Astounding volcano activity photographed from space

This May 23, 2006, photo released by NASA shows the eruption of Cleveland Volcano, Aleutian Islands, Alaska, as photographed by an Expedition 13 crew member on the International Space Station. The image captures the ash plume of the very short-lived eruption. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center)

In this June 16, 2010 satellite image provided by NASA, Papua New Guinea’s Manam Volcano releases a thin, faint plume, as clouds cluster at the volcano’s summit. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite took this image. The clouds may result from water vapor from the volcano, but may also have formed independent of volcanic activity. The volcanic plume appears as a thin, blue-gray veil extending toward the northwest over the Bismarck Sea.

Seen here on on June 12, 2009 in the beginning stages of eruption is Sarychev volcano. This was the sixth eruption since 1946, making it one the busiest volcanoes on Russia's Kuril Islands.

This image provided by NASA shows an image taken by a NASA MODIS satellite acquired at 1:15 a.m. EDT on May 22, 2011 shows the ash plume from the Grimsvotn volcano casts shadow to the west. The Grimsvotn volcano began erupting on Saturday, May 21 sending clouds of ash high into the air. The amount of ash spewing from the volcano tapered off dramatically on Tuesday, however, said Elin Jonasdottir, a forecaster at Iceland's meteorological office. The blue dots are data dropouts probably caused by the very bad light in the shadow of the plume.

Plumes of smoke and ash rise from Sicily's Mount Etna, center, in this satellite image from Monday, Oct. 28, 2002. As rivers of lava poured down its slopes, Mount Etna spewed thick clouds of ash and magma for a third day Tuesday, prompting officials to close some schools. Satellite photos showed the ash was carried as far away as Libya in northern Africa, 350 miles south of Mount Etna. (AP Photo/HO, NASA,

This satellite image taken on Monday Jan. 30, 2006, courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC via the Alaska Volcano Observatory / U.S. Geological Survey, a steam and ash cloud from Augustine Volcano near Homer, Alaska, lower left, can be seen drifting toward the Kenai Peninsula, seen in the upper right. An unbroken plume of ash has been spewing from the uninhabited volcanic island 75 miles southwest of Homer, Alaska since Saturday with explosions thrusting particles almost five miles into the skies around south-central Alaska.

This image provided by NASA's MODIS instrument on board the Terra satellite shows volcanic ash and steam billowing from the Chaiten Volcano in southern Chile, drifting across Argentina and dissipating over the Atlantic Ocean, Saturday, May 3, 2008. The Chaiten Volcano sprung to life Friday for the first time in thousands of years.

This photo of Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia was taken on September 7, 2010 by the Earth Observing-1 satellite. Three days earlier, ash plumes had risen as high as 21,300 feet. This is one of the area's largest and most active volcanoes.

A photo released by NASA is a June 4, 2011, photo of Chile’s Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Volcano was made by the MODI Aqua satellite shortly after the eruption began sahowing the brown plume rising above the clouds. The eruption has forced thousands from their homes, grounded airline flights in southern Argentina and coated ski resorts with a gritty layer of dust instead of snow

This natural-color satellite image provided by NASA and acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on July 8, 2011 shows the ash plume of the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile. The volcano's eruption resulted in grounded flights across the lower third of South America for most of the winter tourist season. Lodges and restaurants in Bariloche and Villa La Angostura normally filled with skiers, are empty. With airport runways, Andean slopes and sheep and cattle ranches coated in ash, the local economy has been devastate

Volcanic ashes from Shinmoedake peak, located between Miyazaki and Kagoshima prefectures, is seen in southern Japan, in this NASA satellite image taken and released February 3, 2011. More than 1,000 people in southern Japan have been urged to evacuate as the volcano picked up its activities, spewing ashes and small rocks into the air and disrupting airline operations, a municipal official said on Monday. Image taken February 3, 2011

Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted explosively on April 14, 2010 and resulting ash fallout disrupted travel across Europe. In this photo taken nearly a month later by the Terra satellite, a massive plume is still visible 530 miles away.

Amazing Pics

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With wildfires bearing down on the McDonald Observatory, the Texas Forest Service undertook controlled burns on April 17 to get rid of fuel on the mountains in West Texas. This would starve the Rock House wildfire of fuel should it double back toward the observatory.
In the above image, Black Mountain is burning. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope dome is at right. Above it, the bright line on the right is the wildfire which broke through a burn-out line on Sunday afternoon. The bright line on the left is the front of a back-fire set to stop that portion of the wildfire. Silhouetted by the back-fires on Black and Spring (to the left) Mountains is Guide Peak now with only small pockets of active fires.

