SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Weather Phenomenon - Full Circle Rainbow Brightens Skies In Cookstown, Northern Ireland! [VIDEO]

March 10, 2016 - IRELAND - A bright full circle rainbow was seen over Northern Ireland on March 7, 2016.

A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured arc.

Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the section of sky directly opposite the sun.  Rainbows can be full circles; however, the average observer sees only an arc formed by illuminated droplets above the ground, and centred on a line from the sun to the observer's eye. 

In a primary rainbow, the arc shows red on the outer part and violet on the inner side. This rainbow is caused by light being refracted when entering a droplet of water, then reflected inside on the back of the droplet and refracted again when leaving it.  In a double rainbow, a second arc is seen outside the primary arc, and has the order of its colours reversed, with red on the inner side of the arc.


WATCH: Full circle rainbow over Ireland.

- YouTube | Wikipedia.

 

WEATHER PHENOMENON: Diamond Dust - Strange "Pillars Of Light" Seen Over Northern Michigan!

© NASA

March 24, 2015 - MICHIGAN, UNITED STATES - Monday morning's low temperatures created a weather event in northern Michigan that you're more likely to see in the Arctic Circle.

Pillars of light filled the sky early in the morning from a phenomenon called diamond dust. It's a cloud formation made from ice crystals.

Justin Arnott - a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Gaylord - says diamond dust can take light from street lamps or traffic lights and refract it into light pillars.

"They can extend very far from a light source," Arnott says. "You can see the tops of them before you even know what's creating the light. So that can kind of make it surreal."

Arnott says the cause is tiny ice crystals from residual moisture.

"You're really seeing the impact of light as it encounters really small ice crystals in the atmosphere," Arnott says. "And it really tends to happen only when it's really cold. I mean well below zero before we see that kind of phenomenon."

Arnott says diamond dust is fairly rare in northern Michigan and more likely to be seen in the Arctic.

The first place he saw the weather event was in Alaska.

"We saw those kind of phenomenon all the time," Arnott says. "There'd be weeks when we'd be in the minus 20s and 30s and it was pretty typical up there this time of year."

Diamond dust could return again later this week when temperatures are expected to drop. - Interlochen.

WEATHER PHENOMENON: Halo Effect - Three Suns Seen In The Skies Over Chelyabinsk, Russia!

© Screenshot from YouTube user Shuriksandr

February 17, 2015 - CHELYABINSK, RUSSIA - Citizens of Chelyabinsk, near Russia's Ural mountains, were awed by a rare optical illusion produced by ice crystals in the winter air on Tuesday.

"Weather in the Urals fell to -23 to -25 Celsius. This led to the formation of tiny hexagonal ice crystals in the air above, which cannot be seen by the naked eye. The sunlight refracts through them, creating the halo effect," regional meteorologist Galina Sheporenko told TASS news agency

While the scientists remained sanguine about the phenomenon, ordinary citizens filled their social media accounts with hundreds of photos of the halo.

The illusion is sometimes called a winter rainbow - using ice crystals for refractions, just as the common ones use water droplets. The symmetrical patches of light, tinged with red on the inside, are called mock suns, parhelia or sundogs.

On average, such distinct halos are often reported several times a week across the entire globe, and can occur even in relatively mild weather, providing the air several kilometers above is sufficiently cold. A distinct halo was spotted in Yamal in northern Siberia on Tuesday, barely noticeable one was photographed in the eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk, and an impressive one was witnessed in Saskatoon in Canada over the weekend.

"The appearance of the halos can vary - from pillars to arcs to circles to blots. It is very hard to predict when all factors will come together for one to appear, but sometimes you can see several in one winter," said Sheporenko.


WATCH: Three suns over Chelyabinsk.

Documented descriptions date back to the ancient Greeks, and also makes an appearance in William Shakespeare's Henry VI, where he describes its appearance ahead of a key battle in the War of the Roses.

Across most world cultures, it was regarded as on omen, or harbinger of cold weather - logically, as the crystals above required to create the halo, often descend onto the ground as snow and rain. But Sheporenko says this is not the case this time.

"The frosty weather will only last a day or two, and then it will get warmer," promised the meteorologist.


WATCH: Meteorite crash in Russia.

