Alien life a common thing?

Time! In the search for life in the universe, time and the sheer scale of the cosmos are enemies of our all too brief human-life span. A few basic facts provide a startling and eye-opening perspective on both our mortality and the obstacles confronting our search for life beyond the Solar System.

A prime target for our early efforts to find a twin Earth is our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, 4.4 million light years away, which means that light (or an extraterrestrial message) takes 4.4 years to reach us.

It’s been the destination of interstellar travelers in science fiction writing for so long now that one would almost be forgiven for thinking we’d already colonized it. But Alpha Centauri, the three-star system closest to our own Sun, is now the center of some very exciting science.

Javiera Guedes who headed up a NASA-funded project to analyze the possibility of detecting an Earthlike planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri B, has shown that terrestrial planets are likely to have formed around Alpha Centauri B, and that these planets should be orbiting in the “habitable zone.”

“It's so close to us, and the position of the other stars is such that it should be very possible to find a small planet,” she explained. She also found that, based on astronomers' current understanding of how solar systems form, the existence of a planet the size of our own is very likely, and that there's also a chance that it would lie in the habitable zone.

Now, the planet-hunting team is using a telescope in Chile to keep an eye on the star for the next three years, in order to collect enough data to determine whether or not the next Earthlike planet lies next door.

“If they exist, we can observe them,” said Guedes also showed that such planets would be observable if a telescope was dedicated to their search.

Guedes used a series of planet formation computer simulations to determine that terrestrial planets have probably formed around the star. The team ran repeated computer simulations which ran on a time frame of 200 million years each time. They varied the beginning conditions each time, and thus created a different result each time. However, each time a system of multiple planets evolved with at least one planet – approximately the size of Earth – forming. In many of these simulations, this planet was often found to be orbiting within the habitable zone of the star.

Its brightness and its position in the sky are both positive factors that make the Alpha Centauri search plausible; the latter giving the team a long period of observability each year from the Southern Hemisphere.

But the profound implication of the iron-clad law of astronomical time is that we see Alpha Centauri only as it was 4.4 years ago.In other words any message from inhabitants of Alpa Cenauri saying “Our planet is dying!” and our reply would consume a total of almost nine years.

The effect becomes even more starkly dramatic at greater distances. If we look at the awesome beauty of the Orion Nebula, we see it as the inhabitants of the Roman Empire saw it 1500 light years ago. A radio message we sent to a planet in the region would take some 3000 years for us to get their reply.

An even more extreme example would a message sent to us from the extreme outer edge of the Milky Way, which is 100,000 light years in diameter. Earth is located about 28,000 light years from the galactic center. A message reaching us now would have been sent 70,000 years ago.

To put astronomical time in an even more awesome perspective, scientists have located a giant 13-billion year old galaxy at the edge of the observable universe. The galaxy, which is 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, is as large as the Milky Way galaxy and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as does our Sun. A message received from a planet that existed in this ancient would have to have been sent some eight billion years before the Earth was formed when the universe was only one-sixteenth of its present age. And, would that planet, indeed, that galaxy, still exist?

microlimitedms@gmail.com

Ah, Jupiter. My favourite planet in the whole Solar system and the planet I researched in Grade 2 . Jupiter is a very appropriate name. Why not name the king of the planets with the same time the king of the Gods had.

Jupiter, with a diameter of 142, 984km, is as massive as all the other planets combined and times by two. Jupiter is also 778 330 000km from the sun, about 5 times the distance that earth is from the sun.

Jupiter is the first of the Jovian planets, the Gassy planets that have no solid surface, but just keeps on getting denser and denser the further inside you go until you hit the core.

Jupiter was first visited by Pioneer 10 in 1973 and later by Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Ulysses. The spacecraft Galileo orbited Jupiter for eight years. It is still regularly observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Not much is known is about the interior of Jupiter, and the other Gassy Planets. Galileo’s observations could only penetrate about 150km of Jupiter’s atmosphere.

What we have gathered but, is that Jupiter’s atmospheric composition is 90% hydrogen and 10% helium, with traces of methane, water, ammonia and “rock”.

What was that? Water? Even though there may be water, there is not enough to sustain life. But hey, for all we know there could be a super intelligent race down there, and a ecosystem that thrives of elements like sulphur and have huge wings to ride the planets constant storms.

Jupiter also sports a huge great red spot that is thought to be a huge storm that has been raging for over 400 years and consists of winds more than 650km/h. The red spot is twice the size of earth.

Jupiter has been called a failed star. When it was young, if it could only gather about 80 times more matter, the planet would have had enough energy to start nuclear fission and your solar system would have been a binary star solar system.

