Monday, September 19, 2011
Awesome Paris Lighting
A chance photo taken from the window of an apartment captures an amazing moment.
Massive 20m deep crater opens up in German town
An aerial view of a large crater that appeared in the early hours in the central German town of Schmalkalden, November 1, 2010. A huge crater measuring 30 by 40 metres (98 by 131 feet ) has opened up in the middle of a residential estate early in the morning on Monday, according to local police. No one was reported hurt in the incident
Residents in the German town of Schmalkalden probably had the shock of their lives when they opened their bedroom curtains as a giant crater had formed overnight.
There is no injuries but forcing the evacuation of 25 people.This huge hole caused by landslide or impact by meteor hit ? The experts are now still investigating..
Stormy weather @ USA
Lightning flashes east of the Las Vegas Strip during a thunderstorm early on 13 September 2011.
Shanghainese women change attire on train
By Fann Sim – Wed, Sep 14, 2011
Photos and videos of Shanghainese women undressing and changing their clothes on the train have surfaced on the Internet.
On 22 August, a netizen caused a stir after uploading photos and videos of a girl on Shanghai's Metro train. The video detailed a girl stripping down to her underwear and changing clothes inside the train cabin.
Netizens believed that she was either late for work or doing it for a publicity stunt as the clothes she changed into looked like a uniform for cosplaying purposes.
The woman changed into a "uniform" that looks like it's for cosplaying purposes.
Some have said that such an act is immoral and very unsightly to look at while others disagreed with the public outcry.
A Chinese user wrote, "What's the big deal? Society's development should mean more diversity/pluralism. If it's always traditional ideas, we won't keep up with the times/fashion. Does everyone still remember the 80s, where peeping (into) the ladies would result in being sentenced to death? Now that we think about it, wasn't that going too far?"
Photos and videos of Shanghainese women undressing and changing their clothes on the train have surfaced on the Internet.
On 22 August, a netizen caused a stir after uploading photos and videos of a girl on Shanghai's Metro train. The video detailed a girl stripping down to her underwear and changing clothes inside the train cabin.
Netizens believed that she was either late for work or doing it for a publicity stunt as the clothes she changed into looked like a uniform for cosplaying purposes.
The woman changed into a "uniform" that looks like it's for cosplaying purposes.
Some have said that such an act is immoral and very unsightly to look at while others disagreed with the public outcry.
A Chinese user wrote, "What's the big deal? Society's development should mean more diversity/pluralism. If it's always traditional ideas, we won't keep up with the times/fashion. Does everyone still remember the 80s, where peeping (into) the ladies would result in being sentenced to death? Now that we think about it, wasn't that going too far?"
Sunday, September 18, 2011
US astronomers find planet with two Suns
US astronomers said Thursday they have discovered the first planet that is orbiting two Suns, much like the fictional home of Luke Skywalker featured in Star Wars.
Skywalker's native planet of Tatooine was hot and desert-like, but this planet, called Kepler-16b, is a freezing cold world about the size of Saturn, orbiting two parent Suns in a near perfect circle about 200 light years away.
The planet was glimpsed with the US space agency's Kepler space telescope, which monitors the brightness of 155,000 stars, according to the research published in the journal Science.
"This discovery is stunning," said co-author Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.
"Once again, what used to be science fiction has turned into reality."
While astronomers have previously glimpsed planets they believed were orbiting two stars, they had never before seen one actually passing in front of its two Suns so this discovery offers the first proof.
"Kepler-16b is the first confirmed, unambiguous example of a circumbinary planet -- a planet orbiting not one, but two stars," said co-author Josh Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
"Once again, we're finding that our solar system is only one example of the variety of planetary systems nature can create."
If there were people on Kepler-16b, they could relax to the view of a double sunset, but such a scenario is highly unlikely due to the planet's extreme frigid surface temperature of -100 to -150 Fahrenheit (-73 to -101 Celsius).
The chill is likely due to the fact that even though the planet has two Suns which it orbits every 229 days at a distance of 65 million miles (105 million kilometers), they are smaller and cooler than our single Sun.
One of Kepler-16b's Suns is 20 percent as massive as ours, and the other is 69 percent as massive.
While the planet orbits them, the two Suns dance with each other in an "eccentric 41-day orbit," the study said.
The study was led by Kepler scientist Laurance Doyle of the California-based SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute.
AFP News – Fri, Sep 16, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
NASA’s Cassini orbiter snaps unbelievable picture of Saturn
Science fiction movies have spoiled us on high definition views of our planetary neighbors, but real-life photographs with equal jaw-dropping potential are exceedingly rare. That's what makes NASA's awe-inspiring snapshot of Saturn (hi-res version here) such a stunning piece of eye candy.
Taken by NASA's Cassini robotic orbiter, the shot was captured from the dark side of Saturn as the Sun's bright rays illuminated every piece of dust and debris circling the planet. Cassini has offered astronomers a never-before-seen look at Saturn and revealed more information about the planet than any craft before it. The craft has taken so many pictures of the ringed wonder that they were recently made into a short flyby film that looks like it was created by George Lucas rather than a robotic space explorer.
