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  • 715 New Exoplanets Discovered by NASA’s Kepler

    715 New Exoplanets Discovered by NASA’s Kepler

    The last decade has seen a huge increase in the number of known exoplanets (those outside of our own solar system). NASA’s Kepler mission has been responsible for a great deal of these planet discoveries in the last few years and today NASA revealed yet another wave of new planets discovered by the Kepler space observatory.

    According to a paper set for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, Kepler data has been used to uncover the location of 715 new exoplanets. Astronomers used statistical techniques to seek out new planets in systems where more than one potential planet has already been detected by Kepler during its earliest observations.

    “Four years ago, Kepler began a string of announcements of first hundreds, then thousands, of planet candidates – but they were only candidate worlds,” said Jack Lissauer, co-leader of the Kepler research team and a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “We’ve now developed a process to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds.”

    More exciting than just the number is just how many of those planets could be orbiting in systems quite like our own. The 715 newly discovered planets were found in just 305 star systems. In addition, over 670 of them are smaller than Neptune, putting in them closer in size to Earth than to gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn.

    Four of the newly discovered planets are smaller than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit within their system’s habitable zone, meaning that they could have liquid water on their surfaces. One planet in particular, Kepler-296f, is only twice the size of Earth and orbits a star half the size of the Sun, though astronomers do not yet know whether it is a rocky planet like Earth.

    “From this study we learn planets in these multi-systems are small and their orbits are flat and circular – resembling pancakes – not your classical view of an atom,” said Jason Rowe, a co-leader of the Kepler research team and an astronomer at the SETI Institute. “The more we explore the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home.”

    Image via NASA

  • “Wobbly” Planet Spotted in Binary Star System

    “Wobbly” Planet Spotted in Binary Star System

    NASA this week revealed that the Kepler Space Telescope has spotted a planet with a very erratic orbit. The planet, named Kepler-413b, orbits around a pair of stars and performs what astronomers are describing as a wobble as its spins.

    The planet’s binary system is located 2,300 light-years from our system and contains two dwarf stars, one orange and one red. Kepler-413b orbits the stars at an angle slightly shifted (2.5 degrees) from the plane of its stars’ orbits. Viewed from the side-on it would appear that the planet moves up and down constantly while revolving around its stars every 66 days. Meanwhile, the planet is processing rapidly, with its spin axis tilting by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years.

    “Looking at the Kepler data over the course of 1,500 days, we saw three transits in the first 180 days — one transit every 66 days — then we had 800 days with no transits at all,” said Veselin Kostov, principal investigator of the phenomenon and an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University. “After that, we saw five more transits in a row.”

    The reason for Kepler-413b’s tilted orbit is still eluding astronomers. Hypotheses for the phenomenon include the interference of other planets in the system or a third star that is influencing its orbit.

    According to astronomers, Kepler-413b would be wholly unsuitable for life as we know it. The planet’s erratic orbit would mean rapid shifts in seasons. In addition, the planet is a gas giant 65 times the mass of Earth that orbits its stars so closely that liquid water cannot exist on it.

    “Presumably there are planets out there like this one that we’re not seeing because we’re in the unfavorable period,” said Peter McCullough, a colleague of Veselin’s at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “And that’s one of the things that Veselin is researching: Is there a silent majority of things that we’re not seeing?”

    Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech

  • Nvidia Tegra K1 Brings PC Graphics To Mobile

    Mobile graphics have come a long way since the original iPhone. We now have full 3D games on mobile that look just as good, if not better, than launch titles on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Nvidia obviously doesn’t think that’s good enough and is now developing a mobile graphics chip that will match the performance of PS4 and Xbox One titles.

    Nvidia formally unveiled its new Tegra K1 mobile graphics chip at a pre-CES press conference on Sunday night. The new mobile graphics technology is powered by the same Kepler architecture that Nvidia uses in its GTX 780 Ti PC graphics card. In theory, this will allow the Tegra K1 to make better looking games as well as ease cross platform development between PC and mobile. More amazingly, it supports all modern graphics technologies and engines, such as DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.4, Unreal Engine 4 and tessellation.

