Category Archives: Astronomy
Could the Quadrillions of Nomad Planets in Milky Way Sustain Life? Astrobiologists Say “Yes”
May 24, 2012
Could the Quadrillions of Nomad Planets in Milky Way Sustain Life? Astrobiologists Say “Yes”
A recent study proposes the galaxy is crowded with nomad planets adrift in space. If this is the case, nomad planets may play a dynamic role in the universe. Titled “Nomads of the Galaxy,” the authors proposed an upper limit to the number of nomad planets that might exist in the Milky Way Galaxy: 100,000 for every star. And because the Milky Way is estimated to have 200 to 400 billion stars, that could put the number of nomad planets in the quadrillions. Continue reading
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A Universe with Billions of Binary Planets?
May 22, 2012
A Universe with Billions of Binary Planets?
The discovery that there are perhaps billions of solo rogue planets and binary planet systems in the Milky Way alone has led to a new theoretical study by astronomer Hagai Perets and his colleague at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that proposes a possible answer: the distant planets are not part of the original stellar system – they were captured by the star. Continue reading
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Planet X And American Astronomical Society Cover-up ~ UFOs 2012|UFO Sightings|Alien UFO Pictures|What Are UFOs|2012 Solar Strom|Mexico UFO
Brazilian Astronomer claims there’s a rogue planet hidden behind Neptune.
. American Astronomical Society tried to censor the information by wiping out the name of the speaker from the list of invited speakers from their website.
Brazilian astronomer/astrophysicist Rodney Gomes, of the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, made a presentation at the meeting of American Astronomical Society in Timberline Lodge, Oregon, about his theory that there’s a rogue planet hidden behind Neptune, messing with the orbits of the objects of the Kuiper Belt.Rodney Gomes says the new planet could be anywhere from half to four times the size of Earth and is likely a rogue planet that floated over from another solar system.
Brazilian astronomer/astrophysicist Rodney Gomes, of the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, made a presentation at the meeting of American Astronomical Society in Timberline Lodge, Oregon, about his theory that there’s a rogue planet hidden behind Neptune, messing with the orbits of the objects of the Kuiper Belt.Rodney Gomes says the new planet could be anywhere from half to four times the size of Earth and is likely a rogue planet that floated over from another solar system.
Depictions of this supposed planet, based in the astronomical model of Gomes, put it as a serious candidate to be planet X.
Rogue planet:
A rogue planet — also known as an interstellar planet, nomad planet or orphan planet — is a planetary-mass object which has either been ejected from its system or was never gravitationally bound to any star, brown dwarf or other such object, and that therefore orbits the galaxy directly.Astronomers believe that either way, the definition of planet should depend on current observable state and not origin.
Larger planetary-mass objects which were not ejected, but have always been free-floating, are thought to have formed in a similar way to stars, and the IAU has proposed that those objects be called sub-brown dwarfs(an example of this is Cha 110913-773444 which may be an ejected rogue planet, or it may have formed on its own and be a sub-brown dwarf) Continue reading
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A Most Hyperdimensional Eclipse … and Final Venus Transit by Richard C. Hoagland | Conscious Life News
_Featured_, Earth, Space Saturday, May 19th, 2012
(By Richard C. Hoagland | The Enterprise Mission)
Abstract
On Sunday, May 20, 2012, the first annular solar eclipse visible in the continental United States for 18 years — after crossing the entire Pacific Ocean, and then, the North American coastline at the Oregon/California boundary — ends at sunset in the “Great American Southwest” … just east of Lubbock, Texas. Continue reading
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SOLAR ECLIPSE / PLEIADIAN ALIGNMENT
Thursday, 17 May 2012 13:08
From a friendly Camelot supporter:
You may be feeling a huge rush of photon energy on May 20th, directly related to our central sun, Alcyone, as the alignment is estimated to take place between 4:44 pm and 4:50 pm (PST) on Sunday!!
Alcyone (also known as the Central Sun) is right smack in the middle of the photon belt, and we are going to be lined up to Alcyone, our Sun, and the Moon (ring of fire eclipse), which is very cool, and full of weirdness. You can be certain that the energy will nothing short of incredible. This Photon Belt has been outside our solar system for a long time and now it is inside our system, and guess who is feeling it — YOU! Continue reading
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New Planet Found in Our Solar System?
