Earth & Space
Could we grow a garden in the soils of Mars and the Moon? A new study digs down deep into the interstellar dirt and says that, yes.
Video of the five most awesome things that happened with space this week:
(5) The Hubble Space telescope finds the smallest known galaxy containing a “supermassive” black hole.
(4) Boeing, SpaceX win contracts to build ‘space taxis’ for NASA
(3) Mysterious satellite launched from Florida by Atlas 5 rocket
(2) NASA conducts recovery drills for next generation space capsule
(1) MAVEN spacecraft close to entering Mars orbit — and it won’t be alone
Science says the universe could be a hologram, a computer program, a black hole or a bubble—and there are ways to check
A tiny fragment of Martian meteorite 1.3 billion years old is helping to make the case for the possibility of life on Mars, say scientists.
The following 3 videos are inspiring examples of how technology can assist in our evolution, and help us to keep stay grounded, by providing us renewed perspectives on life here on Gaia.
We are part of a galactic supercluster called Laniakea, which contains a hundred million billion stars, according to a new study. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, provides our most detailed cosmic address yet. Superclusters – regions of space that are densely packed with galaxies – are the biggest structures in the Universe. But scientists have struggled to define exactly where one supercluster ends and another begins. Now, a team based in Hawaii has come up with a new technique that maps the Universe according to the flow of galaxies across space. Redrawing the boundaries of the cosmic map, they redefine our home supercluster and name it Laniakea, which means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian.
Black holes are some of the strangest objects in the universe, and they typically fall into one of two size extremes: “small” ones that are dozens of times more massive than the sun and other “supermassive” black holes that are billions of times larger than our nearest star. But until now, astronomers had not seen good evidence of anything in between.
Russian scientists say they made a “unique” discovery while analyzing samples from the exterior of the International Space Station – traces of tiny sea creatures on the station’s windows and walls. It remains unclear how marine plankton ended up in space.
Through the analysis of light from distant galactic clusters, astronomers have detected a mysterious signal that they’re having a hard time explaining. Although the signal is weak, could it be the much sought-after direct evidence for dark matter? Dark matter pervades the entire universe and makes up for the bulk of its mass, but what is it? We know it’s out there and oodles of indirect evidence for its presence, but seeing a direct signal has so far proven elusive.
Our universe may have emerged from a black hole in a higher-dimensional universe, propose a trio of Perimeter Institute researchers. What we perceive as the big bang, they argue, could be the three-dimensional “mirage” of a collapsing star in a universe profoundly different than our own.
![Rosetta Spacecraft Orbits Comet After 10-Year Journey [1-min video]](http://i2.wp.com/consciouslifenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Rosetta-spacecraft-orbits-comet-after-10-year-journey.jpg?resize=675%2C240&ssl=1 "Rosetta Spacecraft Orbits Comet After 10-Year Journey [1-min video]")
The “Rosetta” spacecraft has arrived at and orbited comet 67P – located more than 250 million miles away – bringing a 10-year journey across the solar system to an end.
Two new mystery holes have appeared in the Siberian permafrost. Theories range from meteorites, stray missiles, a man-made prank, and aliens, to an explosive cocktail of methane or shale gas suddenly exploding.
Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to explore the Perseus Cluster, a swarm of galaxies approximately 250 million light years from Earth, have observed the spectral line that appears not to come from any known type of matter. The signal they received cannot be explained by known physics but they say it shifts suspicion to the dark matter.
Astronomers have a mystery on their hands. Two large radio telescopes, on opposite sides of the planet, have detected very brief, very powerful bursts of radio waves. Right now, astronomers have no idea what’s causing these bursts or where they’re coming from. And nothing has been ruled out at the moment — not even the kind of outrageous claims you’d expect to see in tabloid headlines.
The amazing crop circle appeared in Raisting near the Ammersee, Bavarian, Germany, 50 kilometers from Munich on July 18, 2014, and next to a satellite ground station for the US-firm “Emerging Markets Communications Inc. (EMC)”.
