Scientists: Over 160 bn alien planets may exist in Milky Way

AP This 2011 handout photo provided by the European Southern Observatory, shows the Milky Way above the La Silla Observatory.

Alien planets are incredibly common in our own galaxy Milky Way and it may be having as many as 160 billion planets, a six-year-long study has suggested.

According to the study, published in the journal Nature, there are over 100 billion stars in our galaxy and each of them hosts at least 1.6 planets on average, bringing the number of likely alien worlds to more than 160 billion.

And large numbers of these exoplanets are likely to be small and rocky, roughly like Earth, since low—mass planets appear to be much more abundant than large ones, it claimed.

“This statistical study tells us that planets around stars are the rule, rather than the exception,” said study author Arnaud Cassan of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics.

“From now on, we should see our galaxy populated not only with billions of bright stars, but imagine them surrounded by as many hidden extra solar worlds,” Cassan told SPACE.com.

Till date, astronomers have discovered over 700 planets beyond our own solar system, with 2,300 “candidates” found by NASA’s Kepler space telescope awaiting confirmation.

In the new study, the researchers looked at data gathered by a variety of Earth-based telescopes, which scanned millions of stars from 2002 to 2007 for microlensing events.

The team closely analysed about 40 of these events and discovered that three betrayed the presence of an alien planet around a star. One of these planets is a bit more massive than Jupiter, one is comparable to Neptune and the third is a so-called “super-Earth” with a mass about five times that of our home planet.

Considering how perfectly aligned multiple bodies must be to yield an exoplanet detection via microlensing, that’s a pretty impressive haul, researchers said.

The astronomers used all of this data and information about seven additional planets detected by other microlensing efforts, to put a number on their planet-detection efficiency -- and, by extension, the number of alien worlds that may populate the Milky Way.

The team determined that about one-sixth of our galaxy’s stars harbour Jupiter-mass planets, half have Neptune-like worlds, and nearly two-thirds host super-Earths.

And that’s just in the stretch of orbital space from 0.5 to 10 astronomical units -- distance from Earth to the sun -- from each star, the limit of the study’s sensitivity.

“Moreover, we confirm that low-mass planets, such as super-Earths (up to 10 Earths) and Neptune-like planets are much more abundant than giant planets such as Saturn and Jupiter (with estimates that there are six to seven times more low-mass than giant planets),” Cassan said.

Further, according to the researchers’ calculations, every planet in the Milky Way harbours an average of 1.6 planets in the 0.5-10 AU range, which in our solar system corresponds roughly to the swath of space between Venus and Saturn.

Since astronomers estimate that our galaxy contains about 100 billion stars, that works out to at least 160 billion alien planets.

However, the true number of alien worlds may be quite a bit larger than 160 billion, as some planets hug their host stars more closely than 0.5 AU, and others are more far-flung than 10 AU. And a great many likely have no host star at all, the researchers added.

Scottish scientists grow human kidneys suitable for transplants

Health Correspondent SCOTTISH scientists have succeeded in growing kidneys in a laboratory in a breakthrough that could help tackle the tragic shortage of organs for transplant.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh created the organs by manipulating stem cells – early cells which are the building blocks of the body – to form the structure of a kidney.

The scientists then managed to create kidneys which measure just half a centimetre in length – the same size as a kidney in a foetus. They hope the tiny kidneys will be able to grow to maturity after being transplanted into patients' bodies.

The kidneys were grown in the laboratory using a combination of cells from amniotic fluid – the fluid which surrounds all babies in the womb – and animal foetal cells in a breakthrough to be outlined at the city's Science Festival later this month.

The technique holds out the prospect of scientists being able to collect amniotic fluid at birth to be stored until needed at a later date if a patient develops kidney disease.

The patient's own amniotic fluid cells can then be used as the base for creating a new kidney.

Using the patient's own cells will, in theory, also end the problem of rejection that arises when an organ from a deceased donor is used.

Almost 7,000 people in the UK are currently on the waiting list for a new kidney, and demand for the organs is expected to grow as the average life expectancy increases.

read full @ scotsman

Chinese students stealing tech secrets from UK varsities

British industrial designer Sir James Dyson has alleged that Chinese students at the country's universities are stealing scientific and technological secrets and passing them on to their country.

