Truth Seeker Forum

May 2, 2012; 9:47 AM ET
Images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) reveal an old star giving out a fiery outburst and spraying the cosmos with dust. This shows a rare, real-time look at the process by which stars like our sun seed the universe with building blocks for other stars, planets and even life.
Results indicate the star recently exploded with copious amounts of fresh dust, equivalent in mass to our planet Earth. The star is heating the dust and causing it to glow with infrared light (heat energy).
The aging star is in the “red giant” phase of its life. Our own sun will expand into a red giant in about 5 billion years. When a star begins to run out of fuel, it cools and expands. As the star puffs up, it sheds layers of gas that cool and congeal into tiny dust particles. This is one of the main ways dust is recycled in our universe, making its way from older stars to newborn solar systems. The other way, in which the heaviest of elements are made, is through the deathly explosions, or supernovae, of the most massive stars.
Astronomers used images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, to locate an aging star shedding loads of dust (orange dot at upper left).

I awoke this morning with messages to share wih all of you about the shifting times we’re in and what’s happening now and what is changing.

First, there was a wave of illness this past week with flu-like symptoms, fever, nausea, down for the count loss of energy. This, I’m told is the letting go process releasing the fear of change. The storms and earthquakes happening now are just recalibrating the planet.

Those of you who have found a way to feather their nests in this stormy energy have fears that these changes will destroy your comfort levels, but this is not the case. And that fear will slow you down. Changes will occur anyway because the cosmic energy supports something different now, but how you experience the change is up to you. Fear it or embrace it and love it.

All the things you love and cherish and have been able to maintain through the last couple of years of sloughing off your snakeskin or breaking out of your cocoon have resulted in a refinement of what you want in your life. You need not fear further loss as the intention now is to build the new and good for everyone.

The energy of the old age, the Piscean Age, was of power and control, the few in charge of the many, and personal control issues and addictions as well. So, all the corporation building, the wars and dictators are products of the old age, and the energy no longer supports these structures. That is why you see them falling away one by one and en masse.

The Aquarian Age supports a new way of being: community, creativity, collaboration, cooperation and compassion. Because the cosmic energy now supports new structures, we are able to release the karmic patterns created during the old age, and claim the lessons and rewards of our service to humanity.

In the Piscean Age, if you stood up for your truth, you were most likely killed for it, i.e., Jesus, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy and so many others. In a past life, I was bound to a water wheel and stoned to death by the very people I was trying to help. This was an old pattern, and it created a long-term fear that if we speak out we will be killed. It shut our voices down and our throat chakras closed up.

But, now is the time to claim the rewards for the times we spoke out for others and stood up for what is right. Now is the time when we are being asked to truly center ourselves in our heart and ask what truth do we want to express in our lives? What life do we want to live? What environment do we want to live in? All these things are possible to manifest now.

Ever since I had that fifth dimensional training dream, I have become acutely aware of my thoughts and feelings and what, through lifetimes, has reinforced limiting beliefs in me. The truth is that those limitations may have resulted from standing in your truth in energy that did not support that truth – a true act of bravery. We deserve the rewards of our bravery, our selfless acts and our concern for the wholeness when all was being divided into little pieces. We deserve to be rewarded for being who we are, for coming to this planet, for sharing in the common good.

What would a world look like that gave you all the things you want in life? What is truly important to you? You don’t have to have the whole picture, just your beautiful heart-felt picture. We, as a whole will put that puzzle together into an amazing collage that offers us a reality that is greater than the sum of its parts.

It’s time now. Make the leap. Believe and let go. Claim your piece of the new age, the new energy and your new life.

Last week, I moved back to NM to the beautiful Oso Vista Ranch where I’m helping create retreats and trainings for the new age, helping people claim their health, their wealth, their creative passions. Helping people move into their new lives easily, joyfully and willingly. http://osovistaranch.com

My shift has occurred, and I’m living the life that all my lives have prepared me for. Nothing is wasted. All my skills, hopes, dreams, passions and joys are embodied in this new expression. But I spent nine months stewing in the old energy before I made the internal shift that allowed the outer expression to occur. I’m living the dream and loving it. I feel like the genie blinked, but I’m the one who blinked.

I look out my windows at the spectacular view and look around the beautiful, comfortable home I’m in, and my heart swells with gratitude. You’ve done the work, now claim the rewards.

Look where I live, photos are posted on my Facebook page: My Zuni Mountain neighborhood: https://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.10150707679779144.416047.783179143&type=1&notif_t=photo_album_comment

(You’ll have to sign into your FB account to see this, I beleive.)

Thanks for sharing this phase of the journey. The best is yet to come.

Love … Sandy Penny, http://sandypenny.com

Posted by Sandy Penny – WritingMuse – Love and Happiness Coach, Build Your Own Website Instructor at 9:40 AM

By Ray Sanders, Universe Today / March 2, 2012
Galactic collision creates mysterious ‘dark core’
Images captured by the Hubble telescope reveal a mysterious clump of dark matter thought to be left behind after a massive galactic collision. But this dark matter isn’t behaving in the way scientists expect dark matter to behave.
This composite image, captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii shows the distribution of dark matter, galaxies, and hot gas in the core of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520, formed from a violent collision of massive galaxy clusters.

NASA, ESA, CFHT, CXO, M.J. Jee (University of California, Davis), and A. Mahdavi (San Francisco State University)

Astronomers are left scratching their heads over a new observation of a “clump” of dark matter apparently left behind after a massive merger between galaxy clusters. What is so puzzling about the discovery is that the dark matter collected into a “dark core” which held far fewer galaxies than expected. The implications of this discovery present challenges to current understandings of how dark matter influences galaxies and galaxy clusters.

