Tag Archives: NASA

How realistic is the world end in 2012?

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The doomsday stories seem to be closely connected with the year 2012, especially since the ancient Mayan calendar which covers the timespan of more than 5000 years, ends on December 21st 2012. This day will mean the end of the 13th bak’tun, last period of around 400 years in Mayan calendar.

While there is a certainly truth that the Mayan civilization knew whole lot of things about astronomy there’s no evidence whatsoever, that the December 21st 2012 means the end of the world, it only means the end of Mayan calendar and nothing else.

The most popular doomsday theory connected with Mayan calendar is the one about the infamous planet Nibiru that was supposedly discovered by the ancient Sumerians. Under this theory the planet Nibiru should collide with Earth in 2012, and even if it doesn’t hit our planet its passage through our Solar system would cause fatal damage to our planet.

This astronomical disaster was first announced for 2003, and after that it was postponed to December 2012 in order to match with Mayan calendar.

The NASA scientists have announced several times that if such planet would actually be on course to collide with earth they would be able to monitor it for at least couple of decades and today we could be even able to see this planet with naked eyes.

The increased solar activity is also no reason for panic in 2012 because even the almighty Sun doesn’t have enough energy to send a killer solar flare 93 million miles to destroy Earth.

There also seems to be no big asteroid heading our way. Even the infamous 2005 YU55 asteroid hasn’t done any damage to our planet when it passed next to Earth in November 2011, and according to NASA there are no deadly asteroids currently heading our way though some tabloids were even suggesting that NASA hides the truth about this asteroid hitting our planet.

From the astronomical point of view there seems to be no danger whatsoever, in terms of possible disaster that would end all life on our planet in 2012. Instead of worrying about the cataclysmic scenarios world should rather start worry about the long-term effects of climate change because this looks to be the only real threat that could seriously disrupt our future life on Earth.

by Ned Haluzan

 

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Bus-Size Asteroid Buzzes Earth in Close Flyby

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A small asteroid the size of a city bus zoomed between Earth and the moon’s orbit Friday (Jan. 27) just days after its discovery, but it never posed a threat to our planet, NASA says.

The asteroid 2012 BX34 passed within 36,750 miles (59,044 kilometers) of Earth when it made its closest approach at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT). The space rock is about 37 feet (11 meters) wide and would have broke apart in Earth’s atmosphere long before it reached the ground, if it had reached the planet at all, NASA scientists said.

“Asteroid 2012 BX34 is small,” astronomers with NASA’s Asteroid Watch at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a Twitter message. “It wouldn’t get through our atmosphere intact even if it dared to try.”

The space rock passed Earth at a distance that is only about 0.17 times that between the Earth and the moon. For comparison, the moon typically orbits Earth at a distance of about 240,000 miles (386,000 km).

“Asteroids this small are hard to spot, & luckily they pose the least concern,” Asteroid Watch scientists explained. “Our goal is to find the bigger ones.” 

asteroid 2012bx34 close approach
The newly discovered asteroid 2012 BX34 (whose orbit is represented by the blue line) will come within 0.17 lunar distances of Earth on Jan. 27, 2012, experts say.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A small asteroid the size of a city bus zoomed between Earth and the moon’s orbit Friday (Jan. 27) just days after its discovery, but it never posed a threat to our planet, NASA says.

The asteroid 2012 BX34 passed within 36,750 miles (59,044 kilometers) of Earth when it made its closest approach at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT). The space rock is about 37 feet (11 meters) wide and would have broke apart in Earth’s atmosphere long before it reached the ground, if it had reached the planet at all, NASA scientists said.

“Asteroid 2012 BX34 is small,” astronomers with NASA’s Asteroid Watch at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a Twitter message. “It wouldn’t get through our atmosphere intact even if it dared to try.”

The space rock passed Earth at a distance that is only about 0.17 times that between the Earth and the moon. For comparison, the moon typically orbits Earth at a distance of about 240,000 miles (386,000 km).

