Artist concept of the curious events going at the star named KIC 12557548. Credit: MIT

The old saying of the universe being stranger than we can imagine definitely applies to a newfound exoplanet orbiting a star about 1,500 light years from Earth. Researchers using the Kepler space observatory have detected what appears to be a planet about the size of Mercury literally turning to dust. A long tail of debris — almost like a comet’s tail — is following the planet as it whirls around the star, KIC 12557548. Scientists think the planet could be evaporating under the blistering heat of the star, and that by analyzing the dust, they could decipher the history of the planet. But they better hurry. According to the team’s calculations, the planet will completely disintegrate within 100 million years.

“This might be another way in which planets are eventually doomed,” said Dan Fabrycky, a member of the Kepler Observatory science team.
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Post tags: exoplanets, Kepler mission

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Patents are technology's first draft - and they don't stop coming even when Facebook's initial public offering is hogging the headlines

The SpaceX Dragon capsule is prepared for a mission to the International Space Station, and officials are managing expectations

Falcon 9 on the launchpad in Florida. Credit: SpaceX

Saturday morning’s launch window for SpaceX’s historic test flight to the International Space Station lasts just one second. Company President Gwynne Shotwell predicted they have “better than a 50-50 shot on whether we lift off tomorrow,” she said at a press conference today, adding, “If we lift off, we’ll get to orbit.”

Shotwell and NASA officials outlined a myriad of systems and activities that have to go perfectly for the launch take place, and then it will be non-stop action for the duration of the flight to orbit and ultimately the berthing of Dragon to the ISS.

Launch is set for 08:55 UTC on May 19 (4:55 AM Eastern/1:15 AM Pacific.) Here’s a timeline of activities so you can follow along while you watch the launch:
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Post tags: Commercial Space, Space Station, SpaceX

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With less than a day left before SpaceX’s historic launch of the first commercial vehicle to the ISS, slated for 4:55 am EDT on Saturday, May 19, here’s a video of what will happen once the Falcon lifts off.

(Part of me really wishes that they’ll be pumping out some dramatic music when it launches!)

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© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: animation, Celestis, Dragon, Falcon, Launch, May 19, NASA, rocket, SpaceX, video

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Whale hunts and sanctuaries could make this year's whaling meeting a hot one

Researchers at Stanford University are working on solutions to the inherent difficulties of hypersonic flight — speeds of over Mach 5, or 3,000 mph (4828 km/h) — and they’ve created one amazing computer model illustrating the dynamics of air temperature variations created at those intense speeds.

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Post tags: aeronautics, flight, fluid dynamics, hypersonic, Mach speed, scramjet, Stanford

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All today's stories on newscientist.com, including: GPS loss kicked off fatal drone crash and monitoring tides could predict major quakes

RAF Kinloss is the focus of a new probe into radioactive contamination, linked to the use of "glow in the dark" paint on WWII aircraft.

An orbiting astronaut has used an amateur astronomer's trick to create an image worthy of the trippier sequences of 2001: A space odyssey

This great video created from images taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on May 13 and 14 show Jupiter as it comes close to the Sun (from our vantage point) in a solar conjunction. But what it really looks like is the old “Space Invaders” video game, with Jupiter marching across the screen. There’s even a couple of sungrazing comets “pewpew-ing” in like the laser cannon shots in the game, and a coronal mass ejection completes the scene as an explosion (which is actually more like “Asteroids.”) For more fun, the team who created this video at the Naval Research Laboratory’s Sungrazing Comets website takes the time to show all the different objects in the scene, which amazingly includes Callisto and Ganymede, two of Jupiter’s moons. All it needs is the funky video game background music.
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Post tags: Jupiter, soho, sun

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Barn owls used to catch mice and rats in the fields of Jordan and Israel are breeding in specially set-up nesting boxes.

Never-before-seen changes to the genetic code give new insight into how the environment can affect our genes

Ichthyosaurs, the dolphins of the dinosaur era, got decompression sickness, but only from the Jurassic period onwards – what happened?

Mice that ate all their meals during an 8-hour window were healthier than mice that snacked throughout the day, even when they ate more fat

Visible in the constellation of Andromeda, NGC 891 is located approximately 30 million light-years away from Earth. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Just look at the kind of stunning images that are buried in the archives from the Hubble Space Telescope! Here, Hubble turned its powerful wide field Advanced Camera for Surveys towards this spiral galaxy and took this close-up of its northern half. The entire galaxy, called NGC 891, stretches across 100,000 light-years and we see it exactly edge-on. Visible are filaments of dust and gas escaping the plane of the galaxy. A few foreground stars from the Milky Way shine brightly in the image, while distant elliptical galaxies can be seen in the lower right of the image.

This is just an example of the hidden gems in Hubble’s archives that have never been seen by the general public. There’s a new contest to find more — so how can you participate?
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Post tags: galaxies, Hubble Telescope, NGC 891

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The asteroid-tracking NEOWISE mission reveals that twice as many asteroids as previously thought are on low-inclination orbits that could hit our planet

A small robot capable of climbing clothes could be a pet or even a moving phone – if that's what you really want

Watch a running man swap directions in a new illusion presented at the Best Illusions of the Year Contest

A fatal drone crash in South Korea followed a loss of GPS signal – which may have been due to jamming efforts by North Korea