1/3rd of sun-like stars have Earth like planets

A mission launched in “search of habitable planets” by NASA has predicted that one-third of “sun-like” stars may have planets similar to Earth.

Analysis of the first 136 days of data of the mission launched by the Kepler orbiting observatory has already begun and scientists are scrutinizing the scans of 150,000 stars and evidence of 1,235 potential planets.

One of the analysis has predicted that one-third of “sun-like” stars with classification F, G or K will have planets similar to the earth.

“About one-third of FGK stars are predicted to have at least one terrestrial, habitable-zone planet,” the Daily Mail quoted Wesley Traub, Chief Scientist with NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program as saying.

F, G and K stars, which are classified according to the characteristics of their spectrum are “sun-like” stars, and the candidates usually targeted by the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence in scans for signals from space.

Earth’s inner core melting.

The inner core of the Earth, which is believed to be growing about one millimetre per year, may be melting, scientists have claimed.

According to researchers at the University of Leeds in England, this melting could actually be linked to activity on the Earth’s surface and the findings could help explain howthe core generates the planet’s magnetic field.

The 2,400km wide inner core — which is a ball of solid iron about the same size of the moon — is surrounded by an outer core made up mostly of liquid iron-nickel alloy, a highly viscous mantle layer and, topping it off, a solid crust that forms the surface of the planet.

As the Earth cools from the inside out, it is believed that the molten outer core is slowly freezing, leading the inner core to grow at a rate of about one millimetre per year.

“The standard view has been that the inner core is freezing all over and growing, but it appears that there are regions where the core is actually melting,” said Sebastian Rost, a seismologist who led the research.

Starless planets could be warm enough for human survival

It seems that starless planets may be able to harbour human life after all.

In what has offered new possiblies of life around the galaxy, it has emerged that water can remain in its liquid form even in a starless planet.

Regardless of the force of gravity among planets – that could cause the ejection of the solar systems – and the cold of space, the decay of radioactive elements in the rocky cores is enough to keep these wayward worlds to stay warm, reports New Scientist.

This also explains why water in rocky planets – with a similar mass to Earth – remains liquid under thick and insulating ice sheets for over a billion years.

According to Dorian Abbot and Eric Switzer of the University of Chicago, a planet with the same fraction of water as Earth could keep a subsurface ocean liquid if it was 3.5 times Earth’s mass. But a planet with 10 times Earth’s water concentration could do this if it weighed just one-third as much as Earth.

“It’s a really interesting idea,” says Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“But we would have to land on [a planet] and burrow down to see if life is possible.”

Thunderstorms Create Antimatter Beams: Geeky Small-Talk Fodder from NASA

Last week, NASA announced that their Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected antimatter produced by thunderstorms on Earth. Though it was long suspected that lightning activity (associated with terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, or TGFs) potentially created antimatter particles, this latest announcement is the first hard evidence of the phenomenon.

Earth may soon have a second sun

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is getting ready to go supernova, and when it does Earth will have a front-row seat. The explosion will be so bright that Earth will briefly seem to have two suns in the sky.

The star is located in the Orion Nebula, about 640 light-years away from Earth. It’s one of the bright and biggest stars in our galactic neighborhood – if you dropped it in our Solar System, it would extend all the way out to Jupiter, leaving Earth completely engulfed. In stellar terms, it’s predicted to explode in the very near future. Of course, the conversion from stellar to human terms is pretty extreme, as Betelgeuse is predicted to explode anytime in the next million years.

Marvelous Pictures of Planet Earth

 

These pictures are just awesome and tell us about our world that it so beautiful. The best thing I like about these pictures is that all of these pictures are so appealing and forced you to say wow. These pictures are taken from the portfolio of Stephen Alvarez, he is a National Geographic photographer since 1995.

New look at Apollo data provides precise readings on the Moon’s core

A new look at data from seismic experiments left on the Moon by astronauts has given researchers a better understanding of the lunar interior.

The Moon’s core appears to be very similar to the Earth’s – with a solid inner core and molten liquid outer core – and its size is right in the middle of previous estimates.

“While the presence of a liquid core had previously been inferred from other geophysical measurements, we have made the first direct seismic observation of a liquid outer core,” said Dr. Renee Weber, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who led the team of researchers.

Eclipse taken in space

October 20, 2010, NASA released pictures of solar eclipse taken by the SDO detector. October 7, the moving around moon passed between the sun and the detector, this moment was just recorded by SDO.

Shooting solar eclipse in space by NASA’s detector.

