Tag Archives : sun

An animation made with data from observatories and amateur astronomers shows the location of all known asteroids in the solar system. The video begins with the year 1980 and will gradually increase the number of points as the years pass and make new discoveries made. The new asteroids appear flashing white and appear to “follow” the Earth‘s [...]

Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is all sent to launch a solar powered spacecraft Ikaros in space on May 18. Ikaros is essentially a spacecraft which will be powered by solar sails and will cruise through solar system and will explore deep space like never before. It is first of its kind interplanetary kite on a deep space mission that [...]

In The Christian Science Monitor, Moises Velasquez-Manoff reviews the new book ‘The Medea Hypothesis’ that ‘looks at the opposite of the Gaia hypothesis and suggests that life on Earth is self-destructive.’ The Gaia hypothesis, first formulated in the 1960s by the British scientist James Lovelock as the “earth feedback hypothesis,” suggests that [...]

US space agency NASA will be launching Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to probe Sun and solar activity more deeply. The probe SDO is expected to be orbiting some 22,300 miles from earth for five years making observations of the sun and find reasons of different solar activity such as sunspots, solar winds and solar flares. This is first of its kind [...]

Open source expert Tim Yeaton, who is president and CEO of American Black Duck Software, feels that European Commission (EC) should not dirty its hands in the mergers between companies for it is going to cause more damage than good. He feels that EC should not involve itself in the merger of Oracle and Sun nor with the future of MySQL. Interference [...]

The current movie hit Avatar shows humans visiting ‘the habitable – and inhabited – alien moon called Pandora.’ Such ‘life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction.’ Soon, what science fiction used to offer in the realm of habitable moons may just become a reality with the [...]

One of the current paranoid and alarmist propaganda circulating the globe is the alleged end of the world in 2012, as prophesied by the ancient Maya. The Mayan calendar will supposedly ‘run out’ on December 21, 2012. Also, it is said that the Maya had a talent for astronomy. To top that, ‘some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth’s [...]

Living in a desert is definitely a challenge especially if it’s in a country like Syria where winter chills are as competitive as summer swelters or the torrential rains. With a constrained choice of building materials and resources, here’s what the Syrians have come up with- the effortless, innovative and well-designed Beehive homes. Premeditated [...]

In a couple of hours from now Total Solar Eclipse will be visible from Asian countries. This will be the longest total solar eclipse of this century which will last for nearly five minutes and more than six minutes at maximum visibility point. The stage is all set for astronomers and enthusiasts keen to watch amazing celestial event when earth will [...]

In a new study featured in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers aver that “[T]he Earth will be identifiable as an inhabited planet for nearly half the total lifetime of the Sun, an important point to consider in the search for life on extrasolar planets.” The new study suggests that ‘the Earth could be [...]