Planets orbiting Kepler 444 suggest there’s ancient life in the Milky Way

NASA’s exoplanet hunting Kepler space telescope has encountered a few problems as of late, but there’s still a mountain of data for astronomers to dig through from the last four years. Astronomers analyzing Kepler data recently uncovered something unusual — a solar system about 117 light years away in the direction of Lyra called Kepler-444 with at least five Earth-sized planets. That would be unusual enough, but this planetary system is also extraordinarily ancient at roughly 11.2 billion years.

Astronomers are intrigued by this discovery for several reasons. First, that’s a lot of small rocky planets. Kepler detects alien worlds by the transit method. It watches distant suns for slight dips in brightness that indicate a planet has passed between it and the telescope. These events can be used to calculate the characteristics of the planet, but it works best for larger worlds (super Earths and gas giants). Spotting five planets between the size of Mercury and Venus (basically a little smaller than Earth) is unusual.



Artistic Depiction of Kepler 444 with its Star

The age of Kepler-444 is also something to note. At 11.2 billion years old, the planets orbiting this star were already older than Earth is now when our sun ignited 4.5 billion years ago. The universe itself is only 13.8 billion or so years old, making Kepler-444 one of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. It would have been from the first generation of stars that dotted the sky. Kepler-444 is still very sun-like because it’s 25% smaller and cooler. That means it burns through its nuclear fuel more slowly.

Finding small rocky planets that are billions of years older than Earth suggests that advanced life may have existed in the universe for a very long time. Life on Earth might be very new by comparison. Just think, planets similar to Earth were forming more than 7 billion years before Earth formed, and some of them could have supported life. If other first-generation stars like Kepler-444 have planets, uncountable civilizations could have come into being eons before the first single-cell life appeared on Earth.

The planets orbiting Kepler-444 themselves are not able to support life as we know it. All five planets are packed very close to the parent star with orbits closer than that of Mercury in our solar system. With solar years less than 10 Earth days, they definitely stood out in the Kepler data. The surfaces of these worlds have been baked by the intense heat, reducing any organic material to cinders.

Kepler-444 isn’t a bastion of alien life, but it improves our understanding of planetary formation and points us in a new direction. Astronomers are anxious to find other ancient stars with rocky planets in hopes they might prove more hospitable to life. What if there was still something alive on one of these ancient worlds? That might sound like science fiction right now, but maybe it won’t always be — there’s still a lot of data from Kepler, and future telescopes will improve our ability to spy distant exoplanets.

Source: Geek.com

Scientists Discover Exoplanet With Rings Far More Impressive Than Our Saturn

Artist’s conception of the extrasolar ring system circling the young giant planet or brown dwarf J1407b is shown. Credit: Ron Miller

Children and adults alike marvel at the rings around Saturn. In a model of our solar system, Saturn—and its rings—is typically the one that gets the most attention.

But while it is easy to be fascinated by Saturn, astronomers have recently found an exoplanet with an even grander expanse of wings that is sure to wow a new generation of stargazers.

“The star is much too far away to observe the rings directly, but we could make a detailed mode based on the rapid brightness variations in the star light passing through the ring system. If we could replace Saturn’s rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon,” explains lead researcher Matthew Kenworthy. “The details that we see in the light curve are incredible. The eclipse lasted for several weeks, but you see rapid changes on time scales of tens of minutes as a result of fine structures in the rings.”

Study co-author Eric Mamaek, who first found the rings of the planet, comments, “The planetary science community has theorized for decades that planets like Jupiter and Saturn would have had, at an early stage, disks around them that then led to the formation of satellites. However, until we discovered this object in 2012, no-one had seen such a ring system. This is the first snapshot of satellite formation on million-kilometer scales around a substellar object.”

The University of Rochester professor of physics and astronomy goes on to say, “This planet is much larger than Jupiter or Saturn, and its ring system is roughly 200 times larger than Saturn’s rings are today. You could think of it as a kind of super Saturn.”

Source : piercepioneer.com

Wormhole to another galaxy may exist in Milky Way

(Click Image to Download)

A giant doorway to another galaxy may exist at the centre of the Milky Way, a study suggests.

Scientists believe that dark matter at the centre of our galaxy could sustain a wormhole that we could travel through.

