Black holes to measure the expansion rate of universe

Certain types of active black holes that lie at the center of many galaxies can help measure the rate at which our universe is expanding, scientists say.

Researchers said radiation emitted in the vicinity of black holes could be used to measure distances of billions of light years with a high degree of accuracy.

A few years ago, researchers revealed that the universe is expanding at a much faster rate than originally believed – a discovery that earned a Nobel Prize in 2011. But measuring the rate of this acceleration over large distances is still challenging and problematic, said Hagai Netzer of Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy.

Now, Netzer and his team has developed a method that uses certain types of active black holes that lie at the center of many galaxies.

The ability to measure very long distances translates into seeing further into the past of the universe - and being able to estimate its rate of expansion at a very young age. Published in the journal Physical Review Letters, this system of measurement takes into account the radiation emitted from the material that surrounds black holes before it is absorbed.

As material is drawn into a black hole, it heats up and emits a huge amount of radiation, up to a thousand times the energy produced by a large galaxy containing 100 billion stars. For this reason, it can be seen from very far distances, said Netzer.

Using radiation to measure distances is a general method in astronomy, but until now black holes have never been used to help measure these distances. By adding together measurements of the amount of energy being emitted from the vicinity of the black hole to the amount of radiation which reaches Earth, it's possible to infer the distance to the black hole itself and the time in the history of the universe when the energy was emitted.

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Partial lunar eclipse to be visible tomorrow night

The first of the three lunar eclipses of the year will occur tomorrow, giving astro enthusiasts all over the country an opportunity to witness the celestial event.

A tiny sliver of the Moon will be covered by the Earth's umbral shadow at maximum of the partial lunar eclipse, N Sri Raghunandan Kumar of Planetary Society of India said.

This is the third shortest partial eclipse of the Moon for the 21st century, lasting just 27 minutes.

According to NASA, the shortest partial lunar eclipse of the 21st century will be on February 13, 2082, lasting only 25.5 minutes.

NASA data also indicates that on September 28, 2034, the second shortest partial eclipse will last for 26.7 minutes. The April 25-26, 2013, partial lunar eclipse will last for 27 minutes, making it the third shortest lunar eclipse of this century.

The lunar eclipse in various phases will begin at 11.32 pm tomorrow night and end at 03.43 am on April 26.

The noticeable Umbra phase will begin at 1.22 am and end at 1.53 am. Middle of eclipse, or when it is maximum, will occur at 1.37 am, he said.

The eclipse will be visible in the region covering Australia, Asia (except N.E. part), Africa, Europe and Antarctica, Kumar said.

This year, a total of five eclipses, three lunar and two annular, will occur.

Unlike an eclipse of the sun, star gazers do not need protective eye equipment to observe a lunar eclipse, he said.

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Slowdown in Apple orders weighs on LG Display's Q1 profit

LG Display Co Ltd reported its smallest profit since it returned to the black in the second quarter of last year, as demand for iPhone and iPad screens from Apple weakened amid concerns theUS company is losing its lustre in the mobile device market.

Apple Inc, which analysts say provides about 30 per cent of LG Display's revenue, is facing intensifying competition from Samsung and up-and-coming rivals. A disappointing forecast by a US supplier to Apple last week heightened fears about slowing demand for the iPhone and iPad, pushing shares of Asian suppliers including LG Display sharply lower.

LG Display, which vies with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's panel unit for the top position in LCD flat screens globally, made 151 billion won ($135 million) in operating profit in its January-March first quarter. That compared with the average forecast of a 147 billion won profit in a Thomson Reuters poll of analysts.

It was the South Korean company's fourth straight quarterly profit after seven straight quarters of losses, as makers of liquid crystal display panels have since curtailed output after about two years of oversupply.

The result was also a sharp improvement from a loss of 211 billion won a year earlier. But it was down 74 per cent from the previous quarter, hurt by a seasonal slowdown in demand and by weaker sales to Apple, which is scheduled to report quarterly results on Tuesday.

Sales of tablet and smartphone panels, which are largely bought by Apple, accounted for 27 per cent of LG Display's total screen shipments in the first quarter, down from 31 per cent in the fourth quarter.

