Astronomy. Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence--In Space. Scientists have found the biggest and oldest reservoir of water ever--so large and so old, it’s almost impossible to describe. The water is out in space, a place we used to think of as desolate and desert dry, but it's turning out to be pretty lush. Researchers found a lake of water so large that it could provide each person on Earth an entire planet’s worth of water--20,000 times over.
Yes, so much water out there in space that it could supply each one of us all the water on Earth--Niagara Falls, the Pacific Ocean, the polar ice caps, the puddle in the bottom of the canoe you forgot to flip over--20,000 times over. The water is in a cloud around a huge black hole that is in the process of sucking in matter and spraying out energy (such an active black hole is called a quasar), and the waves of energy the black hole releases make water by literally knocking hydrogen and oxygen atoms together.
The new cloud of water is enough to supply 28 galaxies with water. Moonless Earth Could Potentially Still Support Life, Scientists Say. Scientists have long believed that, without our moon, the tilt of the Earth would shift greatly over time, from zero degrees, where the Sun remains over the equator, to 85 degrees, where the Sun shines almost directly above one of the poles. A planet's stability has an effect on the development of life. A planet see-sawing back and forth on its axis as it orbits the sun would experience wide fluctuations in climate, which then could potentially affect the evolution of complex life.
However, new simulations show that, even without a moon, the tilt of Earth's axis — known as its obliquity — would vary only about 10 degrees. The influence of other planets in the solar system could have kept a moonless Earth stable. [10 Coolest New Moon Discoveries] The new research also suggests that moons are not needed for other planets in the universe to be potentially habitable. As the world turns Similarly, a planet's orbital plane also precesses. The pull of the planets The benefit of a backspin. Ten things you don’t know about black holes. We are listening. How white holes (might) be created. Exo-planets. Unprecedented: Amateur astronomers discover a planet with four suns.
False. At least in understanding, suns can be anywhere, Sol is the name of the star we orbit. Take your innacurate indignation elsewhere I thought we were in the Sol system? From what I've observed, a 'sun' is a title we give a star in relation to objects in its system, such as how we call large satellites 'moons'. It used to bother me that we'd call them suns, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me that we can use it as a relative term such as 'ground' and 'sky'. I feel like we'll eventually have names for our sun and moon other than 'The Sun' and 'The Moon' to distinguish them. Possibly 'Sol' and 'Luna' from the latin. I think it's more about point of view. Had the title read "solar system with four suns", I might not disagree with you, but we're talking about a planet; that planet orbits four stars, therefore that planet has four suns.
Exomoons. Darkest exoplanet spotted by astronomers. 12 August 2011Last updated at 11:09 By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News TrES-2b is literally darker, on average, than coal A dark alien world, blacker than coal, has been spotted by astronomers. The Jupiter-sized planet is orbiting its star at a distance of just five million km, and is likely to be at a temperature of some 1200C. The planet may be too hot to support reflective clouds like those we see in our own Solar System, but even that would not explain why it is so dark. The research will be published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The planet, called TrES-2b, is so named because it was first spotted by the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey in 2006.
It also lies in the field of view of the Kepler space telescope, whose primary mission is to spot exoplanets using extremely sensitive brightness measurements as far-flung worlds pass in front of their host stars. 'Exotic chemistry' Continue reading the main story. First 'habitable' exoplanet confirmed. Gliese 581d is the outlying planet in the Gliese 581 system, and orbits its parent star every 66.8 days. It may be covered by a large and deep ocean and is the first serious 'waterworld' candidate discovered beyond our Solar System.
Credit: ESO/L. Calçada PARIS: A rocky world orbiting a nearby star was confirmed as the first planet outside our Solar System to meet key requirements for sustaining life. Modelling of planet Gliese 581d shows it has the potential to be warm and wet enough to nurture Earth-like life, scientists have said. It orbits a red dwarf star called Gliese 581, located around 20 light years from Earth, which makes it one of our closest neighbours.