 ”Asteroids this small are hard to spot, & luckily they pose the least concern,” Asteroid Watch scientists explained. “Our goal is to find the bigger ones.” [Video and image of asteroid 2012 BX34's orbit]

In September, NASA announced that it has spotted about 90 percent of the largest asteroids (the size of a mountain or bigger) that can come near Earth. About 911 such giant space rocks have been confirmed. Astronomers estimate there are about 981 big near-Earth objects that occasionally creep close to our planet.

Asteroid 2012 BX34 was the second space rock to fly relatively close by Earth this week, Asteroid Watch scientists said. On Jan. 23, another small asteroid — called 2012 BS1 — passed by the planet at a range of about 745,000 miles (1.2 million km), which is about 3.1 times the Earth-moon distance.

“Asteroid 2012 BS1 is so small (about 7 meters) it would disintegrate in our atmosphere if it were to come close to Earth,” the Asteroid Watch team wrote.

Astronomers with NASA and other science teams routinely scan the skies in search of near-Earth asteroids that could pose a danger to the planet. Experts estimate that asteroids about 460 feet (140 m) across and bigger can cause widespread devastation near their impact sites, though a larger space rock would be required to cause destruction on a global scale.

This week, scientists from around the world are also discussing how Earth should respond to the threat of an asteroid impact. The so-called NEOShield project is a European commission led by the German Aerospace Center and includes scientists from universities and industrial partners in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, the United States and Russia.

AUTHOR – Tariq Malik, SPACE.com Managing Editor

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Doomsday in 1 Year? Why the World Won’t End on Dec. 21, 2012

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the mayan long-count calendar
Some believe the end of the Mayan calendar, Dec. 21, 2012, will usher in a new spiritual era or even a doomsday. And new research suggests the civilization’s demise long ago may have been partly their own doing.
CREDIT: Morphart | Shutterstock

A year from today the world will come to an end, according to some who cite the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar as evidence of a Dec. 21, 2012, apocalypse. But both astronomers and experts on Mesoamerican history say the Mayan apocalypse is likely to be another in a long line of failed doomsdays.

According to the Maya Long Count calendar, the winter solstice of 2012 — Dec. 21, 2012 —is the end of a b’ak’tun, a 144,000-day cycle that has repeated 12 times since the mythical Maya creation date. The b’ak’tun that will end in 2012 is the 13th, supposedly a full 5,200-year cycle of creation.

Because of this end date, a number of predictions have attached themselves to Dec. 21, from the end of the world via collision with a rogue planet, to the ushering in of a new world era. But neither historians nor astronomers put much credence in these predictions. [End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears]

Deciphering the Mayan calendar

In fact, according to archaeologists, it wasn’t the Mayans who linked the end of the 13th b’ak’tun with the end of the world. According to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, when Judeo-Christians began to decipher Mayan writings, their preconceived notions of apocalypse and the end of the world led them to link Mayan calendar cycles with doomsday.

“A lot of the end-of-the-world mythologies are the result of Christian eschatology introduced by Franciscan missionaries,” John Hoopes, a scholar of Maya history at the University of Kansas, told Livescience, referring to missionaries just entering the New World andcoming into contact with native people.

Maya scholars disagree on exactly how the Maya people would have interpreted the end of their calendar cycle, Hoopes said, though many say they would have seen it as a new beginning.

Astronomy anomalies

Many of the supposed 2012 doomsday scenarios involve astronomical phenomena: A rogue planet, solar storms or a planetary alignment. But NASA scientists say these aren’t real threats.

One theory holds that a rogue body called “Planet X” or “Nibiru” will collide with Earth in 2012, snuffing out our planet. The only problem with this theory? Nibiru is made up.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever that Nibiru exists,” said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object program office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., at a public talk Dec. 8. Yeomans said theories that Nibiru is lurking behind our sun make no sense.

“We would have seen it years ago,” he said.

