computer science to a wealth of new astronomical data, researchers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) reported the first robust detection of cosmic magnification on large scales, a prediction of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity applied to the distribution of galaxies, dark matter, and distant quasars.
These findings detail the subtle distortions that light undergoes as it travels from distant quasars through the web of dark matter and galaxies before reaching observers here on Earth.
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Scientists using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider - a giant atom smasher - have created a new state of matter and showed what the early universe looked like for a very, very brief time.
For a tiny fraction of a second after the "big bang" birth of the universe, all matter was in the form of a 'Perfect liquid`, called a quark-gluon plasma. At temperatures 10,000 times hotter than those found inside the sun and with just a few thousand particles, the nuclear physicists saw quarks behaving like a perfect liquid, flowing together like a school of fish, without turbulence or random motion. The unexpected results agree with what string theory calculates how quarks should move in a quark gluon plasma
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a subatomic particle that challenged models of quantum physics since its reported discovery in 2003 has been found not to exist after all, (though some would argue that the jury is still out). Researchers at the National Institute for Nuclear Physics of Genoa used instruments ten more sensitive times to show it was just `noise`. The short-lived particle was thought to consist of five subatomic particles called quarks. Quarks normally only associate in groups of two - producing short-lived mesons, or three - producing the protons and neutrons that make up the bulk of normal matter.
The results fuel a controversy that has raged since the first pentaquark sighting was confirmed by more than ten other labs, which looked back through the results of similar collisions to search for evidence of the particle.
"In 2003, there were lots of positive results, everybody found something."
to read more

a significant discovery by the Spitzer Space Telescope at a listen-and-logon news briefing on Wednesday, April 20^th, at 1900 GMT. The new finding involves a sun-like star, with a planetary system similar to our own.
The Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted what may be the dusty spray of asteroids after colliding together in a belt that orbits a star like our Sun, a yellowish K0V Star about 2 billion years old.
If confirmed, the new asteroid belt would be the first detected around a star about the same age and size as our Sun. The star, called HD69830, is located 41 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Puppis. There are two other known distant asteroid belts, but they circle younger, more massive stars.
The new belt is thicker than our asteroid belt, with 25 times as much material, and orbits closer to its star. And like our solar system, an unseen planet the size of Saturn or smaller may be marshalling this star's rubble, in the same way as Jupiter acts as an outer wall to the asteroid belt, shepherding its debris into a series of bands.
Position (J2000): RA: 8h18m23.9s Dec: -12d37m55.8s
to read more (available April 20 2005 )

on the Subaru telescope, astronomers have taken new images of the Omega Nebula (M17) and revealed a very young star surrounded by a complex dust and gas structure. The young star M17-SO1 is surrounded by a torus of gas and dust, with thin conical shells of material above and below the poles of the star. Shigeyuki Sako and a team of astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan analysed them in infrared wavelengths in order to understand the mechanics of protoplanetary disk formation around young stars.
The protostar M17-SO1 is about 2.5 - 8 times the mass of the Sun, and located in front of a bright infrared ray background nebula. The surrounding, viewed edge-on, dusty torus is shown up, using the 2.166 emission line of hydrogen (called the Brackett gamma (Br) line), in silhouette. A large butterfly-shaped silhouette is about 10,000AU, or 150 times the size of our solar system.
The Omega Nebula lies about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.
The near-infrared observations reveal the structure of the surrounding envelope with unprecedented levels of detail. In particular,
The discovery of the multi-component structure puts new constraints on how an envelope feeds material to a protostellar disk forming within its boundaries.
"It's quite likely that our own solar system looked like M17-SO1 when it was beginning to form. We hope to confirm the relevance of our discovery for understanding the mechanism of protoplanetary disk formation by using the Subaru telescope to take infrared images with high resolution and high sensitivity of many more young stars. “
Position: R.A. 18h20m26.18s Dec. 16d12m10.2s
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on April 2nd 2005 to search the seas for new forms of life.
Its top research ship, the Dayang Yihao (Ocean No 1), will visit the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean after setting off from Qingdao in East China's Shandong Province.
The mission is planned to last for 300 days, with the ship returning to Qingdao next January. A total of 72 people will be on board for the first phase, among which 30 are ordinary seamen and 42 are scientific researchers.

