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POPSFirst extra-galactic planet spotted in Andromeda The advantage of microlensing is that it works best for more distant objects so it's ideal for planet hunting in other galaxies. In theory, it should be possible to see Earth-sized objects in this way. The disadvantage is that microlensing is a relatively rapid, one-off event that lasts a few days at most. That makes observations difficult to verify. And today a new analysis from Ingrosso and co shows that this companion has a mass about 6 times that of Jupiter. That's heading into brown dwarf territory but it's also well within planetary territory too.
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POPSA Diamond Bigger than Earth Discovered The diamond is actually the crystallized interior of a white dwarf – or the hot core of a star that is left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon and is coated by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases.
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POPSIce Volcanoes of Titan May Habor Life For almost thirty years, scientists have known that complex carbon compounds called tholins exist on comets and in the atmospheres of the outer planets. Theoretically, tholins might interact with water in a process called hydrolysis to produce complex molecules similar to those found on the early Earth. Could tholins formed in Titan's atmosphere react with liquid water temporarily exposed by meteor impacts or ice volcanoes to produce potentially prebiotic complex organic molecules — before the water freezes? Laboratory research by Catherine Neish, a graduate student working on her doctorate in planetary science at the University of Arizona, suggests, not without controversy, however, that, over a period of days, compounds similar to tholins can be react with water at near-freezing temperatures.
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POPSPlanet and star in puzzling waltz Instead, the system might have started out that way. "It could be a coincidence, but I don't like explanations based on coincidence," says Aigrain. She suggests that magnetic fields might have helped to lock the system together, but stresses that it is pure speculation at this point. During its mission, COROT should discover many more planets. Aigrain and her colleagues hope they will then have a better idea whether synchronised systems are common, and what causes the phenomenon.
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POPSBio-Earth: Are Planets Living Super-Organisms? He believes that expanding the study of life sciences to the core of our world and the depths of outer space will help us find distant relatives of our own Earth -- planets that could also sustain life. To explain why contintental plates drift on the surface of the Earth's molten mantle, Maruyama argues that continents actually have life cycles. Old, cold plates on continental fringes sink to “plate graveyards” deep in the Earth’s mantle, and then rise again, creating volcanoes fueled by three-dimensional convection movements deep below the surface.
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POPSNew Telescope Array Could Help Detect Possible Signals From Advanced Civilizations Employing this new equipment in a unique, targeted search for possible civilizations enhances the chances of finding one, in the same way that a search for a needle in a haystack is made easier if one knows at least approximately where the needle was dropped, said Henry, who is speaking about the proposal at the American Astronomical Society annual meeting in St. Louis. According to the researchers, the critical place to look is in the ecliptic, a great circle around the sky that represents the plane of Earth's orbit. The sun, as viewed from Earth, appears annually to pass along this circle. Any civilization that lies within a fraction of a degree of the ecliptic could annually detect Earth passing in front of the sun. This ecliptic band comprises only about 3 percent of the sky.
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