New Hubble Images of Galaxy collisions

Many astronomical textbooks say that galaxies are stable objects, however, they do have a side of them that is dynamic.

There are times when galaxies collide and merge together, forming beautiful and astonishing views of new star births, spectacular shapes and much more. In honor of the Hubble's 18th launch anniversary, 59 images of colliding galaxies have been released to the public.
Long ago, when the expanding Universe was much smaller than it is today, mergers and collisions were far more common. However, now it is now harder to observe, because there are far less collisions.

Galaxies collide at an extremely slow rate, according to human standards. But when they do collide, it is a great sight to see.
Some of the new images can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/hst_img_20080424.html

Chances of intelligent Extraterrestrial life

Humans have always wondered if extraterrestrial life was possible, and also the chances of intelligent extra terrestrial life. We already know that mere extraterrestrial life is quite likely due to the simple fact there is are huge amounts of planets out there that may have the potential for life, but not intelligent life.

The difference here is that life such as bacteria or single celled organisms who can only just survive cannot be classified as intelligent life. Humans are intelligent life because we can do much more than just survive. There is the principle of having fun and evolving to stages where we create technology and are able to communicate with effectiveness (to communicate beyond simple signals).

Actually, the "communicating with effectiveness" part may be a bit vague. Many people believe that other animals can communicate as well. However, what distinguishes our languages from their languages, is that they simply use signals to show primitive desires or something like telling others there is food around. We humans actually have words for such things as "technology", and can communicate about things other than just the basics needed for survival. Our communication has evolved to a point where the dominant linguistic, left brain side has taken control and we have mostly right handers in the world now (Left brain also controls the right hand and most parts of the body on the right).

To have reached this stage of intelligence, there have been many factors involved, that can only be attained after the previous has been attained. We only have about 1 billion years left to live - if nothing catastrophic happens - on Earth, compared to the 4 billion years since life on Earth started, not even including the the time it took before the 4 billions years to start unintelligent life. Not only must the conditions for life must exist on a planet, there must also be conditions to accommodate the growth of intelligent life. For intelligent life to begin, there must be evolution beyond simply survival. This is why the chances of intelligent life to exist out there to be lower than 0.01%.

This is based on proof from a new mathematical model developed by Prof Andrew Watson from the University of East Anglia.

Though the chances are small, it is still possible. Hopefully, before Earth becomes inhabitable due to the increasing heat coming from the Sun, humans will be able to colonize and move to other suitable planets.

New Site Changes

Just a note to all SpaceTopia Readers out there:

Over the past few weeks, there have been a lot of significant changes to the blog here at SpaceTopia. You may have noticed various changes such as the site layout, and other such things. As you know, SpaceTopia is still relatively new but we will continue to provide valuable information and breaking news in Space, Astronomy, Space Exploration, new discoveries and much more.

As SpaceTopia improves, we will strive to provide the best information available. However, we also appreciate any feedback that any of you have regarding SpaceTopia or any of our news articles.

You are free to give feedback by commenting in our articles, or emailing webmaster@spacetopia.tk. Valuable feedback is appreciated and we will do our very best to accommodate feedback. SpaceTopia cannot be great without your participation and feedback so please, if there's anything about SpaceTopia that you currently feel is lacking in anything or simply ineffective, feel free to contact us.
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Sun quakes from solar flares

This new discovery refers to the "solar flare" part of the quaking process.
Astronomers have already known that sound waves ripple through the Sun's plasma towards the interior and are able produce a five minute pattern which is called a starquake or five-minute oscillations.

Before this discovery, scientists previously thought that the oscillations of the sound waves were caused by the gas churning near the interior of the Sun. However, this recent discovery has shown them that, though the gas is a part of it, occasional solar flares cause more powerful oscillations.

The theory is similar to the way one might hear constant ringing in their ears after occasionally listening to REALLY loud music The key thing is that it is sudden and the power difference is large.
Astronomers have found that when there are increases in solar flares, there are also increases in the power of the quaking.

