For the other Astronuts out there

[SIZE=1.2em]"These are the first stunning pictures of comet PanSTARRS as it became visible above the UK for the first time last night.[/SIZE]
Paul Kingston managed to capture comet C/2011 L4 PanSTARRS in almost clear skies above the Irish Sea as it graced the western horizon trailing a blaze of fire.
The pictures were taken over from near Whitehaven, Cumbria, and at St Bridget's Church in the nearby seaside village of Lowca.

[SIZE=1.2em]Mr Kingston, 31, of Teesdale, said: 'It was an amazing sight to see the comet which I've been looking forward to seeing for some months now.[/SIZE]
'It's one of the first glimpses we've had in the UK due to cloud cover but there was a fantastic sunset and beautiful clear skies.
'It was really difficult to spot at first, with it being in the same part of the sky as the setting Sun, but once darkness set in, it was there in all its glory, beneath the crescent moon.
'It's very difficult to see with the naked eye, but with binoculars or a DSLR camera you shouldn't have a problem and it's due to be in the western skies for the next few weeks.'"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2293212/PanSTARRS-comet-First-pictures-makes-appearance-skies-Britain.html#ixzz2NWN562yD

 

No likes....but thats a beut....thanks for posting that...I needed a bloody good belly laugh...Cheers...

 

It's kinda related to space....

"Scientists have discovered an ancient pocket of water trapped deep beneath the ground which could have been isolated from the rest of the world for up to 2.7 billion years – making it the oldest known aquifer, with scientists wondering whether it contains life.

The water was found pouring out of boreholes from a copper and zinc mine 2.4 kilometres deep beneath Ontario in Canada. Chemical analysis shows that the water could support primitive microbial life-forms if they were adapted to living off the minerals and hydrogen seeping into the water from the surrounding rock.
Tests by researchers have shown that the water is at least 1.5 billion years old, but the surrounding geology suggests it could be much older, dating to a time when all of life on Earth had not evolved much beyond primitive, single-celled microbes.
The scientists said they intend to analyse the water for signs of life, which could help in the development of techniques for finding extra-terrestrial life-forms living within underground pockets of water on either Mars or Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ancient-underground-lake-isolated-from-the-rest-of-the-world-for-27-billion-years-discovered-in-canadian-mine--but-does-it-contain-life-8617683.html

 

Sounds lovely...I'll have two bottles please...yummy..

 

"An telescope monitoring the moon has captured the moment a 40kg rock slammed into the lunar surface creating a bright flash of light.
The explosion on March 17 was the biggest seen since NASA began watching the moon for meteoroid impacts about eight years ago. So far, more than 300 strikes have been recorded.
'It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before,' Bill Cooke, with NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said in a statement.
NASA satellite orbiting the moon is now on a hunt for the newly formed crater, which scientists estimate could be as wide as 20 meters.
The flash was so bright that anyone looking at the moon at the moment of impact could have seen it without a telescope, NASA said.
[SIZE=1.2em]After reviewing digital recordings made by one of the program's telescopes, scientists determined the space rock was about 1ft (0.3 meters) in diameter, and traveling about 56,000 mph when it slammed into the moon and exploded with the force of five tons of TNT.[/SIZE]
That same night, cameras detected an unusually high number of meteors blasting through Earth's atmosphere as well. Most meteors burn up well before reaching the ground."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2326526/Telescope-catches-moment-40kg-rock-hits-moon-creates-giant-ball-light-seen-Earth.html#ixzz2ThMFId5j

 

"A giant meteor was probably responsible for wiping out the woolly mammoth, scientists believe.
It has long been thought that hunting was the cause of the creatures’ extinction, but researchers have now revised their opinion.
They believe a huge meteor smashing through the Earth's atmosphere broke up into ten million tonnes of fiery fragments, scattering over four continents.
These fragments are thought to have released toxic gas which poisoned the air and blacked out the sun, causing temperatures to plummet, plants to die and landscapes to alter forever.
Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that this caused the extinction, countering previous theories that the spread of human settlements and aggressive hunting was to blame.
After the impact, some animal species, like humans, adapted by either moving away, downsizing to adapt to the resources around them, or simply changed their way of life to cope.
But other species, including the woolly mammoth which roamed throughout Europe, parts of Asia and North America in vast numbers, did not adapt and were wiped out in a generation.
The research says the impact changed the course of the Earth's history forever.
According to anthropologist and geology professor Kenneth Tankersley, the change from booming population to total extinction happened 'within a lifetime'.
The University of Cincinnati professor said: ‘Imagine living in a time when you look outside and there are elephants walking around Cincinnati.
‘But by the time you are at the end of your years there are no more elephants. It happens within your lifetime.’
Working with scientists all over the world, the team found evidence of burnt out fragments of carbon - called spherules - in sites on four continents, and all dating back 12,800 years."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2328374/A-giant-meteor--overhunting--wiped-woolly-mammoth-struggled-cope-rapid-climate-change-followed.html#ixzz2Tz2e0SxW

