Solar storm headed toward Earth

Source: Yahoo!7 News
AAPMarch 8, 2012, 4:01 am

 Storm to hit Earth today

Power grids, GPS devices and plane flights may be disrupted by a solar storm headed towards Earth.

An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and aeroplane flights.

Forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Centre said the sun erupted on Tuesday evening and the effects should start smacking Earth close to 1600 AEDT on Thursday. They say it is the biggest in five years and growing.
The magnetic storm has the potential to trip electrical power grids.
Its radio emissions can disrupt global positioning systems to make them less accurate. It also could damage satellites.
Scientists said communication problems and radiation from the storm will probably force aeroplanes to avoid flying over the north and south poles. Colourful auroras may be more visible.

NASA finds Earth-size planets outside solar system

NASA discivers Earth- size planets

Source:Yahoo!7
Reuters
December 21, 2011, 7:44 am

     Super moon photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system, a milestone in the search for planets like the earth, the space agency said on Tuesday.

The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are the smallest planets outside the solar system confirmed around a star like the Sun, NASA said in a statement.

The planets are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.

"This discovery demonstrates for the first time that Earth-size planets exist around other stars, and that we are able to detect them," Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in the statement.

The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth.

Kepler-20f is slightly larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets are in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-20e orbits its parent star every 6.1 days and Kepler-20f every 19.6 days.

Kepler-20f, at 800 degrees Fahrenheit, is similar to an average day on the planet Mercury. The surface temperature of Kepler-20e, at more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, would melt glass.

The Kepler space telescope detects planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars as planets cross in front their stars.

NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Sun's giant sunspot unleashes powerful flare

Spectacular Solar Fire Show from Sun

Source: yahoo 7 News
Space.com
November 6, 2011, 10:55 am

Fierce storm sparks massive solar flare

Yahoo!7 Technology News

Sun's spectacular fire show

The Sun has unleashed one of the most powerful storms ever, triggering massive solar flares.

Sun's earlier storms captured

                           Solar flare. Photo: space.com

A powerful solar flare that erupted on Nov 3 from a huge blemish on the sun's surface has been classified as an X1.9 flare, ranking it in among the most powerful types of storms from our star can unleash.

The flare originated in a humongous sunspot that was sighted earlier this week, which ranks as one of the largest sunspots seen in years.

The flare "triggered some disruption to radio communications on Earth beginning about 45 minutes later," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Scientists are continuing to watch this active region as it could well produce additional solar activity as it passes across the front of the sun."

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin Stereo sun-watching spacecraft snapped photos and video of the huge solar flare during solar storm.

A flare is a powerful release of energy that brightens the sun, and is often associated with an area of increased magnetic activity on the solar surface. This magnetic activity can also inhibit the flow of heat to the surface in a process called convection, creating darkened areas on the face of the sun called sunspots.

The huge active region on the sun right now, called AR11339, is about 80,000 km long, several times wider than the Earth.

"This large and complex active region just rotated onto the disk and we will watch it for the next 10 days," astronomers with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite wrote in an update.
Later on the same day as the flare, in another area of the sun, a burst of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection released from the surface.

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This eruption came from the back side of the sun and is headed toward the planet Venus, so should not pose any risk to Earth.

Because NASA has a suite of spacecraft observing the sun at all times from many directions, the agency was able to observe the coronal mass ejection as well as the solar flare.

Scientists say we probably haven't seen the last of activity from this dynamic region of the sun.
"The large, bright active region remains potent," officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Odds are good there's more to come."

And recent events are just part of a larger ramping up of action on the sun lately, as our star moves toward the peak of activity in its 11-year cycle around 2013.

Huge asteroid headed for close encounter with Earth

This Tuesday a huge asteroid will pass close to Earth

Source: Yahoo 7 News
Irene Klotz, Reuters
Updated November 5, 2011, 8:56 am

Giant asteroid headed Earth's way

Yahoo!7 Technology News

Close encounter

A space rock bigger than an aircraft carrier is set to get as close to the Earth as the moon in the next two days.
Strange planet blacker than coal

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A huge asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the moon Tuesday, giving scientists a rare chance for study without having to go through the time and expense of launching a probe, officials said.