Likewise, Yeomans said, there are no planetary alignments or other astronomical anomalies set for Dec. 21, 2012.

Our stormy sun

One doomsday theory based on perhaps a pinch of science involves the sun. After years of relative peace, the electromagnetic activity on the surface of the sun is heating up, according to NASA. Some fear that an enormous solar flare will engulf Earth or otherwise destroy us.

But this ramping up of activity is typical of our home star, explained Daniel Baker, the director of the laboratory for atmospheric and space physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in a talk at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union this month. [Gallery: Our Amazing Sun]

“The sun undergoes an approximately 11-year period of activity,” Baker said. “It goes from very weak conditions, the solar minimum, to some very large solar maximum numbers.”

The sun has been quiet even by solar minimum standards in recent years, Baker said. The upcoming maximum — set to peak in 2013, not 2012 — is expected to be average. Humans do have to watch out for solar storms, which can disrupt satellite communications and electrical grids here on Earth. Nonetheless, industries can prepare for solar storms, which is why agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have centers whose sole job is to predict these storms’ coming.

Different industries adjust in different ways, said Rodney Viereck of the NOAA Space Environment Center. Airlines that rely on satellite communications will fly at latitudes where alternative forms of communication are possible. Industries dependent on Global Positioning System (GPS) technology will delay crucial activities. Power grids will adjust voltages to handle electromagnetic fluctuations.

2012: Just another year

Finally, theories abound online about one more scientific phenomenon and the 2012 apocalypse: a magnetic pole reversal on Earth. Believers worry that a flip-flop of the Earth’s magnetic field will throw civilization back into the Stone Age, or perhaps destroy all life on the planet, by temporarily dropping the magnetic-field barrier to radiation from space. NASA scientists, however, say Earthlings can rest easy.

According to NASA, the planet’s magnetic field reverses every 200,000 to 300,000 years, though we’ve currently gone more than twice that without a swap.

But these flips don’t happen in an instant, according to the space agency. They occur over hundreds of thousands of years. The last reversal happened 780,000 years ago, according to NASA, and the fossil record shows no sign of any disruption in life.

Stephanie Pappas

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Biggest Science Stories of 2011

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hurricane hunters, earth, environment, atlantic hurricane season, hurricane planes, hurricane aircraft, meteorology, storm prediction, hurricane pilots

Credit: U.S. Air Force, Staff Sgt. Valerie Smock.

From the last space shuttle mission and spotting Earth-size planets orbiting another star to the possible detection of the elusive Higgs boson particle and some extreme (and very costly) weather, 2011 was filled with science, albeit sometimes disastrous. Here are 11 of the most compelling and significant science stories to break this year.

The U.S. may have exited the recession this year, but the amount of time Americans go without work has reached a record level. And psychologists say this doesn’t bode well for our emotional health. Census data also shows increases in the nation’s poverty rate in recent years. Americans feel their financial situation was getting worse, not better, and even their pets are suffering. The Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 hit all children hard, but seems to have caused the largest increase in childhood poverty among Latino kids.

Killer Contaminated Cantaloupes
null

Credit: stock.xchng

An outbreak of listeriosis, an infection caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, spread by contaminated cantaloupes infected 146 people and killed 30 this fall, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in December. Health officials recommend washing melons particularly cantaloupes before slicing them to remove any bacteria clinging to the rind.

The Last Space Shuttle

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Thirty years after launching its first space shuttle, Columbia, NASA ended its space shuttle program in July with a final mission by the shuttle Atlantis. NASA has no immediate plans to replace the shuttles, but is instead focusing on manned voyages beyond low orbit, such as to the moon and Mars. In the immediate future, a combination of commercial ventures, whose craft are still being developed, and other nation’s craft, such as the Russian Soyuz and Progress, are expected to take over the task of ferrying American astronauts and experiments back and forth to the International Space Station (ISS).