Almost exactly two years ago, on February 15, 2015 Chelyabinsk, a city of 1.1 million people, hit the headlines after a blazing meteor flashed across the sky, after impacting the atmosphere with the strength of over 20 Hiroshima explosions. The 12,000 ton piece of space debris was the biggest object to enter the Earth's atmosphere since the Tunguska meteor in 1908. - RT.

WEATHER PHENOMENON: Land Of The THREE SUNS - Sunshine Passing Through Falling Snow Creates "Parhelion" Optical Illusion In Mongolia!

Seeing treble: This strange sight was captured in Mongolia and is the result of a rare natural phenomenon called a parhelion,
which occurs when sunlight passes though snow crystals in the air

January 23, 2015 - MONGOLIA - The sight of three suns in the sky is enough to make most of us rub our eyes in disbelief, but centuries ago, the strange sight was seen as a bad omen.

The unusual spectacle, called a parhelion, was captured on camera in Mongolia.

It is the result of a natural phenomenon in which sunlight passes though snow crystals in a particular way when they are suspended in the air.

Stills of the event caught on an ITN video show the sun in the centre of the snowy scene, with two reflections either side, which can be described as sundogs or ‘phantom suns’.

Sundogs are created when sunlight is refracted by large, hexagonal ice crystals, such as those in snowflakes.

They typically appear as two coloured patches of light either side of the sun and though rare, can in theory be seen anywhere in the world in any season.

They are created by the refraction of light passing through flat, hexagonal ice crystals in high, cold clouds.

Photographs of the event show the sun in the centre, with two reflections either side, which can be described as
sundogs or ‘phantom suns’. They are always at the same level of the sun on the horizon, as seen here

Sun dogs typically appear as two coloured patches of light either side of the sun and can be seen anywhere in the world in any season.
This image shows a snowy landscape with the real sun on the left and a sundog on the right

The crystals act like prisms so that as light passes through them, it is bent by exactly 22 degrees before reaching viewers' eyes to make the illusion.

If the crystals are more randomly located in clouds, a complete ring around the sun is visible, called a halo.

But if the crystals sink through the air, they become arranged in vertical lines, so that the sunlight is refracted horizontally, to make sundogs, as seen in these images.

If the phenomenon is seen as the sun is rising, the sundogs gradually move further away from the sun, but always stay at the same elevation, so the three 'orbs' appear to be the same distance from the horizon.

They are reddest in colour when they are near to the sun and fade to yellow, orange and then blue as they move away. The colours of sun dogs merge into a white halo in some instances.

THE HISTORY OF SUNDOGS

Sundogs were sometimes seen as an omen for bad times ahead, such as war, and observations of them feature in ancient texts by Aristotle, Seneca and Cicero,
among others. This depiction of sundogs appeared in the Nuremberg Chronicle, an early printed book shwoing world history, published in 1493

The strange phenomenon is first known to have been recorded by Aristotle between 384 and 322 BC.

The Greek philosopher wrote: 'two mock suns rose with the sun and followed it all through the day until sunset'. He noted that they were always to the sun's side and never rose above or below it.

The poet Aratus, who lived between 310 and 240 BC mentioned them in his catalogue of Weather Signs, saying that they indicate wind, rain or an approaching storm, while Artemidorus, a diviner in the second century, included the phantom suns in his list of celestial deities.

Roman authors Cicero and Seneca mention them in their writings too.

In later works it was feared that sundogs were omens for bad times ahead, such as war.

An anthelion is said to have occurred before the Battle of Mortier's Cross in Herefordshire in 1461 - a major event in the War of the Roses.

Apparently the Yorkist commander, later Edward IV of England, convinced his frightened troops - who feared the worst - that the event represented the three sons of the Duke of York and they won a decisive victory, as described in William Shakespeare's King Henry VI.

A powerful anthelion in the summer of 1629 is believed to have influenced René Descartes to write his work of natural philosophy called The World. - Daily Mail.

