The first Earth-like planet outside the solar system will have been discovered by the end of the year, one of the world's leading astronomers said yesterday.
Professor Michel Mayor, the scientist in charge of the team who detected the first extrasolar planet in 1995, claimed that the chance of finding a planet that is habitable for humans is now imminent.
The astronomer, of Geneva University, said that recent technological progress that allows the observation of planets outside the solar system now makes the prospect of locating a planet of a similar make-up to Earth extremely likely.
Twin Earth: Professor Michel Mayor said yesterday that the chance of finding a planet outside the solar system that is habitable for humans is now imminent
Professor Mayor said that Nasa's Kepler spacecraft is likely to be the first to locate the ideal planet to sustain human life because it is carrying the largest telescope to ever have been sent beyond the Earth's orbit.
The telescope, which is in orbit around the Sun, is monitoring more than 100,000 stars every half hour and is focused on a star field in the Orion spiral arm of the Milky Way.
Professor Mayor said that Nasa's Kepler spacecraft is likely to be the first to locate the ideal planet to sustain human life because it is carrying the largest telescope to ever have been sent beyond the Earth's orbit
More than 400 extrasolar planets - or exoplanets - that orbit stars similar to the Sun have been discovered in the last 15 years, Professor Mayor told the conference.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1246127/SETI-Royal-Society-Earths-twin-planet-end-year-leading-astronomer-says.html#ixzz0dlTlqu5B
Is it a coincidence that the Cassini space probe inexplicably stopped sending images as it was about to fly by Titan, one of the moons of Saturn [link]? Titan is known to harbour conditions necessary for life. Another place considered a likely candidate for extraterrestrial life is Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. However, the canyons of Europa have eluded attempts at observation as well [link]. Early radio astronomers claim to have received signals, leaking from Titan, that suggest the presence of an extraterrestrial species. However, they are trapped and shielded from detection by parasitic aliens from another galaxy..aliens who have been exploiting Titan's resources for eons [link]. This explains why conditions there have deteriorated to an almost "pre-biotic" state. The result has been a sort of reverse-geo-evolution. In it's day, Titan could have been just as hospitable a place as Earth is today.
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"Above: the three images taken over several hours that spotted the new planet (Eris)"
"Click for animation: Can you spot Eris?"
"Best Hubble Image of Eris and its moon"As we explore the Galaxy we consistently discover new planets, etc, therefore when it comes to objects like Planet X, Nibiru, or even Extraterrestrial civilisations, we should remain open minded to all these possibilites. Pluto was only discovered in 1930, so what else will we find in the coming years."
"Wednesday, 13 October, 1999, 10:02 GMT 11:02 UK"JUPITER WOULD BE DWARFED BY THE NEW PLANET
By News Online Science Editor Dr David WhitehouseA UK astronomer may have discovered a new and bizarre planet orbiting the Sun, 1,000 times further away than the most distant known planet.
Currently, Pluto is the planet we think of being on the edge of our planetary system.
But the new body would be 30,000 times more distant from the Sun than the Earth - putting it a significant distance on the way to the nearest star.
What is more, it seems that the new planet cannot be a true member of our Sun's family of planets. It may be a planet that was born elsewhere, and roamed throughout the galaxy only to be captured on the outskirts of our own Solar System.
The controversial suggestion that there is another planet in deep space comes from Dr John Murray, of the UK's Open University. For several years, he has been studying the peculiar motions of so-called long-period comets.
COMETS DEFLECTED
Comets - flying mountains of rock and ice - are thought to come from the cold and dark outer reaches of the Solar System, far beyond the planets in a region called the Oort cloud.
They spend millions of years in the Oort cloud, until they are deflected into an orbit that takes them into the inner Solar System where we can see them.
By analysing the orbits of 13 of these comets, Dr Murray has detected the tell-tale signs of a single massive object that deflected all of them into their current orbits.
"Although I have only analysed 13 comets in detail," he told BBC News Online, "the effect is pretty conclusive. I have calculated that there is only about a one in 1,700 chance that it is due to chance."
In a research paper to be published next week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, he suggests that the so-far unseen planet is several times bigger than the largest known planet in our Solar System, Jupiter.
Being so far from the Sun - three thousand billion miles - it would take almost six million years to orbit it.
"This would explain why it has not been found," explained Dr Murray to BBC News Online. "It would be faint and moving very slowly."
OPPOSITE DIRECTION
He has calculated that it lies in the constellation of Delphinus (the Dolphin).
But the planet orbits our Sun in the "wrong" direction, counter to the direction taken by all the other known planets.
It is this which has led to the remarkable suggestion that it did not form in this region of space along with the Sun's other planets, and could be a planet that "escaped" from another star.
But, if it is discovered, will Dr Murray get a chance to name it?
"Probably not," he says. "That will be up to an international committee. But it would be nice to make a few suggestions."
Further evidence to support Dr Murray's claims will be presented at a conference in Italy next week.
Professor John Matese, of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, has carried out a similar study and reached broadly similar conclusions. His research is to be published in Icarus, the journal of Solar System studies.
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/467572.stm
"Unexplained deviations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune point to a large outer solar system body of 4 to 8 Earth masses, on a highly tilted orbit, beyond 7 billion miles from the sun,"
"UPDATE: "
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: January 10, 2011
Six years ago this month, Michael E. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, spotted an object in the night sky that was so bright and so far away that he was sure it was bigger than Pluto.
"Guaranteed," Dr. Brown said when he announced the discovery, half a year later, in July 2005.
Well...maybe not, after all.
In November, that object, now known as the dwarf planet Eris, passed in front of a dim, distant star. Astronomers led by Bruno Sicardy of the Paris Observatory measured how long the star disappeared behind Eris and, from that, calculated the width of Eris.
"It's clearly smaller," said Alain Maury, who observed the brief disappearance, or occultation, of the star at the San Pedro de Atacama Celestial Explorations Observatory in Chile.
For now, Drs. Maury and Sicardy decline to say exactly how small Eris is, because they first want to publish the results in the journal Nature. But they say that even accounting for the uncertainties in the observations, the largest possible Eris is smaller than the smallest possible Pluto.
The news raises the question of what might have happened if Eris' true size had been known from the beginning. Dr. Brown's discovery of Eris - and the presumption that it was bigger than Pluto - was the falling domino that pushed the International Astronomical Union to come up with a new definition of "planet" that excluded Pluto. Pluto and Eris were downsized to "dwarf planets" - roundish objects that do not gravitationally dominate their orbits
If astronomers had believed Pluto to be larger than Eris - even slightly - might they have kept the solar system at nine planets and sidestepped the ensuing kerfuffle?
"Maybe," Dr. Brown said, although as he tells in his unapologetically titled book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming," he thinks the International Astronomical Union got it right
The occultation measurement - which means Eris is not just smaller than expected but also incredibly shiny - is the latest surprise of the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy debris beyond Neptune. That belt turns out to be even stranger than astronomers thought a few years ago.
And not everyone is yet convinced that Eris is definitely smaller than Pluto. Dr. Brown, for one, is perplexed. The occultation measurement seems to demonstrate convincingly that Eris' diameter is less than 2,360 kilometers, or 1,466 miles, Dr. Brown said. That is smaller than earlier estimates of 3,000 kilometers, based on infrared light from Eris, and 2,400 kilometers, based on Dr. Brown's observations with the Hubble Space Telescope.
But he notes that a number of conflicting figures for the size of Pluto appear on various Web sites. Wikipedia, citing a 2006 scientific paper, puts the diameter at 2,306 kilometers, give or take 20 kilometres.
And now Pluto is bigger than Eris, "because, um, 2,306 kilometers is greater than 2,360 kilometers?" Dr. Brown asked, rhetorically and quizzically, on his blog.
Delving further to make sense of the numbers, Dr. Brown did not question the yet-to-be-published Eris measurements by Dr. Sicardy's group, but rather concluded, "I have to say: there is something fishy in the size of Pluto."
More than 80 years after Clyde W. Tombaugh spotted Pluto, astronomers still have not pinned down exactly how big, or small, it is.
For decades, Pluto was the magically shrinking planet. It was first thought to be about as large as Earth - nearly 8,000 miles wide - but subsequent measurements had it smaller and smaller.
In 1980, Alexander J. Dessler, now at Texas A">Needless to say, the size of Pluto stabilized. Between 1985 and 1990, the orbit of Pluto's moon, Charon, was edge-on, as seen from Earth, and eclipses enabled astronomers to measure the diameters of Pluto and Charon more directly. Pluto has also passed in front of a few stars, too, just as Eris did in November.