    For a better look at what Tegra K1 can do, check out this demo video:

    Now, does this mean that you’ll get better looking games and visuals on mobile devices? Most definitely. Will mobile games finally look as good as current generation games on PC and consoles? Not likely. While the Tegra K1 can use the same graphics technologies as the big guys, the limitations of mobile platforms will prevent the K1 from pushing out visuals on par with titles like Crysis 3 or Killzone: Shadow Fall.

    None of this is to say that Nvidia is wasting its time with the Tegra K1. Mobile graphics technology needed a kick in the pants and Nvidia may have just provided that kick. It will be interesting to see then how many device manufacturers adopt the Tegra K1 when Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon processors will no doubt attract a lot of attention as well.

    Image via NVIDIA/YouTube

  • Clouds Mapped on Jupiter-Like Exoplanet

    Clouds Mapped on Jupiter-Like Exoplanet

    Though much of the agency is preparing to shut down, NASA this week announced that astronomers have mapped the clouds of a planet outside our own solar system. Using the Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers have created a cloud map of Kepler-7b, a Jupiter-like planet that orbits around the star Kepler-7.

    Though Kepler-7b has less than half the mass of Jupiter, the planet is nearly 50% larger than our local large gas giant. NASA researchers gazed at Kepler-7b for years to determine that the planet has high clouds on its western hemisphere and little cloud cover on its eastern side. A new paper on the findings is set to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    “By observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution ‘map’ of this giant, gaseous planet,” said Brice-Olivier Demory, lead author of the paper and an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We wouldn’t expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds.”

    Astronomers using the Kepler telescope were able to determine that Kepler-7b had a bright spot on its western side. A follow-up with the Spitzer telescope revealed that the planet was too cool for the bright spot to be heat, meaning it came from light reflected from Kepler-7. NASA believes the technique might help researchers in the future examine the atmospheres of other exoplanets closer in make-up to Earth.

    “With Spitzer and Kepler together, we have a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at planets that are trillions of miles away,” said Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics at NASA. “We’re at a point now in exoplanet science where we are moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them.”

  • Life on Earth Can Last At Least Another 1.75 Billion Years

    In a new study conducted at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, researchers have estimated that the earth will be able to support life for another 1.75 to 3.25 billion years, unless there’s a nuclear holocaust, a planet-killing asteroid event, or some other errant catastrophe in the interim.

    What will inevitably do earth in are astronomical forces that will push the planet out of its habitable zone, and into the hot zone. These zones are defined by the state of a planet’s water. Liquid water exists on earth, as it’s just the right distance from the sun to prevent it all from freezing or evaporating. Over billions of years, the earth will slowly enter the hot zone, which has prompted researchers to take a look at other planets in our solar system.

    The study’s primary concern was to get a better idea of how extraterrestrial life might evolve elsewhere, and how long it takes a sentient species to evolve, against a planet’s time in a habitable zone. The team calculated that earth’s habitable zone classification might span a maximum of 7.79 billion more years, though we’ve already ran through 4.5 billion of those. Mars still has another 7 billion years, and is the closest – so moving there would be anyone’s best bet. Other planetary habitable zone lifetimes in our solar system range from 1 billion to 54.72 billion years.

    One might wonder why any of this is relevant, considering that human evolution has been but a hiccup in the formation of the solar system, and that we might evolve into space gods like the Q Entity in a billion years – or devolve into planaria-like beings. Either way, single-celled life first appeared on earth roughly 4 billion years ago. Then we had “insects 400 million years ago, dinosaurs 300 million years ago and flowering plants 130 million years ago,” according to research project lead Andrew Rushby, who adds, “anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years — so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop.”

    With all the new data, Rushby’s team was able to implement a new system to gauge how long a planet would have, to support the evolution of life, as it exists in a habitable zone. Rushby adds, “Of course, much of evolution is down to luck, so this isn’t concrete, but we know that complex, intelligent species like humans could not emerge after only a few million years because it took us 75 per cent of the entire habitable lifetime of this planet to evolve. We think it will probably be a similar story elsewhere.”

