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Scientists Find New Primitive Mineral in Meteorite
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2012) — In 1969, an exploding fireball tore through the sky over Mexico, scattering thousands of pieces of meteorite across the state of Chihuahua. More than 40 years later, the Allende meteorite is still serving the scientific community as a rich source of information about the early stages of our solar system’s evolution. Recently, scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) discovered a new mineral embedded in the space rock — one they believe to be among the oldest minerals formed in the solar system.
Dubbed panguite, the new titanium oxide is named after Pan Gu, the giant from ancient Chinese mythology who established the world by separating yin from yang to create the earth and the sky. The mineral and the mineral name have been approved by the International Mineralogical Association’s Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification. A paper outlining the discovery and the properties of this new mineral will be published in the July issue of the journal American Mineralogist, and is available online now.
“Panguite is an especially exciting discovery since it is not only a new mineral, but also a material previously unknown to science,” says Chi Ma, a senior scientist and director of the Geological and Planetary Sciences division’s Analytical Facility at Caltech and corresponding author on the paper.
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120626131907.htm#
Gravitational Lensing: Astronomers Spot Rare Arc from Hefty Galaxy Cluster
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2012) — Seeing is believing, except when you don’t believe what you see. Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found a puzzling arc of light behind an extremely massive cluster of galaxies residing 10 billion light-years away. The galactic grouping, discovered by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, was observed as it existed when the universe was roughly a quarter of its current age of 13.7 billion years. The giant arc is the stretched shape of a more distant galaxy whose light is distorted by the monster cluster’s powerful gravity, an effect called gravitational lensing. The trouble is, the arc shouldn’t exist.
“When I first saw it, I kept staring at it, thinking it would go away,” said study leader Anthony Gonzalez of the University of Florida in Gainesville, whose team includes researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “According to a statistical analysis, arcs should be extremely rare at that distance. At that early epoch, the expectation is that there are not enough galaxies behind the cluster bright enough to be seen, even if they were ‘lensed,’ or distorted by the cluster. The other problem is that galaxy clusters become less massive the further back in time you go. So it’s more difficult to find a cluster with enough mass to be a good lens for gravitationally bending the light from a distant galaxy.”
Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120626131234.htm
Proximity of New Planets Stuns Even Astronomers
“We’ve never known of planets like this,” said Yale University astronomer Sarbani Basu, a member of the research team that analyzed the system. “If you were on the smaller planet looking up, the larger planet would seem more than twice the size of Earth’s full moon. It would be jaw-dropping.”
Basu’s research focused on determining the properties of the planets’ host star — work that was essential for discerning the characteristics of the orbiting planets.
The 46-member, international team, led by astronomers at Harvard and the University of Washington, report their discovery June 21 in Science Express, the early release version of the journal Science.
Read mode : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120621152307.htm
Out of this world, quite literally: The beautiful and mysterious Fukang meteorite
By LYLE BRENNAN
PUBLISHED: 15:45 GMT, 14 April 2012 | UPDATED: 15:45 GMT, 14 April 2012
When it slammed into the surface of Earth, there was little sign of the beauty that lay inside.
But cutting the Fukang meteorite open yielded a breathtaking sight.
Within the rock, translucent golden crystals of a mineral called olivine gleamed among a silvery honeycomb of nickel-iron.
Cosmic wonder: Marvin Killgore of the Arizona Meteorite Laboratory lets the sun shine through a polished slice of the Fukang rock
The rare meteorite weighed about the same as a hatchback when it was discovered in 2000, in the Gobi Desert in China’s Xinjiang Province.
It has since been divided into slices which give the effect of stained glass when the sun shines through them.
An anonymous collector holds the largest portion, which weighs 925lb. in 2008, this piece was expected to fetch $2million (£1.26million) at auction at Bonham’s in New York – but it remained unsold.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2129747/The-beautiful-mysterious-Fukang-pallasite-meteorite.html#ixzz1xxGEGnk3
NASA’s black hole-hunting NuSTAR mission launched today
The black hole-hunting telescope NASA announced last month launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean today. The $165 million NuSTAR mission will spend two years scouring the universe for black holes by scanning X-ray light at higher energies than its predecessors. According to Space.com, NuSTAR will especially target high-energy regions of the universe where “matter is falling onto black holes, as well as the leftovers from dead stars after they’ve exploded in supernovas.” Head on past the break for a video of the launch and click through to the source link for more details and images.
NASA Adopts Two Spare Spy Telescopes, Each Maybe More Powerful Than Hubble
Engineer Details Plans to Build a Real, Burj-Dubai-Sized Starship Enterprise in 20 Years
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 05.14.2012
The year 2245 is just too distant — we should build and commission a real USS Enterprise right now, cracking the champagne across her hull within 20 years, according to an enterprising engineer. The gigantic ship would use ion propulsion, powered by a 1.5-GW nuclear reactor, and could reach Mars in three months and the moon in three days. Its 0.3-mile-diameter, magnetically suspended gravity wheel spinning at 2 RPM would provide 1G of gravity, and the thing looks just like the “Star Trek” ship of lore.
This project is the brainchild of an engineer who calls himself BTE Dan. As in “Build The Enterprise,” which is also the name of his brand-new website.
“We have the technological reach to build the first generation of the spaceship known as the USS Enterprise – so let’s do it,” BTE Dan writes. He even sifts through the federal budget and proposes tax hikes and spend ing cuts to cover the $1 trillion cost.
Though the “Star Trek” connection lends the project an air of sci-fi fun, BTE Dan is hardly the only engineer dreaming up a next-generation spaceship to the stars. DARPA’s 100-Year Starship project is designed partly to foster ideas just like this one, from a project planning roadmap to a real ship.
Russian Space Chief: ‘We’re Talking About Establishing Permanent Bases’ On the Moon
By Clay Dillow Posted 05.23.2012 at 1:07 pm
Would You Ride This Pencil-Shaped Capsule To Space?
By Rebecca Boyle Posted 05.23.2012
Kepler Spots a Doomed Planet Slowly Evaporating into Space
By Clay Dillow Posted 05.21.2012 at 12:51 pm @ http://www.popsci.com/
Believe nothing 