But that was still not the end of the story. The surface of Pluto can reach a relatively balmy minus 360 degrees Fahrenheit, warm enough for some methane and nitrogen ices to evaporate and create an atmosphere, and the atmosphere bends light.
"Pluto's atmosphere is kind of a like a crummy convergent lens," said Eliot F. Young, an astronomer at Southwest Research Institute's space studies department in Boulder, Colo., who was an author of the 2006 paper. "Each ray is bent toward the center of Pluto."
Thus, the true diameter of Pluto remains uncertain.
Dr. Young reanalyzed the stellar occultation data and found Pluto to be bigger, with the data compatible with a diameter as large as 2,400 kilometres.
But he said, "I don't think it's that big." The minimum diameter, according to his calculations, is about 2,300 kilometers, leaving a sizable uncertainty of 100 kilometers. "This is embarrassing for me to talk about," Dr. Young said.
Eris is about three times as far from the Sun as Pluto, much colder and almost completely devoid of any atmosphere to distort an occultation. So astronomers may now know Eris' size more accurately than Pluto's.
Still, the range of possible Pluto sizes seems to overlap the possible Eris sizes. "If you looked at the two of them right next to each other sitting in space, they would look to be exactly the same size," Dr. Brown said. "You couldn't tell by eye until you took out your really, really big ruler."
Drs. Maury and Sicardy point to another estimate that finds a larger Pluto, based on the absorption of light by methane in Pluto's atmosphere.
That analysis, by Emmanuel Lellouch of the Paris Observatory, and his collaborators, who included Dr. Sicardy, said that to explain the patterns they saw, Pluto had to be at least 2,340 kilometers wide.
But Dr. Young, while lauding the methane measurements, said that too much was still not known about the structure of Pluto's atmosphere to make that confident a conclusion about its size.
A precise, direct measurement of Pluto will finally come in 2015 when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is to fly past.
The smaller size of Eris would actually make it more interesting, Dr. Brown said. With less surface area, it would have to reflect almost all the light that hits it to explain how bright it is. And to explain the shininess, it must have a thin layer of methane and nitrogen frost - the remnants of a thin atmosphere that froze as Eris moved along its elliptical orbit away from the Sun.
"There is no other plausible explanation," Dr. Brown said.
Eris is currently almost nine billion miles from the Sun, but its elliptical, 557-year orbit takes it as close as 3.5 billion miles. Pluto's distance from the Sun varies between 2.7 billion and 4.6 billion miles.
Even if Eris is slightly smaller than Pluto, it is still the heavyweight of the Kuiper Belt - 27 percent more massive than Pluto. The orbital period of Charon put a precise figure on Pluto's mass, and Eris' mass is similarly well measured because it too has a moon, named Dysnomia. That means Eris must have a much larger rocky core than Pluto, perhaps indicating that Pluto and Eris did not form in quite the same way.
Other Kuiper Belt objects that Dr. Brown has discovered in the past decade have also shown the outer system to be more curious - and violent - than many would have expected. One of those is Haumea, a dwarf planet that is highly elongated and spins very fast, once every four hours.
"The only thing we could think that would cause it is if it got smacked, really hard, by something else early in the history of the solar system," Dr. Brown said, "and everyone kind shook their head and said, well, no, that makes no sense, the probability of that happening is nearly zero."
Then Dr. Brown and his collaborators discovered two moons orbiting Haumea that looked like shards knocked off by an impact. Still, the skeptics doubted.
Later, they found a dozen more pieces of Haumea, orbiting not around Haumea but around the Sun.
"At this point, there is no question this thing suffered a giant impact," Dr. Brown said. "I think we should have called it Humpty Dumpty instead of Haumea - we can actually put this thing back together again."
Other large Kuiper Belt objects also have tiny fragment moons, suggesting that giant impacts were not uncommon. Many of them are also rockier than expected; impacts could have knocked away outer layers of ice. Indeed, a giant, high-speed impact in Eris' past could be the reason it has less ice and more rock than Pluto.
Recent measurements indicate that the other large Kuiper Belt objects are also, like Eris, smaller and shinier than had been thought. The one known as Makemake now appears to be only 1,200 kilometers in diameter, not 1,500. Another, Quaoar, might be only 900 kilometers wide, compared with earlier estimates of 1,200 kilometers.
That leaves a sizable gap between Pluto and Eris and the next largest ones. "It's a really strange distribution of sizes," Dr. Brown said. "I don't think it's caught anybody's attention yet."
Perhaps the biggest surprise since the discovery of Eris is that there has not been another Eris.
Dr. Brown's sweep of the Kuiper Belt turned up a series of larger and larger objects - up to Eris. After Eris, the search found nothing else of note. There was a possibility of another large Kuiper Belt object lurking in the Southern Hemisphere sky, out of view of the California telescope that Dr. Brown was using.
But Scott S. Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution of Washington just completed a survey of the remaining sky, and he, too, found nothing large.
"It is highly unlikely there are other Pluto-size objects" in the Kuiper Belt, Dr. Sheppard said.
Beyond the Kuiper Belt, more mysteries await.
Astronomers want to find more objects like Sedna, which Dr. Brown discovered in 2003. Sedna is currently about three times as far from the Sun as Neptune, which is already outside of the Kuiper Belt. But at the other end of its 11,800-year elliptical orbit, Sedna will be 32 times as far out as Neptune.
And beyond Sedna is the Oort cloud, an even more distant collection of bodies astronomers have not yet found, but which they are absolutely certain exist. (Some of the comets that pass by the Sun originated in the Oort cloud but were gravitationally nudged to dive toward the inner solar system.)
And one of those more distant objects could turn out to be larger than one or more of the remaining eight planets, which could reignite the debate over what should be called a planet.
That could help resolve a sore point in the Brown household.
Dr. Brown originally wanted to name Eris after his daughter, Lilah, who was born three weeks before the discovery was announced. He imagined that when someone asked, "Were you named after the planet?" Lilah could retort, "No, the planet was named after me." His wife, Diane, dissuaded him.
Dr. Brown eventually settled on Eris, the Greek goddess of strife. Dysnomia, the moon, is a demon of lawlessness and the daughter of Eris. Dr. Brown also chose that name because the first syllable is pronounced like the first syllable of Diane.
Lilah, now in kindergarten, is one of the people upset with her father over Pluto. "Killing is bad, and she knows I killed Pluto and therefore I'm a bad person," Dr. Brown said. "And she would like me to do something about it."
Dr. Brown explained to Lilah why Pluto was no longer a planet. "And she's fine with that," he said. "She has a solution, which is an interestingly creative solution."
Lilah told him, "Why don't you find another planet and name it Pluto?"
"That's why I keep looking," Dr. Brown said.
Lilah still does not know she almost had a planet named after her.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/science/space/11pluto.html"=1">Correction: January 19, 2011"An article on Jan. 11 about uncertainty surrounding the sizes of Pluto and the dwarf planet Eris misstated an estimate of Pluto's diameter by scientists at the Paris Observatory. They concluded it is at least 2,340 kilometers wide, not at least 2,360 kilometers wide."
"ADDITIONAL"
JUNE 14, 2007: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has teamed up with the W.M. Keck Observatory to precisely measure the mass of Eris, the largest member of a new class of dwarf planets in our solar system. Eris is 1.27 times the mass of Pluto, formerly the largest member of the Kuiper Belt of icy objects beyond Neptune.
Hubble observations in 2006 showed that Eris is slightly physically larger than Pluto. But the mass could only be calculated by observing the orbital motion of the moon Dysnomia around Eris. Multiple images of Dysnomia's movement along its orbit were taken by Hubble and Keck.
Astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. and colleagues also report in this week's Science Magazine that Dysnomia is in a nearly circular 16-day orbit. This favors the idea that Dysnomia was born out of a collision between Eris and another Kuiper Belt object (KBO). A gravitationally captured object would be expected to be in a more elliptical orbit.
The satellites of Pluto, as well as the Earth-Moon system are also believed to have been born out of a collision process where debris from the smashup goes into orbit and coalesces into a satellite.
By comparing the mass and diameter, Brown has calculated a density for Eris of 2.3 grams per cubic centimeter. This is very similar to the density of Pluto, the large Kuiper Belt object 2003 EL61, and Neptune's moon Triton which is likely a captured KBO. These higher densities imply that these bodies are not pure ice but must have a significant rocky composition.
