planets – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Planets of TRAPPIST-1: Complex atmospheres, probably lots of water

Enlarge (credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser ) We’ve now developed a healthy-sized catalog of planets orbiting in the habitable zone of distant stars. But we don’t have the slightest idea whether any of them are actually habitable. That’s largely because, at these distances, it’s extremely difficult to get any sense of what the planets are made of and what their atmospheres are like. And the greenhouse potential of the atmosphere can make the difference between a frozen world like Mars and an out-of-control hothouse like Venus. But at least in the case of one nearby star, scientists are slowly narrowing down the options. TRAPPIST-1 has at least seven planets , all small enough to be Earth-like, with several inside the star’s habitable zone. In two papers released this week, teams of scientists have narrowed down what their atmospheres might look like and provided a greater sense of their composition. The results suggest that at least one planet has the potential to be a watery world. In the air The first study, which appears in Nature Astronomy , looks at the atmospheres of several of the planets, but not directly. Instead, it relies on the Hubble to observe the star’s light as a planet passes in front of it. A tiny fraction of the photons will have passed through the planet’s atmosphere on their way to Earth. Any colors of light that are absorbed or scattered by the gases in the atmosphere will be missing from that fraction, making it possible to infer the atmosphere’s composition. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

First-known interstellar visitor is a bizarre, cigar-shaped asteroid

Enlarge / An artist’s impression of the oddly shaped interstellar asteroid `Oumuamua. (credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser ) Since mid-October, the astronomy community has been buzzing about what might be our Solar System’s first confirmed interstellar visitor. An automated telescope spotted an object that appeared as if it had been dropped on the Solar System from above, an angle that suggests it arrived from elsewhere. Now, a team of astronomers has rushed out a paper that describes the object’s odd properties and gives it the name “1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua.” In Hawaiian, ‘Oumuamua roughly means “first messenger,” and the 1I indicates that it’s the first interstellar object. ‘Oumuamua was first spotted on October 19 by the Pan-STARRS1 automated telescope system. Pan-STARRS1 turned out to have captured images of the object the day previously, but the automated analysis software hadn’t identified it. Further images over the next few days allowed researchers to refine its travel through our Solar System, confirming that ‘Oumuamua was making the most extreme approach toward the inner Solar System of any object we’ve ever seen. In essence, it appeared to have been dropped onto the Solar System from above, plunging between the Sun and the orbit of Mercury. It was also moving extremely quickly. The Solar System was formed from a flattened disk of material, and all of the planets orbit roughly in the plane of that disk. Smaller objects, like dwarf planets and comets, may take somewhat more erratic approaches with orbits tilted out of that plane, but they still roughly aligned with it. We had literally never seen anything like ‘Oumuamua. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the original post:
First-known interstellar visitor is a bizarre, cigar-shaped asteroid

Newly discovered planet is nearly 25 percent the size of its star

Enlarge (credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick ) What does it take to build a gas giant? Building models of planet formation and studying exosolar systems have both provided us with some hints. But there’s a small but growing list of cases where the two of these approaches disagree about what’s possible. A new paper adds to that list by describing a gas giant planet that orbits a dwarf star, creating a situation where the planet is 25 percent the size of its host—the smallest difference between planet and star yet observed. Gas giants, as their name implies, are mostly hydrogen and helium. But models of planet formation have suggested that they can only form in systems with a lot of heavier elements around. The idea is that a large core of rocky material has to form quickly, before the star fully ignites and drives off any nearby gas. If the rocky body gets big enough early enough, it can grab enough gas to start a runaway atmospheric accumulation, turning itself into a gas giant. Studying exosolar systems provides some support for this idea. We can get a sense of how many heavier elements—generically termed metals—were around during planet formation by looking at their presence in the host star. If the star has a high metal content, then the planets probably had access to lots of heavier elements, too. For small, rocky planets, it doesn’t seem to matter how many heavier elements were around, as they’re found at stars with various degrees of metal content. The same is true for super-Earths and Neptune-sized planets. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continue Reading:
Newly discovered planet is nearly 25 percent the size of its star