came together to become planets has vexed astronomers for years. Until Now: Micron-wide dust particles encrusted with molecularly gluey ice enabled planets to bulk up like dirty snowballs quickly enough to overcome the scattering force of solar winds.
At extreme cold temperatures, close to absolute zero, at 5 - 100 Kelvin, vapour-deposited ice spontaneously becomes electrically polarized. This created electric forces that could stick icy grains together like little bar magnets.
to read more

with a diameter of 2.4 meters has been transported to the Gaogumei astronomical observatory in Lijiang city, in Yunnan province. This is the largest astronomical telescope currently in China and it will achieve first light in August 2005. The 30 million yuan telescope is manufactured by the British TTL Company.
Gaogumei , which means "a place above the sky" , is 3,193 metres above sea level with excellent atmospheric seeing, and with an average of 254 clear nights each year.

the most distant massive structure yet detected in the Universe, a fully formed galaxy cluster, XMMU J2235.3-2557, containing thousands, of galaxies, about 9 billion light years. The discovery is evidence that the Universe's elegant hierarchal structure of stars, galaxies and clusters formed quickly after the big bang, far earlier than most astronomers thought possible just a few years ago.
The discovery was made with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Observatory and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO VLT) in Chile.
"We have underestimated how quickly the early Universe matured into its present-day incarnation. The Universe grew up fast."
Position: R.A. = 22h20m44s, Decl. = -25 °57'33"
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has seen 31 monstrously bright galaxies shrouded by dust 11 billion light-years away. These galaxies are among the most luminous in the universe, shining with the equivalent light of 10 trillion suns. But, they are so far away and so drenched in dust, including silicate dust, it took Spitzer's highly sensitive infrared eyes to find them. Astronomers speculate that a new breed of unusually dusty quasars, powered by huge black holes, may be lurking inside.
"Finding silicate dust at this very early epoch is important for understanding when planetary systems like our own arose in the evolution of galaxies."
to read more

that starlight may be bent in odd directions when it passes close to a rotating black hole. Astronomers could be misinterpreting their observations, due to the shift of a source's apparent position in the sky, caused by the recently discovered phenomenon called negative refraction. Strong gravitational fields will distort space time and could rotate light through a 90° angle.
Interestingly, this effect could experimentally verify if the cosmological constant, a key number in the equations that describe the evolution and growth of the universe, is positive or negative. Negative refraction can only take place if the constant is positive…

(HESS) of four telescopes in Namibia have detected eight new sources of high-energy gamma rays in the Milky Way galaxy. A paper published in the current issue of the journal Science describes the novel finds, two of which may represent a new class of cosmic ray sources.
All eight are few light-years across in size. Three are associated with nearby supernova remnants, another three are located near pulsars; but interestingly, two sources have no corresponding activity at radio, x-ray or optical wavelengths.
"The lack of any counterparts for these two sources suggests the exciting possibility of a new class of 'dark' particle accelerators in the Galaxy."
Dark matter clouds with super symmetric neutralino annihilation maybe producing the gamma rays, neutrinos and synchrotron emissions.
to read more

A search for transient phenomena in galaxies using the Subaru telescope by a research group led by Dr. Tomonori Totani at Kyoto University has led to the discovery of visible flares in the centres of apparently normal galaxies. The galaxies showing a rapid increase in visible brightness in their centres are about 4 billion light years away, and the increase in brightness occurred over just a few days. This light is probably coming from disks of hot matter rotating close to the speed of light, about 1 billion kilometres from super massive black holes about 100 million times heavier than the Sun. These black holes are much heavier than the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, which is about 3 million times more massive than the Sun. This is the first time that such violent activity is observed from such heavy black holes in visible light. The fact that the flares are occurring in otherwise normal looking galaxies support the idea that black holes exist in the centre of almost all galaxies.
to read more