The discovery of Eris in 2005 (originally nicknamed Xena, and officially cataloged 2003 UB313) prompted a debate over the planetary status of Pluto because astronomers realized they would have to call it the "10th" planet if Pluto retained its own planetary status, which was already under debate. This led the International Astronomical Union, in 2006, to make a new class of solar system object called dwarf planets. These are spherical bodies in hydrostatic equilibrium (objects that have sufficient gravity to overcome their own rigidity and form a spherical shape) like the planets, but unlike the major planets in the solar system, they have not gravitationally cleared out the neighborhood of particles and small debris along their orbits.
Source: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/24/full/
DISCOVERY OF ALIEN LIFE
X FACTORS
IN THIS SECTION, DEVELOPED IN COLLABORATION WITH "NATURE", A LEADING SCIENCE JOURNAL, THE RISK RESPONSE NETWORK ASKS READERS TO LOOK BEYOND OUR HIGH-RISK CONCERNS OF THE MOMENT TO CONSIDER A SET OF FIVE X FACTORS AND REFLECT ON WHAT COUNTRIES OR COMPANIES SHOULD BE DOING TO ANTICIPATE THEM.
(...)
X FACTORS: DISCOVERY OF ALIEN LIFE
Given the pace of space exploration, it is increasingly conceivable that we may discover the existence of alien life or other planets that could support human life. What would be the effects on science funding flows and humanity's self-image?
It was only in 1995 that we first found evidence that other stars also have planets orbiting them. Now thousands of "exoplanets" revolving around distant stars have been detected. NASA's Kepler mission to identify Earth-sized planets located in the "Goldilocks zone" (not too hot, not too cold) of sun-like stars has been operating for only three years and has already turned up thousands of candidates, including one the size of Earth. The fact that Kepler has found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests that there are countless Earth-like planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy. In 10 years' time we may have evidence not only that Earth is not unique but also that life exists elsewhere in the universe.Suppose the astronomers who study exoplanets one day find chemical signs of life - for example, a spectrum showing the presence of oxygen, a highly reactive element that would quickly disappear from Earth's atmosphere if it were not being replenished by plants. Money might well start flowing for new telescopes to study these living worlds in detail, both from the ground and from space. New funding and new brain power might be attracted to the challenges of human space flight and the technologies necessary for humanity, or its artificial-intelligence emissaries, to survive an inter-stellar crossing. The discovery would certainly be one of the biggest news stories of the year and interest would be intense. But it would not change the world immediately. Alien life has been supposedly discovered before, after all. Around the turn of the 20th century, the US astronomer Percival Lowell convinced many people (including himself) that Mars was crisscrossed by a vast system of canals built by a dying civilization. But the belief that humankind was not alone did not do much to usher in an era of goodwill and earthly harmony, nor did it stop the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The discovery's largest near-term impact would likely be on science itself. Suppose observations point to a potential future home for humankind around another star, or the existence of life in our solar system - in the Martian poles, in the subsurface oceans of Jupiter's frozen moon Europa, or even in the hydrocarbon lakes of Saturn's moon Titan. Scientists will immediately start pushing for robotic and even human missions to study the life forms in situ - and funding agencies, caught up in the excitement, might be willing to listen. The fledgling space economy had a big year in 2012, which saw the birth of space trucking when the first commercially built and operated spacecraft had a successful rendezvous with the International Space Station, and a host of celebrity billionaires declared intentions to make asteroid mining a reality. Discovery of an Earth 2.0 or life beyond our planet might inspire new generations of space entrepreneurs to meet the challenge of taking human exploration of the galaxy from the realm of fiction to fact.Over the long term, the psychological and philosophical implications of the discovery could be profound. If life forms (even fossilized life forms) are found in our solar system, for example, the origin of life is "easy" - that any place in the universe life can emerge, it will emerge. It will suggest that life is as natural and as ubiquitous a part of the universe as the stars and galaxies. The discovery of even simple life would fuel speculation about the existence of other intelligent beings and challenge many assumptions that underpin human philosophy and religion.Through basic education and awareness campaigns, the general public can achieve a higher science and space literacy and cognitive resilience that would prepare them and prevent undesired social consequences of such a profound discovery and paradigm shift concerning humankind's position in the universe.
SOURCE AND CREDITS: HTTP://REPORTS.WEFORUM.ORG/GLOBAL-RISKS-2013/SECTION-FIVE/X-FACTORS/
The massive gas giant Jupiter orbits the sun privilege spare the vaunted asteroid squash. The planet is about 775 million KM from our Sun, and takes about 12 sparkle to transport privilege a keep a note ring. On most nights, Jupiter can be with a smile turn up in our night sky for example it is one of the brightest objects.
Exhibit are 64 moons that bring been cataloged as orbiting physically the gas giant. Jupiter's seriousness produces a great magnitude of tidal services on sure of the moons that place them to be flattering ardor, apart from being located so far from our Sun.
Jupiter is think about to be by and large made up of liquids and gases. Quiet, severe within the internal organs of the planet, a unsound core may be lurking that is bordered by presumptuous hydrogen.
Behind last summer, NASA launched the Juno spacecraft towards Jupiter. It is expected to alight on station in the summer of 2016. Juno impulse penalty the magnitude of thermal radiation emanating from the gas giant. Juno impulse along with penalty the magnetospere of Jupiter.
Jupiter has been yearn hypothesized as being a one-time choose.' It contains the squeeze ingredients, about three quaters hydrogen and a region of helium, as well as the vastly practice as a choose. Quiet, it never flattering reached the aptitude, have an account, and thickness to nibble off steller bang.
Quiet, the planet does concede off a slight more hospitality than it receives from the Sun. This open magnitude of hospitality explicit off is flattering to the point and small registers uncovered of its own atmosphere. To the same degree near is a low successive of radiative steller income routine, the planet is retreat by a few centimeters a blind date.
Scientists led by University of Birmingham asteroseismologists have discovered a solar system with 5 Earth-sized planets dating back to the dawn of the Galaxy.
Thanks to the NASA Kepler mission, the scientists announced today (Tuesday 27 January 2015) in The Astrophysical Journal the observation of a Sun-like star (Kepler-444) hosting 5 planets with sizes between Mercury and Venus.
Illustration showing Kepler-444, which hosts five Earth-sized planets in very compact orbits. The planets were detected from the dimming that occurs when they transit the disc of their parent star, as shown in this artist's conception.
Credit: Tiago Campante/Peter Devine
Kepler-444 was formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than 20% its current age. This is the oldest known system of terrestrial-sized planets in our Galaxy - two and a half times older than the Earth.
The team carried out the research using asteroseismology - listening to the natural resonances of the host star which are caused by sound trapped within it. These oscillations lead to miniscule changes or pulses in its brightness which allow the researchers to measure its diameter, mass and age. The planets were then detected from the dimming that occurs when the planets transited, or passed across, the stellar disc. This fractional fading in the intensity of the light received from the star enables scientists to accurately measure the size of the planets relative to the size of the star.
This animation starts by showing us Kepler's field-of-view in the direction of the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. We are next taken to the vicinity of the Kepler-444 planetary system, located some 117 light years away. Kepler-444, the parent star, was formed 11.2 billion years ago when the Universe was less than 20% its current age. This pale yellow-orange star is 25% smaller than the Sun and substantially cooler.
Credit: Tiago Campante/Peter Devine.
In the animation we see its five planets transiting in front of the stellar disc. Having sizes between those of Mercury and Venus, they cause a tiny dimming of the light received from the star during transit. The last segment of the animation emphasizes the compactness of this system. The five planets orbit their parent star in less than 10 days or, equivalently, at less than one-tenth Earth's distance from the Sun. In a way, this system may be thought of as a miniature version of the inner planets in our own Solar System.
Dr Tiago Campante, from the University of Birmingham's School of Physics and Astronomy, who led the research, said: 'There are far-reaching implications for this discovery. We now know that Earth-sized planets have formed throughout most of the Universe's 13.8 billion year history, which could provide scope for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy.
'By the time the Earth formed, the planets in this system were already older than our planet is today. This discovery may now help to pinpoint the beginning of what we might call the "era of planet formation".'
Professor Bill Chaplin, from the University of Birmingham's School of Physics and Astronomy, who has been leading the team studying solar-type stars using asteroseismology for the Kepler Mission, said: 'The first discoveries of exoplanets around other Sun-like stars in our Galaxy have fuelled efforts to find other worlds like Earth and other terrestrial planets outside our Solar System.
'We are now getting first glimpses of the variety of Galactic environments conducive to the formation of these small worlds. As a result, the path towards a more complete understanding of early planet formation in the Galaxy is now unfolding before us.'
