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 Almost nine months after Kepler space telescope launched to space, scientists reveal the first five extrasolar planets discoveries that hopes to inspire us that habitable exoplanets are indeed on the way. Although these exoplanets were not really the type that Kepler was created for to detect, the success of finding them proves that scientists are finally on the verge of nailing the first habitable exoplanet.
Kepler, the so called planet-hunter, was launched in March 7, 2009 after several delays due to NASA budget cuts. Its mission is to find any earth-size exoplanet that lie within the habitable zone of stars, the well-known Goldilocks planet. Unlike the Hubble space telescope, Kepler's gears were fine tuned to detect smaller planets and possess a wider field of view for detecting planetary transits, an event where an exoplanet passes in front of its star. Kepler, however, has the opportunity to observe it a couple of times more than Hubble. In this way it observes the the degree of reduction of brightness of the star from whence the diameter of the exoplanet is derived.
Tags: habitable, star, exoplanet
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Today's nuclear reactors provide clean, efficient and continuous power generation with a lifetime between 30-40 years save for their expensive radioisotope fuels, refueling and maintenance every two years and the amount of radioactive waste produced. A special kind of fission reactor called the traveling wave reactor (TWR) reduces the volume of uranium fuel as well as the need for refueling and maintenance. The TWR actually uses conventional reactor radioactive by-products and converts it to fuel it can use using only a small amount of enriched uranium to start the fission process. This means that the TWR can even use its own waste products and run theoretically for a hundred years or more before refueling! It can provide the energy necessary to power the Goldilocks Mission ships, specially if the space travel duration reaches hundreds of years.
Some of us are very much familiar with the basic requirement for an exoplanet to be counted as habitable: it must reside in the habitable zone of its star. The star should favorably be in the same class as our sun in the main sequence although studies show that red dwarfs could host them as well. As such, much focus is given to searching and filing a catalogue for these types of stars. Enter the HabCat, or the Catalog of Nearby Habitable Systems, a list of about 17,129 stars made by astronomers Margaret Turnbull and Jill Tarter in 2002.
Ever since scientists discovered the incredulous tensile strength of carbon nanotubes and its unique properties, the wonder material has found numerous applications in various technologies but has yet to fulfill its part in what made it famous the first time, the space elevator. Much research has been done in the last two decades and still continuing, for carbon nanotubes (CNT) do hold a lot of promise in its home niche, nanoscience and nanotechnology. It may seem a bit ironic then for it to be the main component to what may be the world's gigantic superstructure, one that pierces through the stratosphere and even go beyond where most satellites orbit the earth. For all its worth, carbon nanotubes are still the best uncontested theoretical candidates for constructing the space elevator cable.
