Amazing story.. A nearby (relatively nearby considering the vast distances of space and time) a planet rests that may be habitable ..

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/17/world/wolf-1061-exoplanet-alien-life/index.html

This is a space potato…

Otherwise known as Saturn’s moon Prometheus.. 

Monstrous baby galaxies spotted in dark matter by ALMA

Ordinary matter makes up only 5% of the universe and rest is still undetected. Using numerical simulations, it has been predicted that the rest of the ordinary matter might be located in large-scale structures that form the ‘cosmic web’, but a new study has presented new hypothesis showing where majority of these ordinary matter is found.

Monstrous baby galaxies spotted in dark matter by ALMA

Mystery bright spots could be first glimpse of another universe

This could be the beginning of everything strange and bizarre, wonderful and amazing. From the NEW SCIENTIST report,

THE curtain at the edge of the universe may be rippling, hinting that there’s more backstage. Data from the European Space Agency’s Planck telescope could be giving us our first glimpse of another universe, with different physics, bumping up against our own.

That’s the tentative conclusion of an analysis by Ranga-Ram Chary, a researcher at Planck’s US data centre in California. Armed with Planck’s painstaking map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – light lingering from the hot, soupy state of the early universe – Chary revealed an eerie glow that could be due to matter from aneighbouring universe leaking into ours.

This sort of collision should be possible, according to modern cosmological theories that suggest the universe we see is just one bubble among many. Such a multiverse may be a consequence of cosmic inflation, the widely accepted idea that the early universe expanded exponentially in the slimmest fraction of a second after the big bang.

Read on if you comprehend.. 

Some people I speak to about these subjects, particularly those who don’t take well to science ruining certain religious principles they have grown up with, hate the concept of multiple universes. But regardless of our acceptance or not, certain truths still exist. 

There have long been many people who have believed in such things. And these strange and spooky things…? Well they come closer to being true..

Amazing times.

Mystery bright spots could be first glimpse of another universe

A mysterious chunk of space debris will hit Earth off the coast of Sri Lanka on November 13. Scientists have no clear idea what it is, other than that it is likely artificial in origin, and have dubbed the object WT1190F.

MORE..

“It’s a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Nature.

Detected by the Catalina Sky Survey, an observation lab at the University of Tucson, the alleged piece of space debris initially puzzled observers. But astronomers then went back through the lab’s past images from telescopes, and noticed that it had been present for quite a while.

BUT WHAT!

What could it be?

November 13.. some lucky or unlucky water (not land) will find out near the coast of Sri Lanka..

A mysterious chunk of space debris will hit Earth off the coast of Sri Lanka on November 13. Scientists have no clear idea what it is, other than that it is likely artificial in origin, and have dubbed the object WT1190F.

Hubble spots mother lode of 250 ancient tiny galaxies

Of course the word tiny is in the eye of the beholder..

Hubble spots mother lode of 250 ancient tiny galaxies

Earth is in grave danger of being hit by a catastrophic comet shower triggered by the sun, warn scientists

More .. Earth may be in great danger as the sun’s path through the galaxy sends comet flying towards our planet, scientists have warned.  Researchers have identified a 26 million-year cycle of meteor impacts that coincides with the timing of mass extinctions over the past 260 million years.

There is a close shave on Halloween set by an asteroid .. And now days before that hopeful non event, this news about how eventually a comet accident could kill us all..

Earth is in grave danger of being hit by a catastrophic comet shower triggered by the sun, warn scientists

Who is afraid of a potentially life ending asteroid on Halloween!?
Not us earthlings!

Costumes will still be donned.. makeup still applied. Scantily clad outfits at Saturday night Halloween parties still being stuck on..

Even though this was just discovered: An enormous asteroid will whiz past earth..

CREDIT: The IFL SCIENCE website:

2009 FD will approach within 6,194,000 km of Earth, about 16.3 times further away than the Moon. The asteroid was discovered in February 2009, a month before its closest recorded approach to Earth on March 27, 2009, at a distance of 624,100 km. 2015 TB145 will pass about 500,000 km from Earth, just beyond the lunar orbit.