WEATHER PHENOMENON: Rare "Ice Halo" Seen In The Sky Over New Mexico As Arctic Blast Continues To Sweep Across The United States - And The Chill Is Expected To Last Until At Least Next Thursday; Record-Breaking Cold Has Already Killed 22 People! [PHOTOS]

 Stunning: This ice halo was captured above Red River in New Mexico has temperatures plummeted across the country

January 12, 2015 - UNITED STATES - A rare 'ice halo' was seen above New Mexico has as the arctic blast continued to make its way across the country, causing temperatures to plummet below freezing in dozens of cities.

The optical phenomenon was captured by Texan photographer Joshua Thomas above the town of Red River - which has experienced sub-zero temperatures throughout the last few days.

The variety of rings and arcs in the sky are formed by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere during the cold weather.

Appearance: It is an extremely rare optical phenomenon produced by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere,
resulting in a wide variety of colored or white rings, arcs and spots in the sky

Stunning: This photo, captured by Joshua Nowicki, shows St Joseph Lighthouse and its pier, in Michigan, both of which are completely blanketed in white
icicles. It also features a number of circular formations of ice - which Mr Nowicki dubs 'ice pancakes' - on the shore

Frozen over: Donning sturdy boots and warm clothing, Mr Nowicki trekked along the icy shore of Lake Michigan on Thursday morning to take the
beautiful photos. Above, a close-up shot of the historic St Joseph Lighthouse, which is surrounded by mist and covered in ice

Icy: He later uploaded the images to his Facebook page, where they were deemed 'stunning' by users. Above, ice detail on the south pier

It comes as weather forecasters predict the cold snap will continue into next week and could even reach parts of southern Texas. 

According to the Weather Channel, cities from New England to the Ohio Valley are being warned to brace for snow and sleet as the mercury continues to drop.

The wintry conditions will continue for the rest of the weekend and could last until Thursday, according to experts.

With sub-zero temperatures, severe wind chills and snowfall, millions across the eastern US have been desperately trying to stay warm this week.

On Saturday one photographer chose to brave the frigid weather for hours on end - to capture these stunning photos of St Joseph Lighthouse in Michigan.

Donning sturdy boots and warm clothing, Joshua Nowicki trekked along the icy shore of Lake Michigan on Thursday morning, armed with a camera.

He then captured a breathtaking array of photos of the frozen 30ft lighthouse and its pier, both of which were completely blanketed in white icicles.

He later uploaded the images to his Facebook page, alongside pictures of circular formations of ice  - what he dubbed 'ice pancakes' - on the shore.

Two days earlier: This photo shows St Joseph Lighthouse on Tuesday - as the extreme conditions started to take hold and freeze the pier

Brave: Mr Nowicki, who called the circular pieces of ice on the shore 'ice pancakes', is seen at Lake Michigan during Thursday's blizzard

Snowfall: It comes as a deadly arctic blast is continuing to wreak havoc across the US, with lake-effect snow expected to dump up to five feet of snow on parts
of New York state this weekend. Above, this graphic shows the areas where lake-effect snow is set to strike today

'Ice-covered lighthouse and 'ice pancakes' in St Joseph, Michigan,' wrote Mr Nowicki of his photographs, which were taken during a blizzard.

It is believed the disc-shaped pieces of ice may have been created by stormy waves tumbling and pummeling ice crystals into 'pancake' formations.

Mr Nowicki's images - some taken two days earlier - were met with a positive response from Facebook users, with many deeming them 'stunning'.

Marge Hess Yetzke wrote: 'That is so unique. It looks like a frozen outer space scene', while Kathy Searles said: 'The wonder of nature is amazing!'

And David Howton joked: 'Wow, almost too cold to be out taking photographs I bet!'

It comes as a deadly arctic blast is continuing to wreak havoc across the US, with lake-effect snow expected to dump up to five feet of snow on parts of New York state this weekend. Meanwhile, below-freezing temperatures and wind chills are set to continue to affect a large stretch of the country.

This morning, residents from Northeastern Montana to Northwestern New York were given a windchill advisory by the National Weather Service.

In such frigid conditions, frostbite could set in with just 15 minutes' exposure to the air, the Weather Service said, advising people to keep pets indoors.

And over the next 48 hours, temperatures could fall 15 to 25 degrees below average in states surrounding the Great Lakes, NBC reported.