Odd orbits of remote objects hint at unseen world, new calculations suggest.
Artist’s conception of a small icy object beyond Pluto (file picture).
Illustration courtesy G. Bacon, STScI/NASA
Published May 11, 2012
An as yet undiscovered planet might be orbiting at the dark fringes of the solar system, according to new research.
Too far out to be easily spotted by telescopes, the potential unseen planet appears to be making its presence felt by disturbing the orbits of so-called Kuiper belt objects, said Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.
Kuiper belt objects are small icy bodies—including some dwarf planets—that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune. Continue reading
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Two Suns? Twin Stars Could Be Visible From Earth By 2012
Two Suns? Twin Stars Could Be Visible From Earth By 2012
Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily.
Dr. Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland, outlined the scenario to news.com.au. Betelgeuse, one of the night sky’s brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing. It could run out of fuel and go super-nova at any time. Continue reading
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Star System With a Record 9 Planets Found
April 26, 2012
Star System With a Record 9 Planets Found
The sun-like star, called HD 10180, located approximately 127 light-years away in the constellation Hydrus, is home to a record nine planets, making it the most populated system of extrasolar planets yet found. In a previous study that was published in August 2010, astronomers identified five confirmed alien worlds and two planetary candidates. If confirmed, the planetary system around ‘HD 10180′ would be the richest-ever discovered. Continue reading
“XNA” (Not DNA or RNA) May Form Basis for Life on Exo-Planets
April 24, 2012
“XNA” (Not DNA or RNA) May Form Basis for Life on Exo-Planets
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Kavli researchers say galaxy may swarm with ‘nomad planets’
Stanford Report, February 23, 2012
Researchers say galaxy may swarm with ‘nomad planets’
Nomad planets don’t circle stars, but may carry bacterial life, say researchers from Kavli Institute.
Greg Stewart / SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
This image is an artistic rendition of a nomad object wandering the interstellar medium. The object is intentionally blurry to represent uncertainty about whether it has an atmosphere. A nomadic object may be an icy body akin to an object found in the outer solar system, a more rocky material akin to asteroid or even a gas giant similar in composition to the most massive solar system planets and exoplanets.
Our galaxy may be awash in homeless planets, wandering through space instead of orbiting a star.
In fact, there may be 100,000 times more “nomad planets” in the Milky Way than stars, according to a new study by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint institute of Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
If observations confirm the estimate, this new class of celestial objects will affect current theories of planet formation and could change our understanding of the origin and abundance of life.
“If any of these nomad planets are big enough to have a thick atmosphere, they could have trapped enough heat for bacterial life to exist,” said Louis Strigari, leader of the team that reported the result in a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Although nomad planets don’t bask in the warmth of a star, they may generate heat through internal radioactive decay and tectonic activity.
Searches over the past two decades have identified more than 500 planets outside our solar system, almost all of which orbit stars. Last year, researchers detected about a dozen nomad planets, using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which looks for stars whose light is momentarily refocused by the gravity of passing planets.
The research produced evidence that roughly two nomads exist for every typical, so-called main-sequence star in our galaxy. The new study estimates that nomads may be up to 50,000 times more common than that.
To arrive at what Strigari himself called “an astronomical number,” the KIPAC team took into account the known gravitational pull of the Milky Way galaxy, the amount of matter available to make such objects and how that matter might divvy itself up into objects ranging from the size of Pluto to larger than Jupiter. Not an easy task, considering no one is quite sure how these bodies form. According to Strigari, some were probably ejected from solar systems, but research indicates that not all of them could have formed in that fashion.
“To paraphrase Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, if correct, this extrapolation implies that we are not in Kansas anymore, and in fact we never were in Kansas,” said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science, author of The Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets, who was not involved in the research. “The universe is riddled with unseen planetary-mass objects that we are just now able to detect.”
A good count, especially of the smaller objects, will have to wait for the next generation of big survey telescopes, especially the space-based Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope and the ground-based Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, both set to begin operation in the early 2020s.
A confirmation of the estimate could lend credence to another possibility mentioned in the paper – that as nomad planets roam their starry pastures, collisions could scatter their microbial flocks to seed life elsewhere.
