Astronomy – Page 30

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Water, Water Everywhere in Space

July 23, 2011

The largest mass of water has been found surrounding a black hole in a quasar 12 billion light-years away. Space.com says the cloud harbors “140 trillion times more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.” The discovery not only that “water has been prevalent in the universe for nearly its entire existence,” but that it “was present only some 1.6 billion years after the beginning of the universe.” Alberto Bolatto, of the University of Maryland, said, "This discovery pushes the detection of water one billion years closer to the Big Bang than any previous find.” In other cosmology news:

Astronomy

Cosmology Could Be Way Off

June 17, 2011

The “lumpiness problem” in cosmology refuses to go away. This old conundrum about why the universe is lumpy with stars and galaxies has been around for decades. The big bang predicts no such lumps. Since the late 1990s, tiny differences in temperature measured in the cosmic background radiation held hope of being the seeds of lump formation, provided theories added copious fudge factors like dark matter, dark energy and inflation. A new survey finds more clumps than expected, casting doubt on whether the fudge factors are wrong, the hot big bang is wrong, or relativity is wrong. Words can hardly express the gravity of the situation when gravity itself – an icon of scientific verity – is called into question.

Astronomy

Spiral Galaxy Upset

May 4, 2011

In 1964, C. C. Lin and Frank Shu looked at the galaxy’s curvaceous arms and said, “You are my density.” The density-wave theory of spiral arm formation was married to galactic astronomy for nearly a half century. Now, however, we are back to the future, where theories do not always fulfill their destiny. An upstart […]

Astronomy

Upsets in Space

April 18, 2011

Three different astronomy teams have announced findings that upset long-held beliefs. What does this portend about the confidence we can have in other theories? Galaxy growth: direct challenge: “Galaxies are thought to develop by the gravitational attraction between and merger of smaller ‘sub-galaxies’, a process that standard cosmological ideas suggest should be ongoing,” announced the […]

Astronomy

SETI Ignorance Gets Stronger

December 9, 2010

“Science is not about blind faith” begins a video posted on MSNBC about SETI. Part of an article by AP reporter Seth Borenstein, “Evidence for E.T. is mounting daily, but not proven,” the video explains Frank Drake’s famous equation that tries to quantify the probability for extraterrestrial intelligence (09/29/2010, 11/24/2008). Though Drake confidently asserts the […]

Astronomy

Plasma May Revamp Cosmology

November 15, 2010

A “diverse new field” of astrophysics is poised to revolutionize our understanding of stars, energetic galaxies, and perhaps the entire universe. The properties and interactions of plasma, that hot, electrically-charged gas that makes up the sun and stars, have not been considered as often as matter and light have in astronomy. A set of top […]

Astronomy

Using Aliens to Titillate the Public

June 28, 2010

Geologists cannot even figure out our own planet (next headline), but some of them claim to know a lot about other planets – their geological history, and even their prospects for life. Is it fair to tease the public with the L-word life when so much remains to be understood on the ground under our […]

Astronomy

Are There Limits to Scientific Speculation? A Royal Case

May 2, 2010

Question: When does science become like a priesthood? Answer: When its practitioners engage in speculation on big questions impossible to verify with empirical observations. Is this what the chief astronomer in Britain is doing? Sir Martin Rees certainly would not have thought of himself as a priest as he wrote an article for […]

Astronomy

Man Will Never Fly (to the Stars)

March 13, 2010

It’s risky to say “never” in science. The Man Will Never Fly Society had a short life. However, an article on Space.com makes it seem a safe bet that, Star Trek notwithstanding, warp-speed flights to the stars are out of the question for humans. “Warp speed will kill you,” the article announced; why? Because interstellar […]

Astronomy

Divining Violent gods as Natural Cosmic Creators

March 10, 2010

Ancient stargazers imagined the violent actions of gods in the heavens giving rise to the stars, earth and man. Today’s secular astronomers engage in a similar kind of lore. While not naming their gods after mythical heroes, they describe them as forces of nature whose violent clashes give rise to order and design. Sometimes they […]

Astronomy

Galaxy-Spangled Banner Unfurled

December 8, 2009

The Hubble team has unveiled a new deep field image of distant galaxies, the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field Infrared WFC3/IR.” The image, available at the HubbleSite, was taken with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) installed during the latest servicing mission. It’s been 5 years since the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (03/09/2004; […]

Astronomy

Is the Universe Evolving Upward?

November 13, 2009

It’s intuitively obvious that to get from a big bang to intelligent astronomers looking for evidence of the bang through telescopes, the amount of organization in the universe must increase over time dramatically. Lately, astronomy has uncovered much more dynamism in space than previously recognized – but much of it seems destructive, not creative. Orion […]

Astronomy

Cosmic Accounting Is Wildly Inaccurate

August 26, 2009

Counting faint celestial objects is admittedly hard, but the task should be within the capabilities of expert astronomers. It is, after all, as simple as counting. So much theoretical work relies on accurate counts of what’s out there, they need to get at least in the ballpark. Recent indications hint that their counts have been […]

Astronomy

Planet-Makers Ask Miracles to Evade Death Spiral

August 21, 2009

Remember the old artwork of planets gently forming out of dust orbiting a young star? That’s all gone. Reality has set it. Clumps of material a meter across need help – almost miraculous help – to avoid getting sucked into the star in a giant death spiral. If you don’t believe it, ask John Chambers […]

Astronomy

Early Large Galaxies Stun Cosmologists

April 2, 2009

Cosmology has a kind of Cambrian Explosion of its own to grapple with. Contrary to expectations, some of the earliest galaxies appear as large as current ones, if not larger. Astronomers, using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, examined five galaxy clusters with ages estimated at 5 billion years after the Big Bang. Statements in a […]

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