The National VoicePath

PTI-After a wait of 372 years, sky gazers are in for a special celestial treat as winter solstice coincides with total lunar eclipse on Tuesday. The last time the two astronomical events coincided was on December 21, 1638, Geoff Chester of US Naval Observatory said. The eclipse cannot be seen in the country as it will occur during day time but astro-lovers can see the full moon turning into a delightful shade of coppery-red from Europe, west Africa, the Americas, the Pacific Ocean, eastern Australia, the Philippines and eastern and northern Asia. Also, tomorrow is the shortest day of the year as people living on the northern side of the equator will celebrate winter solstice. "It is a day when the Earth's axis tilts the farthest from the sun and is called winter solstice, a term derived from Latin words 'sol' (sun) and 'sistere' (to stand still)," Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) President C B Devgun said....

UFOs have always been a fascination for millions of people all over the world and now, it appears to be a ‘boom time’ for UFOs in China. In the eight such incident since June this year, yet another UFO was spotted over the Baotou airport in China’s Inner Mongolia province, forcing the authorities to shut down operations for more than one hour. UFO sightings have increased in China, according to media reports. In a recent sighting, photography student Gu Peiwen closely examined a photo in his camera and shouted in disbelief: “I just caught aliens on camera!” According to Shanxi News Net , it was near midnight on Sept. 22 as Gu and his friend were taking photos of the beautiful moonlight view of the ancient Pingyao City in north China’s Shanxi Province, when Gu noticed a bright spot in his photo. He first thought it was a star, but could not find a star in that position when he carefully looked back up into the sky. Enlarging the photo, Gu found the bright spot was a flat object wi...

Physicist Stephen Hawking, apparently dismissing the need for God in creation by arguing that the universe could be self-forming, is mistaken in his theory, said Terry Eagleton, one of the most influential British literary critics and Marxists, Monday. “It’s a fascinating theory. But he’s making a very simple mistake, that many atheists and even many Christians make too, to say that God is the creator means God got it all started,” Eagleton said at a press conference in Seoul, prior to his five-day lecture on the humanities in Korea. “The doctrine of creation has nothing to do with that,” he said. Hawking, famous for his black hole theory, said in his new book that the universe could have created itself “from nothing” and it was not necessary to “invoke God” to set the universe going. Eagleton made a reference to Christian theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas who had said that it was perfectly possible that the universe had no origin. “Aquinas believed in creation but ...

Can scientific laws produce 'spontaneous creation'? SIR – Stephen Hawking makes a category error in his dismissal of God (Comment, September 3). He will find no God if he looks for God as an object among objects. We humans live with the mystery of being not only objects (under the laws of nature) but subjects with consciousness and the freedom of rational beings. We look at the universe through the window of our rationality, just as we might look at a garden through a window. We forget the window but it is always there. Our selfhood is free and transcendent. Professor Hawking and the scientists rightly explore questions about the physical universe and its chains of contingency and objective causation. What they will not answer is the "why" of the universe. Why is it here? This is not a scientific question – it is not another part of the chain of cause and effect that science is unravelling with such brilliance. Questions about...

Melbourne, Aug 26 (ANI): Astronomers are predicting that a massive solar storm, much bigger in potential than the one that caused spectacular light shows on Earth earlier this month, is to strike our planet in 2012 with a force of 100 million hydrogen bombs. Several US media outlets have reported that NASA was warning the massive flare this month was just a precursor to a massive solar storm building that had the potential to wipe out the entire planet's power grid. Despite its rebuttal, NASA's been watching out for this storm since 2006 and reports from the US this week claim the storms could hit on that most Hollywood of disaster dates - 2012. Similar storms back in 1859 and 1921 caused worldwide chaos, wiping out telegraph wires on a massive scale. The 2012 storm has the potential to be even more disruptive. "The general consensus among general astronomers (and certainly solar astronomers) is that this coming Solar maximum (2012 but possibly later into 20...

IBNLive.com - 1 hour ago New Delhi: Paul the octopus was right. Spain marched into the finals after dumping out Germany on Wednesday 1-0. The psychic octopus Paul on Tuesday had ... New Delhi: Paul the octopus was right. Spain marched into the finals after dumping out Germany on Wednesday 1-0. The psychic octopus Paul on Tuesday had predicted that Spain will beat Germany in the World Cup semi-finals. With six out of six correct predictions, the eight-legged creature has now predicted every result forGermany's games in this World Cup with 100 per cent accuracy. The only time the usually-prescient Paul has erred in the past was ahead of the Germany-Spain final at the 2008 European Championship. Paul picked Germany; Spain prevailed 1-0. Otherwise, Paul correctly predicting Germany's wins over Argentina and England, and also foretold the victories over Australia and Ghana and the country's loss to Serbia. Now with Germany to take on the Uruguay for the third place in...

Kate McAlpine, reporter A relatively small black hole has been spotted blowing bubbles with diameters of more than 300-1500 light years. Robert Soria of the University College London and colleagues pored over images and data from the European Southern Observatory and Chandra X-ray Observatory , zeroing in on an unusually large remnant from a supernova explosion. Its host galaxy appears in the Sculptor constellation of Earth's southern sky, around 12.7 million light years away. They discovered three hot spots in the x-ray emissions, all in a row, and identified the central one as the core of a black hole a few times larger than the sun. The two spots flanking the core are produced by jets colliding with interstellar gas. A nearby star feeds the black hole, giving it energy to shoot a flood of particles out each side at near the speed of light. These jets are much more powerful than expected for a black hole of this size, blowing bubbles that expand faster than the ...