In Search of Habitable Worlds: The Older the Planet, the Greater Chance There’s Life

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on June 2, 2011

 

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By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

To date, the Kepler space telescope has found more than 1,200 likely planets orbiting stars beyond the sun — quite a haul

Astronomers have used the Kepler Space Telescope (seen in an artist's rendition, above) to locate likely planets orbiting stars beyond the sun. NASA / Kepler Mission Comment

for a satellite that’s been flying for just over two years. The true prize Kepler is hunting for, of course, is not just any planet, but one that’s a twin of Earth — about the size of our world, orbiting in a zone where the temperature range is like ours. All that would make it a prime place to look for life. Finding such a not-too-hot, not-too-cold world is probably just a matter of time, but even then, there will be one more factor to consider: how old the planet is.

In the biology game, planetary age can be everything. If alien astronomers had discovered Earth when it was just a billion years old, the only life they’d be able to find would be the most primitive of microbes. If they waited another billion years, they’d see the effects of cyanobacteria pumping oxygen into the atmosphere. At about 4 billion, multicellular organisms would arise. And if the aliens wanted someone to talk to, they’d have to wait until Earth had been around for 4.6 billion years, when humans began communicating with radio signals.(See “Planet Discovery: One Step Closer to a Second Earth.”)

The same limitations are true for contemporary earthlings studying other worlds. Trying to determine the age of a planet directly is well-nigh impossible, particularly at the vast cosmic distances at which Kepler is forced to do its work. But there’s a way around that problem, and it begins with the fact that all planets are about the same age as the star they orbit; if you know how old the parent sun is, therefore, you know the age of its litter of worlds. Here too, however, there are complications.

EXCLUSIVE: YouTube Finally Goes Hollywood With New Movies on Demand Service (Updated)

Posted by Ram Kumar Shrestha on April 26, 2011

 

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By Sharon Waxman

YouTube will imminently launch a movie-on-demand service charging users to stream mainstream Hollywood moviesoff the world’s largest video sharing site, TheWrap has learned.

The new service means a full-bore challenge to Apple’s iTunes service – currently the most powerful player in paid video streaming — and a welcome new revenue stream for Hollywood as home entertainment revenues continue their steep decline.

The service may start as early as this week or next, and is expected to be announced soon by YouTube.

Major studios including Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Universal have licensed their movies for the new service, as have numerous independent studios, including Lionsgate and the library-rich Kino Lorber, according to movie executives with knowledge of the deals in place.

YouTube has been laboring to bring all the major Hollywood studios on board before announcing it, according to one executive involved in the deal. But so far Paramount, Fox and Disney have declined to join.

(Update 7:37 p.m. PST) YouTube, which had earlier declined to comment for the story, issued a statement after this story was published, pointing out that it has rented movies for a year, while declining to comment on the broader initiative it is about to launch with the major studios on board. 

“We’ve steadily been adding more and more titles since launching movies for rent on YouTube over a year ago, and now have thousands of titles available,” a spokesperson said. “Outside of that, we don’t comment on rumor or speculation.”

But in fact the video giant has never rented mainstream movies on this scale during the traditional DVD window. The major studios, who were once leery of YouTube, now see it as a potentially lucrative platform.

“We think it will start with VOD, but broaden to include sell-through over time,” said a senior executive at one Hollywood studio that has signed the deal with YouTube. “We are pretty excited because we are happy to see new entrants come in transactionally rather than a subscription model.”

Read also: Mark Cuban: YouTube Can Change the World, But It Can’t Make Money Streaming Movies

The service is the biggest studio VOD deal since all the major studios signed on to Apple’s iTunes rental service in January 2008. Fox, Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Sony, MGM, Lionsgate and New Line were all on board for that initiative. Apple charged as low as $2.99 rental fee for that service.

It was not clear what YouTube would charge. But it means the site’s 130 million monthly users will be able to pay to watch movies as they come out into the DVD market; it is the first serious foray by the Google-owned company into mainstream movies and charging money for video.

Hollywood studios have long struggled to find a way to marry their high quality content – for which they want to be paid – with the largest video site in the world best known for cats peeing on toilets.

Paramount and Fox have declined to be part of the service at this time, according to knowledgeable executives. Disney’s status is still unclear, and a spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.

For movie and YouTube fans, the service means that movies they often see at the cineplex will be available on the same day and date as they can be rented at video stores or iTunes, far ahead of other subscription streaming services such as Netflix.

“What’s really good about their approach is rather than another subscription offering, they’re going into a fresh area where there has been fewer leaps forward,” said the studio executive.

The executive said that Hollywood studios were excited by having a tech giant like Google involved in a new streaming service, with the hope that the parent company would develop new technologies to encourage sell-through purchases of movies that could be securely stored in a digital locker.

At a seminar this month where Google executives discussed their strategy for movie advertising, Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s vice president of TV and film entertainment hinted at a plan in the offing.

“Imagine if you had a video store on YouTube, where you could rent or buy the movie without being sent elsewhere,” he said.

