Diamond planet discovered - Ka-ching, ladies?

Now would you mind having some nice planet-sized diamond sparkling on your ring finger? Space science is all about the bling.

Article:

Surprise! Alien Planet Made of Diamond Discovered
by Nola Taylor Redd, SPACE.com Contributor - 25 August 2011


This illustration shows the alien planet around pulsar PSR J1719-1438, where ultra-high pressures caused carbon to crystallize in the remnant of a dead star. The planet is made of diamond and orbits a dense pulsing star with a radius smaller than that of our sun. CREDIT: Swinburne Astronomy Productions

A newly discovered alien planet that formed from a dead star is a real diamond in the rough.

The super-high pressure of the planet, which orbits a rapidly pulsing neutron star, has likely caused the carbon within it to crystallize into an actual diamond, a new study suggests.

The composition of the planet, which is about five times the size of Earth, is not its only outstanding feature. [Illustration of the diamond alien planet]
The planet's parent star is a special kind of flashing star known as a millisecond pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star formed from a supernova. The entire system, which is only the second of its kind ever discovered, is located about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake).

A gem of a find
Seventy percent of millisecond pulsars found have a companion, which provides additional energy to ramp up the pulsars' rapid rotation. Generally, this companion is a dying star called a white dwarf; more than 180 millisecond pulsars have been found with white dwarfs over the years.

Theonly planet known to be orbiting in such a system was detected in 1992 — until now."The pulsar was found in December 2009," lead scientist Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, told SPACE.com via email."We've been on the trail of the companion ever since." [The Strangest Alien Planets

Video: Massive diamond plaent orbits neutron star, astronomers find

From the ashes of a supernova
Known as PSR J1719-1438, this particular pulsar completes more than 10,000 rotations in a minute. Tiny and compact, it's only about 12 miles (20 kilometers) across, but it has a mass that is 1.4 times that of our sun.

PSR J1719-1438 transformed from an average star to a radio pulsar when a dying star in a binary system exploded. The compact core of the star formed with a very high rotation speed from the ashes of the supernova.
When the second star in the system reached the end of its life, it expanded as a red giant and finally morphed into a white dwarf. The pulsar began to suck mass off its companion, causing the pulsarto spin faster and faster until it attained its breakneck speed.

From dying star to diamond planet
What happened next depends on the system. Most white dwarfs continue to orbit the new millisecond pulsar, but some are consumed by it.

"The fate depends upon the mass of the white dwarf and how far it is from the pulsar," Bailes said.
If it is both close and massive, the two spiral together. Astronomers assume this is what happened to the 30 percent of millisecond pulsars found without a companion. [Top 10 Star Mysteries]

In the case of the diamond planet, astronomers think that the core of the white dwarf failed to merge completely with its companion.
"When they got very close, the star lost a lot of its matter and moved out to its safe distance of about a solar radius," Bailes said.

Now tiny, having lost more than 99.9 percent of its original mass and no longer engaged in the fusion reactions that drive a star, the dead core is classified as a planet.
Ironically, the star-turned-planet is larger than its sun. With a diameter of about 37,300 miles (60,000 km), it's five times the size of Earth, but 3,000 times larger than the millisecond pulsar it orbits.

The planet itself orbits the pulsar in a little more than two hours. The entire system would fit within the diameter of our sun.
The research was published online in the Aug. 25 edition of the journal Science.

Source: Space.com

Space junk could be tackled by housekeeping spacecraft

The increasing amount of shutdown satellites, telescopes, rockets etc. and their leftovers are becoming more and more of a problem. One way to clean the "space waste dump" might be to send dedicated cleaning satellites removing the debris.

BBC article on the topic:

Space junk could be tackled by housekeeping spacecraft

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News - 9 August 2011

Scientists have proposed a viable solution to the growing problem of space junk.

The idea involves launching a satellite to rendezvous with the largest space debris, such as spent rocket bodies.
The satellite would then affix a propellant kit, driving the debris to its doom in the Earth's atmosphere.


