Astronomy Videos: Astronomy News & Astronomy Videos // Current

added
1 day ago

Audio suggests Soviets attempted to land on moon before U.S.

The United States wasn’t the only country hoping to land on the moon in July 1969 — the Soviets were trying to beat us... more

InformedTexan
added this

Farthest supernova ever detected

PARIS (AFP) – Astronomers on Wednesday said they had found the farthest supernova ever detected, a giant star that ripped... more

InformedTexan
added this

NASA Reveals Most Complete Map of Earth's Terrain to Date

An astonishing new map has revealed the elevation of nearly every place on Earth.

The Global Digital Elevation Model was created using nearly 1.3million images collected by a Japanese camera on board NASA's Terra spacecraft. It is made up of a giant grid of 23,000 tiles, with each height point spaced 98ft apart.

It shows a detailed representation of the planet's land mass. In this colourised version, low elevations are purple, medium elevations are greens and yellows, and high elevations are orange, red and white.

"This is the most complete, consistent global digital elevation data yet made available to the world," said Nasa scientist Woody Turner. "This unique global set of data will serve users and researchers from a wide array of disciplines that need elevation and terrain information."

Data from The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (Aster) has been combined with other Aster images to create stunning terrain pictures of Death Valley and the Los Angeles Basin among others.

Aster was launched in 1999 along with four other instruments on the Earth Observing System. It takes about 600 high-resolution images a day, each one covering an area of 60 x 60 km.

It also provides scientists with information on land surface temperatures.

Researchers said it could be used for engineering, energy exploration, conserving natural resources, environmental management, firefighting, geology and city planning, to name just a few.

It is a large improvement on the previous best topographic map, where 80 per cent of the planet's landmass was surveyed during the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

'The Aster data filled in many of the voids in the shuttle mission's data, such as in very steep terrains and in some deserts,' said Michael Kobrick, from the Shuttle Radar project.

Nasa has 15 satellites that monitor the globe providing high-resolution data on how the globe in changing. Recently the Orbiting Carbon Observatory was destroyed during launch, which was a huge loss to the space agency's Earth Science program.An astonishing new map has revealed the elevation of nearly every place on Earth. The Global Digital Elevation Model was... more

EmperorThan
added this

0 responses

added
5 days ago

Hubble Space Telescope - The Final Repair Mission

The Hubble Space Telescope was repaired and enhanced during the STS-125 mission of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Launched on May 11,... more

Siriuslyfun19212
added this

0 responses

added
6 days ago

Hubble Captures Images of Rare Mammoth Stars

The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed two of the most massive stars in our galaxy as never before. Located 7,500 light years... more

EmperorThan
added this

0 responses

added
6 days ago

Vredefort Crater: Earth's Largest Asteroid Impact Crater

Vredefort Crater also called Vredefort Dome, lies approximately 120 km south-west of Johannesburg named after the town of... more

EmperorThan
added this

0 responses

added
6 days ago

Perihelion and Aphelion Visually Demonstrated

This year Aphelion, the point in Earth's elliptical orbit when it is farthest from the Sun, occurs tomorrow, July 4th. Of... more

EmperorThan
added this

0 responses

added
7 days ago

Deepest Underground Laboratory to Focus on Dark Matter

This week, the Sanford Lab dedicated an underground science fortress to research dark matter. The lab is 5,000 feet underground in... more

EmperorThan
added this

0 responses

added
7 days ago

60 Symbols - Videos about Physics and Astronomy

The University of Nottingham released a website with sixty symbols with videos behind them explaining what that symbol means. Not... more

Siriuslyfun19212
added this

2 responses

added
9 days ago

Islam's Influence on Mathematics and Science

Exploring Islam's influence on Mathematics, and Science. Islam had a major influence on Europe. Documentary name:... more

Vierotchka
added this

0 responses

added
10 days ago

Venus Express Probe Unveiled the Mystery of Venus

The launch of Venus Express Probe has given scientists the useful data to study about the mystery facts of Venus. In short, it is... more

CHANLEEPENG
added this

0 responses

added
10 days ago

Scientists Make Radio Waves Travel Faster Than Light

Scientist John Singleton insists that Albert Einstein wouldn't be mad at him, even though at first blush Singleton appears to have twisted the famous physicist's theories about light into a pretzel.

Most people think Einstein said that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but that's not really the case, Singleton said.

Einstein predicted that particles and information can't travel faster than the speed of light — but phenomenon like radio waves? That's a different story, said Singleton, a Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow.

Singleton has created a gadget that abuses radio waves so severely that they finally give in and travel faster than light.

The polarization synchrotron combines the waves with a rapidly spinning magnetic field, and the result could explain why pulsars — which are super-dense spinning stars that are a subclass of neutron stars — emit such powerful signals, a phenomenon that has baffled many scientists, Singleton said.

"Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit radio waves in pulses, but what we don't know is why these pulses are so bright or why they travel such long distances," Singleton said. "What we think is these are transmitting the same way our machine does."

And beyond explaining what has been a bit of a mystery to the astronomical community, Singleton's discovery could have wide-ranging technological impacts in areas such as medicine and communications, he said.

"Because nobody's really thought about things that travel faster than light before, this is a wide-open technological field," Singleton said.

One possible use for the resulting speedy radio waves — which are packed into a very powerful wave the size of a pencil point — could be the creation of a new generation of cell phones that communicate directly to satellites, rather than transmitting through relay towers as they now do.

Those phones would have more reliable service and would also be more difficult for hackers to intercept, Singleton said.

Another application could be in very targeted chemotherapy, where a patient takes the drugs, and the radio waves are used to activate them very specifically in the area around a tumor, he said.

If Einstein were still alive, he probably wouldn't be all that surprised by the discovery, Perez said, even if it does seem on the surface to conflict with some of his theories.

"He might have thought, 'why did this take so long,' " Perez said.Scientist John Singleton insists that Albert Einstein wouldn't be mad at him, even though at first blush Singleton appears to... more