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Archive for the tag “astronomy”

01 Nov 2012
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Flat Earthers Take Aim at NASA

Conspiracy theorists organized under the banner of the Flat Earth Society have targeted NASA, charging the space agency uses fake and altered images to support the idea that Earth is round. The society believes our planet more closely resembles a thin wafer, with the frozen ice packs of Antarctica stretching along the Earth’s outer limits to keep the oceans from draining off.  Formed in 1956, the society is small — fewer than 1,000 members — but global in scope. Its most-famous member: The British musician Thomas Dolby (“She Blinded Me With Science”). H/T SourceFed

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29 Oct 2012

Caught in the Cosmic Web

In this episode of the Hubblecast, Joe Liske (aka Dr J) shows how a team of astronomers has used Hubble and other telescopes to discover the secrets of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717. They have found that an invisible filament of dark matter extends out of the cluster. This is our first direct glimpse of the shape of the scaffolding that gives the Universe its structure.

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27 Oct 2012

The Moon Illusion

“Look how big the moon is!” you’ve shouted before. But as the moon never really changes size, it’s simply your brain playing a trick. Find out what the Moon Illusion is, and why it happens in this edition of AsapSCIENCE.

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23 Oct 2012

Exploring the Moon’s Origins

A team of Japanese and Cuban biologists has rediscovered a venomous mammal believed to have gone extinct some 30 years ago. Meanwhile, another scientific team has shown why the Moon most likely spun off from the Earth following a violent collision with a celestial body millions of years ago.  In this SciShow, Hank Green describes some news stories that illustrate how science is continually changing the things we think we “know,” asking new questions and making discoveries that change the world, and our understanding of it, every day.

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21 Oct 2012

A Quasar By Any Other Name

Quasars are among the most luminous, energetic and powerful objects known in the universe. But what about lesser-known blazers? Hank Green with the SciShow says astronomers now know that quasars and blazars are one and the same thing, just oriented differently to us so we originally thought they were different in essence. Green discusses how this finding impacts the way we perceive quasars and blazers, and how it also effects the ways we can study them.

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07 Oct 2012

Bigger and Better Telescopes

Here’s an introduction to the next generation of mega-telescopes being brought on line in Chile to help solve the biggest mysteries of the Universe. The focus is on ALMA, or the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array. A joint project of Europe, North America and Asia, ALMA will be composed of 66 high-precision antennas when it becomes fully operational next year. The report also introduces the European Extremely Large Telescope, or E-ELT, which will be built on a nearby mountaintop in Chile, becoming the world’s biggest eye on the sky. H/T Best of Science

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01 Oct 2012

Big Dish Might Get Dissed

A fight is brewing to save the world’s largest steerable radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. The Green Bank Telescope operates under the auspices of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, but a committee appointed by the National Science Foundation has recommended the facility be decommissioned in 2017. Saving money is a factor but so is the rise of radio-array telescopes that might render this last remaining vestige of single-dish big science obsolete. Still, residents of Green Bank and West Virginia politicians are gearing up to stop the closure. They want the telescope to remain intact, even though its presence places certain burdens on the community. For instance, for the telescope to properly read signals from space, cell phone and microwave oven usage is forbidden or restricted in a 13,000 square mile zone flanking Green Bank. Vice reports.

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