Seven Earth-like planets discovered around single star

Yahoo – AFP, Marlowe HOOD, February 23, 2017

An artist's impression shows the view just above the surface of one of the
planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system (AFP Photo/M. KORNMESSER)

Paris (AFP) - Researchers have announced the stunning discovery of seven Earth-like planets orbiting a small star in our galaxy, opening up the most promising hunting ground so far for life beyond the Solar System.

All seven roughly match the size and mass of our own planet and are almost certainly rocky, and three are perfectly perched to harbour life-nurturing oceans of water, they reported in the journal Nature Wednesday.

Most critically, their proximity to Earth and the dimness of their red dwarf star, called Trappist-1, will allow astronomers to analyse each one's atmosphere in search of chemical signatures of biological activity.

"We have made a crucial step towards finding life out there," said co-author Amaury Triaud, a scientist at the University of Cambridge.

"Up to now, I don't think we have had the right planets to find out," he said in a press briefing.

"Now we have the right target."

The Trappist-1 system, a mere 39 light years distant, has the largest number of Earth-sized planets known to orbit a single star.

It also has the most within the so-called "temperate zone" -- not so hot that water evaporates, nor so cold that it freezes rock-solid.

The discovery adds to growing evidence that our home galaxy, the Milky Way, may be populated with tens of billions of worlds not unlike our own -- far more than previously suspected.

Remarkably, professional stargazers may simply have been looking in the wrong place.

"The great idea of this approach was to study planets around the smallest stars of the galaxy, and close to us," said lead author Michael Gillon, a professor at the University of Liege in Belgium.

An artist's impression shows the view just above the surface of one of the 

planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system (AFP Photo/Simon MALFATTO, Sabrina 

BLANCHARD)

'Ultracool' dwarf star

"That is something nobody did before us -- most astronomers were focused on stars like our Sun," he told journalists ahead of publication.

Gillon and his team began to track Trappist-1 -- a so-called "ultracool" dwarf star with less than 10 percent the mass of the Sun -- with a dedicated telescope in 2010, and reported last year on three planets in its orbit.

They detected the invisible exoplanets using the so-called "transit" method: when an orbiting world passes between a star and an astronomer peering through a telescope, it dims the starlight by a tiny but measurable amount.

But when subsequent calculations didn't quite tally, Gillon realised that there might be other stars that had escaped Earth-bound observation.

"So we requested time with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope," said co-author Emmanuel Jehin, also at the University of Liege.

"This allowed us to get 20 consecutive 24-hour periods of observation, which was crucial to discovering that we had seven transiting planets."

Looking from Earth, the astronomers could only track activity around the star at night.

"From space, we observed continually and matched all the transits," 34 in all.

Compared to the distance between our Sun and its planets, the Trappist-1 family is very tightly bunched.

Indeed, the dwarf star and its seven satellites -- with orbits ranging from 1.5 to 12 days -- would all fit comfortably in the distance between the Sun and its closest planet, Mercury.

Some artist's illustrations of how the seven planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 might

 appear — including the possible presence of water oceans — alongside some 

images of the rocky planets in our Solar System (AFP Photo/Handout)

Like a sunset

If Earth were that close to the Sun, it would be a hellish ball of fire.

But because Trappist-1 emits far less radiation, temperatures on its planets -- depending on the atmosphere -- could be between zero and 100 degrees Celsius (32 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit), the scientists said.

Gillon and his team have started to analyse the chemical make-up of the atmospheres.

"There is at least one combination of molecules, if present with relative abundance, that would tell us there is life, with 99 percent confidence," said Gillon.

A certain mix of methane, oxygen or ozone, and carbon dioxide, for example, could almost certainly come only from biological sources.

"But except for detecting a message from beyond our solar system from intelligence out there, we will never be 100 percent sure," he added.

Someone standing on, say, Trappist-1 D, E or F -- the three middle planets -- would have a breathtaking panorama of the star and its system, Triaud said.

The red dwarf -- which would loom 10 times larger than the Sun in our sky -- would be a "deep crimson" shading into a salmon-like colour, he said.

"The view would be beautiful -- you would have about 200 times less light that from the Sun on Earth at midday," he added.

"It would be like the end of a sunset."