"They (Chinese students) go back home taking that science and technology knowledge with them and then they start competing with us. This is mad, it is madness,'' Dyson, best know for inventing the bagless vacuum cleaner, told the UK's Sunday Times newspaper.

British universities minister David Willetts said he will carefully study the evidence that Dyson has got.

Universities UK chief executive Nicola Dandridge said, "We are very aware this is going on and we are taking it very seriously." Electronic engineering and computer sciences are suspected to be among the two sectors where technology is being stolen. Dyson said many Chinese students continue to do so even after leaving UK. "Bugs are left in PCs so that data continues to be transmitted after the students return home."

via timesofindia

NASA disavows its scientist's claim of alien life

The gaps and stringy fibers in these space rocks sure look like bacteria, and a NASA researcher has caused a stir with claims that they're fossils of alien life. But as NASA found 15 years ago, looks can be deceiving.

Top scientists in different disciplines immediately found pitfalls in a newly published examination of three meteorites that went viral on the Internet over the weekend. NASA and its top scientists disavowed the work by noon Monday.

Biologists said just because it looks as though the holes were made by bacteria doesn't make them fossils of extraterrestrial microbes. The meteorites could be riddled with Earthly contamination. And both astronomers and biologists complained that the study was not truly reviewed by peers.

There are questions about the credentials of the study's author, Richard Hoover. And the work appeared in an online journal that raises eyebrows because even its editor acknowledges it may have to shut down in June and that one reason for publishing the controversial claim was to help find a buyer.

"There's a lot of stuff there, but not a lot of science," said Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, who publicly dissected the paper over the weekend. "I looked at it and shuddered."

The Associated Press talked to a dozen scientists, and none of them agreed with the findings. There was none of the excitement that surrounded a similar claim that NASA announced with fanfare in 1996 — but was forced to back away from later — that a meteorite from Mars found in Antarctica showed evidence of alien life.

"There has been no one in the scientific community, certainly no one in the meteorite analysis community, that has supported these conclusions," NASA Astrobiology Institute Director Carl Pilcher said Monday of the latest work.

Hoover, of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., claims he found fossils that look like remnants of bacteria in a handful of meteorites. His research, published online Friday in the Journal of Cosmology, concludes these must have come from outer space. It is based on three specimens of a rare type of meteorite — thought to come from comets — found in France in 1806 and 1864 and Tanzania in 1938.

Hoover's pictures look like microscopic versions of flattened tubes and tangled strings.

Hoover didn't return phone calls or e-mails from the AP.

Rudy Schild, a Harvard astronomer and editor-in-chief of the journal, said the study was reviewed by scientists, but he wouldn't identify them. Schild said the idea was to garner attention and generate debate, which happened after it was first reported over the weekend by FoxNews.com.

"We thought the purpose of the exercise here is having it released and having it discussed," Schild told the AP. He acknowledged the journal's imminent demise was "a factor in play, but there are other factors as well" in the decision to publish Hoover's research.

The year-and-a-half-old journal champions a disputed theory that life started elsewhere in the universe and was seeded on Earth by asteroids and comets.

Schild said criticisms of Hoover's paper "are legitimate" but that he agrees with Hoover's conclusion.

Other scientists say Hoover, who has worked for NASA in solar physics but now bills himself as an astrobiologist, doesn't have the proper expertise. "Anyone can call himself an astrobiologist. That doesn't make it so," said Pilcher, the astrobiology institute director.

And while Hoover's paper in the journal lists him as a "Ph.D.," NASA's solar physics website does not mention a doctorate. A colleague of Hoover's said he acknowledges that he doesn't have the advanced degree. Schild said someone at the journal — he doesn't know who — may have inadvertently listed Hoover with the doctorate title.

Top planetary scientists, including those who study meteorites, are at a conference in Houston this week and this was the talk — albeit mostly in a can-you-believe-this-stuff way, said Harry "Hap" McSween, one of world's foremost experts in meteorites.

"I don't think anybody accepts this idea," McSween said. "Nobody thinks they are extraterrestrial."