Large flares will shake up the sun and make it vibrate.
This process can also be observed on Earth, as, after large Earthquakes, there is a constant ringing of seismic waves for a few weeks.

Exactly how the solar flares are causing the quakes is still unclear. We only know that solar flares do correlate, but we still don't know why it happens. But this will definitely help us figure it out, as we will be able to observe the solar flares and the star quakes now.

More information about this discovery can probably be found in the May 1st issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, which comes from data collected with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint venture between NASA and ESA.

Mercury will shine - Don't miss it

Soon, the planet Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, will be easily visible in our skies. How and when? We'll tell you that right now.
Mercury has always been a pretty hard to see planet due to its close vicinity to the Sun. But it looks quite beautiful when seen clearly. In the upcoming days, Mercury will be clearly visible to the naked eye, right on Earth.

In a few days' time, Mercury should be visible in the low west to northwest at dusk. On April 23, Wednesday night, 30 minutes after the sun sets, you will be able to see Mercury as the brightest object in the sky, at a magnitude of –1.6.
As long as there's no big gas cloud or some crazy fog in your area or anything blocking your view, Mercury will not be hard to see.

In the sky, Mercury will not be hard to recognize but for those of you who have never seen it before, it has a yellow to orange kind of light. The brightest time will be on April 23, but it'll also be pretty low in the sky. If you miss it the first time, don't worry. You have until May 14th to see it, but after that, it'll be fading really fast.
As time passes by, Mercury's light will become lower, but it will also climb higher in height in our sky.

If you've never seen Mercury before, you should really look at it this time. It's quite a nice view and doesn't happen often.

Underground Mars explored using radar sounder

There's been plenty of news before about a certain planet's surface or images of it. But now, we have explored the underground of Mars using a radar sounder.

The European Space Agency (ESA)'s new Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) has looked a record 3.7 km beneath Mars' surface. Using a radar sounder from another planet has never been done before, so there could have been problems. The signal could have been distorted too much to be useful enough. However, no big problems occurred, and the experiment was a success.

Now, because of the radar sounder, scientists and astronomers know exactly how much water is on Mars.
With this success scientists and astronomers are hoping to be able to use this technology on other places, such as Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Apparently, radar sounders are very good for scanning icy places.

There is much data to be gained from using these types of radars. Hopefully, they will help us greatly in the future.

Who's Right? NASA or the 13 year old boy?

Looks like NASA did get it right! The story of an enterprising 13-year-old German boy, and his great feat in recalculating the likelihood of an asteroid hitting Earth which the Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the big American space agency acknowledged as being correct spread like a disease through the internet. It may seem incredible and unbelievable - and that's because it is.

Officials from both NASA and the European Space Agency did a re-examination and found that the kid was in fact, not correct, and the ESA swear blind they never said any different. One ESA spokesperson says "A small boy did do these calculations, but he made a mistake... NASA's figures are correct."

It seems that the initial article in the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten, which says that NASA and the ESA endorsed Nico Marquardt's calculations, was incorrect. The story spread like wildfire, and before it could be corrected, it had already made its way into countless articles. (Including one of our own)

Marquardt apparently calculated that the odds of the well-known Apophis asteroid hitting Earth were not one in 45,000 as assessed by NASA, but rather one in 450. It seems that Marquardt's calculations included the possibility of collision with a satellite in some way not thought to have been covered by NASA, which bumped up the odds of a subsequent Earth strike.

Contrary to earlier press releases, NASA denies having been proven wrong by the boy, claims that they were not contacted, and have had no correspondence to the boy.

Apophis will pass close by Earth in 2029 and 2036, so close that it will come nearer than satellites in geostationary orbit. However, according to NASA, it is not a big threat:

"[The asteroid will pass] within the distance of Earth's geosynchronous satellites. However, because Apophis will pass interior to the positions of these satellites at closest approach, in a plane inclined at 40 degrees to the Earth's equator and passing outside the equatorial geosynchronous zone when crossing the equatorial plane, it does not threaten the satellites in that heavily populated region."

