Astronomers Describe Violent Universe


The deeper astronomers gaze into the cosmos, the more they find it's a bizarre and violent universe.
The research findings from this week's annual meeting of U.S. astronomers range from blue orphaned baby stars to menacing "rogue" black holes that roam our galaxy, devouring any planets unlucky enough to be within their limited reach.
"It's an odd universe we live in," said Vanderbilt University astronomer Kelly Holley-Bockelmann. She presented her theory on rogue black holes at the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Austin, Texas, earlier this week.
It should be noted that she's not worried and you shouldn't be either. The odds of one of these black holes swallowing up Earth or the sun or wreaking other havoc is somewhere around 1 in 10 quadrillion in any given year................


On the Net:
American Astronomical Society: http://www.aas.org/
Hubble Space Telescope: http://hubblesite.org/

good news for yeast organisms who don't like to eat!

'Instead of one week, the yeast lived for about 10 weeks through genetic tinkering and a low-calorie diet.'
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22651648/

Ethical storm as scientist becomes first man to clone HIMSELF

Last updated at 01:02am on 20th January 2008

Breakthrough: Dr Samuel Wood has successfully cloned himself
A scientist has achieved a world first... by cloning himself.


In a breakthrough certain to provoke an ethical furore, Samuel Wood created embryo copies of himself by placing his skin cells in a woman's egg.

The embryos were the first to be made from cells taken from adult humans.


Although they survived for only five days and were smaller than a pinhead, they are seen as a milestone in the quest for treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. .....

Astronomers on look-out as asteroid heads for Earth near-miss today

The largest known asteroid to pass near Earth for more than 40 years will hurtle past Earth today, giving astronomers a rare opportunity for a close-up look.

Asteroid 2007 TU24 will miss the planet by about 334,000 miles, just outside the moon's orbit but within sight of amateur astronomers.

Scientists say the event is a rare opportunity to observe an asteroid, which should be visible today providing skies are clear.

Detailed observations of 2007 TU24 could reveal whether the asteroid is a solid object or simply a loose pile of space rubble............

Spacecraft Falling! Get Set to Duck?

Correction Appended: Jan. 29, 2008



If you're the kind inclined to worry, here's a real hand-wringer for you: Sometime as early as February, 7,000 lbs. of flaming metal are going to start raining out of the sky, and nobody can say exactly where on Earth it's going to happen. The upside is, there's almost no rational reason you should give it a second thought.

The approaching fireball of debris comes to us courtesy of an unnamed U.S. spy satellite launched in December 2006, which reached orbit perfectly well, but then suffered a breakdown that caused ground controllers to lose communication with it. "It's not necessarily dead, but it's deaf," John McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics unhelpfully told The New York Times .A deaf satellite, after all, is almost as bad as a dead satellite, when it comes to telling it to fire its thrusters so that it can stay in orbit, or at least come down in a safe place like the middle of the ocean. Without communications, the satellite becomes a falling cannonball colliding with the atmosphere at 17,500 mph

That very atmosphere, however, helps ensure that we're in very little danger from being struck by this craft or any other incoming junk....