But when asked about specific plans for streaming movies, Kyncl said: “Obviously, there are things coming, but we can’t talk about them yet.”

YouTube has been flirting with Hollywood for several years, and has struggled to figure out how to stream movies in concert with the major studios for at least the last two years.

The shift that led to the culmination of this deal seems to be the arrival of Kyncl from Netflix in September 2010, where he ran content acquisition. He brought on board two Paramount executives, Alex Carloss and Malik Ducard, recently let go from that studio’s digital team in an executive reshuffle.

@therap.com

Quantum probe beats Heisenberg limit

A group of physicists in Spain has shown how to make a quantum measurement that overcomes a limit related to Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The researchers confirmed a theoretical prediction of how to beat the Heisenberg limit by using interacting photons to measure atomic spin, and they say that their approach could lead to more sensitive searches for the ripples in space–time known as gravitational waves and perhaps also to improved brain imaging.

Test tube sperm grown in lab could cure male infertility

Sperm has been grown in a test tube for the first time in a “small but important step” towards curing male infertility, a study claims.

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

Researchers removed stem cells and cultured sperm in the laboratory in a breakthrough that could lead to new

This is human sperm (spermatozoa), the male sex cells Photo: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / BARCROFT MEDIA

treatments and drugs for men currently unable to have children.

The development raises hopes that young boys undergoing chemotherapy for testicular cancer will still be able to father their own children when they grow up.

The sperm was produced in a test-tube from the cells taken from a newborn mouse testicles and then injected into eggs to produce to twelve healthy babies, four male and eight female, which were all fertile and able to reproduce themselves in adulthood.

Dr Takehiko Ogawa, an urologist at Yokohama City University in Japan, said the production of sperm in the testes is one of the most complex processes in the body.

It has never been reproduced in a test tube in mammals before.

Telescope team plans to track the whole sky

A European project that will allow astrophysical events to be tracked across the whole sky for the first time has begun

Testbed: the KAT-7 telescopes in South Africa

and is already recruiting its personnel. Funded with €3m from the European Research Council over the next five years, the 4 Pi Sky project will use a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes to study rare events such as colliding neutron stars and exploding supernovae.

4 Pi Sky combines three separate terrestrial telescopes systems. One is the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), consisting of some 10,000 dipole antennas across Europe, that will be used to track objects at a frequency range of about 30–240 MHz. The others are the MeerKAT array in South Africa and the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) in Western Australia, which will be used to track phenomena at higher frequencies of about 1 GHz.

Linking telescopes

When combined, the telescopes will be able to monitor the whole sky, as scientists will be able to link from telescope to telescope to follow transient phenomena as the Earth rotates. Using this technique, researchers are expected to find and track thousands of new events that would have previously been missed.

“This is really a project that will try and co-ordinate what we can do with these telescopes in terms of optimizing their performance and getting the software up and running,” says Rob Fender, an astronomer at the University of Southampton in the UK, who is leader of the 4 Pi Sky project. He adds that it will take at least another three years until all three telescopes come online and are fully networked due to the construction timelines for MeerKAT and ASKA. Part of the network, however, will be working on LOFAR this year.

Scientists working on thought-controlled vehicles

We covered a news story last week about how scientists have being working on techniques to power wheel chairs and prosthetic limbs using the power of thought. But a team of researchers at a German university are taking this one step further by developing technology that enables you to power a vehicle instead.

The project is known as BrainDriver and so far they have been able to control a car’s standard functions, such as braking, steering and throttle control using the power of the mind. Interestingly they originally used eye-tracking as a possible interface to BrainDriver which was based on existing iPad and iPhone technology.

In order for the car to be controlled the researchers had to first start off by recording brain activity using a neuroheadset – a device which was originally intended for gaming. The user then goes through several training cycles to record brain functions and reactions which can then be used by BrainDriver to power the Volkswagen Passat test vehicle.

Big Bang versus Little Pop

Each government on our planet today is desperate to get/grab anything that belongs to the “unexplained”, to UFOs, or to any technological or historical secrets. Fact is, “desperate” is not the right word; they are capable of ANYTHING to get those artifacts, secrets, whatever. The idea is, each country/nation strives to achieve “technological supremacy” and “absolute power”. From social-psychology point of view, that behavior is understandable. The troublesome aspect is the official propaganda: there are no unexplained things, there are no UFOs, and technological/historical secrets do not exist; everything is just ordinary and normal.Well, that “natural” social mentality is due to a very low “real average social intelligence” existing today in our societies, everywhere. It is possible in about 100 years from this time one country on our planet will achieve that “total technological supremacy”, therefore it will enslave all other nations. If that moment will become reality, people are going to discover that technological power is not sufficient; better said, technological power is far from anything. If you have little patience, you may discover what is way, way more powerful and important than technology is in these Amazing Articles in in our SF books. As a note, we do not try to sell anything to anyone. If you want to learn, that is just fine with us, and we can help; if you like to “play”, our advice to you is, do it as hard as you can, forever! * It is not easy to decide on the most interesting topic for a first article. Anyway, after many painful sacrifices, we settled for the birth of our Universe: the great Big Bang itself! The Big-Bang theory started spreading among the scientists at the beginning of the twentieth century, after the English translation of the Sanskrit Veda poems was published in 1899.