The Cassini probe was launched in 1997 and took a further 7 years to reach Saturn's orbit. The total cost of its overarching objective of studying the ringed planet stands at a staggering $3.26 billion. However, the wealth of information it has wrought — including amazing pictures like the one above, and recordings of massive lightning storms on the planet — have already made it one of the best investments in space exploration. Hopefully Juno — which began a 5-year trek to Jupiter just last month — will bring us some equally stunning shots of Saturn's neighbor.
Article By :Mike Wehner, Thu, Sep 8, 2011
Dead NASA satellite will soon plummet to Earth
A dead NASA satellite will soon fall to Earth, but the space agency says there is very little chance that a piece of it will hit someone.
NASA says the 20-year-old satellite will probably fall sometime between late September and October. Pieces of it could land anywhere in the six inhabited continents in a worldwide swath from south of Juneau, Alaska, to just north of the tip of South America. NASA scientists estimate a 1-in-3,200 chance a satellite part could hit someone. Most of it will burn up after entering Earth's atmosphere.
The 6-ton (5.4-metric ton) Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) ran out of fuel in 2005 and will fall uncontrolled out of orbit. Only about 1,200 pounds (544.32 kilograms) of metal should survive, NASA said.
This satellite is far smaller than the 135-ton (123-metric ton) Russian space station Mir, which fell to Earth in 2001 or the 100-ton (91-metric ton) Skylab that fell in 1979. Mir fell into the South Pacific, while Skylab hit the Indian Ocean and parts of sparsely populated western Australia. Because two-thirds of the Earth is ocean, space debris usually hits water
"Things have been re-entering ever since the dawn of the Space Age; to date nobody has been injured by anything that's re-entered," said NASA orbital debris chief Gene Stansbery. "That doesn't mean we're not concerned."
NASA now has a rule that the chance of any of its satellites hitting someone has to be more than 1 in 10,000. But UARS, which measured chemicals in the air, was launched in 1991 before that rule was adopted. The agency usually tries to put dead satellites into "a graveyard orbit" or steer them down to the ocean, Stansbery said. But there was not enough fuel in this one to fire engines that would move it to a higher orbit or steer it down safely.
The 1-in-3,200 odds of being hit pertain to any of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth. But any one individual's odds of being struck are about 1 in 21 trillion.
Space debris bigger than 5 tons (4.5 metric tons) does not often fall to Earth. But this will be the third time this year for something that big to reach Earth, according to Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard University astrophysicist who tracks objects in orbit.
The UARS satellite travels over a large band of Earth, avoiding only areas close to the poles. NASA calculates that when the satellite does fall it will scatter pieces over a 500-mile (800-kilometer)-wide region.
Stansbery said the agency doesn't know exactly when and where those will fall because it depends on the orientation of the satellite in the atmosphere, solar storm activity and other variables.
There probably is no hazardous material left in the falling pieces, but people should not touch any fallen satellite parts just in case, he said.
NASA will be tracking the satellite on a weekly and later daily basis until it falls.
Article by :SETH BORENSTEIN - AP Science Writer | Sep 9, 2011
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AFP News – Sat, Sep 17, 2011
US satellite may crash back to Earth Sept 23: NASA
This undated NASA image shows a conceptual image of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), launched in September 1991, by the space shuttle Discovery.
A 20-year-old satellite that measured the ozone layer is expected to crash back to Earth late next week, but NASA said it still does not know where it will fall.
The US space agency stressed that the risk to public safety from the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is "extremely small," and said that most, but not all, of the gear will burn up on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
"Re-entry is expected Sept. 23, plus or minus a day. The re-entry of UARS is advancing because of a sharp increase in solar activity since the beginning of this week," NASA said in a brief update on its website on Friday.
"Safety is NASA's top priority," it added, noting that throughout history, there have been "no confirmed reports of an injury resulting from re-entering space objects."
The decommissioned satellite could land anywhere between 57 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south latitude, a vast swath of populated territory. Predictions will only get more precise as the landing approaches.
The UARS satellite was sent into orbit in 1991 by the space shuttle Discovery.
The 35 by 15 foot (three by 10 meter) spacecraft weighed 13,000 pounds (5,900 kilograms) and toted 10 scientific instruments for measuring wind, temperature and ozone chemistry. It was officially decommissioned in 2005.
"Although the spacecraft will break into pieces during re-entry, not all of it will burn up in the atmosphere," NASA said.
"It is impossible to pinpoint just where in that zone the debris will land, but NASA estimates the debris footprint will be about 500 miles (800 kilometers) long," the space agency said.
It also urged anyone who comes across what they believe may be space debris not to touch it, but to call authorities for assistance.
Monday, August 22, 2011
The Strangest Alien Planets
By SPACE.com Staff @ 17 May 2011
The Smallest
Credit: NASA
This artist's concept of Kepler-10b shows the smallest known exoplanet, announced in January 2011.