    Regarding exoplanets, the team calculated that Kepler-22b has perhaps been habitable for 6 billion years, and Gliese-581d for 54.7 billion years. As our technology advances, we’ll be able to get a better idea of what’s actually going on in those planets; Rushby adds, “As it stands, we don’t have the technology to explore these planets to discover if there is alien life, but I’d certainly mention Kepler-22b and Gliese-581d as planets that we should keep an eye over the next two or three hundreds years of human existence as our technology develops.”

    Image courtesy of YouTube.

  • Kepler Space Telescope Broken, NASA Gives Up on Restoration

    Kepler Space Telescope Broken, NASA Gives Up on Restoration

    Sometimes the best physicists, engineers, and mathematicians in the world can’t save a failing satellite. NASA announced today that it has given up attempts to restore the malfunctioning Kepler Space Telescope.

    One of the Kepler’s four reaction wheels failed back in July 2012, and a second went out this past May. Since that time NASA researchers have been attempting to recover at lease one of the wheels, which are necessary for the telescope to be precisely aimed. With the restoration effort now abandoned, NASA has effectively cancelled the spacecraft’s four-year extended mission, which began after the completion of its primary mission in November 2012.

    NASA is now considering how the Kepler might be used for research using only its two remaining reaction wheels. Much of the data Kepler collected during its primary mission is still being evaluated, meaning that the satellite will continue to contribute to discoveries for some time to come.

    “Kepler has made extraordinary discoveries in finding exoplanets including several super-Earths in the habitable zone,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Knowing that Kepler has successfully collected all the data from its prime mission, I am confident that more amazing discoveries are on the horizon.”

    Since its launch in 2009, Kepler has been searching for Earth-like exoplanets. The telescope has succeeded in its primary mission, confirming 135 different exoplanets in dozens of space systems. The discoveries include a planet in a system with four stars, exoplanets smaller than Earth, and a planet that could be similar to Star Wars‘ Tatooine. In addition, the spacecraft identified more than 3,500 candidate planets, meaning its greatest discoveries could still await.

    “At the beginning of our mission, no one knew if Earth-size planets were abundant in the galaxy,” said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “If they were rare, we might be alone. Now at the completion of Kepler observations, the data holds the answer to the question that inspired the mission: ‘Are Earths in the habitable zone of stars like our sun common or rare?’”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • NASA’s Kepler Finds Extra-Solar Planets Smaller Than Earth

    NASA’s Kepler Finds Extra-Solar Planets Smaller Than Earth

    Over the past year, NASA’s Kepler mission has found hundreds of possible planets outside of our solar system, and even a few candidates for Earth-like planets.

    This week, astronomers revealed that a new system has been found that contains planets smaller than Earth. The new data has been presented in a paper published recently in the journal Nature.

    The planets orbit around a star called Kepler-37, located around 210 light-years from our solar system. The smallest of the planest found, known as Kepler-37b, is only one-third the size of Earth – smaller than the planet Mercury and just slightly larger than Earth’s moon. The planet is not presumed to have an atmosphere, and scientists predict that life on the planet isn’t likely.

    “Even Kepler can only detect such a tiny world around the brightest stars it observes,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA‘s Ames Research Center. “The fact we’ve discovered tiny Kepler-37b suggests such little planets are common, and more planetary wonders await as we continue to gather and analyze additional data.”

    Two other planets were found in the Kepler-37 system. Kepler-37c orbits further out and is slightly smaller than Venus, or around three-quarters the size of Earth. Kepler-37d is the furthest planet out, and is around twice the size of Earth. Kepler-37 itself is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun.

