NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50,000 light-years and may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the center of our galaxy. [...]
One possibility includes a particle jet from the supermassive black hole at the galactic center. In many other galaxies, astronomers see fast particle jets powered by matter falling toward a central black hole. While there is no evidence the Milky Way’s black hole has such a jet today, it may have in the past. The bubbles also may have formed as a result of gas outflows from a burst of star formation, perhaps the one that produced many massive star clusters in the Milky Way’s center several million years ago.
NASA: NASA’s Fermi Telescope Finds Giant Structure in our Galaxy
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/a8ZXQk66LvI/
NASA Ames Director Simon “Pete” Worden revealed Saturday that NASA Ames has “just started a project with DARPA called the Hundred Year Starship,” with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA. [...]
“The human space program is now really aimed at settling other worlds,” he explained. “Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired.” (Worden was in fact fired by President George W. Bush, he also revealed.) [...]
Wordon also thinks we should go to the moons of Mars first, where we can do extensive telerobotics exploration of the planet. “I think we’ll be on the moons of Mars by 2030 or so. Larry [Page] asked me a couple weeks ago how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars and I told him $10 billion, and his response was, ‘Can you get it down to 1 or 2 billion?’ So now we’re starting to get a little argument over the price.”
KurzweilAI: NASA Ames’ Worden reveals DARPA-funded ‘Hundred Year Starship’ program
(via Richard Yonck)
See also:
Charlie Stross on why space colonisation is impractical
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/JvqzEF23bjM/
The Telegraph reports that NASA has discovered a dense atmosphere surrounding Titan, a moon of Saturn. “They suggest that life forms may have been breathing in the planet’s atmosphere and also feeding on its surface’s fuel.” Titan is too cold to support liquid water.
Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Nasa Ames Research Centre, at Moffett Field, California who led the research, said: “We suggested hydrogen consumption because it’s the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth.
“If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.”
Telegraph: Titan: Nasa scientists discover evidence ‘that alien life exists on Saturn’s moon’
Shhh, no one tell Stephen Hawking.
Related posts:
- Water Found on Moon, Scientists Say
- Stephen Hawking says he wouldn’t be alive without the British health care system
- Why should you care about the dwarf planet Ceres?
From http://technoccult.net/archives/2010/06/12/nasa-says-there-could-be-life-on-titan/
