Hanny’s Voorwerp: a strange object near a galaxy that has baffled astronomers is now seen as a light echo from when the galaxy’s central quasar was still active. More importantly, this is evidence that the quasar went quiescent sometime in the last 70,000 to 200,000 years. For a quasar to turn off so quickly is a surprise for astronomers.
What does this story really tell us? Electric cars are wonderful — except that the dealer hasn’t sold any.
Bumped. Scroll down for updates!
From the abstract of Geoffrey Marcy’s talk today at 6:30 pm (Eastern) at this week’s meeting in Seattle of the American Astronomical Society:
The NASA Kepler Mission has discovered over 700 candidate planets, with most having diameters less than 5 times that of Earth and some as small as that of Earth. One planet has a radius, mass, and density in a new domain having no counterpart in our Solar System, opening a new chapter in planetary science. [emphasis mine]
A press conference is scheduled for 11 am (Eastern). Stay tuned!
Update I. A NASA press release just made public says that Kepler has discovered a rocky planet only 1.4 times the size of the Earth.
Kepler 10b [is] a rocky planet with a mass 4.6 times that of Earth and with an average density of 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter — similar to that of an iron dumbbell.
The press conference is ongoing, but the Kepler results are still to come.
Update II. The star the planet orbits, Kepler 10, is similar to our Sun in mass and size, but older, about 8 billion years old, and is 560 light years away. Kepler 10 is also a relatively bright star in the Kepler field of view, about 11 magnitude.
The planet’s orbit itself is only 8.4 days long. Its density, 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter, is 8.8 times greater than Earth’s. This data, based on all planet models, also suggests that the planet should be a rocky planet like the Earth, though heavier and larger with a surface gravity twice that of Earth.
Since the planet orbits so close to its sun, it is a scorched world, very hot. The scientists expect that it has no atmosphere. It is also probably tidally locked, with one side always facing its Sun.
Update III: Geoffrey Marcy, one of the world’s premier exoplanet scientists, is now commenting on these Kepler results, saying he considers this discovery “among the most profound discoveries in human history.”
Update IV: In answer to a press question, the scientists speculated that the planet might have formed as a gas giant farther from the star, then migrated inward and had its gas atmosphere stripped away. No one knows yet if this is true however.
Studies of further transits might learn more about the planet, such as the temperatures between its two hemispheres. As the planet orbits the star and its illuminated side comes into view, they can see the change in temperature and thus track it. Right now they think the sunlight side could be as hot as 2500 degrees Fahrenheit.
If you want to watch the press conference for yourself, they will be posting the video here.
Black gold! Three to four billion barrels of oil — 25 times more than previously predicted — are now thought to lie under certain geological formations in North Dakota and Montana.
Want to tone down the rhetoric? Maybe the left should look at itself: The progressive “climate of hate:” An illustrated primer, 2000-2010.
The shooting in Tucson might cause NASA to drop Congresswoman Giffords’ husband as commander of Endeavour’s last mission this spring.
An evening pause: Projected in a museum in Vienna.
Russian scientists are about to drill into Lake Vostok, a lake buried for the last 14 million years beneath the almost two and a half mile thick Antarctic icecap.
The next time someone begins ranting about how the money from “big oil” is used to attack the science of global warming, tell them to take a look at this post, which outlines in detail the more than $2 billion that the U.S. government plans to spend on climate change research in 2011 alone (too much of which is unfortunately used by partisans like James Hansen to try to prove the Earth is warming).
Here are two links that I think are worth reading in connection with the aftermath of yesterday’s tragic shootings in Tucson:
Two sicknesses on display in Arizona.
Disgusting partisanship on display after shooting.
Above all, these murders are horrible and a terrible tragedy. For anyone from either party to try to make political gain from them is beyond despicable.
I should also note that, unlike most Islamic terrorists attacks where either no one in the Muslim community protests while many Muslim leaders express joy or agreement with the violence, I can find no one who is happy about yesterday’s murders. The general response from across the American political spectrum is horror and agony. Such things are wrong and should not happen. It is this distinction that separates Western culture from modern Islam. Until the Islamic community finally stands up to its medieval bullies, I will continue to consider it a threat to civilization and freedom.
