Rare And Unusual Rectangular Galaxy Found By Astronomers

The star gazers - from Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Finland - discovered the quirky cosmic phenomenon within a group of 250 galaxies some 70 million light years away.A rare rectangular galaxy with a striking resemblance to an emerald cut diamond has been discovered by astronomers.

‘In the Universe around us, most galaxies exist in one of three forms - spheroidal, disc-like, or lumpy and irregular in appearance,’ said Associate Professor Alister Graham from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

Associate Professor Alister Graham said ‘It's one of those things that just makes you smile because it shouldn't exist, or rather you don't expect it to exist.It's a little like the precarious Leaning Tower of Pisa or the discovery of some exotic new species which at first glance appears to defy the laws of nature.’ and he added the rare rectangular-shaped galaxy was a very unusual object.

However, the astronomers suspect it is unlikely that this galaxy is actually rectangular in shape. Instead, they believe that it may resemble an inflated disc seen side on, like a short cylinder.
Support for this scenario comes from observations with the giant Keck Telescope in Hawaii, which revealed a rapidly spinning, thin disc with a side-on orientation lurking at the centre of the galaxy. The outermost measured edge of this galactic disc is rotating at a speed in excess of 100,000 kilometres per hour (62,000mph).

‘One possibility is that the galaxy may have formed out of the collision of two spiral galaxies,’ said Swinburne's Professor Duncan Forbes, co author of the research. The unusually shaped galaxy was detected in a wide field-of-view image taken with the Japanese Subaru Telescope for Swinburne astrophysicist Dr Lee Spitler, who was actually using it to look for something else.

A widely held theory is that galaxies grow via mergers, most often as bigger galaxies consume their smaller companions. In fact, our Milky Way galaxy shows signs of recent snacking on one of its dwarf companions. The rectangular galaxy is something of a hybrid, though, because it shows characteristics of two established types of galaxy mergers.

Elliptical galaxies tend to lack the ingredients for making new stars, so computer simulations show that when two ellipsoids merge, the galaxies form similar—if less extreme—boxy shapes and have little star-forming activity.

By contrast, the models show that galaxies with lots of star-forming gases don't become rectangular after they merge, but they do exhibit fresh rounds of star formation. The Subaru image, however, revealed that LEDA 074886 has both a geometric outline and an inner disk of star formation. The unusual dwarf galaxy may therefore help astronomers model more complex types of galaxy mergers.

Ben Moore, a theoretical physicist at the University of Zurich and a study co-author, already had plans to model the formation of LEDA 074886 on a supercomputer later this year. Those simulations will help determine, for example, how long the galaxy will keep its boxy shape, Graham said. In space, diamonds aren't forever: Unless LEDA 074886 merges with yet another perfectly aligned galaxy, it may lose its well-defined corners over the next billion years.

Plate Sized Flying Robot To The Rescue

A dinner plate-sized robot capable of self-controlled flight will be the hands and eyes of humans in places too tricky or risky to access, or say you're out repairing fence when, you realize you forgot your box of Gripples back inside the house. Rather than waste time back-tracking, why not just have your flying boomerang-sized robot retrieve them for you?

That's the dream of Queensland University of Technology's Professor Peter Corke, who believes the robot, which weighs about a kilogram, will have a range of practical uses from farming to search and rescue. The robotics team is working on a similar scenario. They're developing small, eco-friendly flying robots that could be used as farmhands and/or sidekicks to help workers cover ground quickly or reach to those hard-to-reach places.

"Anywhere you want to look, where it is too dangerous or difficult to send a person, this kind of technology will be really useful". Creating a robot that is easy to control has been the main challenge for Prof Corke and his assistant, PhD student Inkyu Sa, at the robotics department."If somebody can't just pick it up and use it inside of 10 minutes, then I think we haven't done our job right," he said.

"You'll be able to put your suitcase on the ground, open it up and send the flying robot off to do its job," said Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering professor, Corke added, "These robots could fly around and deliver objects to people inside buildings and inspect things that are too high or difficult for a human to reach easily. Instead of having to lower someone down on a rope to a window on the seventh floor, or raise them up on a cherrypicker, you could send up the flying robot instead."

"I want this thing to be able to be used by anyone". While there are small flying devices already available, none have the ability to perceive and relate information like this one. "We're about the intelligence that sits on the flying machine that makes it possible to do somewhat complex tasks," Prof Corke said. The small four-bladed flying robot would be useful in any disaster situation, for example. "There's a lot of things we want to inspect that are inconveniently high," Prof Corke said.

