NASA-International Space Station

A new surveillance of a far away object five billion light years from Earth may now help to explain the riddle. The object is a quasar, a powerful source of energy supposed to mark the location of an active giant black hole. Nothing that gets close enough to a black hole can get away its powerful gravity. However, objects swirling around the edge of a black hole can radiate vast amounts of energy. Radiation from the quasar was being emitted when the universe was little more than a third of its present age.

To their surprise, the astronomers found that unlike most quasars, this one was ''naked'' and not located at the centre of a galaxy. However, there was a companion galaxy close to it creating innovative stars at a frantic rate corresponding to about 350 suns per year. The galaxy was successfully ''under fire'' from jets of high energy particles and fast moving gas shooting out of the quasar, the scientists found.

The torrent of material was likely to be fuelling star formation in the galaxy, the scientists believe. In result, the quasar was building its own host galaxy. At a later stage the quasar was predictable to end up at the galaxy's centre.

''The two objects are bound to join in the future: the quasar is moving at a velocity of only a few tens of thousands of kilometers per hour with respect to the companion galaxy and their severance is only about 22,000 light-years,'' said lead scientist Dr David Elbaz, from the CEA research institute in Saclay, France.

''Although the quasar is still 'naked', it will ultimately be 'dressed' when it joins with its star-rich companion. It will then finally dwell inside a host galaxy similar to all other quasars.'' A related process may have led to the progress of other large galaxies with enormous black holes nestling within them, the scientists believe.

On Friday, NASA spotted an old science payload from an earlier shuttle mission in the vicinity of the 220-mile-high space station. It's likely to come within nine miles Monday. For now, it's not considered a threat.

Edward Wright, the chief investigator for the mission at the University of California, said: "We will find millions of objects that have never been seen before."

Further afield, it could identify galaxies that are shrouded by dust, or so ancient and remote that current telescopes cannot make them out.

Excitingly, it may also find a theoretical ninth planet in our own solar system (since Pluto is no longer counted as a planet, there are at present only eight).

The patterns of comet orbits around our sun suggests that there may be a enormous gas giant planet, about 25,000 times as far from the Sun as the Earth is, as yet undetected.

The Wise telescope may possibly spot a Jupiter-sized planet as far as 60,000 Earth-to-Sun-distances (called astronomical units, or Aus) from the Sun, according to one of the scientists behind it, Peter Eisenhardt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and it will be vigorously looking for the distant giant.

It is believable, if unlikely, that the telescope could save the planet, as well. Since it will be able to spot formerly invisible asteroids, it might give us enough warning to do something about it if one was on a collision course with Earth.

Scientists have been trying to prove signs of life on mars

“This is very strong proof of life on Mars,” said David Mackay, a senior scientist at the Nasa Johnson Space Centre , who was part of the team of scientists that formerly investigated the meteorite when it was discovered in 1984.

The latest analyses show that this is very unlikely to have resulted in the kinds of structures seen in the rock. Close assessment recommended that about 25 per cent of the crystal structures were chemically reliable with being formed from bacteria.

Allen Hills Meteorite

According to scientists, the meteorite was broken off the surface of Mars by the collision of an asteroid, and reached Earth after floating through space for about 16 million years. It landed in Allan Hills in Antarctica. Scientists were talented to trace the meteorite back to Mars, as its chemical composition matched the relative proportions of different gases measured in observations of the atmosphere of Mars made by the Viking spacecraft in the 1970s.

Microscopic view of the rock

The meteorite also conserves evidence of liquid water on Mars, signifying that the planet may have had more suitable conditions for life to develop in the past. The study was published in the November issue of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the journal of the Geochemical and Meteoritic Society. Nasa is likely to announce the findings formally on Monday.

The team has also been studying two additional Martian meteorites — Nakhla, which landed in Egypt in 1911, and Yamato 593, which was found by a Japanese expedition to Antarctica. In research due to be published shortly, the scientists declare that both of these fossils also show evidence of microbial life.

