Gaia spies two temporarily magnified stars
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-gaia-spies-temporarily-magnified-stars.html

While scanning the sky to measure the position of over one billion stars in our Galaxy, ESA's Gaia satellite has detected
two rare instances of stars whose light was temporarily boosted by other celestial objects passing across their lines of
sight. One of these stars is expected to brighten again soon. Gaia's measurements will be instrumental to learn more about
the nature of these 'cosmic magnifying glasses'.

Space debris: how many operating, dysfunctional & dead satellites & spacecrafts orbiting our planet (per country)

Hunt for ninth planet reveals new extremely distant Solar System objects | Carnegie Institution for Science
https://carnegiescience.edu/.../hunt-ninth-planet-reveals-new-extremely-distant-solar-system-objects

In the race to discover a proposed ninth planet in our Solar System, Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of Northern Arizona University
have observed several never-before-seen objects at extreme distances from the Sun in our Solar System. Sheppard and Trujillo have now submitted their
latest discoveries to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center for official designations. A paper about the discoveries has also
been accepted to The Astronomical Journal.

The more objects that are found at extreme distances, the better the chance of constraining the location of the ninth planet that Sheppard and Trujillo
first predicted to exist far beyond Pluto (itself no longer classified as a planet) in 2014. The placement and orbits of small, so-called extreme trans-
Neptunian objects, can help narrow down the size and distance from the Sun of the predicted ninth planet, because that planet’s gravity influences
the movements of the smaller objects that are far beyond Neptune. The objects are called trans-Neptunian because their orbits around the Sun
are greater than Neptune’s.

Radiation, Brains, and Exploring the Universe - Scientific American Blog Network
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/radiation-brains-and-exploring-the-universe/
New studies indicate that ionizing radiation might cause neurodegenerative disease.
The implications could be profound for interplanetary or interstellar species.

Plate tectonics doesn’t rumple the surfaces of Earth’s supersized cousins, new research suggests.
Super-Earths are not a good place for plate tectonics | Geology IN
http://www.geologyin.com/2016/04/super-earths-are-not-good-place-for.html

Simulating the extreme pressures inside giant exoplanets called super-Earths, researchers discovered that these planets probably have thick,
stagnant outer shells and sluggish internal circulation. Those properties make the existence of fragmented jigsaw puzzles of sliding and
shifting surface sections unlikely, the researchers report in a paper to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

On Earth, plate tectonics drives the carbon cycle that helps regulate the planet’s temperature and allows life to flourish, notes study
coauthor Takehiro Miyagoshi, an earth and planetary scientist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama.

“We think super-Earths are boring,” he says. “This point should be kept in mind in our search of habitable planets.”

XCHAOS: haha, i tak se to da vnimat.

TANTRAMAN: naopak: to, že s námi nekomunikují, je právě důkaz toho, že jsou inteligentní :-)

VIRGO: to je presne ted duvod, proc v okoli nikdo neni. a jestli ano, tak bez moznosti signal prijmout a odvysilat odpoved.
jednoduche jako facka.

News | Catalog of Known Near-Earth Asteroids Tops 15,000
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6664

The number of discovered near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) now tops 15 000, with an average of 30 new discoveries added each week.
This milestone marks a 50 percent increase in the number of known NEAs since 2013, when discoveries reached 10,000 in August of that year.

Surveys funded by NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program (NEOs include both asteroids and comets) account for more than 95 percent of discoveries so far.

The 15 000th near-Earth asteroid is designated *2016 TB57*. It was discovered on Oct. 13 by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey, an element of the NASA-funded Catalina
Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona. 2016 TB57 is a rather small asteroid - about 16 to 36 meters in size - that will come closest to Earth on Oct. 31 at just beyond five times
the distance of the moon. It will safely pass Earth.

Boyajians Star from Breakthrough Listen at 10.4 GHz. Axes are frequency (vertical) vs time (horizontal)

Bright fireball captured by a dashcam over Denver, Colorado on October 27, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sESqNYBimbQ&feature=youtu.be

Shocks in the early universe could be detectable today
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-early-universe-today.html

Physicists have discovered a surprising consequence of a widely supported model of the early universe: according to the model, tiny
cosmological perturbations produced shocks in the radiation fluid just a fraction of a second after the big bang. These shocks would have
collided with each other to generate gravitational waves that are large enough to be detected by today's gravitational wave detectors.

The physicists, Ue-Li Pen at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto, and Neil Turok at the Perimeter Institute
for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, have published a paper on the shocks in the early universe and their aftermath in a recent issue
of Physical Review Letters.

As the scientists explain, the most widely supported model of the early universe is one with a radiation-dominated background that is
almost perfectly homogeneous, except for some tiny waves, or perturbations, in the radiation.

In the new study, Pen and Turok have theoretically shown that some of these early, tiny perturbations, which are small-amplitude waves,
would have spiked to form large-amplitude waves, or shocks. These shocks would have formed only at very high temperatures, like those
that occur immediately after the big bang.

The physicists also showed that, when two or more shocks collide with each other, they generate gravitational waves.

Auroras. Taken by Chad Blakley on October 26, 2016 @ Abisko National Park, Sweden