An exoplanet smaller than the Earth may have been identified in some far away solar system.

Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is a planet two-thirds the size of Earth. The exoplanet candidate, called UCF-1.01, is located a mere 33 light-years away, making it possibly the nearest world to our solar system that is smaller than our home planet.

Exoplanets circle stars beyond our sun. Only a handful smaller than Earth have been found so far. Spitzer has performed transit studies on known exoplanets, but UCF-1.01 is the first ever identified with the space telescope, pointing to a possible role for Spitzer in helping discover potentially habitable, terrestrial-sized worlds.

“We have found strong evidence for a very small, very hot and very near planet with the help of the Spitzer Space Telescope,” said Kevin Stevenson from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Stevenson is lead author of the paper, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. “Identifying nearby small planets such as UCF-1.01 may one day lead to their characterization using future instruments.”

Details here.

Meanwhile, closer to home: Cassini has seen lightning on Saturn. That in itself is not that unusual, but this lightning was spotted on the sunlight side of the planet. That’s a first:

Saturn was playing the lightning storm blues. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured images of last year’s storm on Saturn, the largest storm seen up-close at the planet, with bluish spots in the middle of swirling clouds. Those bluish spots indicate flashes of lightning and mark the first time scientists have detected lightning in visible wavelengths on the side of Saturn illuminated by the sun.

“We didn’t think we’d see lightning on Saturn’s day side – only its night side,” said Ulyana Dyudina, a Cassini imaging team associate based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The fact that Cassini was able to detect the lightning means that it was very intense.”

More detail, pictures, here.

Before getting into this, I just want to give you the best quote about physics from a physicist I’ve seen in a long time. In describing the phenomenon we are discussing here, JPL scientist Slava Turyshev says, “The effect is something like when you’re driving a car and the photons from your headlights are pushing you backward.”

I know, right? I hate when that happens! Continue reading Pioneer Anomaly Re-Explained →

The NASA Curiosity Rover will land on August 5th. NASA has provided a way to follow along with the show, using a special web based plugin which is set up for Mac and Windows, but not Linux.

As NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity prepares to land on Mars, public audiences worldwide can take their own readiness steps to share in the adventure. Landing is scheduled for about 10:31 a.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6), at mission control inside NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Martian fans can help NASA test-drive a new 3-D interactive experience that will allow the public to follow along with Curiosity’s discoveries on Mars. Using Unity, a game development tool, NASA is pushing new limits by rendering high-resolution terrain maps of Gale Crater, Curiosity’s landing site, collected from Mars orbiters. A 3-D “virtual rover” version of Curiosity will follow the path of the real rover as it makes discoveries.

By downloading Unity and trying out the experience early, the public can reduce potential download delays during landing and offer feedback on the pre-landing beta version of the experience. By crowd sourcing — leveraging the wisdom and experience of citizens everywhere — NASA can help ensure the best experience across individual users’ varying computer systems.

Click here to learn more and download it.

I installed it on a Mac. Don’t forget that on a Mac, if you are multitasking, the final icon you have to click on when installing something will be found behind your other windows and there will be no indication that it is there. (That probably happens on Windows, too.) Once installed you have this fancy candy 3D looking model of the rover and all sorts of bells and whistles and stuff. It looks fun. I just hope the landing goes well so this isn’t the only thing we have to play with after August 5th!!!!

We’re getting closer to the Impossible Landing that NASA is going to attempt on Mars, and the space agency has sent out a new press release. Continue reading Curiosity Update →

The whole Higgs Boson thing is really interesting. Not only was is not discovered over the last several months, but in a way that makes it certain that it exists, but for other reasons as well. Higgs himself predicted its existence a very long time ago and was told by the greats that it really can’t exist, so he should be a model for all those people with Theories … like “they didn’t believe Higgs either, so I must be right!” … but instead the usual suspects have lined up (at least in the spam section of my blogs) to tell us how the Higgs Particle itself is a conspiracy.

Another thing is this whole wave-particle duality shtick. The Higgs is a wobbly gobbly everywherish gooblygop, for sure, but even though it is everywhere and affects everything, a tiny bit of it has to be ripped from the space-time continuum and turned into a piece of cosmic lint before we can “see” it, and even then we can’t really “see” it very well.

Also, I’m trying to remember what the social and cultural reaction were to the earlier discoveries of various particles. The term “smashing the atom” seems to have come from some of this early work. Most of what I remember of the earliest particles being discovered was conveyed to me after the fact reading Azimov’s Intelligent Mans Guide To the Physical Science, which I believe is no longer in print.

Were earlier discovered similar in their social and cultural effects or different? Anybody remember?

By the time that book was written in 1964, about twenty “particles” or wavy goobldy gobbly things (like “heat rays”) had been discovered. Since then, about a dozen. Here I note that the Higgs Boson is undiscoverable by Wikipedia. The “Timeline of Particle Discoveries” entry does not list the Higgs…doesn’t use the word Higgs on the list (though it is in the intro and elsewhere). Apparently, what happened yesterday was an unverified report of an excited neutral X-b baryon^{[citation needed]}

Which leads us to the question of whether or not it was actually discovered. The New York Times says it was found: “Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe” … but was it really? What really happened, according to that report, was a bit more dramatic while at the same time being very subtle indeed:

Like Omar Sharif materializing out of the shimmering desert as a man on a camel in “Lawrence of Arabia,” the elusive boson has been coming slowly into view since last winter, as the first signals of its existence grew until they practically jumped off the chart.

And the top quark himself clarifies in case you were wondering if they really found it or not:

“I think we have it,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN .. He and others said that it was too soon to know for sure…For now, some physicists are simply calling it a “Higgslike” particle

OK, whatever. What if its not “Higgs” but rather “Higgslike” in every possible respect? What do we do then?