Low-Earth orbit is an increasingly crowded space. Source.

The authors claim the scheme, in the journal Acta Astronautica, could inexpensively remove five to 10 such objects per year of operation.

The scope of the problem is enormous; more than 17,000 objects of a size greater than 10cm reside in low-Earth orbit. But the greater problem on the horizon is that each of the largest of these represents the potential to create thousands more.

"In our opinion the problem is very challenging and it's quite urgent as well," said Marco Castronuovo, the Italian Space Agency researcher who authored the paper.

"The time to act is now; as we go farther in time we will need to remove more and more fragments," he told BBC News.

In 2007, China demonstrated an anti-satellite system, destroying one of its own defunct satellites and creating 2,000 extra bits of debris in the process. More recently, a collision between US and Russian satellites created even more.


Spent rockets represent some of the largest, most dangerous space junk. Source.

What is feared is a kind of chain reaction, called the Kessler syndrome after the Nasa scientist who first described it in 1978, in which fragments hit other fragments which in turn hit more, creating a cloud of debris that will make vast swathes of low-Earth orbit completely unusable.

The debris presents a risk not only to other man-made satellites in orbit, but occasionally also to the International Space Station and manned space missions.

Space politics

The new research identifies more than 60 objects at a height of about 850km, and two thirds of those weigh more than three tonnes each - many moving near a speed of 7.5km/s. Most of these largest threats are spent rocket bodies, and it is there that Dr Castronuovo thinks the effort should begin.

"It's difficult from a political point of view; many of these objects belong to nations that are not willing to co-operate or do not allow access to their objects even if they are at the end of their operative life, and there is no international regulation on who should remove the objects that are left in space," he said.

"If we start concentrating on the spent rocket bodies - which do not have sensitive equipment on board -it should not pose any problem to the owner to give permission to remove them; and there's no doubt they are not operative anymore."

Dr Castronuovo proposes a scheme in which small satellites are deployed on seven-year missions, each with two robotic arms: one to intercept a rocket body or failed satellite and hang on, and another to affix an ion-engine thruster that will drive the debris out of orbit.
The satellites would then release the debris, hopping from one to the next in a choreographed dance with five to ten large objects per year.

"The proximity operations and manoeuvring talked about here is not easy, but the technology is getting there for that; the idea that you go and attach yourself to something in orbit is becoming more credible," said Stuart Eves, principal engineer for Surrey Satellite Technology.
"People have come up with all sorts of daft ideas... that are really science fiction at the moment. Something like this is a lot more practical."
Nevertheless, the greater problem may be political, as any proposal struggles to be seen as a purely aimed at space junk, Dr Castronuovo said.

"This kind of approach could be seen as a threat to operative systems; if you have the power to go to an object in space and pull it down, nothing prevents you from going to an operative satellite and pulling it down, so it's really a delicate matter."


Source: BBC News

Earth may once have had two moons

Astonishing discoveries all over lately. Exciting times for space science!

Article:

Earth may once have had two moons
3 August 2011 - By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service

A new theory suggests the Earth once had a small second moon that perished in a slow motion collision with its "big sister".
Researchers suggest the collision may explain the mysterious mountains on the far side of our Moon.
The scientists say the relatively slow speed of the crash was crucial in adding material to the rarely-seen lunar hemisphere.


The collision would have occurred at a relatively low speed (2.4 km/s), say the scientists. Image source: Spiegel Online.

Details have been published in the journal Nature.

The researchers involved hope that data from two US space agency (Nasa) lunar missions will substantiate or challenge their theory within the next year.

For decades, scientists have been trying to understand why the near side of the Moon - the one visible from Earth - is flat and cratered while the rarely-seen far side is heavily cratered and has mountain ranges higher than 3,000m.


Collision of the Moon with a second, smaller moon. Around 100 million years after development of the Earth-Moon system. The smaller moon gets "absorbed" by the Far Side of the Moon. The graphic shows snapshots of this process (time in hours). Source: Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) of Universität Bern / astronews.com.

