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Astronomers used the Harlan J. Smith Telescope at the University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Texas, to search for a planet around star CI Tau. Credit: Ethan Tweedie Photography ================================================================================================== In contradiction to the long-standing idea that larger planets take longer to form, U.S. astronomers today announced the discovery of a giant planet in close orbit around a star so young that it still retains a disk of circumstellar gas and dust. "For decades, conventional wisdom held that large Jupiter-mass planets take a minimum of 10 million years to form," said Christopher Johns-Krull, the lead author...

QUIX: SHORT EXCERPTS ARE OFFERED IN A SORT OF EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FIRST--THEN THE ENTIRE NARRATIVE AS AVAILABLE AT SPIRITLESSONS.COM I found this to be another anointed, Biblical narrative about a very convincing Heavenly visitation--actually, as usual, to hell, too. There's an item or 3 in this one to potentially trouble the RC's and Maryolators, . . . as well as some potentially troubling things for some Calvinists, however. Read at your own risk. Those exposed to The Truth are responsible before God for what they do about and with The Truth.On the other hand, ignorance affords no eternal protection....

Astronomers have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface. The planet orbits the faint star Gliese 581, which is 20.5 light-years away in the constellation Libra. Scientists made the discovery using the Eso 3.6m Telescope in Chile. They say the benign temperatures on the planet mean any water there could exist in liquid form, and this raises the chances it could also harbour life. "We have estimated that the mean temperature of this 'super-Earth' lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be...

Munich, April 24: An international team of astronomers from Switzerland, France and Portugal have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date. The planet has a radius only 50 percent larger than Earth and is very likely to contain liquid water on its surface. The research team used the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) 3.6-m telescope to discover the super-Earth, which has a mass about five times that of the Earth and orbits a red dwarf already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet. Astronomers believe there is a strong possibility in the presence of a third planet with...

A Spanish astronomer has admitted he accessed internet telescope logs of another astronomer's observations of a giant object orbiting beyond Neptune – but denies doing anything wrong. Jose-Luis Ortiz of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Granada told New Scientist that it was "perfectly legitimate" because he found the logs on a publicly available website via a Google search. But Mike Brown, the Caltech astronomer whose logs Ortiz uncovered, claims that accessing the information was at least "unethical" and may, if Ortiz misused the data, have crossed the line into scientific fraud. The incident highlights two emerging controversies in...

Niburu and Other Nonsense By: David Morrison The wild stories about an approaching planet or comet are false! For months, weird stories have circulated on the Internet predicting the close passage by Earth this month of a Planet X sometimes called "Niburu", or in some versions a giant comet. I have even seen it linked to both Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), although why either of these is relevant is not clear to me. This news note is for those who may have heard such rumors and wondered if there was any reality to them. The...