SOME RECENTLY POSTED ASTRONOMY PICTURES

Above, the Horsehead Nebula as seen recently by The Hubble space telescope. Actually, it's a composite of several pictures taken at different wavelengths.

For comparrison, here's the same nebula as it appeared in the years before we had The Hubble. A big difference, eh?



 Here's (above) a fragment of a recent episode of "Through the Wormhole." It makes the amazing claim that gravity may not exist. If it does exist then where are the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein? An elaborate, well-funded search just concluded and it turned up nothing. According to this show what we call gravity might just be the same thing as the Strong Force operating through gluon pairs rather than individual gluons.

That's an amazing thing to say. In order to explain why gravity is so weak compared to other forces, we've come up with other dimensions, endless bubble universes, and M Theory. What if none of that was necessary to explain what we see? The demotion of gravity from force to something less would simplify things and overturn a lot of currently believed ideas. Who's right?

Above, a picture of gigantic spouting water ice geysers on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. It took a while to figure out that the water was coming from within the world and not from canyons on the moon's surface. Now it's widely believed that there is indeed a liquid ocean under the surface, and comparisons are being made to Jupiter's watery moon, Europa. Could this world be a candidate for life?

Don't get me wrong...there's no evidence that Earth life began there. It's all fun speculation. It's easy to imagine the early Solar System where ejecta from impacts brought about an exchange of materials between planets and moons. Maybe life began on Earth and was transferred to Europa or Enceladus.

That's Earth above, as it's thought to have looked 4 billion years ago in it's "Hadeon" period. I'm guessing that Hadeon is derived from "Hades."

Another picture of The Milky Way.

MORE RECENT ASTRONOMY PICTURES

Above is Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. It's tiger stripe surface constantly changes due to water ice escaping from the interior and reshaping the surface. Recently discovered gravitational fluctuations indicate that a large liquid ocean may exist under the surface, making Enceladus a candidate for life.

Where the moon gets its warmth isn't understood. Another moon of more or less the same size and distance from Saturn is completely dead.

The inflation theory has come under attack recently by scientists who claim that it's not needed to explain why the universe is as uniform as it is. In March new data was recorded by a microwave observatory at the South Pole that seems to confirm the inflation theory. The findings are controversial and the facts are still being checked.

Here's (above) an odd one: a galaxy that's tearing itself apart from the inside. Not much star formation is visible in the pinwheel, but lots of recently created star clusters appear in the matter ejected from the galaxy.

Above, the Great Nebula in Orion, about 1500 light years away. It's in the same spiral arm that we inhabit. The colors are unfortunately false. They're added to code  temperature and composition.

Here (above) are new gamma ray photos of the center of our galaxy. They've caused quite a stir because they may be evidence that particles of dark matter (called "WIMPS) are colliding with each other there, and producing much more gamma rays than present theory allows for. This conclusion is so far hotly contested.