck scale.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-holometer-universe-hologram.html
Believe nothing 