Comenta aí Jr!




Este é o novo sistema solar: São 12 os planetas do nosso sistema solar: 8 "classicos" - Mercúrio, Terra Marte, Venus, Júpiter, Saturno, Urano e Netuno; 3 "Plutons" - uma nova categoria que engloba o que define a categoria: Plutão, Charon e 2003 UB313; e Ceres.
A decisão veio da União Astronômica Internacional, em sua reunião anual, que começou dia 14 e se encerra no dia 25 deste mês.
Mais detalhes http://www.iau2006.org/mirror/www.iau.org/iau0601/iau0601_release.html

Retirado de: O Velho (http://www.ovelho.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=40035)

Opa, fiz minha as palavras dum outro mano sobre isso lá no tópico de "Ciência". Copio aqui para facilitar o trabalho, e não ter que ir lá para ler
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Tirado daqui, http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/08/16/the-cash-value-of-astronomical-ideas/, com seus respectivos links que nãoaparecem aqui.

The Cash Value of Astronomical Ideas
Sean at 4:13 pm, August 16th, 2006

So you may have heard that Pluto is still a planet, and indeed we have a few new ones as well! Phil Plait, Rob Knop, Clifford, and Steinn have all weighed in. Hey, it’s on the front page of the New York Times, above the fold!

The problem is that Pluto is kind of small, and far away. Those aren’t problems by themselves, but there are lots of similar-sized objects that are also out beyond Neptune, in the Kuiper Belt. As we discover more and more, should they all count as planets? And if not, shouldn’t Pluto be demoted? Nobody wants to lose Pluto among the family of planets — rumors to that effect were previously enough to inspire classrooms around the globe to write pleading letters to the astronomical powers that be, begging them not to discard the plucky ninth planet. But it’s really hard to come up with some objective criteria of planet-ness that would include the canonical nine but not open the doors to all sorts of unwanted interlopers. Now the Planet Definition Committee of the International Astronomical Union has proposed a new definition:

1) A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.

It turns out that, by this proposed definition, there are twelve planets — not just the usual nine, but also Ceres (the largest asteroid, between Mars and Jupiter), and also Charon (Pluto’s moon, but far enough away that apparently it doesn’t count as a “satellite,” but as a double-planet), and UB313, a faraway rock that is even bigger than Pluto. I’m not sure why anyone thinks this is an improvement.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter. Most everyone who writes about it admits that it doesn’t matter, before launching into a passionate defense of what they think the real definition should be. But, seriously: it really doesn’t matter. We are not doing science, or learning anything about the universe here. We’re just making up a definition, and we’re doing so solely for our own convenience. There is no pre-existing Platonic nature of “planet-ness” located out there in the world, which we are trying to discover so that we may bring our nomenclature in line with it. We are not discovering anything new about nature, nor even bringing any reality into existence by our choices.

The Pragmatists figured this out long ago: we get to choose the definition to be whatever we want, and the best criterion by which to make that choice is whatever is most useful and convenient for our purposes. But people have some deep-seated desire to believe that our words should be brought in line with objective criteria, even if it’s dramatically inconvenient. (These are the same people, presumably, who think that spelling reform would be really cool.) But as Rob says, there is no physically reasonable definition that would let us stick with nine planets. That’s okay! We have every right to define “planet” to mean “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, plus whatever other large rocky bodies we find orbiting other stars.” Or whatever else we want. It’s completely up to us.

So we really shouldn’t have to tear up a century’s worth of textbooks and illustrations, and start trying to figure out when the shape of some particular body is governed by hydrostatic equilibrium, just to pat ourselves on the back for obeying “physically reasonable” definitions. But it looks like that’s what the IAU Planet Definition Committee wants us to do. Of course that’s what you’d expect a Planet Definition Committee to suggest; otherwise why would we need a Planet Definition Committee?
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Em resumo, concordo plenamente: só uma definição de uns manos "veinhos" que não tem muito o que fazer hahahahahahahah No fim, não descobrimos nada de novo.