    All three of the planets orbit Kepler-37 at less than than the distance between the sun and Mercury. They each also orbit their star in 40 days or less. The surface temperature of Kepler-37b is estimated to be higher than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

    “We uncovered a planet smaller than any in our solar system orbiting one of the few stars that is both bright and quiet, where signal detection was possible,” said Thomas Barclay, lead author of the paper and a Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. “This discovery shows close-in planets can be smaller, as well as much larger, than planets orbiting our sun.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

  • Earth-Sized Planets May be Close by, Shows Study

    Astronomers this week published a new study that estimates six percent of red dwarf stars may have Earth-sized planets orbiting within their “habitable zone” – the area around a star in which liquid water can exist on the surface of an orbiting body. Since many stars close to our solar system are red dwarfs, astronomers say an Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years away.

    “We thought we would have to search vast distances to find an Earth-like planet.,” said Courtney Dressing, lead author of the paper and an astronomer at Harvard University. “Now we realize another Earth is probably in our own backyard, waiting to be spotted.”

    The research, to be published published in The Astrophysical Journal, came from data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. 95 planet candidates orbiting 64 red dwarf stars were analyzed, and three of them were found to be smaller than twice the size of earth and orbiting in their stars’ habitable zone.

    “We don’t know if life could exist on a planet orbiting a red dwarf, but the findings pique my curiosity and leave me wondering if the cosmic cradles of life are more diverse than we humans have imagined,” said Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

    Though the planets may be similar to Earth in some ways, the nature of a red dwarf system could mean they are very different in others. Since the habitable zone of a red dwarf is closer to those stars than our own, planets within that zone would be more susceptible to solar flares. Also, such planets would likely be very old and tidally locked to their star, leaving one side of the planet in perpetual darkness. Astronomers suggest, however, that a thick atmosphere could counteract these effects, and that such stresses could even help life evolve.

    “You don’t need an Earth clone to have life,” said Dressing.

    (Image courtesy D. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

  • 461 New Planet Candidates Discovered by NASA’s Kepler, Including Four Earth-Like Ones

    461 New Planet Candidates Discovered by NASA’s Kepler, Including Four Earth-Like Ones

    Astronomers last week announced that they estimate there to be 100 billion planets throughout the Milky Way Galaxy. This week, Astronomers announced 461 new candidates for extra-solar planets have been discovered.

    NASA‘s Kepler mission has been discovering exoplanets for years now, and the number of confirmed exoplanets is currently 105. As astronomers dig more deeply into Kepler data, smaller planet candidates and multi-planet systems are becoming less rare. The new group of candidates includes four Earth-like planets that are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit their star in a region where liquid water might exist.

    “There is no better way to kick off the start of the Kepler extended mission than to discover more possible outposts on the frontier of potentially life-bearing worlds,” said Christopher Burke, Kepler scientist at the SETI Institute.

    The number of exoplanet candidates discovered in Kepler data now sits at 2,740 planets orbiting 2,046 stars – a 20% increase from February 2012. The planet candidates are discovered by Kepler when they transit in front of their star, changing its brightness. The Kepler space telescope measures the brightness of over 150,00 stars looking for changes in their brightness. Three transits are required to declare a potential planet, and candidate data is then analyzed for known errors before follow-up observations can confirm the presence of an exoplanet.

    “The analysis of increasingly longer time periods of Kepler data uncovers smaller planets in longer period orbits– orbital periods similar to Earth’s,” said Steve Howell, Kepler mission project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “It is no longer a question of will we find a true Earth analogue, but a question of when.”

    (Image courtesy NASA Ames Research Center/W. Stenzel)

  • 100 Billion Planets Populate the Milky Way Galaxy, Say Astronomers

    For years now, NASA‘s Kepler mission has been confirming the existence of planets outside our solar system. Now, a new review of Kepler data suggests that there are billions upon billions of planets just in the Milky Way galaxy.

    “There are at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy, just our galaxy,” said John Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech and coauthor of the new study. “That’s mind-boggling.”

    The new study, set to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, looked at the planets orbiting a star named Kepler-32, then compared the system to others discovered by the Kepler space telescope. Astronomers stated that the Kepler-32 planets are representative of a majority of planets in the Milky Way, and serve as a case study for how planets form. Systems similar to Kepler-32 comprise around three-quarters of all the stars in our galaxy, leading researchers to their 100 billion-planet estimate.

