Scientist predicts existence of new galaxy Kalyan Ray

Using high-end mathematics, an Indian scientist has predicted existence of a mysterious ''dark and dwarf galaxy'' in the Milky Way.

If Galaxy X is actually discovered following the prediction, it could provide a whole new dimension to our current understanding of the Milky Way – a galaxy to which the Sun and the Earth belong to – and the esoteric “dark matter” which, though invisible to the naked eye, fills up most of the universe.

Buoyed by the strength of Sukanya Chakrabarti’s mathematical model, one astronomer has already applied for time on the Spitzer Space Telescope to look at infrared wavelengths for this hypothetical Galaxy X.

Chakrabarti – a theoretical astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley – presented her findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle on Thursday. She used her method to correctly predict the mass and location of two dwarf satellite galaxies – M51 and NGC 1512. Both are of about one-hundredth, the size of the galaxy.

The technique works for satellite galaxies as small as one-thousandth the mass of the primary galaxy.

Chakrabarti used mathematical method to predict that a dwarf galaxy sits on the opposite side of the Milky Way from the Earth. It remains unseen because it is obscured by the intervening gas and dust in the galaxy’s disk.

Many large galaxies, such as the Milky Way, are thought to have lots of satellite galaxies too dim to see. They are dominated by “dark matter,” which astronomers say makes up 85 per cent of all matter in the universe but so far remains undetected. The Milky Way is surrounded by some 80 known or suspected dwarf galaxies that are called satellite galaxies.

Theoretical models of rotating spiral galaxies, however, predict there should be many more satellite galaxies, perhaps thousands, with small ones even more prevalent than large ones. Dwarf galaxies, however, are faint, and some of the galaxies may be primarily invisible dark matter.

“This approach has broad implications for many fields of physics and astronomy -- for the indirect detection of dark matter as well as dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxies, planetary dynamics, and for galaxy evolution driven by satellite impacts,” she said.

“The method is like inferring the size and speed of a ship by looking at its wake. You see the waves from a lot of boats, but you have to be able to separate out the wake of a medium or small ship from that of an ocean liner,” Chakrabarti’s colleague Leo Blitz, a UC Berkeley professor of astronomy, said.

Source;Deccan Herald, 13-1-2011

Indian American astronomer finds diamond-studded planet Washington

Astronomers led by Indian American Nikku Madhusudhan have discovered a giant planet with an atmosphere and core dominated by carbon, raising the prospect that diamond-studded stars may exist.

Madhusudan, a Banaras Hindu University (BHU) alumnus now at Princeton University, New Jersey, and his colleagues have observed that an extremely hot planet discovered last year has more carbon than oxygen - a feature never observed on a planet until now.

The planet, called WASP-12b, orbits a star about 1,200 light-years from Earth, and appears to have temperatures of nearly 2300°C - hot enough to melt stainless steel, the scientists said in the journal Nature.

A computational technique developed two years ago by Madhusudan while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, was used to analyse the atmosphere of the planet.

Like Jupiter, WASP-12b is made largely of gas, only its core contains carbon-based minerals such as diamonds and graphite, said Madhusudhan now a postdoctoral scientist in the department of astrophysical sciences at Princeton.

"A carbon-rich planet has dramatic implications for its interior, its atmosphere, and may compel us to rethink our long-ingrained ideas of planetary formation," he said.

The planet-larger than Jupiter-is windy, blazing hot and so near its star that it circles in a single day compared with the 365 needed for Earth to go round the sun.

While one side of WASP-12b always faces the star and is daylit, and the other is always dark, the planet's strong winds and gaseous nature distribute energy and keep both sides equally warm.

With that much hotness and no solid surface, WASP-12b couldn't support life, Madhusudhan said. That doesn't mean that other carbon planets are devoid of life, he said.

"If life exists on such planets, it has to be able to sustain low oxygen, low water and lots of methane and other hydrocarbons" that would be in the atmosphere, he said.

If there are other planets with more carbon than oxygen, and some have rocky surfaces instead of gaseous ones, such orbs may have rocks made of diamonds and graphite, instead of silicon and oxygen found on Earth, Madhusudhan said, and sand there may be as rare as diamonds are on Earth.