Isso sim é um resultado novo, embora mas que esperado. DM is really out there! Fresquinho, fresquinho, menos de 3h do press-release

1E 0657-56: NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/1e0657/



Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.; Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI; Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.
JPEG (479 kb) Tiff (9.2 MB) PS (2.8 MB)

This composite image shows the galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56, also known as the "bullet cluster." This cluster was formed after the collision of two large clusters of galaxies, the most energetic event known in the universe since the Big Bang.

Gravitational Lensing Explanation

Hot gas detected by Chandra in X-rays is seen as two pink clumps in the image and contains most of the "normal," or baryonic, matter in the two clusters. The bullet-shaped clump on the right is the hot gas from one cluster, which passed through the hot gas from the other larger cluster during the collision. An optical image from Magellan and the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxies in orange and white. The blue areas in this image show where astronomers find most of the mass in the clusters. The concentration of mass is determined using the effect of so-called gravitational lensing, where light from the distant objects is distorted by intervening matter. Most of the matter in the clusters (blue) is clearly separate from the normal matter (pink), giving direct evidence that nearly all of the matter in the clusters is dark.

Animation of Cluster Collision

The hot gas in each cluster was slowed by a drag force, similar to air resistance, during the collision. In contrast, the dark matter was not slowed by the impact because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity. Therefore, during the collision the dark matter clumps from the two clusters moved ahead of the hot gas, producing the separation of the dark and normal matter seen in the image. If hot gas was the most massive component in the clusters, as proposed by alternative theories of gravity, such an effect would not be seen. Instead, this result shows that dark matter is required.

Fast Facts for 1E 0657-56:

Credit
X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/M.Markevitch et al.;
Optical: NASA/STScI;
Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.;
Lensing Map: NASA/STScI; ESO WFI;
Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.
Scale Image is 7.5 x 5.4 arcmin
Category Groups & Clusters of Galaxies
Coordinates (J2000) RA 06h 58m 19.85s | Dec -55' 56" 29.40º
Constellation Carina
Observation Dates 2004: Aug 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 24, 25
Observation Time 140 hours
Obs. IDs 5355-58, 5361, 4984-86
Color Code
Energy (X-ray: Pink; Optical: White/Orange; Lensing Map: Blue)
Instrument ACIS
Also Known As The Bullet Cluster
Distance Estimate About 3.4 billion light years
Release Date August 21, 2006

Notícia bem explicada! O original, com links e todo, se encontra em http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/08/21/dark-matter-exists/

Uma vez que nunca vou chegar aos 2000 posts como o Mends, vou começar a celebração pelo número 500!!, (no final dos posts)
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Dark Matter Exists
Sean at 11:52 am, August 21st, 2006

The great accomplishment of late-twentieth-century cosmology was putting together a complete inventory of the universe. We can tell a story that fits all the known data, in which ordinary matter (every particle ever detected in any experiment) constitutes only about 5% of the energy of the universe, with 25% being dark matter and 70% being dark energy. The challenge for early-twenty-first-century cosmology will actually be to understand the nature of these mysterious dark components. A beautiful new result illuminating (if you will) the dark matter in galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 is an important step in this direction. (Here’s the press release, and an article in the Chandra Chronicles.)

A prerequisite to understanding the dark sector is to make sure we are on the right track. Can we be sure that we haven’t been fooled into believing in dark matter and dark energy? After all, we only infer their existence from detecting their gravitational fields; stronger-than-expected gravity in galaxies and clusters leads us to posit dark matter, while the acceleration of the universe (and the overall geometry of space) leads us to posit dark energy. Could it perhaps be that gravity is modified on the enormous distance scales characteristic of these phenomena? Einstein’s general theory of relativity does a great job of accounting for the behavior of gravity in the Solar System and astrophysical systems like the binary pulsar, but might it be breaking down over larger distances?

A departure from general relativity on very large scales isn’t what one would expect on general principles. In most physical theories that we know and love, modifications are expected to arise on small scales (higher energies), while larger scales should behave themselves. But, we have to keep an open mind — in principle, it’s absolutely possible that gravity could be modified, and it’s worth taking seriously.

