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Tag Awesome
There’s another planet. Somewhere in another galaxy. All we know is that it’s humongous!
So there _could_ be an exoplanet, a planet behind our galaxy.
Twenty years ago researchers were already arguing this fact, now there is discussion of around 300 exoplanets and maybe even the detection of the first planet in an Andromeda galaxy. The tirtheenth planet?
Jetzer’s team first conducted a simulation of microlensing events in the Andromeda galaxy, which is more than 2 million light years away from Earth. Once they had determined the clues that a planet in Andromeda would show, they returned to a survey completed in 2004 … that showed an unusual light curve. That event, the group says, matches up to its theory and can be attributed to a companion of a mass about six times that of Jupiter. That suggests either a planet, or a small companion star such as a brown dwarf…. “The interesting thing is that the technology is in place to truly see planets of Jupiter’s mass and even less in other galaxies…. It’s an exceptional thing”, says study coauthor Francesco De Paolis.
Source: Discover Magazine.
Skeleton bike, amazing detail
Would you drive a bike like this or just keep it as decorational item and ship it to every meet you want to attend? The level of detail in this customization is amazing.
Smaller raindrops often travel faster than the speed of light. Scottie, accelerate to Warp Speed 4
Gravity defeated:
Common sense dictates that larger raindrops should fall to the ground faster than smaller ones because they weigh more and can better overcome wind resistance. But anecdotal meteorology data have shown that when drops land, smaller ones are sometimes going just as fast as the biggest ones.
Analysis of around 64.000 raindrops in new Mexico has shown that the smaller raindrops defeat the speed of velocity:
Like the speed of light, the terminal velocity should be an absolute limit. But in a paper in press at Geophysical Research Letters, the team reports many observations of so-called superterminal drops, which form when larger drops collide and break up into bunches of small drops. Those smaller drops can then travel for a time as fast as the larger drops. For example, drops with a diameter of 100 micrometers are supposed to be limited to a terminal velocity of about 30 centimeters per second. But the researchers observed such drops hitting the ground at 3 to 4 meters per second.
Via ScienceNOW.
