BBC News has an article about it as well, it seems much more mature overall: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14940885

Yeah, I went there afterwards to see if they wrote up on it, definitely a better article. Damn, that's cool.

I dont care what the scientists say, I'm certain that planet is crawling with Tusken Raiders and Womp rats.....

Black Hole devours star,

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift ... -star.html


the awakening of a distant galaxy's dormant black hole as it shredded and consumed a star. The galaxy is so far away, it took the light from the event approximately 3.9 billion years to reach Earth.


Most galaxies, including our own, possess a central supersized black hole weighing millions of times the sun's mass.

It looks like conjoined nuclear explosions.

Also, I'm really excited about the possibility of seeing two suns.

Eta Carinae right? Fascinating star!


Re: the Tatooine planet, you can see the binary system with amateur equipment apparently:
http://www.space.com/12973-skywatching- ... er-16.html

This Universcale is similar to the Interactive Scale of the Universe only it shows distances and gives an idea of light years.

http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/un ... /index.htm

That thing needs a pause button, but it's pretty cool.

Another BBC News article for Jigglefactor to disagree with, this time about the existence of cold dark matter:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14948730

It's not wrong, just blowing things out of proportion. But I guess Λ-CDM being wrong is more eye-catching than statistical errors, lack of resolution, rapid expulsion of baryonic mass through stellar feedback... just some of the many possibilities discussed in the paper in question.

I'm skeptical about this one.
Strange Particles May Travel Faster Than Light.(....implications, including even the possibility of time travel.)


http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/ ... test=faces

There's actually already a thread about this: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=84018

And the time travel bit only works if both the experiment and special relativity would have to be correct; however, these results are mutually exclusive. What they're thinking about are tachyons, particles that showed up in certain string theories and travel at speeds greater than c (speed of light), but in their case c is a lower limit. Tachyons cannot slow down past c.

....and yeah,it seems that a lot of unproven theories have been bolstered as of late. It's like these scientist have huge ego's and crave attention. Then brag about shit before they should due to the extreme competitiveness in this field. Kind of annoying if you ask me.

The big self-hyping egomaniacs are pretty rare, though they do exist (e.g. Lee Smolin). Mostly it's just science journalists that blow things they don't quite understand entirely out of proportion or focus mostly on fringe stuff since it's different and will attract readers.

That is true with most news sources especially when they rely on advertising revenues. I guess you have to read between the lines when it comes to hyped journalism.

Exactly how well will we perceive a black hole. Maybe it's surroundings but that would be it.

Has anybody seen the meteor shower a few days ago? Unfortunately it was all cloudy here so I didn't get to see anything.

if im correct Einstein proved this aswell? there was some visual with traintracks that showed the relativity of particles w/ the speed of light

also on a side note, i haven't read up but is the Europa project still in progress?

This may not be part of this thread but Ill ask you guys/gals that are pretty fricking smart about space here.

First of all, has anyone listened to Junius' album "Martyrdom of a Catastrophist"? Its about the philosopher/scientist Immanuel Velikovsky and his beliefs and theories. He says that in the not so distant past a lot of catastrophies like asteroids, and Im guessing other space rocks, hit earth, wiping out civilizations and life and that it will happen again at some point. He talks a lot about space and how it was formed and how it will end and what not. I just started reading his book "Worlds in Collision" and that shit is fucking scary. I recommend it.

Anyways, I thought I would throw that out there and see what all of you educated folk think about it. Thanks guys.

Not exactly a whole lot I've got to say about this, but I wanted to share it here because it's just generally awe-inspiring:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1769468/scie ... e-in-space

If only it were closer to Earth, we'd get to see which corporation would get their private space fleet up first to start bottling. Pure, pure cosmic water.

Would that be a turnoff for consumers, though? Would people be creeped out by the idea of drinking space water?

Would be hard to collect though, "the water vapor is the finest mist--300 trillion times less dense than the air in a typical room." Still awe-inspiring, but there goes my dream of seeing whales flying through space..

Wow, that is so cool! Not only is a black hole eating a star (fuckin bad ass bra), but anyone seeing the light today is witnessing a phenomenon that occurred just after the dawn of life on earth. fuck. boggles the mind.

Now I'm thirsty. Someone get out there and collect a glass of space water for me.

Yeah, I was drawn to studying Astrophysics for a bit. Doesn't feel like such a good idea for any longer.

Well, that's no fun. :[

I love space. That story about faster than light particles got me so hyped. I would give anything for it to be true.

Pretty insane: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 091652.htm

First picture of a ''black hole'', or more appropriately, its accretion disk. It's pretty insane that they have to resort to gravitational lensing in order to see it and get observational data.

Can we talk about Xenomorphs -

they live in space or i think they can

at least if i was a Xenomorph id live in space!

Phobos-Grunt Mars probe loses its way just after launch
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15631472

Those Russians and their luck with Mars missions...

You'd think they'd be right at home on the Red Planet.

Ok, I'm sorry.

Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result

The team behind the finding in September that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and found the same result.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236

Amazing news, Time travel here we come!

Or not.

I predict some very Steins;Gate-esque time travel in the near future.

We just need to know how it's constituted. It could be a jovian planet, but even if it's a barren wasteland it would mean an habitable exoplanet is possible. Well, I'd be surprised if it didn't exist, it's just a matter of finding it, and we're kinda close.