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The Moon is regularly abused by meteors, but NASA recently spotted a super bright flash as a space rock hit the lunar surface. Here’s what happened.
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(via crookedindifference)
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At the center of this image, and hidden in a thick cloud of dust, is the Egg Nebula’s central, dying star. #space #NASA #stars (Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA)
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This image is a composite of 25 separate images spanning the period of April 16, 2012, to April 15, 2013.
It uses the SDO AIA wavelength of 171 angstroms and reveals the zones on the sun where active regions are most common during this part of the solar cycle.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO/AIA/S. Wiessinger
Neat.
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Look at this baby picture of our universe. Wasn’t it cute?
The European Space Agency on Thursday released this image yesterday, which depicts what the universe looked like a mere 380,000 years after the Big Bang. While that may sound like a fair amount of time, the universe was virtually an infant then, giving scientists new insight into its origins.
“The new satellite data underscored the existence of puzzling anomalies that may yet lead theorists back to the drawing board. The universe appears to be slightly lumpier, with bigger and more hot and cold spots in the northern half of the sky as seen from Earth than toward the south, for example. And there is a large, unexplained cool spot in the northern hemisphere.”
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Where did the Russian meteorite come from? Most likely from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Poring over crowd-sourced footage, researchers Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin from the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, were able to use “simple trigonometry to calculate the height, speed, and position of the rock as it fell to Earth,” says BBC News. More importantly, the duo was able to find out where Russia’s most famous meteorite was likely born.
Using astronomy software developed by the U.S. Naval Observatory, Zuluaga and Ferrin gathered enough data to trace the meteorite’s origins in outer space. The information included the meteorite’s relative angle to the horizon, the shadows it cast, and video timestamps of the rock’s screaming descent.
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Everything you need to know about meteor strikes
Meteors are space rocks that find their way into Earth’s atmosphere. They can be as small as a grain of sand or as big as a boulder. They usually burn up during their descent. The ones that survive are called meteorites, and they can hit the Earth at speeds of up to 18,600 mph.
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The Chelyabinsk region of Russia, in the Ural Mountains about 930 miles east of Moscow, was pelted by at least one meteorite on Friday, freaking out residents with bright streaks across the sky and loud, window-shaking explosions.
No serious injuries have been reported from the blasts, and Russian authorities are providing slightly different explanations for what happened. The growing consensus is that a meteorite exploded about 32,000 feet in the air, scattering smaller chunks around the region. “Verified information indicates that this was one meteorite which burned up as it approached Earth and disintegrated into smaller pieces,” Russian Emergency Ministries official Elena Smirnykh tells Russia’s RIA Novosti.
There’s some amazing video footage emerging after the explosions. Watch.
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On Monday, Iran proudly announced to the world that it had launched a monkey into space and successfully brought it back to Earth alive. But something is amiss: Upon further inspection, it appears the monkey that returned from space doesn’t match the monkey that left.
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Twenty-seven years ago today, on January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during its 10th flight mission (STS-51-L), just 73 seconds after liftoff. The mission was originally scheduled to begin on January 22, 1986, but it had to be rescheduled several times before the Challenger finally departed from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 28. After the failure of an O-ring seal on one of the shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters, the vessel burst into flames and exploded. The tragic events were captured during a live broadcast, and all seven crew members lost their lives.
Today in history: Looking back at the 1986 Challenger Shuttle disaster
Photo: NASA
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As if space travel weren’t risky enough already, now astronauts have to grapple with the fear that being in deep space might fry their brains.
The radiation in space is similar to what might be experienced in a nuclear explosion, but here on Earth, we’re protected by our planet’s magnetic field. When astronauts leave Earth’s orbit, however, that layer of protection is gone, and human bodies are bombarded by radioactive particles, which have already been linked to increased cancer risk and cardiovascular issues. But “perhaps the greatest danger of such prolonged exposure,” says Alasdair Wilkins at io9, is “the degeneration of the brain itself.”
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center wanted to study how prolonged time spent in deep space could affect astronauts. So they exposed mice to levels of radiation similar to what humans would encounter on a three-year round trip to Mars, then tested the mice’s memories. The results were startling. Mice exposed to radiation failed to recall objects and places, and their brains showed an increased buildup of beta amyloid, a protein considered one of the clearest indicators of Alzheimer’s disease. ”These findings clearly suggest that exposure to radiation in space has the potential to accelerate the development of Alzheimer’s disease,” says researcher M. Kerry O’Banion.
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NASA’s new spacesuit looks awfully familiar…
