Watch the video Russia planning to build permanent base on the moon on Yahoo News. The Kremlin plans to build a permanent base on the surface of the moon by 2030, according to Russian state-run news agency TASS.
That great void of space is growing quieter as the universe dies — but how long do we have before The End?
Oh, joy.
What the Sun might look like if it were to produce a superflare. A large flaring coronal loop structure is shown towering over a solar active region. (credit: University of Warwick/Ronald Warmington)
Astrophysicists have discovered a stellar “superflare” on a star observed by NASA’s Kepler space telescope with wave patterns similar to those that have been observed in the Sun’s solar flares. (Superflares are flares that are thousands of times more powerful than those ever recorded on the Sun, and are frequently observed on some stars.)
The risks associated with space debris are rising. An efficient way to clear the skies of junk is desperately needed, and a team of Chinese engineers think they have the answer.
Physicists have come up with a way to make secret codes based on the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the birth of the universe.
A supercomputer simulation of a mere 10 milliseconds in the collapse of a massive star into a neutron star proves that these catastrophic events, often called hypernovae, can generate the enormous magnetic fields needed to explode the star and fire off bursts of gamma rays visible halfway across the universe.
The results of the simulation, published online Nov. 30 in advance of publication in the journal Nature, demonstrate that as a rotating star collapses, the star and its attached magnetic field spin faster and faster, forming a dynamo that revs the magnetic field to a million billion times the magnetic field of Earth.
A field this strong is sufficient to focus and accelerate gas along the rotation axis of the star, creating two jets that ultimately can produce oppositely directed blasts of highly energetic gamma rays.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered a new phase of solid carbon, called Q-carbon, which is distinct from the known phases of graphite and diamond. They have also developed a technique for using Q-carbon to make diamond-related structures at room temperature and at ambient atmospheric pressure in air.
Phases are distinct forms of the same material. Graphite is one of the solid phases of carbon; diamond is another.
“We’ve now created a third solid phase of carbon,” says Jay Narayan, the John C. Fan Distinguished Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and lead author of three papers describing the work. “The only place it may be found in the natural world would be possibly in the core of some planets.”
