The Sun Will "Flip Upside Down" In Few Weeks

The Sun is set to "flip upside down" within weeks as its magnetic field reverses polarity in an event that will send ripple effects throughout the solar system.

Although it may sound like a catastrophic occurrence, there's no need to run for cover. The sun switches its polarity, flipping its magnetic north and south, once every eleven years through an internal mechanism about which little is understood.

The swap could however cause intergalactic weather fronts such as geomagnetic storms, which can interfere with satellites and cause radio blackouts.

Nasa said in August that the change would happen in three to four months time, but it is impossible to give a more specific date. Scientist won't know for around another three weeks whether the flip is complete.

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The impact of the transfer will be widespread as the sun's magnetic field exerts influence well beyond Pluto, past Nasa's Voyager probes positioned near the edge of interstellar space.

The event will be watched closely by researchers at Stanford University's Wilcox Solar Observatory, which monitors the sun's magnetic field on a daily basis.

Todd Hoeksema, director of the Wilcox Solar Observatory, said the polarity change is built up throughout the eleven year cycle through areas of intense magnetic activity known as sunspots which gradually move towards the poles, eroding the existing opposite polarity.

Eventually, the magnetic field reduces to zero, before rebounding with the opposite polarity. "It's kind of like a tide coming in or going out," Hoeksema said. "Each little wave brings a little more water in, and eventually you get to the full reversal."

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One of the most noticeable effect on Earth will be a boost in the occurrence, range and visibility of auroras - the Northern Lights. "It's not a catastrophic event, it's a large scale event that has some real implications, but its not something we need to worry about," added Hoeksema.

Source: Times Of India
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- Unknown Updated at: Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Indian Scientists Discovers Remnants Of Youngest Supernova

PUNE: Scientists of the Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) and Indian Centre for Space Physics (ICSP), Kolkata, have discovered one of the youngest supernova remnants in the Milky Way. The phenomenon of a star exploding to its death is called supernova.

In the latest discovery, the scientists concluded from the size of the remnants that the supernova occurred only a few hundred years ago, making it one of the youngest known supernova remnants. The study was published in the September issue of The Astrophysical Journal of the American Astronomical Society.

The scientists — Subhasis Roy of NCRA and Sabyasachi Pal from ICSP — used the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) facility at Khodad, about 80 km from Pune, for this study, which took them a decade.

The discovery is significant as search for supernova remnants is a topic of great interest the world over. Only 270 of an estimated 1,000 supernovas have been discovered so far. Scientists have also said that in 400 years, about a dozen supernovas would have taken place, but only two have been discovered till date.

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The scientists spotted the supernova remnants in the centre of the Earth's galaxy. They said it was a challenge to spot the supernova remnants because of its size. Pal said, "The supernova remnants we discovered were small in size, but the radio telescopes in GMRT made it possible for us to conduct the study effectively."

The scientists have not been able to find the exact number of years when the supernova remnants wer created as its distance from Earth is not known. Pal said, "We are still working on finding the exact distance of the supernova remnants from Earth. Once we find this, we will be able to tell the exact age." ...

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- Unknown Updated at: Saturday, October 19, 2013

NASA's First Space 3D Printer To Go Live By 2014: Will Be A LifeSaver

NASA is clear about what they want to do about the 3D printer, the first one to be launched in space. The low cost machine is said to be a savior for the astronauts who work from the space station and also help reduce the working cost for future missions. The plan is to launch the 3D metal printer by end of 2014.

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Although this will not be an easy task says the company, the device will have to withstand lift-off vibrations and operate safely in an enclosed space station environment.

Nasa has chosen technology start-up Made in Space to make the microwave oven-sized printer.

"Imagine an astronaut needing to make a life-or-death repair on the International Space Station," said Aaron Kemmer, the company's chief executive.

"Rather than hoping that the necessary parts and tools are on the station already, what if the parts could be 3D printed when they needed them?"

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In 1970, Apollo 13 astronauts had to cobble together a home-made carbon dioxide filter using a plastic bag, a manual cover and gaffer tape.

