Gliese 581g - There's Life Out There

An Earth sized planet circling a near by star is said to have the proper conditions for sustaining life, and according to at least one expert it's almost certain that it does. 

Gliese 581g is said to have a surface and has enough gravity to hold an atmosphere. "Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent,"  Prof Steven Vogt said during a press briefing. "I have almost no doubt about it." Vogt led the team of scientist who discovered the planet.

Gliese 581g is located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra and is said to have an estimated average surface temperature of between -24 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 to -12 degrees Celsius). So, it's no vacation hot spot.

All of a sudden I'm not so skeptical about the UN's Alien Ambassador appointment :) 

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Astronomers Witness The Death Of A Star

On January 9th of this year, astronomers using a NASA X-ray satellite to spy on a star considered to be near death, observed another star in the same galaxy as it started to explode. "A star exploded right before my eyes," lead author Alicia Soderberg, an astrophysics researcher at Princeton University, said Wednesday in a teleconference. She compared the event to "winning the astronomy lottery. We caught the whole thing from start-to-finish on tape." According to the researchers less than one percent of all stars will end their life in supernova. "As much energy is released in one second by the death of a star as by all of the other stars you can see in the visible universe," said University of California at Berkeley astronomy professor Alex Filippenko. The outburst was 100 billion times brighter than Earth's sun, so bright it flooded the satellite's instrument, giving it a picture akin to "pointing your digital camera at the sun," Soderberg said. CNN has more here.

The sky is no longer the limit for Google Earth

I guess that I'm officially becoming a Google fan boy, I realize that not everyone loves everything that Google does but I've yet to be disappointed. This week Google announced an upgrade to Google Earth called "Sky" that enables users to view the sky as seen from planet Earth. With Sky comes seven informative layers that illustrate various celestial bodies and events: Constellations; Backyard Astronomy; Hubble Space Telescope Imagery; Moon; Planets; Users Guide to Galaxies; and Life of a Star. "We're excited to provide users with rich astronomical imagery and enhanced content that enables them to both learn about what they're seeing above and tell their own stories," said Lior Ron, Google Product Manager. "By working with some of the industry's leading experts, we've been able to transform Google Earth into a virtual telescope.