“Few areas of science have excited as much popular and professional interest in recent times as the prevalence of life in the universe,” said co-author and KIPAC Director Roger Blandford. “What is wonderful is that we can now start to address this question quantitatively by seeking more of these erstwhile planets and asteroids wandering through interstellar space, and then speculate about hitchhiking bugs.”
Additional authors included KIPAC member Matteo Barnabè and affiliate KIPAC member Philip Marshall of Oxford University. The research was supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Royal Astronomical Society.
Andy Freeberg is media relations manager at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Media Contact
Andy Freeberg, SLAC: (650) 926-4359 , afreeberg@slac.stanford.edu
Dan Stober, Stanford News Service: (650) 721-6965 , dstober@stanford.edu
Kavli researchers say galaxy may swarm with ‘nomad planets’.
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200 Earth-Sized Planets –The Latest Kepler Mission Findings
March 14, 2012
The most recent Kepler news release from February 28 reveals that the total count of Kepler planet candidates has reached 2321 and 1790 host stars, with 1091 planets emerging in the new analysis. The headline of the findings is profound: “A clear trend toward smaller planets at longer orbital periods is evident with each new catalog release. This suggests that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone are forthcoming if, indeed, such planets are abundant.”
What Does 2012 Have In Store For You? Shockingly Accurate. See Free!
The Kepler catalog database now holds over 200 Earth-size planet candidates and over 900 that are smaller than twice the Earth’s size, which makes for a 197 percent increase in this type of planet candidates, with planets larger than 2 Earth radii increasing at about 52 percent.Ten planets in the habitable zone (out of a total of 46 planet candidates there) are near Earth in size, and the fraction of host stars with multiple candidates has grown from 17 to 20 percent.
In a March 8th analysis in Space Daily, John Rehing suggests that current Kepler findings might prove that Earthlike planets may be extremely rare. But 16 months of observation is insufficient to detect any precisely Earthlike planet, because the ground rule that only those earth-sized candidates with three transits observed means that a minimum of 24 months of observation will be required.
However, as new data comes in, Rehling says the barriers enforced by the geometric bias are pushed outward, and as more candidates are reported, more terrestrial worlds like the Earth, rather than giants like Jupiter, are revealed.
This release shows two favorable and profound trends. As the Kepler Mission team put it, “With each new catalog release a clear progression toward smaller planets at longer orbital periods is emerging. This suggests that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone are forthcoming if, indeed, such planets are abundant.”
However, Rehling notes that the fine print of this latest release tend toward more pessimistic projections.Mainly, “We see more Earth sized planets which are very close to their stars, and therefore likely very hot; and, separately, we see more giant planets which are located farther out from their stars.”
Overall, our solar system is typical in placing larger planets farther out than smaller planets. However, it is quantitatively atypical according to Rehling: “While Kepler shows us the happy result that there are almost certainly several planets for every star, it shows us that our solar system is distributed freakishly outwards, in comparison to more typical planetary systems.”
The data also indicates that as Kepler’s mission continues, it may not find precise Earth analogues, although this will depend in part upon luck. The worst ramification is that most Kepler candidates are located quite far from Earth, making possible follow-up science with spectroscopy and imaging extremely challenging.
We would be better able to make observations of earth-like planets, Rehling concludes, located closer to us, “at distances of tens of light years instead of hundreds. But if the abundance of earthlike planets is only a few percent, there will be comparatively fewer of these worlds in our neighborhood.”
Any future effort to find and examine earthl-like planets in our corner of the Milky Way will be limited by the frequency of such planets, and this result serves to dim prospects somewhat, or to require considerably larger and more expensive telescopes than would be needed if the more optimistic projections proved out.
Out of the 156,000 stars being monitored by Kepler, we are effectively searching only 27 for perfect Earth analogues: If they are less abundant than 3%, we may very likely find none, unless the Kepler’s mission is extended to allow several years more of data collection.
“I think the discoveries we’re making are showing what could be done if we continue to extend it,” said Charlie Sobeck, Kepler deputy project manager at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “So we’re hopeful, but there’s no guarantee.”
