Tonight's Meteor Shower Is Spectacular Debris From Halley’s Comet

The annual Orionid meteor shower peaks tonight! Caused by small pieces of Comet Halley hitting our atmosphere at 147,000 miles per hour (66 kilometers per second), this shower is noted for variable rates - some years see only 15-20 meteors per hour on the peak night, whereas others have sported a maximum rate as high as 80-90 meteors per hour. The rates have been fairly low the past few years, and this year is particularly bad with the waning Moon located very close to the radiant, washing out the fainter meteors.

4:01:00 AM   by Benzir Ahammed Shawon ·   0

The Moons Formation Was Even More Dramatic Than Thought

Photo: NASA

The Moon likely formed when the primordial Earth slammed into a Mars-sized object, throwing a sizable chunk of material into orbit, which eventually became our satellite. While this has been known for a few decades, the details are still a mystery. Now, a crucial piece of evidence could help clarify exactly how it happened.

3:04:00 AM   by Benzir Ahammed Shawon ·   0

Science confirms that gravitational waves exist

Photo: NASA

At last, scientists have validated a key part of Einstein's general theory of relativity. The National Science Foundation, Caltech and MIT have confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime. Their two LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) detectors measured atomic-scale differences on September 14th, 2015 that point to the collision of black holes (also a new discovery) 1.3 billion years ago, triggering gravity ripples that only just reached Earth. There have long been hints of these waves, but hard evidence has proven elusive until now.

11:37:00 PM   by Benzir Ahammed Shawon ·   0

This ancient Babylonian map of Jupiter just changed history as we know it

You're looking at the foundations of modern calculus.

Trustees of the British Museum/Mathieu Ossendrijver

Analysis of an ancient code breaking tablet has revealed that Babylonian astronomers had calculated the movements of Jupiter using an early form of geometric calculus some 1,400 years before we thought the technique was invented by the Europeans.

3:40:00 PM   by Benzir Ahammed Shawon ·   0

New Earth-like Planet found

Earth-like planet discovered using NASA's Kepler space telescope

An artistic illustration compares Earth (L) to a planet beyond the solar system that is a close match to Earth, called Kepler-452b in this NASA image released on July 23, 2015. REUTERS

A haul of planets from Nasa's Kepler telescope includes a world sharing many characteristics with Earth.

Kepler-452b orbits at a very similar distance from its star, though its radius is 60% larger.

Mission scientists said they believed it was the most Earth-like planet yet.

Such worlds are of interest to astronomers because they might be small and cool enough to host liquid water on their surface - and might therefore be hospitable to life.

4:43:00 PM   by Benzir Ahammed Shawon ·   0

NASA's New Horizons mission

In what may rewrite science books soon, NASA's New Horizons mission - launched in 2006 and has travelled over 4.8 billion km so far at the speed of 45,000 km per hour - fly past the mysterious dwarf planet on Tuesday.

12:27:00 AM   by Benzir Ahammed Shawon ·   0

UFO encounter in Germany, witnesses experience paralysis

Date: March 9, 1993

Location: Braunschweig , Germany

Through the bedroom window, we saw a bright round shining object stationary at a height of some 10 metres or so above the birch trees to the east... it was now immediately quite clear to me that I was looking at an unknown flying object... we could see its shape absolutely clearly."

11:40:00 PM   by Benzir Ahammed Shawon ·   0