Astrocast.TV

You may have heard something about the degree to which the large earthquake in Chile may have effected the tilt of the Earth and the rotation of the Earth. There has been a lot of nonsense on the web about these effects. Today, NASA scientist Dr. Tony Philips released a report about this issue. To learn more about it, go to his science webpage here.

Today, the European Space Agency (ESA) released a long awaited data analysis from its Cluster mission. The Cluster satellites orbited the Earth from 2001 through 2009. The goal was to study the interaction of the Earth’s magnetic field and the charged particles streaming to us from the Sun commonly known as the Solar Wind. Some scientists have called the resultant high energy electrons, killer electrons. “Killer electrons are highly energetic particles trapped in Earth’s outer radiation belt, which extends from 12 000 km to 64 000 km above the planet’s surface.” Learn more about the Cluster data online now here, and watch a really ‘cool’ visualization of the interaction of the Solar Wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Yesterday, in the journal Nature, astrophysicists announced that data they utilized from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has led them to the conclusion that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is valid. The astronomers used a “map of the distribution of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, going out to a distance of 7 billion light years.” The authors conclude that “the existence of dark matter is the most likely explanation for the observation that galaxies and galaxy clusters move as if under the influence of some unseen mass, in addition to the stars astronomers observe.” Read the announcement from UC Berkeley online here, or read the entire science paper online here.

Six months later the 10,000 foot runway has been plowed, graded and concrete is now being finished at Spaceport America.  In addition work is proceeding on the 110,000 square foot THF or Terminal Hangar Facility.  Back by popular demand here is a repost of Astrocast.TV’s “Breaking New Ground” Reported by Kathleen Koch.

In a paper to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, available online now here, astrobiologist Professor Napier of Cardiff University (UK) has announced that he believes that the cooling period in the Upper Paleolithic period known as the Younger Dryas, may have been set off by the impact of debris from a comet. This period of time, almost 13,000 years ago, was responsible for “intense wildfires over North America, major disruption of human culture, and the rapid extinction of 35 genera of North American mammals.”

In a chapter to be published in the Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, available online now here, Jonathan Feng of the Universit of California, Irvine, provides the reader a readable summary of the latest discoveries associated with the search for the nature of dark matter. As the author notes, “the identity of dark matter is a question of central importance in both astrophysics
and particle physics.” While the author presents a picture of the standard model of the atom, he also addresses the very nature of the dark matter in the universe which dominates the universe itself. He addresses many possibilities but concludes that “upcoming experiments will discover or exclude many of these candidates, and progress may open up an era of unprecedented synergy between studies of the largest and smallest observable length scales.”

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released spectra taken by the Herschel telescope. The spectra are of the nebula commonly known as the Orion Nebula. Spectroscopy allows astronomers to determine the nature of the molecules in the gas cloud under examination. These latest spectra from Herschel indicate that there are many complex molecules in those Orion gas clouds. These include: “water, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, methanol, dimethyl ether, hydrogen cyanide, sulphur oxide, sulphur dioxide and their isotope analogues.” Learn more about the Herschel spectra of Orion online now here.

The European Space Agency (ESA) released today an image of a galaxy that is about 500 million light years distant from our own Milky Way galaxy. The galaxy is known as ESO 306-17. It is a large elliptical galaxy, and it is a part of a galactic cluster of galaxies called a fossil group. Most astronomers believe that large elliptical galaxies are remnants of mergers of many galaxies of a group. Learn more about the “bully galaxy” online now here.

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced today that its Mars Express spacecraft successfully flew by the Mars moon Phobos as a distance of just 67 kilometers above its surface. While more photographs will be released as they are processed, you can learn more about the Martian moon Phobos, and see the first images, online now here.

The American Astronomical Scociety Meeting Part 2. In this episode of The Astronomer’s Universe, Carolyn Collins Petersen takes us to the American Astronomical Society Part 2 winter meeting. It’s one of the largest gatherings of astronomers in history and features astronomical talks about topics as far away as the early universe and as close as the atmosphere of our own planet Earth!