The Messenger space probe on its epic journey towards Mercury has deployed the magnetometer boom, and flipped up it’s sunshade towards the Sun. Messenger was about 47 million kms from Earth during the operation, speeding around the Sun at 112374 km/hr.
NASA's first trip to Mercury in 30 years started at 0616 GMT, August 2nd, 2004 with the predawn launch of the MESSENGER spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
MESSENGER's voyage includes three flybys of Mercury in 2008 and 2009 and a year-long orbit of the planet starting in March 2011. MESSENGER will conduct an in-depth study of the sun's closest neighbour, the least explored of the terrestrial (rocky) planets .

soared into the record books as the first person to fly solo, non-stop around the globe. Salina, Kansas ,US, was the starting point for Steve Fossett's attempt to make a uninterrupted flight around the globe.
The single jet engine Virgin Global Flyer is a large aircraft made from composite material, and loaded with more than four times its own weight in fuel for the challenge, that took only 67 hours to complete.
The plane took off at 0500 GMT on Tuesday, and landed at 1948 GMT, Thursday, March 3rd 2005.

the European Space Agency will risk deploying the MARSIS radar rods to seek water under the Martian surface.
The new deployment date for the radar antenna is likely to happen around 25th April 2005.
The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding - or MARSIS - will search for water - which might provide oases for life - as deep as several kilometres below the Martian surface.
to read more

have gained insight into the mysterious giant dark "tadpoles" that appear to swim towards the surface of the Sun during solar flares.
The tadpoles – colossal physical structures with dark heads and wiggling tails seem to swim towards the sun against the flow of hot matter being blasted from the Sun during flares – have puzzled astrophysicists for several years.
The scientists think that the waves are produced by a peculiar physical mechanism known as "negative energy waves", when waves suck energy from the medium they propagate through.
The researchers concluded that the tadpoles are not material features, but optical illusions.
to read more

the mass of the smallest black hole in the active galaxy, NGC 4395, 14 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici.
The black hole seems to be at least a hundred times smaller than any other black hole ever detected inside an AGN, weighing in at a million solar masses.
Position: RA 12h25m48.918s DEC +33d32m48.43s
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	ultraviolet luminous galaxies

on the Galaxy Evolution Explorer have discovered three-dozen bright, compact galaxies (ultraviolet luminous galaxies) that resemble the youthful galaxies of more than 10 billions years ago. These new galaxies are relatively close to us, ranging from two to four billion light-years away, and may be as young as 100 million to one billion years old.
The Milky Way is approximately 10 billion years old.
The recent discovery suggests our aging universe is still alive with youth. It also offers astronomers their first, close-up glimpse at what our galaxy probably looked like when it was in its infancy.
to read more

	The Helix Nebula

690 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius resembles a doughnut in colourful images.
However, a team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has established that the Helix Nebula’s structure is even more perplexing. Their evidence suggests that the Helix consists of two disks nearly perpendicular to each other.
Position (J2000): R.A. 22h 29m 48.20s Dec. -20° 49' 26.0"

	new globular-like clusters

three strange new globular-like clusters in the halo of the andromeda galaxy (M31) with unusually large half-light radii, around 30 pc (compared to typical globular clusters values between 1 and 7 pc).
These objects start to fill the gap between (negligible dark matter) classical globular clusters, and (dark matter dominated) dwarf spheroidals. This is an area, which in recent times has seen a variety of new objects, such as the Ultra Compact Objects (UCOs) in Fornax and massive globular clusters in NGC 5128.
These new clusters are lower luminosity systems than these, and are rather brighter and more extended than the so-called faint fuzzy clusters; and are bluer suggesting a lower metallicity.
The extended M31 clusters have no known analogues in the Milky Way, where such clusters would certainly have been discovered if they existed. This suggests that they could hold important clues to the formation of these galaxies.
If these clusters were not born with their present morphology then one may speculate that they are the stripped cores of cannibalised dwarf spheroidal galaxies or the products of cluster mergers perhaps created in a previous interaction of a gas-rich companion with M31.
to read more (pdf)

around the nearby star Vega was probably caused by collisions of objects, perhaps as big as the planet Pluto.
The Spitzer's infrared telescope detected the radiation from the aftermath of embryonic planets smashing together.
Vega is located 25 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. It is 60 times brighter than our sun.
Vega's pole faces the Earth and provides a great opportunity for detailed study of the dust cloud around it.
"Vega's debris disc is another piece of evidence demonstrating the evolution of planetary systems is a pretty chaotic process."
to read more