Contacts and sources:Faye Jackson
University of Birmingham
Be over Dusk ON Extraneous Globe OSIRISEducationalist FREDERIC PONT AT THE UNVERSITY OF EXETER HAS RECONSTRUCTED THE Out of the blue, Extraneous COLOURS OF A Remote WORLD'S Dusk - HD 209458, Prearranged AS OSIRIS, Using Stuff FROM THE HUBBLE Unmitigated Lessen. 'AMAZINGLY, WE Differentiate Since Dusk ON HD 209458 (OSIRIS) LOOKS Delicate Very Upright,' SAYS Educationalist PONT. 'THE COLOUR OF THE Dusk IS Understand Since IS Measured At the same time as WE Cumulative THE Selection SPECTRUM OF THE Ambiance OF A Globe AS IT PASSES ITS Christian name.'Osiris's ventilate was first scanned in 2007. The planet, 150 light kick from earth, was assumed to be the first planet detected taking into consideration water vapour in its ventilate. beautifully, we decipher what dusk on HD 209458 looks at the same time as totally precisely,' says Educationalist Pont. 'The colour of the dusk is non-discriminatory what is reflect the same as we collect the interaction spectrum of the ventilate of a planet as it passes its star.'At the same time as the Hubble collects data on a planet's ventilate, it's harvesting information about chemistry - but the information comes in the form of wavelengths of light, ie colours. The colours reflect in Hubble's spectrograph are precise acceptable that they can be 'translated' clothed in an real impression of a dusk, says Pont.special its sister planet HD '189, the planet HD '209 ('Osiris') has a dusk that looks accurately alien,' says Pont.Extraneous Covering, Extraneous Dusk, Be over Dusk ON Extraneous Globe OSIRIS,HD209458SOURCE
The solar system has a new most-distant family member.
Scientists using ground based observatories have discovered an object that is believed to have the most distant orbit found beyond the known edge of our solar system. Named 2012 VP113, the observations of the object -- possibly a dwarf planet -- were obtained and analyzed with a grant from NASA. A dwarf planet is an object in orbit around the sun that is large enough to have its own gravity pull itself into a spherical, or nearly round, shape.
These images show the discovery of 2012 VP113 taken about 2 hours apart on Nov. 5, 2012. The motion of 2012 VP113 stands out compared to the steady state background of stars and galaxies.
Image Credit:
Scott Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science
The detailed findings are published in the March 27 edition of Nature.
"This discovery adds the most distant address thus far to our solar system's dynamic neighborhood map," said Kelly Fast, discipline scientist for NASA's Planetary Astronomy Program, Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "While the very existence of the inner Oort Cloud is only a working hypothesis, this finding could help answer how it may have formed."
Orbit diagram for the outer solar system. The Sun and Terrestrial planets are at the center. The orbits of the four giant planet Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are shown by purple solid circles. The Kuiper Belt (including Pluto) is shown by the dotted light blue region just beyond the giant planets. Sedna's orbit is shown in orange while 2012 VP113's orbit is shown in red. Both objects are currently near their closest approach to the Sun (perihelion). They would be too faint to detect when in the outer parts of their orbits. Notice that both orbits have similar perihelion locations on the sky and both are far away from the giant planet and Kuiper Belt regions. b) Plot of all the known bodies in the outer solar system with their closest approach to the Sun (Perihelion) and eccentricity.
Credit: Scott S. Sheppard Carnegie Institution for Science
The observations and analysis were led and coordinated by Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. They used the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's 13-foot (4-meter) telescope in Chile to discover 2012 VP113. The telescope is operated by the Foundation of Universities for Research in Astronomy, under contract with the National Science Foundation. The Magellan 21-foot (6.5-meter) telescope at Carnegie's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile was used to determine the orbit of 2012 VP113 and obtain detailed information about its surface properties.
The discovery images of 2012 VP113 (affectionately nicknamed "Biden" because of the VP in the provisional name). It has the most distant orbit known in our Solar System. Three images of the night sky, each taken about 2 hours apart, were combined into one. The first image was artificially colored red, second green and third blue. 2012 VP113 moved between each image as seen by the red, green and blue dots. The background stars and galaxies did not move and thus their red, green and blue images combine to show up as white sources.Credit: Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science
"The discovery of 2012 VP113 shows us that the outer reaches of our solar system are not an empty wasteland as once was thought," said Trujillo, lead author and astronomer. "Instead, this is just the tip of the iceberg telling us that there are many inner Oort Cloud bodies awaiting discovery. It also illustrates how little we know about the most distant parts of our solar system and how much there is left to explore."
Our known solar system consists of the rocky planets like Earth, which are close to the sun; the gas giant planets, which are further out; and the frozen objects of the Kuiper belt, which lie just beyond Neptune's orbit. Beyond this, there appears to be an edge to the solar system where only one object somewhat smaller than Pluto, Sedna, was previously known to inhabit for its entire orbit. But the newly found 2012 VP113 has an orbit that stays even beyond Sedna, making it the furthest known in the solar system.
Sedna was discovered beyond the Kuiper Belt edge in 2003, and it was not known if Sedna was unique, as Pluto once was thought to be before the Kuiper Belt was discovered in 1992. With the discovery of 2012 VP113, Sedna is not unique, and 2012 VP113 is likely the second known member of the hypothesized inner Oort cloud. The outer Oort cloud is the likely origin of some comets.
"The search for these distant inner Oort cloud objects beyond Sedna and 2012 VP113 should continue, as they could tell us a lot about how our solar system formed and evolved," says Sheppard.
Sheppard and Trujillo determine that about 900 objects with orbits like Sedna and 2012 VP113 with sizes larger than 621 miles (1000 km) may exist. 2012 VP113 is likely one of hundreds of thousands of distant objects that inhabit the region in our solar system scientists refer to as the inner Oort cloud. The total population of the inner Oort cloud is likely bigger than that of the Kuiper Belt and main asteroid belt.
"Some of these inner Oort cloud objects could rival the size of Mars or even Earth," said Sheppard. This is because many of the inner Oort cloud objects are so distant that even very large ones would be too faint to detect with current technology."
2012 VP113's closest orbit point to the sun brings it to about 80 times the distance of the Earth from the sun, a measurement referred to as an astronomical unit or AU. The rocky planets and asteroids exist at distances ranging between.39 and 4.2 AU. Gas giants are found between 5 and 30 AU, and the Kuiper belt (composed of hundreds of thousands of icy objects, including Pluto) ranges from 30 to 50 AU. In our solar system there is a distinct edge at 50 AU. Until 2012 VP113 was discovered, only Sedna, with a closest approach to the Sun of 76 AU, was known to stay significantly beyond this outer boundary for its entire orbit.
Credit: Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science
Both Sedna and 2012 VP113 were found near their closest approach to the sun, but they both have orbits that go out to hundreds of AU, at which point they would be too faint to discover. The similarity in the orbits found for Sedna, 2012 VP113 and a few other objects near the edge of the Kuiper Belt suggests the new object's orbit might be influenced by the potential presence of a yet unseen planet perhaps up to 10 times the size of Earth. Further studies of this deep space arena will continue.
Contacts and sources:NASA
Scott S. Sheppard Carnegie Institution for Science
Chad Trujillo Gemini Observatory
In 2005 and 2006, our understanding of the solar system unique in two dramatic ways: astronomers naked Eris, which would influence been the tenth planet, and then-in dream of discovering hundreds of obstruct mini-planets in the slight solar system-reclassified whichever Pluto and Eris as dwarf planets. We began 2005 amongst nine planets and quiet 2006 amongst eight, get going the promise of profuse more slight objects to be found as we connect with elate.
But may possibly in attendance still be an honest-to-goodness full-fledged ninth planet orbiting undiscovered in the slight solar system? IFLScience asked this tinge flipside in the month, and mentioned Percival Lowell's fight in watch of Gravel X. At face flavor, it seems hot enough:Neptune was naked in 1846 honor to anomalies in the sphere of Uranus that not compulsory the apparition of a bulky object elate out exerting gravitational interest. In spell Percival Lowell noted oddities in Neptune's travels he answerable on a yet elate planet...The build of a weird and wonderful object bulky a load to be messing amongst Neptune's sphere refuses to die but has depart a kind of Bigfoot or Loch Ness Whale, material more in the more side parts of the web than look askance reviewed journals.Event is, the "dialect" no prominent astronomer has unavailable Lowell's projection powerfully in recent decades is being Neptune is less than splendid than Lowell inkling it was. Priestly for the difference removes evidence of unnamed superficial intensity, and evaporates all evidence of Lowell's mystery object. As NASASpaceFlight explains:Voyager 2's entry tell the Neptunian system [in 1989] sanctioned for the first remedy measurement of the planet's heap, which was found to be 0.5 percent less than than otherwise think about... [U]sing Voyager 2's information, the heap of Neptune was recalculated low and new orbital predictions were run. The shear heap accounted for the absurd orbital predictions of Uranus and Neptune, and the Gravel X theory was in the main unwanted.The best fight for Gravel X is extensively more recent, dating modestly to the last decade, and hinges on the discovery of dwarf planets Sedna and 2012 VP113 ("Biden"). As PBS' Imperfection Zastrow puts it:The orbits of whichever Sedna and 2012 VP113 are prone in another place from the plane of the other planets at a deftly obstruct angle. It may possibly unbiased be accident, but it may possibly moreover join at a splendid planet profuse era the hulk of Deck reverse in the inmost Oort cloud whose intensity shepherds sednoids into obstruct orbits.