So, all of you people out there who thought the boy proved NASA wrong about the asteroid collision chances, here's big news! You may have seen our earlier post "NASA proved wrong by a 13 year old school boy", and yes this was basically the article that spread across the Internet. Now we know that NASA was right, and the German Kid was wrong.

The chances of the asteroid hitting Earth is still quite low then. In all, it appears that the Apophis asteroid won't devastate Earth after all.

Stunning Image of New Stellar Birth

Recently, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has taken an image of new stars forming about 140,000 light years from the center of the galaxy known as M83.
This galaxy is also known as the southern pinwheel galaxy.

"It is absolutely stunning that we find such an enormous number of young stars up to 140,000 light-years away from the center of M83," said Frank Bigiel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, lead investigator of the new Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations.
Even with our current technology, it is still hard to observe the beginning of star formation. This new discovery really helps astronomers and scientists to understand what exactly happens when stars form.
Astronomers speculate that the young stars seen far out in M83 could have formed under conditions resembling those of the early universe, a time when space was not yet enriched with dust and heavier elements.
This galaxy, M83, is located 15 million light years away in the constellation of Hydra.
You can find more information about this and the new images here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex-20080416.html

Dark Side of the moon to see the beginning of the Universe

Why should we build a giant telescope on the back of the moon? Well, it seems that the dark side of the moon is the only place that human interference has left untouched that also happens to be near us.

The "dark ages" of astronomy refer to a time before stars existed, when clouds of ionized gas cooled as the Universe expanded. During that time, there wa a faint noise that came from hydrogen atoms doing spin-flips, which gives off radio-wavelength signals that astronomers can pick up on.
Kurt Weiler, senior astronomer at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory says, ""What happens is that because of the Big Bang there's a background glow. The spin-flip will absorb the glow of the older material and will give us a signature that we can see."

However, this signals are very faint, and can easily be masked by Earth transmissions in the same wavelength. There are now plans to build the Dark Ages Lunar Interferometer, which would be made up of over 100 thousand antennas. The only problem is getting this telescope to the moon, and making it survive the conditions on the Moon.

As plans continue, perhaps this telescope will be feasible. Scientists are now testing a film called polyimide to see if it might work. Finding out about the origins of the Universe will realize a dream that many astronomers had before anyone ever explored the moon. Maybe, just maybe, we'll finally truly know how exactly the the universe start.

NASA proved wrong by a 13 year old school boy

UPDATE: Please go to "Who's Right? NASA or the 13 year old boy?" to see the final outcome.

German schoolboy, Nico Marquardt, corrected NASA's estimates of the chance that an asteroid (Apophis) may collide with Earth.
He used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that the chance of Apophis the Asteroid will collide with Earth is 1 in 450.
Previously, NASA had estimated the change to be at about 1 in 45,000, but confirmed later that the kid was right.

How did the kid manage better than NASA? He took in the chances of the Asteroid possibly colliding with one of Earth's 40,000 orbiting satellites. If the asteroid were to strike a satellite in 2029, then its trajectory path would be altered, can will strike Earth in the next orbit in 2036.
Both NASA and Marquardt claim that the asteroid, if collided with Earth, would become a ball of iron and iridium 320 wide, weighing 200 billion tons as it hits Earth in the Atlantic Ocean. This would creating enormous tsunami waves, destroying coastlines, creating a huge dust cloud, and cause much destruction.

Apparently, this discovery was made for a science competition named "Apophis - The Killer Asteroid."

Let's just hope that Asteroid doesn't actually hit Earth.

Broadcasting satellite going down

A company who owns a broadcasting satellite now declares it to be a complete loss. The satellite was released by the Russian Proton rocket but failed to reach the planned orbital position.

