Dark Matter Lab Dedicated 5,000 Feet Underground

From: io9.com

By Stephen Goldmeier, 2:08 PM on Tue Jun 23 2009

“This week, the Sanford Lab dedicated an underground science fortress to research dark matter. The lab is 5,000 feet underground in the mountains of South Dakota, shielded from cosmic radiation.

“The lab is on a site that used to do physics research, and was a gold mine before that. The current Sanford Lab, in collaboration with the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL), is the deepest underground lab in the world. It's divided into three levels: the shallow lab, the mid-level, and the deep campus. The deep campus is 6 and a half Empire State Buildings deep, or around 8,000 feet.”

How to Spot Satellites

From: LiveScience.com, 19 June 2009

By Joe Rao, Space.com Skywatching Columnist"

“If you go out…near dusk or dawn, and you have relatively dark skies, …(within)15 minutes…you see one of the more than 35,000 satellites now in orbit around Earth.

“…most satellites -- especially the bits of debris -- are too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. But…several hundred can be spotted with the unaided eye. These are the satellites that are large enough (typically more than 20 feet in length) and low enough (100 to 400 miles above Earth) to be most readily seen as sunlight reflects off them.

“The International Space Station (ISS) is by far the biggest and brightest of all the man-made objects orbiting the Earth. On favorable passes, it can appear as bright as the planet Venus, at magnitude -4.5

“Along with the ISS, you can also look for a space shuttle on those missions when one is approaching or departing from the space station. Also visible to the naked eye is the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.

“And with good binoculars, you might also try sighting the infamous "ISS Toolbag" which accidentally was allowed to drift into space…Nov. 18

“From now through the final days of July…nights are now the shortest and the time that a satellite in a low-Earth-orbit (like the ISS) can remain illuminated by the Sun can extend throughout the night, a situation that can never be attained during other times of the year. Because the ISS circles the Earth about every 90 minutes on average, this means that it's possible to see it not just on one singular pass, but for several consecutive passes.

“So what is the viewing schedule for your particular hometown? You can easily find out by visiting one of these four popular web sites:”

• Chris Peat's Heavens Above
• Science@NASA's J-Pass
• NASA's SkyWatch
• Spaceweather.com

“Each will ask for your zip code or city, and respond with a list of suggested spotting times.”

Times Online - Science Central - WBLG: Is there a Life On Mars Conspiracy?

Michael Brooks, consultant for New Scientist and the author of 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, sends us a new perspective on the riddle of the empty planet next door

Some pesky scientists have just pointed out an appalling design error in NASA’s latest attempts to find life on Mars. This is beginning to look like a conspiracy. Does someone not want us to find life on Mars?

The best argument for why no one has even found carbon brought in on asteroids and comets is that chemicals called perchlorates, also thought to be in the Martian soil, have destroyed it all. When perchlorates get hot, they burn up carbon-based molecules. That’s why NASA uses them in rocket fuel. The problem is, as NASA's Douglas Ming (the Merciless) has pointed out in a recent paper, the experiments to search for carbon involve heating soil samples to a few hundred degrees and sniffing the vapours. If the soil contains carbon molecules and perchlorates, the carbon molecules will simply burn up. No wonder they couldn’t find any.

Is our a universe just a quantum hallucination?

Physics of the "multiverse" and multiple universes suggests life is most likely to be created as hallucinating disembodied brains that pop up as a quantum fluctuation from the vacuum and float through space imagining the universe, with the thoughts and memories of a human, rather than as "normal" biologically evolved humans.

read more | digg story

SETI scientist finds Alien signal

AFTER you’ve spent more than 20 years hunting for an alien signal, you think you’d be celebrating if you noticed a mysterious pulse suddenly rising up on your computer readouts. A regular pulse, amid the random clatter of the cosmos, suggests that someone very smart at the other end is sending a message.

Instead, he’s spent the past few months meticulously investigating whether the unrecognised signature was caused by a glitch in his instrumentation, a rogue astrophysical phenomenon, or some unknown random noise.

read more | digg story

Note: SETI at Home needs your help:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

Strange & Unsolved Mysteries from America's history

A collection of places and people that have a kind of mystery attached to them because of eerie happenings. Some of those are really chilling.

read more | digg story

Weird physics: Heaven and Earth, UFOs, consciousness

Some scientific views about our universe now include ideas about multiple dimensions in a "multiverse," bridges or portals between them, fields of "zero point energy," the nature of UFOsand other fascinating concepts. How do these newer ideas about ways the universe might operate compare to traditional concepts about an afterlife or "Heaven?"

read more | digg story

Where is Planet X? Where is Nemesis?

In a publication recently published to the arXiv database, one Italian researcher has dusted off this topic and asked a very basic question: Can we constrain the possible locations of Nemesis and/or Planet X if they did exist? His results are fascinating!

read more | digg story

The End of the World As We Know It

An unexpected, thick layer of solar particles inside Earth's magnetic field suggests there are huge breaches in our planet's solar defenses, scientists said.These breaches indicate that during the next period of high solar activity, due to start in 2012, Earth will experience some of the worst solar storms seen in decades.

read more | digg story

The Moon might be a space station after all

Just scroll down the page a bit and look for the section titled, "A Moon With a View..." This man can weave a story. If you go quickly through the sections, you can see some really cool photos, many of which are official.

read more | digg story

Three Clear Photos of Triangular UFO over South Carolina

UFO Casebook: 'I was sitting outside waiting for the mailman to come by my home. The weather was overcast most of the day. I could barely make out the object through my camera LCD screen. This happened in South Carolina...'

read more | digg story

The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less

A really, really really really really really really brief history of time. By Eric Schulman.

read more | digg story

Galaxies in gridlock - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com

NASA / JPL-Caltech / STScI / ESA This image of a pair of colliding galaxies called NGC 6240 shows them in a rare, short-lived phase of their evolution just before they merge into a single, larger galaxy.

read more | digg story

Google Mars updated! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait blogs about Google Mars, just in time for your next vacation.

read more | digg story

Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple

Put down the remote and get schooled on Quantum Physics by Hans Bethe, who was the head of the theoretical physics division on the Manhattan Project. 3 lectures, 45-50 minutes each. Respect.

read more | digg story

Red sheets of glowing light: UFO, nature, or reflection?

The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) recently featured this red sky photo taken by airlines passenger Tyler Blessing. He snapped the picture as his flight came in for a landing in Minneapolis.

read more | digg story

We know time is the 4th dimension, how about the 10th?

This animation illustrates the concepts presented in chapter one of the book "Imagining the Tenth Dimension"by Rob Bryanton.

read more | digg story

Anatomy of a Black Hole

Check out this interactive black hole guide.

read more | digg story

NIBIRU - Latest with 5 planets Visible

Supposedly leaked by someone working on the Scott - Amundsen South Pole Telescope (SPT). This video shows 5 visible planets! All credit should go to the original Poster who took the risk ... if its original that is!PDF file giving historic and present day proof of something that will come to visit us soon:http://rapidshare.com/files/1499...

read more | digg story

NIBIRU Exists! Best Proof Ever

Best proof that Nibiru exists, from film "Are We Alone in Universe".

read more | digg story