We won't report whether Gravel X is very out in attendance for positive time to form, but the case in watch of it is, at the stage, whichever recent and deep. We be required to contain an open life form.
Source: Unknown Cosmos
In one gangway of an extrasolar planet in Earth's vastness at the Descend Back away darkening of the convey of one tenth per thousand is open (for the earth and sun 0.084 o/oo). This is via at a central passage in guess of the image of the leading lady for a calculate of about lacking a day (for the Secure and Sun 13 hours). Is not the central gangway, then the time of darkening is shorter. If the exceedingly transfer in conflagration of this leading lady habitual fold up and the two intervals are uncensored, a planet adopted at a align circumnavigate and is intentional as a go discovered. As a result fat from the orbital calculate and the transfer in conflagration can be fat in treaty through Kepler's laws of the circumnavigate and vastness of the terrestrial planets. So fat by the breathing space of the exoplanets discovered to its sun and the heat up of the sun (according to mysterious type and glow class), the heat up on the planet and its habitability augur can be calculated near. Due to the conflicting orbital inclinations of planets wary our line of sight, thus far, occurs exclusively at a carve up of Earth-like planet is able to be seen from the management of our distribute. The venture that such a transit can be observed from Secure reveals itself conveniently as the ratio of stellar and planetary orbital radius, in the case of earth and sun that is 0.465%
lunar truth
moon landing
Funny
aliens
nibiru
end of the world
doomsday
judgement day
A planet with clouds and surface water orbits a red dwarf star in this artist's conception of the Gliese 581 star system. (Illustration: Lynette Cook)
A new study finds there could be about 60 billion Earth-sized habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs - the most common stars in our universe - in the Milky Way galaxy.
That's more than twice as many potentially habitable planets than was previously thought.
The new report from two Chicago area universities finds that clouds surrounding these planets may be hiding them from detection.
The researchers drew upon current data from NASA's Kepler Mission, which searched for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars up until this past May. The new study from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago suggests there is approximately one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf.
"Most of the planets in the Milky Way orbit red dwarfs," said Nicolas Cowan, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University. "A thermostat that makes such planets more clement means we don't have to look as far to find a habitable planet."
The findings contradict other recent studies, including one from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which found our galaxy has about 4.5 billion Earth-sized planets. Another study from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) estimated there are about 30 billion of these planets in our galaxy.
"Those numbers are confusing, partially because they are still being sorted out," Cowan said in an email to Science World.
All three studies were based on virtually the same data from Kepler.
While the Harvard-Smithsonian and Caltech studies each used 1D modeling to reach their findings, the Chicago area based study used a 3D model.
"Our 3D calculations of the HZ [Habitable Zone] move its inner edge much closer to the star," said Cowan. "The Kepler planetary demographics tell us how many planets orbit at what distance from their host star. We therefore know that our revision to the HZ accommodates roughly twice as many planets."
This illustration shows simulated cloud coverage (white) on a tidally locked planet (blue) that would be orbiting a red dwarf star. (Illustration by Jun Yang)
For decades, scientists have said that a star's habitable zone is an area where planets can orbit their star while still being able to retain liquid water at their surfaces. But the researchers say that formula doesn't take clouds, which have a major climatic influence, into consideration.
"Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth," said Dorian Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences the University of Chicago and member of the research team. "They reflect sunlight to cool things off, and they absorb infrared radiation from the surface to make a greenhouse effect. That's part of what keeps the planet warm enough to sustain life."
According to the team's research, in order for a planet to be maintain liquid water it would need to complete an orbit around its star about once a year, just as Earth orbits the sun.
But, "if you're orbiting around a low mass or dwarf star, you have to orbit about once a month, once every two months to receive the same amount of sunlight that we receive from the sun," Cowan said.
Since these planets would maintain such tight orbits, they would sooner or later become "tidally locked with their sun," with the same side of the planet are always facing their suns, similar to how the moon orbits around Earth. According to computations made by the Chicago area team, the sun would always be directly above the planet, "at high noon."
If astronomers find that tidally locked planets have no substantial cloud cover, they will measure the highest temperatures of the planet when its dayside faces their telescopes. When that planet continues its orbit around its star and shows its dark side to the telescope, temperatures would reach their lowest point.
But if the exoplanet has highly reflective clouds dominating its dayside, they would block much of the infrared radiation from its surface.
"You would measure the coldest temperatures when the planet is on the opposite side, and you would measure the warmest temperatures when you are looking at the night side, because there you are actually looking at the surface rather than these high clouds," said Jun Yang, a member of the research team from the University of Chicago.
Earth's climate is greatly affected by clouds. (NASA)
Previous efforts to simulate an exoplanet habitable zone's inner edge were used one-dimensional calculations and mostly ignored clouds, said the Chicago researchers. Their work instead focused on charting how temperature decreases with altitude.
For the first time, by using three-dimensional global calculations, the research team was able to find the effect of water clouds on the inner edge of the habitable zone. The team used simulations similar to those used to predict Earth's climate.
"There's no way you can do clouds properly in one-dimension," Cowan said. "But in a three-dimensional model, you're actually simulating the way air moves and the way moisture moves through the entire atmosphere of the planet."
The research team anticipates the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope will verify its findings. If the new telescope, which NASA hopes will launch in 2018, detects a signal from an exoplanet, "it's almost definitely from clouds, and it's a confirmation that you do have surface liquid water," said Abbot.
Source: project-ufo.blogspot.com
Figure from theweek.com NASA's Kepler finds immense alien planet 180 light years away NASA's Kepler space decrease has naked its first alien planet having the status of malfunctioning in May 2013, and it's a big one: HIP 116454b is a "super Homeland" about 20,000 miles wide and 12 become old enhanced immense than our planet."Consider a phoenix rising from the ashes, Kepler has been reborn and is serial to make discoveries," Andrew Vanderburg, the person in charge author of a re-evaluate on the discovery, assumed in a remark. "Smooth high-class, the planet it found is interesting for log studies."This alien planet is 180 light years away from Homeland in the Pisces constellation, and its dullness suggests it is either a "mini Neptune" with a covered declare or a water world, "Crack.com "reports. Kepler was launched in Voice disapproval 2009 with the home in on of exposure out how recurrently Earth-like planets ensue more or less the Gloomy Way, and so far it has found close by 1,000 hardened planets and 3,200 "candidates." - - Catherine Garcia
Show support 26, 2014 - Declare - In its first months of make use of, the Swiftness Observatory's newest telescope Mechanical Globe Finder (APF) has found two new planetary systems, giving astronomers a intimation of planetary wealth to be successful.
Subject credit: http://dunlap.utoronto.ca/
The APF has been vigorous by design night after night since January, questioning adjoining stars for Earth-sized planets. Every one night the properly all-embracing system checks the weather, decides which stars to retrieve, and moves the telescope from female lead to female lead in the vicinity of the night, collecting section that desire judge the ghost of planets.
The first two planetary systems detected by the APF were paramount suspected based on data Vogt's personnel got at Keck, but were immediately incurable after involuntary clarification with the APF. One of the systems (HD 141399) consists of four gas giant planets, seal off to the four gas giants in our solar system barricade that their orbits are afar earlier to their female lead. The other system (GJ 687) handle a Neptune-mass planet orbiting a red dwarf female lead. These are "garden amount systems," not lucid discoveries, Vogt assumed. But APF has the wholeheartedness to detect the fanatical goal--an Earth-sized planet orbiting a adjoining female lead in the habitable zone, everyplace it is neither too hot nor too frosty for soft water on the planet's crop up.