Jay Yoo, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities, estimated before the results announcement that LG Display's panel shipments for the iPhone 5 and the latest iPad had fallen 42 per cent and 66 per cent, respectively, from the prior quarter as Apple struggles with slowing sales growth.

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Persistent System's Q4 net profit up 26%

Infotech firm Persistent Systems today said its consolidated net profit increased by 25.9 per cent to Rs 51.88 crore for January-March 2013 on the back of strong growth in intellectual property-led business.

The company's net profit stood at Rs 41.21 crore in the same period last year.

Its total income stood at Rs 333.95 crore in the reported quarter, up 23.4 per cent from Rs 270.62 crore registered in the same period last year.

"Our growth is a result of continued execution of key strategic initiatives in platform solutions and IP-led business. Our revenues from the IP business have doubled in the year and there has been strong growth in platform solutions business as well," Persistent Systems Chairman and Managing Director Anand Deshpande said.

Revenues from infrastructure and systems stood at Rs 222 crore, while that from telecom and wireless was Rs 6.1 crore during the fourth quarter. Lifesciences and healthcare segment revenues were reported at Rs 35.6 crore.

For the fiscal ended March 31, 2013, the company's net profit grew 32.3 per cent to Rs 187.61 crore, while revenues were up 29.4 per cent to Rs 1,294.51 crore.

Intellectual property-led business grew 123.6 per cent to constitute 17.2 per cent of the revenue for the year ended March 31, 2013.

During the fourth quarter, Persistent announced a licensing deal with Hewlett Packard for HP Client Automation (HPCA) software.

"This technology acquisition will underscores our commitment to expand our intellectual property portfolio. It will start contributing to the revenues from this quarter and given the strong growth we have seen, we are confident of FY'14 being a good year for us," he said.

The Board of Directors has recommended a final dividend of Rs 3 per share for 2012-13. The company had paid an interim dividend of Rs 6 per share during 2012-13, taking the total dividend for the year to Rs 9 per share.

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Google buys Wavii for $30 million, mirroring Yahoo's deal

Google Inc has acquired Wavii, the Seattle-based startup behind a news summarization app, for roughly $30 million in cash.

Google's successful bid came after Apple Inc had expressed interest in buying Wavii to incorporate the startup's natural language technology into Siri, Apple's voice-activated personal assistant feature, said a person, who declined to be named because the deal has not been publicly announced. Google and Wavii declined to comment.

Google's purchase comes several weeks after Yahoo Inc paid a similar amount to acquire Summly, the news reader and Wavii competitor founded by 18-year-old Nick D'Aloisio in London.

The deals have taken out of play two small companies that sought to enhance how consumer experience news - a significant concern for Google and Yahoo, which both maintain highly trafficked news sites. In separate interviews last year, Wavii founder Adrian Aoun and D'Aloisio acknowledged the competition between the two startups.

D'Aloisio touted Summly's superior user interface, which condenses articles into several easy-to-read paragraphs. Aoun played up his app's technology, including a proprietary algorithm that boiled down complex news stories into sentences of just a few words.

Wavii's investors included Paypal co-founder Max Levchin, former Facebook executive Dave Morin, and Fritz Lanman, a former dealmaker at Microsoft Corp.

Most of the startup's employees are expected to relocate to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California.

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Review: BlackBerry Q10, the keyboard strikes back

The BlackBerry has finally caught up to the world of touch-screen smartphones. It took time six years, from the launch of the first iPhone and it may be too late to save the company that makes it. But the BlackBerry deserves to be taken seriously again.

Why? Because the new BlackBerry Q10 from Research In Motion Ltd. is a successful marriage of the modern touch-screen smartphone and the iconic BlackBerry keyboard.

Though it can be hard to remember, the keyboard used to be a standard feature on smartphones, before the iPhone wiped our minds with its vision of touch-screen Utopia.Since then, keyboards have been disappearing from smartphones. Physical keyboards just didn't fit into the design mold set by the iPhone.

Palm Inc. created a credible, innovative smartphone with a physical keyboard, but it was a slide-out version, which made the keyboard seem like a burden and an afterthought. There have also been Android phones with physical keyboards, but they haven't been very good, and they've mostly disappeared.

