Friday Science Highlights – Cosmic Volcanoes, Telescopic Defense Systems, and the Climate Change of the Universe

Science Photo of the Week

Amateur photography never ceases to amaze! Stand by, Hubble, because Kuntal A. Joisher has discovered the volcanic explosion of the Milky Way. Doesn’t it look like the star birth of our galaxy is arriving out of the tip of this silhouetted mountain? What a neat concept! Go - write it - be free.

Protecting the Planet from Impact, One Telescope at a Time

A system of two (possibly three) telescopes called ATLAS is coming together in Hawaii with the goal of providing a warning system for imminent asteroid collisions. These telescopes have the capability of scanning the entire sky for threats within the time frame of just one night and can provide as much as a three week alert window depending on the size of the asteroid headed our way.

The third telescope may set up shop in South Africa depending on how discussions in the near future go. But personally this headline makes me wonder if the threat of asteroid collision is so high that this type of technology needs to be created? Sure, Earth has been hit by massive objects before, and it undoubtedly will again. But is it really common enough to require night-by-night scanning?

And if so, what are we going to do about it when an asteroid is spotted? Until I hear about the laser system being set up to destroy these rocks before they hit our atmosphere, I’m going continue to view asteroid strikes as extremely rare occurrences. By the time Earth faces another massive asteroid, these telescopes will very likely be out of date.

(or maybe they’re setting up these telescopes to scan for invading alien war fleets – it’s all a cover, right?)

The Globe May be Warming, but the Universe is Cooling

Forget for a moment about the gradual increase of global temperatures and the melting of the ice caps – we’ve got a cosmic epidemic of decreasing temperatures on our hands.

This is of course nothing to be worried about, since it’s been happening for a long, long time and will continue to happen for a long, long time. You might as well lose sleep over the eventual explosion/implosion of our star, or develop a psychosis based on the fact that the spreading out of our universe is actually accelerating.

There are a lot of truly terrifying things in the universe, but the vast majority of them are based on such a cosmic scale that we will likely never experience any ill effects from them. And the gradual dissipation of energy throughout the universe is one of those things.

Might be interesting, however, to use your imagination to visualize what a universe would look like on the verge of snuffing out? When a few billion years from now the universe is about to spin out of existence, will there even be humans left to witness it? And if they are, what will it look like to them?