On June 6, 2012, the Earth will bear witness to a transit of Venus, where the second planet will pass between us and the sun. The last transit occurred in 2004, but the next will happen in December 2117. While once in a lifetime events are cool, twice in a lifetime events get bonus points for being a little more forgiving.

As far as our understanding of the universe goes, everything started with the big bang which jump started existence. However, only the three lightest elements — hydrogen, helium, and lithium — were  produced during the big bang itself and all the rest were formed in the nuclear furnaces within stars. Scientists had theorized that somewhere in the universe, untouched pockets of the very first elements should still exist undiluted by heavier elements.

Now, astronomers think they’ve found two such pristine gas clouds some 12 billion light years away in the constellations Leo and Ursa Major.

Our little blue dot will get something of a close shave today when the 400-meter-wide 2005 YU55 asteroid will pass us at a distance of no less than about 201,700 miles. For those of you playing along at home, this is about .85 the distance from the Earth to the Moon. According to NASA, this is the closest pass a comparably sized object has made to our planet in some 30 years and the closest 2005 YU55 has made in about 200 years.

And before you ask: No, there is no chance that it will hit us.

Hanny’s Voorwerp was discovered in 2007 by Dutch astronomy enthusiast Hanny van Arkel as part of the citizen science project called Galaxy Zoo. When it was discovered, scientists were unable to discern exactly what was causing the cloud of gas to glow with, quite literally, the strength of 30,000 suns when it had no apparent  source of energy. Gamers were likely immediately suspicious as the mysterious object has more than a passing resemblance to a hydralisk (pictured right).

Scientists now think that Voorwerps, which is Dutch for “thing,” could be a tell-tale sign of a supermassive black hole, and are more common than previously assumed.

A few days ago, Dr. Heidi B Hammel announced on her Facebook page that a strange plume had been spotted in the lower hemisphere of the ice giant Uranus. Along with her announcement was a call for independent verification from amateur astronomers, with the goal of making the anomaly a “target of opportunity” for the Hubble space telescope.

The strange bright spot has been observed by the Gemini Telescope North in Hawaii, and is pictured to the left. The plume of light is apparently ten times brighter than the surrounding area, but still might be difficult for astronomers to spot without special equipment. The current thinking is that the glowing dots are an eruption of methane ice in the high atmosphere, only visible because it is above the dense cloud cover on the planet.

Virginia Tech scientist John Simonetti thinks he can prove the existence of multiple dimensions, and all he needs to do it is a black hole with an orbiting pulsar. Simple, right?

Far from being the unstoppable monsters, black holes are thought to slowly lose mass over time through a process called Hawking Radiation. Emitting just a few particles at a time, the black holes shrink and are believed to lose their hold on orbiting matter in the process. However, if the extra dimensions described by String Theory exist then black holes should lose mass at a faster rate. These additional dimensions, Simonetti believes, would give additional means of escape for those Hawking Radiation particles.

Here’s where the Pulsar comes in.

Astronomer’s at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory were casting their roving eyes around the sky when they noticed something odd going on in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of our neighboring galaxies. It seems that the LMC has made a habit of stealing stars from the nearby Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and claiming them for itself.

You might be wondering how anyone could determine the origin of a star, let alone figure it out from Earth. It all has to do with spin and composition. It’s believed that most stars in the LMC were formed out of a spinning disc of dust, which would give the stars the same spin. But when the astronomers observed the spectra of some 5,600 stars in the LMC, they found that about 5% of them had a different spin from the rest of the stars in the galaxy.

More than 70,000 species of fungi have been identified on Earth. We know that fungi are incredibly mobile through the use of airborne spores. But how such tiny particles can battle through the air to reach new locations has been hypothesized about for decades, without solid answers.

Now research in the laboratory of botanist Nicholas Money, at Miami University in Ohio, has documented cavitation: the long standing theory about what gives spores their speed. Proposed in the 1960′s, cavitation is when a fungi spore is attached to the top of a stalk by a water-filled bulb. When the fungus dries, the water in the bulb evaporates and this lowers the pressure between the stalk and the spore. The drop in pressure lead to the vaporization of water in surrounding cells, which as a gas then flood into the empty bulb. The influx of gas causes the bulb to billow out. The subsequent rapid change in shape is too much for the spore, which is flung into the air.

Airship enthusiasts are invited to strap on the goggles and billowing white aviator scarves for the announcement that Goodyear is retiring its current fleet of blimps and replacing them with new airships. The new craft will be built by Zeppelin Neue Technologie (NT), the modern successor to the famous Zeppelin company that brought us rigid airships of massive size and is partly responsible for the phrase, “oh, the humanity!”

Goodyear’s current fleet consists entirely of blimps, those being airships without a rigid internal structure. Blimps are all well and good, but the design limits the attachment of external engines and the overall size of the craft.  The new Zeppelin NT airships are classified as “semi-rigid,” having a limited triangular skeleton of carbon-reinforced plastic and aluminum struts. With engines mounted at the rear of the craft, rather than the control cabin, the new Goodyear Zeppelins should have a quieter, smoother ride, which is better for photography. Goodyear will, of course, continue to use non-flammable helium in the new Zeppelins.

With Goodyear planning on flying their new Luftschiff Zeppelin (LZ) N07-101 craft in 2014, Zeppelin NT will see the number of their craft flying worldwide double. The deal between the two companies is also something of a historic return to form, as Goodyear worked closely with the original Zeppelin company to build airships in the U.S. some 70 years ago. So if you see a Goodyear airship after 2014, remember to politely, but firmly, remind your friends that it’s not a “blimp.” They’ll thank you, I’m sure.

(The Register via Airships.net, image via Wikipedia)

On March 28, NASA’s Swift gamma ray burst observatory saw a tremendous flash of light some four billion light years away. While it was initially chalked up to an exploding star, new analysis seems to indicate that a star may have been pulled into a black hole. If true, this would be only the second time this has been observed.

Because of the distance, we can never be certain about what happened to the star. However, there’s quite a bit of evidence that the star met its end in the belly of a black hole. Normally, gamma ray bursts occur when a large star collapses and becomes a black hole. But this time, the intensity of the light grew and faded over time, which would fit scientists understanding of how black holes consume matter.