How to Calculate 1 Year On Earth

I’m gonna ask you a quick question: How do you calculate that 1 year has passed on Earth? The answer may seem simple enough, but it is not. The problem is that our planet does not return to its starting point once it was gone all the way around the sun, so how do you know when a year starts and when it ends? Check out this interesting video to find out.

10 Alien-Looking Places on Earth

Dry Valleys (Antartica)

Antarctica’s Dry Valleys, with their barren gravel-strewn floors, are said to be the most similar place on Earth to Mars. Its fascinating landscape, located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound, get almost no snowfall, and except for a few steep rocks they are the only continental part of Antarctica devoid of ice. The terrain looks like something not of this Earth; the valley’s floor occasionally contains a perennially frozen lake with ice several meters thick. Under the ice, in the extremely salty water, live mysterious simple organisms, a subject of on-going research.

Socotra Island (Indian Ocean) 

This island simply blows away any notion about what is considered “normal” for a landscape on Earth, you’d be inclined to think you were transported to another planet – or traveled to another era of Earth’s history. Socotra Island, which is part of a group of four islands, has been geographically isolated from mainland Africa for the last 6 or 7 million years. Like the Galapagos Islands, the island is teeming with 700 extremely rare species of flora and fauna, a full 1/3 of which are endemic.

The climate is harsh, hot and dry, and yet – the most amazing plant life thrives there. Situated in the Indian Ocean 250 km from Somalia and 340 km from Yemen, the wide sandy beaches rise to limestone plateaus full of caves (some 7 kilometers in length) and mountains up to 1525 meters high. The trees and plants of this island were preserved thru the long geological isolation, some varieties being 20 million years old.

Rio Tinto (Spain) 

The giant opencast mines of Rio Tinto create a surreal, almost lunar landscape. Its growth has consumed not only mountains and valleys but even entire villages, whose populations had to be resettled in specially built towns nearby. Named after the river which flows through the region-itself named for the reddish streaks that colour its water-Rio Tinto has become a landscape within a landscape. The river red water is highly acidic (pH 1.7—2.5) and rich in heavy metals.

Kliluk, the Spotted Lake (Canada) 

In the hot sun of summer, the water of Spotted Lake, located in British Columbia and Washington, evaporates and crystallizes the minerals, forming many white-rimmed circles: shallow pools that reflect the mineral content of the water in shades of blues and greens. It contains one of the worlds highest concentrations of minerals: magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts), calcium and sodium sulphates, plus eight other minerals and traces of four more, including silver and titanium.

The Indians soaked away aches and ailments in the healing mud and waters. One story cites a truce in a battle to allow both warring tribes to tend to their wounded in the Spotted Lake, “Kliluk”.

Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) 

Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni is perhaps one of the most spectacular landscapes in the world. A magnificent area with an impressive salt desert (the world’s largest), active volcanoes, tall cacti islands and geyser flats, it exists like an alien mirage, something completely out-of-this-world.

Vale da Lua (Brazil) 

Vale da Lua (Moon Valley) is a water eroded rock formation with natural swimming pools, placed on a river in the brazilian cerrado forest. Located at Chapada, 38 km from Alto Paraíso de Goiás, it’s rock formations are one of the oldest on the planet, made of quartz with outcrops of crystals.

Blood Pond Hot Spring (Japan) 

Blood Pond Hot Spring is one of the “hells” (jigoku) of Beppu, Japan, nine spectacular natural hot springs that are more for viewing rather than bathing. The “blood pond hell” features a pond of hot, red water, colored as such by iron in the waters. It’s allegedly the most photogenic of the nine hells.

The Stone Forest (China) 

The Shilin (Chinese for stone forest) is an impressive example of karst topography. Its rocks are made of limestone and are formed by water percolating the ground’s surface and eroding away everything but the pillars. It’s known since the Ming Dynasty as the ‘First Wonder of the World.’

The Richat Structure (Mauritania) 

This spectacular landform in Mauritania in the southwestern part of the Sahara desert, called the Richat Structure, is so huge with a diameter of 30 miles that it is visible from space. The formation was originally thought to be caused by a meteorite impact but now geologists believe it is a product of uplift and erosion. The cause of its circular shape is still a mystery.

Eisriesenwelt Ice Caves (Austria) 

Ice caves are very different from normal caves. They have a strange feeling about them, as though they are not from this planet, and one has just temporarily stepped into their world when spelunking their depths.

There are many ice caves throughout the world, but the Eisriesenwelt Ice Caves in Austria are some of the largest known to man. They are located within the Tennengebirge Mountains near Salzburg and stretch for a remarkable 40 kilometers. Only a portion of the labyrinth is open to tourists but it’s enough to get a taste of what the remaining network is like: a truly mesmerizing palate of Mother Nature’s handicraft.