Binary Stars with Habitable Planets: related news

Binary Stars with Habitable Planets

The detection of many extrasolar planets constitutes a momentous advance for astronomy. But these discoveries, most of which were made after 1995, were not unanticipated—for centuries, people speculated about the existence of planetary systems around stars other than the Sun. Many of these systems caught astronomers by surprise. They revealed properties that would not fit the theoretical models of planetary system formation. For instance, recently, astronomers have been surprised to learn that some modestly spaced binary stars can also harbor planets. Theoretical work had suggested that planets could not form in such systems. Yet it is now clear that Jupiter-sized planets do indeed exist in at least a few multiple-star systems. And computational modeling suggests that smaller, terrestrial planets will one day be found in such systems, s

How Old Am I? Star Cluster Perplexes Astronomers

Ever have one of those moments when you can't remember how old you are? A group of astronomers may have felt they were having a "senior moment" when they couldn't seem to figure out exactly the age of stars in the open star cluster NGC 6791, located in the constellation Lyra. Conventional thinking among astronomers is that stars in open clusters form at the same time, but in this particular cluster, researchers found stars at three different ages: one group of white dwarf stars appeared to be 4 billion years old, a second group of white dwarfs seemed to 6 billion years old, while the other regular stars were calculated to be 8 billion years of age. The astronomers say this dilemma may fundamentally challenge the way astronomers estimate cluster ages.

Solar Systems Like Ours Are Likely To Be Rare

KentuckyFC writes "Astronomers have discovered some 250 planetary systems beyond our own, many of them with curious properties. In particular, our theories of planet formation are challenged by 'hot Jupiters,' gas giants that orbit close to their parent stars. Current thinking is that gas giants can only form far away from stars because gas and dust simply gets blown away from the inner regions. Now astronomers have used computer simulations of the way planetary systems form to understand what is going on (abstract). It looks as if gas giants often form a long way from stars and then migrate inwards. That has implications for us: a migrating gas giant sweeps away all in its path, including rocky planets in the habitable zone. And that means that solar systems like ours are likely to be rare.

Stars Could Shine In Many Universes

A commonplace of cosmologists who argue the anthropic principle is the assumption that if any or a few of the constants of nature took on an even slightly different value, life could not have evolved — perhaps even stars and galaxies would not form. Science News reports on a new calculation showing that, to the contrary, star formation could happen in up to one-quarter of universes with different values of three important constants. "In fact, all universes can support the existence of stars, provided that the definition of star is interpreted broadly," said the researcher, Fred Adams. "...calculations suggest that, contrary to some previous claims, stars are not only common in our cosmos but are also ablaze in myriad other universes, where the laws of physics may be drastically different.

The Sunny Side of Asteroids

Asteroids with moons, called binary asteroids, are fairly common in the solar system. But scientists haven't been able to figure out the dynamics of these asteroids, especially how the moons form. But a group of astronomers studying binary asteroids say the surprising answer is sunlight, which can increase or decrease the spin rate of an asteroid. The researchers also say that since there are a number of "double craters" on Earth – side-by side craters that appear to have formed at about the same time — these binary asteroids may have hit our planet in the past. The image above is of twin circular lakes in Quebec, Canada, formed by the impact of an asteroidal pair which slammed into the planet approximately 290 million years ago. Similar double craters also can be found on other planets, as well.

Globular Clusters Like to Be Near the Center of the Action

Globular clusters are gravitationally bound, dense concentrations of stars. There can be hundreds of thousands of stars in a cluster, and they are so close together that it's hard to distinguish globular clusters outside of our galaxy from stars within our own galaxy just using ground-based telescopes: in other words, these big bunches of far away stars can look like a single, nearby star. But astronomers recently used the Hubble Space Telescope's sharp eyes to identify, incredibly, over 11,000 globular clusters in the Virgo cluster of galaxies. And in doing so, they also noticed something interesting about where the globulars are located. Globular clusters don't seem to form uniformly from galaxy to galaxy; instead they like to be where the action is near the center of galaxy clusters.