Mutant Flu Virus Created in Lab

Bird flu, also known as H5N1, rarely infects people, but when it does the results are often deadly: Of the 600 cases reported since 2003, about 60 percent have been fatal. To better understand how the virus might change into a form that could easily spread between people, two groups of scientists altered the virus in their labs, creating the sort of pathogen that could start a pandemic.

Biosecurity officials have called for crucial details of their work to be kept under wraps — to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands — and some have questioned whether the work should have been done at all.

Japan’s Earthquake, Tsunami & Nuclear Crisis
tsunami, tohoku earthquake, japan, japanese earthquake, tsunami debris, radioactive debris, radioactivity, pacific garbage patch, hawaii

Credit: U.S. Navy/ Specialist 3rd Class Alexander Tidd.

On March 11, an earthquake, measuring a magnitude of 8.9, struck off the coast of Japan. The earthquake was the most powerful to ever hit the country, and it was followed by the walls of water – caused by the subsequent tsunamis – which wreaked havoc. These disasters set off the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl when massive amounts of radiation were released from nuclear power plants. Reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant melted down, and the surrounding area evacuated.

Alarming Firsts in the Arctic
Baby and mother polar bear on Arctic sea ice

Credit: Sophie TRAN, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE), distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons license.

The ozone hole over the Antarctic is nothing new, although scientists expect it to disappear later this century. But this year, an Arctic counterpart emerged for the first time, thanks to unusually cold temperatures in the stratosphere plus lingering ozone-destroying pollutants. Arctic sea ice also melted — either to its lowest summer extent on record, or its second lowest, depending on who did the measuring.

Exceeding the Speed of Light?

Reports that physicists had accelerated subatomic particles, called neutrinos, faster than the speed of light appeared to upset modern physics and even the nature of causality. Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity gives a special status to the speed of light as a cosmic speed limit. Anything exceeding the speed of light would travel backwards time, interfering with the basic rule that cause precedes effect, called causality. However, this all may have been a false alarm. More recent evidence indicates the neurtrinos never traveled that quickly, though the jury is still out.

Planets Like Ours
earth-sized planets. The Kepler space telescope has spied evidence of two Earth-sized worlds in a star system 950 light-years away.

Credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com Contributor/ NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Astronomers came a step closer to locating a habitable, Earth-like planet, when they found two, roughly Earth-sized planets orbiting a star 950 light-years away. These are the smallest, most Earth-size alien worlds known. Their close proximity to their sun means they are too hot to be habitable, however.

Our Ancestors’ Secrets
teeth from a new branch of ancient humans

Credit: David Reich et al., Nature.

It seems our ancestors not only mated with Neanderthals, they also got it on with another, even more mysterious archaic hominin species. Called the Denisovans, these people lived about 40,000 years ago and are known to us only from a few bone fragments and teeth. Research has uncovered Denisovan genes in modern East Asian and Pacific Island populations.

Particle

This track is an example of simulated data modelled for the ATLAS detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The Higgs boson is produced in the collision of two protons at 14 TeV and quickly decays into four muons, a type of heavy electron that

Credit: CERN/ATLAS

Physicists say they are closing in on an elusive subatomic particle, called the Higgs boson, that could confirm their theory on where mass comes from. The Higgs boson is thought to be tied to a field (the Higgs field), which is responsible for giving all other particles their mass.

Climate Change

dry lake bed

Credit: NOAA.

Drought, wildfire, tornadoes, flooding, a blizzard and a hurricane — weather-related disasters wreaked havoc on the United States in 2011, setting a new record for costly weather-related disasters. In December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the country had experienced 12 $1 billion-plus of them. And we can expect more, said NOAA head Jane Lubchenco, citing predictions of more severe weather brought by climate change. Americans seem to be getting the message; an annual survey found we are starting to see climate change as an immediate problem, thanks to this year’s devastating weather.