	I Zwicky 18

the Hubble Space Telescope have measured the age of what may be the youngest galaxy ever seen in the universe. By cosmological standards, it is a mere toddler seemingly out of place among the grown-up galaxies around it.
Called I Zwicky 18, in the constellation Ursa Major, 45 million light-years away, it may be as young as 500 million years old. Our Milky Way galaxy by contrast is over 20 times older or about 12 billion years old, the typical age of galaxies across the universe. This Irregular Dwarf galaxy offers a rare glimpse into what the first diminutive galaxies in the early universe look like.
Position (J2000): R.A. 09h 34m 00s.9 Dec. 55° 14' 34".2

	supernova remnant Cassiopeia A

was much dustier than astronomers were expecting, according to new data gathered by the Spitzer Space Telescope. This leads to the question, how did it get so dusty so early? Regular stars take billions of years before they star giving off large amounts of dust. But massive stars can form quickly and then explode as supernovae within 10 million years. The problem is that these explosions produce enormous amounts of hot dust, but very little cold dust, which is the kind found in the early Universe.
When astronomers reported detecting submillimeter emission from massive amounts of cold interstellar dust in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A last year, some considered the mystery solved.
However, the Max Planck institute in Heidelberg have now discovered that the detected submillimeter emission comes not from the Cas A supernova remnant itself but from the molecular cloud complex known to exist along the line of sight between Earth and Cas A.
So, the mystery continues.
to read more

Using the Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph at Gemini South, a US team used the presence of strong spectral signature of steam in the atmosphere of a faint object, OTS 44, 554 light-years away in the southern constellation of Chameleon to determine that it is the lowest mass, free floating brown dwarf found to date in the Chamaeleon I cloud complex, and to estimate its physical properties...
Position: RA 11:10:09.32 , Dec -76:32:18.0
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present new findings from the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes at a NASA news briefing on Thursday at 6 p.m. GMT . The two Great Observatories have provided new insights into how systems like our own solar system formed and evolved. Hubble has captured a striking new image ( AU Microscopii ), while Spitzer has made discoveries involving sun-like stars with known planets.
AU Microscopii is 33 light-years away in the constellation Microscopium
Position (J2000): R.A. 20h 45m 09s.53 Dec. -31° 20' 27".2
HD 107146 is a G2V Star 88 light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices
Position (J2000): R.A. 12h 19m 06s.50 Dec. +16° 32' 53".9
Preliminary Results from a Spitzer /MIPS Survey of Solar-Type Stars. (pdf)
A Resolved Debris Disk around the G2V star HD 107146. (pdf)
HST/ACS Coronagraphic Imaging of the AU Microscopium Debris Disk, (pdf)
Discovery of a Large Dust Disk Around the Nearby Star AU Microscopium. (pdf)
to read more (pdf)
to read more (future)

shows unexpected signs of heat and, perhaps, volcanism.
Quaoar is 1250 kilometres in diameter - about half the size of Pluto - and is the largest known Kuiper-Belt Object (KBO). These ice-and-rock bodies date back to the formation of the solar system and form a ring - the Kuiper Belt - beyond Neptune's orbit.
Little is known about their composition because they are so distant and faint. However, new observations with the 8-metre Subaru telescope in Hawaii have revealed the spectral signature of crystalline water-ice - and possibly ammonia hydrate (a natural anti-freeze); both substances should be destroyed over a few million years by particle irradiation.
to read more

show a close encounter with a passing star about 4 billion years ago may have given our solar system its abrupt edge and put small, alien worlds into distant orbits around our sun.
This may explain the existence of Sedna, a “planetoid” that orbits beyond Pluto that may have been catapulted into highly elongated orbits. They have also identified another Kuiper Belt Object, 2000 CR105, that is the most likely solar system member to have been captured from a passing star, based on the highly elliptical and inclined orbit (17deg)
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called InFOCuS (International Focusing Optics Collaboration for u-Crab Sensitivity), suspended from a balloon has captured a unique picture of a pulsar 4U 0115+63, which is 23,000 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. .The observation marks a milestone in astronomical imaging
InFOCuS was launched on September 16 and flew for 20 hours.
to read more