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Last transit of Venus this century draws stargazers around the world

Astronomers say they hope rare planetary spectacle – last for 105 years – will spark people's curiosity about universe

guardian.co.uk, Associated Press in Honolulu, Wednesday 6 June 2012

People in Australia, India, South Korea and the Philippines use film strips or 

glasses to watch Venus pass across the face of the sun Link to this video

None of us is likely to see Venus pass, like a moving beauty spot, across the face of the sun again.

From the US to South Korea, people around the world turned their attention to the daytime sky on Tuesday and early Wednesday in Asia to make sure they caught the rare sight of the transit of Venus. The next one will not be for another 105 years.

"If you can see the mole on Cindy Crawford's face, you can see Venus," Van Webster, a member of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society, told anyone who stopped by his telescope for a peek on Mount Hollywood.

Stages of the transit of Venus as seen from Seoul, South Korea.
Photograph: Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA

For astronomers, the transit was not just a rare planetary spectacle. It was also one of those events they hoped would spark curiosity about the universe and our place in it.

Sul Ah Chim, a researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute in South Korea, said he hoped people would see life from a larger perspective, and "not get caught up in their small, everyday problems".

"When you think about it from the context of the universe, 105 years is a very short period of time and the Earth is only a small, pale blue spot," he said.

Men watch the transit with a telescope in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP

The transit was happening during a six-hour, 40-minute span that began just after 6 pm EDT (2200 GMT) in the United States. What observers could see and for how long depended on their region's exposure to the sun during that window of time, and the weather.

Those in most areas of North and Central America saw the start of the transit until sunset, while those in western Asia, the eastern half of Africa and most of Europe could catch the transit's end once the sun came up.

Hawaii, Alaska, eastern Australia and eastern Asia including Japan, North and South Korea and eastern China got the whole show since the entire transit happened during daylight in those regions.

While astronomers used the latest technology to document the transit, the American astronaut Don Pettit aboard the International Space Station was planning to take photos of the event and post them online.

A bird lands on the Taj Mahal during the transit. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/AP

Online streams with footage from telescopes around the world proved popular for Nasa and other observatories. A Nasa stream midway through the transit had nearly 2m total views and was getting roughly 90,000 viewers at any given moment.

Meanwhile, terrestrial stargazers were warned to look at the celestial event only with a properly filtered telescope or cardboard eclipse glasses. If the sun is viewed directly, permanent eye damage could result.

In Los Angeles, throngs jammed Mount Hollywood, where the Griffith Observatory rolled out the red carpet for Venus. The last time the city witnessed a Venus transit was 130 years ago in 1882. A 2004 transit was not visible from the western US.

Telescopes with special filters were set up next to the lawn and people took turns peering at the sun before and during the transit. Astronomers and volunteers lectured about the rarity of a Venus pass to anyone who would listen.

A boy watches the transit of Venus through binoculars with special filters
in Gwacheon, South Korea. Photograph: Lee Jin-Man/AP

Minutes before Venus first touched the outer edge of the sun, John Philip Sousa's Transit of Venus March blared through. The crowd turned their attention skyward.

Jamie Jetton took the day off work to bring her two nephews, six and 11, visiting from Arizona to the observatory. Sporting eclipse glasses, it took a little while before they spotted Venus.

"I'm still having fun. It's an experience. It's something we'll talk about for the rest of our lives," she said.

Bo Tan, a 32-year-old software engineer, took half a day off work and went with his co-workers to the observatory. He admitted he was not an astronomy buff but could not miss this opportunity.

He pointed his eclipse glasses at the sun and steadied his Nikon camera behind it to snap pictures.

"It makes you feel like a small speck in the universe," he said.

In Mexico, at least 100 people lined up two hours early to view the event through telescopes or one of the 150 special viewing glasses on hand, officials said. Observation points were also set up at a dozen locations.

Venus, which is extremely hot, is one of Earth's two neighbours and is so close in size to our planet that scientists at times call them near-twins. During the transit, it appeared as a small dot.

This will be the seventh transit visible since the German astronomer Johannes Kepler first predicted the phenomenon in the 17th century. Because of the shape and speed of Venus's orbit around the sun and its relationship to Earth's annual trip, transits occur in pairs separated by more than a century.