McSween has studied one of the meteorites cited — the one that fell to France in 1864. He said it was in "atrocious" condition at a Paris Museum with noticeable contamination. There was a vein in the rock that hadn't been there in old photographs, a sign of creeping moisture. That makes sense because even NASA moon rocks, hermitically stored, have been contaminated with Earthly microbes, he said.

McSween and other scientists said they had hoped the public would ignore reports about the study, but they didn't. It was on the top of Yahoo News much of Monday.

"It looks like it's kind of viral," McSween said. "It's extraterrestrial life, that's why."

via sify

Scientists solve mystery of disappearing Sunspots

In a major breakthrough, a team of scientists led by Dibyendu Nandi of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, has used a computer model of solar activity to explain how the Sun lost its spots and solar storms for a long period. Sunspots are dark spots on the Sun with strong magnetic activity. The results of the study on the characteristics of the Sun is slated for international release on Thursday in the "Nature" journal and has been praised by NASA as a breakthrough in generating advanced knowledge of sustained good weather in space.

Nasa has scheduled a conference on Thursday involving several international scientists to discuss the results.

Speaking to TOI from Kolkata, Nandi explained the significance of these predictions lie in the fact that these can be used by airline operators while scheduling air traffic, especially over polar routes and also by space agencies in planning missions.

"Did you know that there is weather in space just like weather on Earth? And that dark spots on the Sun's surface called sunspots can affect weather in space and can disrupt flights over the Earth's polar region," Nandi said.

"The shorter, polar routes are preferred by airline operators because less fuel is consumed and predictions of good weather can be used to direct heavier traffic through these remote regions," he said.

source : timesofindia

2-inch Cube that could replace unsightly Cell Towers

They tower over the landscape, sometimes disguised in a way that does not fool anyone.

Big trees that look so fake, they are derided as "Frankenpines." Flagpoles that soar higher than any flag would warrant. Or unadorned towers that offer absolutely no pretense as to their purpose.

But a day could soon come when those sky-high, unsightly cell phone towers that litter the countryside may be replaced with something no bigger than a Rubik’s cube.

Called the lightRadio cube, the new device developed by Bell Labs in Murray Hill is generating major buzz by cell phone carriers around the world.

"The lightRadio could radically transform the model for wireless networks and could actually change the way the wireless industry operates," predicted Dan Hays, a telecommunications consultant with PRTM in Washington, D.C.

Cell phone antennas now must be large and high because they rely on sending signals down and outward like an umbrella. But officials at Alcatel-Lucent, where Bell Labs is located, said the lightCube directs cell phone signals more directly using far less power, while handling as much as 30 percent more capacity than current cell phone towers.

The device was created in Alcatel-Lucent’s wireless research division. As consumers clamor for stronger data and voice capabilities on their smartphones, telecommunications companies struggle to keep up with demand, said division head Tod Sizer.

Sizer challenged his team to come up with a solution. To push them further, he calculated the device could be as small as 2.3 inches. A hobbyist woodworker, Sizer went into his shop at his home in Little Silver, built a wooden model, and showed it to the group, which is scattered globally.

In March, they told him it would be impossible.

But in May, an inventor in Stuttgart showed his boss what he’d come up with: three 2-inch, stacked circuit boards for the antenna, radio, and network connection, replacing the conventional antenna system that connects every cell phone call.

"I said, ‘Do you realize what you did?,’" Sizer recalled, his voice rising with excitement. The team has since tested the prototype and proved the concept worked. To work effectively, the technology would force carriers to switch how they build wireless networks, but the lightRadio means rural areas and developing countries could get internet access. The device only requires a network connection and a power source.
"The flexibility this brings is really going to be quite fun," Sizer said.

The device shrinks the antenna and radio devices at the top of a cell phone tower, relocating the network communications power systems — which sit at its base — to central data centers. As a result, the antenna casing can be smaller — about 2.3 inches, down from conventional antennas that are typically the size of an ironing board.

