Rahinur Rahaman

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The solar system may not be a nice round shape, but rather a squashed rectangle, scientists said today.

They made their conclusion after studying data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft exploring the solar system’s outer limits.

Launched in 1977 along side Voyager 1 the unmanned probes are now studying the edges of the heliosphere, the huge magnetic ‘bubble’ around our solar system. It is far outside the orbit of Pluto and created by the solar wind as it runs up against the thin gas in interstellar space.

The solar wind is made up of electrically charged particles blown into space in all directions by the sun. The boundary between the heliosphere and the rest of interstellar space is known as the ‘termination shock.’

In August 2007 Voyager 2 crossed this boundary 7.8 billion miles from the sun.

Voyager 1 had already crossed the boundary in December 2004. It is about 10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles farther from the sun.

Scientists think this indicates that the bubble is pushed in closer to the sun by the local interstellar magnetic field where Voyager 2 made its crossing. This makes it more of a squashed rectangular shape rather than a circle.

‘Imagine a balloon is being blown up by the solar wind,’ Edward Stone from the California Institute of Technology told the journal Nature.

‘You might imagine that if you took a balloon, which is mainly spherical, and pushed it against the wall, it would be blunted on one side. That’s what has happened with the heliosphere.’

The Voyager spacecraft were launched with a mission to fly by and observe the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. The two spacecraft then continued their mission into the outer solar system.

They are flying through remote, cold and dark conditions, powered by long-life nuclear batteries in the absence of solar energy.

Source: Mail Online

God did NOT create the Universe, says Stephen Hawking

The universe was not created by God, scientist Stephen Hawking has said in his new book.

Professor Hawking believes the laws of physics were behind the Big Bang instead, in a challenge to traditional religious beliefs.

In The Grand Design, extracts of which were printed today, Prof Hawking concludes: ‘Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

‘Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

‘It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.’

The book, co-written by American physicist Leonard Mlodinow and published on September 9, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton’s belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have created out of chaos.

He cites the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun.

‘That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings.’

Prof Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe, writing in A Brief History Of Time in 1988: ‘If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.’

He also leaves open the possibility of life on other planets and entire new universes – the so-called ‘multiverse’.

Theoretical; physics known as M-theory, a form of string theory, could be the ‘holy grail’ that will explain everything in the known universe.

Physicists have long sought after a universal theory that unites quantum theory, matter at the sub-atomic level, with gravity which explains how objects interact.

He says: ‘M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. The fact that we human beings – who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a triumph’.

Professor Hawking has been quite outspoken in recent months over a number of issues.

In April documentary series, he argued that it is ‘perfectly rational’ to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe.

And in an extraordinary series of assertions, he said Earth might be at risk from what he imagines to be ‘massive ships’ which could try to colonise our planet and plunder our resources.

Professor Hawking said: ‘We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

‘I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet.

‘Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.’

It would be ‘too risky’ to attempt to make contact with alien races, he concluded.

‘If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.’

And last month Professor Hawking has warned that unless the human race colonises space within two centuries it will disappear forever.

He said that our only chance for long-term survival is to move away from Earth and begin to inhabit far-flung planets.

In an interview with the website Big Think, Professor Hawking said he was an optimist but the next few hundred years had to be negotiated carefully if humans were to survive.

Source: Mail Online

Oracle Database 32-bit editions support the following Microsoft Windows operation systems.

Oracle Database 11g Release 2

• Windows Server 2003 – all editions
• Windows Server 2003 R2 – all editions
• Windows XP Professional
• Windows Vista – Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions
• Windows Server 2008 – Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web, and Foundation editions. The Server Core option is not supported.
• Windows 7 – Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions

Oracle Database 10g Release 2

• Windows 2000 with Service Pack 1 or later. All editions, including Terminal Services and Microsoft Windows 2000 MultiLanguage Edition (MLE), are supported.
• Windows Server 2003 – all editions
• Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows XP Professional
• Windows Vista – Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions
• Windows NT is not supported.
• Windows Multilingual User Interface Pack is supported on Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional, and Windows Vista.

Google has announced a new feature for its Gmail service which automatically filters the most important messages for you.

