The new planet is not much bigger than the Earth
Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface.
The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra.
Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile.
They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life.
The wonders of astronomy meet the drama of modern art in this latest image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The color-enhanced image, taken of the distant Carina Nebula, depicts the birth pangs of a dozen stars, as explosions send waves of superheated gases billowing through the southern constellation Carina.
The raucous stellar nursery makes a particularly fitting subject - scientists released the image today in honor of Hubble's anniversary, marking 17 years since the orbiting telescope was borne into space on the shuttle Discovery.
This painterly picture brings the total number of images that Hubble has taken since 1990 to nearly 500,000.
The peak of the next sunspot cycle will come in late 2011 or early 2012 - potentially affecting airline flights, communications satellites and electrical transmissions. But forecasters can't agree on how intense it will be.
A 12-member panel charged with forecasting the solar cycle said Wednesday it is evenly split over whether the peak will be 90 sunspots or 140 sunspots.
The government's Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., tracks space weather and forecasts its changes, which can affect millions of dollars worth of activities such as oil drilling, car navigation systems and astronauts.
Half of the specialists predicted a moderately strong cycle of 140 sunspots expected to peak in October of 2011, while the rest called for a moderately weak cycle of 90 sunspots peaking in August of 2012.
"We're hoping to achieve a consensus sometime in the next six to 12 months," said Douglas Biesecker, a space environment center scientist who is chairman of the forecast panel.
An average solar cycle ranges from 75 to 155 sunspots.
The footage, gathered by Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on Dec. 13, 2006, shows sunspot 930 unleashing a powerful X-class solar flare. It's one of the most detailed movies of a flare solar physicists have ever seen. The SOT has a resolution of 0.2 arcseconds or 0.00006 degrees. Putting those numbers into perspective, the telescope can see features on the sun as small as 90 miles wide from its orbit 93 million miles away.
But resolution is only part of the story. What makes Hinode truly special as a solar telescope "is its unique ability to see the sun's magnetic field," says John Davis, NASA's project scientist for Hinode at the Marshall Space Flight Center. It's an ability Hinode used to reveal the magnetic underpinnings of the Dec. 13th flare.
At a time when the tallest trees stood just a few feet high, giant "mushrooms" towered over the landscape.
That's the finding being reported by new a paper appearing in the May issue of the journal Geology.
he study adds to the quest to solve a long-standing scientific puzzle: the true nature of a fossil that was the world's largest organism from about 420 million to 370 million years ago.
Called Prototaxites, the mystery life-form was first reported in 1859 based on samples found in Canada.
The ancient organism boasted trunks up to 24 feet (8 meters) high and as wide as three feet (one meter).
Prototaxites was widespread - its fossils are found all over the globe.
Lead study author Kevin Boyce, of the University of Chicago, said the unidentified monstrosity was a staple in textbooks while he was still in school.
"It's fun because it's kind of a classic specimen that people have worried about for a long time," Boyce said. "It's been an outstanding question for 150 years."
Jon Cartwright
PhysicsWebThu, 26 Apr 2007 07:13 UTC
The Fibonacci sequence -- in which each successive number is the sum of its two preceding numbers -- regularly crops up in nature. It describes the number of petals around daisies, how the density of branches increases up a tree trunk, and how a pine cone's scales are arranged. Now, having performed "stress engineering" to create Fibonacci-sequence spirals on microstructures grown in the lab, physicists in China think they may have found the reason why the sequence is so ubiquitous -- with a little help from a seemingly unrelated physics problem posed over 100 years ago
Stress engineering can be used to create microstructures without using any high-precision patterning equipment. In the technique, a curved "core" material is coated with a different "shell" material at a high temperature. The composite is then cooled while carefully restricting the geometry, and because of difference in the thermal expansion of each material selective parts of the shell buckle under stress, causing patterns to form.
The rising popularity of text messaging on cell phones poses a threat to writing standards among Irish schoolchildren, an education commission says.
The frequency of errors in grammar and punctuation has become a serious concern, the State Examination Commission said in a report after reviewing last year's exam performance by 15-year-olds.
"The emergence of the mobile phone and the rise of text messaging as a popular means of communication would appear to have impacted on standards of writing as evidenced in the responses of candidates," the report said, according to Wednesday's Irish Times.
OTTAWA - Canada will ban the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012 as part of a plan to cut down on emissions of greenhouse gases, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said on Wednesday.
A metal-detecting novice who unearthed an "extremely important" hoard of Bronze Age artefacts has said his discovery was due to "sheer luck".
|
| ©PA
|
| John Minns found the items shortly after he started metal detection
|
The bark of certain yew trees can yield a medicine that fights cancer. Now scientists find the dirt that yew trees grow in can supply the drug as well, suggesting a new way to commercially harvest the medicine.