Hays said the device could be a game changer. "Historically, the wireless industry has really revolved around towers with large areas of coverage," he said. "There’s now an opportunity to rethink how wireless networks are structured." The device will include wirings for all carriers and cell phone technologies, including 2G, 3G and the emerging 4G or LTE system. Officials said it should also be able to handle as much as 30 percent more capacity than a typical antenna, but that figure varies based on where it is deployed, the number of users and the other types of devices, traffic, and speeds that are on the network, said Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Wendy Zajack.

LightRadio garnered the biggest buzz at last month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where it was launched, where cell phone companies were in Alcatel-Lucent’s booth, examining the lightRadio cube, taking pictures and asking questions.

"Beyond a couple of new smartphones and tablets that were announced, lightRadio was actually one of the most exciting new ideas that came forward," Hays said.

Already, dozens of mobile carriers across the world have approached Alcatel-Lucent asking for demonstrations and trials, according to Ken Wirth, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s 4G/LTE wireless networks business. Five carriers in the United States, Europe and China are enrolled for trials by the end of this year and the company hope to roll the devices out commercially within 18 months.

Tom Sawanobori, vice president of technology planning at Verizon Wireless, said his company was looking at the technology.

The cubes can be positioned nearly anywhere, from the sides of buildings to light poles, or arranged in grids for more strength. If a certain area has more use during a particular time of the day — say, weekday rush hour on the Garden State Parkway compared to the surrounding suburbs on weekends — the signals can change direction at the touch of a button.

The towers do have one benefit, though. Municipalities and state authorities gain revenue when the carriers install towers on their property. But it’s a Catch-22: nearby residents push back as more towers go up, while still demanding better connectivity, technology analyst Jeff Kagan said.

"We as a people have got a problem: we want more connectivity, but that means more towers, and we don’t want more towers," he said. "If (lightRadio) works as well as it sounds like it’s going to work, it sounds like the solution that we need."

via nj

Scientists are cleared of misuse of data

An inquiry by a federal watchdog agency found no evidence that scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration manipulated climate data to buttress the evidence in support of global warming, officials said on Thursday.

The inquiry, by the Commerce Department’s inspector general, focused on e-mail messages between climate scientists that were stolen and circulated on the Internet in late 2009 (NOAA is part of the Commerce Department). Some of the e-mails involved scientists from NOAA.

Climate change skeptics contended that the correspondence showed that scientists were manipulating or withholding information to advance the theory that the earth is warming as a result of human activity.

In a report dated Feb. 18 and circulated by the Obama administration on Thursday, the inspector general said, “We did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data.”

Nor did the report fault Jane Lubchenco, NOAA’s top official, for testifying to Congress that the correspondence did not undermine climate science.

The finding comes at a critical moment for NOAA as some newly empowered Republican House members seek to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, often contending that the science underpinning global warming is flawed. NOAA is the federal agency tasked with monitoring climate data.

The inquiry into NOAA’s conduct was requested last May by Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has challenged the science underlying human-induced climate change. Mr. Inhofe was acting in response to the controversy over the e-mail messages, which were stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, a major hub of climate research.

Mr. Inhofe asked the inspector general of the Commerce Department to investigate how NOAA scientists responded internally to the leaked e-mails. Of 1,073 messages, 289 were exchanges with NOAA scientists.

The inspector general reviewed the 1,073 e-mails, and interviewed Dr. Lubchenco and staff members about their exchanges. The report did not find scientific misconduct; it did however, challenge the agency over its handling of some Freedom of Information Act requests in 2007. And it noted the inappropriateness of e-mailing a collage cartoon depicting Senator Inhofe and five other climate skeptics marooned on a melting iceberg that passed between two NOAA scientists.

The report was not a review of the climate data itself. It joins a series of investigations by the British House of Commons, Pennsylvania State University, the InterAcademy Council and the National Research Council into the leaked e-mails that have exonerated the scientists involved of scientific wrongdoing.

NOAA welcomed the report, saying that it emphasized the soundness of its scientific procedures and the peer review process. “None of the investigations have found any evidence to question the ethics of our scientists or raise doubts about NOAA’s understanding of climate change science,” Mary Glackin, the agency’s deputy undersecretary for operations, said in a statement.

via nytimes

Scientists create plastic that conducts electricity

Plastics are well known as poor conductors of electricity and find many applications in industries and households as insulators. But now scientists have claimed that they have prepared a new class of plastic material that conducts electricity similar to metals.

