Lifeboat Foundation

“They are extraordinarily stable arrangements of such chaotic elements.”

One of these was the question of what lay at its elusive poles. When scientists got the first images, they were stunned. At the north pole, eight storms surrounded one storm at the center. At the south pole, it was the same arrangement, only with five storms.

But the numbers stayed oddly constant: the storms weren’t drifting and merging, as current understanding of the science suggests they should.

Three more of the mysterious fast radio burst (FRB) signals have been detected this month, and one of them is a real record-breaker, coming in with the highest signal-to-noise ratio ever recorded. That makes it the “brightest” FRB that’s ever been observed.

The signals came in on March 1, March 9 (that’s the really bright one) and March 11, snagged by the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in remote Australia.

They are called FRB 180301, FRB 180309 and FRB 180311, following the fast radio burst convention of being named for the dates on which they occurred.

Continue reading “We Just Caught The Strongest-Ever Fast Radio Burst, But They’re Still Super Mysterious” »

Scientists have discovered 15 new planets, including a “super-Earth” that may have liquid water on its surface.

The planets are orbiting small, cool stars near our solar system that are known as “Red Dwarfs.”

One of the brightest Red Dwarfs, K2-155, has three “super-Earths,” one of which, K2-155d, could be within the star’s habitable zone. K2-155d, which has a radius 1.6 times that of Earth, may harbor liquid water, according to three-dimensional global climate simulations.

Continue reading “Scientists discover 15 new planets, including ‘super-Earth’ that could harbor liquid water” »

A new study from ICRAR finds that all galaxies move once every billion years or so, regardless of size.

Damn. =(!!!

“We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe,” Hawking once remarked, “and for that, I am extremely grateful.”

By joe satran and ryan grenoble

Continue reading “Iconic Physicist Stephen Hawking Dies At 76” »

For every planet that orbits a star like our own, there are likely thousands of ‘orphan planets’ wandering the galaxy alone.

This artist’s impression shows the exoplanet WASP-12b — an alien world as black as fresh asphalt, orbiting a star like our Sun. Scientists were able to measure its albedo: the amount of light the planet reflects. The results showed that the planet is extremely dark at optical wavelengths.

Located 350 million light-years away, two neighbor galaxies are slowly being brought together by gravitational forces.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured the pair’s beautiful cosmic dance in a recent photo of the spiral galaxies, known as Arp 256.

One of the most stunning aspects of the image are the swaths of blue on the outer edges of both galaxies. Those are “stellar nurseries,” collections of gas and dust in the process of becoming new stars. Stellar nurseries are set off by intense gravitational forces, like the massive forces of two galaxies slowly merging.

Continue reading “The Hubble Space Telescope captured two galaxies colliding” »

Look out for—falling space debris?

A large Chinese satellite that’s free-falling to Earth could crash into southern Michigan sometime between now and early April, researchers say.

According to a new report from the Aerospace Corporation, southern portions of lower Michigan fall into the regions listed as having a high probability of debris landing from the 8.5-ton space station. The report also identifies northern China, central Italy and northern Spain as regions with higher chances of impact.

Continue reading “Chinese satellite filled with corrosive fuel could hit lower Michigan” »