Meanwhile, RIM has continued to make well-designed phones with physical keyboards. But until now, it hasn't gotten the software running them quite right. Even with physical keyboards, modern phones need touch screens to control movies, games and other tasks beyond the BlackBerry's roots in messaging.

RIM has experimented with touch screens, but has been partly hamstrung by the pre-touch foundations of its operating system. After numerous delays, RIM finally came out with a modern operating system this year, the BlackBerry 10.

The company considers it crucial to its future, as the BlackBerry seeks to recapture relevance lost to the iPhone and Android devices. RIM's first phone with the new software, the BlackBerry Z10, is a touch-only device. With the Q10, we really get to see how it works with a keyboard.

On BlackBerrys, the keyboard has always been about more than filling in text fields, and the new operating system takes that further. If you want to send a tweet about what you're eating for lunch, just pick up the phone, unlock it and type "tweet Turkey sandwich again today.'' Hit Enter, and now the world knows about your boring fare before you've even had a bite.

Just as you can on some older BlackBerrys, you can also launch applications by typing. If you want to play "Angry Birds,'' instead of flicking through screens to look for the icon, you can just start typing "Ang'' and the game icon pops up. Again, that's fast.

The keyboard is handy for music, too. If you're in the apps screen, just start typing the name of the song or artist you're looking for, and up it comes.

The correspondent hasn't used a keyboard-equipped phone in years, but the Q10 makes it very tempting. There's no getting around it, it's a faster and more accurate way to type, even compared with innovations such as Swype, which lets you "type" by swiping your finger from letter to letter.

The keyboard eats up space that could be devoted to a bigger screen, of course. But RIM has saved some space by eliminating the big buttons that resided between the screen and the keyboard on older BlackBerrys. This results in a larger, square screen. It's very sharp and colorful, too. To some extent, the screen compensates for its small size with a high resolution, which allows it to present a lot of information, as long as you're willing to hold it close and read small type.

U.S. phone companies haven't yet said when they'll sell the Q10, but expect it by the end of May for about $250 with a two-year contract. It's coming to RIM's home country of Canada on May 1.

The BlackBerry 10 software made its debut a few months ago on the touch-only Z10. The new operating system is a welcome change, not just for BlackBerry users. It's very quick to get around the phone, and it seldom leaves him baffled the way many incarnations of Android do. He says that it's laser-focused on giving you access to email, texts and other means of communication, as opposed to music, movies and games.

One of the coolest features is the "peek.'' From any application, you can swipe your thumb up from the bottom of the screen, then right, to slide the application slightly off the screen. That reveals the messaging "Hub,'' which gathers your communications. At a glance, you can see which accounts have new messages. If you want, you can slide the app farther to the right, getting you into the Hub to read and write. Swipe left, and you're back to where you were.

The interface takes time to get used to, and it doesn't have the simple immediacy of the iPhone. But once you learn it, you can positively zip between tasks. The downside to the new operating system is its relative dearth of third-party software. There are applications for Facebook, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. A Skype app will be out soon. But there isn't any app for Netflix, Amazon or eBay. There are no Google apps, either. The selection of games is particularly poor. There's only one incarnation of "Angry Birds,'' and that's "Star Wars.''

This correspondent also encountered one glitch while using the Q10 for a few days. He was unable to type his response to one email. Leaving it and going back into it did not help until the next day. That's the kind of problem that's going to frustrate BlackBerry users, so he says that he hopes it's a rare one, and one the company fixes soon with a software update.

That aside, the Q10 is likely to be attractive to the BlackBerry faithful. It deserves to lure some people over from Androids and iPhones as well. The keyboard makes the Q10 a good complement to a tablet. Use the bigger screen for entertainment, surfing and gaming, and the BlackBerry for messaging.

When he reviewed the Z10 model in January, he found that he couldn't point to anything about it that would make him say, "Forget those other phones: you have to buy this one.'' He says he can for the Q10.

If you value a keyboard, this is the one to get.

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Experts stress on need to treat animals with sensitivity

Animals make sacrifices for the well being of mankind and it is important to express our gratitude to them, according to experts.

Animals provide biological information and the knowledge gained from experimentation in animals has unlocked many secrets and made it possible to understand many diseases, they said.

They were speaking at a function at the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) here to celebrate the World Laboratory Animal Day.

