Fantastic Science
April 25th, 2007 - A Twin of Earth? - A "Mere" 20.5 Light-Years Away
A team of scientists from the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, the Lisbon University in Portugal, Grenoble University, France, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France and Service d'Aéronomie du CNRS, France, have announced the discovery of an exoplanet, capable of harbouring life. They used the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searchers) instrument on the European Southern Observatory (La Silla, Chile) to discover the planet.
The planet orbits the red dwarf star Gliese 581, in the constellation of Libra, with a period of 13 days.
"We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid," explains Stéphane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory (Switzerland) and lead-author of the paper reporting the result. "Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth's radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky - like our Earth - or fully covered with oceans," he adds.
The planet has about five times more mass than Earth; its gravity is twice that of our planet's.
Gliese 581 is about three times smaller than the Sun and it's one of the 100 closest stars. It radiates 77 times less light and heat than our Sun.
"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," avows Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University (France). "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."
March 12th, 2007 - Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds (from LiveScience.com)
Some scientists speculate that a change in the sun's activity is the cause of the warming noticed on Earth, Mars, Triton, Pluto, even Jupiter.
(Is the greenhouse warming on Earth man-made or not?
I believe there is controversy, and concerns of cui bono. The current paradigm - the totality of what we were taught since kindergarten - holds most of our thoughts prisoners.)
February 25th, 2007 - Strange New Creatures Found in Antarctica (from LiveScience.com)
Several strange creatures, at least 30 of them new to science, were discovered in the Weddell Sea, off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, in an area sealed off from the surface till recently, for thousands of years, by 100m-thick ice shelves.
(The sea remains probably the last mystery of the world. Its depths might hold the "real" extra-terrestrials, strange creatures of the dark, of which we might only - or never - get a glimpse, just as elusive as potential beings from outer-space.)