The Former Champ
Credit: ESO/L. Calcada
Gliese 581 e used to hold the title of smallest alien planet. However, it was dethroned in January 2011, with the announcement of Kepler-10b.
The Biggest
Credit: Jeffrey Hall, Lowell Observatory
The largest exoplanet ever discovered is also one of the strangest and theoretically should not even exist, scientists say. Dubbed TrES-4, the planet is about 1.7 times the size of Jupiter and belongs to a small subclass of so-called puffy planets that have extremely low densities. The planet is located about 1,400 light years away from Earth and zips around its parent star in only three and a half days
Closest Alien World to Us
Credit: NASA, ESA, G.F. Benedict (University of Texas, Austin)
Epsilon Eridani b orbits an orange Sun-like star only 10.5 light years away from Earth. It is so close to us telescopes might soon be able to photograph it. It orbits too far away from its star to support liquid water or life as we know it, but scientists predict there are other stars in the system that might be good candidates for alien life.
Volcanic Nightmare
Credit: ESO/L. Calcada
This planet, CoRoT-7b, was the first confirmed rocky world outside our solar system, but it doesn't look like a particularly pleasant place to live. It is tidally locked to its parent star, sees hellish 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius). It may also rain rocks and be the core of a vaporized gas giant.
Multiple Sunsets Like Tatooine
Credit: NASA/JPL's Planetquest/Caltech
Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine in Star Wars had two suns, but that’s paltry compared to a Jupiter-like planet 149 light-years from Earth. This planet has three suns, with the main star similar in mass to our own sun. The triple-star system is known as HD 188753. Like Tatooine, the planet there is likely pretty hot – it orbits very close to the main star, completing one orbit every 3.5 days.
Coldest and Farthest From Us
Credit: ESO
With a surface temperature of -364 degrees Fahrenheit (-220 degrees Celsius), the extrasolar planet known as OGLE-2005-BLG-390L b is likely the coldest alien world. It is about 5.5 times as massive as Earth and thought to be rocky. It orbits a red dwarf star about 28,000 light-years away, making it the most distant exoplanet currently known.
Hottest World
Credit: ESA/NASA/Frederic Pont, Geneva University Observatory
A planet called WASP-12b is the hottest planet ever discovered (about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2,200 degrees Celsius), and orbits its star closer than any other known world. It orbits its star one every Earth day at a distance of about 2 million miles (3.4 million km). WASP-12b is a gaseous planet, about 1.5 times the mass of Jupiter, and almost twice the size. It is 870 light-years from Earth
Super-Earth
Credit: ESO
Astronomers are finding many worlds now in a category of worlds called Super-Earths, which are between 2 and 10 times the mass of our own Earth. Some scientists think such worlds could be more susceptible to forming the conditions for life because their cores are hot and would be conducive to geological upheaval through volcanism and plate tectonics
Oldest Alien Planet
Credit: NASA and H. Richer (U. British Columbia)
The oldest known planet is a primeval world 12.7 billion years old that formed more than 8 billion years before Earth and only 2 billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery suggested planets are very common in the universe and raised the prospect that life began far sooner than most scientists ever imagined.
The Youngest Known Exoplanet
Credit: NASA
The youngest exoplanet yet discovered is less than 1 million years old and orbits Coku Tau 4, a star 420 light-years away. Astronomers inferred the planet’s presence from an enormous hole in the dusty disk that girdles the star. The hole is 10 times the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun and probably caused by the planet clearing a space in the dust as it orbits the star.
The Puffiest
Credit: David A. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
A planet lighter than a ball of cork is one of the puffiest alien planets known to date. Called HAT-P-1, the planet is about half as massive as Jupiter but about 1.76 times wider-or 24 percent larger than predicted by theory. It could float in water, if there was a tub large enough to hold it.
Super Neptune
Credit: David A. Aguilar, CFA
While Neptune has a diameter 3.8 times that of Earth and a mass 17 times Earth's, the new world (named HAT-P-11b) is 4.7 times the size of Earth and has 25 Earth masses. The newfound world orbits very close to its star, revolving once every 4.88 days. As a result, it is baked to a temperature of around 1100 degrees F.
The star itself is about three-fourths the size of our Sun and somewhat cooler.
Tilted World
Credit: NASA. ESA, amd G. Bacon (STScI)
Most planets orbit in a plane that corresponds to their parent star's equator. But XO-3b orbits with a crazy tilt of 37 degrees from its star's equator. The only other known example of such an oddly angled orbit was Pluto, until its demotion
to dwarf planet status. There is, however, a planet known to orbit backwards around its parent star.
Fastest Planet
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Schaller (for STScI)
SWEEPS-10 orbits its parent star from a distance of only 740,000 miles, so close that one year on the planet happens every 10 hours. The exoplanet belongs to a new class of zippy exoplanets called ultra-short-period planets (USPPs), which have orbits of less than a day.
