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01/11/2016: Tabby’s mystery – Something 20 times Jupiter’s size may be orbiting a nearby star
The graph made astronomer Tabetha “Tabby” Boyajian sit up at her desk at Yale University. Something was definitely strange — the line was mostly flat but had two sharp dips resembling stalactites hanging from the ceiling of a cave. The dips implied that light coming from the star KIC 8462852, more than 1,400 light years away, […]
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01/06/2016: How residents of a tiny West Virginia community live without any kind of modern technology
In West Virginia, just 200 miles away from Washington, DC, you’ll find a community of roughly 8,000 people who live completely off the grid. In the 13,000-square-mile “National Radio Quiet Zone,” all cell phone, Wi-Fi, microwaves, and even some vacuum use are all banned by law. The restrictions were put in place because of the 11 […]
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01/05/2016: Physics Professor Using 3-D Map of the Milky Way to Determine Its Star Formation Rate
Radio telescopes have provided scientists with incredible information about our own galaxy, as well as those around us. While researchers understand a great deal of galaxies far away, gaps remain in the knowledge about our own, the Milky Way – specifically, how global star formation works in our own backyard, and how many stars our […]
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01/04/2016: Watch this space: Telescope releases mass of data
Astronomers in China working with one of world’s largest optical telescopes released a huge collection of data over the new year holiday, increasing the chances of “significant findings” in space exploration, experts say. The latest update to the National Astronomical Observatories’ sky survey, conducted using the LAMOST telescope, includes some 4.62 million spectral data relating […]
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01/29/2016: This town lives without cellphones, Wi-Fi: Meet Green Bank, West Virginia
Imagine making plans with your friends — by walking to their house to talk in person. That’s the norm at Green Bank, West Virginia, where its 143 residents can’t rely on their cellphones or tablets to connect with friends and loved ones because all wireless devices are forbidden. Located within a 13,000-square mile area known […]
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01/29/2016: Gigantic Gas Cloud Set to Collide with the Milky Way
An enormous celestial gas cloud that first left the Milky Way when dinosaurs roamed the Earth is speeding back towards the galaxy at roughly 700,000 miles per hour, a study in The Astrophysical Journal Letter Reports. The cloud – known as “The Smith Cloud” – was first ejected from the Galaxy some 70 million years […]
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03/11/2016: Berthoud students discover space anomaly
Collin Miller describes the slate of speakers at the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers Western Regional Conference in Arizona this weekend: “There’s doctor this, and doctor someone, PhDs, then you have Berthoud High School STEM students.” Miller and fellow high school senior, Xander Pickard, will present the research of a team of six Berthoud students, […]
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03/23/2016: AT&T uses low-power antennas to prevent cellular interference with telescope
AT&T engineered an unusual low-power antenna system inside a radio quiet zone at a snow resort in rural West Virginia, giving thousands of daily smartphone users network access for the first time. Work on the multimillion-dollar solution started in 2013 and took months of testing with engineers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and […]