Wormholes are areas where space and time are being bent so that distant points are now closer together.

Einstein predicted them in his theory of General Relativity but nobody knows how they could be held open so that someone could travel through. Most scientists believe that It is extremely unlikely they could exist naturally in the universe. It would take a huge mass, like a Neutron star, to create a bend in time which could bend space time enough to meet another tunnel on the other side. No natural examples have ever been detected.

"If we combine the map of the dark matter in the Milky Way with the most recent Big Bang model to explain the universe and we hypothesise the existence of space-time tunnels, what we get is that our galaxy could really contain one of these tunnels, and that the tunnel could even be the size of the galaxy itself," said Professor Paulo Salucci.

"But there's more. We could even travel through this tunnel, since, based on our calculations, it could be navigable. Just like the one we've all seen in the recent film 'Interstellar"'.

He said the research was surprisingly close to what was depicted in director Christopher Nolan's movie, for which theoretical physicist Kip Thorne provided technical assistance.

"What we tried to do in our study was to solve the very equation that the astrophysicist 'Murph' was working on," said Prof Salucci. "Clearly we did it long before the film came out."

 Wormholes bend space-time to allow distant regions to meet

Any wormholes existing in nature have previously been assumed to be microscopic pinpricks in the fabric of space-time.

But the one possibly lying at the centre of the Milky Way would be large enough to swallow up a spaceship and its crew.

Prof Salucci added: "Obviously we're not claiming that our galaxy is definitely a wormhole, but simply that, according to theoretical models, this hypothesis is a possibility."

Other "spiral" galaxies similar to the Milky Way - like its neighbour Andromeda - may also contain wormholes, the scientists believe.

Theoretically it might be possible to test the idea by comparing the Milky Way with a different type of nearby galaxy, such as one of the irregular Magellanic Clouds.

In their paper, the scientists write: "Our result is very important because it confirms the possible existence of wormholes in most of the spiral galaxies ..

"Dark matter may supply the fuel for constructing and sustaining a wormhole. Hence, wormholes could be found in nature and our study may encourage scientists to seek observational evidence for wormholes in the galactic halo region."

The theory was published in the journal Annals of Physics.

Source : Telegraph

Rosetta images reveal crack hundreds of meters long in comet 67P

Image of Comet 67P taken by ESA's Rosetta (Click Image to Download)

The European Space Agency (ESA) succeeded in delivering the Philae lander to the surface of comet 67P several months ago, but its Rosetta probe hasn’t been twiddling its robotic thumbs since then. It’s still in orbit of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to study the comet as it gets closer to the sun. In the newest set of images published by the ESA, scientists reveal 67P is coming apart at the seams. A huge crack was discovered running hundreds of meters along the surface.



To visualize what’s happening, it’s important to know a little about the shape of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Many of us have an idea of comets as being more or less round, but many of them are actually quite oddly shaped. For example, 67P has two lobes, one smaller than the other, connected by a narrow neck. It looks a little like a rubber duck. The crack detected by Rosetta’s Osiris camera is in the neck region, which is also where most of the gas and dust is being expelled.

The crack is about one meter in width, which wouldn’t be so impressive if it wasn’t covering such a large area. The neck region where the crack was found is only 1km wide after all, so a few hundred meters is nothing to sneeze at. In the image above, the crack is visible in two locations on the surface, but the middle section is obscured by layers of dust, which the ESA team has found is plentiful on the surface of 67P, especially in the neck region where the object’s minimal gravity is even less substantial.



67P won’t reach its closest approach to the sun for several months, but it’s already losing more than 11kg of gas and dust every second. Scientists are unsure if the crack will worsen or close up as the comet continues to lose weight. If the stresses on the neck increase, the comet could fracture and break in two .
Some researchers believe that 67P’s shape is the result of two smaller objects colliding in the distant past, so this crack could be following an existing “fault line” in the structure. It’s also possible this crack is nothing out of the ordinary for porous comets like 67P as they erode. It’s hard to say for sure — this is the first time we’ve gotten such a close-up look at a comet.