Today is the anniversary of the discovery, by John Tebbutt of New South Wales, Australia, of the Great Comet of 1861. Tebbutt was an astronome.

The comet was initially visible only in the southern hemisphere, but then became visible in the northern hemisphere on about June 29th. I find it interesting that word of the commet spread slowly enough that it was sen in the north before it was heard of.

It has been suggested that this comet had been previously sighted in April of 1500 (that comet is now known as C/1500 H1). The comet will return during the 23rd century.

source

The Sombrero Galaxy’s Split Personality: The infrared vision of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed that the Sombrero galaxy — named after its appearance in visible light to a wide-brimmed hat — is in fact two galaxies in one. It is a large elliptical galaxy (blue-green) with a thin disk galaxy (partly seen in red) embedded within. Previous visible-light images led astronomers to believe the Sombrero was simply a regular flat disk galaxy. Spitzer’s infrared view highlights the stars and dust. The starlight detected at 3.5 and 4.6 microns is represented in blue-green while the dust detected at 8.0 microns appears red. This image allowed astronomers to sample the full population of stars in the galaxy, in addition to its structure. The flat disk within the galaxy is made up of two portions. The inner disk is composed almost entirely of stars, with no dust. Beyond this is a slight gap, then an outer ring of intermingled dust and stars, seen here in red. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

From the Press Release:
Continue reading The Sombrero is Two Galaxies in the Same Spot in the Universe →

Who says that if you scream in space no one will hear you?

A rare daytime meteor was seen and heard streaking over northern Nevada and parts of California on Sunday, just after the peak of an annual meteor shower.

Observers in the Reno-Sparks area of Nevada reported seeing a fireball at about 8 a.m. local time, accompanied or followed by a thunderous clap that experts said could have been a sonic boom from the meteor or the sound of it breaking up high over the Earth.

source

Here’s an animation:
Continue reading Did you hear that big giant meteor? →

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has revealed unexpected details on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. New images and data highlight the diversity of Vesta’s surface and reveal unusual geologic features, some of which were never previously seen on asteroids.

These results were discussed today at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, Texas.

… Dawn has found that some areas on Vesta can be nearly twice as bright as others, revealing clues about the asteroid’s history.

“Our analysis finds this bright material originates from Vesta and has undergone little change since the formation of Vesta over 4 billion years ago,” said Jian-Yang Li, a Dawn participating scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. “We’re eager to learn more about what minerals make up this material and how the present Vesta surface came to be.”

Bright areas appear everywhere on Vesta but are most predominant in and around craters. The areas vary from several hundred feet to around 10 miles (16 kilometers) across. Rocks crashing into the surface of Vesta seem to have exposed and spread this bright material. This impact process may have mixed the bright material with darker surface material.

While scientists had seen some brightness variations in previous images of Vesta from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Dawn scientists also did not expect such a wide variety of distinct dark deposits across its surface. The dark materials on Vesta can appear dark gray, brown and red. They sometimes appear as small, well-defined deposits around impact craters. They also can appear as larger regional deposits, like those surrounding the impact craters scientists have nicknamed the “snowman.”

“One of the surprises was the dark material is not randomly distributed,” said David Williams, a Dawn participating scientist at Arizona State University, Tempe. “This suggests underlying geology determines where it occurs.”

The dark materials seem to be related to impacts and their aftermath. Scientists theorize carbon-rich asteroids could have hit Vesta at speeds low enough to produce some of the smaller deposits without blasting away the surface.

Higher-speed asteroids also could have hit Vesta’s surface and melted the volcanic basaltic crust, darkening existing surface material. That melted conglomeration appears in the walls and floors of impact craters, on hills and ridges, and underneath brighter, more recent material called ejecta, which is material thrown out from a space rock impact.

Vesta’s dark materials suggest the giant asteroid may preserve ancient materials from the asteroid belt and beyond, possibly from the birth of the solar system.

“Some of these past collisions were so intense they melted the surface,” said Brett Denevi, a Dawn participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “Dawn’s ability to image the melt marks a unique find. Melting events like these were suspected, but never before seen on an asteroid.”

<a href=”Bright areas appear everywhere on Vesta but are most predominant in and around craters. The areas vary from several hundred feet to around 10 miles (16 kilometers) across. Rocks crashing into the surface of Vesta seem to have exposed and spread this bright material. This impact process may have mixed the bright material with darker surface material.

While scientists had seen some brightness variations in previous images of Vesta from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Dawn scientists also did not expect such a wide variety of distinct dark deposits across its surface. The dark materials on Vesta can appear dark gray, brown and red. They sometimes appear as small, well-defined deposits around impact craters. They also can appear as larger regional deposits, like those surrounding the impact craters scientists have nicknamed the “snowman.”

“One of the surprises was the dark material is not randomly distributed,” said David Williams, a Dawn participating scientist at Arizona State University, Tempe. “This suggests underlying geology determines where it occurs.”

The dark materials seem to be related to impacts and their aftermath. Scientists theorize carbon-rich asteroids could have hit Vesta at speeds low enough to produce some of the smaller deposits without blasting away the surface.

Higher-speed asteroids also could have hit Vesta’s surface and melted the volcanic basaltic crust, darkening existing surface material. That melted conglomeration appears in the walls and floors of impact craters, on hills and ridges, and underneath brighter, more recent material called ejecta, which is material thrown out from a space rock impact.

Vesta’s dark materials suggest the giant asteroid may preserve ancient materials from the asteroid belt and beyond, possibly from the birth of the solar system.

“Some of these past collisions were so intense they melted the surface,” said Brett Denevi, a Dawn participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “Dawn’s ability to image the melt marks a unique find. Melting events like these were suspected, but never before seen on an asteroid.””>More, source