A Nasa image of the transit captured by the SDO satellite. Photograph:
Nasa/Getty Images

It is nowhere near as dramatic and awe-inspiring as a total solar eclipse, which sweeps a shadow across the Earth, but there will be six more of those this decade.

In Hawaii, hundreds of tourists and locals passed through an area of Waikiki Beach where the University of Hawaii set up eight telescopes and two large screens showing webcasts of the transit as seen from telescopes at volcanoes on other Hawaiian islands.

But minutes after Venus crossed into the sun's path, clouds rolled overhead and blocked the direct view.

"It's always the challenge of being in Hawaii – are you going to be able to see through the clouds?" said Greg Mansker, 49, of Pearl City, as he stood in line at a telescope.

The intermittent clouds did not stop people from looking up through filters, but it did drive some to crowd the screens instead.

Indian women watch the transit of Venus in Chennai. Photograph:
Nathan G/EPA

Jenny Kim, 39, of Honolulu, said she told her 11-year-old son the planet's crossing would be the only time he would get to see the transit in person.

"I don't know what the future will be, so I think this will be good for him," Kim said as she took photos of the webcast with her smartphone.

Astronomers also hosted viewings at Pearl Harbor and Ko Olina. In Maui, 20 couples renewed their vows during a ceremony tied to the transit at the Hyatt Regency Maui, a spokeswoman said.

Some observers at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, gathered on a campus rooftop, peering at Venus through special filtered glasses and telescopes.

"It's not really spectacular when you're looking at it," Kellen Tyrrell, 13, said. "It's just the fact that I'm here seeing it. It's just so cool that I get to experience it."

Most people do not tend to gaze at the sun for long periods of time because it's painful, but there is a temptation to stare during sky shows such as solar eclipses or transits of Venus.

The eye's lens can concentrate direct sunlight on the retina and burn a hole through it – similar to holding a magnifying glass under the blazing sun and setting fire to a piece of paper.

Venus is seen passing the sun behind clouds in Losevo, north of St Petersburg,
Russia. Photograph: Dmitry Lovetsky/AP

It can take several hours for people to notice problems with their eyes but, by that time, the damage is done and, in some cases, is irreversible.

During the 1970 solar eclipse visible from the eastern US, 145 burns of the retina were reported, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Experts from Hong Kong's Space Museum and local astronomical groups were organising a viewing on Wednesday outside the museum's building on the Kowloon waterfront overlooking Victoria Harbour.

On the east coast of the United States, the amateur astronomer Vince Sempronio was at a viewing hosted by Montgomery College in Takoma Park, Maryland, but clouds there – as in many other places – limited visibility of the spectacle. Many at the college viewing crowded around a laptop to watch the Nasa webcast instead of the Venus move across the sun.

Venus begins to cross the sun's face as seen from the west side of
Manhattan  in New York. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images

"I was here at the same spot eight years ago when we had the last transit and I was able to show people, using my telescope then. So I'm not too disappointed," Sempronio said. "If modern science and medicine helps, maybe I'll be around in 105 years to see the next one. But I'm not crossing my fingers."

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19-year-old girl in Egypt invents a spacecraft propulsion device

Humanipo, by Galgallo Duba Fayo, May 18, 2012

A 19-year-old Egyptian university student called Aisha Mustafa has invented a propulsion device intended to offer spacecrafts a new method and cheaper means of energy consumption.

The propulsion device promises chances of using quantum physics and chemical reactions in artificial satellites, instead of the current radioactive-based jets and ordinary rocket engines.

Mustafa’s device is based on a scientific mix between quantum physics, space technology, chemical reactions and electrical sciences.

Mustafa said the inventions generates energy for space vehicles from electric energy formed by Casimir-polder force, which occurs between separate surfaces and objects in a vacuum and by the zero-point energy considered as the lowest state of energy.

The device uses reflective panels for additional force which resembles photovoltaic solar cells.

At present, artificial satellites, spacecrafts and space vehicles depend on rocket gas engines that use forced gas at a supersonic speed, or chemical reactions rockets propelled by solid or liquid fuels such as radionuclide or petroleum. Others use electrically propelled probes, which depend on thrusting force via accelerating ions.

The physics student at Sohag University told EGYNews agency she has patented the device with Egyptian Academy of scientific Research and Technology (ASRT).

