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Why is Space So Black?

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space - pixabay

Look up at the night sky with your own eyes, or marvel at images of the universe online, and you’ll see the same thing: the inky, abysmal blackness of space, punctuated by bright stars, planets or spacecraft. But why is it black? Why isn’t space colorful, like the blue daytime sky on Earth? Surprisingly, the answer has little to do with a lack of light. “You would think that since there are billions of stars in our galaxy, billions of galaxies in the universe and other objects, such as planets, that reflect light, that when we look up at the … Read more

SPACE: Are There Anti-Matter Stars? We Don’t Know… yet

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Anti-Matter Star - Deposit Photos

Out of an estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy, no more than 14 may be made from antimatter. That’s the result from a new study that scoured the Milky Way for signs of antistars — which are identical to regular stars save for the fact that they would burn antimatter at their cores. Though the findings turned up mostly empty this time, researchers haven’t yet fully ruled out the existence of antistars, whose presence would change much about our understanding of the universe. The recent search for antistars can be traced back to 2018, when a $1.5-billion experiment called … Read more

SPACE: Astronomers Find Six Star System

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multiple star system - deposit photos

Ever ridden a teacup ride at a state fair? If so, you might have a small taste of life in a whirling, twirling sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system. “Sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system” is astronomer-speak for a system with six stars all orbiting each other and all regularly eclipsing one another from the perspective of Earth — and astronomers have just found one named TIC 168789840. This six- star system is far enough from Earth (a bit less than 2,000 light-years away) that telescopes can’t resolve its individual stars, which blur together into a single point of light. Instead, astronomers were able … Read more

FOR READERS & WRITERS: The First Alien Message

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alien on the phone - deposit photos

FOR READERS & WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Scott: If we ever receive a message from the stars, what will the aliens say to us? One sentence, please. Writers: This is a reader/writer chat – you are welcome to share your own book/link, as long as it fits the chat, but please do so as part of a discussion about the topic. Join the chat: FB: http://bit.ly/1MvPABVMeWe: http://bit.ly/2mjg8lf

SPACE: Are They Watching Us?

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alien - pixabay

There are about 1,000 star systems where aliens, if they existed, could be watching us from afar, new research suggests. Those 1,004 star systems are in a direct line of sight to our planet, and close enough to us that they could not only detect planet Earth, but also chemical traces of Earthly life.  Over the course of the last decade, astronomers have found exoplanets orbiting distant stars using a simple formula: Keep an eye on a star and wait for it to suddenly dim. That dimming is a sign of a planet passing between the star and the telescope. … Read more

Astronomers Find Black Hole “Close” to Solar System

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HR 6819

A newfound black hole may be the closest black hole to Earth, and you can spot its cosmic home in the night sky without a telescope. The black hole, which is lurking 1,000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Telescopium, belongs to a system with two companion stars that are bright enough to observe with the naked eye. But you won’t be able to see the black hole itself; the massive object has such a strong gravitational pull that nothing — not even light — can escape it. Astronomers discovered this black hole while studying what they thought … Read more

SPACE: There Are Vampire Stars???

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A “vampire” dwarf star is sucking the life force from its partner star, and their entanglement produced a rare superoutburst. NASA detailed this previously unknown dwarf nova, a brief eruption from dwarf stars, in a statement on Jan. 24. The system brightened by a factor of 1,600 over less than a day, space agency officials said in the statement, and this uncommon sighting was made by a mission targeting an entirely different cosmic population. This rare finding was made by “accident,” according to the research team that found the super-outburst. The Kepler Space Telescope is now retired, but when it … Read more

SPACE: Has Life From Earth Already Gone to the Stars?

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A pair of Harvard astrophysicists have proposed a wild theory of how life might have spread through the universe. Imagine this: Millions or billions of years ago, back when the solar system was more crowded, a giant comet grazed the outer reaches of our atmosphere. It was moving fast, several tens of miles above the Earth’s surface — too high to burn up as a fireball, but low enough that the atmosphere slowed it down a little bit. Extremely hardy microbes were floating up there in its path, and some of those bugs survived the collision with the ball of … Read more

SPACE: Where is Everybody? And What Does That Mean for Us?

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stars - pixabay

It is 1950 and a group of scientists are walking to lunch against the majestic backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. They are about to have a conversation that will become scientific legend. The scientists are at the Los Alamos Ranch School, the site for the Manhattan Project, where each of the group has lately played their part in ushering in the atomic age. They are laughing about a recent cartoon in the New Yorker offering an unlikely explanation for a slew of missing public trash cans across New York City. The cartoon had depicted “little green men” (complete with antenna … Read more

TV: Tyler Posey and Avan Jogia Share a Hot Moment in “Now Apocalypse” Trailer

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“Now Apocalypse,” Starz’s newest comedy series, dropped the first trailer for its debut season which features a steamy moment between Tyler Posey and Avan Jogia.  Deadline reports that the 10-episode season will tell the story of friends Ulysses (Jogia), Carly (Kelli Berglund), Ford (Beau Mirchoff) and Severine (Roxane Mesquida) as they try to figure out life and love in Los Angeles. As Ulysses struggles with his daytime drama he also encounters strange dreams that he can’t shake. In the trailer, there is a clip of Ulysses having a passionate encounter with Gabriel (Posey), who he meets on a dating app. Mariah … Read more