    “I usually try not to call things ‘Rosetta stones,’ but this is as close to a Rosetta stone as anything I’ve seen,” said Johnson. “It’s like unlocking a language that we’re trying to understand—the language of planet formation.”

    The prevalence of Kepler-32-type stars, however, suggests that our own solar system may be quite rare. “It’s just a weirdo,” said Johnson.

    Kepler-32 is an M dwarf star that is much cooler than our sun, with around half its mass and radius. The five planets orbiting Kepler-32 also orbit much closer to the star than the planets in our solar system. All of the Kepler-32 planets orbit their star within one-tenth of the distance from the Earth to the sun, or just one-third the distance from Mercury to the sun.

    That doesn’t mean Kepler-32’s planets are inhospitable, though. The star’s small size also means its habitable zone, where liquid water can exist, is smaller, and the outermost Kepler-32 planet lies within that zone.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • NASA’s Kepler Telescope Ends Its Prime Mission, Begins Another

    NASA this week marked the end of the Kepler Space Telescope’s prime mission, which began in March 2009. Like other NASA equipment, the telescope is now beginning another, extended mission NASA says could last as long as four years.

    Kepler’s prime mission was to determine what fraction of stars might have Earth-like planets in their orbit. So far, the telescope has identified over 2,300 planet candidates and hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates. There are also candidates that orbit in the habitable zone of their system, where liquid water can exist. Kepler has confirmed more than 100 planets so far.

    “The initial discoveries of the Kepler mission indicate at least a third of the stars have planets and the number of planets in our galaxy must number in the billions,” said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “The planets of greatest interest are other Earths, and these could already be in the data awaiting analysis. Kepler’s most exciting results are yet to come.”

    Over the three and a half years of its prime mission, Kepler’s discoveries have revealed much about planetary systems. Just this year, Kepler Astronomers have confirmed a planet in a two-star system (like Tatooine) and even one in a four-star system.

    “Kepler’s bounty of new planet discoveries, many quite different from anything found previously, will continue to astound,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at Ames. “But to me, the most wonderful discovery of the mission has not been individual planets, but the systems of two, three, even six planets crowded close to their stars, and, like the planets orbiting about our sun, moving in nearly the same plane. Like people, planets interact with their neighbors and can be greatly affected by them. What are the neighborhoods of Earth-size exoplanets like? This is the question I most hope Kepler will answer in the years to come.”

    Back in April, NASA extended Kepler’s mission, which might run through 2016. Astronomers will use the extra time to continue to search for Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of their system.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Four-Star Planet Discovered by Planet Hunter Volunteers

    Volunteers for the Planet Hunter project have discovered a planet that is part of a four-star system. The planet, named PH1, orbits a pair of stars that is itself orbited by a more distant pair of stars.

    The Planet Hunter project is a citizen science project that collaborates with Yale University and other organizations to cull through the light curves taken by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. Planet Hunters search the data for the brief dip in brightness that occurs when a planet passes in front of its star.

    NASA announced this week that a Yale-led team of astronomers has confirmed the discovery of this circumbinary planet in a four star system. According to NASA, only six planets are known to orbit binary stars, though none of them are orbited by distant binary stars.

    “I celebrate this discovery as a milestone for the Planet Hunters team: discovering their first exoplanet lurking in the Kepler data,” said Natalie Batalha, Kepler scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “I celebrate this discovery for the wow-factor of a planet in a four-star system. Most importantly, I celebrate this discovery as the fruit of exemplary human cooperation — cooperation between scientists and citizens who give of themselves for the love of stars, knowledge and exploration.”

    PH1 is slightly larger than Neptune and is thought to be a gas giant. It orbits its stars every 137 Earth days.

    A research paper on the phenomenon was presented this week at the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. It has also been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

    Earlier this year NASA announced that Kepler had found a planet orbiting a binary star. Like Tatooine.