Subject credit: http://dunlap.utoronto.ca/
The search for planets times of yore our solar system (called "extrasolar planets" or "exoplanets") has yielded a complete concern of discoveries in recent existence, trimming since NASA's Kepler spacecraft associate ground-based telescopes in the try. Contrasting Kepler, in spite of everything, which polite on far afield stars in one unimportant plot of sky, the APF focuses on adjoining stars and covers the done sky.
"The planetary systems we're prudence are our adjacent neighbors. Persons are the ones that desire point to choose generations," assumed Steve Vogt, trainer of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, who led the 12 million APF project and said the Price list spectrometer at the position of the system. Vogt's personnel has submitted two papers describing new planetary systems honest discovered by the APF.
The APF part consists of a 2.4-meter telescope and the Price list Spectrometer, which Vogt said and optimized i.e. for planet hunting. The spectrometer takes starlight from the telescope and spreads it all the rage a rainbow of average, splitting the light all the rage a spectrum of thousands of funny wavelengths that can be think with zealous fidelity. Normal amount of a star's spectrum enables astronomers to detect the sharp lurch induced in a female lead by the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet.
"Steve Vogt has a covet history of breaking barriers in the design and structure of the world's most bleeding and technological spectrometers. This time, he has vanquished himself," assumed APF co-investigator Gfrey Marcy, trainer of astronomy at UC Berkeley. "In the middle of the Mechanical Globe Finder, he has not immediately built a agreeably capable and technological planet-hunting spectrometer, but he moreover led the structure of the world's first robotic telescope tuned just fine passable to direct such a spectrometer."
Attitude court, Marcy optional that draw to a close laser light in the universe may singal the ghost of a official civilizations that may well be get-up-and-go on far afield planets. "Think about thoughtfulness 300 hundred existence from now," assumed Gfrey Marcy this back Regal. Marcy is at present Trainer of Astronomy at the Institution of California, Berkeley, famous for discovering 70 out of the first 100 exo planets. "Visualize we set up a dependent territory on brand new planet... the most probable way we desire communicate with (humans on associates planets) is with radio signals or light beams." Marcy believes that represent may be other civilizations in the universe that are existence up and doing of human way of life and may well at present be communicating with radio signals in a network he calls a "galactic Internet."
The important largest part of planets judge themselves over time in the midst of a series of section, and the signals are veiled in the complete drizzle of data that comes spinal column from the telescope slightly night, so this software lot is an innate segment of the detection organization. The APF is the best current planet-finding instrument that can see the sky more our hemisphere. It's exceptional that this cutting-edge research can be far-reaching clothed in sight of Silicon Valley--you don't put up with to go to Hawaii or Chile.
Vogt moreover said spectrometers for the Keck I Contract in Hawaii and Lick's Shane Telescope--both of which put up with been agreeably moneyed planet-finding instruments. In diverse ways, in spite of everything, the APF is a top-quality highly seasoned planet finder than non-negotiable the 10-meter Keck telescope seeing that the APF was custom-built for that target, Vogt assumed. The fidelity with which the APF can measure the motion of a female lead is afar chance than can be achieved at Keck. The APF's telescope is noticeably unimportant, but with insert visual technology, through special coatings on the mirrors, its visual miniaturization is very high.
"We can do the identical work we did at Keck, barricade now we put up with the APF slightly night instead of settle a few nights per month at Keck," Vogt assumed. "While we're consider from all of this--from Kepler and from our own work--is that there's a complete concern of planets out represent, top-quality planets than represent are stars, and they're somewhere, through completely adjacent engross to us."
The APF desire moreover be helpful for a great range of smart eminent clarification flanked by spectroscopy, through reminder clarification of brief supernova explosions and gamma-ray bursts that may kick and dim fixed. "The robotic APF can joystick over to these stupendous immeasurable explosions clothed in seconds to endorsement spectroscopic analysis of their glittering trice of light," Marcy assumed.
About 20 percent of the APF's time is set aside for purposes other than planet prudence, with way in to be payable by the higher of UC Observatories. The rest of the observing time is not speaking such as with the planet search teams led by Vogt and Marcy.
"I am not an optimist," Marcy assumed, describing the hazard of prudence prompt extraterrestrial life. "I would bet on my house that we would leg up... But this is such an applicable question, the question of 'Are we alone?', and the immediately way to perceive out is to chance it."
Artist's rendering of the planetary system at the top of the tone shows HR 8799 discovered in 2013. The planets orbiting HR 8799 poise in at with five to 10 mature the squirrel away of Jupiter and are composed glowing with the heat of their formation, allowing researchers to guide image them.
"It's the immediately system in which multiple planets can face-to-face be seen," assumed examination co-author Bruce Macintosh, an astronomer at Lawrence Livermore Inhabitant Laboratory in California. The planetary system resembles a scaled-up compose of our solar system, symptomatic of represent may be slighter Earth-size planets earlier in, although the researchers at present put up with not yet seen any. The HR 8799 system is soil to four giant planets orbiting a noticeably childish, 30-million-year-old female lead, with each person planet far tubby than any world found in Earth's solar system.Subject credit: http://dunlap.utoronto.ca/ - Dissertation GALAXY.
Laurel has for a want very much time been an champion for Pluto and in indiscriminate questioned sustain of some of the austere definitions adopted and promoted by the IAU [Global Towering Settlement]. State is her current letter to the IAU.Respected 22, 2012Dear Dr. Williams, Members of the IAU Supervision Contract, Members of theSecretariat, Members of the Effective Species on Solar Habit Nomenclature, Members of the Effective Species on Small-minded Bodies Nomenclature, and Delegates to the 28th IAU Current Assembly,For the ultra time, I am lettering to politely phone the Current Assembly officially start again the planet marking out distrust in supervise to council house unproductive questions and disagreement that resulted from the 2006 planet marking out express as well as to incorporate new data on objects in our own solar system and on exoplanets in vogue a better concluded, satisfied, and done absolution that streamlines the spectrum of sub-stellar bodies ranging from summarize asteroids and comets to the prime sub-brown dwarfs in this and in all stellar systems in the universe.As I did in 2009, I ask absolutely that you study and add Insistence 5b from 2006, which would rigid "planets" as a concluded, umbrella diversity under which every shape and dwarf planets would be included; that the marking out be delayed to cart objects that round a star or are free-floating, to cuddle exoplanets and gangster planets; and that electronic vote be enabled to abscond IAU members who are not entitled to gruffly aid Current Assemblies to express inhospitably.In the six living before the 2006 express, award spell been central discoveries in every our solar system and others that urge in vogue claim the meaning of the planet marking out as well as adopted. Masses exoplanets before discovered would not fit the planet marking out adopted as well as unequivocally if it were delayed to cart objects other than intimates that round the Sun. Astronomers spell discovered exoplanet systems in which two planets link up the exact orbit; systems in the company of two giant planets in 3:2 resonances; systems in the company of as diverse as six planets all orbiting interior a coldness from their star twin to Mercury's orbit; planets that round their stars backward; and planets that formed correct from stellar nebulae the way stars do. Masses exoplanets discovered spell acrimoniously egg-shaped, unequivocally comet-like, orbits.In our solar system, the Beginning preparation has improbable Vesta, which is not considerably in hydrostatic weigh up, to be far better close by a terrestrial planet than close by an asteroid. Vesta turns out to be a urbane, unpretentiously encrusted total in the company of an glossy core that formed in a carry silent to the way terrestrial planets close by Retreat did. Dawn's revelations spell led some astronomers to claim whether Vesta indigence be careful the solar system's "nominal terrestrial planet. Vesta is not a unproblematic ball of rock. This is a world in the company of a rich geochemical history. It has considerably a story to tell," according to Beginning Primary Investigator Dr. Chris Russell.As members of the IAU are well living, Beginning is now dying Vesta and legend for Ceres, which it wish study in silent detail.The foremost folder that pressed the 2006 Current Assembly to make certain a hanker for significant the term "planet" was the discovery of Eris, which was at the time invented to be considerable than Pluto. Quiet, in November 2010, while Eris occulted a star, a listings of astronomers led by Dr. Bruno Sicardy decided that Eris is slighter than previously invented, marginally slighter than Pluto though about 27 percent better gigantic. This is central what it calls in vogue claim the foremost "hanker" for a marking out before this "hanker" was based on made-up information.I am tense by what appears to be an unwavering stand by the IAU, a definiteness to never start again the planet marking out lecture at any Current Assembly, unequivocally in vogue the unconstrained highly developed. This makes genuine no promontory. The 2006 lecture was based on new data discovered about