Highlighting the contribution of animals, Geethanjali, Member Secretary, Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, stressed that animals should be treated with sensitivity.

Justice T N C Rangarajan talked about the principles of animal experimentation. The World Laboratory Animal Day is celebrated all over the world on April 24 to commemorate the sacrifices of the laboratory animals.

The day was founded by Britain's National Anti-Vivisection Society in 1979 to mark the birthday of Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, a staunch animal welfare activist.

NASA launches three smartphones into orbit

April 23, 2013, 5:00 a.m.

Talk about roaming charges.

NASA has launched three smartphones into orbit as part of a low-budget, experimental satellite program that uses off-the-shelf components.

The three Google-HTC Nexus One smartphones are circling Earth at an altitude of about 150 miles and will burn up on re-entry within the next two weeks, NASA said. The smartphones, which are encased in 4-inch metal cubes, are running the Android operating system.

The mission of each PhoneSat is simple: Snap photos of Earth and send back periodic radio messages. The goal is to see just what the smartphones are capable of, and whether they can supply the "brains" of future satellites, according to NASA officials.

The launch occurred Sunday, when Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket lifted off from Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. By Sunday, amateur, or ham, radio operators had already begun notifying NASA that they had picked up radio signals from the satellites, according to Ruth Marlaire, a NASA spokeswoman.

One of the goals of the program is to build a satellite that costs less than $10,000 using off-the-shelf equipment. (The PhoneSat's UHF antenna is actually a piece of a carpenter's tape measure.)

The smartphones aren't entirely stock, however. There are two PhoneSat 1.0 craft that have larger, external lithium ion batteries, as well as one PhoneSat 2.0 that has solar cells.

Ironically, when engineers began planning the device, the Nexus One smartphone was perhaps the best on the market. Now it's considered out of date and no longer sold.

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Rare galaxy furiously burning gas to form stars found

Washington: A galaxy turning gas into stars with almost 100 percent efficiency, a rare phase of galaxy evolution that is the most extreme yet observed, has been discovered. 

The findings come from the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer in the French Alps, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. 

"Galaxies burn gas like a car engine burns fuel. Most galaxies have fairly inefficient engines, meaning they form stars from their stellar fuel tanks far below the maximum theoretical rate," said Jim Geach of McGill University, lead author of a new study. 

"This galaxy is like a highly tuned sports car, converting gas to stars at the most efficient rate thought to be possible," he said. 

The galaxy, called SDSSJ1506+54, jumped out at the researchers when they looked at it using data from WISE's all-sky infrared survey. Infrared light is pouring out of the galaxy, equivalent to more than a thousand billion times the energy of our sun. 

Hubble's visible-light observations revealed that the galaxy is extremely compact, with most of its light emanating from a region just a few hundred light-years across. 

"This galaxy is forming stars at a rate hundreds of times faster than our Milky Way galaxy, but the sharp vision of Hubble revealed that the majority of the galaxy's starlight is being emitted by a region just a few percent of the diameter of the Milky Way. This is star formation at its most extreme," said Geach. 

The team then used the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer to measure the amount of gas in the galaxy. The ground-based telescope detected millimeter-wave light coming from carbon monoxide, an indicator of the presence of hydrogen gas, which is fuel for stars. Combining the rate of star formation derived with WISE, and the gas mass measured by IRAM, the scientists get a measure of the star formation efficiency. 

The results reveal that the star-forming efficiency of the galaxy is close to the theoretical maximum, called the Eddington limit. 

In regions of galaxies where new stars are forming, parts of gas clouds are collapsing due to gravity. When the gas is dense enough to squeeze atoms together and ignite nuclear fusion, a star is born. At the same time, winds and radiation from stars that have just formed can prevent the formation of new stars by exerting pressure on the surrounding gas, curtailing the collapse. 

The Eddington limit is the point at which the force of gravity pulling gas together is balanced by the outward pressure from the stars. Above the Eddington limit, the gas clouds would be blown apart, halting star formation. 

"We see some gas outflowing from this galaxy at millions of miles per hour, and this gas may have been blown away by the powerful radiation from the newly formed stars," said Ryan Hickox, an astrophysicist at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., and a co-author on the study. 