A 3D printer might have solved the problem in minutes.

"If you want to be adaptable, you have to be able to design and manufacture on the fly, and that's where 3D printing in space comes in,'' said Dave Korsmeyer, director of engineering at Nasa's Ames Research Center.

Nasa is also experimenting with 3D printing small satellites that could be launched from the International Space Station and then transmit data to earth.

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The common technology for 3D printing uses preparing layer by layer of polymer material, also called as Additive Manufacturing. There has been technology used by laser melting titanium and nickel chromium powders to make stronger components.

In August, Nasa successfully tested a metal 3D printed rocket component as part of its drive to reduce the costs of space exploration.

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- Unknown Updated at: Wednesday, October 02, 2013

The Most Crowded Galaxy Discovered : 200 million Stars, only 54 million Light Years Away

Using the combined imaging capabilities of ground-based observatories with the high-flying Hubble Space Telescope and its cousin, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the ultra-compact dwarf galaxy known as M60-UCD1 turns out to be 15,000 times denser than what is found in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

“Traveling from one star to another would be a lot easier in M60-UCD1 than it is in our galaxy, but it would still take hundreds of years using present technology,” said lead author of the new study, astronomer Michigan State University’s Jay Strader, in a press release.

What’s even more remarkable about M60-USD1 is that the galaxy’s most crowded part–its core, where half its 200 million solar masses resides–spans a radius of only 80 light years. That means the stars in this little galaxy are about 25 times closer to each other than those we find around the Sun’s galactic neighborhood.

Chandra observations have revealed that the galaxy’s tiny core harbors a strong x-ray source, which belongs to a giant black hole that weighs 10 million times the mass of our sun. That makes it about twice the size of the black hole in our own galaxy.

Astronomers theorize that a close encounter with a neighboring galaxy billions of years ago may have ripped away stars from M60-USD1 and may have led to the supermassive black hole pulling in the surviving stars close together.

“We think nearly all of the stars have been pulled away from the exterior of what once was a much bigger galaxy,” said co-author Duncan Forbes of Swinburne University in Australia in the press release.

“This leaves behind just the very dense nucleus of the former galaxy, and an overly massive black hole.”

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- Unknown Updated at: Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Moon Atleast 100 Million Years Younger!

How old is the moon? Not as old as we once thought.

The moon is likely to be 4.4 billion to 4.45 billion years old, or about 100 million years younger than previously thought, according to new research by geochemist Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

It may be the closest body to us in space, but scientists are still not sure exactly how, or when, it formed.

The current working theory suggests that the moon formed when a large proto-planet plowed into the early Earth, creating a major explosion that sent huge amounts of rocky debris into space.

While most of that material returned to Earth, the theory suggests some of it stayed in space, forming a disk around the Earth that eventually grew together to form the moon.

While other scientists continue to improve their models of what this giant impact may have looked like, Carlson is trying to determine when it happened.

Like other scientists before him, he has been using radioactive dating to determine the age of lunar rocks collected during the Apollo missions.

Previous work in this area had a large margin of error, but Carlson says improved technology has allowed him to narrow that margin significantly.

"Back in the 1970s, you couldn't distinguish between 4.45 and 4.55 billion years," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Today, we can, and everything we are seeing suggests the 4.4 billion number."


One of the most interesting implications of Carlson's research is to imagine what the Earth might have been like before it had a moon.

"We know the age of the solar system very well -- 4.568 billion years," Carlson said. "So the Earth may have had two phases of its life -- one before the giant impact, and another one greatly modified by the impact."

Carlson presented his research this week at the "Origins of the Moon" meeting of the Royal Society.

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- Unknown Updated at: Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Life Discovered In Stratosphere, Are Alien Life Forms Coming In To Earth's Atmosphere?

The team, led by the University of Sheffield, found small organisms that could have come from space after sending a specially designed balloon to 27 km into the stratosphere during the recent Perseid meteor shower.