Second Handwritten Copy of the Declaration of Independence Discovered in England

Harvard researchers have discovered a parchment manuscript of the Declaration of Independence at a small archive office in the United Kingdom. Only the second parchment copy known to exist, it contains several features that mark it as distinct from the original. Read more…

View article:
Second Handwritten Copy of the Declaration of Independence Discovered in England

Acer’s $300 Windows headset bodes well for the future of cheap VR

For Microsoft, the future of computing isn’t just virtual reality — it’s “mixed reality, ” the company’s term encapsulating AR and VR experiences . That started with HoloLens , but that device costs $3, 000 and is targeted at developers. But Microsoft has something else in mind for consumers: $300 VR headsets from PC makers like Dell and HP. Until now, the closest we’ve come to Microsoft’s mixed reality vision was by touching (but not using) a Lenovo headset . That all changed last week when I put on Acer’s Windows 10 headset. At first glance, the unnamed headset doesn’t look like anything special. But look a bit closer and you’ll notice a few intriguing elements, including two cameras on the front, and a sharp, almost racecar-like design. The visor portion of the headset can also flip up, so you can easily see what’s happening in the real world without taking it off entirely (something Lenovo’s entry also does). Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any photos, but it looks exactly like the model we saw back at CES (albeit in a bright blue instead of red). I had no trouble putting on the headset while wearing glasses, though it was a bit tough to adjust the headstrap without actually seeing it. Like the Vive and many other VR headsets I’ve tried, Acer’s entry is fairly front-heavy, so it might take some adjustment to make it feel comfortable. Once I found a decent fit, it felt like something I could easily wear for an hour or more. Those two cameras on the front are the most intriguing part of Acer’s headset, as they allow it to track your environment and head position without the need for external sensors like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. This technique, known as “inside out” tracking, is an offshoot of what Microsoft developed for HoloLens. The goal: to make VR setup easier for consumers, removing the need to drill holes into your walls for the Vive’s lighthouses, or find desk space for the Rift’s standing sensor. That solves one of the biggest problems Microsoft noticed the offering Rift and Vive units at its stores: Lots of buyers would return VR hardware because it was too tough to set up. Once I put on the headset, I was thrust into a virtual living room somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, I was stick with using an Xbox One controller to navigate the environment — a huge step down from the Rift and Vive’s motion controllers. I was able to teleport and walk around around the room, as well as pick up and view virtual objects. While the environment wasn’t particularly detailed, it looked sharp on Acer’s headset. And most importantly, I didn’t get dizzy, even as I was moving my head around to take in the virtual space. Just like HoloLens, this new crop of Mixed Reality headsets will let you access just about every app and tool you’d otherwise use in Windows 10. That includes Universal apps, as well as those made for HoloLens. So you could conceivably throw up a video onto a wall in your virtual living room while you’re browsing the web or working on an Office doc. I didn’t have much time to run software on the headset, but I was able to move around a model of the solar system with the controller and by tilting my head. When I pushed in on Jupiter and other planets for a close-up view, they all looked sharp and clear. It was evident from the demo that Microsoft isn’t targeting high-end VR with $300 headsets like Acer’s. Instead, it’s aiming for a middle ground between mobile VR and what we’re seeing from the Rift and Vive. The company bets that relatively inexpensive headsets powered by mid-range machines will make up the majority of the PC VR market. The Acer unit I tested was powered by a gaming laptop, but the company claims computers with integrated graphics will also be able to run mixed reality headsets later this year. That’s partially due to low-end graphics getting better over time, but Microsoft claims it can also handle VR more efficiently since its Mixed Reality platform is built directly into the OS. It’s not relying on a separate app like the competition. Microsoft has also partnered with 3Glasses for a much more powerful headset which beats out Oculus and HTC’s offerings when it comes to specs, so it’s not ignoring the high-end entirely. Microsoft has made it clear that VR will be a big part of its Xbox One successor, Project Scorpio. While the company hasn’t made any official announcements regarding these low-end headsets and Scorpio, it’s something I expect we’ll hear more about at E3 in June. Given that the company’s next console is powerful enough to handle true 4K gaming, and it’s technically powered by Windows 10, it’s easy to see how it could integrate with these headsets. As for that Windows-powered HTC Vive we saw back at Computex, Microsoft says that device was just a mockup. The company doesn’t currently have any deals with HTC, but it’s open to working something out. That’s partly because Microsoft is eager to reduce the fragmentation of the VR market with Windows Mixed Reality. That’s self-serving, of course, but Microsoft has a point: Virtual reality has to be easier for consumers to jump into if we actually want it to succeed. This Acer headset, along with the first batch of offerings from PC manufacturers, will mainly be targeted at developers with the Windows Creators Update. But Microsoft is confident it will have something consumer grade to show by the holiday season. It’s taken a few years, but it won’t be long until we see if Microsoft’s bet on mixed reality actually pays off.

