© Ben McGee
If you grew up thinking there were nine planets and were shocked when Pluto was demoted five years ago, get ready for another surprise. There may be nine after all, and Jupiter may not be the largest.
The hunt is on for a gas giant up to four times the mass of Jupiter thought to be lurking in the outer Oort Cloud, the most remote region of the solar system. The orbit of Tyche, as it is provisionally called, would be 15,000 times farther from the Sun than the Earth's, and 375 times farther than Pluto's, which is why it hasn't been seen so far.
But now scientists believe the proof of its existence has already been gathered by a Nasa space telescope, Wise, and is just waiting to be analysed.The first tranche of data is to be released in April, and astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette think it will reveal Tyche within two years. "If it does, John and I will be doing cartwheels," Professor Whitmire said.
Once Tyche has been located, other telescopes could be pointed at it to confirm the discovery.
Whether it would become the new ninth planet would be decided by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The main argument against is that Tyche probably formed around another star and was later captured by the Sun's gravitational field. The IAU may chose to create a whole new category for Tyche, Professor Matese said.
The IAU would also have the final say about the gas giant's name. To the Greeks, Tyche was the goddess responsible for the destiny of cities.
Her name was chosen in reference to an earlier hypothesis, now largely abandoned, that the Sun might be part of a binary star system with a dim companion, tentatively called Nemesis, that was responsible for mass extinctions on Earth. In myth, Tyche was the good sister of Nemesis.
Comment: 375 times the perihelion and aphelion of Pluto give us a range of approximately 1,003,800,000,000 miles to 1,718,700,000,000 miles. Matese and colleagues speculate Tyche to be similar in size to Jupiter.
According to the Cassiopaean Material, there are 12 planets in our solar system. From the Superluminal Communication session dated 30 September, 1994:
Q: (L) How many planets are in our solar system?
A: 12
Q: (L) Could you tell us the names of all the planets, their distances from the sun, the chemical composition, and the diameter.
A: * Mercury=Opatanar, 36 million miles from Sun; 3000 mi. diameter.
* Venus=Pemuntar, 67 million miles from Sun; 7,500 mi. diameter.
* Earth=Saras, 93 million miles from Sun; 7,900 mi. diameter.
* Mars=Masar, 141,500,000 miles from Sun; 4,200 mi. diameter.
* Jupiter=Yontar, 483,400,000 miles from Sun; 88,700 diameter.
* Saturn=Zendar, 886,700,000 miles from Sun; 74,500 diameter.
* Uranus=Lonoponor, 1,782,700,000 miles from Sun; 31,566 diameter.
* Neptune=Jinoar, 2,794,300,000 miles from Sun; 30,199 diameter.
* Pluto=Opikimanaras, 3,666,100,000 miles from Sun; 1,864 diameter.
* NI=Montonanas, 570,000,000,000 miles from Sun; solid matter; 7000 miles diameter.
* NII=Suvurutarcar, 830,000,000,000 miles from Sun; 18000 miles diameter; hydrogen, ammonia.
* NIII=Bikalamanar, 1,600,000,000,000 miles from Sun; 46000 miles diameter; hydrogen, ammonia.
© unknownA prototype of a 'flying car', called the "flying Maruti" developed by Indian innovator A.K.Vishwanath, seen here on the tarmac at the Aero India 2011 air show in Bangalore. Unassumingly parked next to some of the world's most lethal warplanes, the squat, converted, 800cc Maruti hatchback has stolen some of the thunder from the supersonic exhibits at the show in the southern city of Bangalore
It would be the ultimate answer to the daily horror of gridlock on the traffic-choked, exhaust-filled roads of Indian cities.
Unassumingly parked next to some of the world's most lethal warplanes, a converted 800cc Maruti hatchback has stolen some of the thunder from the supersonic exhibits at the Aero India 2011 air show in the southern city of Bangalore.
The attraction? Rotating blades fitted on the four corners of the roof, and a vacuum section around the tyres which -- its inventor insists -- gives the car a vertical lift-off capability, allowing it to soar over any traffic jam.
Built in the 1980s by Japan's Suzuki and only phased out last year, the Maruti 800 was India's first small car, revolutionising transport for millions of people for whom car ownership had previously been a distant dream.
Now A.K. Vishwanath is hoping his "flying Maruti" will have an equally dramatic impact on the way people look at car travel -- although it has never actually flown and he is extremely tight-lipped about its exact inner workings.
"After studying 2.5 million shapes and objects linked to automobiles and working through complex theories I built this technique which will give my car vertical lift capabilities," the soft-spoken inventor told AFP.
