Space telescope to seek out Earth-like planets

A French-led satellite project took off Wednesday on a mission to seek new Earth-like planets outside the solar system.

The multinational mission will also study stars on a quest to uncover more about their interior, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced.

The Corot project sends into orbit a telescope that is able to detect smaller planets than are currently known.

With the spacecraft, astronomers expect they will discover between 10 and 40 rocky objects slightly larger than Earth, as well as tens of new gas giants similar to Jupiter.

Should the mission uncover such planets, they will constitute a new class of planets altogether.

"Corot will be able to find extra-solar planets of all sizes and natures, contrary to what we can do from the ground at the moment," Claude Catala, one of the researchers associated with the project, told France Info radio.

"We expect to obtain a better vision of planet systems beyond the solar system, about the distribution of planet sizes," Catala said.

"And finally, it will allow us to estimate the likelihood of there existing planets resembling the Earth in the neighbourhood of the sun or further away in the galaxy."

The telescope lifted off into a polar orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday morning ET.

source: ctv.ca

Why practice can't make perfect

Study shows our brains were meant to handle variable, not repetitive, tasks

Ever wonder why your tee shot still slices after smacking 30 buckets of balls on the driving range?

Or why an NBA superstar can still miss a free throw after practising the shot thousands of times?

Well, according to a new study out of Stanford University, a quirk of the human brain ensures that practice can never make perfect.

Human brains have evolved to consider anew even the most practised of motions before launching into them, the study says. And that planning process, often momentary and subconscious, can change the outcome of every move you make.

Our brains ensure that we are "doomed" to make mistakes, says Stanford scientist Krishna Shenoy, whose paper appears this week in the journal Neuron.

Scientists have long believed that the fault for such things as missed shots and errant fastballs lay in the muscles, says Shenoy, an assistant professor in the school's department of electrical engineering and neurosciences program. "The fundamental tenet of the field is ... that you can't activate your muscles the same way every time," he says. "Another fundamental assumption is that your brain can plan that same movement each and every time."

Shenoy's groundbreaking study, however, places at least half the blame on the brain, arguing that its obsessive planning function provides a fertile source for errors.

The failed free throw, for example, is likely foretold seconds before the player's arm is set in motion, as the brain's plan – almost certainly subconscious – has ruined the shot.

"You are doomed to have variability in your movement," says Shenoy. "And it's not just because your muscles can't work perfectly, but also because your brain is incapable, it appears, of planning the same movement each and every time."

source: thestar.com

STEREO Sends Back First Solar Images

NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories (STEREO) sent back their first images of the sun this week and with them a view into the sun's mounting activity.

One image shows the first coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by STEREO's Ahead spacecraft, taken Dec. 9.

"We're absolutely thrilled. We've been looking forward to STEREO's unique vantage point for over 10 years now and the community couldn't be happier with these first views," said Michael Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

"Now we're holding our breath to see what the next big CME looks like in 3-D, so we can really start to answer some interesting questions."

After a successful launch on Oct. 25 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., STEREO spent the first few minutes separating from its stacked configuration aboard the single Delta II rocket. Shortly afterwards, mission operations personnel at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, (APL) Laurel, Md., monitored the two observatories as they traveled in an elliptical orbit from a point close to Earth to one extending just beyond the moon.

source: nasa.gov

Are you an Aries? Then you may suck at driving

Next time you smash your ride into something, just blame it on the stars. Tell the cop Mercury was in retrograde, causing your driving to follow suit and thus leading to the crash of your Mercury. Watch out if you're an Aries with an Aries - that's a dangerous thing to be.

InsuranceHotline.com, a Canadian website that provides insurance quotes to drivers, conducted a study correlating accident rates to zodiac signs. You'd think age and ability would hold more water, but apparently astrology trumps even changing zip codes when determining how prone a particular driver is to accidents. Libras are the worst, followed by Aquarians. The best were Leos and Geminis. As for that Aries, they have a "me first" attitude that leads them into bad juju. If InsuranceHotline's study is accurate, it appears that everyone on the road is an Aries.

