They’ve been looking for one quite a while. They’ve found over a hundred of them but none that seem to fit the bill. But now they think one has been found. A planet that might be able tio sustain life. With a surface temperature that ranges from about -40 to +120 F.
Interestingly, it’s sun is classed as a “Red Dwarf” which makes the planet actually bigger than the it’s sun. And the planet doesn’t rotate - which makes me wonder about it’s gravity.
Other than that (and the fact that it’s more than 1 light year away), it’s perfect.
May 1st, 2007
Posted by
bit |
Science |
3 comments
When I read articles about the universe, I normally don’t have any biases about how it got here. But this came across a few months back and I hung on to it because it seemed so, well, different. It’s not that it forms any particular opinion but it great food for thought and conversation.
There was an NPR Public Radio show in Minnesota early in February that Harvard physicist Leonard Susskind, the author of The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design”, offers a view of a current debate in the theoretcial physics world - at least in some parts of it. Eric Black summarizes the main points:
Susskind describes the discoveries and mysteries disturbing physicists’ serenity as “a scientific tsunami” and “one of the most stunning reversals of fortune in science.” He says “[T]hings have been happening in the last decade that are changing the minds of many physicists” about whether life is a “mere coincidence.”
* Physicists have learned that the universe we dwell in is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for life. It’s a Goldilocks universe - not too hot, or too cold, or too dense, or too diffused, but just right. If fundamental physical forces were any different than they are - to even an infinitesimal degree — no life could exist.
* This reality has physicists wrestling with questions, Susskind says, that baffle them - questions that raise the issue of “intelligent design” more widely heard from in debates about evolution and creationism. The “crazy fine tuning” of the universe, Susskind says, “seems very non-accidental.”
* One response among physicists is a mind-cramping concept called “the anthropic principle.” It’s the idea that we shouldn’t be amazed that our universe is just what it needs to be to support intelligent life because, if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to be amazed by it. Put another way, any universe intelligent beings find themselves in must by definition be the sort of universe that could produce intelligent beings. Susskind says the idea discomforts scientists because it suggests that the “universe somehow cared about us.”
* The theory of the multiverse suggests a more naturalistic, if not much less mysterious, resolution of the problem. It’s the theory that universes reproduce, rather like living things, and that many universes exist. Most are presumably unfit for life. But the sheer number and diversity of them makes it understandable how one, at least, got it just right, and produced us and our misplaced amazement at the improbability of our existence. Yet we will never see these other universes, Susskind says. They are receding from us so fast that their light can never reach us and they are “forever hidden behind an eternal cosmic horizon.” This, he says, makes critics complain that the theory is metaphysical speculation rather than science.
While this is all very interesting I find it more of an intellectual argument for the sake of purpose by those in an academic field who need to have relevancy to such purpose. It’s kind of like a stock market correction. News for now (very interesting news) and back to work later.
Eric Black points out in his article that theoretical physics is a field that constantly churns and needs that relevance to keep going:
Susskind’s presentation is a reminder that there seems to be a pleasing wild west quality about theoretical physics - or at least about the simplified versions of its disputes that reach non-scientists. Perhaps because their controversies have seldom been turned into political and cultural battles, or maybe because the mysteries they probe inevitably lead to the biggest of big questions, physicists often seem refreshingly open to the strangest possibilities.
You can listen to the call in show here. This isn’t really a debate but, as Black points out, what these guys work on eventually lead to these type of questions. Good food for thought.
April 23rd, 2007
Posted by
bit |
Science |
one comment
After last year’s flop season predictions following the year of Katrina, hurricane prediction pretty much became comic relief. Those struck by major hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas predicted as much - “you never get hit two years in a row”. That may be, but the science of hurricane prediction is much more reliable than the Farmer’s Almanac. Dr. Bill Gray at Colorado State University has done an enviable job of using a field of markers to accurately predict hurricane’s and has improved that prediction capability over the years.
Dr. Gray’s 2007 forecast is currently predicting another active season with 17 named storms and 5 major hurricanes. He predicates the April 3, 2007 forecast with this statement:
We have increased our forecast for the 2007 hurricane season, largely due to the rapid dissipation of El Niño conditions. We are now calling for a very active hurricane season. Landfall probabilities for the 2007 hurricane season are well above their long-period averages.
For those who scoff at this forecast, try to remember that Dr. Gray’s team has done an excellent job over the years. Having one semi-flat year of over-predictability - due mainly to the appearance of El Nino, cannot be held as a reason to disregard the forecast. Those who fail to heed will likely be surprised. Here’s the abstract for April 3, 2007:
Information obtained through March 2007 indicates that the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season will be much more active than the average 1950-2000 season. We estimate that 2007 will have about 9 hurricanes (average is 5.9), 17 named storms (average is 9.6), 85 named storm days (average is 49.1), 40 hurricane days (average is 24.5), 5 intense (Category 3-4-5) hurricanes (average is 2.3) and 11 intense hurricane days (average is 5.0). The probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall is estimated to be about 140 percent of the long-period average. We expect Atlantic basin Net Tropical Cyclone (NTC) activity in 2007 to be about 185 percent of the long-term average.