Waterworld
Credit: David A. Aguilar, CFA
The extrasolar planet GJ 1214b is a rocky planet rich in water that sits about 40 light-years away. It orbits a red dwarf star. It is the only known "Super-Earth" exoplanet — worlds that have masses between Earth and Neptune — with a confirmed atmosphere. The planet is about three times the size of Earth and about 6.5 times as massive. Researchers think it is likely a water world with a solid center.
Atmosphere Detected
Credit: ESA, NASA and G. Tinetti
Astronomers have been able to detect the atmospheres around several exoplanets, including HD 189733b – one of the first alien words to have its atmosphere sniffed to determine its composition. Glowing methane, which can be produced naturally or be a biological byproduct, has been detected on the planet.
Endangered World
Credit: CARREAU/ESA/Nature
When astronomers observed WASP-18b, they may have seen it in the cosmic moment before its death. This planet, possibly an ill-fated world, whips around its star in less than one Earth day. Scientists think that this speed coupled with the planet's heft yields strong gravitational tugs that can alter the planets orbit. If the planet orbits faster than its star spins, it should gradually be moving inward towards its sun, and its doom.
Most Habitable
Credit: ESO
One of the several planets within the Gliese 581 star system, called Gliese 581 d, may be one of the most potentially habitable alien worlds known. It is about 8 times the mass of Earth, and located in an orbit just right for liquid water to exist on the surface. Water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star 20.5 light-years from Earth
Densest Planet
Credit: ESO/OAMP
One of the densest exoplanet to date is a world known as COROT-exo-3b. It is about the size of Jupiter, but 20 times that planet’s mass, making it about twice as dense as lead. Scientists have not ruled out that the COROT-exo-3b may be a brown dwarf, or failed star.
The Smallest
Credit: NASA
This artist's concept of Kepler-10b shows the smallest known exoplanet, announced in January 2011.
The Former Champ
Credit: ESO/L. Calcada
Gliese 581 e used to hold the title of smallest alien planet. However, it was dethroned in January 2011, with the announcement of Kepler-10b.
The Biggest
Credit: Jeffrey Hall, Lowell Observatory
The largest exoplanet ever discovered is also one of the strangest and theoretically should not even exist, scientists say. Dubbed TrES-4, the planet is about 1.7 times the size of Jupiter and belongs to a small subclass of so-called puffy planets that have extremely low densities. The planet is located about 1,400 light years away from Earth and zips around its parent star in only three and a half days
Closest Alien World to Us
Credit: NASA, ESA, G.F. Benedict (University of Texas, Austin)
Epsilon Eridani b orbits an orange Sun-like star only 10.5 light years away from Earth. It is so close to us telescopes might soon be able to photograph it. It orbits too far away from its star to support liquid water or life as we know it, but scientists predict there are other stars in the system that might be good candidates for alien life.
Volcanic Nightmare
Credit: ESO/L. Calcada
This planet, CoRoT-7b, was the first confirmed rocky world outside our solar system, but it doesn't look like a particularly pleasant place to live. It is tidally locked to its parent star, sees hellish 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius). It may also rain rocks and be the core of a vaporized gas giant.
Multiple Sunsets Like Tatooine
Credit: NASA/JPL's Planetquest/Caltech
Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine in Star Wars had two suns, but that’s paltry compared to a Jupiter-like planet 149 light-years from Earth. This planet has three suns, with the main star similar in mass to our own sun. The triple-star system is known as HD 188753. Like Tatooine, the planet there is likely pretty hot – it orbits very close to the main star, completing one orbit every 3.5 days.
Coldest and Farthest From Us
Credit: ESO
With a surface temperature of -364 degrees Fahrenheit (-220 degrees Celsius), the extrasolar planet known as OGLE-2005-BLG-390L b is likely the coldest alien world. It is about 5.5 times as massive as Earth and thought to be rocky. It orbits a red dwarf star about 28,000 light-years away, making it the most distant exoplanet currently known.
Hottest World
Credit: ESA/NASA/Frederic Pont, Geneva University Observatory
A planet called WASP-12b is the hottest planet ever discovered (about 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2,200 degrees Celsius), and orbits its star closer than any other known world. It orbits its star one every Earth day at a distance of about 2 million miles (3.4 million km). WASP-12b is a gaseous planet, about 1.5 times the mass of Jupiter, and almost twice the size. It is 870 light-years from Earth
Super-Earth
Credit: ESO
Astronomers are finding many worlds now in a category of worlds called Super-Earths, which are between 2 and 10 times the mass of our own Earth. Some scientists think such worlds could be more susceptible to forming the conditions for life because their cores are hot and would be conducive to geological upheaval through volcanism and plate tectonics
Oldest Alien Planet
Credit: NASA and H. Richer (U. British Columbia)
The oldest known planet is a primeval world 12.7 billion years old that formed more than 8 billion years before Earth and only 2 billion years after the Big Bang. The discovery suggested planets are very common in the universe and raised the prospect that life began far sooner than most scientists ever imagined.