"Most people will assume that these biological particles must have just drifted up to the stratosphere from Earth, but it is generally accepted that a particle of the size found cannot be lifted from Earth to heights of, for example, 27 km," said Professor Milton Wainwright from the University's Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology.

"The only known exception is by a violent volcanic eruption, none of which occurred within three years of the sampling trip.

"In the absence of a mechanism by which large particles like these can be transported to the stratosphere we can only conclude that the biological entities originated from space.

"Our conclusion then is that life is continually arriving to Earth from space, life is not restricted to this planet and it almost certainly did not originate here," he said.

"If life does continue to arrive from space then we have to completely change our view of biology and evolution. New textbooks will have to be written!" Wainwright said.


The balloon, designed by Chris Rose and Alex Baker from the University of Sheffield's Leonardo Centre for Tribology, was launched near Chester and carried microscope studs which were only exposed to the atmosphere when the balloon reached heights of between 22 and 27 km.

The balloon landed safely and intact near Wakefield. The scientists then discovered that they had captured a diatom fragment and some unusual biological entities from the stratosphere, all of which are too large to have come from Earth.

Wainwright said stringent precautions had been taken against the possibility of contamination during sampling and processing, and said the group was confident that the biological organisms could only have come from the stratosphere.

The findings have been published in the Journal of Cosmology.

Wainwright's team is hoping to extend and confirm their results by carrying out the test again in October to coincide with the upcoming Haley's Comet-associated meteorite shower when there will be large amounts of cosmic dust.

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- Unknown Updated at: Saturday, September 21, 2013

Voyager Out To Infinity : NASA

Scientists say the probe's instruments indicate it has moved beyond the bubble of hot gas from our Sun and is now moving in the space between the stars.

Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.

Today, the veteran Nasa mission is almost 19 billion km (12 billion miles) from home.

This distance is so vast that it takes 17 hours now for a radio signal sent from Voyager to reach receivers here on Earth.

"This is really a key milestone that we'd been hoping we would reach when we started this project over 40 years ago - that we would get a spacecraft into interstellar space," said Prof Ed Stone, the chief scientist on the venture.

"Scientifically it's a major milestone, but also historically - this is one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time. This is the first time we've begun to explore the space between the stars," he told BBC News.

Sensors on Voyager had been indicating for some time that its local environment had changed.

The data that finally convinced the mission team to call the jump to interstellar space came from the probe's Plasma Wave Science (PWS) instrument. This can measure the density of charged particles in Voyager's vicinity.

Readings taken in April/May this year and October/November last year revealed a near-100-fold jump in the number of protons occupying every cubic metre of space.

Scientists have long theorised such a spike would eventually be observed if Voyager could get beyond the influence of the magnetic fields and particle wind that billow from the surface of the Sun.

When the Voyager team put the new data together with information from the other instruments onboard, they calculated the moment of escape to have occurred on or about 25 August, 2012.

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- Unknown Updated at: Saturday, September 14, 2013

First Time Ever Two Civilian Ships To Help India's Mars Spacecraft

BANGALORE: For the first time in the history of India's space flights, two civilian ships will play a supporting role in India's forthcoming flight to Mars designated as the Mars Orbiter Mission.

The launch is slated for lift-off between October 21 and November 19 from Sriharikota.

On Wednesday, the 1,350 kg Mars Orbiter spacecraft with the five payloads was unveiled to the media for the first time at Isro's Satellite Centre. It was in the process of being fine-tuned and the clean room was the scene of hectic activity with scientists clad in their white robes attending to the orbiter.

The orbiter is set to be moved to Sriharikota on September 27. Speaking to TOI on Wednesday, B S Chandrasekhar, director of Isro Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network ( Istrac), said that Shipping Corporation of India's 'Yamuna' and 'Nalanda' ships will be positioned in the South Pacific Ocean. "They are now fully equipped and will depart for the South Pacific Ocean from Visakhapatnam on September 15 and will support the mission during the launch phase,'' he said.

He said that in a previous flight—the space capsule recovery experiment mission — a naval ship was used. "This is the first time we are using a civilian ship for a major interplanetary mission,'' he added.