This early April forecast is based on a newly devised extended range statistical forecast procedure which utilizes 40 years of past global reanalysis data and is then tested on an additional 15 years of global reanalysis data. Analog predictors are also utilized. We have increased our forecast from our early December prediction due largely to the rapid dissipation of El Niño which has occurred over the past couple of months. Currently, neutral ENSO conditions are observed. We expect either neutral or weak-to-moderate La Niña conditions to be present during the upcoming hurricane season. Tropical and North Atlantic sea surface temperatures remain well above their long-period averages.
El Nino caused a lot of consternation last year so don’t get overconfident. Recall the “two years in a row” moniker. With the current intense hurricane cycle, two years of complacency would be a dangerous stance.
Even Fox News credited Dr. Gray’s efforts at staying on target:
Gray’s research team at Colorado State University said an unexpected late El Nino contributed to the calmer season last year. El Nino _ a warming in the Pacific Ocean _ has far-reaching effects that include changing wind patterns in the eastern Atlantic, which can disrupt the formation of hurricanes there.
A weak to moderate El Nino occurred in December and January but dissipated rapidly, said Phil Klotzbach, a member of Gray’s team.
“Conditions this year are likely to be more conducive to hurricanes,” Klotzbach said Tuesday. In the absence of El Nino, “winds aren’t tearing the storm systems apart.”
So be ready to welcome Andrea, the first storm name of this season.
And in a change of roles at CSU, Dr. Gray has indicated the continued effort at improving the hurricane prediction system will now be shifted to his co-author for the last five years, Philip Klotzbach:
The order of the authorship of these forecasts has been reversed from Gray and Klotzbach to Klotzbach and Gray. After 22 years (since 1984) of making these forecasts, it is appropriate that I step back and have Phil Klotzbach assume the primary responsibility for our project’s seasonal, monthly and landfall probability forecasts. Phil has been a member of my research project for the last six years and has been second author on these forecasts for the last five years. I have greatly profited and enjoyed our close personal and working relationships.
Phil is now devoting more time to the improvement of these forecasts than I am. I am now giving more of my efforts to the global warming issue and in synthesizing my projects’ many years of hurricane and typhoon studies.
This should be interesting - Dr. Gray doesn’t agree with Heidi Cullen’s fatwa.
April 3rd, 2007
Posted by
bit |
Science |
post comments
Here’a story sure to make some people happy - if you like ample read ends. From Fox News is a report on women in the Stone Age (15,000 years ago) who were revered for having “big behinds.”
Women With Bigger Behinds Were All the Stone Age Rage, Scientists Say.
“Baby Got Back” may have been a smash hit song in the early 1990s, but researchers say the song might have been wildly popular some 15,000 years ago as well.
Carvings found in Stone Age Europe show that prehistoric women with curvy figures and a prominent posterior were revered, according to a report in Daily Express.
Carvings found in Stone Age Europe show that prehistoric women with curvy figures and a prominent posterior were revered, according to a report in .“The engravings and figurines adhere to a style depicting feminine silhouettes with over-represented buttocks,” Romuald Schild, of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who led the dig, told the Daily Express.
The Kate Mosses of the era, researches said, were ignored by men looking for a mate. An overdeveloped derriere were signs that a woman was wealthy, healthy and had a good diet, a sign that her mate was a good hunter. She would also be a good mother and be fertile, the report said.
No comment. But you can read the whole report here.
March 11th, 2007
Posted by
bit |
Humor, Science |
one comment
I was grazing through blogs and ran across this link from Rantings of A Sandmonkey:
Missing: a huge chunk of the earth’s crust
LONDON (Reuters) - A team of British scientists has set sail on a voyage to examine why a huge chunk of the earth’s crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean — a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how the earth works.
The 20-strong team aims to survey an area some 3,000 to 4,000 metres deep where the mantle — the deep interior of the earth normally covered by a crust kilometres thick — is exposed on the sea floor.
Experts describe the hole along the mid-Atlantic ridge as an “open wound” on the ocean floor that has puzzled scientists for the five or so years that its existence has been known because it defies existing tectonic plate theories of evolution.
“We know so little about it,” said Bramley Murton, a senior research scientist at Southampton’s National Oceanography Center.
“It’s a real challenge to our established understanding of what the earth’s surface looks like underneath the waves,” he told Reuters by telephone from the brand new, hi-tech British research ship RRS James Cook.
Well, I’ll be damned. We’ve got a hole and we don’t know why. Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, we don’t know all the reasons for the hole in the ozone regions of the polar areas. Just that they aren’t as bad as in the recent past.
I’ll bet that damn hole has something to do with Global Warming. I’m sending Al Gore an email tomorrow. I’ll bet he doesn’t know pea diddly squat about this. Or anything else.
UPDATE:
A website called “Damn Interesting” has a great story - actually an old post - on the deepest hole ever drilled in the world. It’s over 7 miles down and the reason they gave up was - it got too hot.
Maybe they should have set that drill thingy up over the “open wound”.
March 8th, 2007
Posted by
bit |
Humor, Science |
post comments
