Newly discovered alien world looks like Jupiter

This is the first planet discovered outside our solar system that resembles planets within our system.

By Katherine Butler

Fri, Mar 19 2010 at 12:31 AM EST

Read more: NASA, SPACE

Jupiter and its moon, Lo. (Photo: NASA)

Scientists have long looked for a planet outside of our own solar system that would resemble our own cluster of worlds. Space.com reports that researchers have found a planet outside our solar system that is about the size of Jupiter and situated at an orbit similar to Mercury's.

• Comments
• EMAIL
• 
• Facebook
• Stumble
• Tweet
• Digg

Related Links

• Geneva atom smasher to try record collisions

• Britain launches first space agency

• 'The Book of the Moon'

• Atom smasher experiment begins again

• Can a person own the moon?

The newfound exoplanet was discovered by the French space agency CNES's CoRoT satellite. Dubbed CoRoT-9b by scientists, it may have a more temperate climate than some of the other exoplanets since discovered. This is because CoRoT-9b is farther away than some of the other gas giant planets circling alien stars. Scientists came to this conclusion by tracking the light signature of the planet passing in front of its host star from the perspective of Earth. CoRoT-9b moves relatively slow, so this gave researchers enough time to get a good look at it.

The physical makeup of CoRoT-9b is similar to a planet in our own solar system. Tristan Guillot of the Côte d'Azure Observatory in Nice, France, is a member of the team that discovered this new planet. As he told Space.com,"Like our own giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, the planet is mostly made of hydrogen and helium … And it may contain up to 20 Earth masses of other elements, including water and rock at high temperatures and pressures."

Further, CoRoT-9b has a low eccentricity orbit, which means that its orbit remains fairly stable. Scientists believe this allows the exoplanet to have a more temperate climate. Didier Queloz of the Observatory of the University of Geneva in Switzerland is another member of the team that discovered the planet. As he told Space.com, "Our analysis has provided more information on CoRoT-9b than for other exoplanets of the same type."

Does this mean NASA should gear up a shuttle and take a trip to CoRoT-9b to check for life? Researchers say the surface temperature is somewhere between minus 4 and 360 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 and 160 degrees Celsius), so, the team might want to bring a jacket.

Big Bang project may delay space shuttle's final flight

Scientists are still testing a possible design flaw in the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which could lead to clues about the beginning of the universe.

 

By Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block

March 13, 2010

• E-mail
• Print

• Share

• Text Size

Reporting from Washington and Cape Canaveral, Fla. - Possible problems with a $2-billion physics experiment could delay the space shuttle's final flight and further complicate White House plans to retire the orbiter fleet this year.
At issue is a van-sized device called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which scientists hope will tell them more about the universe and its beginnings. The AMS is scheduled to fly aboard Endeavour in July to be installed aboard the International Space Station, but a potential design flaw has forced NASA to consider postponing the mission.
The trouble lies with the experiment's magnets, which are designed to work within a few degrees of absolute zero. The magnets will bend interstellar particles as they flow through the middle of the tube-shaped device; scientists will be able to identify the electronic charge of the particles by how they curve.
Supporters say it's the best tool to find a mysterious

substance called antimatter, which is believed to make up half of the universe.
The experiment will test the Big Bang theory, which says that the universe formed from equal parts of matter and antimatter.
Just about everything known in the universe -- from people to planets -- is composed of matter. But finding antimatter has been difficult because it is destroyed whenever it comes into contact with matter.

Scientists think antimatter particles are present in space and can be observed as they flow through the AMS magnetic field.
But engineers are worried that the AMS may not work as expected when attached to the outside of the space station. Heat from the sun and the station could warm the magnets, which could make them malfunction or shorten the experiment's three-year life span.
Scientists are testing the AMS to gauge the problem, and hope to have results by mid-April. In the meantime, NASA officials are preparing to swap the planned July 29 launch of Endeavour with a September mission that was supposed to be the shuttle's final flight.
"We are evaluating launch options for the STS-134 [Endeavour] flight as prudent planning in case the results of the testing does not come back as expected," NASA spokesman John Yembrick said.
"It is premature to speculate on whether the . . . launch date will slip. Endeavour is still targeted to launch on July 29," he added.

 

The project's lead scientist would not say how long it will take the AMS team to assess, and potentially fix, the heat problem. But Samuel Ting, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, remained confident that the AMS would be ready this year.
"No matter what, we are going to fly this year," said Ting, a physics professor with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He even expressed hope that the upcoming tests could help engineers find a way to extend the AMS experiment past its three-year life to coincide with new plans to extend station operations to 2020.
Once the AMS is in space, he joked, "You can no longer send a graduate student to fix it."
The project, at Johnson Space Center in Houston, must arrive at Kennedy Space Center in Florida by June 1 to make a July launch.
The White House has budgeted an extra $600 million through Dec. 31 in case shuttle flights slip into the final three months of this year. Administration officials are uncertain what would happen if the AMS flight went into 2011.

Scientists find turbulence in Saturn's rings

 

March 19, 2010|By David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

(03-19) 11:03 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — The ringed planet Saturn, brilliant jewel of the night sky, has revealed new insights into the behavior of its rings for scientists studying signals from the Cassini spacecraft still flying through the Saturnian neighborhood after six years in orbit.

"We now have the clearest view of the rings' beautiful crystalline structure pasted onto the real night sky," said Jeffrey Cuzzi of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, leader of the Cassini-Huygens mission. "Gazillions of icy particles are constantly colliding with each other up there as they orbit the planet ... moving as waves under the influence of moonlets we've discovered orbiting inside gaps between the rings."

The tumultuous nature of the particles in Saturn's seven main rings and the gaps between the planet's rings, where those tiny moonlets cause ring edges to wave like ripples on the shorelines of space, are being described today in the journal Science.

Saturn's rings, through even the best of telescopes, look like series of thin flat discs grooved like an old phonograph record. But that's far from the truth: From Cassini's images and data, researchers have determined that each ring is a turbulent collection of orbiting particles - 95 percent water ice glistening in sunlight and the rest some strange kind of rubble tinged in red-brown here and there.

"That color may be some kind of organic materials," said Cuzzi, "but to me it looks like just plain rust - iron oxide. How it got there we don't yet know."

The ice chunks range in size from a few inches to tens of yards. As they orbit the planet, gravity turns some into huge clumps and pulls others apart, and they batter each other chaotically.

Beyond Saturn's major rings, Cassini scientists report they have detected several other faint rings that seem to be composed of minute amounts rubble and "microscopic dust."

The physics involved in their evolution suggests they are similar to the "protoplanetary discs" of rubble that on a much larger scale mark the earliest stages in the formation of the planets in the solar system.

But just how long ago the rings of Saturn formed and where their material came from originally remains a mystery, the scientists say.

The rings and the icy matter they contain are far from stable in their orbits around the planet. Instead, they appear to be changing constantly.

MY WATCHES

I have two watches. One I got for my birthday and for Christmas.

My Timex 1440 Sports        This Watch contains these abilities: Stopwatch, Time 1 & 2, Timer, and Alarm.

 

My Armitron Watch

This contains these abilities: Stopwatch, Time 1 & 2 , 5 Alarms, 8 Birthday Alarms and Timer.