Jupiter also has rings, just like Saturn, but there are too faint to see from earth. In total, so far we have counted 63 moons; 4 big ones and heaps of smaller ones.

Some things about Jupiter that continue to puzzle scientists include questions like: why does Jupiter have so little water? Was it that the spacecraft Galileo measured the atmospheric composition at an unusually dry area?

What kind of mechanism drives the zonal winds of Jupiter?

Why are Jupiter’s rings so dark and feint when Saturn’s rings and bright?

Knowledge about Jupiter’s interior continues to dazzle us, and it may be many more years to come before we know any more than we do at present day.

News Publishers Launch Joint Venture Targeting Digital Content …

Five major magazine publishers today announced the creation of a joint venture to develop standards for a digital content storefront and viewing on portable devices.Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News.

Havok launches independent developer program // News

Technologies provider Havok has launched a new Independent Developer Program which gives studios access to its full suite…

Yakuza 3 dated for all the West News | PS3 | Eurogamer

Read our Yakuza 3 dated for all the West News for PlayStation 3.

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NASA and the Arab Youth Venture Foundation in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) have partnered to provide three to 12 UAE engineering students each year the opportunity to work with U.S. students, scientists, and engineers on NASA missions. The program's goal is to engage outstanding college students from the UAE in fields of science, technology, engineering and aerospace.

“The space program has a unique ability to inspire students to pursue excellence in disciplines that drive science and technology innovation,” said Joyce Winterton, assistant administrator for education at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With this Space Act Agreement, NASA will engage outstanding students in the UAE to continue their development in the critical skills of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.”

Under this program, UAE students will join U.S. students in a research project administered by the Education Associates Program at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. UAE student involvement will provide U.S. student participants with valuable experience and knowledge about working together with representatives from other countries. The Education Associates Program anticipates its first group of Education Research Fellows in January 2010. Corporations and government entities in the UAE will sponsor the foundation's activities in full, including costs related to student lodging, housing, and transportation.

“There is much work to be done to promote and deliver inspired science, technology, education, aerospace and math education in the Arab world that is hands-on and conducted in real world settings,” said Lisa-Renee LaBonte, chief executive officer of the Arab Youth Venture Foundation. “This groundbreaking program, administered by NASA, will provide select UAE citizens the opportunity to work with NASA scientists, researchers, and engineers on actual NASA missions.”

Founded in Ras Al Khaimah, the Arab Youth Venture Foundation is dedicated to imagining and bringing to life initiatives that nurture the innovative spirits and entrepreneurial mindsets of youth aged six to 21 across the Arab world. The foundation's goal is to create activities that develop the next generation of scientific researchers, engineers, inventors, corporate leaders and entrepreneurs.

Since 1998, the Education Associates Program has placed more than 1,500 U.S. students from schools throughout the country in research positions working on NASA missions. Cooperation with the Arab Youth Venture Foundation will provide future U.S. participants in this NASA sponsored program at Ames with valuable cultural exposure and experience in working with their international counterparts.

This new partnership and NASA's many other education programs play a key role in preparing, inspiring, exciting, encouraging, and nurturing students in the critical disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Learn more about NASA's education programs at:

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By Sandi Martin, Public Relations Coordinator

University of Georgia professors in two schools have received a $447,000 grant from NASA that will offer undergraduate students a year-long combination of classroom and field classes studying the effects of climate change on birds.

NASA’s three-year global climate change education teaching and research grant funds instruction activities that are scheduled to begin with fall 2010 classes. The grant will fund fall, spring and summer courses that will teach students about global climate change models, research methods and designing field experiments. The final course in the lecture and lab series—to be held during summer classes—will have students perform their experiments in the field. That field experience will make students more competitive for graduate schools and jobs, said Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman, an assistant professor of landscape ecology in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Hepinstall-Cymerman said the students will use NASA data, models, spatial analysis, statistics and field methods while studying the effects of climate change on birds and bird migration.

“This training offers a unique opportunity for students to obtain an understanding of the complexities and challenges involved in predicting floral and faunal responses to a changing climate, in addition to exposing them to important field and analytical methods at the cutting edge of applied ecology,” he said.

Hepinstall-Cymerman and two other professors in the Warnell School, Robert Cooper and Michael Conroy, are lead investigators on the grant, which also includes Marshall Shepherd, a professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. As part of the grant, the team will install ground sensors at Whitehall Forest, a research forest located off campus and managed by Warnell, and at the Coweeta Long Term Ecological Research station to allow students to compare ground measurements with measurements made with NASA satellites. This will allow students to see how the satellite images covering large areas compare to detailed information gathered on the ground, Conroy explained. “This is an excellent example of how you use that technology to teach,” he said.