The invention is related to a hypothetical concept of a jet propulsion called “Differential Sail”, theoretically created by NASA’s retired professor Marc G. Millis -- who led NASA breakthrough propulsion physics project.

Aisha Mustafa

Dr. Ahmed Fikry, Mustafa’s supervisor, said the invention would be highly beneficial in several fields and areas of industries once adopted.

The 19-year-old says she aims at testing her invention at major scientific research organisations hence the possibility of applying it in upcoming space missions.

The new invention, analysts say, is expected to make space travels, easier, cheaper and faster in future.

ScienceCasts: Auroras Underfoot (NASA Video)

Lately, the International Space Station has been flying through geomagnetic storms, giving astronauts an close-up view of the aurora borealis just outside their windows.

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Venus shifts gear: Scientists puzzle as planet is found to be spinning slower than it should

Daily Mail, by ROB WAUGH, 16th February 2012

 

The Venus Express spacecraft has peered through the crushing and poisonous atmosphere of the planet, and found that it's spinning slower than expected.

Using the orbiter's VIRTIS spectrograph at infrared wavelengths, to penetrate the thick cloud cover, scientists studied surface features and discovered that some were more than 10 miles from where they should be.

The length of Venus's day is 6.5 minutes shorter than previously thought. The discovery could help scientists understand the forces at work on the hostile planet, and plan missions to its surface.

The Venus Express orbiter used its VIRTIS spectrograph at infrared
 frequencies to measure the position of features on the surface - and found
that the planet was spinning more slowly than expected

The Venus Express orbiter's measurements found that the planet's day
is just over six minutes longer than thought

These detailed measurements from orbit are helping scientists determine whether Venus has a solid or liquid core, which will help our understanding of the planet’s creation and how it evolved. 

The orbit could be being affected by Venus's dense atmosphere – more than 90 times the pressure of Earth’s and high-speed weather systems, which are believed to change the planet’s rotation rate through friction with the surface.

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Earth experiences a similar effect, where it is largely caused by wind and tides. The length of an Earth day can change by roughly a millisecond and depends seasonally with wind patterns and temperatures over the course of a year.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Venera and Magellan orbiters made radar maps of the surface of Venus, long shrouded in mystery as well as a dense, crushing and poisonous atmosphere. These maps gave us our first detailed global view of this unique and hostile world.

Topographic maps from the Magellan and Venus Express spacecraft
clearly show that features on the surface have 'shifted'

Over its four-year mission, Magellan was able to watch features rotate under the spacecraft, allowing scientists to determine the length of the day on Venus as being equal to 243.0185 Earth days.

However, surface features seen by Venus Express some 16 years later could only be lined up with those observed by Magellan if the length of the Venus day is on average 6.5 minutes longer than Magellan measured.

This also agrees with the most recent long-duration radar measurements from Earth.

Then the two maps did not align, I first thought there was a mistake in my calculations as Magellan measured the value very accurately, but we have checked every possible error we could think of, said Nils Müller, a planetary scientist at the DLR German Aerospace Centre, lead author of a research paper investigating the rotation.

Scientists, including Özgur Karatekin of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, looked at the possibility of short-term random variations in the length of a Venus day, but concluded these should average themselves out over longer timescales.

On the other hand, other recent atmospheric models have shown that the planet could have weather cycles stretching over decades, which could lead to equally long-term changes in the rotation period. Other effects could also be at work, including exchanges of angular momentum between Venus and the Earth when the two planets are relatively close to each other.

An accurate value for Venus’ rotation rate will help in planning future missions, because precise information will be needed to select potential landing sites, noted Håkan Svedhem, ESA’s Venus Express project scientist.

While further study is needed, it’s clear that Venus Express is penetrating far deeper into the mysteries of this enigmatic planet then anyone dreamed.

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Dark matter galaxy hints seen 10bn light-years away

BBC News, 18 January 2012

Related Stories 

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• Dark follower of Milky Way sought
• Dark matter theory 'may be wrong'

The light bent by a dark-matter-dominated
 galaxy can form what is known as
an "Einstein ring"

Astronomers have spotted a "dwarf" galaxy some 10 billion light-years away which may be made mostly of the mysterious material called dark matter.