Furthermore, it would be really cool. Personally, I would prefer to explain cosmological dynamics using modified gravity instead of dark matter and dark energy, just because it would tell us something qualitatively different about how physics works. (And Vera Rubin agrees.) We would all love to out-Einstein Einstein by coming up with a better theory of gravity. But our job isn’t to express preferences, it’s to suggest hypotheses and then go out and test them.

The problem is, how do you test an idea as vague as “modifying general relativity”? You can imagine testing specific proposals for how gravity should be modified, like Milgrom’s MOND, but in more general terms we might worry that any observations could be explained by some modification of gravity.

But it’s not quite so bad — there are reasonable features that any respectable modification of general relativity ought to have. Specifically, we expect that the gravitational force should point in the direction of its source, not off at some bizarrely skewed angle. So if we imagine doing away with dark matter, we can safely predict that gravity always be pointing in the direction of the ordinary matter. That’s interesting but not immediately helpful, since it’s natural to expect that the ordinary matter and dark matter cluster in the same locations; even if there is dark matter, it’s no surprise to find the gravitational field pointing toward the visible matter as well.

What we really want is to take a big cluster of galaxies and simply sweep away all of the ordinary matter. Dark matter, by hypothesis, doesn’t interact directly with ordinary matter, so we can imagine moving the ordinary stuff while leaving the dark stuff behind. If we then check back and determine where the gravity is, it should be pointing either at the left-behind dark matter (if there is such a thing) or still at the ordinary matter (if not).

Happily, the universe has done exactly this for us. In the Bullet Cluster, more formally known as 1E 0657-56, we actually find two clusters of galaxies that have (relatively) recently passed right through each other. It turns out that the large majority (about 90%) of ordinary matter in a cluster is not in the galaxies themselves, but in hot X-ray emitting intergalactic gas. As the two clusters passed through each other, the hot gas in each smacked into the gas in the other, while the individual galaxies and the dark matter (presumed to be collisionless) passed right through. Here’s an mpeg animation of what we think happened. As hinted at in last week’s NASA media advisory, astrophysicists led by Doug Clowe (Arizona) and Maxim Markevitch (CfA) have now compared images of the gas obtained by the Chandra X-ray telescope to “maps” of the gravitational field deduced from weak lensing observations. Their paper is available here in pdf, and will appear on astro-ph this evening. And the answer is: there’s definitely dark matter there!

Despite the super-secret embargoed nature of this result, enough hints were given in the media advisory and elsewhere on the web that certain scientific sleuths were basically able to figure out what was going on. But they didn’t have access to the best part: pictures!

Here is 1E 0657-56 in all its glory, or at least some of it’s glory — this is the optical image, in which you can see the actual galaxies.

1e0657 optical


With some imagination it shouldn’t be too hard to make out the two separate concentrations of galaxies, a larger one on the left and a smaller one on the right. These are pretty clearly clusters, but you can take redshifts to verify that they’re all really at the same location in the universe, not just a random superposition of galaxies at very different distances. Even better, you can map out the gravitational fields of the clusters, using weak gravitational lensing. That is, you take very precise pictures of galaxies that are in the background of these clusters. The images of the background galaxies are gently distorted by the gravitational field of the clusters. The distortion is so gentle that you could never tell it was there if you only looked at one galaxy; but with more than a hundred galaxies, you begin to notice that the images are systematically aligned, characteristic of passing through a coherent gravitational lens. From these distortions it’s possible to work backwards and ask “what kind of mass concentration could have created such a gravitational lens?” Here’s the answer, superimposed on the optical image.

1e0657 optical and dark matter



It’s about what you would expect: the dark matter is concentrated in the same regions as the galaxies themselves. But we can separately make X-ray observations to map out the hot gas, which constitutes most of the ordinary (baryonic) matter in the cluster. Here’s what we see.

1e6057 optical and x-ray



This is why it’s the “Bullet” cluster — the bullet-shaped region on the right is a shock front. These two clusters have passed right through each other, creating an incredibly energetic collision between the gas in each of them. The fact that the “bullet” is so sharply defined indicates that the clusters are moving essentially perpendicular to our line of sight.

This collision has done exactly what we want — it’s swept out the ordinary matter from the clusters, displacing it with respect to the dark matter (and the galaxies, which act as collisionless particles for these purposes). You can see it directly by superimposing the weak-lensing map and the Chandra X-ray image.