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First Earth-size planets found around distant star – in a bizarre solar system

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For the first time, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has found two Earth-size planets outside our solar system – a landmark achievement. But the planets are in a solar system that baffles scientists and could overthrow current models of planet formation.

This illustration shows artist’s renderings of planets Kepler 20e and Kepler 20f compared with Venus and the Earth.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/AP

Scientists have found the first Earth-size planets orbiting a star like the sun, but the pair appear in a solar system so bizarre that it is for now upending current explanations for how solar systems form, the discoverers say.

The two planets, thought to be rocky, form a kind of cosmic triple-decker sandwich, with each interspersed among three Neptune-scale gas planets. All five are closer to their host star than Mercury is to the sun, meaning they are too hot for life.

But the find is proof that NASA‘s Kepler spacecraft can find Earth-size planets orbiting distant stars. Kepler 20e is slightly smaller than Venus, or about 0.87 times Earth’s size. Kepler 20f is 1.03 times Earth’s size.

Combined with the discovery, announced Dec. 5, of a “super Earth” in another star’s habitable zone, these new planets move the Kepler team closer to its goal: detecting Earth-size planets in their stars’ habitable zones – orbital distances where temperatures on the planet are warm enough to allow water to remain stable on the surface.

The newest discovery is “the most important milestone” for the Kepler team, says Francois Fressin, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and the lead author of the team’s formal report, which is being published by the journal Nature.

Kepler uncovered the two Earth-size planets 1,000 light-years away by tracking the changes the brightness of light coming from their host star, Kepler 20, as the planets pass in front of it. Kepler 20e orbits its sun once every 6.1 days at an average distance of 4.7 million miles. Kepler 20f orbits once in 19.6 days at a distance of 10.3 million miles. 

Earth, by contrast, is 93 million miles from the sun.

The team doesn’t yet have an independent confirmation of the planets’ masses, but given their sizes and orbits, the planets likely are rocky – probably composed of silicates and iron, as is Earth – according to current models of how solar systems form.

Yet the arrangement of the five planets orbiting Kepler 20 is calling those models into question. It could be dubbed the Neptune/Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The configuration of the five planets – Neptune-like planet, followed by small rocky planet, followed by Neptune-like planet, followed by small rocky planet, followed by Neptune-like planet – is decidedly unlike anything yet seen.

“The architecture of that planetary system is crazy,” says David Charbonneau, another researcher from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a Kepler team member.

From centuries of studying our own solar system, astronomers had pieced together a convincing picture of planet formation. Rocky planets formed close to the sun, where temperatures were too warm to allow gases and ices to accumulate. Meanwhile, gas and ice giants formed beyond the so-called snow line, where temperatures even on the sunward side of objects could not unfreeze water and allowed gases to condense into liquids.

“We thought all solar systems would be like this,” says Linda Elkins-Tanton, who heads the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington.

Extrasolar-planet hunters then found so-called hot Jupiters – gas giants with Jupiter‘s mass and more – orbiting close to their parent stars. But that still could be explained: The giants just migrated inward and forced the smaller rocky planets into the star as they came, Dr. Elkins-Tanton suggests.

“Now, with this new Kepler finding, comes a solar system that doesn’t fit any mold we have,” she says. “This system forces us to change out ideas about how planets are formed, and how they reach stable orbits, and where indeed in solar systems there could be Earth-sized rocky planets.”

The Kepler team’s announcement Tuesday coincides with an additional report released the same day by scientist claiming to have found two planets smaller than Earth orbiting a relic of a red-giant star some 4,000 light-years away. Although this second group is not part of the Kepler team, they used Kepler data to make their discovery.

By Pete Spotts

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What will happen after sun vaporizes Earth? Scorched planets hold clues.

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Scientists say they’ve found two planets that survived being swallowed by a red-giant star. Earth won’t be so fortunate when our sun becomes a red giant in 5 billion years, but the find shows what can happen to solar systems after such dramatic events.

An artist’s rendering of the two planets orbiting close to the former red-giant core.

