There are mysteries in this world that still confound us.
1 The placebo effect
You induce pain in someone several times a day, for several days. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away. But, don’t try this at home.
Continue reading… “13 things that just don’t make any sense”
In 2005, Japan’s unmanned Hayabusa spacecraft (illustration) successfully landed on an asteroid.
Getting to Mars is going to involve building a huge spacecraft and loading it up with tons of fuel and radiation shielding. Unless, that is, we could just tag along with a spacecraft that’s already headed in that direction, like an asteroid.
Continue reading… “Astronauts Could One Day Reach Mars by Riding Asteroids”
If only we could get close to it without being crushed…
A gamma-ray burst is an immensely powerful blast of high-energy light thought to be generated by a collapsing star in a distant galaxy, but what this collapse leaves behind has been a matter of debate.
Continue reading… “Black Holes May Be A Power Source”
Studies of one of the galaxy’s most active black-hole binaries reveal a dramatic change that will help scientists better understand how these systems expel fast-moving particle jets.
Continue reading… “Suzaku Catches Retreat of a Black Hole’s Disk”
A specialized camera on a telescope operated by U.K. astronomers from Liverpool has made the first measurement of magnetic fields in the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). The result is reported in the Dec. 10 issue of Nature magazine by the team of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) astronomers who built and operate the telescope and its unique scientific camera, named RINGO.
Continue reading… “Magnetic Power Revealed in Gamma-Ray Burst Jet”
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has made the first unambiguous detection of high-energy gamma-rays from an enigmatic binary system known as Cygnus X-3. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a compact object — either a neutron star or a black hole — that blasts twin radio-emitting jets of matter into space at more than half the speed of light.
Continue reading… “Nasa’s Fermi Telescope Peers Deep Into a ‘Micro-Quasar’”
Nearly 100 years ago, scientists detected the first signs of cosmic rays — subatomic particles (mostly protons) that zip through space at nearly the speed of light. The most energetic cosmic rays hit with the punch of a 98-mph fastball, even though they are smaller than an atom. Astronomers questioned what natural force could accelerate particles to such a speed. New evidence from the VERITAS telescope array shows that cosmic rays likely are powered by exploding stars and stellar “winds.”
Continue reading… “Origin Of Cosmic Rays: VERITAS Telescopes Help Solve 100-year-old Mystery”
Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Two so-called “starburst” galaxies, plus a satellite of our own Milky Way galaxy, represent a new category of gamma-ray-emitting objects detected both by Fermi and ground-based observatories.
Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA’s ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.
Continue reading… “Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High”
Researchers from the Open University are laying the groundwork for a new equation that could mathematically quantify a habitat’s potential for hosting life, in a similar way to how the Drake equation estimates the number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way. Continue reading… “New Drake Equation To Quantify Habitability?”
Scientists using the Cassini spacecraft’s Magnetospheric Imaging instrument (MIMI) have detected a new, temporary radiation belt at Saturn, located around the orbit of its moon Dione at about 377,000 km from the center of the planet. Continue reading… “New Transient Radiation Belt Discovered Around Saturn”
An unprecedented measuring campaign has succeeded in precisely defining the place of origin of high-energy gamma radiation in the galaxy Messier 87. This radiation can only be produced by accelerating elementary particles to very high energies in enormous cosmic objects. Now the underlying extreme physical processes and inherent implications can be investigated in more detail.
Continue reading… “Astrophysics: High Energy Galactic Particle Accelerator Located”
