This video is for all the times you’ve been told not to look at the Sun (hopefully you listened and never did). But unlike other videos of the Sun, this one shows the Sun like you’ve never seen it before: in different colors. That’s because it’s made from data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and reveals wavelengths invisible to the naked eye.
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The NASA Van Allen twin probes launched last year have revealed that the Earth is a giant particle accelerator. Recently it was reported that particles in the magnetosphere sometimes accelerate across distances of a few hundred meters. But the newer discovery shows the acceleration can occur across hundreds of thousands of kilometers. The data will […]
We humans can form curious attachments to non-living things, so when Comet Ison veered recklessly toward the sun, naturally we rooted for the plucky iceball. Unfortunately, scientists feared the worst after seeing it mostly vanish when it brushed past the sun’s corona. Cue the heroic music, though, as new footage released early today (after the break) shows that at least part of the 1.4 mile-wide comet has emerged from the brutal encounter. It’s looking a bit ragged after all that, so astronomers will have to wait a bit more to make a final call on its health. Hopefully it’ll still be classed as “comet” rather than “scorched hunk of rock.”
Source: BBC
This awesome sunscreen looks like it would be at home in deep space, but it’s actually designed for the arts district in Dallas, Texas. The sculpture/sunscreen was commissioned by the police to protect us from brain scans by aliens (NOT!).
Actually, it was designed by REX Architecture as a proposed way to prevent harsh reflected light from bouncing off a highly reflective building into a neighboring sculpture center. The 400-foot-tall installation would generate different designs throughout the year. The shields are designed to open and close like flowers to automatically block sunlight coming in at different angles. Mr. Burns would have been proud.
The sun’s movements were mapped, allowing the team to sculpt SURYA perfectly. Personally, I think they should have included some solar panels in their design so they could harness the Sun’s energy at the same time. That would have been even better.
[via designboom]
Not all Earth-sized planets are Earth-like. Take for instance the planet Kepler 78b, it’s Earth like in size but orbits too close to its parent star for any chances supporting life as we know it. That doesn’t mean there’s not a huge number of Earth-like planets orbiting in the right temperature zone around their stars in our solar system alone that are both Earth-like in size and orbit a parent star in the Goldilocks zone.
In fact, astronomers have issued a new study created using data NASA has collected to estimate that in the Milky Way galaxy alone there are 8.8 billion stars with Earth-size planets that orbit in a habitable temperature zone. That means scientists believe there at least 8.8 billion planets of the right size, in the right temperature for life to exist in our galaxy alone.
To put that into perspective, that’s more Earth-like planets orbiting stars in the correct temperature zone and there are people on the Earth. Scientists say that the next step in locating the most Earth-like worlds is to look for atmospheres on these planets using powerful space telescopes. The biggest problem facing this now is that these telescopes have yet to launch.
Scientists calculate that in the Milky Way galaxy where we live, about one in five stars are like our Sun in size, color, and age. Many of these suns are also thought to have planets orbiting in the habitable zone where water could be liquid according to calculations performed by scientists. This is important because this marks the first time scientists have actually calculated the number of stars that are believed to have planets like Earth rather than estimating. Though they did look at only 42,000 stars to extrapolate their figures. The scientists calculate that 22% of the stars in our galaxy have planets similar to Earth with a margin of error of plus or minus 8 percentage points.
[via Fox News]
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), launched in 1995, stares mostly at . . . yeah. The sun. But when its instruments are trying to image other things near the sun, all that light gets kind of overwhelming. So sometimes instruments on the SOHO just block the sun out and turn their attention to other things. Like this sungrazer comet.
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The sun emitted a solar flare at 8:30 pm EDT on October 23rd, and NASA captured in all its glory at its Solar Dynamics Observatory. Doesn’t it look pretty?
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Trying to watch the sun’s explosions with your naked eyes is a recipe for blindness, but luckily NASA has a couple of telescopes that can show you all that fusion glory with none of the permanent ocular damage. Take, for instance, this 200,000-mile long canyon of fire.
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Despite the Mayan Calendar’s and the People’s Temple’s best efforts, we’ve managed to avoid any sort of Apocalypse and/or End Times thus far. But don’t let your guard down just yet, because we know for a fact that, one day, that warm, life-giving center of the solar system will turn its back on us and blow up, taking the Earth down with it. But what if that fiery fate could be avoided?
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The power of 1,000 suns? Pfft. That ain’t nuthin’. A recent breakthrough in solar panel connections has allowed scientists to create arrays of solar cells that can stand strong under the blazing glare of 70,000 suns. Not that they’d ever have to, but still.
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