Rosetta dropped the Philae lander off on 67P back in November, but it didn’t quite go as planned. The lander’s harpoons failed to fire, which caused it to bounce along the surface, eventually coming to rest in a shadow that prevented the solar panels from creating enough power. After doing most of its science, Philae went to sleep. The ESA has continued to monitor conditions on the comet with Rosetta and hopes that when the comet nears the sun, it will shine more light on Philae, allowing it to come back online.

Philae isn’t close enough to the neck region to offer any insights about the newly discovered crack, but it can certainly tell us more about the composition of 67P. Even if Philae never comes back online, Rosetta will keep an eye on the surface from a few kilometers up. It will be there through 67P’s solar perigee in August, and will follow as it heads back out toward Jupiter.

Source : Geek.com

NASA unveils 100-millionth picture of the sun

An instrument onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured NASA's 100-millionth image of the sun. Four telescopes work parallel to capture eight images of the sun and cycle through 10 different wavelengths every 12 seconds.

A National Aeronautics and Space Administration instrument aboard a sun-viewing spacecraft has captured its 100-millionth image of the sun.

The instrument, on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly and uses four telescopes. The photo was taken Jan.19, according to NASA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VVxdN79QZY

In the nearly five years since its start in 2010, Solar Dynamics Observatory has captured images of the sun "to help scientists better understand how the roiling corona gets to temperatures some 1,000 times hotter than the sun's surface, what causes giant eruptions such as solar flares, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move," NASA says.

Source : USA TODAY

Windows Holographic will let NASA explore what Curiosity sees on Mars

Microsoft announced the futuristic at-home augmented reality project Windows Holographic today, and one of the many different uses the company teased was a collaboration with NASA and the Curiosity rover team. Now, NASA has released more information on the software it built for Holographic, a program called OnSight.

By using Microsoft's HoloLens visor, NASA scientists will be able virtually explore the areas of Mars that Curiosity is studying in a fully immersive way. It will also allow them to plan new routes for the rover, examine Curiosity's worksite from a first-person view, and conduct science experiments using the rover's data.

The science teams at NASA that have worked with Curiosity's data before have had no problem learning plenty just by a computer screen, but Holographic and HoloLens will literally offer a new perspective on how to interpret the findings. Scientists will be able to virtually surround themselves with images from the rover and then explore the surface from different angles.

HERE is the video of Microsoft Hololens which makes Holographic Display near to reality :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA

That's a big deal, according to OnSight's project manager, who's quoted in the release. "This tool gives them the ability to explore the rover's surroundings much as an Earth geologist would do field work here on our planet," he says.

We may still be decades away from landing humans on Mars, but it looks like Holographic and OnSight will help bridge the gap until then. The JPL team will start testing OnSight with Curiosity later this year. Deeper integration into future missions may have to wait until the next proposed Mars rover lands on the red planet in 2020.

Source : theverge

Researchers: Solar system may have Planet X , Planet Y

The presence of two additional planets might explain the unexpected orbital features of some trans-Neptunian objects.

Scientists have postulated the existence of possibly two undiscovered planets beyond the orbit of Neptune to explain discrepancies in the orbits of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO). The objects have orbits that take them beyond the orbit of the planet Neptune.

Theory predicts that they be randomly distributed and that their orbits must have a semi-major axis with a value around 150 AU; an orbital inclination of nearly zero degrees; and an angle of perihelion, the point in the object’s orbit at which it is closest to the Sun, of zero to 180 degrees.

However, a dozen ETNO do not fit these orbital criteria. These objects have semi-major axis values of 150 to 525 AU, orbital inclinations of around 20 degrees, and angles of perihelion far from 180 degrees.

According to a statement, a new study by astrophysicists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and University of Cambridge have calculated that these orbital discrepancies could be explained by the existence of at least two additional planets beyond the orbits of Neptune and dwarf planet Pluto. Their study suggests that the gravitational pulls of those two planets must be disturbing the orbits of some smaller ETNO.

However, there are two difficulties with the hypothesis. One is that current models of the formation of our solar system do not allow for additional planets beyond Neptune. Secondly, the team’s sample size is very small, only 13 objects. However, additional results are in the pipeline, which will expand the sample.

“This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNO and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of UCM and lead author on the study.

The new findings have been published in two papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.