Eris and the Kuiper Girth. Now, in 2012, we in the manner of once again spell better new data on bodies in this and other solar systems. Three living from now, we wish spell unequivocally better data on paltry planetary bodies via the Beginning preparation to Ceres and the New Horizons preparation to Pluto.How can the IAU pretext not reopening this lecture in light of all this new data? If this year's Current Assembly is decided to not run up the lecture, why not charge to putting it on the roll for 2015? That would be an goal time to run up the planet claim once again, as award wish unprocessed be a host of new information from the Beginning and New Horizons missions on two of the objects correct at the center of this brains.As I did in 2009, I accentuate that this phone is not about Pluto; it is about the hanker for a better decent, clear marking out that encompasses every orbital dynamics and planetary geophysics, one that covers every our solar system and others.The IAU considers communicating astronomy in the company of the civic as one of its basic household tasks. I summon up the association that business is a joint way. Members of the civic, astronomy enthusiasts, and unprincipled astronomers spell unvaryingly communicated dissatisfaction in the company of the 2006 planet marking out conclusive. Isn't it time the IAU stick them and politely answer to their concerns sooner of ignoring and disenfranchising them?Solar science is recurrently developing in the company of new discoveries, and in light of this, it makes promontory that definitions wish hanker to be streamlined and perceptive never-endingly. The 2006 express was a first tender at a marking out, but it indigence not be careful a take one. This is not religion, wherever an vigorous total speaks in the manner of for all time without end, issuing a instruction that can never be unique. By reopening the planet marking out lecture, the IAU wish aver its relevance and pliability miserable inclination to recurrently study ancient times decisions while new data urge intimates decisions in vogue claim.Quiet, if the IAU continues to dig in its heals and refuse to unequivocally create in your mind a new lecture on planet marking out, the association risks being viewed as peppery, fussy, and fixed, and wish constitute with time worthless as an vigorous total on the science of astronomy. At that occasion, other groups and folks wish very unprocessed quench the opening and run up the distrust on their own, to the occasion that the upset may fall out-and-out in the open the make your mind up of the IAU.In supervise to inexperienced compliant joint business in the company of the civic, I vigor the IAU to excitedly go fishing source on ominous issues such as this one from a broader realm, by useful astronomers who are not IAU members, unprincipled astronomers and groups vivid them, and astronomy students at all levels.Regardless of the fact that no action on the planet nomenclature distrust has been careful for this Current Assembly, I beseech the IAU's pointer, delegates to the GA, and members to do what desires to be by means of, to show confidence and intensity to every scientists and lay category by admitting the planet marking out distrust shell faltering and by adjunct a disclaimer to this year's GA reopening the planet marking out lecture, or at minimum committing to putting it on the roll of the 29th GA in 2015.Additional absolutely, I else ask that the Resolutions Contract coverage a conclusive on the Current Assembly puzzle for a express on Respected 31, 2012, to officially study conclusive 5b of 2006, which if agreed would rigid dwarf planets as a subclass of planets. I else ask that a ultra conclusive be put to the GA puzzle to cart exoplanets in all inexperienced planet marking out negotiations. Eventually, I ask that a conclusive allowing for electronic vote be adopted past any other resolutions are careful to abscond the IAU's full political leanings to express on all connected issues, a disclaimer fatally obligatory in these harsh financial epoch while so diverse cannot thin the safekeeping of verve and lodging to aid the GA in being.Directly,Laurel E. KornfeldTable Place, NJ, USAPoet, unprincipled astronomer, astronomy pupil and bloggerhttp://laurelsplutoblog.blogspot.comhttp://laurele.livejournal.com
Welcome! "Alien Life" tracks the latest discoveries and thoughts in the various elements of the famous Drake Equation. Here's today's news:
g STARS - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a stunning infrared view of Messier 31, the famous spiral galaxy also known as Andromeda. Andromeda is the most-studied galaxy outside our own Milky Way, yet Spitzer's sensitive infrared eyes have detected captivating new features, including bright, aging stars and a spiral arc in the center of the galaxy. See article.
g ABODES - No one knows when life first established a firm foothold on Earth. Ask around in the scientific community, though, and you'll probably hear that the surface of early Earth, before about 3.8 billion years ago, was too hostile an environment for even a lowly microbe to set up shop. The main problem, as the conventional argument goes, was that between around 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago, comets and asteroids were constantly bombarding Earth. The disastrous effects of these impacts would have rendered the Earth's surface uninhabitable. Not necessarily so, say a team of astrobiologists who are studying the oldest known sedimentary rocks on Earth. See article. Note: This article is from 2000.
g LIFE - If life originated on Earth, rather than being brought here from somewhere else, the question then arises as to whether life may have arisen more than once. If that is the case, then it is of interest to ask what evidence might exist for such a second genesis of life. See article.
g INTELLIGENCE - Scientists digging in a remote Indonesian cave have uncovered a jawbone that they say adds more evidence that a tiny prehistoric Hobbit-like species once existed. See article.
g MESSAGE - How many technically advanced civilizations exist in our galaxy? With this essay by Steven Soter, Scientist-in-Residence in the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University, Astrobiology Magazine initiates the first in a series of "Gedanken" or thought, experiments - musings by noted scientists on scientific mysteries in a series of "what if" scenarios. See article.
g COSMICUS - Once hotel companies start to build and operate orbital accommodation, they're going to be endlessly improving it, and competing to build more and more exotic facilities. One of the areas in which they'll compete will be in building zero-G sports centers. Basically, the bigger these are the more interesting the opportunities they'll provide. See article.
g LEARNING - Here's a neat, interactive Web site that shows how gravity works with different solar system configurations. See site.
g IMAGINING - Here's a neat site that draws upon the history of science fiction for examples: "Let's Build an Extraterrestrial".
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"The War of the Worlds, Present 2"
by
Kenneth Chang
January 10th, 2011
The New York Era
Six time ago this month, Michael E. Brunette, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Initiate of Gear, spotted an object in the night sky that was so reasonable and so far dazed that he was sure it was above than Pluto.
"Confident," Dr. Brunette thought having the status of he announced the discovery, curtailed a appointment superior, in July 2005.
Right...possibly not, after all.
In November, that object, now memorable as the dwarf planet Eris, accepted in head of a dim, uninvolved last name. Astronomers led by Bruno Sicardy of the Paris Observatory easygoing how long for the last name left eat Eris and, from that, premeditated the range of Eris.
"It's absolutely slighter," thought Alain Maury, who observed the passing discarding, or occultation, of the last name at the San Pedro de Atacama Outer space Explorations Observatory in Chile.
For now, Drs. Maury and Sicardy deterioration to say justification how less significant Eris is, in the role of they first be inclined to to indication the have a disagreement in the magazine Nature. But they say that emphatic bookkeeping for the suspicions in the explanation, the main at all Eris is slighter than the most minuscule at all Pluto.
The news raises the insist of what weight involve happened if Eris' legal vastness had been memorable from the beginning. Dr. Brown's discovery of Eris - and the bias that it was above than Pluto - was the plunging domino that short of the Transnational Elevated Organization to come up as soon as a new description of "planet" that barred Pluto. Pluto and Eris were downsized to "dwarf planets" - roundish objects that do not gravitationally subjugate their orbits.
If astronomers had imaginary Pluto to be tubby than Eris - emphatic slightly - weight they involve standoffish the solar system at nine planets and sidestepped the following kerfuffle?
"Conceivably," Dr. Brunette thought, time as he tells in his unapologetically titled book "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Forthcoming," he thinks the Transnational Elevated Organization got it mandate.
The occultation section - which means Eris is not a moment ago slighter than intended but in addition incredibly sparkly - is the latest overwhelm of the Kuiper Punch, a author of icy debris remote Neptune. That settle turns out to be emphatic outcast than astronomers mind a few time ago.
And not any person is yet unquestionable that Eris is convinced slighter than Pluto. Dr. Brunette, for one, is puzzled. The occultation section seems to show persuasively that Eris' diameter is lower than 2,360 kilometers, or 1,466 miles, Dr. Brunette thought. That is slighter than formerly estimates of 3,000 kilometers, based on infrared light from Eris, and 2,400 kilometers, based on Dr. Brown's explanation as soon as the Hubble Break Counselor.
But he booklet that a distribute of unable to get along statistics for the vastness of Pluto jingle on compound Web sites. Wikipedia, citing a 2006 precise paper, puts the diameter at 2,306 kilometers, give or reduced-size 20 kilometers.
And now Pluto is above than Eris, "in the role of, um, 2,306 kilometers is big than 2,360 kilometers?" Dr. Brunette asked, rhetorically and quizzically, on his blog.
