http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has observed extreme brightness changes on a nearby brown dwarf that may indicate a storm grander than any seen yet on a planet. Because old brown dwarfs and giant planets have similar atmospheres, this finding could shed new light on weather phenomena of extra-solar planets. http://phys.org/news235044308.html Space & Earth Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:05:48 EST news235044308 Some planets that roam the galaxy without a star to call home still may be able to host life. Finding such rogue planets is difficult, but new research suggests these wandering worlds could be detected by their atmospheric auroras. http://phys.org/news224431856.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 May 2011 16:40:01 EST news224431856 Scientists for decades have been hunting for ways to harness the enormous force of the sun and stars to supply energy here on Earth. The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory may spark the light at the end of the tunnel. http://phys.org/news162827599.html Physics Fri, 29 May 2009 14:53:56 EST news162827599 (PhysOrg.com) -- A long-proposed tool for hunting planets has netted its first catch -- a Jupiter-like planet orbiting one of the smallest stars known. http://phys.org/news162749574.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 May 2009 17:15:01 EST news162749574 Things have changed since the original Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock set off to seek out new life and new civilizations. Back in the 1960s, while the Enterprise crew was exploring a galaxy full of exotic life-forms, real astronomers were stuck in a solar system with eight desolate-looking neighbors and no signs of any planets beyond. http://phys.org/news162554775.html Space & Earth Tue, 26 May 2009 11:06:54 EST news162554775 (PhysOrg.com) -- Since the early 1990s astronomers have discovered more than 300 planets orbiting stars other than our sun, nearly all of them gas giants like Jupiter. Powerful space telescopes, such as the one that is central to NASA's recently launched Kepler Mission, will make it easier to spot much smaller rocky extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, more similar to Earth. http://phys.org/news162541543.html Space & Earth Tue, 26 May 2009 07:26:30 EST news162541543 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds. The mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 6, will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars for telltale signs of planets. Kepler has the unique ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans. http://phys.org/news161452332.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 May 2009 16:53:29 EST news161452332 (PhysOrg.com) -- We are likely not alone in the universe, though it may feel like it, since life on other planets is probably dominated by microbes or other nonspeaking creatures, according to scientists who gave their take on extraterrestrial life at Harvard recently. http://phys.org/news161358845.html Space & Earth Tue, 12 May 2009 14:54:36 EST news161358845 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new species of archaebacteria, Pyrococcus CH1, thriving within a temperature range of 80 to 105°C and able to divide itself up to a hydrostatic pressure of 120 Mpa (1000 times higher than the atmospheric pression), has just been discovered. http://phys.org/news160154101.html Biology Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:15:42 EST news160154101 During the last two decades, astronomers have found hundreds of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. New research indicates they might have found even more except for one thing - some planets have fallen into their stars and simply no longer exist. http://phys.org/news160071489.html Space & Earth Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:18:57 EST news160071489 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of astronomers from University College London (UCL), including undergraduate students, have discovered that an exotic world passes directly in front of the Sun-like star it orbits, revealing for the first time that it is about the same size as Jupiter. And rather than travelling to one of the major observatories in Hawaii or Chile, the students made the discovery with a telescope at UCL's University of London Observatory (ULO) in the capital's northern suburb of Mill Hill. http://phys.org/news159550986.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:43:47 EST news159550986 (PhysOrg.com) -- Exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor announces the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, "e," in the system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581-d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. These amazing discoveries are the outcome of observations using the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6m ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile. http://phys.org/news159520355.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:13:14 EST news159520355 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have found that at least 1 in 100 white dwarf stars show evidence of orbiting asteroids and rocky planets, suggesting these objects once hosted Solar Systems similar to our own. http://phys.org/news159460384.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:33:37 EST news159460384 NASA's Kepler mission has taken its first images of the star-rich sky where it will soon begin hunting for planets like Earth. http://phys.org/news159110447.html Space & Earth Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:21:49 EST news159110447 (PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers have successfully ejected the dust cover from NASA's Kepler telescope, a spaceborne mission soon to begin searching for worlds like Earth. http://phys.org/news158427654.html Space & Earth Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:41:43 EST news158427654 (PhysOrg.com) -- A powerful, newly refined image-processing technique may allow astronomers to discover extrasolar planets that are possibly lurking in over a decade's worth of Hubble Space Telescope archival data. http://phys.org/news157820664.html Space & Earth Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:04:54 EST news157820664 (PhysOrg.com) -- Does a twin Earth exist somewhere in our galaxy? Astronomers are getting closer and closer to finding an Earth-sized planet in an Earth-like orbit. NASA's Kepler spacecraft just launched to find such worlds. Once the search succeeds, the next questions driving research will be: Is that planet habitable? Does it have an Earth-like atmosphere? Answering those questions will not be easy. http://phys.org/news156776825.