"The loss of any satellite is a disappointment, and the failure of AMC 14 means there will be no revenues to come from this program," said Mark Rigolle, chief financial officer for SES, the satellite's Luxembourg-based owner.
The AMC 14 was built to broadcast television programming to viewers across the U.S. but unfortunately will meet an early end, probably fiery doom as it plunges into Earth's atmosphere. Rigolle says that the insurance policy will be redeemed for $150 million and the failure will have no impact on the company's financial statements.

The company officials showed optimism for recovering the satellite but later analysis proved it was impractical.

"SES and Lockheed Martin [The Manufacturer of the satellite] have carefully examined all the available options for repositioning this satellite into its intended geostationary orbit," Edward Horowitz, president and CEO of SES AMERICOM. "Unfortunately, none of those options would allow effective use of the spacecraft. The various repositioning scenarios presented carry unacceptable risks, and would result in a severely shortened life of the satellite. Therefore, we have no choice but to claim a total loss of the satellite with our insurers."

Last week, International Launch Services announced that the Russian Board investigating the problem was close to determining the failure's cause.
It appears that it would have been possible to recover the satellite, but the company decided to back down because the process of using the lunar flyby wayward GEO birds back to GEO Earth orbit involved violating a patent. Apparently, Boeing owns a patent for using the Moon's gravity in the lunar flyby process. It seems that SES has determined that the cost of the lawsuits would not be worth it, though they would likely win.

What's up with Moondust?

Moon dust was a big annoyance for the first moon explorers. It stuck to everything and it was mostly due to its electrostatic charge.
A group of NASA and University of Alabama researchers, Mian Abbas, James Spann, Richard Hoover and Dragana Tankosic have been experimenting with moon dust in a variety of ways.

The Moon, unlike Earth, has no magnetic field protecting it from solar winds. Thus, moon dust is charged up by free electrons of the solar winds.
Abbas et al. experimented with the effects of ultraviolet light on moon dust in previous studies to find out how moon dust will be like in the daylight hours on the moon. Now they are investigating what happens in the dark hours.
At the Dusty Plasma Lab, the scientists simulate solar wind-like conditions to find out more. Abbas experimented with the moon dust by blasting electrons at dust grains. There were surprising results his studies.

"We're finding that individual dust grains do not act the same as larger amounts of moon dust put together. Existing theories based on calculations of the charge of a large amount of moondust don't apply to the moondust at the single particle level," says Abbas.
In a certain experiment, a positively charged grain was pelted with electrons and the grain wounded up more positively charged (Electrons are negative). It appeared that electrons hitting the grain caused more electrons to be dislodged.

However, not all moon dust behaves this way. It all depends on a number of things, such as size, charge, and the number of electrons coming at it. Spann adds that single grains of moon dust will also behave differently on the moon.
By understanding how moon dust behaves, we are getting closer to lunar settlement and colonization. After all, the moon is filled with moon dust.

Prior to the Big Bang: New Theory

Many have wondered what happened before the Big Bang. Now, it's not just a simple religious answer. A new theory has sprung up, called the Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). This theory suggests the possibility of our universe having formed following the collapse of another Universe;a "quantum bounce".

Alejandro Corichi from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Parampreet Singh from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario have developed a simplified LQG model that shows what could have existed before the big bang.
Earlier research has been done but there are some major differences.
Before now, a simplified LQG was used where it was thought that nothing was preserved after the quantum bounce, therefore we could find out nothing about the earlier universe from studying our own.

However, Singh and Corichi modified the simplified form of LQG by adding a key equation called the quantum constraint, which showed that some things like the laws of physics would be retained.
Thus, they believe that if looked at from far away, it would look almost exactly like our own universe. However, just like identical twins could have slight DNA discrepancies or different fingerprints, the universes would also have slight differences.