S. Charpinet

Forget this season’s final episode of “Survivor.” The ultimate survivors appear to be two small planet-candidates engulfed for a billion years inside the searing envelope of a red-giant star. And they emerged to tell the tale.

The planets are a glimpse at what can happen to a solar system when a star begins its death throes, becoming bloated and red as it consumes the last of the hydrogen fuel in its core. The same fate awaits our sun in about 5 billion years.

The two planet-candidates announced Wednesday are among the tiniest yet revealed by data from NASA‘s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft. And they hold the potential to shed light not only on how planets could survive such a torching, but also how they might affect the evolution of red-giant stars themselves.

“On many levels, it’s very cool,” says Elizabeth Green, a researcher with the University of Arizona‘s Steward Observatory and a member of the team reporting its observations in the Dec. 22 issue of the journal Nature.

A red giant originates as a star roughly like our sun – between 0.5 and 8 times the sun’s mass. As the star exhausts its hydrogen fuel, its core collapses. The heat of that event causes remaining hydrogen in the outer shell to begin fusion, and the star’s outer layer, or photosphere, expands.

By the time the red-giant phase of our sun ends, the Earth, Venus, and Mercury are likely to be vaporized. But scientists have examples of other objects – planets and brown-dwarf stars – that survived being enveloped by red-giant stars they orbited.

None of them, however, is like the ones reported Tuesday. All the previous examples were bigger objects that orbited farther from their parent stars to begin with. For that reason, they didn’t spiral as deeply into their stars’ photospheres. When these stars’ red-giant phase ended – and the stars shrank back to become helium-burning so-called subdwarf B stars – the planets survived.

By contrast, the objects reported Tuesday appear to have traveled far deeper into the red-giant’s photosphere and survived only as tiny remnants.

Indeed, the planet-candidates orbit so close to their subdwarf B star, named KIC 05807616, that their years are 5.8 hours and 8.2 hours long, respectively. With one side constantly facing the star, the planets’ sun-side faces would roast at between 14,000 and 16,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

So how did the planet-candidates survive such a blistering? The team suggests that the objects may represent the rocky cores of stripped-down gas-giant planets that once orbited farther away.

As KIC 05807616 went through its red-giant phase and expanded, the two planets had to push through far more material as they orbited, creating a drag that slowed them down. That began a long spiral toward the star’s core, and as the gas-giant planets migrated, they were stripped of their gas until only the rocky cores remained.

In the process, however, these planets also could have hastened the end of the star’s red-giant phase, the team suggests.

The star’s gravity is at its weakest in the outer reaches of the extended photosphere. As the planets migrated, their gravity could have stirred the star’s outer photosphere in ways that stripped the hot gas away.

There are other possible explanations for the planet-candidates’ presence. They could have been rocky planets to start with, were destroyed, and when the red-giant phase ended and the star’s photosphere contracted, they reformed from the torched leftovers, says Eliza Kempton, a scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who focuses her research on small extrasolar planets and was not part of the team.

Ironically, the team, which was led by French astronomer Stephane Charpinet of the University of Toulouse, didn’t set out to hunt for planets, Dr. Green explains. Instead, the scientists were using Kepler’s data to study stars – in particular, stars that had passed through their red-giant phase and had begun to burn the helium in their cores.

KIC 05807616 is one such star. Like many stars, KIC 05807616 varies in brightness in repeating patterns. These patterns can yield information on a star’s mass, temperature, size, even the structure of its interior.

Kepler measures such changes with high precision because of the requirements of its planet-hunting mission. It hunts for extrasolar planets by measuring how a planet slightly dims a star’s light when passing in front of it. But the scientists using its data need to be able to separate planet-induced dimming from a host star’s built-in swings in brightness.

As Dr. Charpinet’s team analyzed the varying brightness patterns from KIC 05807616, they detected two additional sets that didn’t mesh with the patterns from the star itself.

