First 'animal cells' could have been created by viruses
https://theconversation.com/first-animal-cells-could-have-been-created-by-viruses-71202

When a virus infects a living cell, it hijacks and reprograms the cell to turn it into a virus-producing factory. Now scientists
at the University of California have for the first time discovered just how extensive that reprogramming can be, effectively turning
bacterial cells into animal or plant-like cells. This might even be how the cells of more complex organisms evolved in the first place.

The study shows that when a virus hijacks a bacterial cell, it quickly destroys the cell’s normal structure, including its DNA. It then
builds new structures that strongly resemble the nuclei found in animal, human and plant cells. The nucleus is the genetic control centre
of a cell of such a “higher” lifeform but has never been seen before in a bacterial cell. This suggests that higher cells might have
first evolved from ancient interactions between bacteria and viruses.

K sobotnímu 12. výročí..
Cassini: Mission to Saturn: Catching Cassini's Call
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2989/catching-cassinis-call/

This week, ESA deep-space radio dishes on two continents are listening for signals from the international Cassini spacecraft,
now on its final tour of Saturn.
ESA's sensitive tracking antennas at New Norcia, Western Australia, and Malargüe, Argentina, are being called in to help with
crucial observations during Cassini's last months in orbit, dubbed the 'Grand Finale.'

JULIANNE: no to je jasný, Messenger byla moje srdcovka... :)

The SPT-3G focal plane during assembly at the South Pole: 2700 (3-color) pixels, 16 000 superconducting detectors cooled to 0.25 Kelvin!

NEBULA: K Venuši se dostaneme rychleji než k Marsu a startovní okna jsou častější. Energie pro solární panely je víc než dost. Pro orbitery nebo atmosférické (třeba balonové) sondy je to super lokalita!
Povrch už je samozřejmě něco jiného...

deimos imaging – World’s largest radio telescopes captured by Deimos-2
http://www.deimos-imaging.com/worlds-largest-radio-telescopes-captured-by-deimos-2

Deimos-2 captured the two world’s largest radio telescopes: the Arecibo Observatory and the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical
Telescope (FAST). The images show the proportions of both, allowing to appreciate the great difference between their diameters.

NEBULA: Z dlouhodobého hlediska (obyvatelnosti) je jediná cesta dál od Slunce.
Nestabilita se bude zhoršovat. Ale souhlasím s Darkmoorem, že její studium je důležité už kvůli tomu,
aby to na Zemi neskončilo podobně co se týče klimatických podmínek.

Dostávat se blíž ke Slunci je i náročnější, ale hlavně na povrchu Venuše probíhá mejdan,
na kterém fakt nemáme co pohledávat.

The LISA Mission proposal was submitted today!

In response to the call of the European Space Agency (ESA) for L3 mission concepts,
the LISA Mission consortium submitted the proposal for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna today.

The proposal document will be published in a few days on the LISA Mission homepage.

LISA - mission concept proposal
https://www.lisamission.org/consortium/

Mystery Object in Cygnus A Galaxy - Sky & Telescope
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/mystery-object-in-cygnus-a-galaxy-1301201623/

Astronomers have discovered an object in the active galaxy Cygnus A that wasn’t there before.

Last week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, Texas, astronomers made an announcement
that’s caught the interest of several researchers: a very bright something has appeared in a well-known galaxy.

That galaxy is the elliptical Cygnus A. Cygnus A is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky. It lies approximately 800 million
light-years from us (redshift of 0.056). In its core sits a supermassive black hole madly eating and cocooned in gas, while two jets
shoot out to either side and light up the intergalactic medium. This activity produces the radio radiation that makes Cygnus A so bright.

Using the recently upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, Rick Perley (NRAO) and colleagues took a gander at Cygnus
A — the first time the instrument has looked at the galaxy since 1989. (Apparently astronomers spent so much VLA time observing the galaxy
in the 1980s that they didn’t feel the need to look again, Perley joked January 6th in his AAS presentation.) The new observations showed
a surprise: a new, secondary object just southwest of the central black hole. This object wasn’t in the 1989 radio image. Additional, higher-
resolution observations with the Very Long Baseline Array also picked up the object, clearly distinct from the galaxy’s nucleus. It’s roughly
1,300 light-years from the center.

The whatever-it-is is about twice as bright as the brightest known supernova at these frequencies. In fact, it’s much brighter than just about
any transitory radio signal known, except for accreting supermassive black holes and tidal disruption events, outbursts created when a black
hole eats a star.

The team scoured other archives and found the object in 2003 Keck infrared observations and, more iffily, in some images from Hubble.
(The object is so red that it doesn’t show up well at optical wavelengths, and in this range the space telescope’s resolution isn’t as
good as that of Keck’s adaptive optics.)

L3 magnet doors open, the ALICE experiment exposes its inner components to the (artificial) day light for the first time in years.
In the center, the beam pipe. On the left, the low-beta platform (visitors view point). On top, the crane used to move material
around the ALICE experimental area. The doors will be closed mid-April, in preparation for the 2017 beams.