Priority emails will be pushed to the top of a user’s inbox – while others will drop to the bottom.

The ‘Priority Inbox’ function is designed to help users manage the huge number of emails received every day.

The brand new application splits the inbox into three sections: ‘Important and unread’, ‘Starred’ and ‘Everything Else’.

Announcing the new feature, Google said in a statement: ‘As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important.

‘Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most and which messages you open and reply to.’

Google said Priority Inbox will be rolled out to all Gmail users, including those who use Google Apps, over the next week or so.

Google described its new filtering system as ‘your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules’.

Messages that initially start appearing in the new priority box will be based on an algorithm which looks at factors such as the identity of the sender, phrases in the message and whether the sender is an individual or a company.

The plan is that emails from friends and family will appear above less important messages.

Gmail was launched by Google in April 2004 and now has an estimated 146 million monthly users worldwide.

Google said in its blog that once users start seeing the ‘New! Priority Inbox’ link at the top right of their Gmail account they can begin using the new function.

A solar system containing up to seven planets orbiting a sun-like star has been detected 127 light years from Earth.

The planetary system is believed to be the largest ever discovered beyond the sun.

Astronomers have confirmed the presence of five planets and have tantalising evidence of two more.

The distance of the planets from their parent star follow a regular pattern, similar to that seen in our own solar system.

‘We have found what is most likely the system with the most planets yet discovered,’ said Dr Christophe Lovis, who led the European Southern Observatory (ESO) scientists.

‘This remarkable discovery also highlights the fact that we are now entering a new era in exoplanet research: the study of complex planetary systems and not just of individual planets.

‘Studies of planetary motions in the new system reveal complex gravitational interactions between the planets and give us insights into the long-term evolution of the system.’

The parent star, known as HD 10180, lies in the southern constellation of Hydrus 127 light years away.

Astronomers patiently studied it for six years using a planet-finding instrument called the HARPS spectrograph, attached to ESO’s 3.6 metre (11.8ft) telescope at La Silla, Chile.

These planets, with orbit periods ranging from six to 600 days, are separated from their star at 0.06 to 1.4 times the distance between the Earth and sun.

Dr Lovis added: ‘We also have good reasons to believe that two other planets are present. One would be a Saturn-like planet (with a minimum mass of 65 Earth masses) orbiting in 2,200 days. The other would be the least massive exoplanet ever discovered, with a mass of about 1.4 times that of the Earth.

‘It is very close to its host star, at just two per cent of the Earth-sun distance. One ‘year’ on this planet would last only 1.18 Earth days.’

The planet would be rocky, like the Earth, but probably far too hot to sustain life.

With at least five Neptune-sized planets circling inside an orbit equivalent to that of Mars, the HD 10180 system has a more populated inner region than our solar system.

So far astronomers have found 15 systems containing at least three planets.

The last record holder was 55 Cancri, which has a total of five planets including two gas giants.

Details of the discovery were presented today at an exoplanet meeting at the Haute-Provence Observatory in south-east France.

A paper on the research has been submitted to the journal Astronomy And Astrophysics.

Source: Mail Online

It is more commonly known as the gas that fills cheap party balloons and makes your voice squeak if you inhale it.

But helium is actually a precious resource that is being squandered with Earth’s reserves of it due to run out within 25 to 30 years, experts have warned.

Earth’s resources of helium are being depleted at an astonishing rate, an effect which will spell disaster for hospitals which use it to cool MRI scanners.

The world’s biggest store of helium – the most commonly used inert gas – lies in a disused airfield in Amarillo, Texas, and is being sold off far too cheaply.

But in 1996, the US government passed a law which states that the facility – the US National Helium Reserve – must be completely sold off by 2015 to recoup the price of installing it.

This means that the helium, a non-renewable gas, is being quickly sold off at increasingly cheap prices, making it uneconomical to recycle.

Nasa uses the gas to clean its rockets of fuel while liquid helium is used to cool nuclear reactors and space telescopes.

Nobel laureate Robert Richardson, a professor of physics at Cornell University in New York,  told New Scientist magazine that once our helium reserves are gone there will be no way of replacing it.

