new planet discoveres

[ravaila]

The new planet was discovered by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope two years ago but new research has identified it as the most similar to our own yet discovered.
Kepler 22b is about twice the size of Earth and has temperatures which average around 72 degrees (22 Celsius).
It also contains the right atmosphere to potentially support life. However, there is a downside: it is 600 light years from Earth....
Kepler 22b is the first so-called "super-Earth" known to lie within the "habitable" zone of a star similar to our Sun.
Dubbed the "Goldilocks Zone", this is the band where temperatures are just right to allow the existence of surface liquid water throughout its orbit.



This means the planet could have continents and oceans just like the Earth, and where there is liquid water, there could also be life, they say.
Scientists believe Kepler 22b may not only be habitable, but possibly already even inhabited.
"This discovery supports the growing belief that we live in a universe crowded with life," said Dr Alan Boss, from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, who helped identify the planet from data obtained by the Kepler space telescope.
The telescope, launched by the American space agency Nasa, is watching 155,000 stars looking for tiny drops in brightness that betray the presence of planets.
The star around which Kepler 22b orbits, in the region of the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus, should you know them, is slightly smaller than the Sun and about 25% less bright.
The planet orbits the star in 290 days, at a distance 15% closer than the Earth is from the Sun.
It lies right in the centre of the star's habitable zone, where potentially perfect conditions exist for life.
Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than the Sun have recently been found at the very edges of their habitable zones. Their orbits more closely resemble those of Mars and Venus.
A report on the discovery will be published by the Astrophysical Journal.
Dr Douglas Hudgins, Kepler programme scientist at Nasa headquarters in Washington, said: "This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin."
The planet was spotted after making a "transit" across the front of its parent star, causing the star's brightness to dip.

[azeegum]

Just on the same date 9 ( ie 5th December 2011 ) two record-sized black holes were also identified by NASA.

Two huge black holes may be the largest yet measured. Super-massive black holes inhabit most large galaxies. One, in the galaxy Messier 87, has the mass of about 6 billion suns – but it is no longer the record holder.

There's one in galaxy NGC 3842 with the mass of about 10 billion suns ( ie 9.7 billion suns), and NGC 4889's could weigh up to 37 billion suns, say Nicholas McConnell at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues.

The estimates were made by clocking the motion of stars near these galaxies' cores, since a black hole's mass dictates how fast objects orbit around them.

In 2008, a mass of 18 billion suns was claimed for the black hole inside a distant bright galaxy called OJ287. But that number relies on an assumption – that periodic flares from OJ287 are created by a second black hole orbiting the first. "Observations cannot rule out alternative ways of creating those outbursts," says McConnell.

The mass of galaxies tends to correlate with that of their central black holes, but both of these holes are heavier than predicted. Collisions with other galaxies could have force-fed the holes with gas, the team speculates. "Another possibility is that the black holes we discovered grew to huge masses early on, and their host galaxies never caught up," says McConnell.

Note: A black hole is an ob*ject so com*pact and heavy that its gra*vity over*pow*ers an*y*thing that comes near it, even par*t*i*cles or waves of light.

Source: Two biggest black holes ever found - space - 05 December 2011 - New Scientist

[ravaila]

The object named XTE
J1118+480 is believed to be a
black hole within our own
galaxy, the Milky Way. This is
not a black hole in the center
... of the galaxy, but instead is
moving through and around
the galaxy much in the same
way as billions of other stars
-- including our Sun.