Earth's close encounter with Asteroid 2005 YU 55 will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST (2328 GMT) Tuesday, as the space rock sails about 201,000 miles from the planet.

"It is the first time since 1976 that an object of this size has passed this closely to the Earth. It gives us a great -- and rare -- chance to study a near-Earth object like this," astronomer Scott Fisher, a program director with the National Science Foundation, said Thursday during a Web chat with reporters.

The orbit and position of the asteroid, which is about 1,312 feet in diameter, is well known, added senior research scientist Don Yeomans, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"There is no chance that this object will collide with the Earth or moon," Yeomans said.
Thousands of amateur and professional astronomers are expected to track YU 55's approach, which will be visible from the planet's northern hemisphere. It will be too dim to be seen with the naked eye, however, and it will be moving too fast for viewing by the Hubble Space Telescope.

"The best time to observe it would be in the early evening on November 8 from the East Coast of the United States," Yeomans said. "It is going to be very faint, even at its closest approach. You will need a decent-sized telescope to be able to actually see the object as it flies by."

Scientists suspect YU 55 has been visiting Earth for thousands of years, but because gravitational tugs from the planets occasionally tweak its path, they cannot tell for sure how long the asteroid has been in its present orbit.

"These sorts of events have been happening for most of the lifetime of the Earth, about 4.5 billion years," Fisher said.

Computer models showing the asteroid's path for the next 100 years show there is no chance it will hit Earth during that time, added Yeomans.

"We do not think that it will ever impact the Earth or moon (but) we only have its orbit calculated for the next 100 years," he said.

Previous studies show the asteroid, which is blacker than charcoal, is what is called a C-type asteroid that is likely made of carbon-based materials and some silicate rock.

More information about its composition and structure are expected from radar images and chemical studies of its light as the asteroid passes by the planet.

"I've read that we will be able to see details down to a size of about 15 feet across on the surface of the asteroid," Fisher said.

NASA is working on a mission to return soil samples from an asteroid known as 1999 RQ36 in 2020, followed by a human mission to another asteroid in the mid-2020s.

Japan also plans to launch an asteroid sample return mission in 2018.

(Corrects time element in paragraph 3)
(Editing by Tom Brown and Philip Barbara

Doomsday comet' to pass by Earth

Excellent article about the our universe
Source: Yahoo 7 News
Space.com
October 15, 2011, 7:52 am

The moment long feared by conspiracy theorists is nearly upon us: The "doomsday comet" Elenin will make its closest approach to Earth on Oct. 16.

Or what's left of it will, anyway.

Comet Elenin started breaking up in August after being blasted by a huge solar storm, and a close pass by the sun on Sept 10 apparently finished it off, astronomers say.

So what will cruise within 35.4 million kilometers of our planet Sunday is likely to be a stream of debris rather than a completely intact comet.

And the leftovers of Elenin won't return for 12,000 years, astronomers say.

"Folks are having trouble finding it, so I think it's probably dead and gone," said astronomer Don Yeomans of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
That means it probably won't present much of a skywatching show on Sunday, scientists have said.

The doomsday comet

Elenin's apparent demise may come as a relief to some folks, since apocalyptic rumors circulating on the Internet portrayed the comet as a major threat to Earth.

One theory claimed Elenin would set off havoc on Earth after aligning with other heavenly bodies, spurring massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Another held that Elenin was not a comet at all, but in fact a rogue planet called Nibiru that would bring about the end times on Earth.

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After all, the comet's name could be taken as a spooky acronym: "Extinction-Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh."

Those ideas were pure nonsense, Yeomans said.

"Elenin was a second-rate, wimpy little comet that never should have been noted for anything, really," he told SPACE.com. "It was not even a bright one."

Elenin's remains will not be the only objects about to make their closest pass of Earth. One day after the Elenin flyby, the small asteroid 2009 TM8 will zip close by. Like Elenin, it poses no risk of striking our home planet.