The Youngest Known Exoplanet
Credit: NASA
The youngest exoplanet yet discovered is less than 1 million years old and orbits Coku Tau 4, a star 420 light-years away. Astronomers inferred the planet’s presence from an enormous hole in the dusty disk that girdles the star. The hole is 10 times the size of Earth’s orbit around the Sun and probably caused by the planet clearing a space in the dust as it orbits the star.
The Puffiest
Credit: David A. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
A planet lighter than a ball of cork is one of the puffiest alien planets known to date. Called HAT-P-1, the planet is about half as massive as Jupiter but about 1.76 times wider-or 24 percent larger than predicted by theory. It could float in water, if there was a tub large enough to hold it.
Super Neptune
Credit: David A. Aguilar, CFA
While Neptune has a diameter 3.8 times that of Earth and a mass 17 times Earth's, the new world (named HAT-P-11b) is 4.7 times the size of Earth and has 25 Earth masses. The newfound world orbits very close to its star, revolving once every 4.88 days. As a result, it is baked to a temperature of around 1100 degrees F.
The star itself is about three-fourths the size of our Sun and somewhat cooler.
Tilted World
Credit: NASA. ESA, amd G. Bacon (STScI)
Most planets orbit in a plane that corresponds to their parent star's equator. But XO-3b orbits with a crazy tilt of 37 degrees from its star's equator. The only other known example of such an oddly angled orbit was Pluto, until its demotion
to dwarf planet status. There is, however, a planet known to orbit backwards around its parent star.
Fastest Planet
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Schaller (for STScI)
SWEEPS-10 orbits its parent star from a distance of only 740,000 miles, so close that one year on the planet happens every 10 hours. The exoplanet belongs to a new class of zippy exoplanets called ultra-short-period planets (USPPs), which have orbits of less than a day.
Waterworld
Credit: David A. Aguilar, CFA
The extrasolar planet GJ 1214b is a rocky planet rich in water that sits about 40 light-years away. It orbits a red dwarf star. It is the only known "Super-Earth" exoplanet — worlds that have masses between Earth and Neptune — with a confirmed atmosphere. The planet is about three times the size of Earth and about 6.5 times as massive. Researchers think it is likely a water world with a solid center.
Atmosphere Detected
Credit: ESA, NASA and G. Tinetti
Astronomers have been able to detect the atmospheres around several exoplanets, including HD 189733b – one of the first alien words to have its atmosphere sniffed to determine its composition. Glowing methane, which can be produced naturally or be a biological byproduct, has been detected on the planet.
Endangered World
Credit: CARREAU/ESA/Nature
When astronomers observed WASP-18b, they may have seen it in the cosmic moment before its death. This planet, possibly an ill-fated world, whips around its star in less than one Earth day. Scientists think that this speed coupled with the planet's heft yields strong gravitational tugs that can alter the planets orbit. If the planet orbits faster than its star spins, it should gradually be moving inward towards its sun, and its doom.
Most Habitable
Credit: ESO
One of the several planets within the Gliese 581 star system, called Gliese 581 d, may be one of the most potentially habitable alien worlds known. It is about 8 times the mass of Earth, and located in an orbit just right for liquid water to exist on the surface. Water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star 20.5 light-years from Earth
Densest Planet
Credit: ESO/OAMP
One of the densest exoplanet to date is a world known as COROT-exo-3b. It is about the size of Jupiter, but 20 times that planet’s mass, making it about twice as dense as lead. Scientists have not ruled out that the COROT-exo-3b may be a brown dwarf, or failed star.
10 Wildest Tries to Contact Aliens
By InnovationNewsDaily Staff
@ 05 May 2011
Since we have developed the technology, we’ve been sending messages into space ― from scientists, rock stars, students, politicians ― in the hopes that someone or something will hear them and respond. That practice of broadcasting is known as Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). Here are some of the messages that we have beamed into the cosmos in an attempt to get E.T.'s attention.
The Arecibo message
Credit: Cornell University
Beamed out 37 years ago, the Arecibo message is still the most powerful broadcast ever deliberately beamed into space. It was sent from Cornell University’s Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
The transmission was aimed at the globular star cluster M13. The cluster is roughly 21,000 light-years from us, near the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, and contains approximately a third of a million stars.
Researchers worked together to create a message that contained basic information about Earth and the life it contained. It including a graphic of the Arecibo telescope, our solar system, human DNA, a stick figure of a human, and some of the biochemicals of earthly life.
The message took only three minutes to transmit, and so far, we haven’t heard back.
Pioneer 10 and 11
Credit: NASA
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to reach Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond the solar system toward other stars. Soon afterward, Pioneer 11 followed its exact flight pattern, and presumably they’re still going, though we have lost contact.
Knowing that these two crafts would make it so far into space and would be traveling for years to come, NASA attached plaques to both Pioneer 10 and 11 with information about Earth.