1e6057 optical, dark matter, and x-ray


Clicking on each of these images leads to a higher-resolution version. If you have a tabbed browser, the real fun is opening each of the images in a separate tab and clicking back and forth. The gravitational field, as reconstructed from lensing observations, is not pointing toward the ordinary matter. That’s exactly what you’d expect if you believed in dark matter, but makes no sense from the perspective of modified gravity. If these pictures don’t convince you that dark matter exists, I don’t know what will.

So is this the long-anticipated (in certain circles) end of MOND? What need do we have for modified gravity if there clearly is dark matter? Truth is, it was already very difficult to explain the dynamics of clusters (as opposed to individual galaxies) in terms of MOND without invoking anything but ordinary matter. Even MOND partisans generally agree that some form of dark matter is necessary to account for cluster dynamics and cosmology. It’s certainly conceivable that we are faced with both modified gravity and dark matter. If the dark matter is sufficiently “warm,” it might fail to accumulate in galaxies, but still be important for clusters. Needless to say, the picture begins to become somewhat baroque and unattractive. But the point is not whether or not MOND remains interesting; after all, someone else might come up with a different theory of modified gravity tomorrow that can fit both galaxies and clusters. The point is that, independently of any specific model of modified gravity, we now know that there definitely is dark matter out there. It will always be possible that some sort of modification of gravity lurks just below our threshold of detection; but now we have established beyond reasonable doubt that we need a substantial amount of dark matter to explain cosmological dynamics.

That’s huge news for physicists. Theorists now know what to think about (particle-physics models of dark matter) and experimentalists know what to look for (direct and indirect detection of dark matter particles, production of dark matter candidates at accelerators). The dark matter isn’t just ordinary matter that’s not shining; limits from primordial nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background imply a strict upper bound on the amount of ordinary matter, and it’s not nearly enough to account for all the matter we need. This new result doesn’t tell us which particle the new dark matter is, but it confirms that there is such a particle. We’re definitely making progress on the crucial project of understanding the inventory of the universe.

What about dark energy? The characteristic features of dark energy are that it is smooth (spread evenly throughout space) and persistent (evolving slowly, if at all, with time). In particular, dark energy doesn’t accumulate in dense regions such as galaxies or clusters — it’s the same everywhere. So these observations don’t tell us anything directly about the nature of the 70% of the universe that is purportedly in this ultra-exotic component. In fact we know rather less about dark energy than we do about dark matter, so we have more freedom to speculate. It’s still quite possible that the acceleration of the universe can be explained by modifying gravity rather than invoking a mysterious new dark component. One of our next tasks, then, is obviously to come up with experiments that might distinguish between dark energy and modified gravity — and some of us are doing our best. Stay tuned, as darkness gradually encroaches upon our universe, and Einstein continues to have the last laugh.

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477 - The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1977
Ilya Prigogine "for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures"

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1977/

Mas que post cumpriiiiddooo, seu dotô. Um resumo com a metade de linhas seria o que está lá no Ciência?

Sim, mas com muito menos charme, e sem entender a física do que esta´acontecendo...

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478 - The Nobel Prize in Physics 1978
Arno Allan Penzias e Robert Woodrow Wilson "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation"

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1978/

Já aviso que não tenho nada a ver com isso... Agora é oficial, são 8 ao invés de 12... Só mostra que esses caras deveriam era estar visitando Praga

Pluto loses status as a planet
Astronomers meeting in the Czech capital have voted to strip Pluto of its status as a planet.

About 2,500 experts were in Prague for the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) general assembly.

The scientists rejected a proposal that would have retained Pluto as a planet and brought three other objects into the cosmic club.

Pluto has been considered a planet since its discovery in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh.

The ninth planet will now effectively be airbrushed out of school and university textbooks.

"The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune," said the IAU resolution, which was passed following a week of stormy debate.

The initial proposal put before the IAU to raise the number of planets in the Solar System to 12 - adding the asteroid Ceres, Pluto's "moon" Charon and the distant object known as 2003 UB313 - met with opposition.