Various theories have been proposed to explain what's termed the lunar dichotomy. One suggests that tidal heating, caused by the pull of the Earth on the ocean of liquid rock that once flowed under the lunar crust, may have been the cause.

But this latest paper proposes a different solution: a long-term series of cosmic collisions.

The researchers argue that the Earth was struck about four billion years ago by another planet about the size of Mars. This is known as the global-impact hypothesis. The resulting debris eventually coalesced to form our Moon.

Slow-motion impact

But the scientists say that another, smaller lunar body may have formed from the same material and become stuck in a gravitational tug of war between the Earth and the Moon.

Dr Martin Jutzi from the University of Bern, Switzerland, is one of the authors of the paper. He explained: "When we look at the current theory there is no real reason why there was only one moon.

"And one outcome of our research is that the new theory goes very well with the global impact idea."

After spending millions of years "stuck", the smaller moon embarked on a collision course with its big sister, slowly crashing into it at a velocity of less than three kilometres per second - slower than the speed of sound in rocks.

Dr Jutzi says it was a low velocity crash: "It was a rather gentle collision at around 2.4km per second; lower than the speed of sound - that's important because it means no huge shocks or melting was produced.

At the time of the smash, the bigger moon would have had a "magma ocean" with a thin crust on top.

The scientists argue that the impact would have led to the build-up of material on the lunar crust and would also have redistributed the underlying magma to the near side of the moon, an idea backed up by observations from Nasa's Lunar Prospector spacecraft.

In a commentary, Dr Maria Zuber from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, US, suggests that while the new study "demonstrates plausibility rather than proof", the authors "raise the legitimate possibility that after the giant impact our Earth perhaps fleetingly possessed more than one moon".

The researchers believe one way of proving their theory is to compare their models with the detailed internal structure of the moon that will be obtained by Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

They will also be looking to high resolution gravity mapping set to be carried out next year by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission.

But according to Dr Jutzi the scientists would prefer to get their hands on samples from the far side of the Moon to prove their theory.

"Hopefully in future, a sample return or a manned mission would certainly help to say more about which theory is more probable."


The Far Side of the Moon. Image source: NASA.
Some facts:
* It takes the Moon about the same amount of time to rotate on its axis as it does to complete an orbit of the Earth
* This is known as "synchronous rotation" and explains why the Moon always presents its familiar near side to Earth
* The near side is covered in smooth, dark lunar maria (Latin for "seas") created by magma erupting on the surface
* The far side is more rugged, with a thicker crust pock-marked by impact craters; the highest point on the Moon is located on the far side
* In 1959, the USSR's unmanned spacecraft Luna 3 became the first to photograph the far side; many of the features have been given Soviet names


Source: bbc.co.uk

Howdy, P4! You are Pluto's moon number 4!

The Hubble Space Telescope just revealed that Pluto obviously has a fourth moon, that remained undiscovered until now. It was provisorily called "P4" by astronomers (Wiki article). This is just another sign how little we know about our own solar system so far - and how many great discoveries may remain for us out there!

Pluto Moon P4 in its orbit:

Two labeled images of the Pluto system, released on July 20, 2011, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 ultraviolet visible instrument with newly discovered fourth moon P4 circled. The image on the left was taken on June 28, 2011. The image of the right was taken on July 3, 2011. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI institute) - Full Size.

Article:

Pluto Has Another Moon, Hubble Photos Reveal

Date: 20 July 2011 Time: 09:35 AM ET - SPACE.com Staff

A tiny new moon has been discovered around Pluto, the fourth and smallest one yet found orbiting the dwarf planet, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal.
The moon, which has been temporarily named P4, was spotted in a Hubble survey searching for rings around Pluto.

The tiny satellite is estimated to be between 8 and 21 miles (13 to 34 kilometers) wide. For comparison, Pluto's largest moon Charon is 648 miles (1,043 km) across. The dwarf planet's other moons, Nix and Hydra, range between 20 to 70 miles across (32 to 113 km). [Photo of Pluto's new moon]
"I find it remarkable that Hubble's cameras enabled us to see such a tiny object so clearly from a distance of more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km)," Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. said in a statement. Showalter led this observational survey with Hubble.


