Wed, Jun 18 2008
LIFE IS UNIVERSAL #2
[Artist rendering of Super Earths]
Astronomers find 'super Earths' circling a star
WASHINGTON, Associated Press - European astronomers have found a trio of "super-Earths" closely circling a star that astronomers once figured had nothing orbiting it, demonstrating that planets keep popping up in unexpected places.
Monday's announcement is the first time three planets close to Earth's size were found orbiting a single star, said Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz. He was part of the Swiss-French team using the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in the desert in Chile.
The mass of the smallest of these super-Earths is about four times the size of Earth. That may seem like a lot, but they are quite a bit closer in size and likely composition to Earth than our solar system's giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They are much too hot to support life, Queloz said.
Scientists are more interested in the broader implications of the finding: The universe is teeming with far more planets than thought.
Using a new tool to study more than 100 stars once thought to be devoid of planets, the Swiss-French team found that about one-third had planets that are only slightly bigger than Earth.
That's how the star with three super-Earths, 42 light-years away, was spotted. The European team took a second look with a relatively new instrument that measures tiny changes in light wave lengths and is so sensitive that it is precisely positioned and locked in a special room below the observatory in Chile. And the key is kept in Switzerland, scientists say.
The discovery is "really making the case that we live in a crowded universe," said Carnegie Institution of Washington astronomer Alan Boss, who wasn't part of the discovery team. "Planets are out there. They're all over the place."
That means it is easier to make the case for life elsewhere in the universe, both Boss and Queloz said.
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On the Net:
The European Southern Observatory: http://www.eso.org/public/
[Spitzer Telescope image of actual proto solar system]
Wed, Jun 18 2008
LIFE IS UNIVERSAL #1
We may all be space aliens: study
PARIS (AFP) - Genetic material from outer space found in a meteorite in Australia may well have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth, according to a study to be published Sunday.
European and US scientists have proved for the first time that two bits of genetic coding, called nucleobases, contained in the meteor fragment, are truly extraterrestrial.
Previous studies had suggested that the space rocks, which hit Earth some 40 years ago, might have been contaminated upon impact.
Both of the molecules identified, uracil and xanthine, "are present in our DNA and RNA," said lead author Zita Martins, a researcher at Imperial College London.
RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is another key part of the genetic coding that makes up our bodies.
These molecules would also have been essential to the still-mysterious alchemy that somehow gave rise, some four billion years ago, to life itself.
"We know that meteorites very similar to the Murchison meteorite, which is the one we analysed, were delivering the building blocks of life to Earth 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago," Martins told AFP in an interview.
Competing theories suggest that nucleobases were synthesised closer to home, but Martins counters that the atmospheric conditions of early Earth would have rendered that process difficult or impossible.
A team of European and US scientists showed that the two types of molecules in the Australian meteorite contained a heavy form of carbon -- carbon 13 -- which could only have been formed in space.
"We believe early life may have adopted nucleobases from meteoric fragments for use in genetic coding, enabling them to pass on their successful features to subsequent generations," Martins said.
If so, this would have been the start of an evolutionary process leading over billions of years to all the flora and fauna -- including human beings -- in existence today.
The study, published in Earth Planetary Science Letters, also has implications for life on other planets.
"Because meteorities represent leftover materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components of life -- including nucleobases -- could be widespread in the cosmos," said co-author Mark Sephton, also at Imperial College London.
"As more and more of life's raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely," he said.
Uracil is an organic compound found in RNA, where it binds in a genetic base pair with another molecule, adenine.
Xanthine is not directly part of RNA or DNA, but participates in a series of chemical reactions inside the RNA of cells.
The two types of nucleobases and the ratio of light-to-heavy carbon molecules were identified through gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, technologies that were not available during earlier analyses of the now-famous meteorite.
Even so, said Martins, the process was extremely laborious and time-consuming, one reason it had not be carried out up to now by other scientists.Wed, Jun 18 2008
HOW FATASS HAPPENS
Check out this guy. He's lost some weight, but he got his stomach stapled or something and he's gone from 1,235 lbs (!!) to a mere 700 lbs. But he's still crabbing that he's fat. Which he is. And his enablers are still at it, apparently.
Newsflash, tubby - the pictures tell you exactly what the problem is! A whole freaking cake instead of a slice, a full BBQ goat instead of a couple of ribs. Not brain surgery. Although that might be what's actually required.
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