Read the original post:
Acer’s $300 Windows headset bodes well for the future of cheap VR

These Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets Have Everyone Freaking Out Over Alien Life

After a deluge of teasing press releases and premature speculation , we can finally share some Very Important NASA News: Today, the agency announced that a team of scientists has confirmed seven Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, a star located just 39 light-years away from our Sun. The six inner planets are… Read more…

See original article:
These Seven Earth-Sized Exoplanets Have Everyone Freaking Out Over Alien Life

Everything Star Wars Has Reintroduced From the Old Expanded Universe

When Disney got control of Star Wars , it announced that pretty much everything that wasn’t a TV show or movie was no longer canon. That swept away a long tradition of considering almost everything produced in this universe as connected and part of the same universe. But as the new canon has developed, not everything… Read more…

Link:
Everything Star Wars Has Reintroduced From the Old Expanded Universe

Incredible Animations Show Real Exoplanets Orbiting Their Stars

Scientists have detected thousands of exoplanets in recent years, by catching dips in light as they orbit their parent stars. These days, finding new ones isn’t usually such a big deal. But taking direct images of exoplanets, and turning them into videos so we can watch their orbits, makes these faraway worlds a… Read more…

Continued here:
Incredible Animations Show Real Exoplanets Orbiting Their Stars

Canonical Names Ubuntu Linux 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’

“Linux distributions and silly names go together like peanut butter and jelly, ” notes BetaNews. BrianFagioli writes: One of the most well-known Linux distributions to use funny names is Ubuntu. It famously uses the convention of an adjective and a lesser-known animal, each starting with the same letter… For example, Ubuntu 16.10 uses the letter “Y” — “Yakkety Yak”. The next version of the operating system will use the letter “Z” [and] Canonical has chosen “Zesty Zapus”… It is apparently a type of jumping mouse… “As we come to the end of the alphabet, I want to thank everyone who makes this fun. Your passion and focus and intellect, and occasionally your sharp differences, all make it a privilege to be part of this body incorporate. Right now, Ubuntu is moving even faster to the centre of the cloud and edge operations. From AWS to the zaniest new devices, Ubuntu helps people get things done faster, cleaner, and more efficiently, thanks to you…”, says Mark Shuttleworth, CEO, Canonical… “we are a tiny band in a market of giants, but our focus on delivering free software freely together with enterprise support, services and solutions appears to be opening doors, and minds, everywhere. So, in honour of the valiantly tiny leaping long-tailed over the obstacles of life, our next release which will be Ubuntu 17.04, is hereby code named the Zesty Zapus”. My favorite was Xenial Xerus. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More:
Canonical Names Ubuntu Linux 17.04 ‘Zesty Zapus’

The World’s Oldest Computer May Have Predicted the Future

Gizmodo reports: Discovered in an ancient shipwreck near Crete in 1901, the freakishly advanced Antikythera Mechanism has been called the world’s first computer. A decades-long investigation into the 2, 000 year-old-device is shedding new light onto this mysterious device… It wasn’t programmable in the modern sense, but it’s considered the world’s first analog computer. schwit1 shares a report from the Associated Press:: For over a century since its discovery in an ancient shipwreck, the exact function of the Antikythera Mechanism — named after the southern Greek island off which it was found — was a tantalizing puzzle…. After more than a decade’s efforts using cutting-edge scanning equipment, an international team of scientists has now read about 3, 500 characters of explanatory text — a quarter of the original — in the innards of the 2, 100-year-old remains. They say it was a kind of philosopher’s guide to the galaxy, and perhaps the world’s oldest mechanical computer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.