There are still many questions, such as whether or not the previous galaxies have left imprints on the way the new galaxies have formed. Perhaps they formed in a different way in the previous universe.
Corichi and Singh's model could possibly tell us what the next universe will look like. It may even follow, that this model will predict a collapse of our own universe.

Sound Waves Destroying Rockets

For many years, rocket scientists have attempted to find out what causes the strange phenomenon where rocket engines are being destroyed by mysterious and oscillating waves.
Scientists have thought that these powerful waves were the causes of rocket failure in several U.S. and Russian Rockets.

Now, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology show that this destructive phenomenon is manifested in the form of rotating waves of sound. As the waves rotate faster and faster, its power also increases. The researchers were able to show this because they have developed a liquid rocket engine simulator that helped them to further understand what these waves do.

Ben Zinn, the David S. Lewis Jr. Chair and Regents’ Professor in the Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech says that these phenomenons are very troublesome: “These spinning acoustic oscillations destroy engines without anyone fully understanding how these waves are formed. Visualizing this phenomenon brings us a step closer to understanding it.”

Previously, when such cases of the phenomenon occurred, scientists were able to see the beginning stages but were unable to see the rest due to being forced to shut down the engine in case of serious damage to the engine.
Dr. Oleksandr Bibik, a visiting physicist and research scientist from Ukraine helped the Georgia team and they developed new techniques of viewing the waves with a very high speed camera in combination with a series of fiber optic probes. Bibik used filters to only allow certain light radiation to get to the camera's lens from a low-pressure combustion zone. The fiber optic probes then further collect data on the reaction process oscillations.
They discovered that the waves gained power as it spun around the engine's periphery at a rate of 5,000 revolutions per minute.

Now, scientists hope to use these simulations to help understand more what these waves are. They hope to be able to use these simulations to prevent real situations of engine destruction and to save billions of dollars for technologies that are affected by these mysterious waves.

Amazing Record-Breaking Explosion Seen by Hubble

A star seen by the Hubble about 7.5 billion light years away (about halfway back to the Big Bang), was, for almost a minute, as bright as 10 million galaxies.
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken the picture of the now fading visible light part of an extremely powerful gamma ray burst that holds the record for being the brightest object ever seen from Earth with just the naked eye.
This star erupted in a tremendous flash of gamma rays and other electromagnetic radiation at 2:12 a.m. EDT on March 19, and was detected by NASA's gamma ray burst watchdog satellite called Swift.

This explosion has been named GRB 080319B and was in the constellation Bootes. Astronomers had hoped to see the galaxy where this star had originated from, but it appears that the light from the explosion is still drowning out the light of the galaxy.
From patterns seen before, astronomers thought that bright bursts usually fade faster. However, this explosion was different in that it took a long time to fade. Thus, astronomers now wonder what was able to power this tremendous explosion.
These massive explosions are thought to be caused by incredibly large stars with about 50 times the weight of our own Sun. The theory behind the incredible light emanating from them is that these "hypernovae" emit a sort of concentrated beam aimed, in this case, directly at Earth.

If you want to see some images or more information, go here: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/17

Spitzer captures new images of Omega Centauri

NASA's Spitzer Space telescope has captured new images of a globular cluster known as Omega Centauri. A globular cluster, is a cluster of stars that are some of the oldest objects in the universe. Many of their stars are more than 12 billion years old.
Unlike other clusters, Omega Centauri seemed to have less of the dusty stars others had and varying ages of stars. Astronomers say that Omega Centauri's unusual make-up points to an alternative origin than other globular clusters. They believe that this one may be from a dwarf galaxy that was partially absorbed by our own Milky Way.
The new image that Spitzer took, with its infrared view and combined with visible light data, can be seen here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/20080410.html.