    (Photo courtesy Haven Giguere/Yale)

  • Tatooine-Like Planet Discovered by NASA’s Kepler

    As technology and measurements have improved, astronomers have begun finding extra-solar planets at a breakneck pace. It was only last year that the first planet orbiting a binary star system was discovered. Today, NASA has announced that it has discovered a planet orbiting a binary star system that is also within the habitable zone of the system.

    The planet, named Kepler-47c, orbits its two suns with a period of 303 days, and is joined by another planet in the system, Kepler-47b. The system is located 4,900 light-years from Earth and is in the constellation Cygnus. The discovery is proof that more than one planet can exist in a binary star system, a first for a circumbinary system.

    “Unlike our sun, many stars are part of multiple-star systems where two or more stars orbit one another. The question always has been — do they have planets and planetary systems?” said William Borucki, Kepler mission principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “This Kepler discovery proves that they do. In our search for habitable planets, we have found more opportunities for life to exist.”

    Unfortunately for Star Wars fans, no future humans will be traversing the deserts Kepler-47c digging for Krayt Dragon fossils. Astronomers say the planet is most likely a gaseous giant slightly larger than Neptune. Still, the planet could have water-vapor clouds, and its discovery will push cosmological models of star-system formation forward.

    “The presence of a full-fledged circumbinary planetary system orbiting Kepler-47 is an amazing discovery,” said Greg Laughlin, professor of astrophysics and planetary science at the University of California Santa Cruz. “These planets are very difficult to form using the currently accepted paradigm, and I believe that theorists, myself included, will be going back to the drawing board to try to improve our understanding of how planets are assembled in dusty circumbinary disks.”

    NASA has prepared a short documentary about the Kepler-47 system that can be seen below:

    (Picture courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)

  • MacBook Pro To Be Powered By Nvidia Kepler Graphics

    The new MacBook Pro is pretty much a beast. One of the major driving forces behind that power is the video card. Nvidia will be providing the graphics in the new MacBook Pro with its new line of Kepler video cards – specifically the GT 650M.

    While I’m sure the Mac gamers out there are super excited to hear this news, regular Mac users should be getting excited as well. The 600 series is Nvidia’s latest innovation in GPU construction that runs on its Kepler architecture.

    Nvidia announced on their blog that the GT 650M would be coming to both the next-generation MacBook Pro as well as the newly redesigned 15-inch MacBook Pro model. This sets up MacBook Pro users with the latest and very best in graphics processing technology.

    Apple mentioned that the new retina display will be great for all the gaming experiences that Mac fans can enjoy. The most high profile release is obviously Diablo III which Mac gamers will want the new MacBook Pro for. Not only will the GT 650M allow them to play it on max settings, it will help them take true advantage of the new retina display. It will be the best looking version of Diablo III on the Mac platform.

    For those who care about such things, the GT 650M contains a number of enhancements over its predecessors that make notebook gaming even better. The 600M series features Optimus which optimizes notebooks to only use the graphics power when it needs to thus conserving power.

    As a PC gamer, trust me when I say that Apple made the right choice with the 650M. It’s the most cost-efficient mobile gaming GPU on the market today. While the next-generation MacBook Pro will start at $2,199, you can at least know the GPU is top of the line. Sure, it’s no GTX 680M, but it gets the job done regardless.

  • Astronomers Find Habitable Planet 22 Light Years Away

    Astronomers have found a super earth located just 22 light years away from us. This follows a discovery that there is a distinct possibility that there are close to 1 billion habitable planets in our galaxy and close to 100 within 20 light years. The planet named Gliese 667Cc, is orbiting a binary star system. That means there are two suns instead of one, just like Luke Skywalkers home planet of Tatooine.

    (image)

    The High Accuracy Radial Planetary Searcher (HARPS) telescope, which measures the radial velocity of a star, was used to find the planet. It was initially discovered last year, but they recently went back over the data with a new equation and discovered that the planet in question is not only in the green zone, but that it is a solid planet, not gaseous as previously thought.

