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Hubble observes star eating a planet

May 21, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, May 21 (ANI): A new instrument on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, called the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), has observed that the hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy being eaten by its parent star.

The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

The planet, called WASP-12b, is so close to its Sun-like star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into a football shape by enormous tidal forces.

The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times Jupiter’s radius and is spilling material onto the star.

The planet is 40 percent more massive than Jupiter.

This effect of matter exchange between two stellar objects is commonly seen in close binary star systems, and this is the first time it has been seen so clearly for a planet.

“We see a huge cloud of material around the planet which is escaping and will be captured by the star. We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system,” said team leader Carole Haswell of The Open University in Great Britain.

A study last year predicted that the planet’s surface would be distorted by the star’s gravity, and that gravitational tidal forces make the interior so hot that it greatly expands the planet’s outer atmosphere.

Now Hubble has confirmed this prediction.

WASP-12 is a yellow dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the winter constellation Auriga.

The exoplanet was discovered by the United Kingdom’s Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) in 2008.

The automated survey looks for the periodic dimming of stars from planets passing in front of them, an effect called transiting.

The hot planet is so close to the star it completes an orbit in 1.1 days.

The unprecedented ultraviolet (UV) sensitivity of COS enabled measurements of the dimming of the parent star’s light as the planet passed in front of the star.

The UV spectral observations showed that absorption lines from aluminum, tin, manganese, among other elements became more pronounced as the planet transited the star, meaning that these elements exist in the planet’s atmosphere as well as the star’s.

The fact the COS could detect these features on a planet offers strong evidence that the planet’s atmosphere is greatly extended because it is so hot.

The UV spectroscopy was also used to calculate a light curve to precisely show just how much of the star’s light is blocked out during transit.

The depth of the light curve allowed the COS team to accurately calculate the planet’s radius.

They found that the UV-absorbing exosphere is much more extended than that of a normal planet that is 1.4 times Jupiter’s mass.

It is so extended that the planet’s radius exceeds its Roche lobe, the gravitational boundary beyond which material would be lost forever from the planet’s atmosphere.

The results were published in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Binary Star Systems, Carole Haswell, chemical elements, Constellation Auriga, Cosmic Origins, degrees fahrenheit, Hubble Space Telescope, hubble telescope, huge cloud, Milky Way Galaxy, Nasa Hubble, outer atmosphere, own solar system, parent star, Spectral Observations, Stellar Objects, Tidal Forces, Uv Sensitivity, Winter Constellation, Yellow Dwarf Star

Future temperatures could surpass liveable limits

May 5, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, May 5 (ANI): In what could be called the worst scenarios for global warming, the temperatures could reach such heights that it would be impossible for humans to survive on the planet, say researchers from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia.

For the first time, researchers have calculated the highest tolerable “wet-bulb” temperature and found that this temperature could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate.

Wet-bulb temperature is equivalent to what is felt when wet skin is exposed to moving air.

It includes temperature and atmospheric humidity and is measured by covering a standard thermometer bulb with a wetted cloth and fully ventilating it.

The researchers calculated that humans and most mammals, which have internal body temperatures near 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, will experience a potentially lethal level of heat stress at wet-bulb temperature above 95 degrees sustained for six hours or more, said Dr. Matthew Huber, who co-authored the paper.

“Although areas of the world regularly see temperatures above 100 degrees, really high wet-bulb temperatures are rare. This is because the hottest areas normally have low humidity, like the ”dry heat” referred to in Arizona. When it is dry, we are able to cool our bodies through perspiration and can remain fairly comfortable. The highest wet-bulb temperatures ever recorded were in places like Saudi Arabia near the coast where winds occasionally bring extremely hot, humid ocean air over hot land leading to unbearably stifling conditions, which fortunately are short-lived today,” said Huber.

The study did not provide new evaluations of the likelihood of future climate scenarios, but explored the impacts of warming.

The challenges presented by the future climate scenarios are daunting in their scale and severity, he said.

“Whole countries would intermittently be subject to severe heat stress requiring large-scale adaptation efforts. One can imagine that such efforts, for example the wider adoption of air conditioning, would cause the power requirements to soar, and the affordability of such approaches is in question for much of the Third World that would bear the brunt of these impacts. In addition, the livestock on which we rely would still be exposed, and it would make any form of outside work hazardous,” said Huber.

While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change central estimates of business-as-usual warming by 2100 are seven degrees Fahrenheit, eventual warming of 25 degrees is feasible, he said.

Steven Sherwood, who is the paper”s lead author, said prolonged wet-bulb temperatures above 95 degrees would be intolerable after a matter of hours.

“The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan. Although we are very unlikely to reach such temperatures this century, they could happen in the next,” said Sherwood.

