Planet With Four Suns
October 17, 2012
In other recent exoplanet news:
“Astronomers have found a planet whose skies are illuminated by four different suns - the first known of its type.
The distant world orbits one pair of stars which have a second stellar pair revolving around them.
The discovery was made by volunteers using the Planethunters.org website along with a team from UK and US institutes; follow-up observations were made with the Keck Observatory.”
Planet with four suns discovered by volunteers, BBC News.
Pretty cool what volunteers can do these days.
An Earth-Mass Planet in Alpha Centauri
October 17, 2012
“Here we report the detection of an Earth-mass planet orbiting our neighbour star α Centauri B, a member of the closest stellar system to the Sun. The planet has an orbital period of 3.236 days and is about 0.04 astronomical units from the star (one astronomical unit is the Earth-Sun distance).”
That’s really close to the star, so the planet is unsuitable for life, but this is still massive news.
(Via Ars Technica.)
The Magazine
October 12, 2012
The Magazine is a new iOS-only magazine created by Marco Arment:
“I’ve always loved technology, and I especially love the recent focus on mobile phones, tablets, and truly great personal computers. These interests also increasingly include other fields, such as photography, publishing, and music, affected heavily by technology.
This is what The Magazine is about.”
I’ve subscribed to the free trial.
SETILive
October 10, 2012
I haven’t had a chance to properly play with SETILive yet, but it sounds interesting:
“SETILive is taking the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) directly to you by presenting radio frequency signals LIVE from the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) while it’s pointed at stars that, based on Kepler exoplanet discoveries, have the best chances of being home to an alien civilization.”
3D Animated Nebula
October 10, 2012
An astronomical photographer from Finland has created an animated 3D computer model of the nebula IC 1396. Absolutely stunning.
(Via Bad Astronomy.)
Designing for Failure
October 8, 2012
“Falcon 9 detected an anomaly on one of the nine engines and shut it down. As designed, the flight computer then recomputed a new ascent profile in realtime to reach the target orbit, which is why the burn times were a bit longer. Like Saturn V, which experienced engine loss on two flights, the Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine flameout and still complete its mission. I believe F9 is the only rocket flying today that, like a modern airliner, is capable of completing a flight successfully even after losing an engine. There was no effect on Dragon or the Space Station resupply mission.”
(Via Universe Today.)
The Problem With Ideology
September 22, 2012
From Bill Clinton, speaking on the Daily Show this week:
“The problem with any ideology is it gives you the answer before you look at the evidence, so you have to mould the evidence to get the answer that you've already decided you've got to have. It doesn't work that way.”