] As startling new images from the Hubble space telescope
] were unveiled in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 9, U.S.
] Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) vowed to continue fighting
] NASA%u2019s decision to cancel a shuttle mission intended
] to extend the life of the beloved astronomy satellite.
]
] Just two days later, Mikulski appeared to have won an
] important battle when NASA agreed to an outside study of
] the Hubble issue lead by the National Academy of
] Sciences. But later that same day, during a meeting with
] reporters, NASA Administrator Sean O%u2019Keefe said that
] as long as he remains in charge of NASA, the chance that
] a shuttle will be launched to Hubble are slim to none.

NASA's O'Keefe Stands Firm on Hubble Decision, But Agrees to New Study

] Now that NASA's Opportunity rover has established a
] locale on Mars where rocks were once drenched in water,
] it is in a race against time and battery life to learn
] how widespread and deep the water was.
]
] Was there a giant sea, or did less conspicuous
] groundwater percolate locally through the subsurface of
] Meridiani Planum?
]

How Much Water on Mars? Rover Road Trip Seeks Answers

] Astronomers may have found a new way to search for
] intermediate black holes, the long sought after missing
] link between stellar black holes and their supermassive
] cousins at the heart of galaxies.

New Method May Help Find Black Hole Middleweights

Opportunity's Microscopic Imager found this intriguing object, looking more like Rotini pasta. Its odd shape has stirred up Mars researchers, both inside and outside of the NASA Mars Rover Exploration team. Whether or not this object is related to biology has prompted a variety of views.

Main Story:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/opportunity_news_040302.html

Martian Pasta

] this is the bright new picture of black holes and their
] role in the evolution of the universe. Interviews with
] more than a half dozen experts presently involved in
] rewriting the slippery history of these elusive objects
] reveals black holes as galactic sculptors.
]
] In this revised view, which still contains some highly
] debated facts, fuzzy paragraphs and sketchy initial
] chapters, black holes are shown to be fundamental forces
] in the development and ultimate shapes of galaxies and
] the distribution of stars in them. The new history also
] shows that a black hole is almost surely a product of the
] galaxy in which it resides. Neither, it seems, does much
] without the other.
]
] The emerging theory has a nifty, Darwinist buzzword:
] co-evolution.

The New History of Black Holes: 'Co-evolution' Dramatically Alters Dark Reputation

] The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky
] Way Galaxy is heftier than thought and rotates at an
] amazing clip, new research shows.
]
] For years scientists said the black hole contained about
] 2.6 million times the mass of the Sun. They now believe
] the figure is somewhere between 3.2 million and 4 million
] solar masses.
]
] And a new study suggests all that mass, confined to an
] area about 10 times smaller than Earth's orbit around the
] Sun, spins around about once every 11 minutes.

New Twists on the Milky Way's Big Black Hole

] This web page is designed to give everyone an idea of
] what our universe actually looks like.

An Atlas of The Universe

Phewww! That was a close one. I was only betting on 29 billion years.

The new findings support Einstein's cosmological constant, which modern cosmologists say implies that dark energy should not characteristically change over time. If that's right, the universe will continue to expand at an accelerating forever.

The new results suggest that even if Einstein and modern dark energy theory are both wrong, dark energy will not destroy the universe for at least 30 billion years, Riess and his colleagues say.

"Right now we're about twice as confident than before that Einstein's cosmological constant is real, or at least dark energy does not appear to be changing fast enough, if at all, to cause an end to the universe anytime soon," Riess said.

The universe is presently 13.7 billion years old.

Universe Has At Least 30 Billion Years Left

Visit the 2000-page A-Z of astrobiology, astronomy, spaceflight, and related subjects:

this is where I usually go looking for science stories so if in future I recommend various stories then in all probability I didn't go trawling through web sites but found it here so for the sake of honesty I firstly recommend this

The Worlds of David Darling

] Each day a different image or photograph of our
] fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief
] explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Astronomy Picture of the Day