Scientists placed a thin film of metal on a plastic sheet. They mixed it with polymer surface using an ion beam. In this experiment, researchers found that the material well conducted electricity. Research was done by an international team of scientists.

Scientists found that this method can be used to produce cheaper, stronger, flexible and above all, conducting plastic films. Prof Paul Meredith of University of Queensland said about the research, "What the team has been able to do here is use an ion beam to tune the properties of a plastic film so that it conducts electricity like the metals used in the electrical wires themselves, and even to act as a superconductor and pass electric current without resistance if cooled to low enough temperature."

Read also : US Scientists unveils Hummingbird Robot

When this newly created material is tested in industry standards and all claims of research team proved valid. In order to verify conductivity, team created electrical resistance thermometers of industrial standard. Then team created another platinum resistance thermometer of industrial standard. When tested thoroughly, this material gave even better results, with comparable accuracy.

A team member, Prof Adam Micolich of University of New South Wales explained the excellency of this material. Micolich said this material has an advantage that it can adopt all desirable properties of polymers like flexibility, robustness and easy availability with additional feature of conducting electricity. Conventional metals which are used as electricity conductors usually do not possess all above described properties, making this new material more valuable. Adams said this discovery will begin a new era of plastic electronics.

Read also : US Scientists Invent World's First 'Anti-Laser'

Researchers said their material opens a wide scope in electrical conductivity. Scientists are capable of manipulating conductivity levels in the thin film from zero to that of metals, making it highly usable while designing electricity based products.

via topnews

Inkjet printers inspire scientists to make skin

Ink-jet printing technology has inspired researchers to develop a new method of repairing damaged skin, by applying layers that are effectively used as a direct graft onto burns and other injuries.

A project at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is being funded by the US Department of Defense, with the hope that it could one day be utilised on the battlefield. By utilising a portable bioprinter, the process would involve scanning the injury, sampling cells from the patient and printing a section of compatible skin.

Another similar technique currently being developed uses a three-dimensional printer combining donor cells, biofriendly gel and other materials to build cartilage.

Scientists from the Wake Forest Institute, Cornell University and the Medical University of South Carolina presented findings at an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington.

Dr Anthony Atal, director of the Wake Forest Institute, in North Carolina, said: "Once we make those new cells, the next step is to put the cells in the printer, on a cartridge, and print on the patient."

Once the new cells have been applied, which can take just a few minutes, they mature and form new skin. Researchers have suggested the technique could also be used to replace damaged organs and remove signs of ageing.

"Just imagine -- if you could take cells from a donor, culture them, put them into an ink and recreate an implant that is alive and made of the original cells from the donor -- how useful that would be in terms of avoiding rejection," commented Hod Lipson of Cornell University.

So far, experiments using cartilage have worked most effectively as it is resilient to the printing process. The basic technology uses a modified ink-jet style printer which can print in three dimensions, using cell cultures. Although the advances are certainly still in the early stages, with much greater research required before they can be practically deployed, demonstrations so far have shown great promise. Scientists have estimated that it will take more than five years before the research is complete.

via publicservice

Scientists claim: New satellites to be able to predict earthquakes

A team of British and Russian scientists have launched a project that could predict when and where earthquakes will occur, and thus save thousands of lives.

An agreement to work together on the project, that was signed in Moscow, says the TwinSat project involves the launch of two satellites - one is about the size of a TV set and the other smaller than a shoebox - which will orbit the earth a few hundred kilometres apart, The Independent reported.

Data from the satellites will be collated with data from the ground as the scientists try to understand what natural warnings are given prior to earthquakes.

Read also : US Scientists unveils Hummingbird Robot

"As stress builds up in the Earth prior to an earthquake, subtle electromagnetic signals are released that can be read from the upper atmosphere," said Alan Smith, director of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at the University College, London.

"We want to try to work out how these signals differ from all the other things that are present at any given time."

The two linked satellites will monitor zones with high seismic and volcanic activity, such as Iceland and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russia's far east.