Asteroid 2009 TM8 is about 6.4 meters wide and the size of a schoolbus. It will come within 212,000 miles of Earth – just inside the orbit of the moon – when it zips by on Monday morning (Oct. 17).
Say goodbye to Elenin

Elenin was named after its discoverer, Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin, who spotted it in December 2010. Before the icy wanderer broke up, its nucleus was likely 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 km) in diameter, scientists say.

Amazing space photos. Photo: Getty Images

Elenin never posed any threat to life on Earth, Yeomans said. It was far too small to exert any appreciable influence on our planet unless it managed to hit us.

"Just driving to work every day in my subcompact car is going to have far more of a gravitational effect on Earth than this comet ever will," Yeomans said.

Elenin's supposed connection to earthquakes was just a correlation, and a weak one at that, he added. Relatively strong earthquakes occur every day somewhere on Earth, so it's easy — but not statistically valid — to blame some of them on the comet's changing position.

Yeomans views the frenzy over Elenin as a product of the Internet age, which allows loud and often uninformed voices to drown out the rather more prosaic results that scientists publish in peer-reviewed journals.

"It's a snowball effect on the Web," Yeomans said. "You get one or two folks who make an outrageous claim, and a bunch of others pile on. Some folks are actually making a living this way."
Elenin's crumbs will soon leave Earth in the rear-view mirror, speeding out on a long journey to the outer solar system. But Yeomans doesn't think the departure will keep the conspiracy theorists down for long.

"It's time to move on to the next armageddon," he said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Comets a water source for thirsty early Earth

Excellent discover in the space
Source: Yahoo 7 News
Ben Hirschler, Reuters
October 6, 2011, 3:11 am

LONDON (Reuters) - Astronomers have found the first comet with ocean-like water in a major boost to the theory that the celestial bodies were a significant source of water for a thirsty early Earth.

 

The intense heat of the planet immediately after it formed means any initial water would have quickly evaporated and scientists believe the oceans emerged around 8 million years later.

The puzzle is where the water, which is vital for life on Earth, came from.

Reuters ©                           Enlarge photo

Past analysis of water-ice from far-flung comets suggested they could have delivered no more than 10 percent of today's oceans because the chemical "fingerprints" did not match up.

But research from Paul Hartogh of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and colleagues published on Wednesday showed a comet called 103P/Hartley 2 has the same chemical composition as the Earth's oceans.

The finding substantially increases the amount of water that could have originated from comets, which are made up of rock and ice with a characteristic tail of gas and dust. Previous models of the early Earth implied most water came from asteroids.

In the case of Hartley 2, researchers using infrared instruments on the Hershel Space Observatory found that ice on the comet has a near identical "D/H" ratio to seawater. D/H measures the proportion of deuterium -- or heavy hydrogen, which has an extra neutron -- compared to ordinary hydrogen in water.

"It was a big surprise when we saw the ratio was almost the same as what we find in the Earth's oceans," Hartogh told Reuters.

"It means it is not true any more that a maximum of 10 percent of water could have come from comets. Now, in principle, all the water could have come from comets."

Hartogh, whose research was published online in Nature, believes Hartley 2, whose current orbit around the sun does not extend much beyond Jupiter, started life in a different part of the solar system than other comets studied.

It probably formed in the Kuiper belt, which lies about 30 to 50 times further from the sun than the Earth, while the others come from the Oort Cloud, some 5,000 times further away.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

NASA satellite plunges into Pacific off California

Source: Yahoo 7 news

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A bus-sized US satellite that hurtled unpredictably toward Earth crossed over Africa and the northern Atlantic before likely plunging into the Pacific Ocean off California, NASA said on Saturday.

 

The six-tonne Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell from the sky between 11:23 pm Friday and 1:09 am Saturday (0323-0509 GMT Saturday), the space agency said, but there were no sightings or reliable accounts of damage.

"We have got no reports of anyone seeing anything that we believe are credible," NASA chief orbital scientist Nick Johnson said, noting that the "vast majority" of its flight track had been over water.

The best and latest estimate, made by the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at two hours before entry, put the re-entry time at 0416 GMT.
"If the re-entry point was at 0416 GMT, then all that debris wound up in the Pacific Ocean," said Johnson.

