Space Scan

NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory has observed a remarkable eclipse of a supermassive black hole. The eclipse has allowed astronomers to measure the swirling disk of hot matter around the hole. The black hole is located in NGC 1365, which is a spiral galaxy located some 60 million light years from Earth. This galaxy also contains an active galactic nucleus or AGN. Astronomers believe that this AGN is fed by a steady stream of material from a surrounding disk. Matter is heated to millions of degrees before passing over the event horizon or the point of no return. The disk of gas around the black hole is too small to be detected by a telescope. However this time the disk was eclipsed by a cloud passing by. The team of researchers associated with Chandra has estimated the diameter of the X-ray source to be 7 AU or seven times the distance between Earth and Sun. If a black hole this size was present in our solar system it would have swallowed all planets up to Mars and all asteroids as well. In addition to measuring the size of this disk of material, researchers were also able to estimate the location of the dense cloud that caused the eclipse. They have stated that the cloud is at a distance of a hundredth of a light year from the black hole’s event horizon. This is much closer than anyone ever expected. This is much of a puzzle for all astronomers. Image Credit: NASA Via: Scienceblog

NASA may be going great guns in the ‘Space Expeditions’ but they are going brawny in arranging ‘Excavation Challenges’ too. Four teams comprising of heavy weird looking machines took part in the ‘NASA’s Regolith Excavation Challenge’. The teams were competing for a mammoth sum of $250,000, but sadly, no one was able to grab the title. On Saturday a huge sandbox weighing 1-ton was arranged for the teams to excavate, the respective teams had to excavate mock moon dirt, regolith, from that box with their strange excavation machines and equipments. The time given to all of the teams was just 30 minutes, and believes me; no one was able to gather the winning requirement of 330 pounds of ‘regolith.’ The best was the excavator built by Technology Ranch of Pismo Beach. It managed to collect 143 pounds of regolith in that given time slot. The other teams that took participation were from – from Rancho Palos Verdes; Berkley, Mich.; and Rolla, Miss. That is odd, why couldn’t they manage to get to the top slot? Via: Latimes

Search for life outside Earth has driven a bunch of scientists and engineers to Mexico for a NASA robotic probe. If the experiment at the Mexican sinkhole goes as planned, the next round of test would take place at Lake Bonney in Antarctica, where conditions are quite similar to Europa, Jupiter’s moon which is believed to have an underground ocean. As they prepare for the test in Mexico, the sinkhole at El Zacaton in central Mexican state of Tamaulipas, itself would be of major interest to the researchers. Scientists don’t have an idea about its depth and some of them feel the vertical cave could be deep enough to swallow three Chrysler Buildings! The other main target of the study would be to find out if there is any life form at the bottom of the sinkhole. This is the most ambitious test in NASA’s Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, or DEPTHX, program and researchers are using an unmanned submersible, which can navigate in the water without tethers. The scientists are confident that the tests would go well and David Wettergreen of the Carnegie Mellon University said It’s an ambitious program, but the vehicle performed well in two earlier field tests. Image

NASA’s Spirit rover has delivered the strongest evidence till date that ancient Mars was rich in water and its soil was much wetter than it is today. A patch of Martian dirt was analyzed by the rover’s aging robotic arm and it discovered that the dirt is rich in silica, which suggests that it was once water rich as silica can only be produced by interaction with water. The arm also measured a composition of about 90 percent pure silica in the Martian dirt. Silica is commonly found in quartz on Earth, but finding the same chemical on Mars is a bit of surprise for the astronomers. The discovery was accidentally made by Spirit as a result of mechanical failure. Both the NASA rovers named Spirit and Opportunity have already completed their expected tenure of three months in April 2004 and are now aging and some of their machines are already dead. Similar is the case with one of the wheels of Spirit, which no longer rotates and Spirit has to drag its way through the Martian soil. This scrapping has exposed several patches of bright soil leading to some of the biggest discoveries made by the rover, including the most recent one. Astronomers now state that one possible origin for the silica may have been the interaction of soil with acid vapors produced by volcanic eruptions in the presence of water, another reason for the formation could have been a hot spring environment. Both ways water is necessary for the formation and that is the most important finding. The discovery has again shown that ancient conditions on the red planet were much better that they are today and these conditions might have been favorable for life. Via: MSNBC

