Science/Nature | Dwarf planet 'becoming a comet' An unusual dwarf planet discovered in the outer Solar System could be en route to becoming the brightest comet ever known. 2003 EL61 is a large, dense, rugby-ball-shaped hunk of rock with a fast rotation rate. Professor Mike Brown has calculated that the object could be due a close encounter with the planet Neptune. If so, Neptune's gravity could catapult it into the inner Solar System as a short-period comet. "If you came back in two million years, EL61 could well be a comet," said Professor Brown, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. "When it becomes a comet, it will be the brightest we will ever see. " Cosmic oddball 2003 EL61 is a large object; it is as big as Pluto along its longest dimension. But it is extremely unusual: spinning on its axis every four hours, it has developed an elongated shape. 2003 EL61 is apparently composed of rock with just a thin veneer of water-ice covering its surface.
Shedding surface. New Trojan asteroid found in Neptune's dead zone. 12 August 2010Last updated at 19:33 By Howard Falcon-Lang Science reporter Many new Trojan asteroids await discovery Astronomers have found a new 100km diameter Trojan asteroid near Neptune. Trojans are a type of asteroid found in space graveyards. They shed light on what the early Solar System was like. Scientists say up to 150 similar objects could await discovery in the same area. The new asteroid was discovered by Dr Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution and Dr Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory, Hawaii.
Their findings are published in the journal Science. Space graveyard Trojan asteroids orbit in the same plane as a planet, but don't collide with it. These Lagrangian points, as the dead zones are called, occur 60 degrees ahead and behind the planet. Almost all of the 200,000 Trojan asteroids larger than 1km found to date orbit with Jupiter. Asteroid 2008LC18 occurs in an area of the sky where the Milky Way, our own galaxy, is especially bright. Alien hunters 'should look for artificial intelligence' 23 August 2010Last updated at 00:16 By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News The Allen telescope array will comprise 350 telescopes listening for ET signals A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien "sentient machines".
Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth. But Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short. Writing in Acta Astronautica, he says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than "biological" life. Many involved in Seti have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they would not at a biological level even work like us. 'Moving target' "Certainly what we're looking at out there is an evolutionary moving target. " Beer microbes live 553 days outside ISS.
23 August 2010Last updated at 12:36 By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Professor Charles Cockell from the OU explains how the experiment worked A small English fishing village has produced an out-of-this-world discovery. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote These are just everyday organisms that live on the coast in Beer in Devon and they can survive in space” End QuoteDr Karen Olsson-FrancisOpen University Bacteria taken from cliffs at Beer on the South Coast have shown themselves to be hardy space travellers. The bugs were put on the exterior of the space station to see how they would cope in the hostile conditions that exist above the Earth's atmosphere. And when scientists inspected the microbes a year and a half later, they found many were still alive.
These survivors are now thriving in a laboratory at the Open University (OU) in Milton Keynes. OU-20: Single cells (left) at the centre of a colony (right) would get extra protection OU-20 came through that challenge, too. 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.