Source : thespacereporter

Evidence Builds for Dark Matter Explosions at the Milky Way’s Core

This Fermi map of the Milky Way center shows an overabundance of gamma-rays (red indicates the greatest number) that cannot be explained by conventional sources.

So far, dark matter has evaded scientists’ best attempts to find it. Astronomers know the invisible stuff dominates our universe and tugs gravitationally on regular matter, but they do not know what it is made of. Since 2009, however, suspicious gamma--ray light radiating from the Milky Way’s core—where dark matter is thought to be especially dense—has intrigued researchers. Some wonder if the rays might have been emitted in explosions caused by colliding particles of dark matter. Now a new gamma-ray signal, in combination with those already detected, offers further evidence that this might be the case.

One possible explanation for dark matter is that it is made of theorized “weakly interacting massive particles,” or WIMPs. Every WIMP is thought to be both matter and antimatter, so when two of them meet they should annihilate on contact, as matter and antimatter do. These blasts would create gamma-ray light, which is what astronomers see in abundance at the center of our galaxy in data from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. The explosions could also create cosmic-ray particles—high-energy electrons and positrons (the antimatter counterparts of electrons)—which would then speed out from the heart of the Milky Way and sometimes collide with particles of starlight, giving them a boost of energy that would bump them up into the gamma-ray range. For the first time scientists have now detected light that matches predictions for this second process, called inverse Compton scattering, which should produce gamma rays that are more spread out over space and come in a different range of energies than those released directly by dark matter annihilation.

“It looks pretty clear from their work that an additional inverse Compton component of gamma rays is present,” says Dan Hooper, an astrophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who was not involved in the study, but who originally pointed out that a dark matter signal might be present in the Fermi telescope data. “Such a component could come from the same dark matter that makes the primary gamma-ray signal we've been talking about all of these years.” University of California, Irvine scientists Anna Kwa and Kevork Abazajian presented the new study October 23 at the Fifth International Fermi Symposium in Nagoya, Japan and submitted their paper to Physical Review Letters.

None of the intriguing gamma-ray light is a smoking gun for dark matter. Other astrophysical processes, such as spinning stars called pulsars, can create both types of signal. “You can make models that replicate all this with astrophysics,” Abazajian says. “But the case for dark matter is the easiest, and there’s more and more evidence that keeps piling up.”

The official Fermi telescope team has long been cautious about drawing conclusions on dark matter from their data. But at last week’s symposium, the group presented its own analysis of the unexplained gamma-ray light and concluded that although multiple hypotheses fit the data, dark matter fits best. “That’s huge news because it’s the first time they’ve acknowledged that,” Abazajian says. Simona Murgia, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Irvine and a member of the Fermi collaboration’s galactic-center analysis team, presented the team’s findings. She says the complexity of the galactic center makes it difficult to know for sure how the excess of gamma rays arose and whether or not the light could come from mundane “background” sources. “It is a very interesting claim,” she says of Abazajian’s analysis. “However, detection of extended excesses in this region of the sky is complicated by our incomplete understanding of the background.”

The dark matter interpretation would look more likely if astronomers could find similar evidence of WIMP annihilation in other galaxies, such as the two dozen or so dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I think a convincing claim of discovery would probably require a corresponding signal in another location—or by a non-astrophysical experiment—as well as the galactic center,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology astrophysicist Tracy Slatyer, who has also studied the Fermi data from the Milky Way’s center.

Non-astrophysical experiments include the handful of so-called direct-detection experiments on Earth, which aim to catch WIMPs on the extremely rare occasions when they bump into atoms of normal matter. So far, however, none of these has found any evidence for dark matter. Instead they have steadily whittled away at the tally of possible types of WIMPs that could exist.

Other orbiting experiments, such as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station, which detects cosmic rays, have also failed to find convincing proof of dark matter. In fact, the AMS results seem to conflict with the most basic explanations linking dark matter to the Fermi observations. “Most people would agree that there is something rather unexpected happening at the galactic center, and it would be tremendously exciting if it turns out to be a dark matter annihilation signal,” says Christoph Weniger of the University of Amsterdam, another astrophysicist who has studied the Milky Way’s core. “But we have to confirm this interpretation by finding corroborating evidence in other independent observations first. Much more work needs to be done.”

Source : scientificamerican