The dwarf was found using a technique called gravitational lensing. It is only the second dark dwarf ever seen, and it is by far the most distant.

The fact that so few dwarf galaxies are seen in our own cosmic neighbourhood has remained a conundrum in astronomy.

The study in Nature could explain it: they may be overwhelmingly dark matter.

Dwarf galaxies often occur in the periphery of larger galaxies, where they are known as satellites - the Milky Way may have many as well.

"According to the theory of galaxy formation, you'd expect thousands of these satellites," explained lead author of the study Simona Vegetti of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"But if you look at the Milky Way we only find 30, so it's important to understand how many satellites are really there, and important to look at other galaxies other than the Milky Way," she told BBC News.

That will help determine if our cosmic neighbourhood of galaxies - the Local Group - is unusual, or if the theory of galaxy formation is incomplete.

Massive question

Dark matter is so named because it does not interact with light - it cannot be seen directly, as the stars and dust of the cosmos can.

However, it does have mass - making up 85% of the mass in the Universe - and the effects of that mass can be spotted.

Gravitational lensing is a technique in which an object that lies between Earth and a distant light source can actually act as a "lens"; the object's mass bends the distant galaxy's light, magnifying and distorting it.

By using computer models of how that magnification and distortion should work, the mass of the lensing galaxy - and where that mass is distributed - can be determined.

Dark energy and dark matter mysteries 

. Gravity acting across vast distances does
not seem to explain what astronomers see

. Galaxies, for example, should fly apart;
some other mass must be there holding
them together

. Astrophysicists have thus postulated "dark
matter" - invisible to us but clearly acting 
on galactic scales

. At the greatest distances, the Universe's 
expansion is accelerating

. Thus we have also "dark energy" which
acts to drive the expansion, in opposition to
gravity

. The current theory holds that 73% of the
Universe is dark energy, 23% is dark matter, 
and just 4% the kind of matter we know well

BBC Universe: Dark matter

BBC Universe: Dark energy

The technique was recently used to develop the widest view of dark matter distribution in the Universe ever produced.

Dr Vegetti and colleagues in the US and the Netherlands have now used the Keck telescope in Hawaii to study the lensing caused by a distant elliptical galaxy called JVAS B1938+666.

They found a discrepancy in comparing with the image that their detailed computer model suggested should come from the system.

Something with a mass about 200,000,000 times that of our Sun is in the periphery of the image they see.

Yet that source of mass is not visible in the image of the galaxy itself.

"It's very hard to tell at the moment because the telescopes are just not powerful enough to see such dim galaxies so far away," Dr Vegetti said.

"But [the dwarf galaxy] is most likely dominated by dark matter, or maybe there are a few stars hiding here and there."

The team must continue the hunt for such satellites to get to the bottom of the dark mystery.

"We were kind of lucky that the first one we looked at also had a satellite," Dr Vegetti said.

"If we find other galaxies or satellites, it will tell us whether we need to change the properties of dark matter; if we don't find enough, then dark matter must be different from what we think."

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Stephen Hawking

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Former astronaut to lead starship effort

BBC News, By Sharon Weinberger, Science reporter, 5 January 2012

The foundation aims to foster the research necessary to build a starship

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The Pentagon's premiere research agency has chosen a former astronaut to lead a foundation that is designed to take humanity to the stars.

Former astronaut Mae Jemison

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and Nasa are sponsoring the project, known as the 100-Year Starship.

Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, was notified last week that she had won, according to a copy of a Darpa letter obtained by the BBC.

Since leaving Nasa, Jemison has been involved in science education programmes, and is known as a space travel enthusiast and long-time Star Trek fan.

Her organisation, the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, is partnered on the Darpa project with Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to interstellar travel, and the Foundation for Enterprise Development.

Since it was first announced last year, the 100-Year Starship project has been met with trepidation by some, and excitement by many.

With Nasa scaling back its manned space programmes, the idea of a manned trip to the stars, which is well beyond any current technology, may sound audacious.

But the goal is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft destined for the stars, but rather to create a foundation that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel.

The money for the winning team, $500,000, is small, but is designed to help jumpstart the effort. According to a copy of the notification letter, Jemison's proposal was titled: "An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond".

A spokesman for Darpa declined to comment on the award, which has not been publicly announced.

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