2009 FD has been tracked by several instruments since its discovery. It was first estimated to be 130 meters in size by NASA’s Near Earth Program. A better estimate for its size came from NASA’s NEOWISE, which gave a value of 470 meters, although this is considered anupper limit.

2015 TB145 was discovered just over a week ago by the Pan-STARRS I telescope in Hawaii, and it has an estimated size of 320 meters. The passing of 2015 TB145 will be the closest approach by something this large until asteroid August 2027, when 1999 AN10 will pass within one lunar distance (380,000 km). NASA has given these objects a value of 1 on the Torino Scale, which is the value assigned to non-dangerous asteroids.

Business as usual.
Gather ye candies while ye may..

2km-wide asteroid approaching Earth, NASA warns

An asteroid big enough to kill millions of people is on its way to Earth but is expected to brush past, missing by a mere 25 million kilometers – a narrow distance by space standards, NASA said.

If all goes well death and destruction will stay safely away from earth..
But boy is that close..

2km-wide asteroid approaching Earth, NASA warns

Don’t count your property before you build on it..

From the BBC: A question for the future and the ages. Who owns outer space? 

I would tend to think that if other life forms dominate space, we never will own it and certainly better not try buying..

There May be a Massive Disturber Beyond Pluto - The Monitor Daily

There May be a Massive Disturber Beyond Pluto - The Monitor Daily

The asteroid games

I have been following this NASA website recently: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/pdc15/ .. if you fear a life-ending asteroid, maybe you should too.

The first and most important thing to realize about the page: It is all imagined. The asteroid and work to stop it from hitting Earth is all hypothetical. But with each pretend statement about the asteroid and the would be trajectory, it seems very real. That is because the words on http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/pdc15/, though now unreal, could be accurate one day soon. We could be facing a mass extinction event. Something bigger than Chelyabinsk, something mightier. It may hit land and cause an impact zone crater on Earth. Or it could hit water and flood coastlines with a massive wave never seen during our lifetime.

The Planetary Defense Conference is a meeting of scientists, engineers, policy-makers, and people in Italy. They are playing an asteroid pre-war-game. Mapping out the possibilities and speculating on the impact aftermath.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/pdc15/ is where people could follow online to the games.

The games..
But on the topic of the site itself, there is rampant speculation about the ‘game’.. and the chances it could all be a diversion meant to keep our mind believing it’s unreal and really, in the end, “they” know something is coming. The conspiracy minded folk, of which I join in now and then, think that there is a killer stalking this planet.. lurking not too far from our existence. And NASA knows it. They are so aware of it that they are going to great lengths to post this ‘war game’ on the internet, along with bringing the biggest and brightest minds together. Because the reality, some would say, is that they ARE INDEED planning a course of action over a real event.

My take is a little less paranoid, at least about this game. I think the simulation is that: A simulation. But I think sooner rather than later, we will be hit with something on this planet. It is my hope that we have simulated long enough to get the reason response.

And I pray to whatever gods of life exist that we will have years, and not months, to prep. And maybe decades–not days.

Chelyabinsk should have been a wake up call to the planet. Instead it became a “and finally tonight” segment on local newscasts around the world. Science is regulated too often to the “in other news” portion after sports and weather. But if Chelyabinsk would have hit NYC, or D.C., and would have been just a little bit lower in orbit, we may have been playing a whole new REAL game right about now…….

THE COOL SCIENCE OF THE DAY: THE MYSTERY OF CERES' BRIGHT LIGHTS ONLY GETS WEIRDER

This from Alexandra Witze from  NATURE:

Not all of the puzzling bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres are alike. The closest-yet images of the gleams, taken from 45,000 kilometres away, suggest that at least two of the spots look different from one another when seen in infrared wavelengths.
The Hubble Space Telescope spied many of the bright spots from afar years ago, but the observations from NASA's Dawn spacecraft — which began looping around Ceres on 6 March — are the first at close range. The images were released on 13 April in Vienna, Austria, at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union.
Scientists say that the bright spots may be related to ice exposed at the bottom of impact craters or from some kind of active geology. They glimmer tantalizingly in a new full-colour map of Ceres, obtained in February but released at the conference. The map uses false colours to tease out slight differences on the otherwise dark surface of Ceres.

