SPACE
& SCIENCE NEWS: October 2002
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& science news > space & science news: October 2002
SETI: Time for a change of direction?
(Oct. 27, 2002)
For more than 40 years, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI) has largely involved listening for microwave and, to a lesser
extent, laser signals across interstellar distances. This has become
the standard, or conventional, paradigm. However, there are other
approaches which, their supporters argue, are equally valid and at
least as likely to prove successful. Moreover, the failure of conventional
SETI, despite repeated and intensive efforts, to obtain positive results,
suggests that the time has come to reevaluate where the limited resources
available should be spent. Scot Stride, a JPL engineer who has worked
on flight hardware for the Mars Pathfinder, Galileo, and other NASA
missions, believes a rigorous survey of the SETI community is needed
to establish what new directions, if any, researchers believe their
subject should take in the future. Stride proposes a survey, conducted
privately to allow free expression, based on conjoint analysis –
a statistical technique for estimating what value people place on
the attributes or features of something (often used, for example,
in carrying out surveys of what options buyers consider when making
a purchase). |
Universe heading for Big Crunch new study
suggests
(Oct. 21, 2002)
According to a new study carried out by Andrei Linde and his wife,
Renata Kallosh, of Stanford University, the universe will begin collapsing
within the next 10 to 20 billion years. Their work is based on the
idea that the mysterious force that appears, at present, to be accelerating
the cosmic expansion – working like antigravity – will
eventually run out of steam. According to Linde and Kallosh, the properties
of the dark energy that is currently stretching spacetime at an every
increasing rate may be changing in a way that will eventually neutralise
its influence. According to the Linde-Kallosh model, the cosmos, at
some 14 billion years of age, is now, in human terms, a 40-something.
See André Linde's website here
and Renata Kallosh's website here.
More details to follow. Watch this space(-time)! |
Galaxy's central black hole confirmed
(Oct. 16, 2002)
New results published in this week's Nature appear to remove
any remaining doubt that a 3.7-million-solar-mass black hole lies
at the core of our galaxy. The conclusion comes from observations
carried out, over the past decade at the European Southern Observatory's
Paranal Observatory in Chile, of a fast-moving star, known as S2,
that orbits close to the central object, referred to as Sagittarius
A*. S2, which is seven times as massive as the Sun, circles
the galactic center every 15.2 years, at the edge of the black hole's
event horizon. Moving at the astonishing rate of 5,000 km/s, it approaches
to within just 17 light-hours of the black hole itself.
See the ESO
press release. |
First planet found in a close binary star
system
(Oct. 10, 2002)
Astronomers with the McDonald
Observatory Planet Search project have discovered the first planet
orbiting a star in a close binary system. The discovery has important
implications for the number of possible planets in our galaxy, because
the majority of stars are in binary or multiple systems. Artie Hatzes,
Bill Cochran, and colleagues found that the planet orbits the larger
star of the Gamma Cephei system, about 45 light-years away in Cepheus.
The primary star is 1.59 times as massive as the Sun, while the planet
is 1.76 times as massive as Jupiter and orbits the star at a mean
distance of about 2 astronomical anits (AU), a little further than
Mars is from the Sun. The second, relatively small star is only 25
to 30 AU from the primary star-about Uranus' distance from the Sun.
Astronomers have found planets orbiting stars in binary systems before,
but the stars in those binary systems were a hundred times farther
apart than those of Gamma Cephei. A third-magnitude star, Gamma Cephei
can be seen with the unaided eye.
For more, go here
(University of Texas). |
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