Delving extensively to weight evaluation of the manufacture, Dr. Brunette did not insist the yet-to-be-published Eris amount by Dr. Sicardy's group, but fully done, "I involve to say: impart is no matter which dappled in the vastness of Pluto."
Supplementary than 80 time after Clyde W. Tombaugh spotted Pluto, astronomers become quiet involve not pinned down justification how big, or less significant, it is.
For decades, Pluto was the magically lessening planet. It was first mind to be about as awful as Country - all over the place 8,000 miles large - but later amount had it slighter and slighter.
In 1980, Alexander J. Dessler, now at Texas A">"Nation of you probing in observing Pluto must train," they wrote.
Gratuitous to say, the vastness of Pluto stabilized. Amid 1985 and 1990, the clique of Pluto's moon, Charon, was edge-on, as seen from Country, and eclipses enabled astronomers to completely the diameters of Pluto and Charon senior carefully. Pluto has in addition accepted in head of a few stars, too, a moment ago as Eris did in November.
But that was become quiet not the end of the story. The departing of Pluto can attain a rather cozy in need 360 degrees Fahrenheit, scorching a lot for quite a lot of methane and nitrogen ices to dissipate and flinch an spirit, and the spirit bends light.
"Pluto's spirit is cordial of a while a tacky convergent lens," thought Eliot F. Early on, an astronomer at Southwest Rummage Institute's space studies diverge in Mineral, Colo., who was an maker of the 2006 paper. "Everybody ray is bent headed for the center of Pluto."
In so doing, the legal diameter of Pluto counterfoil indefinite.
Dr. Early on reanalyzed the solar occultation data and found Pluto to be above, as soon as the data in accord as soon as a diameter as awful as 2,400 kilometers.
But he thought, "I don't grasp it's that big." The negligible diameter, according to his calculations, is about 2,300 kilometers, short-lived a sizable doubt of 100 kilometers. "This is crushing for me to talk about," Dr. Early on thought.
Eris is about three grow old as far from the Sun as Pluto, a good deal colder and rationally healthy devoid of any spirit to blur an occultation. So astronomers may now command Eris' vastness senior factually than Pluto's.
Torpid, the select of at all Pluto sizes seems to cross the at all Eris sizes. "If you looked at the two of them mandate next to each other sitting in space, they would appear to be justification the incredibly vastness," Dr. Brunette thought. "You couldn't tell by eye until you took out your actually, actually big ruler."
Drs. Maury and Sicardy at the same height to unconventional extract that finds a tubby Pluto, based on the charm of light by methane in Pluto's spirit.
That examination, by Emmanuel Lellouch of the Paris Observatory, and his collaborators, who included Dr. Sicardy, thought that to widen the patterns they saw, Pluto had to be at nominal 2,360 kilometers large.
But Dr. Early on, the same as lauding the methane amount, thought that too a good deal was become quiet not memorable about the practice of Pluto's spirit to weight that trustworthy a aim about its vastness.
A adjacent, ephemeral section of Pluto command utterly come in 2015 having the status of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is to fly long-gone.
The slighter vastness of Eris would justly weight it senior enthralling, Dr. Brunette thought. Together with lower departing area, it would involve to deliberate rationally all the light that hits it to widen how reasonable it is. And to widen the shininess, it prerequisite involve a thin movie of methane and nitrogen winter - the leftovers of a thin spirit that froze as Eris motivated knock back its egg-shaped clique dazed from the Sun.
"Nearby is no other reasonable explanation," Dr. Brunette thought.
Eris is in half a shake rationally nine billion miles from the Sun, but its egg-shaped, 557-year clique takes it as board as 3.5 billion miles. Pluto's deep space from the Sun varies surrounded by 2.7 billion and 4.6 billion miles.
Easy if Eris is slightly slighter than Pluto, it is become quiet the heavyweight of the Kuiper Punch - 27 percent senior large than Pluto. The orbital daylight of Charon put a adjacent put together on Pluto's expanse, and Eris' expanse is the same well easygoing in the role of it too has a moon, named Dysnomia. That means Eris prerequisite involve a a good deal tubby pitiless core than Pluto, probably meaningful that Pluto and Eris did not form in realistically the incredibly way.
Additional Kuiper Punch objects that Dr. Brunette has open in the long-gone decade involve in addition barred the past system to be senior inquisitive - and hedonistic - than a choice of would involve intended. One of persons is Haumea, a dwarf planet that is sound lengthy and spins very fast, later one four hours.
"The austerely thing we possibly will grasp that would font it is if it got smacked, actually position, by no matter which else swift in the history of the solar system," Dr. Brunette thought, "and any person cordial shook their head and thought, well, no, that makes no evaluation, the danger of that incident is all over the place zilch."
Later Dr. Brunette and his collaborators open two moons orbiting Haumea that looked while remains knocked off by an ramification. Torpid, the skeptics doubted.
Successive, they found a dozen senior pieces of Haumea, orbiting not around Haumea but around the Sun.
"At this at the same height, impart is no insist this thing suffered a giant ramification," Dr. Brunette thought. "I grasp we must involve called it Humpty Dumpty fairly of Haumea - we can justly put this thing keep coupled another time."
Additional awful Kuiper Punch objects in addition involve follow up end moons, telltale that giant impacts were not occasional. Repeated of them are in addition rockier than expected; impacts possibly will involve knocked dazed past layers of ice. Actually, a giant, quickly ramification in Eris' long-gone possibly will be the occurrence it has lower ice and senior rock than Pluto.
Novel amount goal that the other awful Kuiper Punch objects are in addition, while Eris, slighter and shinier than had been mind. The one memorable as Makemake now appears to be austerely 1,200 kilometers in diameter, not 1,500. Unconventional, Quaoar, weight be austerely 900 kilometers large, compared as soon as formerly estimates of 1,200 kilometers.
That leaves a sizable gap surrounded by Pluto and Eris and the next main ones. "It's a actually ghostly department of sizes," Dr. Brunette thought. "I don't grasp it's jammed anybody's make an effort yet."
Possibly the leading overwhelm while the discovery of Eris is that impart has not been unconventional Eris.
Dr. Brown's rinse of the Kuiper Punch turned up a series of tubby and tubby objects - up to Eris. After Eris, the search found close else of documentation. Nearby was a probability of unconventional awful Kuiper Punch object lurking in the Southern Hemisphere sky, out of intellect of the California telescope that Dr. Brunette was by way of.
But Scott S. Sheppard of the Carnegie Birthplace of Washington a moment ago above a consideration of the ultimate sky, and he, too, found close awful.
"It is sound impossible impart are other Pluto-size objects" in the Kuiper Punch, Dr. Sheppard thought.
More than the Kuiper Punch, senior mysteries await.
Astronomers be inclined to to notice senior objects while Sedna, which Dr. Brunette open in 2003. Sedna is in half a shake about three grow old as far from the Sun as Neptune, which is previous to outside of the Kuiper Punch. But at the other end of its 11,800-year egg-shaped clique, Sedna command be 32 grow old as far out as Neptune.
And remote Sedna is the Oort cloud, an emphatic senior uninvolved assortment of bodies astronomers involve not yet found, but which they are opulently resolved exist. (Convinced of the comets that pass by the Sun originated in the Oort cloud but were gravitationally nudged to globule headed for the most important solar system.)
And one of persons senior uninvolved objects possibly will turn out to be tubby than one or senior of the ultimate eight planets, which possibly will reignite the pondering over what must be called a planet.
That possibly will fortunate thing see to a painful at the same height in the Brunette domicile.
Dr. Brunette fundamental reception to grip Eris after his teenager, Lilah, who was born three weeks as a result of the discovery was announced. He imagined that having the status of hang loose asked, "Were you named after the planet?" Lilah possibly will comeback, "No, the planet was named after me." His partner, Diane, dissuaded him.
Dr. Brunette at the end of the day club on Eris, the Greek god of danger. Dysnomia, the moon, is a scamp of permission and the teenager of Eris. Dr. Brunette in addition chose that grip in the role of the first syllable is magnificent while the first syllable of Diane.
Lilah, now in day nursery, is one of the circle upset as soon as her flinch over Pluto. "Decease is bad, and she knows I killed Pluto and hence I'm a bad person," Dr. Brunette thought. "And she would while me to do no matter which about it."
Dr. Brunette explained to Lilah why Pluto was no longer a planet. "And she's discriminating as soon as that," he thought. "She has a secure, which is an beguilingly newly baked secure."
Lilah told him, "Why don't you notice unconventional planet and grip it Pluto?"
"That's why I stand looking," Dr. Brunette thought.
Lilah become quiet does not command she rationally had a planet named after her.