This view of the Rock House wildfire was shot on the night of April 9 from the catwalk of the 6.9-foot (2.1-meter) Otto Struve Telescope dome looking east. The 8.9-foot (2.7-m) Harlan J. Smith Telescope is at left.

This view of the Rock House wildfire was shot on the night of April 9 overlooking the dome of the 3-foot (0.9-m) telescope.

The controlled burn of April 17 as seen from the visitors center's public telescope park at the McDonald Observatory, where public star parties are held three times each week.
The Texas Forest Service undertook the controlled burn to starve the Rock House wildfire of fuel, should it turn back toward the observatory.

Guide Peak is in flames from the controlled burn on April 17. The two peaks of McDonald Observatory, Mount Fowlkes and Mount Locke, are to the right and far right, respectively. The domes of the 30-foot (9.1-m) Hobby-Eberly, Harlan J. Smith and Otto Struve telescopes are visible.

To the north of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, Guide Peak is on fire and almost completely burned on April 17.

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope dome watches as wildfires and controlled burns compete for fuel in the West Texas mountains.

India's another communications satellite

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists on Friday successfully launched the GSAT-12 communications satellite which will help meet India’s increasing demand for services like tele-education, telemedicine and e-governance.

The 1410 kg satellite, which costs Rs 80 crores, was launched on board the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SHAR) in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

The PSLV-C17 rocket launched the GSAT-12 satellite into a
sub-Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit of 284 km perigee and an apogee of 21,000 km. The satellite with Extended C-band transponders will augment communication services in the country, the ISRO said.

With this launch, the PSLV, referred to as the Indian space agency’s trusted workhorse, completed its eighteenth successful mission in a row. Two more launches of the rocket are expected later this year.

Existence of Universe before the Big Bang

London, Nov 30 (IANS) Scientists may have uncovered evidence that the universe existed before the Big Bang.

Concentric circles discovered in cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) - the after-effects of the Big Bang - display evidence of events that took place before most scientists believe the universe came into being.

The controversial finding points to the existence of a universe that did not begin 13.7 billion years ago, as is generally accepted, but is instead a cycle of so-called aeons.

The discovery has been posted online by Professor Roger Penrose from Oxford University and Professor Vahe Gurzadya from Yerevan State University, Armenia, the Daily Mail reports.

Most scientists believe the universe was created in the Big Bang around 13.7 billion years ago. Stars and galaxies started to form around 300 million years later.

Our sun was born around five billion years ago, while life first appeared on the earth around 3.7 billion years ago. The CMB dates to 300,000 years after the Big Bang and has now cooled to around -270 degrees Celsius.

But Penrose and Gurzadyan argue that evidence unearthed by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotophy Probe in the CMB shows imprints in the radiation that are older than the Big Bang.

They say they have discovered 12 examples of concentric circles, some of which have five rings, meaning the same object has had five massive events in its history.

They believe the circles are imprints of extremely violent gravitational radiation waves generated by supermassive black hole collisions in a previous aeon before the last big bang.

Penrose believes that his new theory means that black holes will eventually consume all the matter in the universe.

Life on Mars could be similar to that on Earth

Washington, Nov 3 (ANI): Scientists from MIT have said that if life on Mars does exist, it wouldn't be too different from that on Earth.

"We think that if there is life on Mars, it could be related to us," Discovery News quoted Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer and scientist Christopher Carr as saying.

"We would feel awfully silly if we spent a lot of time looking for something that was very different and didn't spend time looking for something that was very similar. Life could have arisen independently, but that is not the most likely scenario," he added.

MIT is developing, along with NASA, a project known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Genomes (SETG) that would attempt to isolate, amplify, detect and identify nucleic acids on Mars.

Carr said that Martian DNA could remain viable for about one million years or so underground, where it would be shielded from the harsh ultraviolet rays and space radiation that sterilize the planet's surface.
"The problem is that there are processes at work on Mars that destroy organic materials. If you want to have a fighting chance of getting to material that has been unaffected by these processes, it's good to go down," Carr said.

It will take another two years to refine SETG technology before it's ready for field tests in Chile's Atacama Desert or the dry valleys of Antarctica-both of which resemble the cold, dry deserts of Mars.

Astronomers find giant extragalactic planet

Astronomers have for the first time spotted a planet that originated outside the galaxy.

Till date, about 500 planets have been discovered. This is the first known planet to have been born elsewhere.