After carefully weighing other explanations, the most probable explanation left standing was the presence of two planets.

Not everyone is convinced that the team has detected planets, with some ready to go no farther than to describe planet patters as “intriguing modulations.” And while the team is confident that the objects are planets, they still formally dub them planet-candidates.

Whatever the answer, astrophysicists studying stars are as tickled to have Kepler on orbit as are planet-hunters. Compared with the tools available prior to Kepler’s launch, the quality of the data pouring in from the mission “is fantastic,” Green says.

By Pete Spotts

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Dooms day.

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No Danger of Earth Exploding

Scientists have nailed an alarming prediction about the cataclysmic destruction of earth in 2012.

An erroneous doomsday theory doing the rounds is that a supernova explosion, which releases energy equivalent to that produced during the sun’s entire lifetime, could happen in 2012 and harm earthly life.

However, given the vastness of space and the long light years between supernovae, astronomers say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt earth.

According to a statement by NASA-Goddard Space Flight Centre, astronomers say that the closest gamma-ray burst on record, known as GRB 031203, is 1.3 billion light years away from the earth.

Image

Supernova 1987A was the closest exploding star seen in modern times. It occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits our own Milky Way. Images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope were combined to make this composite of the blast’s expanding debris.

Given the incredible amounts of energy in a supernova explosion – as much as the sun creates during its entire lifetime – another erroneous doomsday theory is that such an explosion could happen in 2012 and harm life on Earth. However, given the vastness of space and the long times between supernovae, astronomers can say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt Earth.

Astronomers estimate that, on average, about one or two supernovae explode each century in our galaxy. But for Earth’s ozone layer to experience damage from a supernova, the blast must occur less than 50 light-years away. All of the nearby stars capable of going supernova are much farther than this.

Any planet with life on it near a star that goes supernova would indeed experience problems. X- and gamma-ray radiation from the supernova could damage the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet light in the sun’s rays. The less ozone there is, the more UV light reaches the surface. At some wavelengths, just a 10 percent increase in ground-level UV can be lethal to some organisms, including phytoplankton near the ocean surface. Because these organisms form the basis of oxygen production on Earth and the marine food chain, any significant disruption to them could cascade into a planet-wide problem.

Another explosive event, called a gamma-ray burst (GRB), is often associated with supernovae. When a massive star collapses on itself — or, less frequently, when two compact neutron stars collide — the result is the birth of a black hole. As matter falls toward a nascent black hole, some of it becomes accelerated into a particle jet so powerful that it can drill its way completely through the star before the star’s outermost layers even have begun to collapse. If one of the jets happens to be directed toward Earth, orbiting satellites detect a burst of highly energetic gamma rays somewhere in the sky. These bursts occur almost daily and are so powerful that they can be seen across billions of light-years.

A gamma-ray burst could affect Earth in much the same way as a supernova — and at much greater distance — but only if its jet is directly pointed our way. Astronomers estimate that a gamma-ray burst could affect Earth from up to 10,000 light-years away with each separated by about 15 million years, on average. So far, the closest burst on record, known as GRB 031203, was 1.3 billion light-years away.

As with impacts, our planet likely has already experienced such events over its long history, but there’s no reason to expect a gamma-ray burst in our galaxy to occur in the near future, much less in December 2012.

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Mysterious Evidence of Life on Red Planet

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Bangalore: The Red Solar Neighbour has fascinated us from time immemorial. Mars is the most earth like planet in our Solar System. Scientists and Astronomers have for quite some time now tried to explore the possibility of life conditions on Mars. Mars has always remained mysterious as it has left innumerable hints on its past civilizations in photographs that have been decoded in various ways as to suggesting that the Red Planet once supported life.

There is no conclusive evidence that life ever existed on Mars. However, there are some photos taken by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) that point to life forms on Mars, and others that support evidence of intelligent life.