Chandrasekhar said that the current plans project that the 70-metre antenna of Nasa's deep space network at Canberra in Australia will acquire the first signal of the crucial Mars orbiter insertion in September 2014 after a nearly 300-day flight.

A liquid apogee motor will play a major role in the orbit insertion. "This motor has a major part in orbital manoeuvres and has to restart for the insertion after a 300-day flight,'' an Isro official said.

SK Shivakumar, director of Isro Satellite Centre, said progress in the Indian Mars programme has been satisfactory. "We were able to achieve because we were able to regroup ourselves,'' he said.

Mylswamy Annadurai, programme director, said the mission will mark a quantum jump in technology. It posed a major challenge because globally the success rate of Mars missions was not even 30%, he said. Lessons learnt from the Chandrayaan mission have been embedded into the Mars mission. "The powering system of the spacecraft has been changed,'' he said.

S Arunan, project director, said that the mission had incorporated a number of redundant systems to ensure a successful Mars capture of the spacecraft. "The on-board autonomy called for the development of 68 new software modules,'' he said, adding that they have concentrated on those areas where foreign Mars missions had failed.

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- Unknown Updated at: Thursday, September 12, 2013

NASA's New Smart Cam To Explore Alien World

NASA has developed a new camera system that can not only take pictures of alien rocks, it also draws meaning out of them — allowing a planet rover to decide if it should keep exploring a particular area or move on.

The Curiosity rover exploring Mars boasts impressive technology but future rovers will need more smart technology to explore more distant worlds, researchers said.

To help future rover and space missions spend less time waiting for instructions from Earth, Wagstaff and her colleagues developed an advanced two-lens camera, called TextureCam.

Although Curiosity and other rovers can already, on their own, distinguish rocks from other objects in photos they take, they must send images all the way to Earth for scientific analysis of a particular rock.

This process costs time and limits the potential scientific scope of rovers’ missions. TextureCam can do the analysis by itself, researchers said.

At the beginning of each Martian day, called a sol, scientists on Earth upload an agenda to a Mars rover. This scientific schedule details nearly all of the rover’s movements: roll forward so many meters, snap a photo, scoop a soil sample, run rudimentary tests on it and move on.

Even moving at light speed, instructions from Earth take about 20 minutes to reach the surface of Mars. This 40-minute round-trip makes real-time control of the rover impossible.

On Jupiter’s moon Europa, where astrobiologists suspect extraterrestrial life could exist, the delay balloons to over 90 minutes.

Mars-to-Earth communication costs precious power and trickles at a bandwidth of around 0.012 megabits per second — about 250 times slower than a 3G cellphone network.

Mars orbiters can help speed up the data transfer rate, though the satellites only orbit into correct alignment a few short minutes each day. Curiosity’s constrained connection limits the number of Martian images it can send back to Earth.

“If the rover itself could prioritise what’s scientifically important, it would suddenly have the capability to take more images than it knows it can send back. That goes hand in hand with its ability to discover new things that weren’t anticipated,” said Wagstaff.

When TextureCam’s stereo cameras snap 3D images, a special processor separate from the rover’s main computer analyses the pictures.

By recognising textures in the photos, the processor distinguishes between sand, rocks and sky. The processor then uses the size and distance to rocks in the picture to determine if any are scientifically important layered rocks.

The system’s built-in processor avoids straining the rover’s busy main processor. When TextureCam spots an interesting rock, it can either upload a high-resolution image back to Earth or send a message to the main processor to move towards the rock and take a sample.

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- Unknown Updated at: Tuesday, September 10, 2013

LADEE Recovers, NASA Moon Mission Back On Track

NASA's newest robotic explorer rocketed into space late Friday in an unprecedented moonshot from Virginia that dazzled sky watchers along the East Coast.

But the LADEE spacecraft quickly ran into equipment trouble, and while NASA assured everyone early Saturday that the lunar probe was safe and on a perfect track for the moon, officials acknowledged the problem needs to be resolved in the next two to three weeks.

S. Peter Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California, which developed the spacecraft, told reporters he's confident everything will be working properly in the next few days.