Illustration of the Pluto Satellite System orbits with newly discovered moon P4 highlighted. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

New moon around Pluto
Pluto's new moon is located between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, which Hubble also discovered in 2005. Charon was discovered in 1978 at the U.S. Naval Observatory and was first resolved using Hubble in 1990 as a separate body from Pluto.

The finding is a result of ongoing work to support NASA's New Horizons mission, which is scheduled to fly through the Pluto system in 2015. The mission is designed to provide new insights about worlds at the edge of our solar system.
Hubble's photos of Pluto's surface and the discovery of its satellites have been invaluable for planning for New Horizons' close encounter.
"This is a fantastic discovery," said New Horizons' principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "Now that we know there's another moon in the Pluto system, we can plan close-up observations of it during our flyby."

Pluto's moon system
The dwarf planet's entire moon system is believed to have formed by a collision between Pluto and another planet-sized body early in the history of the solar system. The galactic smashup flung material that combined into the family of satellites observed around Pluto.

Our own moon is thought to have been created by a similar collision between Earth and a Mars-sized body 4.4 billion years ago. Lunar rocks that were returned to Earth from the Apollo missions led to this theory, and scientists think material blasted off Pluto's moons by micrometeoroid impacts may form rings around the dwarf planet.
So far, Hubble's photographs have yet to show any such rings, but the detection of P4 shows that big discoveries can sometimes be unexpected.

"This surprising observation is a powerful reminder of Hubble's ability as a general purpose astronomical observatory to make astounding, unintended discoveries," Jon Morse, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
P4 was first seen in a photo taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on June 28. It was confirmed in subsequent Hubble pictures taken on July 3 and July 18. The moon was not seen in earlier Hubble images because the exposure times were shorter.

There is a chance that P4 appeared as a very faint smudge in images from 2006, but was overlooked because it appeared obscured, scientists said.
Pluto was discovered in 1930, but its planethood was thrown into question when the International Astronomical Union came up with a new definition of "planet" in 2006. That year, Pluto was demoted to the status of "dwarf planet," a newly created category to describe many other objects in the Kiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune.

Source: space.com

Houston, we have feedback from 4 Vesta!

The asteroid mission DAWN is now delivering closeup images of the asteroid 4 Vesta.


Source: NASA / Wiki - Full resolution (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on July 17, 2011. It was taken from a distance of about 9,500 miles (15,000 kilometers) away from the protoplanet Vesta. Each pixel in the image corresponds to roughly 0.88 miles (1.4 kilometers). Vesta has a mean diameter of 529 km.

Article by space.com:

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has beamed home the first close-up photo of the huge asteroid Vesta, just days after entering orbit around the distant space rock.
The new photo, which Dawn snapped for navigation purposes on Sunday (July 17), shows Vesta in greater detail than ever before, researchers said. Astronomers have been observing the gigantic space rock for 200 years, first with ground telescopes and later orbiting observatories, but have never been able to see it so clearly, they added.

"We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system," said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell, of UCLA, in a statement. [Photos: See the first close-up photos of Vesta]
"This region of space has been ignored for far too long. So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons," Russell added.


This composite image shows the comparative sizes of eight asteroids. Until now, Lutetia, with a diameter of 81 miles (130 kilometers), was the largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft, which occurred during a flyby. Vesta, which is also considered a protoplanet because it's a large body that almost became a planet, dwarfs all other small bodies in this image, with diameter of approximately 330 miles (530 km). CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA/ESA


Read more: NASA Spacecraft Snaps First Close-Up Photo of Huge Asteroid Vesta

Biggest stars & black holes in our universe

Now let's once again contemplate about our place in the universe. We're small. Tiny midgets in the vastness of space. But still, we're able to go out of our cosmic jail here on Earth, to reach for the stars and discover new worlds never imagined before. Open your mind for the size of space:

The Biggest Stars In The Universe

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcz4vGvoxQA

Cosmic Journeys: The Largest Black Holes in the Universe


Definitely watch in HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW7BvabYnn8

Hypersonic Jet by EADS at Paris Air Show - London-NYC in just 1 hour

London-Tokyo in just 2 hours? A passenger plane with Mach-4 flying faster than the Concorde and almost 4 times as fast as the usual Jumbo Jet (Boeing 747)? Driven by biofuel and hydrogen? Around 100 passengers? And first flights scheduled for 2021 already? Sounds almost too good to be true. But the European enterprise EADS now unveiled their groundbreaking hypersonic jet ZEHS at Paris Air Show that does it all. Flytime!


Unveiling of the EADS ZEHST model at Paris Air Show - Source


Graphic of the EADS hypersonic jet (Click for FullRes) - Source


Scheme of the Mach-4 ZEHST jet (Click for FullRes) - Source

June 20, 2011 2:16 AM IST
EADS Gives an Heir to the Concorde, the Mach-4 ZEHST
Aerospace group EADS, owner of planemaker Airbus, thinks it has the answer -- a hypersonic jet that flies above the atmosphere, yet takes off from a regular runway.

"It is not a Concorde but it looks like a Concorde, showing that aerodynamics of the 1960s were very smart," Jean Botti, EADS' chief technical officer, said.
By flying above the atmosphere and using biofuel to get the plane off the ground initially, the group hopes to avoid the supersonic boom and pollution Concorde was notorious for.
"When you are above the atmosphere nobody hears anything," Botti said.

The plane, being developed in collaboration with Japan, is being primarily designed with the business market in mind and could carry 50-100 passengers.
The concept project, known as ZEHST (zero emission high speed transport), comes as companies such as Virgin Galactic push forward with plans to take paying customers up on commercial space flights. Indeed, ZEHST is being developed using research from EADS' space arm Astrium.

Unlike Virgin Galactic customers, EADS says ZEHST would have a maximum acceleration of 1.2G, meaning passengers will not need any training in order to fly.
"The acceleration on people is very low, so no specific equipment or training is needed," Botti said.

The plane will take off using a regular turbofan engine, before rocket boosters kick in to start a sharp ascent, sending the plane soaring above the atmosphere.
Ramjet engines, currently used in missiles, will then take the plane up to altitudes of 32km as the plane cruises at speeds beyond Mach 4, or four times the speed of sound. After a gliding descent, the turbofans will reignite to enable landing.

"ZEHST has no novelty, it is all things that have been created before," Botti said, adding the company could have an unmanned demonstrator by 2020.
EADS boss Louis Gallois warned it could be another 30-40 years before commercial flights are a reality.
"We're not talking about a product that we launch in the next few years. We have to see security, integration of different technologies, how man reacts to it."
Article source: http://in.ibtimes.com/articles/165523/20110620/eads-zehst-concorde-mach-4.htm

Additional video on YouTube: EADS ZEHST Hypersonic plane (hydrogen + alguae)

Envision your place in the universe

For the beginning, I'd like to make you realize, how small we actually are. The vastness of our universe is almost impossible to comprehend for a human's mind. 
The Milky Way, our home galaxy, consists of an estimated number of around 400 billion stars alone. Now imagine many of them having planets (estimations are ~ 50 billion) - and those having moons! And that's just our galaxy, there are billions of other ones, in some way it can be seen as an infinite number. How many life forms, how many civilizations might evolve in such an endless sea that forms the space above our heads?
This graphic is a scale comparison of our sun to the planets of the solar system, amended by some interesting facts. 1.3 million Earths fit into our Sun! Which is a yellow dwarf star - there are way bigger stars out there in space.

Click the image for full resolution!
Source: http://waynedorrington.blogspot.com/2011/02/infographic-no2-sun.html

And this video shows you how size is all relative - making our Earth and the sun look like tiny mites!

(You can watch it in HD by clicking the video to open the YouTube page.)