Coldest Brown dwarf star

A new brown dwarf star has been discovered that is the coldest yet. Brown dwarf stars are usually less than 70 time Jupiter's mass. Normal stars spend most of their time burning hydrogen and maintaining a standard internal temperature. However, brown dwarfs usually spend their time getting colder. Brown dwarf stars were first discovered in 1995 and many more have been discovered since then.
This brown dwarf star, CFBDS J005910.83-011401.3, is about 40 light years away from our solar system. It was discovered by an international team that used the Canadian France Hawaii telescope, the Gemini North telescope (both of which reside in Hawaii), and European Southern Observatory telescope in Chile.l
What are brown dwarf stars? Well, they are similar to very large planets but they have their differences. One for example, is that while water is condensed into ice on most giant planets, it is always gaseous on brown dwarf stars. Ammonia has never been found in their atmospheres either, while it makes up a large amount of Jupiter's atmosphere. Similarities include clouds of dust and aerosol, along with large amounts of methane in the atmospheres.

However, this newly discovered brown dwarf has different properties than either of the existing classes of brown dwarf stars: L and T. L dwarfs have temperatures from 1,200 - 2000 Celsius while T dwarfs have less than 1,200 Celsius.
This new dwarf has even lower temperatures and even has ammonia. In this manner, it is much more like a humongous planet than any other discovery. Researchers now propose that they call this new class Y dwarfs.
Scientists hope to use these discoveries to learn more about planetary formation and extrasolar planets, as planets are usually bound to a star and are harder to observe than brown dwarf stars that are not attached.

Space Games

It has come to my attention that some of you would like to see a list of great space games. Well, right now, here is a short of of some of the best MMO space games out there, in no particular order:

EVE Online
Space Odyssey
Solar voyager
Space Cowboy
Vendetta
Chosen Space
Jumpgate
SolarFleet

Currently, this list is incomplete, but I hope many of you space game fans out there will enjoy these quick picks. Have fun and enjoy!

Black Holes Merging !?

One black hole may be powerful, but think of the power of three or more black holes merging into one ! Astrophysicists used a computer model to predict what would happen if several black holes were to orbit each other.

The simulations show three possiblities: one, mesh together into one big black hole, two, two of them mesh while the third orbits around in a very elliptical orbit, and three, they all fly apart. Like a collisions, this would also cause a massive release of energy. However, due to the densities of the merging masses, it is predicted that the merging would release tons of energy in the form of gravitational waves, or warps in space-time.

So far, scientists have been unable to detect gravitational waves, which are predicted by Einstein's General Relativity. Something to help that would be simulations, so we have a model that predicts what we would see. It tells the people who do those experiments what kind of signature is characteristic of black holes.

The scientists' model simulates the simplest case of a black hole triplet: three non-spinning black holes of equal masses. They plan to expand their models to include more complex systems, but currently, even their basic models were very computationally expensive. It took their giant supercomputer two weeks, running 24 hours a day, to complete the simulations. Hopefully, in the future they will take less time to complete, and be more complex.

Smallest planet outside of our solar system ever found

Scientists have found a planet roughly 5 times the mass of Earth orbiting a red dwarf star called Gliese 436. This planet, named Gliese 436c was found by analyzing a bigger planet's oddities in its orbit around Gliese 436.
This star was found 30 light years away from Earth, in the constellation of Leo. This planet is rocky and with a radius about 50% greater than Earth's.
Scientists hope that in the future, more planets like these and planets that are similar to Earth can be found. They believe that, soon they will find an exoplanet (planet outside our solar system), with a mass very similar to Earth, but it will be a distance much closer to its star, so it will not be like Earth, in that manner.
Planets that are close to the same mass and distance away from its star as Earth will likely have possibilities of Life and develop in a way that can support life. As advancing technologies improve, we will likely see more and more planets discovered that are similar to Earth, moving that much closer, to finding extraterrestrial life (life outside of Earth).

Space Power

Space represents to society a major source of power and control. A long time ago, The seas provided for Britain a way to transport themselves and helped them conquer other places to create a lasting empire.