The study will be published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: atmospheric humidity, body temperatures, climate scenarios, degrees fahrenheit, Dry Heat, greenhouse gas emissions, heat stress, Human History, New South Wales, new south wales australia, Ocean Air, perspiration, purdue university, Saudi Arabia, south wales australia, time researchers, University of New South Wales, University Of New South Wales Australia, Wet Bulb Temperature, Wet Skin

INTERVIEW – U.S. to host major economies meeting on climate

April 8, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

The United States will host a meeting of major economies on April 18-19 in Washington to advance talks on a global deal to fight climate change, the top U.S. climate negotiator said on Wednesday.

Todd Stern told Reuters he hoped U.N. climate talks in 2010 would lead to agreements on six outstanding issues, including financing for poor countries’ pollution-control efforts, but he said it was unclear whether a legally binding deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be reached this year.

“Is there going to be a legal treaty? I think we don’t know that,” Stern said.

The Major Economies Forum, which helped nudge big emitters to support a goal of limiting global warming to less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, was not intended to be a negotiating forum to replace the United Nations, Stern said, reiterating U.S. policy.

Analysts have speculated the forum or other groups would take on a greater role this year in climate negotiations after chaotic U.N. talks in Copenhagen in December ended without a legally binding pact.

“There is, in general, an increasing pace now of discussions,” Stern said, referring to different meetings worldwide on climate change.

“We will look forward to having a pretty broad discussion about what people’s expectations are this year” during the talks in Washington, he said.

The Major Economies Forum groups 17 countries that account for roughly 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The countries have not met on climate issues since the Copenhagen summit.

Stern said Germany would also host a ministerial level meeting of some 40-45 countries on May 2-4.

With only about eight months left before U.N.-sponsored global negotiations on climate change set for Cancun, Mexico, Stern said countries had not yet worked out basic procedural questions. Those issues, Stern said, will feature during a batch of U.N. talks beginning in Bonn, Germany, on April 9-11.

EYES ON UNITED STATES, CHINA

Stalled progress in the U.S. Senate on a bill to curb domestic emissions has hampered global talks. Stern said he hoped there would be movement in that area.

“It’s obviously highly important that progress be made on the domestic front,” he said, adding the bill was critical for U.S. leverage and credibility in U.N. negotiations.

“It’s important first and foremost for the United States, for our own national security and economic interests and environmental interests,” Stern said.

President Barack Obama and many of his fellow Democrats in the U.S. Congress want to put the United States on a path toward reducing carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels.

While that goal is significantly below commitments made by some other countries, notably European economies, it would be seen as major progress by the world’s second-largest carbon polluter after China.

Stern declined to predict whether a bill would pass this year. Analysts view it as an uphill fight to enact legislation before the congressional elections in November.

Stern also declined to predict the outcome of global talks but said he hoped more progress on issues such as mitigating the effects of climate change and making different countries’ goals to curb emissions transparent would be made.

“There are fundamentally six big issues at the center of negotiations: mitigation, transparency … financing, technology, forests and adaptation,” he said.

“It would be a quite desirable outcome to essentially conclude text on all of those issues.”

China will be a key player in international talks. Stern said Beijing had done a lot domestically to fight climate change but needed to do more.

“We appreciate what’s been done and more needs to be done and we have to see how it goes this year,” he said.

He praised China for signing up to the Copenhagen Accord on global warming but said there have been questions about “the degree to which (Beijing was) prepared to internationalize their efforts in the sense of reaching international agreements as distinguished from just taking domestic action.”

More than 110 countries have signed up to the Copenhagen Accord on fighting global warming, but the United Nations says their emissions cutting pledges are insufficient.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: bonn germany, cancun mexico, celsius, climate issues, Climate Negotiations, climate talks, degrees fahrenheit, eight months, Emitters, Forum Groups, Global Deal, Global Negotiations, greenhouse gas emissions, ministerial level, negotiator, Policy Analysts, pollution control efforts, poor countries, Procedural Questions, reuters

IPCC has underestimated climate-change impacts, say scientists

March 20, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, March 20 (ANI): A team of scientists has determined that the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 4th assessment report underestimates the potential dangerous impacts that man-made climate change will have on society.

According to Charles H. Greene, Cornell professor of Earth and atmospheric science, “Even if all man-made greenhouse gas emissions were stopped tomorrow and carbon-dioxide levels stabilized at today’s concentration, by the end of this century, the global average temperature would increase by about 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 2.4 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, which is significantly above the level which scientists and policy makers agree is a threshold for dangerous climate change.”

“Of course, greenhouse gas emissions will not stop tomorrow, so the actual temperature increase will likely be significantly larger, resulting in potentially catastrophic impacts to society unless other steps are taken to reduce the Earth’s temperature,” he added.