    Steven Vogt, an astronomer from the University of California, said: “It´s the Holy Grail of exo-planet research to find a planet orbiting around a star at the right distance so it´s not too close where it would lose all its water and not too far where it would freeze. He also added, “It´s right there in the habitable zone – there´s no question or discussion about it. It is not on the edge. It is right in there.”

    Before you get all excited about this planet, you need to realize that at current technology and speeds it would take 492,000 years (light travels 129,329,758,210,039.39 in 22 years, divide that by the fastest man made object Voyager which is appox. 30,000MPH I get 4,310,991 hours. Divide that by 24 hrs in a day and I get 179,624,664 days, divide that by 365 days in a year and I get 492122 years).

    Basically that by the time we got to the destination, assuming that man has neither been destroyed or destroyed himself, and that technology continues to advance at its current rate, we would pass them up hundreds of thousands of years before they even get there. Is there a point in even looking for a world like that until we are even remotely close to even achieving 1/10 of the speed of light? Then It would only take 220 years to get there which is still a long time but only about 9 generations deep.

    (image)
    This photo is courtesy of PHL @ UPR Arecibo (phl.upr.edu)

  • First “Alien Earth” To Be Found By 2014

    Scientists from NASA firmly believe that we will find an alien planet, and that we can say, “that planet can support life.” In the past few days we have gotten news that there are quite possibly billions of planets in the Milky Way that can suport life. Including up to 100 planets within 20 light years.

    Most of these planets that we have found have come from the Kepler planet finding project. “I believe Kepler will find a ‘Goldilocks planet’ within the next two years,” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a researcher at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. said in a statement. “We’ll be able to point at a specific star in the night sky and say ‘There it is — a planet that could support life!’”

    NASA also has plans to use the Tess (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). Supported in part by Google, this mission is designed to find alien planets in our local galactic neighborhood. Tess would study hundreds of stars within 50 light-years of Earth, close enough to study in some detail.

    “With better detectors and instruments designed to block the glare of the parent stars, these next-generation telescopes could not only find a Goldilocks planet, but also tell us what its atmosphere is made of, what sort of cloud cover graces its skies, and maybe even what the surface is like — whether oceans cover part of the globe, how much land there is, and so on,” Hudgins said.

    Domagal-Goldman expects big finds, and big surprises. “We’ve found so many unexpected things about planets that now I expect to be amazed,” he said. “When we can study a Goldilocks planet, I believe we’ll discover something revolutionary about how life interacts with a planetary environment. Nature is so much more diverse than we anticipated.”

  • Nvidia Kepler Video Cards Rumored To Be In Production

    It’s been a long time waiting, but Nvidia appears to finally be starting production on its line of Kepler GK104 video cards.

    For those unaware, Nvidia has been working on the new 28nm production process for a new video card codenamed Kepler. Fudzilla got word from their sources that Nvidia has been talking to its partners and the new cards are already in production. That pegs the release of the new Kepler cards at sometime in April. The video cards are expected to be a part of the GTX 600 series.

    Fudzilla’s sources told them that the first line of cards are going to look very similar with a few partners using different cooling techniques. This is because Nvidia’s manufacturing partners won’t deviate from their reference design for the first batch of cards. Once they understand the manufacturing process a little better, they will come up with their own unique designs for the cards as we’ve seen with some of the crazy releases in the current GTX 500 series.

    AMD beat Nvidia to market early this year with the release of their HD7000 series of GPUs. AMD’s GPUs were the first to use the 28nm manufacture process. They were also the first to take advantage of PCI Express 3.0.1. If the rumors are true and Nvidia’s cards launch in April, we will soon be able to see how Kepler stacks up.

    Nvidia has been relatively quiet about the Kepler cards in recent months with a no-show at CES. This has led many fans, including myself, to question what’s going on with our favorite video card manufacturer.

    We’ll keep you up to date on any developments as Nvidia draws closer to the release of Kepler. With AMD being more aggressive than ever in their GPU production, you can be expect this to be an interesting year for video card manufacturers.