Why is SDSSJ1506+54 so unusual? Astronomers say they're catching the galaxy in a short-lived phase of evolution, possibly triggered by the merging of two galaxies into one. The star-formation is so ferocious that in a few tens of millions of years, the blink of an eye in a galaxy's life, the gas will be used up, and the galaxy will mature into a massive elliptical galaxy. 

The scientists also used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii and the MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona. 

The study appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

ANI 

Last 30 years were the warmest in the last 1,400 years

From 1971 to 2000, the world's land areas were the warmest they have been in at least 1,400 years, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. The massive new study, involving 80 researchers from around the world with the Past Global Changes (PAGES) group, is the first to look at continental temperature changes over two thousand years, providing insights into regional climatic changes from the Roman Empire to the modern day. According to the data, Earth's land masses were generally cooling until anthropogenic climate change reversed the long-term pattern in the late-19th Century.

"Even just a few years ago we would have aimed for a single worldwide temperature series," says co-author Ulf Büntgen with the Swiss Federal Research Institute (WSL) and PAGES. "Nowadays, we know how important it is to have a better understanding of regional differences."

Scientists were able to reconstruct continental temperatures across every continent except Africa, where data is still lacking. They found that continents could still show important idiosyncrasies even in the midst of global trends.

"Distinctive periods, such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age stand out, but do not show a globally uniform pattern," explains co-author Heinz Wanner with the University of Bern and a member of PAGES.

The researchers found that such temperature changes occurred during different times on continents. For example, the Medieval Warm Period occurred from around 830 to 1100 AD in the northern hemisphere, but a similar warm-up period doesn't show up in the southern hemisphere until 1160 to 1370 AD, a lag time of 300 years. Meanwhile, the Little Ice Age began decades earlier in the northern hemisphere than in the southern. The oddest continent proved to be Antarctica, which bucked trends elsewhere during several periods.

Looking at the temperature data over 30 years intervals allowed scientists to note that the most recent period (1971-2000) held the title for the warmest on record. Still, zooming into a continental view showed a slightly more diverse picture: for example, temperatures in Europe from 21-80 AD may rival those of 1971-2000. But globally the picture remains the same: over a thousand years of cooling, replaced suddenly by warming beginning in the late 19th Century. According to climatologists, temperatures have risen about 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last hundred years over land and sea due to burning fossil fuels, deforestation and other land-use changes, and industrial agriculture. The most recent decade was the hottest yet.

Scientists measured temperatures through numerous means, including data taken from tree rings, corals, pollen, sediment and ice cores, and stalagmites in caves. The PAGES organization was essential in bringing the data and researchers together.

"A key aspect of the consortium effort was to engage regional experts who are intimately familiar with the evidence for past climate changes within their regions," explains Wanner.

From PAGES 2k Network et al: "Continental-scale temperature reconstructions. 30-year mean temperatures for the seven PAGES 2k Network regions, standardized to have the same mean...North America includes a shorter tree-ring-based and a longer pollen-based reconstruction. Dashed outlines enclose intervals of pronounced volcanic and solar negative forcing since ad 850 (see Methods). The lower panel shows the running count of number of individual proxy records by region."

Broadcom MASTERS(R) Alumni Students Welcomed to White House Science Fair to Share STEM Projects with President Obama

WASHINGTON, April 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Three Broadcom MASTERS(R) alumni attended the third White House Science Fair today where President Obama honored winners of the nation's top science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions and viewed award-winning projects. Broadcom MASTERS students invited to participate included Jack Andraka, 16, of Crownsville, Md., Jessika Baral, 13, of Fremont, Calif, and Mabel Wheeler, 13, of Orem, Utah. Learn more at www.broadcomfoundation.org/masters.

Broadcom MASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars) is a leading national STEM competition for sixth, seventh and eighth grade students created to inspire future scientists and engineers to stay with science and math throughout high school. Sponsored by Broadcom Foundation, a non-profit public benefit organization funded by Broadcom Corporation, the Broadcom MASTERS is a program of Society for Science & the Public.

Students met the President and had the opportunity to discuss their research including projects such as innovating new detection for pancreatic cancer, engineering peripheral vision and preventing the degradation of polymers. Following the Fair, the President addressed the students, science educators and business leaders in attendance about the critical important of STEM education to address our country's economic and societal challenges.