He also warned that although some substitutes can be found for some applications where helium is used, it will be impossible to use a different material for MRI scanners

He told the magazine: There are some substitutes, but it can’t be replaced for cryogenics, where liquid helium cools superconducting magnets for MRI scanners.

‘There is no other substance which has a lower boiling point than helium. It is also used in the manufacture of fibre optics and liquid crystal displays.

‘The use of helium in cryogenics is self-contained, in that the helium is recycled. The same could be done in other industries if helium was expensive enough that manufacturers thought recovering it was worthwhile.’

Helium is formed through the slow radioactive decay of rocks on Earth and nearly all of our reserves have been formed as a by-product of the extraction of natural gas.

The only way to obtain more helium would be to capture it from the decay of tritium – a radioactive hydrogen isotope, which the U.S. stopped making n 1988.

The US stores around 80 per cent of the world’s helium and so its decision to let it go at an extremely low price has a massive knock-on affect on its market.

But Professor Richardson said that low price of helium meant that it was being ‘squandered’ rather than being treated as a precious resource.

He said: ‘The problem is that these supplies will run out in a mere 25 years, and the US government has a policy of selling helium at a ridiculously low price.’

And he said that the only way to deal with the problem would be for the free market in helium to prevail.

He said this will mean that a helium balloon of the kind used at children’s parties would cost $100 in the future as the price soared.

What helium is used for

Airships: Helium gas is seen as a safer alternative to hydrogen for lifting airships and blimps because it is non-flammable
Doctors Giving Patient MRI

MRI scanners: Its low boiling point makes it perfect for cooling metals to make them superconductive. it is used to cool the superconducting magnets in an  MRI scanner

Nasa rockets: Nasa uses helium to clean out rocket engines and pressurise the inside of rocket fuel engines

Meteorite age suggests planets began to form earlier than thought

The solar system may be almost 2 million years older than previously thought, a new study shows.

Data from a newly studied meteorite recovered from the Saharan Desert show that the solar system formed 4,568.2 million years ago, 0.3 million to 1.9 million years earlier than other estimates. The results were published online August 22 in Nature Geoscience.

“All the interesting things we want to understand about the chemistry of our solar system happened within the first five to 10 million years,” says study coauthor Meenakshi Wadhwa, a cosmochemist from Arizona State University in Tempe. “When you push it back by 2 million years, that’s a substantial proportion of that 5 to 10 million years.”

The meteorite contains millimeter- and centimeter-sized bits of calcium- and aluminum-rich substances, some of the oldest material ever found in primordial rocks. These pockets in the rock, called inclusions, are believed to be among the first solids that condensed from gas at the beginning of the solar system’s formation. Along with other materials in the presolar cloud, the inclusions snowballed into larger objects, eventually forming asteroids and planets.

Study coauthor Audrey Bouvier of Arizona State measured the ratios of variants of lead atoms produced by the radioactive decay of uranium present when the inclusions formed.  Since uranium decays at a known rate, current amounts of lead forms, or isotopes, allow scientists to calculate how long ago the space dust formed.

Two meteorites previously analyzed for their lead-isotope ratio suggested the first solar system solids formed 4,567.1 million to 4,567.6 million years ago. But these ages were inconsistent with other radioactive “clocks” in the same rocks, such as one based on the decay of an aluminum isotope to magnesium.

The uranium-lead decay age is consistent with other clocks in the new meteorite. The rock probably went through less heating and bombardment when it was part of an asteroid than the previously studied meteorites did, the authors say, so it experienced less chemical change.

The softball-sized meteorite was found in Morocco in 2004 and weighs a little over three pounds.

“It’s like crime-scene investigation four and a half billion years after the scene is vacated,” says astrophysicist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. “We’re coming toward more of a cohesive picture of how things happened.”

Source: Science News

Mobile phone which can monitor heart problems and send data to your doctor goes on sale in UK

A new mobile phone could help millions of people who suffer from heart-related medical problems monitor their conditions.

The H’andy Sana is a touch-screen phone that also includes an application called Heart Suite, which allows users to measure, record and send vital Electrocardiograms (ECGs).