	Tidbinbilla Radio Telescope

of radiation ever seen, hasrecorded from from pulsar, B1937+-21, nearly 12,000 light years away. Lasting less than 15 nanoseconds, the burst was recorded by the radio telescope at Tidbinbilla in Australia.
Although the star discovered decades ago, it is only now that telescopes have become sensitive enough to record such a fleeting phenomenon. The radiation intensity measured on Earth to work out the intensity at the surface of the star, known as, the Original Millisecond Pulsar that emits pulses every 1.557 milliseconds that are not particularly bright. This spectacular outburst was a “giant pulse”, something associated with only a few of the known pulsars. No one knows what causes these outbursts.
“For an instant this pulsar appeared fantastically bright, but that instant was extremely brief.”
Position(2000): RA= 9 39 38.58406 Dec= 21 34 58.7684
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	CRBR 2422.8-3423

from the Spitzer Space Telescope are helping astronomers better understand how stars form out of thick clouds of gas and dust, and how the molecules in those clouds ultimately become planets.
Two discoveries -- the detection of an mystery object inside the dust cloud, L1014, what was thought to be an empty cloud, 650ly away in the constellation Cygnus.
Position : RA: 21h24m06.59s Dec: +49d59m07.0s
and the discovery of icy Protoplanetary Disc in a system, CRBR 2422.8-3423, believed to resemble our own solar system in its infancy, in the constellation Ophiuchus, 390 light years away
Position : RA: 16h27m28.8s Dec: -24d41m03s

	SS 433

(VLA) radio telescope has captured the faintest details yet seen in the plasma jets emerging from the microquasar SS 433, an object once dubbed the "enigma of the century." As a result, it has changed scientists' understanding of the jets and settled the controversy over its distance "beyond all reasonable doubt,"
SS 433 is a neutron star or black hole orbited by a "normal" companion star, 18,000 light-years distant in the constellation Aquila. The powerful gravity of the neutron star or black hole draws material from the stellar wind of its companion into an accretion disk of material tightly circling the dense central object prior to being pulled onto it. This disk propels jets of fast protons and electrons outward from its poles at about a quarter of the speed of light. The disk in SS 433 wobbles like a child's top, causing its jets to trace a corkscrew in the sky every 162 days.
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Tycho Brahe noticed a star in the constellation Cassiopeia that was as bright as the planet Jupiter (which was in the night sky in Pisces). No such star had ever been observed at this location before. It soon equalled Venus in brightness (-4.5 magnitude in the predawn sky). For about two weeks the star could be seen in daylight. By the end of November it began to fade , and was lost...
Until now...
The Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 captured an image of a small section of sky containing a candidate star, the progenitor companion to Tycho's Supernova. The star, 9,800 light-years away, is like our Sun except several billion years older, and moving through space at three times the speed of the other stars in its neighbourhood.
This discovery provides the first direct evidence supporting the long-held belief that Type Ia supernovae come from binary star systems containing a normal star and a burned-out white dwarf star. The normal star spills material onto the dwarf, which eventually triggers an explosion.
Position (J2000): R.A. 00h 25m 08s.07 Dec. +64° 09' 55".7

in the UK have finished building the SCT ,a key component of ATLAS, one of the four major experiments that will run on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The semi conductor tracker( SCT) are the `eyes` of the ATLAS experiment. The Large Hadron Collider will recreate the conditions that existed mere moments after the big bang. ATLAS is designed to see what happens next.
"There are very strong indications that the exploration of this completely new energy regime will lead to the discovery of new physics, such as Supersymmetry which would imply the existence of exotic partners to all the previously discovered particles. The new physics might be even more exotic and involve extra spatial dimensions and the production of mini black holes."