 

My impression for some time has been that the mass extinctions were a result of a number of factors. Severe disruption of the ecosystem was one of the contributing factors in most of the materials I've read. A strike such as mentioned would certainly count. Predetation though was likely (IMO) the final straw in many (most?) cases. The huge shock to the ecosystem would mean that many predators are looking for food and that it's far more scares than it was. Combine that with a slow reproduction rate (typical of most mega fauna) and you have a reciepe for extinction. It's worth noteing that at least in the Americas it wasn't just the Mammoth but most of the large herbivors and not a few of the large carnivors became extinct about the same time.

An afterthought does this event also correlate with some of the exticntions in Australia?

 

Doesn't seem to, unless I've misread-
http://austhrutime.com/mass_extinctions.htm

 

Indeed looking at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event#Australia_and_New_Guinea
The last major Australian extinction events seem to have occured about 50,000 years ago while those in the Americas were about 10,000 years ago. Eurasian and African "events" seam to be less clearly dated and not as severe.

 

"Predation though was likely (IMO) the final straw in many (most?) cases."
After a meteor strike, wouldn't the larger animals be the first to go? Then the smaller animals would thrive off of the carcasses. For long enough that Earth would return to a state they could more easily survive?

 

"A telescope monitoring the moon has captured the moment a 40kg rock slammed into the lunar surface creating a bright flash of light."
-Fairly amazing to me that they can figure out the size and velocity. Should be easy to figure out where it hit if they can figure the other stuff out.
-Wouldn't finding a 20 meter crater where there are thousands of craters, be tough to do?
-And if those fragments that hit the moon were to hit earth, would our atmosphere be able to burn 'em up?

There have been a lot of reported "booms" and ground shaking all over the world lately. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPhbUT53I5U there have been a lot of other reports as well in other locations.

And this by Linda Moulton Howe http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=2058&category=Environment Has this been in the big news in the US?

 

"Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, astronomers have discovered.
Researchers say the groundbreaking discovery is 'the equivalent of discovering a missing link between winged dinosaurs and early birds', and sheds new light on how the Universe formed.
The new mega-galaxy, dubbed HXMM01, 'is the brightest, most luminous and most gas-rich submillimeter-bright galaxy merger known,' the authors write in Nature.

HXMM01 is fading away as fast as it forms, a victim of its own cataclysmic birth, the researchers say.Capturing the creation of this type of large, short-lived star body is extremely rare, the team said,
As the two parent galaxies smashed together, they gobbled up huge amounts of hydrogen, emptying that corner of the universe of the star-making gas.
'These galaxies entered a feeding frenzy that would quickly exhaust the food supply in the following hundreds of million years and lead to the new galaxy's slow starvation for the rest of its life,' said lead author Hai Fu of the University of California in Irvine.
'This monster system of interacting galaxies is the most efficient star-forming factory ever found in the Universe at a time when it was only 3 billion years old.
'Finding this type of galaxy is as important as the discovery of the archaeopteryx was in understanding dinosaurs' evolution into birds, because they were both caught at a critical transitional phase,' Fu said."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2329173/Astronomers-spot-missing-link-galaxy-collision-creating-supermassive-galaxy-times-size-Milky-Way.html#ixzz2U4QVTLld

 

Dude, these baby blues can't pick up what you are putting down...why is your type so small? There's been 3-4 posts of yours that were barely legible. Does the small type not show on your end?..Want to read , but...

 

Sorry Poppy. Seems to be a conflict between the software on here and whatever the papers are using. I've changed them to 12 point font, so you should be able to see them now.

 

Yes. Much better, but still smaller than the one I use now. .Do they charge for font size yonder? Like the BBC TV license?..Dudes peaking in your window, radioing back to headquarters: "Historians' font is waaay too big", then full body armour guys crash through the roof.