NASA’s Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detection of this phenomenon — a result of Einstein’s general theory of relativity — in binary, or double, star systems.

The dead star, called a white dwarf, is the burnt-out core of what used to be a star like our sun. It is locked in an orbiting dance with its partner, a small “red dwarf” star. While the tiny white dwarf is physically smaller than the red dwarf, it is more massive.

“This white dwarf is about the size of Earth but has the mass of the sun,” said Phil Muirhead of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, lead author of the findings to be published April 20 in the Astrophysical Journal. “It’s so hefty that the red dwarf, though larger in physical size, is circling around the white dwarf.”

via NASA – Gravity-Bending Find Leads to Kepler Meeting Einstein.

This sequence of seven images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows wind-caused changes in the parachute of NASA’s
Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft as the chute lay on the Martian ground during months
after its use in safe landing of the Curiosity rover. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

PASADENA, Calif. – Photos from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show how the parachute that helped NASA’s Curiosity rover land on Mars last summer has subsequently changed its shape on the ground.

The images were obtained by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Seven images taken by HiRISE between Aug. 12, 2012, and Jan. 13, 2013, show the used parachute shifting its shape at least twice in response to wind.

The images in the sequence of photos are available online at http://uahirise.org/releases/msl-chute.php and at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/pia16813.html .

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I think this is a good read, if you like strange theories

Most people take it for granted that we have yet to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. Trouble is, the numbers don’t add up. Our Galaxy is so old that every corner of it should have been visited many, many times over by now. No theory to date has satisfactorily explained away this Great Silence, so it’s time to think outside the box. Here are eleven of the weirdest solutions to the Fermi Paradox.

(Excerpt from 11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox) Read Full Story Here.