“Furthermore, while the oceans have slowed the amount of warming we would otherwise have seen for the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the ocean’s thermal inertia will also slow the cooling we experience once we finally reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

This means that the temperature rise we see this century will be largely irreversible for the next thousand years.

“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone is unlikely to mitigate the risks of dangerous climate change,” said Green.

“Society should significantly expand research into geoengineering solutions that remove and sequester greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere,” he said.

“Geoengineering solutions must be in addition to, not replace, dramatic emission reductions if society is to avoid the most dangerous impacts from climate change,” he added. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Assessment Report, Atmospheric Science, average temperature, carbon dioxide levels, Catastrophic Impacts, climate change impacts, Cornell Professor, dangerous climate change, degrees fahrenheit, Emission Reductions, gases in the atmosphere, greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse gases, intergovernmental panel on climate change, Oceans, Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions, temperature increase, Thermal Inertia, threshold, United Nation

Suzaku space mission snaps first complete X-ray view of a galaxy cluster

May 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 29 (ANI): In a new study, the joint Japan-US Suzaku mission has for the first time detected X-ray-emitting gas at a cluster’s outskirts, where a billion-year plunge to the center begins.

“These Suzaku observations are exciting because we can finally see how these structures, the largest bound objects in the universe, grow even more massive,” said Matt George, the study’s lead author at the University of California, Berkeley.

The team trained Suzaku’s X-ray telescopes on the cluster PKS 0745-191, which lies 1.3 billion light-years away in the southern constellation Puppis.

Between May 11 and 14, 2007, Suzaku acquired five images of the million-degree gas that permeates the cluster.

By looking at a cluster in X-rays, astronomers can measure the temperature and density of the gas, which provides clues about the gas pressure and total mass of the cluster.

In PKS 0745-191, the gas temperature peaks at 164 million degrees Fahrenheit (91 million C) about 1.1 million light-years from the cluster’s center.

Then, the temperature declines smoothly with distance, dropping to 45 million F (25 million C) more than 5.6 million light-years from the center.

Astronomers expect that the gas in the inner part of a galaxy cluster has settled into a “relaxed” state in equilibrium with the cluster’s gravity.

This means that the hottest, densest gas lies near the cluster’s center, and temperatures and densities steadily decline at greater distances.

In the cluster’s outer regions, though, the gas is no longer in an orderly state because matter is still falling inward.

“Clusters are the most massive, relaxed objects in the universe, and they are continuing to form now,” said team member Andy Fabian at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy in the UK.

The distance where order turns to chaos is referred to as the cluster’s ‘virial radius’.

For the first time, this study shows the X-ray emission and gas density and temperature out to – and even beyond – the virial radius, where the cluster continues to form.

“It gives us the first complete X-ray view of a cluster of galaxies,” Fabian said. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: cambridge institute, constellation puppis, degree gas, degrees fahrenheit, Densities, equilibrium, fahrenheit 91, galaxy cluster, gas density, gas temperature, million light years, outer regions, outskirts, ray emission, Ray View, s center, Space Mission, suzaku, university of california berkeley, virial, x rays, x-ray

Scientists find new evidence for existence of “cold fusion”

March 24, 2009 By admin 1 Comment

Washington, March 24 (ANI): Scientists have across evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the process once called “cold fusion” that may promise a new source of energy.

Low-energy nuclear reactions could potentially provide 21st Century society a limitless and environmentally clean energy source for generating electricity, according to researchers.

“Our finding is very significant,” said study co-author and analytical chemist Pamela Mosier-Boss, of the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego, California. “To our knowledge, this is the first scientific report of the production of highly energetic neutrons from an LENR device,” she added.

Fusion is the energy source of the sun and the stars.

Scientists had been striving for years to tap that power on Earth to produce electricity from an abundant fuel called deuterium that can be extracted from seawater.

Everyone thought that it would require a sophisticated new genre of nuclear reactors able to withstand temperatures of tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.

Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons, however, claimed achieving nuclear fusion at comparatively “cold” room temperatures in 1989 in a simple tabletop laboratory device termed an electrolytic cell.

But, other scientists could not reproduce their results, and the whole field of research declined.

A stalwart cadre of scientists persisted, however, seeking solid evidence that nuclear reactions can occur at low temperatures.

One of their problems involved extreme difficulty in using conventional electronic instruments to detect the small number of neutrons produced in the process.

In the new study, Mosier-Boss and colleagues inserted an electrode composed of nickel or gold wire into a solution of palladium chloride mixed with deuterium or “heavy water” in a process called co-deposition.

A single atom of deuterium contains one neutron and one proton in its nucleus.