The gas planet, at least 25 percent heavier than Jupiter or 400 times heavier than Earth, orbits a star that started life in a dwarf galaxy, according to the journal Science Express.

Known as HIP 13044b, the hydrogen and helium planet sits in a solar system belonging to a group of stars called the Helmi stream, some 2,000 light years away from Earth, the Telegraph reports.

Between six and nine billion years ago, the Helmi merged with the Milky Way in an act of 'galactic cannibalism'. It is now in a southern constellation of the Milky Way called the Fornax or Furnace.

Because of the vast distance, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla, Chile, could not detect the planet visibly, using the 2.2 metre-diameter telescope.

Instead, they inferred its existence from tiny telltale wobbles of the star.

These are caused by the gravitational tug of its large orbiting companion, which the astronomers detected with a high-resolution spectrograph attached to the telescope.

Rainer Klemen, of the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, said: 'This discovery is very exciting. For the first time, astronomers have detected a planetary system in a stellar stream of extragalactic origin.'

The planet is orbiting a star which is approaching the end of its life, having exhausted its hydrogen fuel and gone through a stage of massive expansion - called the red giant phase - in which it probably consumed the inner planets in its solar system.

It has now contracted again and is burning helium in its core.

Earth-like planet found

A team of planet hunters led by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times the mass of Earth) orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's "habitable zone," where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one.

This undated handout artist rendering provided by Lynette Cook, National Science Foundation, shows a new planet, right. Astronomers have found a planet that is in the Goldilocks zone _ just right for life. AP Photo

To astronomers, a "potentially habitable" planet is one that could sustain life, not necessarily one that humans would consider a nice place to live. Habitability depends on many factors, but liquid water and an atmosphere are among the most important.

But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.

Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between in the land of constant sunrise it would be shirt-sleeve weather, said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from NASA's Great Observatories--the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms," seen in wide-angle views of the system. These features were produced by tidal forces generated in the collision.

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

The planet is tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness. One effect of this is to stabilize the planet's surface climates, according to Vogt. The most habitable zone on the planet's surface would be the line between shadow and light (known as the "terminator"), with surface temperatures decreasing toward the dark side and increasing toward the light side.

"Any emerging life forms would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," Vogt said.

This handout photo released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) shows a montage of young and hot stars located in the Tarantula nebula taken with a 2.2-metre telescope. AFP

The researchers estimate that the average surface temperature of the planet is between -24 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 to -12 degrees Celsius). Actual temperatures would range from blazing hot on the side facing the star to freezing cold on the dark side.
If Gliese 581g has a rocky composition similar to the Earth's, its diameter would be about 1.2 to 1.4 times that of the Earth. The surface gravity would be about the same or slightly higher than Earth's, so that a person could easily walk upright on the planet, Vogt said.
The findings are based on 11 years of observations at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. "Advanced techniques combined with old-fashioned ground-based telescopes continue to lead the exoplanet revolution," said Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution. "Our ability to find potentially habitable worlds is now limited only by our telescope time."
Vogt and Butler lead the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey. The team's new findings are reported in a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

This handout photo released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) shows a montage of young and hot stars located in the Tarantula nebula taken with a 2.2-metre telescope. AFP

The paper reports the discovery of two new planets around the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581. This brings the total number of known planets around this star to six, the most yet discovered in a planetary system other than our own solar system. Like our solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly circular orbits.

The most interesting of the two new planets is Gliese 581g, with a mass three to four times that of the Earth and an orbital period of just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with a definite surface and that it has enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere, according to Vogt.

This image of the Tarantula Nebula was obtained with the near-infrared optics. Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, one weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. AFP

Gliese 581, located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, has a somewhat chequered history of habitable-planet claims. Two previously detected planets in the system lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side (planet c) and one on the cold side (planet d). While some astronomers still think planet d may be habitable if it has a thick atmosphere with a strong greenhouse effect to warm it up, others are skeptical. The newly discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.

"We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone--one too hot and one too cold--and now we have one in the middle that's just right," Vogt said.

"It's really hard to detect a planet like this," Vogt said.

Scientists have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170 000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies. In this representative color image, red shows emission from sulphur atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.

The researchers also explored the implications of this discovery with respect to the number of stars that are likely to have at least one potentially habitable planet. Given the relatively small number of stars that have been carefully monitored by planet hunters, this discovery has come surprisingly soon.

"If these are rare, we shouldn't have found one so quickly and so nearby," Vogt said. "The number of systems with potentially habitable planets is probably on the order of 10 or 20 percent, and when you multiply that by the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, that's a large number. There could be tens of billions of these systems in our galaxy."