When Kepler launched in 2009, the telescope’s science mission was set to run through November 2012 — a lifetime of 3.5 years. But the instrument could operate for six years, or perhaps longer, if it receives more funding, team members have said. Its mission is to find roughly Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zones of their parent stars — a just-right range of distances that could support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it on the alien worlds.Kepler’s overall goal is to help scientists determine just how common such planets may be throughout our galaxy.
It would cost about $20 million per year to keep the Kepler mission running at its current level of activity beyond November 2012, Sobeck added.
Kepler finds alien planets using what’s called the transit method. The telescope detects the telltale dips in brightness caused when an alien planet crosses in front of, or transits, its star from Kepler’s perspective. Kepler needs to witness three of these transits to firmly identify a planet candidate.
This technique has been extremely effective. In just its first four months of operation, Kepler discovered 1,235 exoplanet candidates. So far, two dozen of them have been confirmed by follow-up observations — including Kepler-16b, a world with two suns that was announced recently.Kepler team members have estimated that 80 percent or so of the telescope’s candidates will probably end up being the real deal. If that’s the case, Kepler’s finds to date would more than double the number of known alien planets.
The Kepler main mission is to help scientists determine just how many potentially habitable, Earth-size alien planets may be out there. Of the first 1,235 planet candidates, 68 are roughly Earth-size and 54 appear to orbit in their stars’ habitable zones. And five candidates meet both of those criteria.
“What we’re seeing is this trend — the smaller the planet, the more of them there are,” Sobeck told Space.com. “That’s great news for the idea of finding Earth-like planets, or Earth-size planets. Once you have Earth-size planets, all it has to do is be in the right orbit, and it’s habitable.”
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Nibiru’s Existance Cofirmed by CNN – YouTube
Nibiru’s Existance Cofirmed by CNN – YouTube.
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“An Impact Basin as Deep as Mount Everest” –Was Mars’ Magnetic Field Destroyed by a Colossal Asteroid?
March 01, 2012
“An Impact Basin as Deep as Mount Everest” –Was Mars’ Magnetic Field Destroyed by a Colossal Asteroid?
An impact basin deep enough to swallow Mount Everest and surprising slopes in Valles Marineris highlight what might be the results of a ancient asteroid collision with the Red Planet. Magnetic analysis of Martian sites by Berkeley researchers show that the red planet’s protective field was switched off half a billion years ago, and NASA scientists say they know why.
What Does 2012 Have In Store For You? Shockingly Accurate. See Free!
“The full range of topography on Mars is about 19 miles (30 kilometers), one and a half times the range of elevations found on Earth,” noted Dr. David Smith of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, the principal investigator for MOLA.
“The most curious aspect of the topographic map is the striking difference between the planets low, smooth Northern Hemisphere and the heavily cratered Southern Hemisphere,” which sits, on average, about three miles (five kilometers) higher than the north, Smith added. The MOLA data show that the Northern Hemisphere depression is distinctly not circular, and suggest that it was shaped by internal geologic processes during the earliest stages of martian evolution.
The massive Hellas impact basin in the Southern Hemisphere is another striking feature of the map. Nearly six miles (nine kilometers) deep and 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) across, the basin is surrounded by a ring of material that rises 1.25 miles (about two kilometers) above the surroundings and stretches out to 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) from the basin center.
This ring of material, likely thrown out of the basin during the impact of an asteroid, has a volume equivalent to a two-mile (3.5-kilometer) thick layer spread over the continental United States, and it contributes significantly to the high topography in the Southern Hemisphere.
The difference in elevation between the hemispheres results in a slope from the South Pole to North Pole that was the major influence on the global-scale flow of water early in martian history. Scientific models of watersheds using the new elevation map show that the Northern Hemisphere lowlands would have drained three-quarters of the martian surface.
If you’ve seen The Core then you that the only thing between us and instant space-death is a magnetic field. You also know that’s the only thing that’s even heard of real science in the entire movie, but it’s a pretty important one – and could explain why the otherwise eminently habitable Mars is such a barren wasteland.
Scientists think the Martian magnetic field might have been hammered into submission by strikes from space. A flowing current creates a magnetic field, even when the current is massive volumes of charged liquid metal moving under the influence of temperature gradients (convection) – in fact, especially then.
John Hopkins University scientists calculated that a period of massive asteroid impacts, known to have happened around the same time, could not only have massively impacted on the surface Deep Impact-style (with all the atmospheric alteration and great-big-crater-making that entails) but added enough energy to the planet to heat up the outer layers of the planet.