[Source: Reuters via scotsman.com]

NASA Telescope Picks Up Glow of Universe's First Objects

New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope strongly suggest that infrared light detected in a prior study originated from clumps of the very first objects of the Universe. The recent data indicate this patchy light is splattered across the entire sky and comes from clusters of bright, monstrous objects more than 13 billion light-years away.

"We are pushing our telescopes to the limit and are tantalizingly close to getting a clear picture of the very first collections of objects," said Dr. Alexander Kashlinsky of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., lead author on two reports to appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Whatever these objects are, they are intrinsically incredibly bright and very different from anything in existence today."

Astronomers believe the objects are either the first stars -- humongous stars more than 1,000 times the mass of our sun -- or voracious black holes that are consuming gas and spilling out tons of energy. If the objects are stars, then the observed clusters might be the first mini-galaxies containing a mass of less than about one million suns. The Milky Way galaxy holds the equivalent of approximately 100 billion suns and was probably created when mini-galaxies like these merged.

source: spitzer.caltech.edu

Giant New Telescope Will Probe The Universe

The future of European astronomy is poised to enter a new era of discovery with the decision announced today by ESO's governing body to proceed with detailed studies for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This three year study, with a budget of 57 million euro, will prepare the way for construction of the world's largest optical/infrared telescope that will revolutionise ground-based astronomy. Astronomers from the UK have played crucial roles in reaching this decision.

The E-ELT will be more than hundred times more sensitive than the present-day largest optical telescopes, such as the 10-m Keck telescopes or the 8.2-m VLT telescopes and will answer some of the biggest questions about the Universe in which we live.

full story: spacedaily.com

Astronauts rewire half of space station

By Mike Schneider, Associated Press | December 15, 2006

Two spacewalking astronauts successfully rewired half of the international space station yesterday, a job that when finished will allow the orbiting outpost to double the size of its crew and add two more labs in the coming years.

NASA immediately started powering up systems aboard a large section of the space station; the power had to be turned off for the spacewalkers' safety while they were handling the electrical connections.

The space agency also rushed to get the space station's ammonia cooling system operating again before the new electrical equipment overheated. It took less than an hour for the cooling system to start running smoothly.

The rewiring job involved switching the space station from its old, temporary power source to its brand-new one -- a pair of solar arrays that were delivered in September. The spacewalkers had to unhook three dozen electrical hoses and reconnect them.

During a short break, the spacewalkers watched shooting stars and the blaze of the Northern Lights, caused by solar flares colliding with Earth's atmosphere. "Gosh, they're beautiful," Curbeam said.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was considering a fourth spacewalk in which astronauts could manually fold up the old solar array, which failed to retract fully by remote control Wednesday. The accordion-like 115-foot array, which had provided temporary power to the space station, retracted about halfway -- enough to allow the new pair of solar arrays to rotate.

The half-retracted array presents no danger, NASA said. In a worst-case scenario, it could be jettisoned.

"It's a little disappointing with the solar array, but folks . . . understand you're going to have a little hiccup," said Joel Montalbano, a space station flight director. "NASA probably does its best with their back against the wall."

Look into the eyes of our Sun

“NewScientist reports that Japan’s Hinode (Solar-B) spacecraft has captured videos of surface details of the Sun, including the development of loops of hot plasma above the surface, and activity around sunspots. From the article: ‘It is hoped that its observations will shed light on what triggers solar eruptions — called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These ejections spew out radiation that poses a health risk for astronauts, and they can also knock out satellites.”

watch the movie

China’s white dolphin called extinct after 20 million years

“The white dolphin known as baiji, shy and nearly blind, dates back some 20 million years. Its disappearance is believed to be the first time in a half-century, since hunting killed off the Caribbean monk seal, that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction.”

full story: cnn.com

modNS.org Community Forums -> Level Control

i installed the lvlctrl plugin for the Natural Selection server i administrate. it's not working very good. i had to hack the extralevels2_rework plugin in order for it to play nice.

first post

once again i'm setting up an account on blogger. not sure if i'll actually use it this time.