The effect of climate change on birds is sometimes overlooked when the controversial subject is debated, but Conroy notes that if springs continue to get warmer, then it affects when the primary food source for birds—insects—emerge. If birds don’t adjust to that change, he said, newly-hatched birds won’t have enough food.

Global climate models are key tools for studying aspects of climate change. Shepherd, through funding from a Northeast Georgia PRISM (Partnership for Reform in Science and Mathematics) grant, implemented a fully functional educational global climate model called EdGCM into weather-climate exercises in the department of geography. “I was familiar with the NASA-funded EdGCM model from my previous tenure at NASA and felt that it was the ideal platform for integrating climate modeling in an accessible manner for today’s ‘digital native’ students,” said Shepherd. He will assist with implementation of EdGCM into the project’s instructional activities and provide climate science expertise.

Although the NASA grant primarily funds instruction activities, the summer undergraduate research will offer undergraduate students the type of field research experience generally found only at the graduate level and will tie in with work Cooper is doing on breeding bird productivity along an elevational gradient at Coweeta. “The mountainside is a surrogate for climate change,” said Cooper, “and leafout and insect emergence will be later at higher elevations. Migrating birds that arrive in the spring to breed may be right on time to hit peak insect numbers at higher elevations, but not at lower sites, a phenomenon that is likely to be even more extreme with increasing global temperatures.”

Contact Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman at 706/583-8097 or jhepinstall@warnell.uga.edu, Robert Cooper at 706/542-6066 or rcooper@warnell.uga.edu, Michael Conroy at 706/542-1167 or mconroy@uga.edu, and Marshall Shepherd at 706/542-0517 or marshgeo@uga.edu.

Tags: climate change, Jeffrey Hepinstall-Cymerman, Marshall Shepherd, Michael Conroy, NASA, Robert Cooper

Written by Nicholos Wethington

NASA is getting WISE to the Universe this Friday. That is, they're launching the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, a new infrared space telescope that will survey objects in our Solar System and beyond, looking for asteroids and brown dwarfs close to home, and protoplanetary disks and newborn stars far off.

The WISE mission is another in a series of all-sky surveys that have become so very effective for research. The satellite will spend six months mapping the entire sky in the infrared, after which it will make a second, three-month pass to further refine the mapping. Rather than looking at any specific objects, the satellite will survey everything it can see with its infrared eyes, providing a detailed catalog of infrared-emitting objects for followup with telescopes like the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Herschel Space Observatory and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

Infrared instruments detect heat, so the instrument must be cooled to a chilly 17 Kelvin (-265 degrees Celsius/ -445 degrees Fahrenheit). Otherwise, it would detect its own heat signature. This is accomplished by packing it in a cryostat, which is basically a large thermos filled with solid hydrogen. The cryostat is expected to keep the instrument cool enough for about 10 months of observation after the launch.

WISE is all ready to go, with the chilled instrument stowed safely in the nosecone that will fit atop a Delta II rocket. WISE will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Friday, Dec. 11, between 9:09 a.m. and 9:23 a.m. EST. NASA will have live coverage of the launch available on NASA TV.

Objects that the WISE telescope will pick up include asteroids in our own Solar System that remain undetected because they are invisible in visible light. By doing an all-sky survey, WISE is expected to see hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our Solar System that haven't been discovered, hundreds of them lying in the path of the Earth's orbit. By cataloging these Earth orbit-crossing objects, astronomers can get a better idea of what threats from asteroid impact are lurking in the dark.

WISE will also be sensitive enough to pick up brown dwarfs, objects that straddle the line between planet and star. Though they are massive, they don't quite make the cut for igniting nuclear fusion in their cores, but are warm enough to emit infrared light. It's thought that there are quite a few of these objects in our own back yard waiting to be discovered, and WISE may double or triple the amount of star-like objects that are within 25 light-years of the Earth.

In addition to these smaller, closer finds, WISE will be able to see ultra-luminous infrared galaxies out in the distant regions of the Universe. These galaxies are bright in the infrared, but are invisible to telescopes that can only see in the visible light spectrum. The catalog may be a boon to extrasolar planet hunters, as the protoplanetary disks from which these planets form will be another object visible to the instrument.

The WISE telescope will have polar orbit with an altitude of 525 km (326 miles), and will circle the Earth 15 times each day. Snapshots of the sky will be taken every eleven seconds, allowing the instrument to image each position on the sky in the telescope's field of view a minimum of eight times.

Be sure to check back with us for further coverage of the WISE launch on Friday!

Source: NASA press release, WISE mission site

Filed under: Missions, NASA

Tags: Infrared Astronomy, WISE

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