Confirmed: US Planned To Nuke The Moon.

*Source: RT

A B53 bomb is seen in this handout taken October 19, 2011 and released October 20, 2011.(Reuters / Handout)

In a secret project recently discovered, the United States planned to blow up the moon with a nuclear bomb in the 1950s as a display of the country’s strength during the Cold War space race.

The secret project, called “A Study of Lunar Research Flights”, as well as “Project A119” was never carried out but initially intended to intimidate the Soviet Union after their launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, which demonstrated their technological power, the Daily Mail reports.

The sight of a magnificent nuclear flash from Earth was meant to terrify the Soviet Union and boost US confidence, physicist Leonard Reiffel, 85, told the Associated Press. The nuclear device would have been launched from a missile from an unknown location. It would have ignited upon impact with the moon, causing a massive explosion that was visible from Earth.

The detonation would have been the result of an atom bomb, since a hydrogen bomb was too heavy for a missile to carry the 238,000 miles to the moon.

Astronomer Carl Sagan was responsible for some of the calculations that could cause the nuclear detonation. Sagan, who later became a famous author of popular science, was a young graduate student at the time. He worked as a NASA advisor from the 1950s onward and died in 1996.

One of Sagan’s biographers claims he may have committed a security breach by revealing the classified project in 1959 in his application for an academic fellowship. Reiffel, who once served as deputy director at NASA and was responsible for the nuclear research at the Armour Research Foundation in 1958, confirmed this claim.

In his interview with AP, which took place in the year 2000, Reiffel said the nuclear detonation could have occurred by 1959, which is when the US Air Force deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles. The project documents were kept secret for nearly 45 years and the US government has never formally confirmed its involvement in the study.

But in the end, the mission was abandoned due to safety concerns about the radioactive material that would contaminate space. The scientists were also worried about the bomb detonating prematurely, thereby endangering the people on Earth.

Rather than blow up the moon, the US continued the space race, sending its first satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit on Jan. 31, 1958. The project was officially canceled by the Air Force in Jan. 1959, and the US instead focused on sending a man to the moon.

Two Planets, Two Suns: NASA Discovery Could Help Find Alien Life

*Source: RT

George Lucas knew it before the scientists.(Image: Lucasfilm)

NASA’s Kepler space laboratory has discovered a pair of planets orbiting a pair of suns. The first-ever find could revolutionize knowledge of how planets are formed, and even identify alien worlds where life may flourish.

The Kepler-47 star system, about 5,000 light years away from Earth, has a bright sun and a pale sun that circle each other, and two planets bigger than the earth that rotate around their dance.

Greg Laughlin, professor of astrophysics and planetary science at the University of California, said the discovery could turn our understanding of how planets appeared after the Big Bang on its head.

"This is an amazing discovery," he told SPACE.com "These planets are very difficult to form using the currently accepted paradigm, and I believe that theorists will be going back to the drawing board to try to improve our understanding of how planets are assembled."

A planet with more than one sun, like Tatooine in Star Wars, was long imagined by artists, but the first such arrangement, known as a circumbinary system, was spotted less than twenty years ago.

It was often assumed before that that a system of multiple planets would struggle to exist under the gravity of two stars at the same time, with planets either pulling away from the orbit or crashing into each other.

Now, scientists are expecting to find more such systems.

“If we get more data that confirms a third planet, then the sky’s the limit,” says Jerome Orosz from San Diego State University, who published the discovery of Kepler-47 in Science magazine.

It is even possible such a planet will be detected in Kepler-47, he says.

The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009, with the hope of finding Earth-like planets in “habitable zones” that could potentially house life. It has found more than 2,300 potential alien worlds so far.

The new discovery will make the search easier.

"Most of the stars in the galaxy are in binary or higher-order multiple systems, so the fact that planetary systems can exist in these types of systems is important. If we were restricted to looking for planets around single stars, we would be missing most of the stars in the galaxy," says Orosz.

The planet closer to the suns circles them every fifty days, and is likely to be searing hot and unsuitable for life.

But the further planet is in the “habitable range,” where water could exist. The body itself is likely a gas giant like Uranus, nonetheless researchers say its moons could be suitable for life.

And even if it is not found there, there are billions more circumbinary systems in our galaxy alone.

"The thing I find most exciting is the potential for habitability in a circumbinary system," says Science study co-author William Welsh of San Diego State University.