Recently in Space/Science/Astronomy Category

In this image provided by NASA low-level winds rushing over the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of northwestern Africa created cloud vortexs which share this scene with the top of the Hubble Space Telescope locked down in the cargo bay of the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis Friday May 15, 2009. Friday's spacewalk was one of the longest ever, lasting nearly 8 hours, and Mission Control told the weary crew members that they could sleep in and start Saturday's spacewalk a little late. They had been scheduled to begin the third spacewalk at 8:16 a.m. EDT. (AP Photo/NASA)

Awesome photographs snapped from the International Space Station of The Palm Islands and The World in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The large versions give the best view.

This image provided by NASA Tuesday April 21, 2009 shows a peculiar system of galaxies known as Arp 194. This interacting group contains several galaxies, along with a 'cosmic fountain' of stars, gas, and dust that stretches over 100,000 light-years. The most striking feature of this galaxy troupe is the impressive blue stream of material extending from the northern component. This 'fountain' contains complexes of super star clusters, each one of which may contain dozens of individual young star clusters. The blue color is produced by the hot, massive stars which dominate the light in each cluster. Overall, the 'fountain' contains many millions of stars. This picture was issued to celebrate the 19th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. During the past 19 years Hubble has made more than 880,000 observations and snapped over 570,000 images of 29,000 celestial objects. The Space Shuttle Discovery placed the Hubble Space Telescope into Earth orbit on April 25, 1990. (AP Photo/NASA)

Tiny and dying but still-powerful stars called pulsars spin like crazy and light up their surroundings, often with ghostly glows. So it is with PSR B1509-58, which long ago collapsed into a sphere just 12 miles in diameter after running out of fuel.
And what a strange scene this one has created.

In a new image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light.

Many people hate the idea of a loved one being dissected - even if it could provide vital clues about how and why they died. But it may not be necessary for much longer. A growing number of countries, including the UK, Australia, US, and Japan, are looking towards virtual autopsies as an alternative to opening the bodies of people who die in suspicious circumstances.

By combining surface scans of the body with CT and MRI scans, it is possible to work out what happened to a person without cutting them open. A small biopsy of tissue is also taken to measure cellular structure and to check for the presence of drugs.

Virtual autopsies have several advantages: as well as overcoming moral objections to autopsy, it also means the pathologist has a permanent 3D record of damage to the body, something which isn't possible once you begin cutting it open. Description of autopsies will also become less subjective, as the data can be reinterpreted by independent pathologists if need be.

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Fermilab says: "Hey wait, we're in the Higgs hunt, too!"

It looks like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may have some competition in its search for the much-anticipated Higgs boson, the source of mass.

Yesterday CERN, the European particle physics lab, announced that on September 10 it would begin shooting protons around the full 27 kilometers (17 miles) of the circular LHC--the most powerful particle accelerator ever built--building up to collisions with a second, opposing beam in subsequent months.

Researchers don't know much concentrated energy it takes to make the Higgs particle pop out, but they are confident that the sheer number of high-energy particle collisions the LHC was designed to produce ought to generate lots of Higgs bosons, enough to spot them from among other collision debris.

But the LHC isn't the only machine with the potential for finding the Higgs. At a conference this week, researchers working on the Tevatron [above, background] at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Ill.--still the top particle accelerator for a few months more--have finally collected enough data that they can start to rule out the Higgs along portions of the energy range the LHC will also explore.

The crescent moon is accompanied by planets Venus, bottom, and Jupiter, right, as evening sky clouds stream by the trio in this 15-second time exposure made from Stedman, N.C. Monday night, Dec. 1, 2008 using a telephoto lens. The striking grouping was widely observed from the eastern US. Earlier in the day observers in England saw the moon completely cover Venus. (AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Johnny Horne)

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A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible's camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and--strangest of all--"elbowed" Magnapinna squid. (See photos of Magnapinna.)

In a brief video from the dive recently obtained by National Geographic News, one of the rarely seen squid loiters above the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico on November 11, 2007.

The clip--from a Shell oil company ROV (remotely operated vehicle)--arrived after a long, circuitous trip through oil-industry in-boxes and other email accounts.

"Perdido ROV Visitor, What Is It?" the email's subject line read--Perdido being the name of a Shell-owned drilling site. Located about 200 miles (320 kilometers) off Houston,

Texas (Gulf of Mexico map), Perdido is one of the world's deepest oil and gas developments.

The video clip shows the screen of the ROV's guidance monitor framed with pulsing inputs of time and positioning data.

In a few seconds of jerky camerawork, the squid appears with its huge fins waving like elephant ears and its remarkable arms and tentacles trailing from elbow-like appendages.

Despite the squid's apparent unflappability on camera, Magnapinna, or "big fin," squid remain largely a mystery to science.

ROVs have filmed Magnapinna squid a dozen or so times in the Gulf and the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.

The recent video marks the first sighting of a Magnapinna at an oil development, though experts don't think the squid's presence there has any special scientific significance.

Police dash cam of Meteor over Edmonton, Canada.
Filmed about 5:30pm Thursday November 20th 2008

In this image released by NASA, a dust ring, seen in red, surround the star Fomalhaut, that resides at the center of the image, and not visible to the human eye in this image. The Hubble Telescope discovered the fuzzy image of the planet, known as Fomalhaut b, which is no more that a white speck in the lower right portion of the dust ring that surrounds the star. (AP Photo/NASA)

An image of the planet Mercury, made during the January 2008 flyby of the planet by the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft is seen in this image released by NASA July 3, 2008. The image shows that volcanoes were involved in plains formation and suggest that its magnetic field is actively produced in the planet's core.
(NASA/JHUAP/Arizona State University/Handout/Reuters)