Charred: On Friday, roughly 190 vehicles were involved in fatal pile-up along a snowy Michigan interstate that caused fires on trucks carrying fireworks
and acid. Above, the charred remains of vehicles are pictured on Interstate 94 on Saturday following the accident

Wrecked: According to Michigan State Police Lt. Rick Pazder, the Friday morning accident killed one person. Above, a wrecked lorry

Clear-up: Road crews work to clear wrecked vehicles and debris along Interstate 94, the day after a series of crashes closed the highway between
mile markers 88 and 92 in eastern Kalamazoo County, near Galesburg, Michigan. There were apparently 193 vehicles involved

At around 7am today, a low of minus 23 degrees was recorded in Manitowish, Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, in Northeast New York, residents are preparing to deal with between one to five feet of snow. 'Heavy lake-effect snow will shift back to the north into the Buffalo South Towns and perhaps into the city for a time Saturday night,' said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams.

Wind gusts of up to 40mph could make temperatures feel as low as minus 30F.

And in Texas, locals are bracing for severely icy roads that could lead to fatal traffic accidents, according to Weather.com.

By Monday, the wintry weather could be even more widespread - with freezing rain and sleet expected to affect commuters from Louisville to Boston.

It comes just a day after the weather forced schools across the US to close, filled up homeless shelters and even caused penguins to be taken inside.

The record-breaking cold, which has already claimed the lives of at least 21 people, led officials to shut down a 132-mile stretch of the Thruway in western New York on Friday - for the second time since the epic November snowstorms - amid concerns over the safety of drivers.

Meanwhile, hundreds of schools in Chicago, Boston and other large cities from the South to the Northeast and Midwest decided to close for a second day running, unable to cope with the sub-zero climates. Others chose to delay their opening by several hours.

And it is was not just humans who were affected by Friday's cold - in Pittsburgh, two baby African penguins were moved indoors at the National Aviary, where the endangered animals that are native to South Africa will remain until temperatures rise.

A day earlier, train rails cracked by the cold had caused severe delays for commuters in Washington, D.C, while tens of thousands of airline passengers were also hit by 1,937 delays and 515 cancellations by mid-afternoon, according to FlightAware.com.

Commuters vented their frustration on Twitter throughout Thursday, with many posts including photos of stations and trains jam-packed with people. One Twitter user wrote that he loves being told to avoid lines that have delays, adding, 'OK, I'll just move my house and job for the day.'

The coldest place in the country on Thursday was recorded to be Estcourt Station, the northernmost point in Maine, with temperatures of minus 38 degrees F (minus 39 C), meteorologist Dan Petersen of the National Weather Service said.

Records were broken from Montpelier, Vermont, at minus 20 F (minus 29 C), to Jackson, Kentucky, with minus 1 F (minus 18 C), he said. Snow flurries were reported as far south as Jacksonville, Florida.

'It's the face, it's like being hit with a sheet of ice,' Bart Adlam, 40, president of U.S. yogurt supplier siggi's, said as he rode a bike through Times Square on his way to work at 8am in New York. The wind chill there reportedly made 9 degrees F (minus 12 C) feel like 2 below (minus 18 C).

The frigid weather has even affected Florida - with snow flurries reported in the Jacksonville area on Thursday afternoon, the first time a trace of snow has been reported since December 26, 2010. Before that, the last sighting of snow was on December 22, 1995.


AMID THE DEADLY COLD, WINDS AND SNOW... ARIZONA POSTS A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE

As the eastern US was battling a deadly arctic blast, Phoenix, Arizona, posted a record high temperature of 80 degrees on Wednesday, breaking the previous 1948 record of 79.

Over in Tempe, 74-year-old Bill Justice was wearing shorts while hanging out in his yard, just days after the National Weather Service announced that 2014 was the warmest year ever recorded in Arizona.

'We can enjoy all kinds of things in the winter and the same thing in the summer,' Mr Justice said, adding that if he lived in Colorado or another cold climate, his swimming pool would be frozen by now.


Meanwhile, there were reports of a water main break in Indiana resulting in several cars becoming 'glued' to the road by frozen water. Residents were forced to abandon their stranded cars and use public transport, or walk, to get to work and school.

