Scientists Snap First Images of New Planets

New 'Blue Marble' image focuses on eastern hemisphere

(NEWSER) - NASA released its 2012 version of the "Blue Marble" image of earth from space last month, and it went viral in a hurry. What to do for an encore? Show the other side. The first image focused on the western hemisphere. Citing huge demand, NASA this week released a companion image that focuses on the eastern hemisphere. It's a composite image, and Wired has the particulars of how this new shot came to be. More»

GG 667Cc orbits star 22 light years away

(NEWSER) - A planet in a triple-star system a relatively close 22 light years away is the best candidate yet for supporting life, researchers say. The rocky planet, GJ 667Cc, is around 4.5 times the size of Earth and orbits in the middle of the "Goldilocks zone" where water can remain stable without boiling or freezing, the Christian Science Monitor reports. It orbits a red dwarf star once every 28 days, and appears to absorb as much light and energy from its sun as Earth does. More»

Weather balloons can pose danger to airplanes, officials advise

(NEWSER) - Lego men in space —like the one recently sent 14 miles above sea level by two Toronto teens—may be cool, but pilots have a warning for would-be copycats: Your weather balloon could endanger airplanes, reports the Toronto Star . Were a plane to fly into a large balloon, the damage could be the equivalent of hitting a bird. And if the balloon was sucked into an engine, things could get ugly, warned air safety experts. More»

Triples number of known multiplanetary star systems

(NEWSER) - The Kepler space telescope has discovered a whopping 11 new planetary systems that are home to 26 planets—thus tripling the number of stars that have more than one planet that passes in front of them and doubling the number of exoplanets confirmed by the Kepler mission. "Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky," says a NASA scientist. "Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates." More»

Relativity, theory of evolution top the list

(NEWSER) - Every year, the website Edge poses a big, open-ended question to leading scientists. This year's query— "What is your favorite deep, elegant or beautiful explanation?" —received 191 answers covering a wide range of ideas, with Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution receiving the most replies, reports Reuters . Some interesting responses:

• "Darwin's natural selection wins hands down," writes Richard Dawkins, unsurprisingly. "Never in the field of human comprehension were so many facts explained by assuming so few."