Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known
Founder: Joseph Barone
Contributors: crookedindifference, bumerangue, propagandery, rocketmagic, rostenbach
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Shuttle Endeavour to finish with a Big Bang project
Scientists have high hopes for a $1.5-billion experiment that might help solve mysteries of the universe, though some have doubts.
Stowed in the cargo hold of space shuttle Endeavour for its final launch Friday is a science experiment that could upend astronomy in ways unparalleled since the Hubble Space Telescope. Or — if it flops — it could end up as a $1.5-billion hood ornament on the International Space Station.
It’s called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Once it is mounted on the station, scientists hope it will find and analyze high-energy cosmic rays and exotic space particles, including some that could help solve the most profound mysteries of the universe.
Was the Big Bang Preceded by Another Universe (Which Was Preceded by Another Universe)?
13.7 billion years to get to where we are isn’t enough for renowned physicist Sir Roger Penrose, and now he thinks he can prove that things aren’t/weren’t quite so simple. Drawing on evidence he found in the cosmic microwave background, Penrose says the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning, but one in a series of cyclical Big Bangs, each of which spawned its own universe.
Mind blowing! Read more.
On image above, the Cosmic Microwave Background.
NDT on BBT, YESSSSSSSS
New record! Ancient galaxy is most distant thing in space.
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have now measured the distance to the most distant galaxy so far, UDFy-38135539 (the faint object shown in the excerpt on the left, n photo above). It is seen here in a Hubble Space Telescope photo and is about 13.1 billion light-years away. Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth.
This galaxy may provide insight into what the first stars were like and how they influenced the formation of the universe, researchers said.
The new record-holder galaxy contains roughly a billion stars that would have formed within 600 million years of the Big Bang, which scientists think started the universe 13.7 billion years ago.
The distant galaxy was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. In the new study, researchers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe the galaxy for 16 hours to confirm its distance from Earth by measuring how much its extremely faint glow was distorted by the expansion of the universe. UDFy-38135539 was found to be about 100 million light-years farther than the previous record-holder, a gamma-ray burst.
You tell people that I am a rocket scientist?!?