And on Wednesday, a man was found dead in a portable toilet on the Northwest Side of Chicago, according to police. The cause of 51-year-old Marek Bobak's death was cold exposure and coronary artery atherosclerosis, the Cook County Medical Examiner determined on Thursday.

Even sledding hills around Chicago and ice-skating rinks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, were shut down because of risk of wind chill, while Maine's Sugarloaf Mountain closed ski trails because of 'Arctic conditions.'

Earlier this week, the extreme conditions caused an 18-vehicle pileup on a western Pennsylvania interstate, leaving two people dead and nearly two dozen injured.

Nine trucks, several of them tractor-trailers, and nine cars were involved in the crash on Wednesday afternoon on Interstate 80 in Clarion Township, state police said. At least one of the trucks was carrying hazardous material, but no leaks were found.

Blanketed: A student walks through a Calvin College parking lot filled with snow-covered cars on Friday in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Aftermath: Doug Brende, of Sioux Falls, is pictured shoveling snow from the sidewalk outside his house on Friday following strong winds

Stuck in the snow: Also in Buffalo, a fresh layer of snow covers cars in Norwood Avenue, making it difficult for people to get to work

None of the injuries was thought to be life-threatening, but three of the 20 or so people taken to the hospital appeared to have serious injuries. The others were treated for everything from bumps to broken bones.

And on Friday, around 193 vehicles were involved in fatal pile-up along a snowy Michigan interstate that caused fires on trucks carrying fireworks and acid. According to Michigan State Police Lt. Rick Pazder, the Friday morning accident killed one person - a trucker from Ottawa, Canada.

Meanwhile, authorities have said the severe weather and blowing snow were factors in the deaths of two northern Michigan men — an 85-year-old who was struck by a car while crossing a road to get his mail and a 64-year-old who was hit by a car while clearing snow.

A car struck 85-year-old Carl Dewey on Wednesday in Helena Township, about 30 miles northeast of Traverse City, the Antrim County sheriff's department said. There were whiteout conditions at the time, the department told The Grand Rapids Press.

The Kalkaska County sheriff's department said 64-year-old Zane Chwastek of Bear Lake Township was using a snow blower in his driveway Wednesday when a car slid off the road and struck him.

But amid the frigid conditions, Phoenix, Arizona, posted a record high temperature of 80 degrees on Wednesday, breaking the 1948 record of 79.

Over in Tempe, 74-year-old Bill Justice was wearing shorts while hanging out in his yard, just days after the National Weather Service announced that 2014 was the warmest year ever recorded in Arizona.

'We can enjoy all kinds of things in the winter and the same thing in the summer,' Mr Justice said, adding that if he lived in Colorado or another cold climate, his swimming pool would be frozen by now. - Daily Mail.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Unknown Galaxy Clusters Have Been Discovered - "What We Are Seeing Are Giant Ellipticals In The Process Of Being Formed"!

February 13, 2014 - SPACE - Four previously unknown galaxy clusters each potentially containing thousands of individual galaxies have been discovered some 10 billion light years from Earth. Most clusters in the universe today are dominated by giant elliptical galaxies in which the dust and gas has already been formed into stars. "What we believe we are seeing in these distant clusters are giant elliptical galaxies in the process of being formed," says David Clements, from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London.

The Daily Galaxy via imperial.ac.uk

An international team of astronomers, led by Imperial College London, used a new way of combining data from the two European Space Agency satellites, Planck and Herschel, to identify more distant galaxy clusters than has previously been possible. The researchers believe up to 2000 further clusters could be identified using this technique, helping to build a more detailed timeline of how clusters are formed.

Galaxy clusters are the most massive objects in the universe, containing hundreds to thousands of galaxies, bound together by gravity. While astronomers have identified many nearby clusters, they need to go further back in time to understand how these structures are formed. This means finding clusters at greater distances from the Earth.

The light from the most distant of the four new clusters identified by the team has taken over 10 billion years to reach us. This means the researchers are seeing what the cluster looked like when the universe was just three billion years old.

"Although we're able to see individual galaxies that go further back in time, up to now, the most distant clusters found by astronomers date back to when the universe was 4.5 billion years old," explains Clements. "This equates to around nine billion light years away. Our new approach has already found a cluster in existence much earlier than that, and we believe it has the potential to go even further."