NASA had maintained that the risk of the satellite causing harm to people on land was remote.
Since the satellite was circling Earth just about every hour and a half before it fell, it covered a vast amount of territory in its final loop, according to a map NASA posted on its website at nasa.gov/uars.
It started off on the eastern coast of Africa before going over the Indian Ocean, up the Pacific over Canada, over the northern Atlantic and then down western Africa before ending in the Indian Ocean again, Johnson said.

The final resting place of the 20-year-old satellite's remains could stay shrouded in mystery.
"We may never know," Johnson said, noting that NASA relies on the public as well as aviation and naval personnel to report evidence of satellite debris.

The satellite was expected to break into 26 pieces as it plummeted toward Earth, with surviving parts including titanium fuel tanks, beryllium housing and stainless steel batteries and wheel rims.
"Twenty-six satellite components, weighing a total of about 1,200 pounds (550 kilograms), could have survived the fiery re-entry and reach the surface of Earth. However, NASA is not aware of any reports of injury or property damage," the space agency said.

UARS was launched in 1991 to measure the ozone layer and other atmospheric conditions and was decommissioned in 2005. The last of its fuel was used up to change its orbit so it would return to Earth sooner.

Influence from solar activity and the tumbling motion of the satellite made it difficult to narrow down where it would penetrate Earth's atmosphere, and it was expected to leave a 500-mile (800-kilometer) debris footprint.

UARS was the biggest NASA spacecraft to fall since the 85-ton Skylab crashed into western Australia in 1979.

A 40-tonne Russian space station Salyut 7 scattered over Argentina in 1991 after an uncontrolled return to Earth.

Despite the media frenzy that surrounded the UARS landing, orbital debris experts said space junk actually falls from the sky regularly, even weekly, according to Johnson.

"This is not an unusual event. We do not always know where these re-entries occur," he said.

'Small chance' satellite may hit Australia

Source: yahoo 7 NewsBy Matthew Sadler, AAP
September 23, 2011, 5:17 pm

Australians may want to keep an eye on the sky this weekend with space junk set to crash back to Earth in the next 24 hours.

Scientists say there is a small chance debris from a satellite due to crash to Earth this weekend could land in Australia.

NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), which weighs more than five tonnes, is expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere at 1058 AEST on Saturday.

The US-based Centre for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies estimates that re-entry could occur up to seven hours before or after this time.
The satellite's flight path includes several passes over Australia.

The Australian Space News website said the satellite poses a negligible threat to life and property on Earth.

"Most of the satellite will burn up on re-entry, with perhaps as many as 26 stronger or harder small pieces surviving to reach the surface," editor Jonathan Nally said in a statement.

"But with the majority of the Earth comprising oceans or uninhabited (or very sparsely populated) remote regions, the chances are overwhelming that any pieces of UARS that survive re-entry will fall harmlessly and never be seen again."

The UARS was launched in September 1991 and was decommissioned in December 2005.
After the satellite's productive days were over, NASA deliberately placed it into an orbit about 200 kilometres lower than its operational orbit.

"This was done to accelerate its eventual demise and means it is re-entering the atmosphere 20 years earlier than it would otherwise have done," explains Mr Nally.

"This was a very responsible thing to do. The longer a spacecraft stays in orbit, the more chance it has of being hit by other orbital debris, leading to a destructive breakup and therefore more bits of debris."

Debris from SkyLab, another satellite which plunged to Earth, was scattered over parts of Western Australia in 1979. Skylab weighed about 77 tonnes, many times more than the UARS.

Dr Alice Gorman of the Department of Archaeology at Flinders University in Adelaide said the re-entry of the UARS brings back memories of Skylab 32 years ago.

"There is the same exaggeration of the hazard through the media, public anxiety as the advance warning allows for speculation, and a lack of understanding of what the risks actually are," Dr Gorman said in a statement.

"Should it land in Australia, we might expect the same rush for souvenirs as we saw with Skylab, as anything that has been in space has a special meaning on Earth."