Robin Catchpole, of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK, told the BBC News website: "My own personal opinion was to leave things as they were; I met Clyde Tombaugh and thought how nice it was to shake hands with someone who had discovered a planet.

"But since the IAU brought out the proposal for new planets I had been against it - it was going to be very confusing. The best of the alternatives was to leave the major planets as they are and then demote Pluto. So I think this is a far superior situation."

Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society in California, US, commented: "The classification doesn't matter. Pluto - and all Solar System objects - are mysterious and exciting new worlds that need to be explored and better understood."

Dwarf planet

Amid dramatic scenes which saw astronomers waving yellow ballot papers in the air, the IAU meeting voted in criteria that define the exact nature of a "planet".

They agreed that to qualify, a celestial body must be in orbit around a star while not itself being a star. It also must be large enough in mass "for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit."

Pluto was automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

It will now join a new category of "dwarf planets".

Pluto's status has been contested for many years as it is further away and considerably smaller than the eight other "traditional" planets in our Solar System.

Its orbit around the Sun is also highly inclined to the plane of those big planets.

In addition, since the early 1990s, astronomers have found several objects of comparable size to Pluto in an outer region of the Solar System called the Kuiper Belt.

Some astronomers have long argued that Pluto belongs with this population of small, icy worlds.

Allowances were once made for Pluto on account of its size. At just 2,360km (1,467 miles) across, Pluto is smaller even than some moons in the Solar System. But until recently, it was still the biggest known object in the Kuiper Belt.

That changed with the discovery of 2003 UB313 by Professor Mike Brown and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). After being measured with the Hubble Space Telescope, it was shown to be some 3,000km (1,864 miles) in diameter, making it larger than Pluto.

Named after the god of the underworld in Roman mythology, Pluto orbits the Sun at an average distance of 5.9 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) taking 247.9 Earth years to complete a single circuit of the Sun.

An unmanned US spacecraft, New Horizons, is due to fly by Pluto and the Kuiper Belt in 2015.
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480 The Nobel Prize in Physics 1980
James Watson Cronin e Val Logsdon Fitch "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons"

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1980/

Rebaixamento de Plutão não altera seu simbolismo em mapas astrais

RICARDO FELTRIN
Editor-chefe da Folha Online

A exclusão de Plutão como planeta do Sistema Solar, decisão anunciada oficialmente hoje pela União Astronômica Internacional, não deve mudar absolutamente em nada o significado, importância ou simbolismo que o planeta (sic) tem na interpretação de mapas astrológicos. Queiram os cientistas ou não, Plutão vai continuar a ser incluído e analisado por qualquer astrólogo coerente. E a interferência do planeta, suas conjunções, quadraturas e oposições com outros astros continuarão a ser alvo de interesse astrológico.

Em primeiro lugar, cabe lembrar que existem dezenas de linhas de interpretação dentro da astrologia, e que nenhuma delas pode ser considerada ciência (pelos acadêmicos) ou dona da verdade. No máximo, a construção e a interpretação de um mapa astral só pode ser considerada uma diversão, que, aliás, milhares de pessoas praticam (ou pagam para alguém praticar) todos os dias.

Assim como o Plutão real, o astrológico também está envolto em mistério e, assim como sua distância astronômica em relação ao Sol, o simbólico Plutão astral também demora a demonstrar seus efeitos na vida das pessoas (que acreditam em mapas astrais).

Plutão é o último dos chamados planetas exteriores. São exteriores os planetas cujas órbitas estão aquém da da Terra (Marte, mas em escala menor, Júpiter, Saturno, Urano, Netuno e Plutão são exteriores).

Na casa em que cada um desses planetas estiver no mapa astral de uma pessoa, lá estará sua influência predominante. Por exemplo, quem tem Saturno na casa 7 (a casa do relacionamento) supostamente terá dificuldades em manter namoro ou casamento por muito tempo. Já quem tem Netuno na casa 1 (o Eu, o Ego) sugere que essa pessoa poderá ter propensão ao uso de drogas ou à religiosidade exacerbada. Se aparece um Marte na casa 8 (a da Morte ou Transformação), o indivíduo simbolicamente gosta de correr riscos. Se possui Júpiter na casa 1, é sério candidato a ser um sortudo a vida toda, ganhar em loterias ou receber heranças inesperadas.