The clusters can be identified at such distances because they contain galaxies in which huge amounts of dust and gas are being formed into stars. This process emits light that can be picked up by the satellite surveys.

Observations were recorded by the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) instrument as part of Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES). Seb Oliver, Head of the HerMES survey said: "The fantastic thing about Herschel-SPIRE is that we are able to scan very large areas of the sky with sufficient sensitivity and image sharpness that we can find these rare and exotic things. This result from Dr. Clements is exactly the kind of thing we were hoping to find with the HerMES survey"

The researchers are among the first to combine data from two satellites that ended their operations last year: the Planck satellite, which scanned the whole sky, and the Herschel satellite, which surveyed certain sections in greater detail.

The researchers used Planck data to find sources of far-infrared emission in areas covered by the Herschel satellite, then cross referenced with Herschel data to look at these sources more closely. Of sixteen sources identified by the researchers, most were confirmed as single, nearby galaxies that were already known. However, four were shown by Herschel to be formed of multiple, fainter sources, indicating previously unknown galaxy clusters.

The team then used additional existing data and new observations to estimate the distance of these clusters from Earth and to determine which of the galaxies within them were forming stars. The researchers are now looking to identify more galaxy clusters using this technique, with the aim of looking further back in time to the earliest stage of cluster formation.

NGC 7049 shown at the top of the page is a giant galaxy on the border between spiral and elliptical galaxies that spans about 150,000 light-years. It is located about 100 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Indus. NGC 7049 is the “brightest” galaxy of the Indus Triplet of galaxies (NGC 7029, NGC 7041, NGC 7049), and its structure might have arisen from several recent galaxy collisions.

Bright Cluster Galaxies are among the most massive galaxies in the universe and are also the oldest. They provide astronomers the opportunity of studying the many globular clusters contained within them. NGC 7049 has far fewer such clusters than other similar giant galaxies in very big, rich groups. This indicates to astronomers how the surrounding environment influenced the formation of galaxy halos in the early Universe.

The globular clusters in NGC 7049 are seen as the sprinkling of small faint points of light in the galaxy’s halo. The halo – the ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding the galaxy – is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous background to the remarkable swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding NGC 7049′s core.

NGC 7049′s striking appearance is primarily due to this unusually prominent dust ring, seen mostly in silhouette. The opaque ring is much darker than the millions of bright stars glowing behind it. Generally these dust lanes are seen in much younger galaxies with active star forming regions. Not visible in this image is an unusual central polar ring of gas circling out of the plane near the galaxy’s center.

The image was taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope, which is optimised to hunt for galaxies and galaxy clusters in the remote and ancient Universe, at a time when our cosmos was very young.

The research involved scientists from the UK, Spain, USA, Canada, Italy and South Africa. It is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and was part funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Research Council and the UK Space Agency. - Daily Galaxy.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: "Quite Mysterious And Was Not Predicted By Current Theories" - New "Black Hole-Quasar" Discovery Baffles Astronomers?!

November 12, 2013 - SPACE - The most luminous objects in the universe keep getting more mysterious.

Astronomers have discovered a new type of quasar — an incredibly bright galactic core powered by a supermassive black hole — that current theory fails to predict.

One theory of a newly discovered type of black-hole quasar suggests gas flows into a central black hole.
More frequent particle collisions close to the black hole make the gas hot in regions that are closer to
the center (shown in blue and white). Regions further away are cooler (yellow and orange).
York University/Patrick Hall

Models predict that a quasar's light and heat should push nearby gas out from the center and toward the fringes of the host galaxy. The newly found quasars do demonstrate this behavior, but, surprisingly, some of the gas also appears to be falling back to the center, researchers said. 

"Matter falling into black holes may not sound surprising," study lead author Patrick Hall, an astronomer at York University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "But what we found is, in fact, quite mysterious and was not predicted by current theories."

So far, astronomers have found 17 of these objects, which are thought to make up just 0.01 percent of all quasars.

Gas flow in and around quasars can be calculated by examining its Doppler shift, or the change in the wavelengths of light that are produced as the gas moves. On Earth, humans can hear the Doppler shift in action when a car toots its horn as it zooms by. As it comes towards you, the sound waves are compressed and the horn's pitch sounds higher. After it passes, the sound waves lengthen and the pitch drops.