A close up view of red planet shows the craters on its surface

Bill Clinton, then the US President, said of the research in 1997: “It speaks of the possibility of life. If this innovation is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most astonishing insights into our Universe that science has ever uncovered. Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined.”

“It was absolutely a wave,” George Mason University scientist Spiros Patsourakos, lead author of a paper on the solar tsunamis in August in The Astrophysical Research Journal Letters, said in a press release. “Not a wave of water,” he adds, “but a giant wave of hot plasma and magnetism.” The spacecraft have also spotted waves crashing into other solar structures.

“We’ve seen the waves reflected by coronal holes. And there is a wonderful movie (at right) of a solar fame oscillating after it gets hit by a wave (near the top of the image),” co-author Angelos Vourdilas of the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C., said in a press release. “We name it a dancing prominence.”

Watching the waves interact with other things can reveal innovative information about the sun’s atmosphere, and assist forecast when a coronal mass ejection or radiation storm will impact Earth.

In the auroras above the northern latitudes of Saturn, Cassini has spotted the tallest known "northern lights" in the solar system, flickering in shape and brightness high above the ringed planet.

The new video reveals changes in Saturn's aurora every little minute, in high resolution, with three dimensions. The images show a formerly unseen vertical profile to the auroras, which ripple in the video like tall curtains. These curtains reach more than 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) over the edge of the planet's northern hemisphere.

Auroras occur on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn and a few other planets, and the innovative images will help scientists improved understand how they are generated.

An Aurora

"The auroras have put on a amazing show, shape-shifting rapidly and exposing curtains that were suspected to be there, but hadn't seen on Saturn before," said Andrew Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who is a member of the Cassini imaging team that processed the latest video. "Seeing these things on a new planet helps us understand them a little better when we see them on Earth."

Auroras appear generally in the high latitudes near a planet's magnetic poles. When charged particles from the magnetosphere the magnetic bubble surrounding a planet plunge into the planet's higher atmosphere, they cause the atmosphere to glow. The curtain shapes prove the paths that these charged particles take as they flow along the lines of the magnetic field between the magnetosphere and the topmost part of the atmosphere.

An aurora above the northern part of Saturn

The height of the curtains on Saturn exposes a key distinction between Saturn's atmosphere and our own, Ingersoll said. While Earth's atmosphere has a lot of oxygen and nitrogen, Saturn's atmosphere is composed chiefly of hydrogen. Because hydrogen is very light, the atmosphere and auroras reach extreme out from Saturn. Earth's auroras tend to flare only about 100 to 500 kilometers over the surface.

The speed of the auroral changes in the video is similar to some of those on Earth, but scientists are still working to understand the processes that produce these quick changes. The height will also help them discover how much energy is necessary to light up auroras.

Ultraviolet and infrared instruments on Cassini have captured images of and data from Saturn's auroras before, but in these newest images, Cassini's narrow-angle camera was able to confine the northern lights in the noticeable part of the light spectrum, in higher resolution.

The images were initially obtained in black and white, and the imaging team highlighted the auroras in false-color orange. The oxygen and nitrogen in Earth's upper atmosphere add to the colorful flashes of green, red and even purple in auroras. But scientists are still operational to determine the true color of the auroras at Saturn, whose atmosphere lacks those chemicals.

This complex image uses data from three of NASA's Great Observatories. The Chandra X-ray image is shown in blue, the Hubble Space Telescope optical images are in yellow and red, and the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared image is in purple. The X-ray image is smaller than the others because tremendously energetic electrons emitting X-rays radiate away their energy more quickly than the lower-energy electrons emitting optical and infrared light. Along with many other telescopes, Chandra has frequently observed the Crab Nebula over the course of the mission’s lifetime. The Crab Nebula is one of the major studied objects in the sky, truly making it a cosmic icon.

It shows the moon's south polar region, where jets of water vapor and other particles spew from fissures on the surface.

"These first raw images are stunning, and paint an even more attractive picture of Enceladus," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The Cassini teams will be delving into the data to better appreciate the workings of this bizarre, active moon."

