Tag: Planet

Water, Water Everywhere

The weekend and time for some sciencey stuff……..we have learned that water is essential for the development of life forms……and now we have a report from Mars……

(Newser) – Photos of an enormous crater on Mars indicate possible underground water—water that could have supported life, and could still be doing so. Images taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show the 57-mile-wide McLaughlin Crater, which is now dry. It’s one of the planet’s deepest spots at 1.3 miles, and minerals there indicate upwelled groundwater may have formed a lake on the spot some 4 billion years ago. One other sign of a former lake, per Space.com: channels that climb 1,650 feet up the walls of the crater’s eastern side.

Because the surface of the planet is inhospitably cold, scientists have focused on lower layers in a search for possible life. Earth’s underground is home to almost half its living matter, in the form of microbes, and in like fashion, “the deep crust has always been the most habitable place on Mars,” says the study’s head author. His work began as an attempt to disprove that water had flowed to Mars’ surface. But “lo and behold, there was strong evidence for that process in this crater,” he notes. “Science is special because we are allowed to change our minds.”

Are we talking about H2O or some liquified substance?  Thoughts?

Earth 2?

Back on 01 January I did my annual prediction post and I said that Earth 2 would be discovered…….

Scientists this week announced at the 221st meeting of American Astronomical Society that the Kepler telescope has found a “super-Earth” whose radius is 1.5 times that of our own; it exists in the habitable zone, orbits a star similar to our sun, and possibly contains water. Space.com dubs it “the most Earth-like world yet detected” outside of our solar system. “This was very exciting because it’s our first habitable-zone super Earth around a sun-type star,” says a Kepler astronomer. The Earth-like planet orbits a G-type star, one that’s nearly as hot as our sun, once every 242 days. “It’s a big deal,” adds an astrophysicist of the planet named KOI 172.02. “It’s definitely a good candidate for life.” (The news comes just a couple of days after astronomers announced there were probably around 17 billion Earth-size planets around the Milky Way.)

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Nostradamus……looks like my predictions are off to a good start….the Oracle Of Delphi can kiss my butt……SCHOOLED!

The “Homeless” Planet

It could be the title of a really poor SyFy movie…..or it could be an idea of how to handle the growing homeless population……or ……….

(Newser) – Astronomers have identified a “homeless” planet for the first time and given it a rather un-catchy label: CFBDSIR2149. This young and very cold planet is drifting about 100 light-years away with a group of roughly 30 stars, but isn’t orbiting any of them—which makes its blue light stand out well against the black backdrop of the universe. Astronomers have spotted other homeless-planet candidates but weren’t sure if they were really brown dwarfs, the smallest kind of star, the Smithsonian’s Surprising Science blog reports.

Theorists have speculated that such drifting planets exist and may even be as common as ordinary stars—but seeing them is the problem. “Looking for planets around their stars is akin to studying a firefly sitting one centimeter away from a distant, powerful car headlight,” says the lead author in the study. “This nearby free-floating object offered the opportunity to study the firefly in detail without the dazzling lights of the car messing everything up.”

After I read this I thought of a Star Trek (I believe) episode where the Enterprise encountered a wandering planet and it was actually a very large ship that the inhabitants did not know they lived in a star ship…..other than that a pretty cool discovery……..

For All You Star Wars Geeks

Do you remember Tatooine?  The home of Anakin and Jabba the Hutt…….that desolate planet on the edge of known space that has a inhospitable climate and residents?   Fiction is fun but there may be some credence to the idea of Tatooine.

(Newser) – Luke Skywalker would not consider this a big deal, but some of us earthlings are getting excited. Astronomers have discovered a Tatooine-like planet that orbits two suns and is also orbited by two other stars, Space.com reports. Called PH1, the gas giant is about six times bigger than Earth and resides roughly 5,000 light-years away in a planetary system with four stars—the first ever discovered, the Independent reports.

“It’s fascinating to try and imagine what it would be like to visit a planet with four suns in its sky, but this new world is confusing astronomers,” says one astronomer. “It’s not at all clear how it formed in such a busy environment.” A pair of amateur US skywatchers spotted the alien world in a project called Planet Hunters, launched by Yale University to help professional and armchair astronomers delve into data collected by NASA’s Kepler telescope.

Personally, I would like to think that it is more like Arrakis, the desert planet in Dune……..a more interesting planet that Tatooine…….

Gliese 581–A Brave New World

Once upon a time…in a galaxy far, far away………

This is not a world on Star Trek or Star Wars or ……..it is real and it is close by….well close in astronomical terms…..

The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighborhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars.

But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star — 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It’s so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn’t rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.

Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between — in the land of constant sunrise — it would be “shirt-sleeve weather,” said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

It’s unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes “that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent.”

Okay, good news right?  We may have found E.T…..or the possibility of a world that we can colonize……Now we do not have to tackle that pesky ozone problem….we can divert all that research  money on to how to get to our new home once we fry this planet into the dust of time….A brave new world that we can totally f*ck up…and they say there is NO God!