LADEE's reaction wheels were turned on to orient and stabilize the spacecraft, which was spinning too fast after it separated from the final rocket stage, Worden said. But the computer automatically shut the wheels down, apparently because of excess current. He speculated the wheels may have been running a little fast.

Worden stressed there is no rush to "get these bugs ironed out."

The LADEE spacecraft, which is charged with studying the lunar atmosphere and dust, soared aboard an unmanned Minotaur rocket a little before midnight from Virginia's Eastern Shore.

"Godspeed on your journey to the moon, LADEE," Launch Control said. Flight controllers applauded and exchanged high-fives following the successful launch. "We are headed to the moon!" NASA said in a tweet.

It was a change of venue for NASA, which normally launches moon missions from Cape Canaveral, Fla. But it provided a rare light show along the East Coast for those blessed with clear skies.

NASA urged sky watchers to share their launch pictures through the website Flickr, and the photos and sighting reports quickly poured in from New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New Jersey, Rhode Island, eastern Pennsylvania and Virginia, among other places.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer or LADEE, pronounced "LA'-dee," is taking a roundabout path to the moon, making three huge laps around Earth before getting close enough to pop into lunar orbit.

Unlike the quick three-day Apollo flights to the moon, LADEE will need a full month to reach Earth's closest neighbor. An Air Force Minotaur V rocket, built by Orbital Sciences Corp., provided the ride from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.

LADEE, which is the size of a small car, is expected to reach the moon on Oct. 6.

Scientists want to learn the composition of the moon's ever-so-delicate atmosphere and how it might change over time. Another puzzle, dating back decades, is whether dust actually levitates from the lunar surface.

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- Unknown Updated at: Sunday, September 08, 2013

1Lakh People Ready to Fly To Mars By 2022 And Never Return Back! : Science Desk

More than 100,000 people have applied to be a part of the Mars One project, which aims to colonize the red planet starting in 2022.

Out of the thousands, 40 people will be selected. Of the 40, just four will participate in the first passage to Mars, which is scheduled to leave in September 2022 and land seven months later in April 2023.

None of the four will ever return to Earth.

More than 30,000 Americans have applied for the chance to be the very first settlers on Mars, paying a $38 application fee.

The audacious project is the brainchild of a Dutch company run by CEO and creator Bas Lansdorp.

Lansdrop told CNN that the price based is on the gross domestic product per capita of different nations. For example, Mexicans pay a $15 application fee.

'We wanted it to be high enough for people to have to really think about it and low enough for anyone to be able to afford it,' Lansdorp said.

The very first mission to Mars will cost $6 billion, according to Lansdorp.

He intends to fund the mission by creating a 'reality TV' series about the mission, documenting everything from the astronauts' training on Earth right through to touch-down on Mars and their daily lives once on the planet.

Sponsors and media agencies would pay to broadcast the Mars mission.

'What we want to do is tell the story to the world. When humans go to Mars, when they settle on Mars and build a new Earth, a new planet. This is one of the most exciting things that ever happened, and we want to share the story with the entire world,' Lansdorp said.

Another second group of four will leave two years after the first...

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- Unknown Updated at: Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Science : 100 Meter asteroid passes close by earth today

It's the plot of a dozen movies and Sci-Fi books: an asteroid large enough to do serious damage to Earth is spotted just a few days before it sails close to our stellar doorstep.

Faced with the possibility of extinction humanity does the only sensible thing: stream it live on the 'net.

That's what the Slooh Space Camera did today, after Asteroid NE19 zipped past our planet.

Discovered just last week, NE19 was said to be the size of a football field. It's also rather dark, which explains the ever-so-recent detection.

The rock passed 11 Lunar Distances from Earth. That's unsettlingly close, on a scale that escalates to disconcertingly close, worryingly close and Lucifer's Hammer close.



Slooh Space Camera's tracked the object from its Canary Islands observatory and kindly made video of its coverage available to all in the video below.

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- Unknown Updated at: Tuesday, July 23, 2013