"We are incredibly proud of these young people who represent the excellence and dedication that middle schoolers can bring to STEM education. By competing in the Broadcom MASTERS in middle school, young scientists and engineers are inspired to achieve at the highest level in high school and beyond," said Paula Golden, Executive Director, Broadcom Foundation. "President Obama's support for science and engineering competitions, including the Broadcom MASTERS, is critical for focusing public attention on the need for students to stay with math and science through their high school years in order to achieve college and career aspirations."

About the Broadcom MASTERS Alumni Participants

Jack Andraka

Andraka was recognized as one of the top 300 semifinalists in the 2011 Broadcom MASTERS for his project "A Comparative Study of the Toxicity of Nano and Bulk Metal Oxides on Vibrio fischeri and Daphnia magna." He was also awarded first place for his new method to detect pancreatic cancer at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2012.

Jessika Baral

Baral won the Marconi/Samueli Award for Innovation at the Broadcom MASTERS 2012 for her project "A Novel Way to Strengthen Eye Muscles and Enhance Peripheral Vision." She was inspired to study vision after noticing that her friends often use handheld electronic devices for long periods of time -- a habit that can result in eye muscle fatigue. She decided to put her engineering skills to use creating a device to strengthen tired eye muscles and improve peripheral vision using LED lights.

Mabel Wheeler

Wheeler won a Rising Star award at the Broadcom MASTERS 2012 for her project on the "Impact of Sunscreen on the Degradation of Polymers." She noticed that plastic objects in her yard, such as balls and lawn chairs, had become brittle and discolored by time spent in the sun. She wondered if the same sunscreens that protect her skin from the UV radiation could prevent the degradation of polymers, the long molecules that make up plastics, rubbers, and proteins.

For more information on the Broadcom MASTERS, check out the Broadcom Foundation and SSP websites or visit Broadcom Foundation's Newsroom and read the B-Connected Blog. To keep up with the Broadcom MASTERS on Twitter, use hashtag #brcmMASTERS or follow Broadcom and SSP. And to stay connected, visit the Broadcom MASTERS and SSP Facebook pages.

About Broadcom Foundation

Broadcom Foundation's mission is to enable young people throughout the world to enter careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) through partnerships with local schools, colleges, universities and non-profit organizations. Broadcom Foundation is the proud sponsor of the Broadcom MASTERS(R), a program of Society for Science & the Public -- a premier science and engineering competition for middle school children. The Foundation's mission is to advance education in STEM by funding research, recognizing scholarship and increasing opportunity. Learn more at www.broadcomfoundation.org.

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a FORTUNE 500(R) company, is a global leader and innovator in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications. Broadcom(R) products seamlessly deliver voice, video, data and multimedia connectivity in the home, office and mobile environments. With the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and embedded software solutions, Broadcom is changing the world by Connecting everything(R). For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

About SSP

Society for Science & the Public (SSP) is one of the nation's oldest non-profit membership organizations dedicated to public engagement in science and science education. Established in 1921, SSP is a leading advocate for the understanding and appreciation of science and the vital role it plays in human advancement. Through its acclaimed education competitions, including the Intel Science Talent Search, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, and the Broadcom MASTERS, and its award-winning publications, Science News and Science News for Kids, as well as its weekly e-publication for the iPad, Science News Prime, Society for Science & the Public is committed to inform, educate, and inspire.

For more information about SSP and its work, please visit societyforscience.org or follow SSP on Facebook: facebook.com/societyforscience and through Twitter: twitter.com/Society4Science. Become a member of the Society at societyforscience.org/join.

Broadcom(R), the pulse logo, Connecting everything(R), the Connecting everything logo and Broadcom MASTERS(R) are among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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Herschel Finds Oceans of Water in Disk of Nearby Star

October 20, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. -- Using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time cold water vapor enveloping a dusty disk around a young star. The findings suggest that this disk, which is poised to develop into a solar system, contains great quantities of water, suggesting that water-covered planets like Earth may be common in the universe. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.

