Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
First Planet Found In Habitable Zone 20 Lights-Years Away: "Gliese 581g"
From the official report:
The paper reports the discovery of two new planets around Gliese 581. This brings the total number of known planets around this star to six, the most yet discovered in a planetary system outside of our own. Like our solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly-circular orbits.
The new planet designated Gliese 581g has a mass three to four times that of Earth and orbits its star in just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with a definite surface and enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere.
Gliese 581, located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, has two previously detected planets that lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side (planet c) and one on the cold side (planet d). While some astronomers still think planet d may be habitable if it has a thick atmosphere with a strong greenhouse effect to warm it up, others are skeptical. The newly-discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.
The planet is tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness. One effect of this is to stabilize the planet's surface climates, according to Vogt. The most habitable zone on the planet's surface would be the line between shadow and light (known as the "terminator").
Makes the geek in me very happy!
Black Marine General Astronaut to Head NASA
President Barack Obama has selected Major Charles Bolden to be the Administrator of NASA. Bolden, 62, is a Brigadier General of the Marines and has also been into space four times, twice as commander of Shuttle missions, inluding the one that put the Hubble Telescope into orbit in 1990. He would be the first African American and second austronaut to head the space agency.(Hat/tip to Maybe, it's just me)
Cool!
Via the BBC - Rare dead star found near Earth
Astronomers have spotted a space oddity in Earth's neighbourhood - a dead star with some unusual characteristics.It is still cool but not quite as cool as it initially sounds, as the "near Earth" designation is very relative. The neutron star is actually outside the Milky Way Galaxy:
The object, known as a neutron star, was studied using space telescopes and ground-based observatories.
But this one, located in the constellation Ursa Minor, seems to lack some key characteristics found in other neutron stars.
Details of the study, by a team of American and Canadian researchers, will appear in the Astrophysical Journal.
If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star" - meaning a neutron star that does not have an associated supernova remnant, binary companion, or radio pulsations.
The object has been nicknamed Calvera, after the villain in the 1960s western film The Magnificent Seven.
Calvera's location high above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy is also a mystery. The researchers believe the object is the remnant of a star that lived in our galaxy's starry disc before exploding as a supernova.I guess in terms of the infinite void of space, that is nearby.
In order to reach its current position, it had to wander some distance out of the disc.
Another damaged heat shield
Via NYT - Inspection Finds Debris Penetrated Shuttle’s Tiles
A close-up laser inspection by astronauts on the space shuttle Endeavour revealed on Sunday that a three-and-a-half-inch gouge penetrates all the way through thermal tiles on the shuttle’s belly, and left NASA officials urgently calculating whether a spacewalk for repairs is needed.I know that the mission managers want to avoid another Columbia disaster just as much as the rest of the country does. However, I am left wondering why this is becoming a recurrent problem with the space shuttle. Is it that newer technology is not actually better technology? What is the problem? It would seem that after Columbia they would have done everything in their power to stop the insulation from flying off in the first place. Maybe it is just time for the space shuttle technology to be retired, as I believe I have heard they've considered doing soon.
A chunk of insulating foam ricocheted off a fuel tank and smacked the shuttle during liftoff last week, carving out the gouge.
The unevenly shaped gouge, which straddles two side-by-side heat shield tiles and the corner of a third, is 3.5 inches long and just over 2 inches wide. The inspection on Sunday showed that the damage went through the one-inch-thick thermal tiles, exposing the felt material sandwiched between the tiles and the shuttle’s aluminum frame.
Mission managers expect to decide Monday or Tuesday whether to send astronauts out to patch the gouge.
Land for sale. . .on the Moon!
BBC News - Making a mint out of the Moon
From his office in Nevada, entrepreneur Dennis Hope has spawned a multi-million-dollar property business selling plots of lunar real estate at $20 (£10) an acre.My guess is that this enterprise is similar to buying and naming a star and really amounts to nothing but a novelty for the purchaser. However, the story actually continues on to something much more important:
Mr Hope exploited a loophole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and he has been claiming ownership of the Earth's Moon - and seven planets and their moons - for more than 20 years.
[. . .]
Hope says he has so far sold more than 400 million acres (1.6m sq km), leaving a further eight billion acres still up for grabs.
Buyers include Hollywood stars, large corporations - including the Hilton and Marriot hotel chains - and even former US presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. George W Bush is also said to be a stake holder.
Data collected from the Apollo Moon landings have indicated that large deposits of an extremely rare gas called helium 3 are trapped in the lunar soil.I'm not sure what to think about this. On the one hand, alternatives fuels are a good thing. On the other hand, strip mining the moon doesn't sound like such a wise idea.
Scientists believe that this helium 3 could be used to create a new source of almost inexhaustible, clean, pollution-free energy on Earth.
One of them is Dr Harrison Schmitt, a member of the 1972 Apollo 17 mission and the only trained geologist ever to walk on the Moon.
"A metric ton of helium 3 would supply about one-sixth of the energy needs today of the British Isles," he claims.
Plans are already afoot in the US and Russia to strip-mine lunar helium 3 and transport it the 240,000 miles (385,000km) back to Earth.
The Moon, claims Prof Jerry Kulcinski of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, could become the Persian Gulf of the 21st Century.
Cool Space Pic
For those of you out there that like really cool pictures from outer space, check this one out.
The dusty dead star appears as a dot in the middle of the nebula, like a red pupil in a green monster's eye.Cool!
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