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Initially, the observations made in 2007 were dismissed as bad data. New data obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2008 confirmed the previous observations of dark matter and galaxies parting ways. The new evidence is based on observations of a distant merging galaxy cluster named Abell 520. At this point, astronomers have a challenge ahead of them in order to explain why dark matter isn’t behaving as expected.

“This result is a puzzle,” said astronomer James Jee (University of California, Davis). “Dark matter is not behaving as predicted, and it’s not obviously clear what is going on. Theories of galaxy formation and dark matter must explain what we are seeing.”

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Current theories on dark matter state that it may be a kind of gravitational “glue” that holds galaxies together. One of the other interesting properties of dark matter is that by all accounts, it’s not made of same stuff as people and planets, yet interacts “gravitationally” with normal matter. Current methods to study dark matter are to analyze galactic mergers, since galaxies will interact differently than their dark matter halos. The current theories are supported by visual observations of galaxy mergers in the Bullet Cluster, and have become a classic example of our current understanding of dark matter.

Studies of Abell 520 are causing astronomers to think twice about our current understanding of dark matter. Initial observations found dark matter and hot gas, but lacked luminous galaxies – which are normally detected in the same regions as dark matter concentrations. Attempting to make sense of the observations, the astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 to map dark matter in the cluster using a gravitational lensing technique.

“Observations like those of Abell 520 are humbling in the sense that in spite of all the leaps and bounds in our understanding, every now and then, we are stopped cold,” said Arif Babul (University of Victoria, British Columbia).

Jee added, “We know of maybe six examples of high-speed galaxy cluster collisions where the dark matter has been mapped, but the Bullet Cluster and Abell 520 are the two that show the clearest evidence of recent mergers, and they are inconsistent with each other. No single theory explains the different behavior of dark matter in those two collisions. We need more examples.”

The team has worked on numerous possibilities for their findings, each with their own set of unanswered questions. One such possibility is that Abell 520 was a more complicated merger than the Bullet Cluster encounter. There may have been several galaxies merging in Abell 520 instead of the two responsible for the Bullet Cluster. Another possibility is that like well-cooked rice, dark matter may be sticky. When particles of ordinary matter collide, they lose energy and, as a result, slow down. It may be possible for some dark matter to interact with itself and remain behind after a collision between two galaxies.

Another possibility may be that there were more galaxies in the core, but were too dim for Hubble to detect. Being dimmer, the galaxies would have formed far fewer stars than other types of galaxies. The team plans to use their Hubble data to create computer simulations of the collision, in the hopes of obtaining vital clues in the efforts to better understand the unusual behavior of dark matter.

If you’d like to learn more about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Ray Sanders is a Sci-Fi geek, astronomer and space/science blogger. Currently researching variable stars at Arizona State University, he writes for Universe Today, The Planetary Society blog, and his own blog, Dear Astronomer. Be sure to follow via the links below for more of Ray’s posts!

Temporal Distortion from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.
What you see is real, but you can’t see it this way with the naked eye. It is the result of 20-30 second exposures edited together over many hours to produce the timelapse. This allows you to see the Milky Way, Aurora and other Phenonmena in a way you wouldn’t normally see them.
In the opening “Dakotalapse” title shot, you see bands of red and green moving across the sky. After asking several Astronomers, they are possible noctilucent clouds, airglow or faint Aurora. I never got a definite answer to what it is. You can also see the red and green bands in other shots.
Find out more information on how the video was made at Temporal Distortion.
Randy Halverson

Continue Reading on dakotalapse.com >

NASA’S Spitzer Finds Solid Buckyballs in Space

WASHINGTON — Astronomers using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form.

Formally named buckminsterfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor.

In the latest discovery, scientists using Spitzer detected tiny specks of matter, or particles, consisting of stacked buckyballs. They found them around a pair of stars called “XX Ophiuchi,” 6,500 light-years from Earth.

“These buckyballs are stacked together to form a solid, like oranges in a crate,” said Nye Evans of Keele University in England, lead author of a paper appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “The particles we detected are miniscule, far smaller than the width of a hair, but each one would contain stacks of millions of buckyballs.”

Buckyballs were detected definitively in space for the first time by Spitzer in 2010. Spitzer later identified the molecules in a host of different cosmic environments. It even found them in staggering quantities, the equivalent in mass to 15 Earth moons, in a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud.

In all of those cases, the molecules were in the form of gas. The recent discovery of buckyballs particles means that large quantities of these molecules must be present in some stellar environments in order to link up and form solid particles. The research team was able to identify the solid form of buckyballs in the Spitzer data because they emit light in a unique way that differs from the gaseous form.

“This exciting result suggests that buckyballs are even more widespread in space than the earlier Spitzer results showed,” said Mike Werner, project scientist for Spitzer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “They may be an important form of carbon, an essential building block for life, throughout the cosmos.”

Buckyballs have been found on Earth in various forms. They form as a gas from burning candles and exist as solids in certain types of rock, such as the mineral shungite found in Russia, and fulgurite, a glassy rock from Colorado that forms when lightning strikes the ground. In a test tube, the solids take on the form of dark, brown “goo.”

“The window Spitzer provides into the infrared universe has revealed beautiful structure on a cosmic scale,” said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “In yet another surprise discovery from the mission, we’re lucky enough to see elegant structure at one of the smallest scales, teaching us about the internal architecture of existence.”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.