The research team says they are using cost-effective technology to keep the robots affordable. Within the 2 year, they'd like to attach arms to the robot so it will be able to make repairs.

Alien City Could Be Found Out With Their Street Lights

If you look at the Earth from space, it's pretty clear that there's intelligent life here because you can pick out cities on the night side. Abraham Loeb, of Harvard University and Edwin Turner, from Princeton University, are saying that we might find other civilizations the same way.The reason is that the way we usually listen for aliens -- via radio signals -- may not work that well. One issue is that contrary to popular belief, TV transmissions don't travel all that far.

The proposal comes from Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and Edwin Turner of Princeton uni."Looking for alien cities would be a long shot, but wouldn't require extra resources. And if we succeed, it would change our perception of our place in the universe," says Loeb.

The plan relies on the assumptions that aliens would use artificial lighting when their location on their planet was turned away from their local star, as humans do. This might not be the case for various reasons, but at least some alien races – if there are a decent number out there – would seem likely to have illuminated cities or something like them.

The good thing about this is that, according to Loeb and Turner, exoplanets with such city/hive/beingness-assemblage lighted patches could potentially be picked out from the rest as the variation in total light emitted from it would show a different signature to that from one without lighted areas. Admittedly this would require telescopes more powerful than those now in service, but the pace of development in humanity's telescopes has been rapid in recent times and the wait for such instruments might not be impossibly long."It's very unlikely that there are alien cities on the edge of our solar system, but the principle of science is to find a method to check," says Turner.

City-spotting could be a better means of finding alien civilisations than traditional methods such as listening out for their radio transmissions. This used to be highly favoured, and our own habit of broadcasting radio, TV etc was thought likely to draw visitors to us, too

Nowadays, however, humanity is beginning to emit much less in the way of detectable radio waves as we make much more use of directional signals and cables to carry our comms and content. Unless an alien civilisation were fortunately/unfortunately placed in time and space it might never spot us by these means, and the same goes for us spotting them if the ETs should follow similar paths of development.But our city lights blaze brighter and more numerous every year, so it may well be that future SETI efforts will prefer to search for similar phenomena rather than trying to tune in to broadcast transmissions.

iPad And Angry Bird Goes Out Of Space

Guys its true, have u ever imagined that an iPad is gonna be taken away from the earth surface, that is gonna happen soon.

Kelly Humphries, NASA representative, revealed to space news website collectSPACE that two iPads are heading for the International Space Station (ISS) in the next few days.

The two iPads are being placed in an unmanned rocket along with other supplies for the two cosmonauts and one astronaut that are currently onboard the ISS. According to Humphries, the iPads will be used only for entertainment, and before the brand was chosen NASA teams had looked through a wide range of tablets and compared their benefits.

Next year, other tablets will probably join the iPads in space. So far, the ISS is like a little Apple fan club since, with two laptops from an unknown maker, there are a few iPods even from 2005 and two iPhone 4 handsets.

Oddly enough the latest shuttle will also transport an Angry Birds soft toy at the request of space personnel. Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov revealed the mystery: "At a time when [we] start weightlessness, about 10 minutes after launch, it will begin to float". The low-tech indicator for the zero gravity point is a tradition for astronauts and cosmonauts who use small charms all the time for this purpose.

UFO In Gagarin Said 2 eyewitness

Oh god now its in Russia too guys ya its true UFO sitting in Russia isnt it amazing there are lots and lots of UFO sitting in the present times so guys what do all you guys think of an UFO. certainly i dont have a clue do you guys have any then hit a mail to me guys. so okay now lets come to the main part.A total of six passenger planes have reported seeing a UFO near the town of Gagarin in western Russia.

A burning object, a smoke trail and six mysterious red dots were reportedly seen in the sky over two Russian towns.One, a pilot on a commercial flight from London to Moscow, claimed to see a 'burning object' followed by a trail of smoke going at high speed over the town, which was named after Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.Hundreds of miles away in SIberia, six red dots were reportedly seen an hour after the Gagarin 'sightings'.
An hour later, six red dots were seen in the sky, hundreds of kilometres away in Siberia. "Leaving a supermarket with my daughter, I saw six moving red dots in the sky. First, it crossed the sky from west to east, then one flew separately, and the rest at some point stayed almost on the same spot," a witness, Andrey Filipov, said.

The Russian Defence Ministry denied any stray missiles or other military objects were in the vicinity of Gagarin at around 7.30pm local time last Thursday.