Can you ever think of weighing something that is beyond your accessibility? Something that accounts for a huge mass and huge size, which limits every technological accomplishment, that human race has access to. No, I guess we could not but Astrophysicists at “NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center” are formulating measures to weigh an invisible mass such as “Black hole”. They are of the view that they can develop a technique that is very precise and effective in measuring mass of something gigantic like a black hole. The contemporary way that the scientists incorporated was a bit time consuming and obsolete. They used to consider the behavior of an orbiting star that was actually an outcome of a “Space Blast” through a “Black Hole.” It was made public through the “Astrophysical Journal” that scientists are now considering spinning disk of hot flue gases that revolve around the near by stars – called the Accretion disk. The earlier method just took the gravity principle of the stars into consideration and in that way the time factor was the barrier. The previous technique considered a well-known fact about the Back holes being heavily massed (millions of times the sun’s mass) or lightly massed (10 times heavier than the sun); there was no consideration in regards to the intermediate mass. So, the astronomers propped up a theory that would solve the universal law of masses and also give us an in-depth solution to the calculation of heavy and gigantic masses. They think them to weigh somewhere around 1000 to 2000 solar masses. NASA Astronomer and co-author, Tod Strohmayer, stated that there are a hell lot of uncertainties related to a star’s / black hole’s birth. He took a well-known example of the “Goldilocks” black hole while explaining this phenomenon. Tod Strohmayer also commented that -”We know collapsing stars create black holes, but making one from a star a thousand times larger than our own is highly unlikely. The most massive stars in the universe, in fact, are only about 70 times our Sun’s mass.” They seem to be of the view that a cluster or an accumulation of stars feed the black holes with hot gases that that encircle the gravitational belt of the stars. He was of the view that – “Or the merging of several black holes themselves could form a bigger one.” They are not at all ruling out the possibility of the formation of intermediate black holes when the super-massive holes are under the process of initiation. The team of experts incorporated X-ray detecting satellites that helped them to detect abundance of radiations that clog the Space. He added that –“they could be remnants of a big merger of black holes that break off.” The X-rays helped the scientists by letting them know the exact “quasi-periodic oscillations” (QPO) of the black holes. These oscillations help to detect the nature of the black hole that is taken under consideration. He is of the view that the size and the fluctuations vary inversely as in case of such heavy bodies. He opined that- “For super massive black holes, for example, the QPO frequency is too long to currently measure.” So it’s the QPO factor that has made the scientists unravel the mysteries of the black holes. Still this technique of calculating the masses of intermediate black holes is under test and may prove beneficial at a later stage of the scientific Space probes. He also stated that “We’re going to measure well-studied black holes to create a baseline.” The task would be pretty easy after doing this as the scientists would just scrutinize the QPO of the Accretion disks. Via: Usatoday

A male astronaut has been dismissed by the US space agency, due to some confrontation that occurred in Florida airport between female astronaut and some other woman. A spokesman of NASA Johnson Space Agency has stated that William Oefelein 42 was having an affair with one of his fellow astronaut. By June 1, he would be sent to the US Navy. William Oefelein was designated as a space shuttle pilot, whereas Nowak was shuttle robot arm operator. In March, Lisa Nowak was sent back to Navy after being dismissed from US astronaut corps. She was also a naval officer. She has been charged for attempting kidnapping, burglary and assault and is awaiting trial in September. In February, to settle scores with another woman whom Oefelein was dating she drove all the way from Houston to Orlando. According to the clippings of Orlando airport security video, Nowak was wearing a trenchcoat and was into argument with Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman. This confrontation was happening in the parking lot. Nowak was arrested with a knife, steel mallet and a BB pistol. According to the police officials, she was wearing diapers during this 1,000 mile long drive. Due to Oefelein affair with Nowak, he has divorced, whereas she was not living with her husband. Both of them flew once in the space. Nowak flew in the year July 2006, whereas Oefelein flew during last December. Image:Nytimes Via:reuters