Trio of Super-Earths Discovered

FiReaNGeL writes "A group of astronomers have now discovered a system of three super-Earths around a rather normal star, which is slightly less massive than our Sun, and is located 42 light-years away towards the southern Doradus and Pictor constellations. 'We have made very precise measurements of the velocity of the star HD 40307 over the last five years, which clearly reveal the presence of three planets.' The planets, having 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth, orbit the star with periods of 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively. 'The perturbations induced by the planets are really tiny — the mass of the smallest planets is one hundred thousand times smaller than that of the star — and only the high sensitivity of HARPS made it possible to detect them' says co-author François Bouchy, from the Institut d'Astrophysique de

Binary Asteroid Glides Past Earth

A rare event has given astronomers a great view of a binary asteroid system. Tonight, asteroid 2008 BT18 passed 1.4 million miles from Earth, shining like a 13th magnitude star. Before July 7th, astronomers believed 2008 BT18 was "just another" near-Earth asteroid, but then the Arecibo radio telescope obtained a "delay-Doppler" image of the asteroid and found it in fact had a binary partner. Although binaries are fairly common in the Solar System, this was a rare opportunity for a ground-based telescope to capture such a clear view…

Converting Binary Numbers To Decimal The Hard Way On Linux Or Unix

The Linux and Unix Menagerie: "If you recall a while back, we looked at using Perl's "unpack" function to easily convert binary values to decimal and convert decimal back to binary.

Astronomers Simulate the First Stars Formed After the Big Bang

What were the first stars like that formed shortly after the Big Bang? We don't know much about the conditions of the early universe 13 billion years ago, but a new computer simulation provides the most detailed picture yet of the first stars and how they came into existence. The composition of the early universe was quite different from that of today, said Dr. Naoki Yoshida, Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan and Dr. Lars Hernquist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA. An article that will be published to the August 1 journal Science describes their findings from the computer model that simulates the early days of the universe, the "cosmic dark ages," where the physics governing the universe were somewhat simpler.

Three-of-a-kind planets found - Premium content

Astronomers have discovered a family of three planets, ranging from just four to nine times as massive as Earth, orbiting a Sun-like star 42 light-years away. The planets zip around their star incredibly quickly — one does it in 4 days — which means they hug the star too closely for known types of life to be comfortable.

Microsoft Releases Pre-2007 Binary File Format Specs

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has released the specifications for the binary file formats used by pre-2007 Microsoft Office applications. They're accurate this time! Honest! While the documents are enormous (Word alone requires 533 pages; Excel runs over 1000 plus another 850 pages for the Office 2007 binary format), they hopefully will be useful to developers trying to create or extract information from Microsoft Office files (which despite their flaws, have been the de facto standard in many fields for some time now)."

Performance Woe of Binary XML

Since its inception, XML has been criticized for the overhead it introduces into the enterprise infrastructure. Business data encoded in XML takes five to 10 times more bandwidth to transmit in the network and proportionally more disk space to store. While most agree that verbosity is inherent to XML's way of encoding information (e.g., extensive use of tags and pointy brackets), the explanation of XML's perceived performance issue remains inconclusive. A popular belief is that since XML is human-readable text, it has to be slow and inefficient. And by the same token, proponents of binary XML seem to suggest that a compact encoding format, most noticeably the binary XML, would automatically lead to better processing performance.

Patent Battle Brewing Over Videotaping Stars Signing Autographs

Reuters is running an article about the launch of a new company, Live Autographs, which has stars like William Shatner (who's an investor in the company) signing autographs for customers, while filming a short video of the signature. As part of the video the stars are supposed to say aloud something in reference to what they're signing. It's basically no different than standing in line to get an autograph and telling the person what you want them to sign -- except that it takes place over the internet, and the end result is both the signed product and the video. Who knows if it's a good idea or not, but given the lengths some people will go (or the amount they'll pay) to get an autograph, it's hardly a surprising extension of the autograph industry.

Activision Twirls Back into the Spotlight with Dancing with the Stars(TM): Get Your Dance On! for Wii(TM) and Nintendo DS(TM)