E o nosso Plutãozinho? Bem, Plutão está no mapa astral de todas as pessoas. Sua influência é muito duradoura astrologicamente, graças ao tempo que ele gasta para dar uma órbita completa no Sol. Então pode-se dizer que a influência de Plutão num mapa é para a vida toda.

Se você tem Plutão na casa 5 (finanças), há risco de um dia sofrer um grande terremoto nas suas contas bancárias --provavelmente não sobrará nada se ainda por cima ele estiver retrógrado. Se ele estiver na casa 6 (Saúde) é uma indicação de suposta doença crônica. Mas lembre-se que essas indicações podem ser agravadas ou reduzidas de acordo com os outros aspectos que os outros planetas estão fazendo nessas casas também. O mapa é um conjunto. Um planetinha só não faz verão.

Portanto calma, todos que têm Plutão em casas astrológicas. Lembrem que tudo isso é apenas um simbolismo, uma forma de interpretar o significado esotérico de uma determinada disposição de planetas em um mapa celeste. E, repetindo, não se trata de uma ciência oficial, e sua interpretação muito menos é exata, embora milhares de astrólogos no mundo digam o contrário e fiquem nervosos com quem não concorda com eles.

O que chama a atenção em tudo isso é o fato de Plutão ser um planeta cujo simbolismo remete à morte, aos terremotos, aos grandes cataclismas ou às grandes transformações da humanidade.

Ele sempre age subterraneamente, em silêncio e então, de repente, desponta no mundo mudando toda uma era, chacoalhando a vida dos indivíduos, mudando as instituições e o establishment. E muda tudo na marra. Na pancada.

Pode-se dizer que Plutão está sentindo o próprio gostinho de seu simbolismo misterioso e subreptício. Acaba de ser desprezado e rebaixado pelos cientistas sem aviso prévio. Não é mais um planeta, declararam. Esperamos agora que ele não se vingue da humanidade.

RICARDO FELTRIN, 43, estuda astrologia desde os 16 anos.

http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=11570&display=photoshop#entries

Pro Danilo... Hilário, uns photoshops sobre Plutão.





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487 The Nobel Prize in Physics 1987
bla, bla, bla, por algo que ver com supercondutividade

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/1987.html[/img]

Hahaha...

É fogo, hein, é só mandar um brasileiro pro espaço que um planeta some.

hahahaha... Muito boa!!

Objeto misterioso adia volta da Atlantis


A Nasa, a agência espacial americana, adiou para amanhã a aterrissagem da nave Atlantis. Técnicos descobriram um objeto misterioso entre o ônibus espacial e a Terra, deslocando-se quase na mesma velocidade da nave. 'Temos de prestar mais atenção do que o habitual para não batermos', brincou o engenheiro de vôo da Estação Espacial Internacional (ISS), Jeffrey Williams. Os astronautas da Atlantis instalaram na ISS um novo conjunto de painéis solares que duplicarão o fornecimento de energia no módulo. EFE

So´ podemos recorrer a eles...

Cientistas acham 2 planetas quentes fora do sistema solar

AFP

Foram identificados dois novos planetas fora do sistema solar, anunciou o Instituto de Astrofísica de Paris. Wasp-1b está a mil anos-luz da Terra, na constelação de Andrômeda; e Wasp-2b, a 500 mil anos-luz, na constelação Delphinus.

São planetas gigantes gasosos, similares a Júpiter. Giram em torno de sua estrela em períodos de 2,5 e 2,2 dias, respectivamente. Júpiter demora 12 anos para dar a volta pelo Sol.

A proximidade põe Wasp-1b e Wasp-2b na categoria dos 'Jupíteres quentes' - planetas grandes que orbitam muito perto da estrela central. A temperatura dos planetas recém-descobertos deve chegar a 1.800°C.

Os planetas foram identificados graças à combinação de duas potentes ferramentas: o sistema britânico SuperWasp e o novo espectrógrafo do observatório francês de Haute-Provence.