news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101202/ap_on_sc/us_sci_starry_night
This photo provided by NASA, taken in 2006 by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a cluster of diverse galaxies. A new study led by a Yale University ast AP - This photo provided by NASA, taken in 2006 by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a cluster of diverse galaxies. By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer - Wed Dec 1, 9:32 pm ET WASHINGTON - The universe may glitter with far more stars than even Carl Sagan imagined when he rhapsodized about billions upon billions. A new study suggests there are a mind-blowing 300 sextillion of them, or three times as many as scientists previously calculated. The estimate, contained in a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature, is based on findings that there are many more red dwarf stars EUR" the most common star in the universe EUR" than once thought. The study by Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum and Harvard astrophysicist Charlie Conroy questions a key assumption that astronomers often use: that most galaxies have the same properties as our Milky Way. And that conclusion is deeply unsettling to astronomers who want a more orderly cosmos. When scientists previously estimated the total number of stars, they assumed that all galaxies had the same ratio of dwarf stars as the Milky Way, which is spiral-shaped. Much of our understanding of the universe is based on observations made inside our own galaxy and then extrapolated to other galaxies. But about one-third of the galaxies in the universe are elliptical, not spiral, and van Dokkum found they aren't really made up the same way as ours. Using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, van Dokkum and a colleague gazed into eight distant, elliptical galaxies and looked at their hard-to-differentiate light signatures. The scientists calculated that elliptical galaxies have more red dwarf stars than predicted.
Atmosphere of alien super-earth revealed for first time "We're seeing 10 or 20 times more stars than we expected," van Dokkum said. Generally scientists believe there are 100 billion to a trillion galaxies in the universe. And each galaxy -- the Milky Way included -- was thought to have 100 billion to a trillion stars. Sagan, the Cornell University scientist and best-selling author who was often impersonated by comedians as saying "billions and billions," usually said there were 100 billion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars. That's because some of those galaxies EUR" the elliptical ones, which account for about a third of all galaxies EUR" have as many as 1 trillion to 10 trillion stars, not a measly 100 billion. When van Dokkum and Conroy crunched the incredibly big numbers, they found that it tripled the estimate of stars in the universe from 100 sextillion to 300 sextillion. That's a huge number to grasp, even for astronomers who are used to dealing in light years and trillions, Conroy said. "It's fun because it gets you thinking about these large numbers," Conroy said. Conroy looked up how many cells are in the average human body -- 50 trillion or so -- and multiplied that by the 6 billion people on Earth. So the number of stars in the universe "is equal to all the cells in the humans on Earth EUR" a kind of funny coincidence," Conroy said. For the past month, astronomers have been buzzing about van Dokkum's findings, and many aren't too happy about them, said astronomer Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology.
Van Dokkum's paper challenges the assumption of "a more orderly universe" and gives credence to "the idea that the universe is more complicated than we think," Ellis said. Ellis said it is too early to tell if van Dokkum is right or wrong, but his work is shaking up the field "like a cat among pigeons." Its biggest weakness might be the assumption that the chemical composition of dwarf stars is the same in elliptical galaxies as in the Milky Way. If it is, it would mean there are only five times more red dwarf stars in elliptical galaxies than previously thought, instead of 10 or 20, van Dokkum said. Slightly closer to home, at least in our own galaxy, another study also published in Nature looks at a single red dwarf star in a way that is a step forward in astronomers' search for life beyond Earth. A team led by a Harvard scientist was able to home in on the atmosphere of a planet circling that star, using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Alien-life flap excites web The planet lives up to the word alien. The team reports that this giant planet's atmosphere is either dense with sizzling water vapor like a souped-up steam bath, or it is full of hazy, choking hydrogen and helium clouds with a slightly blue tint. The latter is more likely, say the researchers and others not involved in the study. While scientists have been able to figure out the atmosphere of gas giants the size of Jupiter or bigger, this is a first for the type of planet called a super Earth -- something with a mass 2 to 10 times Earth's. The planet is more comparable to Neptune and circles a star about 42 light years from Earth. The planet is nowhere near livable -- it's about 440 degrees (about 225 degrees Celsius). It would be unpleasant," said study co-author Eliza Kempton of the University of California Santa Clara. But describing its atmosphere is a big step toward understanding potentially habitable planets outside our solar system, said study chief author Jacob Bean at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Bean and Kempton looked at the light spectrum signature from the large planet as it passed in front of the dwarf star, and the result led to two possible conclusions: steam bath or haze. The steam bath is the more interesting possibility because water is key to life, said outside scientist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. But an upcoming and still unpublished study by Kempton and Bryce Croll at the University of Toronto points more toward a hydrogen-helium atmosphere, several astronomers said.
Report Abuse A good article about the grandeur of God's creation comes out and the athiests take this opportunity to start bashing religion. Science is a tool, a tool for discovering what God has created for us, not an end in itself.
Report Abuse And yet again, a good scientific article and all the bible bashers come out. Look, take science for what it is, study and observation, the same as you do with your fictional and farcicle books, except we do it in the real world.
Report Abuse God comes from the Sumerian word "GAAD" , which was a deity of wealth. It NOTHING to do with what the Hebrews and Arabs call : YAHWAY ELOHEEM, or ALLAH the mighty. NOT a "Man with a white beard" or a "Woman with a round belly and breasts" , yet it COULD if it so willed , Project as that in order to relate to the respective intelligence to whom it is communicating. Hillel who later was called "Lucifer" in Latin, extended himself as SATAN - SET- LEVIATHAN and was able to SUB-create worlds and lifeforms as well. Much like the strange looking Alien faces of Reptiles, Yetis, Bees, Gargoyles, Lions , Pigs Etc. Forms that were NOT in the image of The Creator (such as ours face structure, aesthetics and the nose, eyes, mouth, etc.
Report Abuse God comes from the Sumerian word "GAAD" , which was a deity of wealth. It NOTHING to do with what the Hebrews and Arabs call : YAHWAY ELOHEEM, or ALLAH the mighty. NOT a "Man with a white beard" or a "Woman with a round belly and breasts" , yet it COULD if it so willed , Project as that in order to relate to the respective intelligence to whom it is communicating. Hillel who later was called "Lucifer" in Latin, extended himself as SATAN - SET- LEVIATHAN and was able to SUB-create worlds and lifeforms as well. Much like the strange looking Alien faces of Reptiles, Yetis, Bees, Gargoyles, Lions , Pigs Etc. Forms that were NOT in the image of The Creator (such as ours face structure, aesthetics and the nose, eyes, mouth, etc.
Report Abuse No problem, just wait another 45-5 billion years and you won't be able to see many other galaxies as they will have receded from us and will be traveling too fast away from us. About that same time, our...
|
http://csua.com/feed/