Users can take their ECG instantly by pressing two fingers on the side of the phone for 30 seconds.

They can then send it to a doctor or qualified medical professional for advice, along with other data including blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol.

The idea is that the phone is suitable for day-to-day monitoring of heart problems, without the need for expensive equipment.

Manufacturers also argue it could offer a broader picture of the patient’s condition compared to the result of only getting an ECG when visiting a hospital or clinic.

Doctors could buy the phone to use for ECG tests when visiting patients in their homes.

The new device will be launched in the UK later this year by Medical Marketing UK Ltd, which has signed a deal with MMB GmbH for exclusive marketing rights for the H’andy sana.

It is expected to cost around £490 and is likely to be sold with a large carrier subsidy.

MMUK is headed by former Vodafone director Jonathan Viney. A number of telecommunications companies have already expressed an interest in selling the new handset.

Source: Mail Online

Facebook launches new service where users ‘check in’ to locations and let friends know where they are.

Facebook is at the centre of a fresh privacy storm after launching a feature which reveals the location of users.

The application, called Facebook Places, uses satellite tracking technology to allow people to ‘check in’ their current location and share the information with their friends.

But critics said it leaves users open to the risk of burglary, stalking and harassment.

They also said that many users did not fully understand the site’s privacy options and have no idea of the potential dangers.

The service is currently only available in the U.S. but the company plans to extend the feature worldwide.

Eric King, of human rights watchdog Privacy International, said that though Facebook defended the feature by saying the information was only shared with friends, users often had certain ‘friends’ they knew little about.

He added: ‘You are essentially telling people that you are not at home, that you are in thisbar, or in this area. This could  mean you end up burgled and at worst then people you don’t want knowing where you are can very easily find you.’

However, Facebook insisted users would have to agree to a number of clauses before the option was enabled.

The launch of the feature comes just days after Google boss Eric Schimdt warned young people risk being forced to change their identities in the future because they are exposing so much of their private live on social networking sites.

Source: Mail Online

Scientists have discovered that the universe will probably continue to expand forever.

Nasa researchers using a ‘Galactic Lens’ have revealed it will eventually become a cold, deserted wasteland.

The astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to work out the amount of mysterious ‘dark energy’ present in the cosmos.

The study looked at what the energy, which is continuing to push the universe apart, is made of.

Using the ‘huge magnifying lens’ to calculate the amount of dark energy present in space, the scientists concluded the distribution of the unexplained force meant the universe would probably never stop expanding.

Scientists used Hubble to examine how light from stars became distorted in and around a huge cluster of galaxies known as Abell 1689.

The size of the cluster causes light to bend round the galaxies which the astronomers utilised to measure how far away Abell 1689 is from Earth, its mass and crucially, the distribution of dark energy.

Scientists examined 34 pictures of the galaxies taken by Hubble and ground-based observatories to study the phenomenon.

‘The geometry, the content and the fate of the universe are all intricately linked,’ said researcher Priyamvada Natarajan from Yale University.

‘If you know two, you can deduce the third. We already have a pretty good knowledge of the universe’s mass-energy content, so if we can get a handle on its geometry then we will be able to work out exactly what the fate of the universe will be.’

Professor Eric Jullo, from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who led the study published in the journal Science, added: ‘We have to tackle the dark energy problem from all sides.

‘It’s important to have several methods, and now we’ve got a new, very powerful one.

‘What I like about our new method is that it’s very visual. You can literally see gravitation and dark energy bend the images of the background galaxies into arcs.’

Dark energy is believed to make up around three-quarters of the universe but remains completely invisible to astronomers.

All that is known of the force is that it is responsible for pushing galaxies further and further apart. Prof Jullo said he was confident though that today’s study will help scientific estimations of dark energy improve by around 30 per cent in the future.

He also added it was now thought the expansion of the universe will not only continue indefinitely but also speed up.

Source: Mail Online

Suren Manvelyan took an amazing series of macro photographs of irises, revealing all sorts of incredible, complex detail that you might not have known you had.

Source: I Heart Chaos