OUT OF THIS UNIVERSE! AS SEEN BY HUBBLE

NASA's best-recognized, longest-lived, and most prolific space observatory zooms past a threshold of 20 years of operation this month. On April 24, 1990, the space shuttle and crew of STS-31 were launched to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope into a low Earth orbit. What followed was one of the most remarkable sagas of the space age. Hubble's unprecedented capabilities made it one of the most powerful science instruments ever conceived by humans, and certainly the one most embraced by the public. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research, from planetary science to cosmology. And, its pictures were unmistakably out of this world.
At times Hubble's starry odyssey played out like a space soap opera, with broken equipment, a bleary-eyed primary mirror, and even a space shuttle rescue/repair mission cancellation. But the ingenuity and dedication of Hubble scientists, engineers, and NASA astronauts have allowed the observatory to rebound time and time again. Its crisp vision continues to challenge scientists with exciting new surprises and to enthrall the public with ever more evocative color images.
NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) are celebrating Hubble's journey of exploration with a stunning new picture, online educational activities, an opportunity for people to explore galaxies as armchair scientists, and an opportunity for astronomy enthusiasts to send in their own personal greetings to Hubble for posterity.
NASA is releasing today a brand new Hubble photo of a small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble's classic "Pillars of Creation" photo from 1995, but is even more striking in appearance. The image captures the top of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby bright stars. The pillar is also being pushed apart from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be seen streaming from towering peaks like arrows sailing through the air.
Hubble fans worldwide are being invited to share the ways the telescope has affected them. They can send an e-mail, post a Facebook message, use the Twitter hashtag #hst20, or send a cell phone text message. Or, they can visit the "Messages to Hubble" page on http://hubblesite.org/, type in their entry, and read selections from other messages that have been received. Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope's many terabytes of science data. Someday, future researchers will be able to read these messages and understand how Hubble had such an impact on the world.
The public will also have an opportunity to be at-home scientists by helping astronomers sort out the thousands of galaxies seen in a deep Hubble observation. STScI is partnering with the Galaxy Zoo consortium of scientists to launch an Internet-based astronomy project (http://hubble.galaxyzoo.org) where amateur astronomers can peruse and sort galaxies from Hubble's deepest view of the universe into their classic shapes: spiral, elliptical, and irregular. Dividing the galaxies into categories will allow astronomers to study how they relate to one another and provide clues that might help scientists understand how they formed.
For students, STScI is opening an education portal called "Celebrating Hubble's 20th Anniversary" (http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/hubble_20/). It offers links to "fun facts" and trivia about Hubble, a news story that chronicles the Earth-orbiting observatory's life and discoveries, and the IMAX "Hubble 3D" educator guide. An anniversary poster containing Hubble's "hall-of-fame" images, including the Eagle Nebula and Saturn, is also being offered with downloadable classroom activity information.
To date, Hubble has looked at over 30,000 celestial objects and amassed over one-half million pictures in its archive. The last heroic astronaut servicing mission to Hubble in May 2009 made it 100 times more powerful than when it was launched. In addition to its irreplaceable scientific importance, Hubble brings cosmic wonders into millions of homes and schools every day. For the past 20 years the public has become co-explorers with this wondrous observatory.
CONTACT
Ray VillardSpace Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.410-338-4514villard@stsci.edu
Mario LivioSpace Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.410-338-4439mailto:Md.410-338-4439mlivio@stsci.edu

http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/13/full/

Discovery Announcement ~ Pelosium:The densest element in the known Universe has been found!

Pelosium:
A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named Pelosium. Pelosium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311.
These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
The symbol of Pelosium is PU.
Pelosium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons within the Pelosium molecule, leading to the formation of isodopes.
This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientist to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass.
When catalyzed with money, Pelosium activates CNNadnausium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons as Pelosium.
I believe this type of element has been known to exist for quite some time. But it has an ebb-and-flow lifespan and can, with the proper application of external pressure, be rendered ineffective and broken into random elements that are not presently recognizable and largely ineffective. However, the short-term memory of these external pressures (i.e.: public opinion) allows these elements to re-configure into even more powerful and far more dense elements than previously seen.
Therefore, we see today the formation of the aforementioned Pelosium, which has configured with other elements:
Pelosium + Bidentuim + Reidenese + Clintonogen (as an explosive catalyst) = the n0bamanator E (that gives off) free-radicals of B.S. running amok.

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest atom smasher, will shut down for a year to repair mistakes that were made in its construction

By Ben Leach
Dr Steve Myers, a director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which built the collider, said the machine will close at the end of a 2011.
The collider is expected to reach world record power later this month at 7 trillion electron volts (TeV) in its bid to replicate the big bang that started the universe.
But Dr Myers told the BBC that the faults will delay the machine reaching its full potential of 14TeV for two years.
"It's something that, with a lot more resources and with a lot more manpower and quality control, possibly could have been avoided but I have difficulty in thinking that this is something that was a design error," he said.
"The standard phrase is that the LHC is its own prototype. We are pushing technologies towards their limits."
"You don't hear about the thousands or hundreds of thousands of other areas that have gone incredibly well.
"With a machine like the LHC, you only build one and you only build it once."
It is the latest in a series of setbacks for the world's largest machine, which was first launched in September 2008 amid an international fanfare.
But just nine days later, the £5bn LHC suffered a spectacular failure from a bad electrical connection.
Fifty-three of 1,624 large superconducting magnets - some of them 50 feet long - were damaged and had to be replaced.
Then in November 2009, it emerged that further problems had been caused by a small piece of baguette dropped by a passing bird which landed in a piece of equipment on the surface above the accelerator ring.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/7411707/Large-Hadron-Collider-to-shut-down-for-a-year.html