Immense Cloud of Hydrogen Observed Bleeding From an Alien Planet

"This cloud is very spectacular, though the evaporation rate does not threaten the planet right now," explains David Ehrenreich of the Observatory of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. "But we know that in the past, the star, which is a faint red dwarf, was more active. This means that the planet evaporated faster during its first billion years of existence because of the strong radiation from the young star. Overall, we estimate that it may have lost up to 10 percent of its atmosphere over the past several billion years." Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an immense cloud of hydrogen dubbed "The Behemoth" bleeding from a planet orbiting a nearby star. The enormous, comet-like feature is about 50 times the size of the parent star. The hydrogen is evaporating from a warm, Neptune-sized planet, due to extreme radiation from the star. This phenomenon has never been seen around an exoplanet so small. It may offer clues to how other planets with hydrogen-enveloped atmospheres could have their outer layers evaporated by their parent star, leaving behind solid, rocky cores. Hot, rocky planets such as these that roughly the size of Earth are known as Hot-Super Earths. The planet, named GJ 436b, is considered to be a "Warm Neptune," because of its size and because it is much closer to its star than Neptune is to our sun. Although it is in no danger of having its atmosphere completely evaporated and stripped down to a rocky core, this planet could explain the existence of so-called Hot Super-Earths that are very close to their stars. These hot, rocky worlds were discovered by the Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) and NASA's Kepler space telescope. Hot Super-Earths could be the remnants of more massive planets that completely lost their thick, gaseous atmospheres to the same type of evaporation. Because the Earth's atmosphere blocks most ultraviolet light, astronomers needed a space telescope with Hubble's ultraviolet capability and exquisite precision to find "The Behemoth." "You would have to have Hubble's eyes," says Ehrenreich. "You would not see it in visible wavelengths. But when you turn the ultraviolet eye of Hubble onto the system, it's really kind of a transformation, because the planet turns into a monstrous thing." Because the planet's orbit is tilted nearly edge-on to our view from Earth, the planet can be seen passing in front of its star. Astronomers also saw the star eclipsed by "The Behemoth" hydrogen cloud around the planet. Ehrenreich and his team think that such a huge cloud of gas can exist around this planet because the cloud is not rapidly heated and swept away by the radiation pressure from the relatively cool red dwarf star. This allows the cloud to stick around for a longer time. The team's findings will be published in the June 25 edition of the journal Nature. Evaporation such as this may have happened in the earlier stages of our own solar system, when the Earth had a hydrogen-rich atmosphere that dissipated over 100 to 500 million years. If so, the Earth may previously have sported a comet-like tail. GJ 436b resides very close to its star - less than 2 million miles -- and whips around it in just 2.6 Earth days. In comparison, the Earth is 93 million miles from our sun and orbits it every 365.24 days. This exoplanet is at least 6 billion years old, and may even be twice that age. It has a mass of around 23 Earths. At just 30 light-years from Earth, it's one of the closest known extrasolar planets. Finding "The Behemoth" could be a game-changer for characterizing atmospheres of the whole population of Neptune-sized planets and Super-Earths in ultraviolet observations. In the coming years, Ehrenreich expects that astronomers will find thousands of this kind of planet. The ultraviolet technique used in this study also may also spot the signature of oceans evaporating on smaller, more Earth-like planets. It will be extremely challenging for astronomers to directly see water vapor on those worlds, because it's too low in the atmosphere and shielded from telescopes. However, when water molecules are broken by the stellar radiation into hydrogen and oxygen, the relatively light hydrogen atoms can escape the planet. If scientists spot this hydrogen evaporating from a planet that is slightly more temperate and less massive than GJ 436b, it could be an indication of an ocean on the surface. The Daily Galaxy via NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. 'Source: The Behemoth'

Read More........→June 27, 2015

The first baby born from a womb transplant

Doctors in Sweden have announced the first baby born to a mother with a womb transplant. This pioneering operation offers hope to thousands of couples who are unable to conceive children.

In 2013, researchers at the University of Gothenburg completed a series of nine womb transplants on women in Sweden. Among the patients was an unnamed 36-year-old with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH), a rare condition that prevents the uterus from developing. Her ovaries were intact, however, so she could ovulate. This female became the recipient of a uterus donation from her 61-year-old family friend, the latter having gone through the menopause around seven years earlier. Drugs were needed to suppress the immune system, which otherwise would have resulted in the organ being rejected. Alongside this, IVF was used to produce 11 embryos, frozen and stored for later use. In January 2014, a year after the transplant, doctors successfully implanted one of these embryos into the patient, transferring it to her new womb. There were concerns over how well a transplanted uterus would

Credit: The Lancet

cope with the strains of pregnancy, during which it swells greatly in size. The procedure had been attempted by scientists in the past – but in each case, it led to either a miscarriage or organ failure caused by disease. On this occasion, however, the operation was successful. There were problems in the 31st week of pregnancy – as the mother developed a condition known as pre-eclampsia (characterised by high blood pressure) – but a caesarean section delivered a healthy baby boy weighing 3.9 pounds (1.8 kg); normal for that stage of pregnancy. British medical journal The Lancet has released a photo below and is due to publish a report on the case shortly. This milestone in reproductive medicine – the culmination of more than 10 years' research and surgical training – offers hope to thousands of couples who are unable to conceive children. The doctor who led the work, Prof. Mats Brännström, has issued a note of caution, however. In an interview he stated it will be "many, many years" before this operationbecomes routine. This is partly because of the extremely high cost, but also because it remains a new and somewhat experimental procedure, only performed by certain specialist surgeons in select centres and requiring various further studies. Dr Allan Pacey, of the British Fertility Society says: "I think it is brilliant and revolutionary, and opens the door to many infertile women. The scale of it feels a bit like IVF. It feels like a step change. The question is can it be done repeatedly, reliably and safely." "He’s no different from any other child – but he will have a good story to tell," the father says. "One day, he can look at the newspaper articles about how he was born and know that he was the first in the world to be born this way."Source: Article