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:07:45 EST news156776825 On 24 February 2009, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured a photo sequence of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet. The moons, from far left to right, are the white icy moons Enceladus and Dione, the large orange moon Titan, and icy Mimas. Due to the angle of the Sun, they are each preceded by their own shadow. http://phys.org/news156514110.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:09:01 EST news156514110 An international team of scientists have discovered a transparent form of the element sodium (Na). The team, led by Artem Oganov, Professor of Theoretical Crystallography at Stony Brook University, and Yanming Ma, the lead author and professor of physics at Jilin University in China, was able to demonstrate that sodium defies normal physical expectations by going transparent under pressure. The results are published in the March 12 edition of the journal Nature. http://phys.org/news156104532.html Physics Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:22:47 EST news156104532 When NASA's Kepler telescope rocketed into the night sky last week, two Berkeley astronomers watching its fading contrail were hoping that the telescope will reveal Earth's — and humanity's — place in the universe. http://phys.org/news156101002.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:24:13 EST news156101002 The search for habitable planets continues with the March 6 launch of the Kepler spacecraft, the latest in NASA's series of low cost, highly focused Discovery missions. Kepler, built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., includes redundant avionics systems designed and built by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to help guide and control the spacecraft as it stares deep into space, watching for planets orbiting stars. http://phys.org/news155817762.html Space & Earth Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:43:15 EST news155817762 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Kepler spacecraft and its Delta II rocket are "go" for a launch tonight that is expected to light up the sky along Florida's Space Coast at 10:49 p.m. EST as the rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Weather predictions remain good, with a 95 percent chance of favorable conditions at launch time and a temperature of 64 degrees. http://phys.org/news155568810.html Space & Earth Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:33:57 EST news155568810 (PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Kepler telescope rockets into the night sky on Friday, March 6, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, two University of California, Berkeley, astronomers - key members of the Kepler team - will be watching its fading contrail, hoping that the telescope will reveal Earth's and humanity's place in the universe. http://phys.org/news155401559.html Space & Earth Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:07:52 EST news155401559 To mark UNESCO's International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), six leading astronomers from the UK, the US, Europe and Asia write in March's Physics World about the biggest challenges and opportunities facing international astronomers over the next couple of decades. http://phys.org/news155188813.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:00:38 EST news155188813 (PhysOrg.com) -- The patterns of missing asteroids are like the footprints of wandering giant planets preserved in the asteroid belt. http://phys.org/news154802620.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:44:17 EST news154802620 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of astronomers, led by Loretta Dunne from the University of Nottingham, have found some very unusual stardust. In a paper to be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr Dunne and her team find new evidence for the production of copious quantities of dust in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, the remains of a star that exploded about 300 years ago. http://phys.org/news154709258.html Space & Earth Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:48:14 EST news154709258 NASA's Kepler spacecraft is on its way to the launch pad and will soon begin a journey to search for worlds that could potentially host life. http://phys.org/news154281121.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:52:42 EST news154281121 In recent years researchers have found hundreds of new planets beyond our solar system, raising questions about the origins and properties of these exotic worlds—not to mention the possible presence of life. Speaking at a symposium titled "The Origin and Evolution of Planets" held at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, two Carnegie Institution scientists will present their perspectives on the new era of planetary exploration. http://phys.org/news153833101.html Space & Earth Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:26:27 EST news153833101 Future telescopes, with mirrors half the size of a football field, will need special components to deal with the light they collect. Astronomers are turning to photonic devices that guide and manipulate light inside specially-designed materials. The greatest potential, which is described in the latest issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, may lie in a laser-based technique that carves out micron-sized light pathways in three dimensions. http://phys.org/news153073531.html Physics Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:26:02 EST news153073531 (PhysOrg.com) -- SF State's planet hunting team is trying new avenues of investigation in the quest to discover planets beyond our solar system. At the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in January, graduate students presented novel approaches being used by the Exoplanet Group to search for earth-like planets. http://phys.org/news152900631.html Space & Earth Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:24:14 EST news152900631