Free Republic

May 13, 2021May 13, 2021 by Nancy AtkinsonExtrasolar Object Interceptor Would be Able to Chase Down the Next Oumuamua or Borisov and Actually Return a SampleWhat if we had the ability to chase down interstellar objects passing through our Solar System, like Oumuamua or Comet Borisov? Such a spacecraft would need to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, with the capacity to increase speed and change direction quickly.That’s the idea behind a new mission concept called the Extrasolar Object Interceptor and Sample Return spacecraft. It has received exploratory funding from NASA through its Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.“Bringing...

One month after its launch, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has sent back an initial test image that shows more than 200,000 stars in the southern sky. TESS’ image was taken by one of its cameras with a two-second exposure. The picture is centered on the constellation Centaurus, with the edge of the dark Coalsack Nebula at upper right and the star Beta Centauri prominent along the lower edge. The picture provides only a hint of what TESS will be seeing once it starts delivering science-quality images next month. When all four wide-field cameras are in operation, TESS’ images...

Astronomers on Wednesday reported they had detected a planet that had strayed from its star system and was wandering alone in deep space. Object CFBDSIR2149 is believed to be a cold, young world that for unknown reasons has pulled free of the gravitational pull of its mother star, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said. It is not the first time that a "free-floating" planet has been found, but this one is the closest that has ever been spotted, at over 100 light years from Earth. Initial observations sketched the object as either a homeless planet or a tiny failed star...

QUIX: SHORT EXCERPTS ARE OFFERED IN A SORT OF EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FIRST--THEN THE ENTIRE NARRATIVE AS AVAILABLE AT SPIRITLESSONS.COM I found this to be another anointed, Biblical narrative about a very convincing Heavenly visitation--actually, as usual, to hell, too. There's an item or 3 in this one to potentially trouble the RC's and Maryolators, . . . as well as some potentially troubling things for some Calvinists, however. Read at your own risk. Those exposed to The Truth are responsible before God for what they do about and with The Truth.On the other hand, ignorance affords no eternal protection....

(CNN) -- Astronomers announced this week they found a water-rich and relatively nearby planet that's similar in size to Earth. While the planet probably has too thick of an atmosphere and is too hot to support life similar to that found on Earth, the discovery is being heralded as a major breakthrough in humanity's search for life on other planets. "The big excitement is that we have found a watery world orbiting a very nearby and very small star," said David Charbonneau, a Harvard professor of astronomy and lead author of an article on the discovery, which appeared this...

Astronomers announced today the discovery of at least four — and as many as six — planets orbiting two nearby stars. These planets are relatively low mass, ranging from 5 to 25 times the mass of the Earth. For comparison, Jupiter is over 300 times more massive than the Earth, and Uranus 15 times our mass. Three of these extrasolar planets orbit the nearby star 61 Virginis, which is only about 28 light years away (that’s a stone’s throw in galactic terms). 61 Vir has been a target for planet hunters for some time because it’s very much like our...

<p>WASHINGTON – Astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop.</p> <p>Scientists using European Southern Observatory telescopes didn't find any planets quite the size of Earth or any that seemed habitable or even unusual. But their announcement increased the number of planets discovered outside the solar system to more than 400.</p>

MADRID (AFP) - Spanish astronomers Wednesday announced the discovery of the smallest planet discovered to date outside the solar system, located 30 light years from earth. The planet, "GJ 436T", was detected through a new technique which "will allow us to discover in less than 10 years the first planet resembling earth in terms of mass and orbit," said Ignasi Ribas of Spain's CSIC scientific research institute. It was discovered by a team led by Ribas through its gravitational pull on other planets already discovered around the same star in the constellation of Leo. "GJ 436T" has a mass five...

Astronomers using robotic cameras - including some in Australia - say they have found 10 new planets outside our solar system, while a second team says they have found the youngest planet yet. The findings add to a growing list of more than 270 so-called extrasolar planets, they told a meeting of astronomers in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The robot team is called "SuperWASP," for Wide Area Search for Planets, and the cameras look for planets transiting, or crossing in front of, their stars. The light from the sun fades just slightly when this happens, and astronomers can extrapolate the size...

For the first time, the scattered light from a planet orbiting a distant star has been detected by an international team of astronomers led by Prof. Svetlana Berdyugina (ETH Zurich). Similar to how polaroid sunglasses filter away reflected sunlight to reduce glare, the scientists have used tricks with polarized light to enhance the faint reflected starlight "glare" from an extrasolar planet. This allowed them to trace directly the orbit of the planet and infer the size of its swollen atmosphere, in contrast to other exoplanets detected by various indirect methods. The exoplanet circles a red dwarf star, called HD189733, in...

