Rogue Black Holes Roam the Milky Way -- What if One Impacted the Sun? & 20 new Items

For more information about Updates, Click on the titles: New Power Source Lights Up Supernova Six Trillion Light-Years Across --the Closest to Earth in 400 Years In 1987, light from an exploding star, Supernova 1987A, in a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, reached Earth --the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years, allowing astronomers to study it in unprecedented detail as it evolves.  "Molecular Machines" --Proof of Evolution at Cellular Level "Our cells, and the cells of all organisms, are composed of molecular machines. These machines are built of component parts, each of which contributes a partial function or structural element to the machine. How such sophisticated, multi-component machines could evolve... Black Holes Larger than Entire Galaxies? New Techniques Allow Astronomers to Measure Supermassive Objects The largest known supermassive black hole described below, contains 18 billion solar masses of material. Although black holes are dark, their masses can be measured quite precisely from their gravitational influence on stars and other matter. Astronomers have done just... Image of the Day: The Planet's Most Spectacular Salt Flats Salar de Uyuni salt flats of in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, span more than 10,000 square kilometers, and are the most extensive in the world, and so perfectly flat that the surface is used to calibrate... EcoAlert: New Research Shows Global Warming Stymies Evolution "Do organisms have the ability to adapt to climate change on a timescale of decades?" This is the question a unique lab study of the tidal pool copepod, Tigriopus californicus, which is found from Alaska to Baja California, attempted to... The Daily Flash --Sci, Space, Tech (6/09) Superatoms with magnetic shells discovered A proposed assembly of FeMg8 magnetic superatoms where the directions of magnetic moment are indicated by arrows (credit: Victor Medel/VCU) A team of Virginia Commonwealth University scientists has discovered a new class of “superatoms” —... Dark Matter Enigma Continues to Haunt World Science Community The image above shows a ghostly ring of dark matter floating in the galaxy cluster ZwCl0024+1652, one of the strongest pieces of evidence to date for the existence of dark matter. Meanwhile, underground locations such as the Coherent Germanium Neutrino... Jupiter Once Orbited Where Mars is Today Over the age of the Solar System, Jupiter roamed toward the center of the solar system and back out again, at one point moving in about as close as Mars is now, profoundly influenced the solar system, changing the nature... Filmmaker Captures Awesome Beauty Of NASA's Mission To Saturn Filmmaker Chris Abbas has morphed NASA footage of the Cassini Solstice Mission into a rare art-house film of outer space creating some of the most striking imagery of outer space around, with its starkly minimal black-and-white photographs of moons and... Image of the Day: A Spiral Blue Beauty M 100 was one of the first spirals galaxies ever discovered -- a grand design spiral galaxy located within the southern part of constellation Coma Berenices approximately 55 million light-years from Earth with a diameter of 160,000 light years.  "The Daily Flash" -- Sci, Space, Tech (6/8) Kepler's Astounding Haul of Multiple-Planet Systems NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered 170 planetary systems containing between two and six transiting planets. This animation shows all the multiple-planet systems discovered by Kepler as of 2/2/2011; orbits go through the entire mission... From the 'X Files': "BioBase Alpha" on Mars? -Actually a Streak Artifact from a Cosmic Ray Two days ago an "armchair astronaut," David Martines, claimed to have identified a base on Mars of "either human or alien origin" while surfing Google Mars. Martines noticed the mysterious rectangular structure on the Red Planet's surface while using a... A Moment of Zen Posted: 08 Jun 2011 12:02 AM PDT News Flash --First Ever Image of the International Space Station and docked Shuttle Endeavour from Soyuz capsule This image of the International Space Station and the docked Space Shuttle Endeavour, flying at an altitude of 220 miles was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011... Rogue Black Holes Roam the Milky Way -- What if One Impacted the Sun? The effect of a primordial black hole hitting the Sun ought to be easily observable, say physicists at New York University and Princeton University, noting what we think might be the obvious. But they go on to suggest that such...

A New Supernova Sighted in Nearest Galaxy to Milky Way A new star (left) was observed in the night sky by amateur astronomers in France, and soon after it was detected by the PTF Sky Survey between May 31 and June 1 in a spiral arm of our galaxy's close...

Image of the Day" -- Moon Over Chile's Gemini Observatory Bruce Macintosh, a scientist in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and an international Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) Science Team have won an 890-hour observing campaign to use the GPI instrument at the Gemini Observatory...

EcoAlert: Jellyfish Blooms Threaten Ocean Food Chain http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4384/jellyfish-blooms-endanger-foodwebs With greater numbers of jellyfish to feed, the blooms result in a major decrease in resources available to fish. Plus a bacterial bloom often accompanies a jellyfish bloom, and this will feed on and respire the dissolved organic matter...

EcoAlert: Gigantic Fjords Carved 14-Million Years Ago Lie Beneath Antarctica Ice A team of scientists from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, have taken a look below the Aurora Subglacial Basin in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and found some of the largest fjords on Earth and provide important insights...

From the 'X-Files' Dept: "Bio Station Alpha --A Human or Alien Base Sighted on Mars" An "armchair astronaut," David Martines, claims to have identified a base on Mars of "either human or alien origin" while surfing Google Mars. Martines noticed the mysterious rectangular structure on the Red Planet's surface while using a new map program... Provided by The Daily Galaxy