- Is
Multitasking rotting our kids brains
- ArtsJournal's headline; USA Today said ëSo much media, so little attention spanû
- Speaking of Multi-Tasking ... this is our token non-astro "wet" news item ;-)
- USA-Today Ed,
via ArtsJournal
- Is this a brown dwarf or an exoplanet? [updated]
- ëUsing the ESO VLT, astronomers have found a companion to the T-Tauri star GQ Lupi.
Comparing with archive data, the astronomers could confirm that the two objects move together in the sky.
The companion, roughly 250 fainter than GQ Lupi A, is located at 100 AU from it and is found to be a cool and small object.
Its exact nature - exoplanet or brown dwarf ââ¬â is still unclear.û
- This is the same one reported previously here,
but now there's an on-line pre-print linked from the ESO PR.
- Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters,
European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Press Release,
via EurekAlert; prior reports
- Superglue Of Planet Formation: Sticky Ice
- ëScientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory,
reporting in the current issue of Astrophysical Journal, offer a cool answer to the planet-formation riddle:
Micron-wide dust particles encrusted with molecularly gluey ice enabled planets to bulk up like dirty s
nowballs quickly enough to overcome the scattering force of solar winds.û
- Super-Low temperature "fluffy ice" is much softer than regular ice, and thus impacts are very inelastic,
so things can clump up with gravity capture instead of bouncing with escape velocity.
- PACNW NL original release,
via Science Daily
Special RAS-NAM2005 Section
The Royal Astronomical Society's on-going
National Astronomers Meeting
(RAS-NAM 2005) in Birmingham, UK
is a major source of astronomical
Press Releasees
this week; the Conference abstracts
go on for 33 sessions, or 97 pages with 4-5 abstracts per page.
- New solar flare evidence may solve mystery
- ëAn international group of scientists has discovered important
new evidence that points to the cataclysmic events that trigger a solar flare
and the mechanisms that drive its subsequent evolution. The new results were
obtained by using the SOHO spacecraft to study one of the most powerful solar
flares of recent years.û
-
RAS
NAM 2005
Press Release,
via SpaceRef
- Discovery of Giant X-Ray Loop Hints at Cosmic Particle Accelerator
- Darn that's big.
-
RAS
NAM 2005
Press Release,
via SpaceRef
- X-Ray Vision of Violence in Interacting Galaxies
-
Crunch.
-
RAS
NAM 2005
Press Release
and Project,
via SpaceRef and Space Flight Now