SANTA MONICA, Calif., BUSINESS WIRE -- Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) announced today the Fall 2008 release of Dancing with the Stars(TM): Get Your Dance On!, the sequel to last year's rhythm-packed Dancing with the Stars(TM) videogame. They have once again teamed up with Disney-ABC Click for the lowest price on dmnobieblanktelevision');" onMouseOut="setTimeout('hideLayer()',500);" class=hotlink2>Television

i-Technology Viewpoint: The Performance Woe of Binary XML

Since its inception, XML has been criticized for the overhead it introduces into the enterprise infrastructure. Business data encoded in XML takes five to 10 times more bandwidth to transmit in the network and proportionally more disk space to store. While most agree that verbosity is inherent to XML's way of encoding information (e.g., extensive use of tags and pointy brackets), the explanation of XML's perceived performance issue remains inconclusive. A popular belief is that since XML is human-readable text, it has to be slow and inefficient. And by the same token, proponents of binary XML seem to suggest that a compact encoding format, most noticeably the binary XML, would automatically lead to better processing performance.

i-Technology Viewpoint: The Performance Woe of Binary XML

Since its inception, XML has been criticized for the overhead it introduces into the enterprise infrastructure. Business data encoded in XML takes five to 10 times more bandwidth to transmit in the network and proportionally more disk space to store. While most agree that verbosity is inherent to XML's way of encoding information (e.g., extensive use of tags and pointy brackets), the explanation of XML's perceived performance issue remains inconclusive. A popular belief is that since XML is human-readable text, it has to be slow and inefficient. And by the same token, proponents of binary XML seem to suggest that a compact encoding format, most noticeably the binary XML, would automatically lead to better processing performance.

NASA's Kepler Telescope Set to Use 3PAR in the Search for Distant Earth-Like Planets

3PAR INC ("PAR-N") - NASA's Kepler Telescope Set to Use 3PAR in the Search for Distant - Earth-Like Planets 3PAR, the leading global provider of utility storage, announced that NASA Ames Research Center has chosen 3PAR Utility Storage for a mission that will send the Kepler Space Telescope into orbit around the Sun to find planets in solar systems outside our own. Set to launch in February of 2009, the mission will use 3PAR Utility Storage to store digital images taken with the powerful telescope and its camera. NASA Ames chose the resilient 3PAR storage system to meet its strict cost and performance requirements while maintaining massive scalability and avoiding the need for a full-time, dedicated storage expert. "Even rocket launches have budget constraints," said Chris Middour, Deputy Manager for the Kepler Operations Science Center an

Observing an Evaporating Extrasolar Planet

Observations of planets orbiting other stars are becoming increasingly common as astronomical techniques become more and more sophisticated. But some extrasolar planets have a stronger than normal spectroscopic signature, often stronger than their optical signature. What could be causing this? In a recent study, observations of the extrasolar planet HD 209458b (also unofficially known as "Osiris", which orbits a star in the constellation of Pegasus) revealed the strongest ever spectroscopic signature for a giant extrasolar planet, indicating Osiris is producing a huge cloud of gas. This gas is being lost from the planet's atmosphere; Osiris is evaporating…

Sun-like Stars May Have Low Probability of Forming Planets

This protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula has a mass more than one hundredth that of the sun, the minimum needed to form a Jupiter-sized planet. Image credit: Bally et al 2000/Hubble Space Telescope & Eisner et al 2008/CARMA, SMA)

Astronomers find planetary system with three super-earths

Garching, Germany - Astronomers said Monday they have detected a distant planetary system with three planets not much bigger than our Earth, one of the most promising discoveries ever in the hunt for life in outer space. Unlike most of the 300 so-called exo-planets discovered in the past 13 years, the trio are small enough to perhaps have rocky surfaces. Most of the 300 have been huge gas planets such Jupiter and Saturn, which cannot sustain life as we know it.

Adopt-a-Star To Fund Research

Travis writes "An international collaboration of astronomers is taking a unique approach to funding their research, through an 'adopt-a-star' program. Preparing for the launch of NASA's Kepler satellite next February, the group will help characterize thousands of stars that the mission will be searching for evidence of Earth-like planets. For a small donation, early adopters get a certificate by email and updates when any planets are found around their adopted star."

Earth and Moon From an Alien's Perspective

krygny writes "NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft (whose extended mission is called EPOXI) has created a video of the moon transiting Earth as seen from 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds. 'Our video shows some specific features that are important for observations of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars,' said Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center... 'A "sun glint'" can be seen in the movie, caused by light reflected from Earth's oceans, and similar glints to be observed from extrasolar planets could indicate alien oceans. Also, we used infrared light instead of the normal red light to make the color composite images, and that makes the land masses much more visible.'" Here are links to the two videos, one red-green-blue and the other infrared-green.

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