Earth and Science News- Earth and Science Videos and News // Current

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Depression strikes more Americans than cancer, AIDS, or coronary heart disease

Depression strikes about 17 million American adults each year--more than cancer, AIDS, or coronary heart disease--according to the... more

sunkisthappy
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New Barack Obama "Hero" Video

Video, of all of Barack Obama Presidential Vision, and Ideas, Ending the Iraq War, Universal Healthcare, New Barack Obama... more

supportobama2008
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Britney Spears now under 14-day hold

People magazine has confirmed that Britney Spears's hospitalization has been extended to an additional 14-day hold. Only... more

woodywoodbeck
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Climate Change Viewpoints on Current TV!

Congratulations, your Viewpoints made it to Current TV.

Chloe
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Natural Gas Supplies

Quoted from article. "Given U.S. production levels in 2002 and the National Petroleum Council's estimate for... more

csmonut
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Clashes over Naples rubbish site

Eight Italian policemen and three other people have been injured in clashes over the site of a new rubbish dump in a densely... more

merasyad
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Change the way we live to save the world

if we don't we're screwed...

broessel
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Cosmic Time

"Michio encounters a mystery - tiny particles called muons which shouldn't exist. They don't last long enough to be... more

c4chaos
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NRDC Press Archive: Environmentalists Applaud EPA Hudson River Clean-Up Decision

Longtime Debate Ends as EPA Approves Plan to Dredge PCB Contaminants From Hudson Riverbed NEW YORK (August 1, 2001) - Friends... more

TouchArt
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Discovery of missing link sinks intelligent design theories

With both eyes on one side of its head, this bizarre-looking flatfish has long been used as an case study by proponents of the... more

purplefox
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The Origins of Aids

Since first being broadcast in 2003 in Canada, the Origins Of Aids has yet to be aired on UK or US television. Despite winning... more

podtarts
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Fit-Flops, someone has figured out how to sell $50 flipflops

Tell women they'll get toner legs and a better butt and you can sell them just about anything. In this case it's a fifty... more

eldamon
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Hot 'super-Earths' may hide life

'Super-Earths': massive, rocky planets up to 15 times the size of ours, were previously dismissed as too harsh for life to exist; largely because many of them are in orbit unbelievably close to their parent stars.

However, at a recent conference organised by Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, the consensus was changed significantly.

Kaltenegger herself believes that "there's no reason why the different chemical cycles that are important for life on our planet wouldn't work on super-Earths". And she says that at the conference, "the consensus of attendees was similarly positive – even for those planets once dismissed as being too harsh for life".

One reason that these exo-planets were thought to be so inhospitable to life, was that those ones orbiting very close to their stars experience a strong gravitational pull, which keeps them 'tidally locked', so that they cannot turn, always displaying the same face to the sun: as happens between the Earth and the moon. As a result of this locking, it was assumed that this would create one incredibly hot, and one incredibly cold side: both of which would be far too extreme for life. If an atmosphere, a key element in life, were present, it was also thought that it would quickly become frozen.

New models however suggest that "if a tidally locked super-Earth has an atmosphere at least as dense as Earth's, strong winds could transport heat from its hot side to its cold side." Furthermore, the effect of a global ocean appears to be that heat could be transported away from the hot side, thereby regulating the temperature of the whole planet.

For super-Earth's orbiting around cooler 'Red Giant' stars (which make up 85% of the stars in our Galaxy), the critical distance for temperatures to be offset sufficiently was calculated to be 0.05 AU (where 1AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun). For comparison, Mercury, the closest planet to the sun in our solar-system, orbits at a distance of 0.38 AU!

These calculations and more, now point to the serious possibility of finding the right conditions for life on a much larger number of planets than has ever been thought.

So what are you astrophysicists waiting for?!

'Super-Earths': massive, rocky planets up to 15 times the size of ours, were previously dismissed as too harsh for life... more