Scientists and Astronomers have accounted for some dark caverns reportedly seen on the Mars’s terrain. These dark images of the so-called caverns give a first impression of some trick done through Photoshop software but NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance orbiter imagery confirmed that these dark images are definitely of some strange cavern entrances. Look carefully at the picture, the dark spot in the middle confirms to be a hole in amidst of lava. Scientists and researchers confirmed that it cannot be an impact crater as it does not have a heaved rim called the “Ejecta”. It is surely a deep hole / cavern as light from the sun never seems to return from it. This kind of phenomenon is only seen when there is a deep cave type opening on the surface of a planet. The scientists assume it to be some deep, dark chamber with collapsed or caved-in roof. They also opine that it may be having sharp vertically rising walls. They are fascinated by this imagery for sure. Via: Universetoday

Researchers at NASA seem to be all set for their upcoming and well-talked mission to the Moon. In the wake of this upcoming mission NASA is trying to strengthen it’s commercial associations and considerably taking measures for the same. We got to have some idea from sir Neil Woodward who is the acting director of NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate – “That would make our life a lot easier.” NASA seems to be leaving not a single stone unturned for getting what they want. Their projected mission will be starting somewhere around 2019 or 2020. Another assignment NASA will be eyeing on would be a manned mission to the Red planet – Mars. Woodward opined that -”If somebody says ‘I have this really great way to be able to extract water ice from lunar regolith (lunar rocks) that I’ve developed on my own dime’ we would be interested.” In regards to the “Space development conference”,Dallas, Mr. Woodward addressed the Reuters by saying that -”If we could be in a commercial relationship with somebody who has the capability that’s fine because in many cases they can do it for less money than we can.” While addressing them, he very well kept the “Venture capital in space exploration” as the main theme in consideration. It is amazing to know that NASA foretells a manned outpost on the Lunar surface just like the International Space Station (ISS). Woodward tried to make clear that – “Maybe at that point there will be commercial exploitation and we won’t be sending missions there but some of the commercial companies here will start sending people there. One thing that keeps being batted around is a fuel dump in orbit, in low Earth orbit. If someone was to build one of those and said do you want NASA to be a customer we would say yes because if you do the math it turns out that it would be an advantage to us.” “We’re trying to help some commercial entities demonstrate that they can do low Earth orbit resupply to say the space station and once they can do that we can contract with them and then we don’t have to do it ourselves anymore. It would be much better if there was an American company who had that capability and presumably being a private entity they may be able to do it for less expense,” he added. For the space shuttle fleet that would retire by 2010 he opined – “The space station needs a tremendous amount of food and water and scientific experiments to go up and down — we have to pay the Russians to do that after the shuttle retires.” Via: Reuters

President of the United States, Mr. George Bush, signed supplemental appropriations for NASA’s upcoming expeditions. The supplement said as under – U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007 (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by House). NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION – exploration capabilities It said that an additional amount for carrying out NASA’s future “Exploration Capability” programs, which are related to the aftermaths of disaster struck by Hurricane Katrina, would be made available until September 30, 2009. General Provisions for this chapter were – Under the SEC. 4202, somewhere around $ 48,000,000 would be given to NASA for carrying out their expeditions and explorations that help to serve the mankind. This act came under the Public Law 109-148 and Public Law 109-234, but NASA may have got some lesser amount of share there. Via: Nasawatch

A black hole is an object with a gravitational field so powerful that a region of space becomes cut off from the rest of the universe, no matter and not even light can escape these strong clutches of gravity. Until now scientists from all over the world have tried to know the secrets of this amazing part of the universe, but according to a latest research, black holes might not exist, or at least not exist in a manner in which scientists have imagined it to be. Scientists till now thought that black holes are cloaked by an impenetrable “event horizon” or a point of no return. They think that anything that comes in the vicinity of this “event horizon” has no chances of survival and it falls from the universe for ever. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity light is also trapped inside black holes and no information about what fell into the hole can be recovered. Its now that the contradiction comes into being, scientists claim that information that goes into a black hole seems to have fallen out of the universe, this theory contradicts the equations of quantum mechanics, which always preserve information. To resolve this conflict researchers came to a conclusion that the information is not destroyed but it comes out of the black hole slowly encoded in a hypothetical flow of particles called Hawking radiation, which is thought to result from the black holes’ event horizons messing with the quantum froth that is ever-present in space. Still some other researchers opine that information may not be cut off in the first place so there is no question of it being recovered in any form. To prove this, researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, US, Continue reading “Black Holes: Do they really exist?” »