Without the huge temperature difference between the core and mantle, the mega-magnetic dynamo convection currents would be switched off – and unable to start up again when things cooled down. Remember, planetary core behavior is still carrying on from when the planets first formed – as far as they’re concerned the whole “crust” thing and all life as we know it is just a cooling scum on the surface. If you break something from back then you just don’t have the juice to start it up again.
Without the magnetic field Mars is defenseless against the radiation that constantly pours in from space (never mind the Fantastic Four, the only superpower cosmic rays’ll give you is decomposition). Earth is thought to have survived the same space-bombing because of our superior size, with our dynamo maybe stuttering a little but – very importantly – not stopping. As you can maybe tell by the fact you exist.
The Daily Galaxy via http://science.nasa.gov/science-news and sciencemag.org
Image credit: With thanks to http://jules.unavco.org/Voyager/Docs/ImageGallery
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Water! 140 Trillion Times Earth’s Oceans–Surrounds a Voracious Black Hole at the Edge of the Universe
February 21, 2012
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/water-140-trillion-times-earths-oceans-surround-a-voracious-black-hole-at-the-edge-of-the-universe-t.html
Laura: I am posting these NASA news as it seems to be an important part of the disclsoure process: Realizing that we know very little about the Universe and its life forms.
In the summer of 2011, two teams of astronomers discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away.
The quasar, APM 08279+5255, was discovered in 1998. Observations with optical and infrared telescopes revealed that the quasar, a young galaxy with a voracious black hole at its center (image above), was forming new stars rapidly in a starburst. At a distance of more than 12 billion light-years, the quasar is seen as it was more than 12 billion years ago, just a billion or so years after the Big Bang.
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NASA Discovers a Water World –A ‘New Species’ “Unlike Any Planet We Know Of”
NewsAlert: NASA Discovers a Water World –A ‘New Species’ “Unlike Any Planet We Know Of”
“GJ1214b is like no planet we know of. A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.”
Zachory Berta, astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Our solar system contains three types of planets: rocky, terrestrial worlds (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), and ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). Planets orbiting distant stars come in an even wider variety, including lava worlds and “hot Jupiters.” Continue reading
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Saturn’s Enceladus: A Hotspot for Life –Geysers of “Primordial Organic Brew” (Today’s Most Popular)
Saturn’s Enceladus: A Hotspot for Life –Geysers of “Primordial Organic Brew” (Today’s Most Popular).
also read
Saturn’s Enceladus: Part 2 –Does it Harbor a Vast Underground Ocean?
February 09, 2012
Saturn’s Enceladus: A Hotspot for Life –Geysers of “Primordial Organic Brew” (Today’s Most Popular)
During March of 2010, the Cassini spacecraft tasted and sampled a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion not from Yellowstone National Park, but from Saturn’s moon Enceladus during a close flyby. Scientists are amazed that this tiny moon is so active, ‘hot’ and brimming with water vapour and organic chemicals.
Heat maps of the surface show higher temperatures than previously known in the south polar region, with hot tracks running the length of giant fissures. Additionally, scientists say the organics ‘taste and smell’ like some of those found in a comet. The jets themselves harmlessly peppered Cassini, exerting measurable torque on the spacecraft, and providing an indirect measure of the plume density. Continue reading
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NewsAlert: Radar Captures Evidence of an Ancient Ocean on Mars
One step closer to Disclosure ~ Laura
February 07, 2012
NewsAlert: Radar Captures Evidence of an Ancient Ocean on Mars
The European Space Agency’s Mars Express radar probe has returned evidence that the planet once hosted an enormous ocean in its northern plain from sediments reminiscent of an ocean floor, within areas that have been suspected to be shorelines.
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Life Bearing Super-Earths –Will be Geologically Active with Volcanoes & Plate Tectonics
February 02, 2012
“Super-Earths would be more geologically active than our planet, experiencing more vigorous plate tectonics due to thinner plates under more stress. Earth itself was found to be a borderline case, not surprisingly since the slightly smaller planet Venus is tectonically inactive.”
Harvard’s Center for Astronomy Continue reading
The Huffington Post Dean Praetorius