The 6- by 9-inch gold anodized plaques were bolted to the spacecrafts’ frames; they depict a man – whose right hand is raised as a sign of good will – and woman. In addition, they show the layout of our solar system, as well as our sun’s position relative to a number of pulsars are shown, so that our location can be triangulated from fixed points in space. The hope is that the beings who find it can figure out whence the probe came.
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to reach Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond the solar system toward other stars. Soon afterward, Pioneer 11 followed its exact flight pattern, and presumably they’re still going, though we have lost contact.
Knowing that these two crafts would make it so far into space and would be traveling for years to come, NASA attached plaques to both Pioneer 10 and 11 with information about Earth.
The 6- by 9-inch gold anodized plaques were bolted to the spacecrafts’ frames; they depict a man – whose right hand is raised as a sign of good will – and woman. In addition, they show the layout of our solar system, as well as our sun’s position relative to a number of pulsars are shown, so that our location can be triangulated from fixed points in space. The hope is that the beings who find it can figure out whence the probe came.
Voyagers’ golden record
Credit: NASA
Four years after Pioneer 11 was launched, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were sent out to explore Jupiter and Saturn, and NASA decided to take their message to the next level.
Voyager 1 and 2 contain a “time capsule” that, according to NASA, was “intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.” The Voyager message is carried on a 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.
After the section that contains the sounds of Earth, the record’s creators included a 90-minute section of music that includes both Eastern and Western classics as well as a selection of ethnic music from all over the planet.
The Voyager spacecrafts left our solar system in 1990, and it will be 40,000 years before they make it close to any other planetary system, so we still have a while to wait before we get a return message.
“A Message from Earth”
Credit: Bebo
While Facebook seems to be the social network that has achieved everything, the honor of being the first one to try to network with extraterrestrial intelligence goes to Bebo, which sent out “A Message from Earth” in 2008.
Some 501 photos, drawings and text messages from the site’s 12 million users were transmitted by the National Space Agency of Ukraine's RT-70 radar telescope, which is normally used to track asteroids. The messages were sent to the planet Gliese 581C, which is 20 light-years from Earth, in the hope they would reach intelligent alien life.
Bebo users submitted their messages as part of a competition, and 501 were translated into a binary format, so they could be sent the 120 trillion miles to the Gliese 581C. According to the competition, the messages could cover any range of topics. They should be reaching their destination in 2028.
Cosmic Calls 1 and 2
Credit: S. Korotky
Cosmic Call 1 and Cosmic Call 2, pictograms broadcast from Moscow toward various star systems, featured the “Interstellar Rosetta Stone.”
The “rosetta stone,”developed by Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumans, was based on mathematical and scientific concepts believed to be universal. The hope was that any alien life form that intercepted the calls would be able to use it to decipher the messages.
The calls were sent out by Alexander Zaitsev, of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow to sunlike stars within 70 light-years. The first Cosmic Call was beamed toward four separate star systems, 16 Cyg A, Gliese 777, HD 178428 and 15 Sge. The second, reached out to five stars, including 55 Cancri, which is home to a complex planetary system.
The second message also included 50 personal messages from individuals including David Bowie and elementary students from the Ukraine.
The Teen-Age Message
Credit: Farnea via Flickr
In addition to the Cosmic Calls, Zaitsev had his hand in the Teen-Age Message, which was a transmission put together by students from all across Russia.
The TAM transmission was sent out in six sessions in August and September 2001 from the Evpatoria Deep Space Center. It was transmitted to six nearby sunlike stars, some of them with at least one planet.
Like the Arecibo message, TAM had digital information, but Zaitsev and the students decide to include that information in analog format as well, to “compensate for the uncertainty of which is more easily understood by extraterrestrials.”
TAM included personal greetings, messages about Earth, and music that was made with a theremin – the electronic instrument used to make the eerie sounds from 1950s science fiction B-movies.
Doritos commercial
Credit: Doritos
In a 2008 publicity campaign, radars in the Arctic Circle broadcast six hours of a repeating Doritos commercial. Surprisingly, it has not made us targets of an alien attack.
The ad was directed toward a solar system in the Ursa Major constellation, which is only 42 light-years away from Earth. This system has a “habitable zone,” which scientists believe could be host to an Earth-like planet and extraterrestrial life.
The EISCAT European space station on the Norwegian island of Svalbard sent the message using its array of radars. It was sent as an MPEG file coded into 1s and 0s. Researchers agreed that the message would look just like a random series, but they hoped that through its repetition, extraterrestrials would identify the message as intelligent.
RuBisCo message
Credit: U.S. Department of Energy
On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the original Arecibo message, MIT biology fellow and artist Joe Davis sent the genetic code for the plant enzyme RuBisCo into space.
RuBisCo, which is essential for photosynthesis, is the most abundant protein on Earth, which is why Davis selected it to represent life on Earth.
According to Peter Weigele of New England Biolabs, “The choice of this molecule for broadcast communicates the central importance of our sun in sustaining life as well as an implicit understanding of the role of [carbon dioxide] in our biogeochemical systems. This is a message that is both timely and timeless – for the universe and here on Earth!”