Even more interesting, and thought provoking:

Spot 1 appears darker in images from Dawn's infrared spectrometer, said Federico Tosi, a Dawn scientist at the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. That suggests that the area is cooler than the rest of the dwarf planet's surface, supporting the idea that the spot is made of ice.
But for some reason Spot 5 — the brightest feature seen on Dawn — does not show up in infrared images. “One possibility is that we still don’t have enough resolution to see it in the proper way,” said Tosi.

Space is fun.
And some truly fun theories exist about these bright spots on Ceres..

Ceres is one little amazing dwarf.. As we learn more, perhaps we'll discover a distant icy plume. Or maybe even a little city of space aliens with bright lights.

The day dream believers

Mystery of strange radio bursts from space

Mysterious radio wave flashes from far outside the galaxy are proving tough for astronomers to explain. Is it pulsars? A spy satellite? Or an alien

There are very real and respectable people asking if this is a sign from intelligent life.. OR something else. A fascinating mystery

Mystery of strange radio bursts from space

Two stories to make you feel very very small

Just when you think your plight in the grand scheme of things matters a bit, news comes along to give perspective to just how tiny we all are. Today, two examples exist in science news, presented for your review:

Maybe JUPITER is planet x!? There is new information to suggest that the early solar system was made up of giant super earths. And then Jupiter came along to smash things into pieces.. A theory for now, but certainly amazing when considering the mighty explosion something like this could have made..

And this other tale, a little closer to home: The huge Australian impact of an asteroid was so large that it caused cracks to the earth’s core..

When considering the history of our universe, and the ever-changing space around us, it’s pretty amazing that we are even here. That somehow we evolved into the creatures of habit we have.. and somehow still survive in a very hostile existence.. 

We are somehow alive..

No matter how big of planets of the past crashed and asteroids smashed.

Of course all of that could easily happen again..

BEST IMAGES OF TODAY’S SOLAR ECLIPSE

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibVofIHq71s?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

jtotheizzoe:

NEW VIDEOOOOO!

What color is the universe? 

(Hint: It’s not “black”)

Good video..

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Confirmed: Jupiter's moon Ganymede has a salty, underground ocean

Astronomers have found the most conclusive evidence yet that a large watery ocean lies beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.

SET SAIL FOR Ganymede!

Take a deep breath.. read the headline a few times until the true power of it sinks in. Jupiter’s moon.. a salty ocean.. 

Though it may seem like eons for my, it wasn’t too long ago that I learned in school how Earth was the only planet with life and water. And there were only 9. Boom. Done.

Now there’s trillions with untoldillions to be discovered. And maybe multiverses.. and Pluto is NOT a planet. But CERES has glowing balls of light emitting from it. And we are landing on asteroids.. and there’s a ROVER on MARS watching the sunset from the distant planet.. and TITAN may have water.. And MARS may have HAD water..

And we are stardust.
And there may be aliens..
And we are not alone.

This is an amazing time to be alive. It also makes me ponder if ‘disclosure’ is going to drip out slowly .. with each new story about water on some distant body in space, are we being primed for the ultimate: Not only water is abundant, but life is too?

From the LA TIMES STORY, a money quote:

"The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place," said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA. "The more we look at individual moons, the more we see that water is really in enormous abundance."

A soggy place. 
Much different than those 1980s and 90s grade school textbooks in science. And even much more different than those 2013 textbooks.

Throw them all away.

Next up?
LIFE.

Confirmed: Jupiter's moon Ganymede has a salty, underground ocean

At what point will we allow our old fashioned antiquated and wrong believes about the age and size of the universe dir? And when will we begin to think of the multiverse theory is a way that goes beyond just poking fun at the those who believe it..

Let’s not forget the news just released last week: We found a black hole that, if we are right about how black holes forn, is older than the time frame of the big bang..

Can we sometime soon just admit we practically don’t anything!?