Found: Firm place to stand outside solar system (AP, Yahoo)

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer – Wed Sep 16, 10:08 am ET

WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand — if only it weren't so broiling hot.

As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.

Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs asolid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.

"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun."

So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days.

"It's hot, they're calling it the lava planet," Hatzes said.

This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented Wednesday morning. The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It's in our general neighborhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

Four planets in our solar system are rocky: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

In addition, the planet is about as close to Earth in size as any other planet found outside our solar system. Its radius is only one-and-a-half times bigger than Earth's and it has a mass about five times the Earth's.

Now that another rocky planet has been found so close to its own star, it gives scientists more confidence that they'll find more Earth-like planets farther away, where the conditions could be more favorable to life, Boss said.

"The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded universe," Boss said.

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On the Net:

European Southern Observatory: http://www.eso.org/

(This version CORRECTS the spelling of name of observatory's director to Artie Hatzes.)

Big Bang Baby

Yes, there is pun intended on the title of this blog. Yes we will talk about the Big Bang Theory later. Yes, I want this new blog website to premiere with a Big Bang! And no, although it's fun, this will not deal with the Big Bang Theory sitcom showing in the United States, we shall cover it later.

I am very much excited about my new website Hoshiyozora (ほしよぞら) which literally translates to Stars Night Sky. This blog is for those people who are curious about astronomy, astrophysics, physics, and of course, although it's very tangent, the study of the Japanese language. This is inline with my upcoming Master's Study in the University of Tsukuba majoring in Theoretical Astrophysics.

We shall insert very basic concepts about the particular theory and I shall be writing in the sources at the end of the blog. I do hope that you enjoy the first of the three blogs that will come out in succession later.

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The Big Bang Theory is a model that describes the initial conditions and the subsequent evolution of the universe we know of today. Many scientific information and observation has come into an agreement that the Big Bang is the most accurate model to explain the universal evolution. 

Before we go into the big scientific/religious mayhem, we shall first describe what the Big Bang Model asserts, look at this figure below:

My apologies for the very small imagery here, but hope when you click it, it will zoom out. Anyways, the initial condition that we have, at a finite time in the past (approximately 13.7 billion years ago, finite but approximate, really funny!) states that the universe we know of today is extremely hot and infinitely dense. Then it went into a superfast inflation, expanding from an atomic size point into that of a grapefruit, this is when TIME BEGAN. You would also see in the figure that the color connotes the temperature scale of the "epoch" of evolution. After the inflation, the universe is filled with subatomic particles, travelling, mingling, and combining with one another. But as this happens, the universe is gradually cooling, allowing subatomic particles to fuse together to form electrons, protons, and neutrons... the basic building block of atoms, however the universe is still to hot to form atoms. In this case, the universe still doesn't shine, and it's just a hot fog! :) The universe gradually cools down allowing the formation of atoms. And with a little Physics or Chemistry, one would know that different combinations of electrons, protons and neutrons constitute the known elements. Continuing the cooling down process (but the temperature is still to hot to handle), gravity makes hydrogen and helium glue together to form galaxies, and smaller clumps form the most primitive stars. Galaxies and stars, by the action of the weakest force in the universe will cluster together, time goes by, and eventually stars die. Some of the them (stars) would have a violent death, spewing out matter into the vast regions of space, triggering innocent gases to form into other stars... and it seems like it goes forever...

The first question is, how would it turn out or what is the end of the universe?

There are basically two models that tries to predict the end. The first one, called HEAT DEATH says that the universe will continue to expand, the stars all eventually die out and the universe becomes so cold. The other one, called BIG CRUNCH stipulates that the universal expansion will eventually end, and will reverse direction. All the galaxies and stars would eventually converge into a single point, reminiscent of the Big Bang Theory, and the process repeats again. 

the big crunch

If you go on to read familiar cosmological books, there are other theories regarding the end of the universe. There are several factors that may contribute to which model would eventually triumphed over the rest. Such factors include, dark matter, dark phantom energy, the Hubble constant, etc. And it should be interesting to find that some of the topics we shall cover later are very much related to this one. For example, (1) The Edge of the Universe, (2) Multiverses: Parallel Worlds, (3) Time Travelling. The geometry of the universe plays a very important role in determining the universal end.

Now, let's deal with the scientifc and religious belief debate. In the Bible, if I'm not mistaken, The Lord God created everything in a span of six days. And the Big Bang Theory (and some other theories subsequent to the BBT) states that the solar system formed about some billion years after the Big Bang Theory. My curious students would ask me which one I think is true, and I would always answer that maybe both of them are factual. I believe that the Big Bang Theory and the book of Genesis can be reconciled. Although I am not completely certain about the length of time as declared in the Bible, because it may be metaphorical, they are almost identical.

(1) The universe is said to be in darkness

(2) There was light after darkness (explosion?)

(3) From the sea of darkness rose the Earth (galactic, stellar, planetary formations?)

and so on...

Because humans, like myself, do not, up to this moment in time, have the full grasp of TIME, we can just presume that TIME in the biblical sense is metaphorical... and besides... nothing is IMPOSSIBLE to the Supreme Being.

The striking similarity, as I tell my students, foretells that there must be some link between the Big Bang and the book of Genesis. This strong link, I tell them, can really prove the existence of a supreme Being. And I will conclude the discussion by going back to the scientific part, because I am a science teacher and I am not teaching religion. So I have to pull them back

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It is almost politically correct that we begin this amazing blogsite with the Big Bang Theory, because it tells us the beginning of the universe. This is also appropriate because I shall make the blogs as chronologically arranged as possible. We have the HEAVENLY BODY of the month blog which I will post once a month, we also have lightly conceptualized theories as well as deepearth-dug,  mathematically challenging theories, Japanese language tutorial and some personal experiences. I hope you join me in this journey of discovery and fun! :)

Thanks to Wikipedia, Youtube, Flickr, university websites! :)