Scientists used US space agency NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to observe light emitted by the planet WASP12, discovered in 2009 by researchers in the UK-based consortium called Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP).

Source: Deccan Herald, 9-12-2010

NASA mulling permanent manned mission to Mars

The US space agency has confirmed that it is carrying out feasibility studies to asses whether astronauts could be sent permanently to the red planet, or its moons, to establish human colonies under the ambitious project called the "Hundred Years Starship".

The astronauts would be sent supplies from Earth on a regular basis but they would have to become self-sufficient as soon as possible. The astronauts would have to embark on the mission knowing that they would never return to earth as the cost of returning would make the project prohibitively expensive.

Speaking at a conference in San Francisco, Pete Worden, Director of NASA's Ames Research Centre, recently said his division has received one million pound funding to start work on the project.The research team has also received an additional USD 100,000 grant from NASA, he said.

"The human space programme is now really aimed at settling other worlds. Twenty years ago, you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired," he was quoted as saying by MSNBC.

"You heard it here. We also hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund."

Worden said he has discussed the potential price tag for one-way trips to Mars with Google co-founder Larry Page, telling him such a mission could be done for USD 10 billion.
"His (Page's) response was, 'Can you get it down to USD one or two billion?' So now we're starting to get a little argument over the price," he said.

Depending on the position of Mars in its orbit around the Sun, its distance from Earth varies between 34 and 250 million miles. NASA's Phoenix was the most recent unmanned mission to Mars which launched in August 2007 and landed on the planet's north polar cap in May 2008.

Experts say a nuclear-fuelled rocket could shorten the journey to about four months. Of all the planets in the solar system, Mars is the most likely to have substantial quantities of water, making it the best bet for sustaining life. But it is a forbidding place to set up home.

Temperatures plummet way below freezing in some parts. The thin atmosphere would be a problem as it is mostly carbon dioxide, so oxygen supplies are a must. Worden also suggested that new technologies such as synthetic biology and alterations to the human genome could also be explored ahead of the mission.

He also said that the mission should visit Mars' moons first, where scientists can do extensive telerobotics exploration of the planet. He claims that humans could be on Mars' moons by 2030, the Daily Mail reported.

The announcement comes as a new study, published in the Journal of Cosmology, claimed that a human mission was technologically feasible and was cheaper returning astronauts to earth.It also said the costs of safely returning a crew would eat up the majority of such a mission's budget.

Sources: Deccan Herald , 29-10-2010

India a role model in space activities

Thrissur: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan has said that India is a role model for other countries in applications of space technology.He was delivering the keynote address at a programme here on Tuesday to mark the diamond jubilee of B.Sc. Physics course and golden jubilee of the M.Sc. Physics course of the St. Thomas College.

“In many areas of space research, India ranks second or third. India is among the top six countries that build world-class satellites. With the launch of Cartosat-2B, India has 10 active remote sensing satellites in space. India has built about 30 satellites for other countries. With its technological capabilities, it has set a benchmark for other countries,” he said. He observed that the Indian space science programme was guided by the Nehruvian vision that science should be used for poverty alleviation and social welfare.“With its applications in monitoring climate and natural resources, space technology contributes to decentralised planning.” He urged universities and colleges to associate with the ISRO in student projects. “To create more space scientists, the ISRO supports space science promotion activities in select universities and colleges. Youthsat, a microsatellite to study space weather, built by students from universities in India and Moscow, will be launched in a forthcoming flight of PSLV,” he said.

He stated that Chandrayan-2 mission, scheduled for 2013, would throw light on the origin and evolution of moon using instruments on an orbiter and through an in situ analysis of samples collected by a rover put on the lunar surface. He said he was touched to be invited to lecture at a college where his father had studied. “My father studied here in the early 1930s. He grew up in this college.”

Auxiliary Bishop Mar Raphael Thattil, former college principal Devassy Panthallukkaran and P. C. Thomas, former professor with the college, also spoke.

Source: Hindu,28-7-2010