This was also the first transmission that required the aid of an iPhone. When Davis arrived at Arecibo, the encoder normally used to modulate the beam was out of commission, so he used his iPhone as an improvised source to get the new coded message modulated into the 1,000-foot-wide dish’s 2-million-watt radio beam.
“Hello from Australia”
Credit: HelloFromEearth/Cosmos Magazine
In 2009, Australia’s Cosmos magazine took a cue from Bebo and reached out to its readers to create a goodwill message to transmit through space.
The magazine’s website collected text-message-length sentiments from people all over the world. The first came from Kim Carr, Australia’s minister for innovation, industry, science and research. It said: “Hello from Australia on the planet we call Earth. These messages express our people’s dreams for the future. We want to share those dreams with you.”
It was sent from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex to the planet Gliese 581d ― a planet in the same system as Gliese 581c, which was the recipient of “A Message from Earth.” Australia’s message should be arriving just a year later, in 2010.(original text puts 2029?)
Kepler DVD
Credit: NASA
In keeping with its earlier messaging practices, NASA included a DVD with the Kepler spacecraft two years ago.
The Kepler was specifically designed to search our region of the Milky Way galaxy for other habitable Earth-size and smaller planets. If by chance it did find life, it had a message.
Unlike the messages from Pioneers 1 and 2 and the Voyager golden record, these messages came from the public. For six-month period, tens of thousands of people submitted messages explaining why the Kepler mission was important. These were then recorded on the DVD, which was attached to the spacecraft.
The spacecraft is still going, so there is still a chance that the message may be discovered.
@ 05 May 2011
Since we have developed the technology, we’ve been sending messages into space ― from scientists, rock stars, students, politicians ― in the hopes that someone or something will hear them and respond. That practice of broadcasting is known as Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI). Here are some of the messages that we have beamed into the cosmos in an attempt to get E.T.'s attention.
The Arecibo message
Credit: Cornell University
Beamed out 37 years ago, the Arecibo message is still the most powerful broadcast ever deliberately beamed into space. It was sent from Cornell University’s Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
The transmission was aimed at the globular star cluster M13. The cluster is roughly 21,000 light-years from us, near the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, and contains approximately a third of a million stars.
Researchers worked together to create a message that contained basic information about Earth and the life it contained. It including a graphic of the Arecibo telescope, our solar system, human DNA, a stick figure of a human, and some of the biochemicals of earthly life.
The message took only three minutes to transmit, and so far, we haven’t heard back.
Pioneer 10 and 11
Credit: NASA
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to reach Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond the solar system toward other stars. Soon afterward, Pioneer 11 followed its exact flight pattern, and presumably they’re still going, though we have lost contact.
Knowing that these two crafts would make it so far into space and would be traveling for years to come, NASA attached plaques to both Pioneer 10 and 11 with information about Earth.
The 6- by 9-inch gold anodized plaques were bolted to the spacecrafts’ frames; they depict a man – whose right hand is raised as a sign of good will – and woman. In addition, they show the layout of our solar system, as well as our sun’s position relative to a number of pulsars are shown, so that our location can be triangulated from fixed points in space. The hope is that the beings who find it can figure out whence the probe came.
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to reach Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond the solar system toward other stars. Soon afterward, Pioneer 11 followed its exact flight pattern, and presumably they’re still going, though we have lost contact.
Knowing that these two crafts would make it so far into space and would be traveling for years to come, NASA attached plaques to both Pioneer 10 and 11 with information about Earth.
The 6- by 9-inch gold anodized plaques were bolted to the spacecrafts’ frames; they depict a man – whose right hand is raised as a sign of good will – and woman. In addition, they show the layout of our solar system, as well as our sun’s position relative to a number of pulsars are shown, so that our location can be triangulated from fixed points in space. The hope is that the beings who find it can figure out whence the probe came.
Voyagers’ golden record
Credit: NASA
Four years after Pioneer 11 was launched, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were sent out to explore Jupiter and Saturn, and NASA decided to take their message to the next level.
Voyager 1 and 2 contain a “time capsule” that, according to NASA, was “intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.” The Voyager message is carried on a 12-inch gold-plated copper phonograph disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.
After the section that contains the sounds of Earth, the record’s creators included a 90-minute section of music that includes both Eastern and Western classics as well as a selection of ethnic music from all over the planet.
The Voyager spacecrafts left our solar system in 1990, and it will be 40,000 years before they make it close to any other planetary system, so we still have a while to wait before we get a return message.
“A Message from Earth”
Credit: Bebo
While Facebook seems to be the social network that has achieved everything, the honor of being the first one to try to network with extraterrestrial intelligence goes to Bebo, which sent out “A Message from Earth” in 2008.
Some 501 photos, drawings and text messages from the site’s 12 million users were transmitted by the National Space Agency of Ukraine's RT-70 radar telescope, which is normally used to track asteroids. The messages were sent to the planet Gliese 581C, which is 20 light-years from Earth, in the hope they would reach intelligent alien life.