Scientists previously found warm water vapor in planet-forming disks close to a central star. Evidence for vast quantities of water extending out into the cooler, far reaches of disks where comets take shape had not been seen until now. The more water available in disks for icy comets to form, the greater the chances that large amounts eventually will reach new planets through impacts.

"Our observations of this cold vapor indicate enough water exists in the disk to fill thousands of Earth oceans," said astronomer Michiel Hogerheijde of Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands. Hogerheijde is the lead author of a paper describing these findings in the Oct. 21 issue of the journal Science.

The star with this waterlogged disk, called TW Hydrae, is 10 million years old and located about 175 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Hydra. The frigid, watery haze detected by Hogerheijde and his team is thought to originate from ice-coated grains of dust near the disk's surface. Ultraviolet light from the star causes some water molecules to break free of this ice, creating a thin layer of gas with a light signature detected by Herschel's Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared, or HIFI.

"These are the most sensitive HIFI observations to date," said Paul Goldsmith, NASA project scientist for the Herschel Space Observatory at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It is a testament to the instrument builders that such weak signals can be detected."

TW Hydrae is an orange dwarf star, somewhat smaller and cooler than our yellow-white sun. The giant disk of material that encircles the star has a size nearly 200 times the distance between Earth and the sun. Over the next few million years, astronomers believe matter within the disk will collide and grow into planets, asteroids and other cosmic bodies. Dust and ice particles will assemble as comets.

As the new solar system evolves, icy comets are likely to deposit much of the water they contain on freshly created worlds through impacts, giving rise to oceans. Astronomers believe TW Hydrae and its icy disk may be representative of many other young star systems, providing new insights on how planets with abundant water could form throughout the universe.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission launched in 2009, carrying science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes. NASA's Herschel Project Office based at JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Gravity-Bending Find Leads to Kepler Meeting Einstein

NASA's Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detections of this phenomenon -- a result of Einstein's general theory of relativity -- in binary, or double, star systems. 

The dead star, called a white dwarf, is the burnt-out core of what used to be a star like our sun. It is locked in an orbiting dance with its partner, a small "red dwarf" star. While the tiny white dwarf is physically smaller than the red dwarf, it is more massive. 

"This white dwarf is about the size of Earth but has the mass of the sun," said Phil Muirhead of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, lead author of the findings to be published April 20 in the Astrophysical Journal. "It's so hefty that the red dwarf, though larger in physical size, is circling around the white dwarf." 

Kepler's primary job is to scan stars in search of orbiting planets. As the planets pass by, they block the starlight by miniscule amounts, which Kepler's sensitive detectors can see. 

"The technique is equivalent to spotting a flea on a light bulb 3,000 miles away, roughly the distance from Los Angeles to New York City," said Avi Shporer, co-author of the study, also of Caltech. 

Muirhead and his colleagues regularly use public Kepler data to search for and confirm planets around smaller stars, the red dwarfs, also known as M dwarfs. These stars are cooler and redder than our yellow sun. When the team first looked at the Kepler data for a target called KOI-256, they thought they were looking at a huge gas giant planet eclipsing the red dwarf. 

"We saw what appeared to be huge dips in the light from the star, and suspected it was from a giant planet, roughly the size of Jupiter, passing in front," said Muirhead. 

To learn more about the star system, Muirhead and his colleagues turned to the Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego. Using a technique called radial velocity, they discovered that the red dwarf was wobbling around like a spinning top. The wobble was far too big to be caused by the tug of a planet. That is when they knew they were looking at a massive white dwarf passing behind the red dwarf, rather than a gas giant passing in front. 

The team also incorporated ultraviolet measurements of KOI-256 taken by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a NASA space telescope now operated by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The GALEX observations, led by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., are part of an ongoing program to measure ultraviolet activity in all the stars in Kepler field of view, an indicator of potential habitability for planets in the systems. These data revealed the red dwarf is very active, consistent with being "spun-up" by the orbit of the more massive white dwarf. 

The astronomers then went back to the Kepler data and were surprised by what they saw. When the white dwarf passed in front of its star, its gravity caused the starlight to bend and brighten by measurable effects. 

"Only Kepler could detect this tiny, tiny effect," said Doug Hudgins, the Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "But with this detection, we are witnessing Einstein's general theory of relativity at play in a far-flung star system." 