Particles of gas in a distant galaxy emit light at expected wavelengths. This changes as the gas moves toward Earth or away from it. Gas receding from Earth is shifted to the red edge of the light spectrum (which has longer waves), while gas moving toward Earth appears more blue.

Quasar light is easy to track because it is astonishingly bright, producing "enough light to be seen across the observable universe," York University officials said in a statement. The appearance of these newfound quasars, however, generated a mystery.

"The gas in the disk must eventually fall into the black hole to power the quasar, but what is often seen instead is gas blown away from the black hole by the heat and light of the quasar, heading toward us at velocities up to 20 percent of the speed of light," Hall said.

"If the gas is falling into the black hole, then we don't understand why it's so rare to see infalling gas," he added. "There's nothing else unusual about these quasars. If gas can be seen falling into them, why not in other quasars?"

One theory suggests the gas is not descending into the black hole but instead is circling it after the quasar pushes it away. This means that some particles of gas in the galaxy would be moving toward Earth, while others are moving away.

"To make an analogy: Imagine an ant on a spinning merry-go-round, crawling from the center to the edge," Hall said. "You will see the ant moving toward you about half the time and away from you about half the time. The same idea could apply to the gas in these quasars. In either case, the gas in these quasars is moving in an unusual fashion."

Astronomers found the quasars using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), which examines large swaths of the sky. Scientists expect quasar models will have to be revisited, so the researchers plan follow-up surveys using the Gemini Observatory.

The research was published Sept. 1 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - Huffington Post.

MONUMENTAL EARTH CHANGES: Scientists Find "BLACK HOLES" At Sea - The Ocean Whirlpools From Which NOTHING Can Ever Escape, Not Even Water?!

September 29, 2013 - ATLANTIC OCEAN - They are impossible to see, but astronomers are convinced they exist.

Black holes are tears in the fabric of space-time that pull in everything that comes too close to them.

Nothing that gets sucked in can escape, not even light.

Now, scientists believe they have found features of these black holes here on Earth, in the southern Atlantic Ocean.

A black hole is a tear in the fabric of space-time that pulls in everything that comes too close to it.
Nothing that gets sucked in can escape, not even light.

Some of the largest ocean eddies in this region are mathematically equivalent to the mysterious black holes of space, according to researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Miami.

This means that they do the same thing with water, that black holes do with light.

These huge ocean whirlpools are so tightly surrounded by circular water paths that nothing caught up in them escapes.

Their numbers are reportedly on the rise in the Southern Ocean, increasing the northward transport of warm and salty water.

Scientists believe they have found features of black holes in space here on Earth in ocean eddies.
The reflected sunlight in this image illuminates eddies in the Gulf Stream current.

Scientists believe these ocean eddies could moderate the negative impact of melting sea ice in a warming climate.

But up until now they’ve been unable to quantify this impact because the exact boundaries of these swirling water bodies have remained a mystery.

George Haller, professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at ETH Zurich, and Francisco Beron-Vera, research Professor of Oceanography at the University of Miami, believe they have now solved this puzzle.

Using mathematical models, they isolated water-transporting eddies from a sequence of satellite observations.

They did this by detecting their rotating edges, which the scientists found were indicators of the whirlpool within.


WATCH: This video from Nasa shows eddies forming  throughout the south Atlantic.

To their surprise, these eddies turned out to be mathematically equivalent to black holes.

At a critical distance, a light beam no longer spirals into the black hole.

Instead, it dramatically bends and comes back to its original position, forming a circular orbit.

A barrier surface formed by closed light orbits is called a ‘photon sphere’ in Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The researchers discovered similar closed barriers around select ocean eddies.

Some of the largest ocean eddies in the world are mathematically equivalent to the mysterious black
holes of space, according to researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Miami.

In these barriers, fluid particles move around in closed loops – similar to the path of light in a photon sphere.

And as in a black hole, nothing can escape from the inside of these loops, not even water.

The researchers identified seven Agulhas Rings of the black-hole type, which transported the same body of water without leaking for almost a year.

