Friday, 11 March 2016

Clouds on Pluto, Distant Galaxies and Radio Signals



Following the recent announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves, you can help in the further discovery of more signals - link here.
In news from the New Horizons team, something is eating away at Pluto, creating a huge gouge in the Western hemisphere.
Don't panic though, it 's probably just material evaporating ...
Another recent discovery is what appear to be actual clouds on Pluto - caveat, I say actual clouds, but these are nitrogen with traces of methanenot water clouds.
Smelly acid rain then, don't forget your brolly.
Or breathing apparatus, obv.

Impossibly hard to see  wispy clouds on Pluto.  pic NASA

This discovery is possible through the ongoing downloads of material from the September flypast by New Horizons.
The downloads will continue until near the end of this year.
It's a slow process - after all, New Horizons is getting further away, heading for a rendezvous in the Oort cloud in 2019, so it is putting serious miles between us , travelling at approximately 30,000 mph in the opposite direction .
Don't forget the download speed is pathetically low; at an underwhelming 2000 bits a second - there are no Wi - Fi relay / booster stations out there !
Clouds on Pluto are exciting news because they could help in the reclassification of Pluto as a planet (remember it was downgraded in 2006) .
This would create a whole new set of problems with the ongoing search for the mysterious Planet X , which would then become a tenth planet in our solar system.

On its way out of service, Hubble has just imaged the most distant object in the known universe at 13 billion light years distant, which makes it just  aspproximately 400 hundred million years from the Big Bang.

JWST artists impression    pic NASA

Anyway, the incoming James Webb Telescope should easily surpass that, perhaps even revealing the finger of The Supreme Being hovering over the button marked ' Start .'
But I digress...
In other news, the source of the mysterious signal FRB 121102 has been pinpointed (approximately) -but they are none the wiser as to what exactly it is .
The actual signals seem to be clustered irregularly, which implies an artificial nature, perhaps designed to be noticed.
Beyond that, there is only speculation at present - but the 'alien megastructure' theory is no longer viable.
To add to the confusion, doubts have already been cast on the validity of the report - the internet is no slouch when it comes to raining on parades !
Despite this, the internet can also have its uses - for instance, here's a link to many Russian films, including the only horror film made in the old USSR 'Viy', and the mesmerising ' Stalker' - pointless and strange ? Exactly, that's why we're here !