'Invisible' alien planet discovered

Impacting news from NASA's Kepler telescope was detected new planets in the universe UJWQ2TFPABYK

Source: Yahoo 7 News
space.com
September 9, 2011, 2:22 pm

For the first time, scientists have definitively discovered an "invisible" alien planet by noticing how its gravity affects the orbit of a neighboring world, a new study reports.
NASA's Kepler space telescope detected both alien planets, which are known as Kepler-19b and Kepler-19c. Kepler spotted 19b as it passed in front of, or transited, its host star. Researchers then inferred the existence of 19c after observing that 19b's transits periodically came a little later or earlier than expected. The gravity of 19c tugs on 19b, changing its orbit.

The discovery of Kepler-19c marks the first time this method — known as transit timing variation, or TTV — has robustly found an exoplanet, researchers said. But it almost certainly won't be the last.
"My expectation is that this method will be applied dozens of times, if not more, for other candidates in the Kepler mission," said study lead author Sarah Ballard, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

Finding two new planets

The Kepler spacecraft launched in March 2009. It typically hunts for alien worlds by measuring the telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet crosses the star's face from the telescope's perspective, blocking some of its light.

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Kepler has been incredibly successful using this so-called transit method, spotting 1,235 candidate alien planets in its first four months of operation. That's the way it detected Kepler-19b, a world 650 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-19b has a diameter about 2.2 times that of Earth, researchers said, and orbits 8.4 million miles (13.5 million kilometers) from its parent star. The planet likely has a surface temperature around 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius).

Kepler-19b transits its host star once every nine days and seven hours. But that number isn't constant, Ballard and her team found; transits can occur up to five minutes early or five minutes late. That variation told them another planet was tugging on 19b, alternately speeding it up and slowing it down.

In our own solar system, scientists used similar methods to predict the existence of the planet Neptune. Astronomers noticed that Uranus did not orbit the sun exactly as expected, and surmised that an unseen planet was pulling on it. This prediction was borne out when telescopes confirmed Neptune in 1846.

Researchers know little about Kepler-19c at the moment. It takes the alien world 160 days or less to zip around its host star, and 19c's mass could range from a few times that of Earth to six times that of Jupiter, researchers said.

But 19c should start coming into clearer focus soon.

"It's a mystery world, but of course we don't expect it to remain a mystery," study co-author David Charbonneau, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told SPACE.com in an email. "Kepler, and large ground-based telescopes, should help us figure out its true identity soon enough!"
The study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

A first for a new method

The new study isn't the first to report evidence of a new alien planet using the TTV method. Last year, for example, a different research team announced the possible discovery of a planet called WASP-3c using the technique.

But WASP-3c is still somewhat ambiguous, researchers said.
"The authors consider that result tentative, though, and are collecting more data to confirm that there are timing variations," study co-author Daniel Fabrycky, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com in an email. "The detection is much more certain in our case, as the data come from a single instrument and nearly every transit has been detected over a few cycles of the signal."
Ballard voiced similar sentiments, saying other potential TTV exoplanet finds — such as another possible world in the WASP-10 star system — aren't quite definitive.

"We are just claiming that the Kepler-19 system is the first robust discovery," Ballard told SPACE.com. "The detection we have is a better-sampled one, and it's also higher signal to noise."
Further, she added, in all other potential TTV finds, the "perturbed" alien planet has been a gas giant orbiting extremely close to its parent star — a so-called "hot Jupiter." But the Kepler mission has shown that hot Jupiters tend to be singletons, circling their stars alone.

"It puts doubt in my mind about the likelihood of an additional perturbing planet in a hot Jupiter system," Ballard said. "I'm not saying it's impossible, but it makes it a little more unlikely."
That's in contrast to Kepler-19b, which is a so-called "super-Earth" just 2.2 times wider than our own planet.

Hunting for alien Earths

Kepler's first TTV exoplanet discovery is in the books, but many more could be coming. Charbonneau, for example, estimated that Kepler might eventually discover hundreds of planets using the technique.

Many of these finds would likely not be possible using the traditional transit method, which requires a precise alignment of star, planet and spacecraft to work, he added.

The TTV technique is also sensitive enough to find smaller planets — those that are closer to Earth-size, some of which may even be Earth-like.

"That is the promise of transit timing variations," Ballard said. "I do believe it could discover Earth-mass planets, to say the least. Whether they're Earth-like, I don't know. That would require a lot more study."