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Plant life on Mars

This photo points to sand dunes on Mars, and is located in the southern hemisphere of the Red Planet. It resembles aerial view of Earth’s deserts covered by shrubs. A Hungarian research team, studying these photos on similar areas believes that the black dots are living trees or shrubs. The NASA research teams, however, disagree. Their findings suggest that the dark spots are the effects of defrosting process on Mars and are not signs of life.

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Mars Trees

This is another photo that is much like spread trees, when seen from above. The renowned author Arthur C. Clarke feels they are like Earth’s Banyan trees. Many photos taken during different times of a year, show that these forms change with seasons, growing during the increased warmth of Mars’s spring season, just like any vegetation. NASA has again rejected this theory, and explained these away as defrosting phenomenon.

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Tunnel like Tubes

There have been some images with structures that look more artificial than natural. One of such photos shows a fascinating tunnel like structure, resembling an uneven tube. The structure partially under surface terrain seems as though it has been unearthed by a geologic process. NASA’s theory on these structures is that they are quiet natural and are only sand dune rows.

One needs to understand that these are only theories and NASA’s stance is no better than Hungarian theory.

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Glass Tubes

These are among the most mysterious structures to have been photographed on Mars’s surface. They are like long translucent tubes supported by rows of arches. There have been many guesses on this object. Some feel these could be large water channels funneling water from one area to another. Others say these are one of geological anomalies of Mars.

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Mars Ports

This supposed ‘port’ is a structure on a Martian cliffside that resembles a two-story building constructed for a mysterious purpose. The first floor walls of the ‘port’ are facing camera and in shadow. The second floor is at 45-degree angle to the first floor. Located on the roof of the second floor is a sharp circle, similar to helipads on tall buildings. Beside this structure is a huge U-shaped drain, flowing a great deal of liquid.

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Mars Tower

The “Mars Tower” seems very much like a tall tower having a white tip, casting extensive shadow around. It is around 6 kilometers high, about 10 times higher than the largest skyscraper on Earth. Many have wondered whether these are just optical illusions or an artificial structure of a lost civilization on Mars.

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Mars PyramidsMars Pyramids

In Cydonia area of Mars, there are many anomalous structures. Below this region is a group of structures that have been called “pyramids”. They have smooth triangular sides strikingly resembling the Egyptian Pyramid.

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Mars Riverbed

Scientists have always refuted the presence of water on Mars. This photo taken by Mars Express Orbiter in a way challenges their theories. Resembling a blue green “something”, these patches are very much like a water body. Are there actual riverbeds on Mars? Recently Scientists found “water everywhere” on the Red Planet. Or are they a kind of blue-green algae or lichen anomalous to Mars?

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Mars Sea Shell

Sir Charles W. Shults III, in his “A Fossil Hunter’s Guide to Mars”, uncovered several photos of objects taken by the Spirit rover on the surface of Mars. They resemble terrestrial seashells. These cannot be rocks, and if they are, then they are indeed anomalous to Mars.

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Mars Bio Station

When astronomer David Martines was exploring Google Mars, he found a structure resembling a large building, in the northern hemisphere of the planet. He called it “Bio-Station Alpha”. He feels there may be some kind of a creature living in it. The structure is over 700 feet long and 150 feet wide. It may be located at the following coordinates on Google Mars: 71 49’19.73″N 29 33’06.53″W.

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Golf Ball Craters on Mars

This Golf Ball Crater is one of the strangest craters on Mars. It is so called because in its centre is a dome like structure, nearly spherical, and appears to have a golf ball texture. Interestingly, this dome is close to what seems like a series of tunnels that run above and below the Martian surface. Small tunnels apparently connect large tunnels, very much like a large drainage system.

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Star City on Mars

These strange formations have been dubbed “Star City”. It is a complex structure that some that resembles artificial wall constructions. Star City is located on the Syrtis Major Planum area and is part of a larger area that is home to geometric objects and structures that look like tubes and tunnels. Were they part of a real Martian city? It is not sure and some scientists feel these are just natural formations.

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