The major space powers in the world all have pretty much the same developments in regards to satellites and goals. Space could become a big battlefield but it also holds much promise for the development of mankind. While it is true that the satellites orbiting around Earth have great destructive potential, they have also provided convenient methods of communication such as Satellite TV and Satellite Internet. The world is always changing and soon, humanity will be able to reach out into the vast depths of the Universe and colonize.

Satellites have helped society in a big way and the prosperity that we have now may not last. Up there in the atmosphere, satellites are highly vulnerable to attack, and such attacks could take modern day countries back a LONG way. Many people take satellite power for granted and don't realize what destruction of them could do. The U.S. military has already started to "harden" their satellites but the same cannot be said for industry satellites. As hardening greatly increased costs.

The Space generation will lead to many great discoveries, but the threat of satellite destruction and enormous economic downfall is inevitable. We can only hope that disaster does not fall upon us.

New Laser Technology

A new laser technology being developed at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA nows shows promise for finding smaller planets than we were able to before. This new technology allows us to find Earth-like planets instead of only being able to see very large planets.

Gravity pulls planets toward stars and also pulls stars toward planets. This created a kind of shaking of the star that helped us to detect planets near the star. However, this didn't work well with small planets and planets far from the star.
This new device, called an astrocomb uses ultrashort, femtosecond (one millionth of one billionth of a second) pulses of laser light, linked to an atomic clock, to provide a precise standard against which light from a star can be measured. It can accurately measure one part to a trillion. This new device will be able to detect planets with the mass and orbiting range similar to that of Earth.
The device is still being tested and if it works out well, it will surely be a big help to scientists and astronomers looking for faraway planets, and the possibility of life on other planets.

The Begining of Life

Life began on Earth billions of years ago and has evolved greatly to the present date. We have wondered for a long time how life came to be. We're already gotten some clues when comets were examined and we found that they had similar amounts of the chemicals that make up humans (Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Carbon). Ronald Breslow, Ph.D., University Professor, Columbia University, and former ACS President, described how our amino acid signature came from outer space. Firstly, chains of amino acids make up the protein in people and life. There are two forms of amino acids: the left and the right, which mirror the other in much the same way human's left and right hands mirror each other.
This is known as "chirality." In order for life to arise, proteins must contain only one chiral form of amino acids, left or right, as noted by Ronald Breslow.

"If you mix up chirality, a protein's properties change enormously. Life couldn't operate with just random mixtures of stuff," he said.
On Earth, left handed amino acids dominate. Breslow explained how this compusition of amino acids came to be: as asteroids fly past stars in space, one type of amino acid is destroyed. Stars emit polarized light circularly and thus, on one side, it emits right-polarized light, and on the other, it emits left-polarized light.
Previous experiments have proven have circularly polarized light destroys one type of amino acid over the other, causing an excess of about 5-10% over the other. Asteroids begin with an equal amount until they are affected by this light. In this case, the L-amino acid was the excess.

There has been much proof indicating this L-amino acid domination in experiments and instances of finding meteorites where they had an excess of L-amino acids on the surface. The professeur showed how L-amino acids could become dominant with an experiment starting with a 5% extra of one the L-amino acid and disolving it in water. As the amino acids combined and the water evaporated, it left a huge dominance of L-amino acids and it was chosen selectively by living organisms.

There have been other theories put forth but the evidence behind this theory is overhwelming.
With this discovery, we are closer than ever before, to discovering how life begins and the fact that there could very well be other life on Earth.

The Beginning

Well, to start, I'll let you know what this blog will be about. It'll be able about space, probably as you have already guessed. Space, meaning the universe, the galaxy, etc. After this blog starts going, I'll have regular updates about major and cool things such as eclipses, etc. Anyway, this blog will be update whenever I like, and whenever really important space things come out. Don't expect me to update the blog as soon as something really cool is on the news. First I have to get all the good details, then shorten it, and blog about it when I've got the time to do that.
Well, this blog is just starting and well, check back in possibly a week or so and it should have some more.