The remains of old sunspot complex 1147-1149 are rotating over the eastern limb today. Although the region is in an advanced state of decay, it's not dead yet. During the late hours of Feb. 11th, a plasma bullet came rocketing out of the region's unstable core. Watch the movie--but don't blink, because it's fast (
21 MB Quicktime).
© SDO
The eruption was not geoeffective. Earth's magnetic field will remain undisturbed as the 'bullet' sails wide-left of our planet over the weekend.
This region has been spitting plasma and crackling with flares since it first emerged more than a month ago on Jan. 10th. Remarkably, however, every eruption so far has missed Earth. Why? It's just luck: Most of the blasts occurred while AR1147-1149 was on the far side of the sun. Statistically speaking, a plasma bullet in our direction may be overdue.
© B. Bonfond (ULg/UCLA)/ESA/NASA)Ultra-violet Hubble Space Telescope image of the southern aurora on Jupiter. The most poleward patch of emission has been found to appear and fade away every 2-3 minutes.
New Hubble photos show auroras - flares of ultraviolet light - streaming from the planet Jupiter.
These
light shows on the gas giant are similar in some ways to the northern lights on Earth, but there are important differences.
"The big picture is that on Earth the magnetosphere is controlled by the solar wind," said astronomer Bertrand Bonfond of the Universite de Liege in Belgium and UCLA. "On
Jupiter, we have a magnetosphere that is not that much affected by the solar winds, but by its rapid rotation and the material expelled by the
volcanic moon Io."
Solar winds are streams of charged particles that fly off the sun. When these particles collide with Earth's magnetic field, they create the brightly shining lights known as the aurora, which are seen at both poles of our planet.
The auroras on Jupiter also occur at the poles.
© unknown
Those light-emitting diodes marketed as safe, environmentally preferable alternatives to traditional lightbulbs actually contain lead, arsenic and a dozen other potentially hazardous substances, according to newly published research.
"LEDs are touted as the next generation of lighting. But as we try to find better products that do not deplete energy resources or contribute to global warming, we have to be vigilant about the toxicity hazards of those marketed as replacements," said Oladele Ogunseitan, chair of UC Irvine's Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention.
He and fellow scientists at UCI and UC Davis crunched, leached and measured the tiny, multicolored lightbulbs sold in Christmas strands; red, yellow and green traffic lights; and automobile headlights and brake lights. Their findings? Low-intensity red lights contained up to eight times the amount of lead allowed under California law, but in general, high-intensity, brighter bulbs had more contaminants than lower ones. White bulbs copntianed the least lead, but had high levels of nickel.
"We find the low-intensity red LEDs exhibit significant cancer and noncancer potentials due to the high content of arsenic and lead," the team wrote in the January 2011 issue of
Environmental Science & Technology, referring to the holiday lights. Results from the larger lighting products will be published later, but according to Ogunseitan, "it's more of the same."
Artist had a camera installed on the back of his head for a performance project
A New York City professor's controversial art project is becoming quite a headache - literally.
Wafaa Bilal, an assistant arts professor at New York University, needed to remove the camera he had installed into the back of his head earlier this month because his body rejected the foreign object.
One of the three titanium posts holding his "third eye" was removed by surgery this Friday,
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, forcing him to find other means to continue with his photography project for a museum in Qatar.
"I'm determined to continue with it," Bilal told the
Chronicle about "3rdi" which is described on his website as "a statement on surveillance, the mundane and the things we leave behind."
© David StahleA 1,100-year old Montezuma tree from Barranca de Amealco, Mexico, used in the rainfall chronology.
Major droughts may have spurred the demise of multiple cultures and cities in pre-Hispanic Mexico over the last millennium.
A new study, which used tree rings to add many hundreds of years to the region's climate record, pinpointed four severe droughts in the region over the last 1,200 years. Some were far more intense and prolonged than anything ever seen in modern meteorological records, and many coincided with major historical events.
One, for example, lasted for 25 years around the year 900 and accompanied the end of a flourishing era of Mayan city-states.
By dating droughts to precise periods of time, the work puts the region's current drought problems into perspective, said David Stahle, a geoscientist at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The findings should also help researchers figure out the factors that have driven moisture out of the area again and again throughout history.
"Clearly the drought in 1400 was not caused by the accumulation of heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere because it precedes the industrial revolution," Stahle said. "But something caused it that stimulated very unusual climate conditions elsewhere in the world. This may allow us to determine the dynamics of drought-forcing over Mexico."