‘Mathematicians have been trying to understand such peculiarly coherent vortices in turbulent flows for a very long time’, explained Haller.

Their results are expected to help in resolving a number of oceanic puzzles, ranging from climate-related questions to the spread of environmental pollution patterns.

WHAT ARE OCEAN EDDIES?

An ocean eddy is a swirling whirlpool surrounded by circular water paths in which nothing that is caught up in them can escape.

Eddies can spin off from major ocean current systems and may last for several months at a time

Ocean eddies are typically bigger than a city and contain a billion tonnes of swirling water.

They take a few days to rotate, drifting slowly and carrying warm and cold water around the ocean.

Despite their importance in driving large-scale ocean circulations, eddies are not fully represented in climate models like those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

- Daily Mail.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL MEMES: Historic Achievement - Light From Alien Super-Earth Seen For the First Time!

Light from an alien "super-Earth" twice the size of our own Earth has been detected by a NASA space telescope for the first time in what astronomers are calling a historic achievement.

This artist's concept shows the super-Earth planet 55 Cancri e.

NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope spotted light from the alien planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits a star 41 light-years from Earth. A year on the extrasolar planet lasts just 18 hours. The planet 55 Cancri e was first discovered in 2004 and is not a habitable world. Instead, it is known as a super-Earth because of its size: The world is about twice the width of Earth and is super-dense, with about eight times the mass of Earth. But until now, scientists have never managed to detect the infrared light from the super-Earth world. "Spitzer has amazed us yet again," said Spitzer program scientist Bill Danch of NASA headquarters in Washington in a statement today (May 8). "The spacecraft is pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to apply a similar technique on potentially habitable planets." Spitzer first detected infrared light from an alien planet in 2005. But that world was "hot Jupiter," a gas giant planet much larger than 55 Cancri e that orbited extremely close to its parent star. While other telescopes have performed similar feats since then, Spitzer's view of the 55 Cancri e is the first time the light from a rocky super-Earth type planet has been seen, researchers said.Since the discovery of 55 Cancri e, astronomers have pinned down increasingly strange features about the planet.

The researchers already knew it was part of an alien solar system containing five exoplanets centered on the star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer (The Crab).  But 55 Cancri e stood out because it is ultra-dense and orbits extremely close to its parent star; about 26 times closer than the distance between Mercury and our own sun. The new Spitzer observations revealed that the star-facing side of 55 Cancri e is extremely hot, with temperatures reaching up to 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (1,726 degrees Celsius). The planet is likely a dark world that lacks the substantial atmosphere needed to warm its nighttime side, researchers said. And to top it all off, the planet is oozing. Past observations of the planet by the Spitzer Space Telescope have suggested that one-fifth of 55 Cancri e is made up of lighter elements, including water. But the extreme temperatures and pressures on 55 Cancri e would create what scientists call a "supercritical fluid" state. Supercritical fluids can be imagined as a gas in a liquid state, which can occur under extreme pressures and temperatures. On Earth, water can become a supercritical fluid inside some steam engines. The previous studies of 55 Cancri e were performed by analyzing how the light from its parent star changed as the planet passed in front of it, a technique known as the "transit method."

In the new study, astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to determine the infrared light from 55 Cancri e itself. Spitzer's new look at 55 Cancri e is consistent with supercritical-fluid waterworld theory. The planet is likely a rocky world covered with water in a supercritical fluid state and topped off with a steam blanket, researchers said. "It could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away," said the study's principal investigator Michaël Gillon of Université de Liège in Belgium. The lead author is Brice-Olivier Demory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The research is detailed in the Astrophysical Journal. NASA's $770 million Spitzer Space Telescope launched in 2003 and is currently in an extended mission to study the universe in infrared light. During that extended mission, telescope engineers modified several settings on the observatory to optimize its alien planet vision, NASA officials said. The space agency's next major infrared space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope slated to launch in 2018, could potentially reveal even more details about 55 Cancri e and other similar super-Earth planets. "When we conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago, exoplanets hadn't even been discovered," said Michael Werner, Spitzer project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Because Spitzer was built very well, it's been able to adapt to this new field and make historic advances such as this." - Discovery News.

WATCH: NASA's Spitzer sees light of Super-Earth.