Space
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"Diamond" Planet Found; May Be Stripped Star
An exotic planet as dense as diamond has been found in the Milky Way , and astronomers think the world is a former star that got transformed by its orbital partner. The odd planet was discovered orbiting what's known as a millisecond pulsar—a tiny, fast-spinning corpse of a massive star that died in a supernova. Astronomers estimate that the newfound planet is 34,175 miles (55,000 kilometers) across, or about five times Earth's diameter. In addition, "we are very confident it has a density about 18 times that of water," said study leader Matthew Bailes , an astronomer at the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing in Melbourne, Australia.
Space flight
New Scientist TV: How the universe appeared from nothing
MacGregor Campbell, consultant There's no such thing as a free lunch, or so the saying goes, but that may not be true on the grandest, cosmic scale. Many physicists now believe that the universe arose out of nothingness during the Big Bang which means that nothing must have somehow turned into something. How could that be possible? Due to the weirdness of quantum mechanics, nothing transforms into something all the time. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that a system can never have precisely zero energy and since energy and mass are equivalent, pairs of particles can form spontaneously as long as they annihilate one another very quickly.
Is the Universe a Holographic Reality?
The Universe as a Hologram by Michael Talbot Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm? In 1982 a remarkable event took place.Nasa budget slashes Martian funds
13 February 2012 Last updated at 14:30 ET By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website The ExoMars project was formally initiated by European space ministers in 2005 President Barack Obama's 2013 budget request for Nasa would slash spending on Mars exploration and shift funds to human spaceflight and space technology.
A Nasa astrobiologist called Daniel Glavin and his colleagues said they had proven that a wide variety of meteor types might be home to such an imbalance. Yet newer research led by Uwe Meierhenrich of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis has now shown how this process could work. The team found that light which passes through the dust cloud around a forming star become polarised in a particular way. The light then triggers the formation of amino acids which can become stuck into asteroids. If one struck the Earth, the theory goes, the life switch could have been turned on. However, one major mystery remains - how did the acids survive the journey from outer space to our planet?
Did asteroids spark life on Earth?
astronomy
Hottest planet is hotter than some stars - space - 19 January 2011
Astronomers have found the hottest planet yet, a gas giant with a temperature of nearly 3200 °C, which is hotter than some stars. A collaboration called the Super Wide Angle Search for Planets (SuperWASP) announced hints of the planet's existence in 2006. The group had observed periodic dimmings of the parent star possibly caused by a planet about 1.4 times the size of Jupiter passing in front of the star once per orbit. Follow-up measurements confirmed the planet's presence in 2010, showing distortions of the star's light spectrum that could only be due to a planet's influence.