Researchers passed electric current through the solution, causing a reaction within seconds. The scientists then used a special plastic, CR-39, to capture and track any high-energy particles that may have been emitted during reactions, including any neutrons emitted during the fusion of deuterium atoms.

At the end of the experiment, they examined the plastic with a microscope and discovered patterns of “triple tracks,” tiny-clusters of three adjacent pits that appear to split apart from a single point.

The researchers said that the track marks were made by subatomic particles released when neutrons smashed into the plastic.

Importantly, Mosier-Boss and colleagues believe that the neutrons originated in nuclear reactions, perhaps from the combining or fusing deuterium nuclei.

“People have always asked ‘Where’s the neutrons?’” Mosier-Boss said. “If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons. We now have evidence that there are neutrons present in these LENR reactions,” she added. (ANI)

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Swampy expansion spurred “Little Ice Age” in 17th century

March 4, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 3 (ANI): A new study has indicated that a vast expansion of swampy wetlands across North America may have invoked the “Little Ice Age,” a two-centuries-long cold snap that gripped the northern hemisphere starting in the 1620′s.

Scientists have argued for years over what caused the planet to abruptly cool during this time, invoking everything from volcanic eruptions to reduced solar activity to a pandemic that killed millions and effectively wiped out the Incan and Aztec empires in the New World.

The only known factors is that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere fell by around 10 parts per million at this time, mountain glaciers expanded, and global temperatures dropped by as much as 0.5 degrees Centigrade (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit).

Swamps, bogs and marshes may have contributed to the cooling. Their oxygen-poor waters are graveyards for carbon-rich plant matter, sequestering it away from the atmosphere.

According to a report in Discovery News, in a study of 144 wetland areas across North America, a team of researchers led by Sarah Finkelstein of the University of Toronto found that they expanded en masse across North America around the time of the Little Ice Age.

“We can’t quantify exactly how much carbon was sequestered in wetlands at that time,” Finkelstein said. “But we know it was a continent-wide effect. If you look in Europe and Asia, I’m sure you’ll see the same thing going on,” she added.

She thinks that some large trigger event – either solar activity or volcanic eruptions – may have started the cooling and led to more rainy weather.

As wetlands expanded, they gobbled up carbon, which chilled the northern hemisphere further. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: 17th century, bogs, cold snap, degrees fahrenheit, discovery news, finkelstein, global temperatures, graveyards, little ice age, marshes, mountain glaciers, northern hemisphere, pandemic, plant matter, rainy weather, solar activity, university of toronto, volcanic eruptions, wetland areas, Wetlands

Astronomers observe `hot-headed’ planet with wild temperature swings

January 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Pasadena (California, US): Astronomers have observed a planet that heats up to red-hot temperatures in a matter of hours before quickly cooling down.

Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the astronomers have identified the “hot-headed” planet as HD 80606b.

They describe it as a gas giant that orbits a star 190 light-years from Earth.

It was already known to be quite unusual, with an orbit shuttling it nearly as far out as Earth is from our sun, and much closer in than our planet Mercury.

They claimed that they used Spitzer, an infrared observatory, to measure heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star.

In just six hours, the planet’s temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit), claimed astronomer Greg Laughlin of the Lick Observatory, University of California atanta Cruz.

“This is the first time that we’ve detected weather changes in real time on a planet outside our solar system,” said Laughlin, the lead author of a new report about the discovery appearing in the January 29 issue of Nature.

HD 80606b was originally discovered in 2001 by a Swiss planet hunting team led by Dominique Naef of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

Using a method known as the Doppler-velocity technique, the Swiss team learned that the planet is wildly eccentric, with an orbit more like a comet’s than a planet’s.

The planet takes about 111 days to circle its star, but it spends most of its time at farther distances while zipping through the closest part of its orbit in less than a day. This is a consequence of Kepler’second Law of Planetary Motion, which states that orbiting bodies — planets and comets — sweep out an equal area in equal time.

Spitzer observed HD 80606b before, during and just after its closest passage to the star in November of 2007, as the planet sizzled under the star’s heat.

“By studying this planet under such extreme circumstances, we figure out how it handles heat — does it retain it or dissipate it? In this case, the answer is that the planet releases the heat right away,” said Laughlin.

“We were essentially able to perform the ‘thought experiment’ – what would happen to a planet like Jupiter if we could drag it very close to the sun?” (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: atanta, degrees fahrenheit, dominique naef, doppler velocity, extreme circumstances, gas giant, geneva observatory, greg laughlin, infrared observatory, Kepler, law of planetary motion, lick observatory, light-years, NASA, orbits, pasadena california, planet mercury, spitzer space telescope, swiss team, weather changes