Most Amazing Space Discoveries of 2007

December 28th, 2007

With the airing of my new favorite show The Universe starting this year I guess you could say that I pay a lot more attention to Space News than I ever have. In doing so I have heard a lot of the stories that have been listed as the Most Amazing Space Discoveries of 2007, but there are a few I haven’t heard about and they are all pretty interesting regardless.

One of the more interesting studies was that of the search for Dark Matter:

Some of the universe’s dark matter was found to be tied up in really small, nearby galaxies that researchers dubbed “hobbit galaxies.” Each contains only a few stars but has a mass about 100 times more than what would be expected from the mass of their stars alone. The hidden stuff, noted by its gravitational effects, must be invisible material that astronomer call dark matter. In separate work, astronomers made a 3D map of dark matter across a big swath of space and time. Of course, nobody knows what the heck dark matter is.
Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Massey (Caltech)

How about the Death Ray?

Death Ray
Few discoveries evoked sci-fi more than the “death star galaxy,” where an anchoring supermassive black hole was found to shoot a constant beam of energy that’s blasting its neighbor galaxy. The radiation would be enough to destroy life on Earth if it were nearby and aimed our way. Thankfully, this monster is far away. Long live the solar system!
Credit: NASA

I’m still very interested in the tool storage going on in the Mars Rover as well. It’s just an amazing feat that we have a rover on a nearby planet that we tend to think we will be able to explore personally some day.