Bebo users submitted their messages as part of a competition, and 501 were translated into a binary format, so they could be sent the 120 trillion miles to the Gliese 581C. According to the competition, the messages could cover any range of topics. They should be reaching their destination in 2028.
Cosmic Calls 1 and 2
Credit: S. Korotky
Cosmic Call 1 and Cosmic Call 2, pictograms broadcast from Moscow toward various star systems, featured the “Interstellar Rosetta Stone.”
The “rosetta stone,”developed by Yvan Dutil and Stephane Dumans, was based on mathematical and scientific concepts believed to be universal. The hope was that any alien life form that intercepted the calls would be able to use it to decipher the messages.
The calls were sent out by Alexander Zaitsev, of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow to sunlike stars within 70 light-years. The first Cosmic Call was beamed toward four separate star systems, 16 Cyg A, Gliese 777, HD 178428 and 15 Sge. The second, reached out to five stars, including 55 Cancri, which is home to a complex planetary system.
The second message also included 50 personal messages from individuals including David Bowie and elementary students from the Ukraine.
The Teen-Age Message
Credit: Farnea via Flickr
In addition to the Cosmic Calls, Zaitsev had his hand in the Teen-Age Message, which was a transmission put together by students from all across Russia.
The TAM transmission was sent out in six sessions in August and September 2001 from the Evpatoria Deep Space Center. It was transmitted to six nearby sunlike stars, some of them with at least one planet.
Like the Arecibo message, TAM had digital information, but Zaitsev and the students decide to include that information in analog format as well, to “compensate for the uncertainty of which is more easily understood by extraterrestrials.”
TAM included personal greetings, messages about Earth, and music that was made with a theremin – the electronic instrument used to make the eerie sounds from 1950s science fiction B-movies.
Doritos commercial
Credit: Doritos
In a 2008 publicity campaign, radars in the Arctic Circle broadcast six hours of a repeating Doritos commercial. Surprisingly, it has not made us targets of an alien attack.
The ad was directed toward a solar system in the Ursa Major constellation, which is only 42 light-years away from Earth. This system has a “habitable zone,” which scientists believe could be host to an Earth-like planet and extraterrestrial life.
The EISCAT European space station on the Norwegian island of Svalbard sent the message using its array of radars. It was sent as an MPEG file coded into 1s and 0s. Researchers agreed that the message would look just like a random series, but they hoped that through its repetition, extraterrestrials would identify the message as intelligent.
RuBisCo message
Credit: U.S. Department of Energy
On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the original Arecibo message, MIT biology fellow and artist Joe Davis sent the genetic code for the plant enzyme RuBisCo into space.
RuBisCo, which is essential for photosynthesis, is the most abundant protein on Earth, which is why Davis selected it to represent life on Earth.
According to Peter Weigele of New England Biolabs, “The choice of this molecule for broadcast communicates the central importance of our sun in sustaining life as well as an implicit understanding of the role of [carbon dioxide] in our biogeochemical systems. This is a message that is both timely and timeless – for the universe and here on Earth!”
This was also the first transmission that required the aid of an iPhone. When Davis arrived at Arecibo, the encoder normally used to modulate the beam was out of commission, so he used his iPhone as an improvised source to get the new coded message modulated into the 1,000-foot-wide dish’s 2-million-watt radio beam.
“Hello from Australia”
Credit: HelloFromEearth/Cosmos Magazine
In 2009, Australia’s Cosmos magazine took a cue from Bebo and reached out to its readers to create a goodwill message to transmit through space.
The magazine’s website collected text-message-length sentiments from people all over the world. The first came from Kim Carr, Australia’s minister for innovation, industry, science and research. It said: “Hello from Australia on the planet we call Earth. These messages express our people’s dreams for the future. We want to share those dreams with you.”
It was sent from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex to the planet Gliese 581d ― a planet in the same system as Gliese 581c, which was the recipient of “A Message from Earth.” Australia’s message should be arriving just a year later, in 2010.(original text puts 2029?)
Kepler DVD
Credit: NASA
In keeping with its earlier messaging practices, NASA included a DVD with the Kepler spacecraft two years ago.
The Kepler was specifically designed to search our region of the Milky Way galaxy for other habitable Earth-size and smaller planets. If by chance it did find life, it had a message.
Unlike the messages from Pioneers 1 and 2 and the Voyager golden record, these messages came from the public. For six-month period, tens of thousands of people submitted messages explaining why the Kepler mission was important. These were then recorded on the DVD, which was attached to the spacecraft.
The spacecraft is still going, so there is still a chance that the message may be discovered.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Bejing Olympic Card Stack
World Record cardstacker Bryan Berg has recreated the Bejing Olympic Village using 140,000 playing cards.
Uploaded by diagonaluk on Aug 14, 2008
Uploaded by diagonaluk on Aug 14, 2008
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