There are at least two points of view about the links between climate and culture, Stahle added. And controversy surrounds the conversation.
Active sunspot 1153 rotated over the sun's western horizon yesterday, ending the possibility of an Earth-directed eruption. The sunspot will spend the next two weeks transiting the sun's far side -- out of sight, but not out of view. NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft are monitoring the far side, and they will never lose track of the active region. STEREO-A took this picture just hours ago:
© NASA
Sunspot 1153 is circled. The sunspot's magnetic canopy is filled with hot plasma, which glows brightly in this extreme ultraviolet image. Surges of UV radiation seen in
this 24-hour movie show that the active region is still active indeed.
You can follow AR1153 as it swings around the back of the sun. Just download NASA's 3D Sun app for the iPhone and iPad. The app allows you to spin the sun with a flick of your finger, zoom in to inspect active regions, and fly over the farside. Best of all, it's free.
John Roach
MSNBCWed, 09 Feb 2011 05:44 UTC
Scientists are getting a detailed look inside the turmoil behind the disappearance - and slow re-emergence - of a prominent stripe of clouds on Jupiter, thanks to some crafty astronomy and help from the planet's icy moon Europa.
© Mike Wong, Franck Marchis, Christopher Go & W.M. Keck ObservatoryJupiter seen in three bands of infrared (left), with an overlay of 5-micron thermal infrared (center) and on the same night in visible light (small inset at right).
Astronomers noticed that the stripe, known as the South Equatorial Belt,
disappeared from view last May. Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot is typically found along the edges of this belt. The belt's disappearance was attributed to a deck of white clouds made of ammonia ice that formed when the dry, downwelling winds that normally keep the region clear of high clouds died down. In November, scientists noticed that the belt was
re-emerging due to a shift in the cloud cover.
To gain a better understanding of the dynamics behind the disappearance and re-emergence of the belt, scientists created the image above, which shows how the gas giant looks in thermal infrared light, at a wavelength of nearly 5 microns. The thermal IR imagery is shown in bright red and yellow, overlaid on a composite of three shorter near-infrared bands.
The thermal readings reveal how heat from Jupiter's interior is being radiated into space. The three other IR bands, in contrast, capture reflected sunlight. Put them all together and compare them to visible-light images, and scientists get a picture of the thinning, breaking layer of high, bright icy clouds that obscured the belt.
© Unknown
None of the mummies in Cairo's main archaeological museum were damaged during a break-in last week but 70 other exhibits will need restoration, top Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said on Sunday.
Media reports during Egypt's political unrest had quoted Hawass as saying that looters damaged two mummies, but in a BBC interview on Sunday he said that this was not the case.
"They were not mummies, there were two skulls taken outside from the CT scan machine. Everything will go back to normal at Cairo Museum today," said Hawass, head of Egypt's antiquities authority since 2002. He was made a cabinet minister last week.
Comment: 375 times the perihelion and aphelion of Pluto give us a range of approximately 1,003,800,000,000 miles to 1,718,700,000,000 miles. Matese and colleagues speculate Tyche to be similar in size to Jupiter.
According to the Cassiopaean Material, there are 12 planets in our solar system. From the Superluminal Communication session dated 30 September, 1994:
Q: (L) How many planets are in our solar system?
A: 12
Q: (L) Could you tell us the names of all the planets, their distances from the sun, the chemical composition, and the diameter.
A: * Mercury=Opatanar, 36 million miles from Sun; 3000 mi. diameter.
* Venus=Pemuntar, 67 million miles from Sun; 7,500 mi. diameter.
* Earth=Saras, 93 million miles from Sun; 7,900 mi. diameter.
* Mars=Masar, 141,500,000 miles from Sun; 4,200 mi. diameter.
* Jupiter=Yontar, 483,400,000 miles from Sun; 88,700 diameter.
* Saturn=Zendar, 886,700,000 miles from Sun; 74,500 diameter.
* Uranus=Lonoponor, 1,782,700,000 miles from Sun; 31,566 diameter.
* Neptune=Jinoar, 2,794,300,000 miles from Sun; 30,199 diameter.
* Pluto=Opikimanaras, 3,666,100,000 miles from Sun; 1,864 diameter.
* NI=Montonanas, 570,000,000,000 miles from Sun; solid matter; 7000 miles diameter.
* NII=Suvurutarcar, 830,000,000,000 miles from Sun; 18000 miles diameter; hydrogen, ammonia.
* NIII=Bikalamanar, 1,600,000,000,000 miles from Sun; 46000 miles diameter; hydrogen, ammonia.