Read More........→October 21, 2014

Pigeons use mental map to navigate

Washington, Homing pigeons fly off from anand still manage to find their way home using a mental map, a new study has revealed. Despite intensive research, it is not yet definitively clear where this unusual gift comes from. All we know is that homing pigeons and migratory birds determine their flight direction with the help of the Earth's magnetic field, the stars and the position of the sun. Research proposes two approaches to explain how homing pigeons can find their home loft when released from an unfamiliar place. The first version assumes that pigeons compare the coordinates of their current location with those of the home loft and then systematically reduce the difference between the two until they have brought the two points together. If this version is accurate, it would mean that pigeons navigate like flying robots. The second version accords the pigeons a spatial understanding and "knowledge" of their position in space relative to their home loft. This would presuppose a type of mental map in their brain and thus cognitive capabilities. Up until now, there has not been any clear evidence to support the two navigation variants proposed. For their experiments, Nicole Blaser, a doctoral student in biology at the University of Zurich and her colleagues fitted homing pigeons with miniature GPS loggers in order to monitor the birds' flight paths. Blaser concluded that pigeons can determine their location and their direction of flight relative to the target and can choose between several targets. They thus have a type of cognitive navigational map in their heads and have cognitive capabilities. The study is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. (ANI). Source: Article, Image: flickr.com

Read More........→September 08, 2014

Sun's Activity Influences Natural Climate Change

Credit: UCAR

For the first time, a research team has been able to reconstruct the solar activity at the end of the last ice age, around 20,000-10,000 years ago, by analysing trace elements in ice cores in Greenland and cave formations from China. During the last glacial maximum, Sweden was covered in a thick ice sheet that stretched all the way down to northern Germany and sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than they are today, because the water was frozen in the extensive ice caps.  The new study shows that the sun's variation influences the climate in a similar way regardless of whether the climate is extreme, as during the Ice Age, or as it is today. "The study shows an unexpected link between solar activity and climate change. It shows both that changes in solar activity are nothing new and that solar activity influences the climate, especially on a regional level. Understanding these processes helps us to better forecast the climate in certain regions", said Raimund Muscheler, Lecturer in Quaternary Geology at Lund University and co-author of the study. The sun's impact on the climate is a matter of current debate, especially as regards the less-than-expected global warming of the past 15 years. There is still a lot of uncertainty as to how the sun affects the climate, but the study suggests that direct solar energy is not the most important factor, but rather indirect effects on atmospheric circulation. "Reduced solar activity could lead to colder winters in Northern Europe. This is because the sun's UV radiation affects the atmospheric circulation. Interestingly, the same processes lead to warmer winters in Greenland, with greater snowfall and more storms. The study also shows that the various solar processes need to be included in climate models in order to better predict future global and regional climate change", said Dr Muscheler. Contacts and sources: Raimund Muscheler, Lund University, Citation: Persistent link between solar activity and Greenland climate during the Last Glacial Maximum, Nature Geoscience, Source: ineffableisland.com

Read More........→August 27, 2014

Climate Adaptation Difficult For Europe’s Birds

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European Goldfinch

For the past 20 years, the climate in Europe has been getting warmer. Species of bird and butterfly which thrive in cool temperatures therefore need to move further north. However, they have difficulty adapting to the warmer climate quickly enough, as shown by new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Åke Lindström is Professor of Animal Ecology at Lund University, Sweden. Together with other European researchers he has looked at 20 years’ worth of data on birds, butterflies and summer temperatures. During this period, Europe has become warmer and set temperatures have shifted northwards by 250 km. Bird and butterfly communities have not moved at the same rate. “Both butterflies and birds respond to climate change, but not fast enough to keep up with an increasingly warm climate. We don’t know what the long-term ecological effects of this will be”, says Åke Lindström. Butterflies have adapted more quickly to the changing temperatures and have moved on average 114 km north, whereas birds have only moved 37 km. A likely reason is that butterflies have much shorter lifespans and therefore adapt more quickly to climate change. Because birds like to return to the same breeding ground as in previous years, there is also greater inertia in the bird system. “A worrying aspect of this is if birds fall out of step with butterflies, because caterpillars and insects in general represent an important source of food for many birds”, says Åke Lindström. Sweden shows the strongest trends with regard to birds; however, there is no corresponding Swedish data for butterflies. For the study, the birds have been divided into ‘cold’ and ‘warm’ species, i.e. birds that thrive in slightly cooler or warmer temperatures. For example, chaffinches and reed buntings are ‘colder’ species and blackcaps and goldfinches ‘warmer’ species. In general, the researchers have observed that ‘warm’ birds are on the increase and ‘cold’ birds are in decline. When new species are seen in an area and others disappear, it is more often ‘warm’ species that arrive and ‘cold’ species that disappear. “Over the past 50 years the main factors affecting bird and butterfly numbers and distribution have been agriculture, forestry and urbanisation. Climate change is now emerging as an increasingly important factor in the development of biodiversity”, says Åke Lindström, continuing: “For Sweden, this will probably mean more species of bird in the long run; many new species are already arriving from the continent.” Åke Lindström works among other things on the projects BECC (Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in a Changing Climate) and CanMove (Centre for Animal Movement Research) at Lund University in Sweden. The study is a joint European project with data from 20 years and seven countries (Spain, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, Finland and the Czech Republic). The Swedish data covers birds and temperatures and has been gathered on behalf of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Contacts and sources: Åke Lindström, Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com

Read More........→August 27, 2014