studying ancient landslides in the Canary Islands ,a tidal wave able to devastate America's east coast, is vastly overstated.
The researchers are taking part in a three-week research cruise aboard Southampton Oceanography Centre's research ship the RRS Charles Darwin say the threat is far lower than previous warnings would suggest.
In typical landslides, chunks of land break off in bits, not in one dramatic plunge, they claim.
This contradicts previous warnings that an Isle of Man-sized chunk of land could fall off the island of La Palma into the sea, causing a mega-tsunami.
to read more

	magnetic field

The puzzle of magnetic stars solved by astrophysicists of the Max Planck Society
How does one explain the enormous magnetic field strengths of the so-called `magnetic stars'?
This question concerning magnetic fields in the cosmos, first posed half a century ago, has now been answered by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching. With 3-dimensional numerical simulations they have found the magnetic field configurations that underlay the strong magnetic fields observed on the surface of the so-called magnetic Ap (for 'A-peculiar') stars and magnetic White Dwarfs, and how these fields can survive for the life time of these stars.
The results confirm the ‘fossil field’ hypothesis, which proposes that these magnetic fields are remnants of the magnetic field in the gas clouds from which stars are born.
The observed field geometries can develop by evolution from arbitrary, unstable initial fields. The results also apply to magnetic white dwarfs and the highly magnetic neutron stars known as magnetars, neither of which have sufficient dynamo activity to generate their magnetic fields.
to read more

An object radiating high-energy gamma rays has been detected by a team of UK astronomers working with international partners. Their research, published on September 22^nd, was carried out using the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), an array of four telescopes, in Namibia, South-West Africa.
The radiation observed comes from a region very near Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the galaxy. According to most theories of dark matter, it is too energetic to have been created by the annihilation of dark matter particles. The observed energy spectrum best fits theories of the source being a giant supernova explosion, which should produce a constant stream of radiation.
for more information .

sends back the best ever data about the chemicals present in the martian atmosphere, rumours abound that scientists are beginning to detect signs of life on the red planet.
But, despite recent stories, to the contrary, Mars Express PFS Experiment scientist V.Formisano now insists that he has not detected ammonia on Mars, although in a recent conference abstract he had optimistically suggested that his team might have done so.
Update 20^th September :

to read original methane discovery story.

	2002 AW197

that KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects) are smaller than previously thought. KBOs - icy cousins to asteroids and the source of some comets - are the leftover building blocks of the outer planets. Astronomers using the world’s most powerful telescopes have discovered about 1,000 of these objects orbiting beyond Neptune since discovering the first one in 1992. Many astronomers had assumed that KBO albedos - like comet albedos - are around four percent and have used that number to calculate KBO diameters. However, early results from the Spitzer Space Telescope survey of 30 Kuiper Belt Objects, astronomers found that a distant KBO designated 2002 AW197 reflects 18 % of its incident light and is about 700 kilometres in diameter; considerably smaller and more reflective than expected.
to read more

New Uranium/lead dating provides most accurate date yet for Earth's largest extinction.
A new study by geologists improves upon a widely used dating technique, opening the possibility of a vastly more accurate time scale for major geologic events in Earth's history.

for more information .

	Early galaxys

Astronomers have been studying the deepest optical view of the Universe - the Hubble Ultra Deep Field - and they think they've found some of the first star forming galaxies. These galaxies began forming 0.5 - 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The team analysed the HUDF, and found dozens of red, dim dwarf galaxies, which appear to be the first basic galactic building blocks.
These would merge with other galaxies to eventually form the complex spiral formations like our own Milky Way. The also found regions which were more dense than others, which supports the theory that dense regions of space where the first places galaxies formed.

	hum, whats that?

at Virginia Tech has research published that shows Mars probably had liquid water at some point, but likely for only a short time
The Mars Rover Opportunity recently found the mineral jarosite, and using a computer-modeling program it was determined that it formed in acid mine drainage environments as sulphide minerals oxidize, or while volcanic rocks were being altered by acidic, sulphur-rich fluids near volcanic vents.
As such, jarosite formation is thought to need an oxidizing and acidic environment and only forms when a small amount of reaction has occurred and completely decomposes if more water is available.
"This shows that the reaction on Mars ran out of water. Either there was not enough water to begin with or it disappeared quickly,"
Because water is important for life, the discovery could have implications of how long water was present on Mars and the likelihood of finding living organisms there now.
to read more

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