Scientists are chiefly interested in the tiger stripes, which are fissures in the South Polar Region, because they discharge jets of water vapor and other particles hundreds of kilometers, or miles, from the surface. This flyby was scientists' last peek at the tiger stripes before the South Pole fades into the dusk of winter for numerous years. The thermal imaging work focused on the tiger stripe known as Baghdad Sulcus.

It shows the ridges and fractures on the surface of the icy moon.

The Nov. 21 encounter, which is occasionally called "E8" since it is the eighth targeted flyby of Enceladus, brought Cassini to within about 1,600 kilometers of the moon's surface, at around 82 degrees south latitude. Cassini is now cruising toward Rhea, another one of Saturn's moons, for additional imaging and mapping work.

Spirit rover

However, NASA said the progress was too slight to establish any instant trends for hopes of freeing the stalled rover, which landed on Mars in 2004 with its twin Opportunity and has far surpassed its expected three months of usefulness.

Spirit was moving backward in April when its wheels broke through Mars' soft surface and became stuck in a scrap of talcum-like dirt. The rover tried to plot its way out of the sand trap but its wheels sunk deeper.

The plan calls for Spirit to impel forward and retrace its steps in an effort to free itself.

Spirit landed on Mars with six operational wheels but soon lost movement in its right front wheel. The rover since has been exploring the planet dragging its broken wheel down.

Attempts to free the rover will prolong until at least February. If Spirit is not free by then, NASA may choose whether it's worth it to keep trying, said Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars exploration program at NASA headquarters.

The spacewalkers then got separated. Foreman installed cables for a space-to-ground antenna on the Destiny laboratory and replaced a handrail on the Unity node with one having a bracket to route an ammonia cable for the Tranquility Node to be delivered next year. He also effectively connected a cable on the Unity Node, which in September had defied efforts by STS-128 astronauts.

Satcher lubricated the latching end effectors on the Japanese robotic arm and an alike attachment device on the station’s mobile base system. They were approximately two hours ahead when the final scheduled task was completed.

A get-ahead task involved fitting of a Payload Attach System (PAS). It was one of three such jobs intended for the second spacewalk. Installation of this PAS, on the Earth-facing side of the Starboard 3 truss, had been planned as a 1.5-hour job on Saturday's spacewalk.

About Mission

Planet Nibiru collides with Earth

The concealed planet was supposedly discovered by the Sumerians, according to claims by pseudo-scientists, paranormal activity enthusiasts and Internet theorists.

Some websites have betrayed the US space agency of concealing the truth about the wayward planet’s existence, but NASA has denounced such stories as an “internet hoax.”According to a statement in the Telegraph, NASA said in a question-and-answer posting on its website, “There is no factual basis for these claims.”

If such a collision were genuine, “astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye,” it said. “Obviously, it does not exist,” it added.“Credible scientists worldwide recognize of no threat associated with 2012,” it insisted.After all, “our earth has been receiving along just well for more than four billion years,” added NASA.

Initial theories set the tragedy for May 2003, but when nothing happened, the date was moved forward to the winter solstice in 2012, to correspond with the end of a cycle of the ancient Mayan calendar.

Mayan calendar

NASA insisted the Mayan calendar does not in fact end on December 21, 2012, as another period begins instantaneously afterward; and it said there are no planetary alignments on the horizon for the next few decades.

Even if the planets were to line up as some have forecast, the consequence on our planet would be “negligible,” NASA said.

The LCROSS spacecraft, which was built at a cost of $79 million, crashed the lunar surface so that scientists could probe the debris for the existence of water. The project scientist Anthony Colaprete, who is also the principal researcher for NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffet Field, said "Indeed yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a major amount."

It might be remembered that Chandrayan, the Indian lunar probe had established evidence of water on Moon and shared the findings with NASA almost a month ago. Chandrayan has NASA’s lunar analyzing equipment built-in on board.


For long, scientists have alleged that there is water on the surface of moon, predominantly at its south pole, which is permanently shadowed by craters. These craters have frozen water since the temperature is wintry. NASA has been analyzing the debris of the lunar crater by its sensing satellite and is planning to launch a mission to the moon by 2020.