Vitaly Chmyrev, of the Institute of Physics of the Earth, in Moscow, one of the Russian partners, said the possibilities for progress in earthquake research were extremely exciting.

Read also : US Scientists Invent World's First 'Anti-Laser'

Chmyrev said that in the days leading up to the devastating earthquake in Haiti last year, satellites picked up electromagnetic signals from the area, but they were only analysed afterwards.

This project could be a huge step towards understanding how to read the signals.

"Just imagine if we could have accurately predicted the Haiti earthquake a few weeks before," said Chmyrev.

"Or if we had predicted the Icelandic volcano eruption that paralysed transport routes for weeks. The potential human and economic benefits are enormous."

Peter Sammonds, professor of Geophysics at UCL and another member of the project team, said that because the satellites were so small, the technology was relatively cheap.

Read also : Scientists Building Largest Antimatter Trap Ever

"These satellites are absolutely incredible, you can almost hold them in the palm of your hand," he said.

"If the project progresses as we want it to, we'll be able to send up several more of them to increase coverage."

The first satellite launch is planned for 2015.

via hindustantimes

Scientists Building Largest Antimatter Trap Ever

Creating matter's strange cousin antimatter is tricky, but holding onto it is even trickier. Now scientists are working on a new device that may be able to trap antimatter long enough to study it.

Antimatter is like a mirror image of matter. For every matter particle (say an electron, for example), a matching antimatter particle is thought to exist (in this case, a positron) with the same mass, but an opposite charge.

The problem is that whenever antimatter comes into contact with regular matter, the two annihilate. So any container or bottle made of matter that attempts to capture antimatter inside would be instantly destroyed, along with the precious antimatter sample one tried to put inside the bottle.

Physicist Clifford Surko of the University of California, San Diego is hard at work to overcome that issue. He and his colleagues are building what they call the world's largest trap for low-energy positrons – a device they say will be able to store more than a trillion antimatter particles at once.

The key is using magnetic and electric fields, instead of matter, to construct the walls of an antimatter "bottle."

"We are now working to accumulate trillions of positrons or more in a novel 'multicell' trap – an array of magnetic bottles akin to a hotel with many rooms, with each room containing tens of billions of antiparticles," Surko said in a statement.

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US Scientists unveils Hummingbird Robot

Pentagon researchers have taken robots for a science fiction spin, building a robotic hummingbird that's ideal for covert surveillance.

A year and a half ago, we saw our first look at the hummingbird drone from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a teeny robotic spyplane inspired by the mid-air dexterity of the hummingbird. But now we've got a video of the drone in action, much more capable and with the ability to do its acrobatics for much longer.

The drone, built by AeroVironment with funding from DARPA, is able to fly forwards, backwards, and sideways, as well as rotate clockwise and counterclockwise. Not only does the 'bot resemble its avian inspiration in size (it's only slightly larger than a hummingbird, with a 6.5-inch wingspan and a weight of 19 grams), it also looks impressively like a hummingbird in flight.

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US Scientists Invent World's First 'Anti-Laser'

Instead of having chips with transistors and silicon, these new computers will use both light and electrical energy

The laser - a 50-year-old invention now used in everything from CDs to laser pointers - has met its match in the "antilaser," the first device capable of trapping and canceling out laser beams.

While such a device would seem most fitting in a science fiction movie, its real-world application will likely be in next-generation, optical computers, which will be powered by light in addition to electrons, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

"It's a device which basically works like running a laser backwards," A. Douglas Stone of Yale University, who published his findings in the journal Science, said in a telephone interview.

While a laser takes in electrical energy and emits light in a very narrow frequency range, Stone said, his antilaser takes in laser light and transforms it into heat energy.

But it could be easily converted into electrical energy, he said.

Conventional lasers, which were invented in 1960, use a so-called "gain medium," such as a semiconductor material, to produce a focused beam of light waves.

Stone's device uses silicon as an absorbent "loss-medium" that traps light waves, which bounce around until they are converted into heat.

And while the technology seems cool, his antilaser would never be used as a potential laser shield.

"This is something that absorbs lasers. If a ray gun was intended to kill you, it's going to kill you," Stone said.

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