Astronomers have detected water in the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system for the first time. The finding, to be detailed in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal, confirms previous theories that say water vapor should be present in the atmospheres of nearly all the known extrasolar planets. Even hot Jupiters, gaseous planets that orbit closer to their stars than Mercury to our Sun, are thought to have water. The discovery, announced today, means one of the most crucial elements for life as we know it can exist around planets orbiting other stars. 'We know that water vapor...

Alien Light: Taking the spectra of extrasolar planets Ron Cowen Astronomers have for the first time recorded the spectra of light emitted by two extrasolar planets. This achievement provides a new, direct way to analyze the atmosphere of alien worlds light-years from Earth. OBSCURED ORB. Clouds may sheathe the atmosphere of some extrasolar planets, masking the presence of water vapor at lower altitudes, as in this artist's depiction. JPL-Caltech/NASA Obtained by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the infrared spectra represent a milestone in the study of distant planets, says David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. Both...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The oldest planet ever detected is nearly 13 billion years old and more than twice the size of Jupiter, locked in orbit around a whirling pulsar and a white dwarf, astronomers said on Thursday. Compared with the relative youth and stability of our own celestial neighborhood, where Earth and the other planets orbit a single 5-billion-year-old star in a quiet neighborhood of the Milky Way, the ancient group that holds the oldest planet has had a boisterous past, scientists said at a NASA (news - web sites) briefing. The old planet is located near the heart of...

Starshade brings fresh hope in search for alien life By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 06/07/2006) The quest to find Earth-like planets where alien life may thrive is boosted today by a professor who has unveiled plans for a gigantic, daisy-shaped space shield. Although large planets, similar to Jupiter, have already been spotted outside our solar system, the orbiting shield should allow astronomers to make out much smaller and more habitable planets. Such so-called "Goldilocks planets" would be close enough to their neighbouring star so as to be not too hot and not too cold to support life. The daisy...

Astronomers detected unusually high quantities of carbon, the basis of all terrestrial life, in an infant solar system around nearby star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away. "For years we've looked to this early forming solar system as one that might be going through the same processes our own solar system did when the rocky planets, including Earth, were forming," commented lead author Aki Roberge, who began the research while at Carnegie's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. "But we got a big surprise--there is much more carbon gas than we expected. Something very different is going on." The research, published in the...

New Scientist for Dec 14, 2002, had a cover story for Planet X: The Hunt for Planet X by Heather Couperand Nigel HenbestJust over a year after the New Horizons' launch, it will... pick up enough velocity to reach Pluto, possibly as early as July 2015... In their new research, Melita and Brunini have explored three possible reasons for the Kuiper Cliff... The third possibility is that the region beyond was brushed clear by the gravity of Planet X... the KBO orbits they have investigated so far fit in best with the influence of a Planet X.

Astronomers announced today the discovery of a frigid extrasolar planet several times larger than Earth orbiting a small red dwarf star roughly 9,000 light years away. The finding alters astronomers' perceptions of planetary system formation and the distribution of planets in the galaxy, suggesting that large rock-ice worlds might outnumber gas giants like Jupiter. The newfound planet is about 13 times more massive than Earth and likely has an icy and rocky but barren terrestrial surface, and it is one of the coldest planets ever discovered outside of our solar system. It orbits 250 million miles away from a red...

Scientists find possible birth of tiniest known solar system PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY NEWS RELEASE Posted: November 29, 2005 Scientists using a combination of ground-based and orbiting telescopes have discovered a failed star, less than one-hundredth the mass of the Sun, possibly in the process of forming a solar system. It is the smallest known star-like object to harbor what appears to be a planet-forming disk of rocky and gaseous debris, which one day could evolve into tiny planets and create a solar system in miniature. A team led by Kevin Luhman, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn...

Astronomers have discovered a planet about as massive as Neptune orbiting one of the most common types of stars in the universe. The star is a red dwarf, a class of star about 50 times fainter than the Sun. Among the 100 stars closest to us, 80 are red dwarfs. But astronomers had so far found only two planets in searches of about 200 red dwarfs, while well more than a hundred planets have been found around other types of stars. "Our finding possibly means that planets are rather frequent around the smallest stars," says Xavier Delfosse, from the Laboratoire...

Are we alone in the universe? Are there planets like Earth around other "suns" that might harbor life? Thanks to a recent technology breakthrough on a key NASA planet-finding project, the dream of answering those questions is no longer light-years away. On a crystal clear, star-filled night at Hawaii's Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, NASA engineers successfully suppressed the blinding light of three stars, including the well-known Vega, by 100 times. This breakthrough will enable scientists to detect the dim dust disks around stars, where planets might be forming. Normally the disks are obscured by the glare of the starlight....