Gliese 581d orbits on the outer fringes of the star’s ‘Goldilocks zone’, where it is not so hot that water boils away, nor so cold that water is perpetually frozen. Zarmina’s World More than 500 planets orbiting other stars have been recorded since 1995, detected mostly by a tiny wobble in stellar light. No doubt that it exists. Exoplanet HD 189733b Determined to be Color Blue Like the Earth. A planet discovered in 2005 in the constellation of Vulpecula (the Fox) was determined to be colored blue with the help of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The blue colored planet is similar to how the Earth's color looks like from space. The planet, HD 189733b which is a huge gas giant similar to the planet Jupiter, is 63 light years away and is closely orbiting its host star; around 1/30 the distance the Earth orbits the Sun.
Although the planet comes off with a deep cobalt blue color, its atmosphere is vastly different from that of the Earth. The HD 189733b's atmosphere has a temperature of over 1000 degrees Celsius, and it rains glass, sideways, in howling 7000 kilometre-per-hour winds. HD 189733b is slightly bigger than the planet Jupiter. Scientists have determined that the blue color of the planet is because of silicate particles in its atmosphere which scatters blue light. But that's where the similarities end. Video: Hubble Telescope Discovers Blue planet HD 189733b. Astronomers confirm there are two potentially habitable planets orbiting Gilese 581. Further evidence that there are many habitable planets for humans to colonize. Astronomers may have just discovered the first known free-floating planet. There isn't any reason this object wouldn't or couldn't have satellites of its own; and probably does. Earth has 1-6 moons at any given time, but we don't really notice them because they're small and interloping.
Here, experiment: Sadly there is no way to intelligently answer those questions at this time beyond "Well, we do not know of any reason either of those things should be impossible, but we do not know anything about what would make that possible either. " We simply have no empirical evidence to work with here except for what we can observe in our own solar system, and we have absolutely no way to know whether what we observe here could be considered "typical" or whether our system represents some extreme abberration... or even whether the interactions which govern stellar/planetary formation allow for the word "typical" to have any meaning whatsoever.
So what you're saying is "Maybe, maybe not"? Wait, 1 to 6 moons? Astronomy. Astronomy is a natural science that is the study of celestial objects (such as moons, planets, stars, nebulae, and galaxies), the physics, chemistry, and evolution of such objects, and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth, including supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic background radiation. A related but distinct subject, cosmology, is concerned with studying the universe as a whole.[1] Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences. Prehistoric cultures have left astronomical artifacts such as the Egyptian monuments and Nubian monuments, and early civilizations such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Chinese, Indians, Iranians and Maya performed methodical observations of the night sky.
However, the invention of the telescope was required before astronomy was able to develop into a modern science. During the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Etymology[edit] History[edit] Scientific revolution[edit] Stellar astronomy. Galactic astronomy. Solar system. Space science. Astronomy. Asteroids. Astronomy. The Universe. Astrobiology. Rich exoplanet system discovered. 24 August 2010Last updated at 14:03 By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News The researchers say the finding marks a new phase in the hunt for exoplanets Astronomers have discovered a planetary system containing at least five planets that orbit a star called HD 10180, which is much like our own Sun.
The star is 127 light years away, in the southern constellation of Hydrus. The researchers used the European Southern Observatory (Eso) to monitor light emitted from the system and identify and characterise the planets. They say this is the "richest" system of exoplanets - planets outside our own Solar System - ever found. Christophe Lovis from Geneva University's observatory in Switzerland was lead researcher on the study. The discovery could provide insight into the formation of our own Solar System "This also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research - the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets," he said.
“Start Quote. Astrochemistry. Planetary science. Planetary science (rarely planetology) is the scientific study of planets (including Earth), moons, and planetary systems, in particular those of the Solar System and the processes that form them. It studies objects ranging in size from micrometeoroids to gas giants, aiming to determine their composition, dynamics, formation, interrelations and history. It is a strongly interdisciplinary field, originally growing from astronomy and earth science,[1] but which now incorporates many disciplines, including planetary astronomy, planetary geology (together with geochemistry and geophysics), atmospheric science, oceanography, hydrology, theoretical planetary science, glaciology, and exoplanetology.[1] Allied disciplines include space physics, when concerned with the effects of the Sun on the bodies of the Solar System, and astrobiology.
There are interrelated observational and theoretical branches of planetary science. History[edit] Disciplines[edit] Planetary astronomy[edit] Geomorphology[edit]