One of the consequences of Einstein's general theory of relativity is that gravity bends light. Astronomers regularly observe this phenomenon, often called gravitational lensing, in our galaxy and beyond. For example, the light from a distant galaxy can be bent and magnified by matter in front of it. This reveals new information about dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious ingredients in our universe. 

Gravitational lensing has also been used to discover new planets and hunt for free-floating planets. 

In the new Kepler study, scientists used the gravitational lensing to determine the mass of the white dwarf. By combining this information with all the data they acquired, the scientists were also able to measure accurately the mass of the red dwarf and the physical sizes of both stars. Kepler's data and Einstein's theory of relativity have together led to a better understanding of how binary stars evolve. 

Other authors include Andrew Vanderburg of the University of California, Berkeley; Avi Shporer, Juliette Becker, Jonathan J. Swift, Sasha Hinkley, J. Sebastian Pineda, Michael Bottom, Christoph Baranec, Reed Riddle, Shriharsh P. Tendulkar, Khanh Bui, Richard Dekany and John Asher Johnson of Caltech; James P. Lloyd and Jim Fuller of Cornell University; Ming Zhao of The Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Andrew W. Howard of University of Hawaii, Hilo; Kaspar von Braun of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany; Tabetha S. Boyajian of Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Nicholas Law of the University of Toronto, Canada; A. N. Ramaprakash, Mahesh Burse, Pravin Chordia, Hillol Das and Sujit Punnadi of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics, India. 
NASA Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with JPL at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters. JPL is a division of Caltech. For more information about the Kepler mission

NASA Hosts Media Briefing on Kepler Planetary Discovery

April 16, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will host a news briefing at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT), Thursday, April 18, to announce new discoveries from the agency's Kepler mission.

The briefing will be held at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and will be broadcast live on NASA Television and on the agency's website.

The briefing will also be streamed live at: http://www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL2, with a moderated Web chat featuring Kepler Deputy Project Scientist Nick Gautier of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The briefing will also be broadcast live at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-arc .

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water. Launched in 2009, the Kepler space telescope is detecting planets and planet candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances to help us better understand our place in the galaxy.

The briefing participants are:

-- Paul Hertz, astrophysics director, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-- Roger Hunter, Kepler project manager, Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
-- William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator, Ames Research Center
-- Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, Sonoma, Calif.
-- Lisa Kaltenegger, research group leader, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany, and research associate, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.


News media representatives and the public may submit questions for the news conference participants via Twitter to #AskNASA. 

For hostgator discunt click here

NASA's Kepler Confirms Its First Planet In Habitable Zone

December 05, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe."

Kepler discovers planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets that cross in front, or "transit," the stars. Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.

"Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that discovered Kepler-22b. "The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season."

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planet candidates the spacecraft finds. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away. While the planet is larger than Earth, its orbit of 290 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our world. The planet's host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and cooler.

Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in February 2011, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed. This milestone will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The Kepler team is hosting its inaugural science conference at Ames Dec. 5-9, announcing 1,094 new planet candidate discoveries. Since the last catalog was released in February, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler has increased by 89 percent and now totals 2,326. Of these, 207 are approximately Earth-size, 680 are super Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter.

The findings, based on observations conducted May 2009 to September 2010, show a dramatic increase in the numbers of smaller-size planet candidates.

Kepler observed many large planets in small orbits early in its mission, which were reflected in the February data release. Having had more time to observe three transits of planets with longer orbital periods, the new data suggest that planets one to four times the size of Earth may be abundant in the galaxy.

The number of Earth-size, and super Earth-size candidates, has increased by more than 200 and 140 percent since February, respectively.

There are 48 planet candidates in their star's habitable zone. While this is a decrease from the 54 reported in February, the Kepler team has applied a stricter definition of what constitutes a habitable zone in the new catalog, to account for the warming effect of atmospheres, which would move the zone away from the star, out to longer orbital periods.

"The tremendous growth in the number of Earth-size candidates tells us that we're honing in on the planets Kepler was designed to detect: those that are not only Earth-size, but also are potentially habitable," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif. "The more data we collect, the keener our eye for finding the smallest planets out at longer orbital periods."

NASA's Ames Research Center manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters.