A Star is Born

This NASA image released on May 4, 2010 from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory shows the cloud associated with the Rosette Nebula, a stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years from Earth. The formation of new stars in galaxies like the Milky Way has declined five-fold in the last three billion years, initial findings of the European Space Agency's Herschel telescope.

An "impossible" star is born. And a hole in space shows what happens once a star is formed. Scientists' European-built Herschel space telescope caught on tape the beginning of a big star. And we mean really, really big. So enormous, it would block out the sun. Researchers can't explain how what they're calling the "impossible" star came to be. The star was discovered in a star-forming cloud in the Milky Way Galaxy called RCW 120. And here's the coolest part: Even as a baby star, it is already eight to ten times larger than our sun, and it's still feeding on the gas and dust clouds around it. The star is set to be one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years - meaning, this star won't ever be a part of our lives.

How did it get there? Just because we couldn't see it before now, doesn't mean it wasn't there. That's not the only unexplained mystery in space. That same Herschel infrared telescope also picked up an enormous hole in space. A story from Space.com has a scientist noting, and we quote, "No one has ever seen a hole like this." The surprising find is confounding scientists because it is so unexpected. When a star forms, it's surrounded by gas and dust. (See above.) But how a newborn star shakes off the space debris to emerge from its birth cloud hadn't been fully understood. Until now: Black patches near the stars were always around a reflective gas, NGC 1999. Everyone figured the black patches near the star were gas, but the telescope would have picked up on that. Finally, scientists realized they were looking at a big, empty hole where the space dust used to be - possibly caused by some of the young stars puncturing a hole with the jets of gas. So perhaps some of that dust gets sucked into the space holes. For researchers, this amazing discovery is a helpful step into understanding how a star is formed. I have to wonder out loud, what is on the other side of those space holes...Hmmm?? Someone please answer me.

Finally, scientists have no idea how to stop a fully powered satellite that has gone rogue and is no longer accepting orders from earth. This so-called 'zombie' satellite, known as Galaxy 15 continues along in the Earth's orbit — on a course to interfere with the communications of a fully functioning SES satellite beaming down programming for AMC 11 to its customers in the United States. Nobody panic: the owner of the undead satellite, Intelsat, is attempting a fix. The interference is expected on May 23, and chances of the company succeeding in stopping the communication break-down are not good. OK, panic.