The “Big Bang” theory says: the Universe has a cyclic evolution. It starts with a single, invisible point–named a “singularity” by some scientists–which contains the entire mass of the Universe, including space and time. Next, the little invisible point explodes with a “Big Bang”, then matter, space, and time appear as we know them. Of course, matter appears as basic atomic particles/components at first, and they need to group themselves together to form atoms, molecules, stars, planetary systems, and in the end the galaxies. The Universe continues to expand for billions of years, then it will stop its motion; next, it will start collapsing. The collapsing of the Universe continues until a new singularity point is formed, and a new cycle is “bound” to start again. The Big Bang theory was explained the first time after the Indian Veda poems were translated and published in 1899. Please note this: that translation was performed according to our mechanical capacity of understanding the Universe. In other words, we understand the science of the Universe only if it is explained “mechanically”. This is our actual level of Civilization: mechanical! In reality, things are far from being mechanical in nature, and we have no doubt this aspect is perfectly well documented in the original Veda poems. However, the problem is, we cannot understand what is not mechanical in nature. We are certain the first translators have added little “mechanical touch” to the entire picture, in order to make some sense out of those incredibly advanced ideas. Note that the Big-Bang theory does not hold water, and many scientists know it very well. Today, when a new star is born, there is no Bang at all. Fact is, the wave sounds do not travel through vacuum–they cannot do it. Therefore, why should it be such a Big Bang the very first time when there was actually no space/vacuum at all? Now, if it was a Big Bang or not, this is totally not important. However, this absurd naming used reflects perfectly well our actual capacity to understand reality. A “Big Bang” suggests a mechanical explosion, and this “mechanical picture” makes perfect sense to most of us.

Most of the scientists agree today with the Big Bang theory. Even more, famous ancient texts as are Ramayana and Mahabharata prove to us that our ancestors, fine Ladies and Gentlemen, were well familiar with the Big Bang theory 7000 .. 10000 years ago! Now, the real beauty about this Big Bang is, it is not quite clear regarding particular aspects, and that is very good news, because it leaves plenty of room for further investigations. One thing is certain: there was an initial moment in time when our Universe appeared (that is the Big Bang moment), and we named it, Time Zero. Before Time Zero, some scientists consider there was NOTHING, meaning, no matter, no space, and no time. Other scientists say, the entire mass of the Universe was concentrated in a single, invisible point named–poetically only, without any scientific fundament–a singularity. To us, the NOTHING hypothesis makes far more sense. Further form Time Zero, there is a nice sequence of events dealing with the formation of the first quarks, the first atoms and, in the end, with the formation of the galaxies themselves. That sequence of events is very … “scientific”, except it doesn’t work. A quick search on the Internet for “Universe, history” is going to reveal many thorny aspects regarding the moments before and after Big Bang in general and, in particular, about the formation of galaxies, planetary systems, etc. It is very interesting to note that before Time Zero we had a big bunch of NOTHING which decided suddenly to explode in a Big Bang. We do not deny there was absolutely NOTHING before Time Zero–that is, nothing from our Atomic Universe–but we are not quite certain it was such a Big Bang afterwards. Why not a first, tiny, Little Pop of a single quark, or even of one hydrogen proton? Of course, after that first, timid pop of matter, many others could be heard/seen popping/flourishing up like … popcorns!

The most important aspect, however, is the initial state: the NOTHING itself. Yes, there was no matter, no space, and no time, but that is only from our point of view, from this side of the now existing Atomic Universe. In the other side, the Subatomic Universe, time was, and it has always been, in its rightful place, and the Certitude Factors were preparing for that first, Little Pop of matter. After Time Zero, our Atomic Universe came into existence with matter, space, and with its own time. Following the Little Pop of atomic matter, the Subatomic Primary Energies led to the formation and expansion of what would later became the “buds” of the incredibly beautiful Galaxies we have today.At NASA website you can find few pictures of galaxies. No doubt about it, there is nothing more beautiful in the Universe than the image of some galaxies; please take a look at the Sombrero Galaxy.

The Subatomic is the one responsible for many mysteries connected to the formation of galaxies, planetary systems, and to strange astronomical objects as are pulsars, neutron stars, black holes, etc. Now, what is that intriguing Subatomic? The most advanced theories known officially today regarding the Subatomic (this is the next level from quark further down) are the String Theory and the M Theory. Both theories are very interesting, developed from complex, advanced mathematical models but, again, they are not quite consistent.As a note only, Einstein didn’t agree with the Big Bang Theory: he considered the Universe is a static system. Wow, a static system! That is stunningly perplexing since it came from someone who has postulated the Theory of Relativity! Anyway, there are many other theories regarding the birth of the Universe, although none is as popular as the Big Bang. The scenario presented graphically in this page is based on few theories from MERCY, and THREE STORIES. For details, please read our books. Source: http://www.corollarytheorems.com