(Credit: Cnn.com/tech)
Astronomers find largest exoplanet to date
PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Scientists have discovered the universe's largest known planet, a giant ball made of mostly hydrogen that circles a star 1,400 light-years away.
An illustration of the new planet, called TrES-4, with its host star.
Scientists believe the planet is about twice the size of Jupiter, and has a temperature of 2,300-degrees.
"There is probably not a really firm surface anywhere on the planet. You would sink into it," said Georgi Mandushev, a research scientist at Lowell Observatory and lead author of an article announcing the finding in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Lowell, along with the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County and telescopes operating in Spain's Canary Islands, discovered the planet circling a star in the constellation Hercules.
Lowell announced the finding Monday. Scientists first spotted the new planet, called TrES-4, and a smaller one in spring 2006. Scientists at Caltech, Harvard University and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii later confirmed the discovery.
"It's very solid stuff," astronomer Alan Boss at the Carnegie Institution of Washington said of the discovery of TrES-4. He marveled at the planet's extremely low density, about half that of Saturn in our solar system.
"It's just letting us know that nature has some surprises for us ... a much wider range of possibility than we could imagine," Boss said.
He said scientists "can't understand why these so-called fluffy planets are so fluffy. It really is a mystery, just how they can be so low-density."
Scientists also are working on the possibility of another planet in the same constellation. "It's tough," Mandushev said. "We're not really sure what's going on there. There might actually be another planet in this field, which would be incredible."
The participating Lowell telescope is housed on top of Anderson Mesa, about 15 miles south of Flagstaff.
Lowell is best known for the 1930 discovery of Pluto, which since has been demoted from planet status.
Gadget Of The Day!
(Credit: Engadget).
Samsung Wi-Fi Photo Frame
We already heard of a WiFi-equipped Samsung photo frame hitting Europe, but it looks like the company is unsurprisingly releasing one in Korea as well, albeit with a slightly different model number. From the looks of it, however, that small distinction doesn't seem to indicate any larger changes to the frame itself, with the company's new SPF-72V model boasting the same 7-inch screen, memory card slots, USB port, RSS support, and Windows Media Player 11 interaction as the SPH-72V we saw earlier. It also packs more or less the same price, coming in at 229,000 won, or just under $250.
Sony Set To Introduce New Fz Series Models
(Credit:Engadget)
It's not all that long ago that Sony bumped its VAIO FZ laptops into Santa Rosa territory, but it seems that the company is planning to expand the line even further, with Notebook Italia today getting word of a pair of new FZ2 series laptops. As with its current FZ offerings, these new laptops will each pack 15.4-inch WXGA displays, but they get an upgrade in the processor department to your choice of Core 2 Duo T7250 or T7500, along with NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GT graphics on the higher-end of the two, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and your choice of Blu-ray or DVD combo drives. No word on a release date just yet, it seems, but they'll apparently set you back $1,299 or $1,399 depending on the configuration.
Ford's Sync phone / DAP integration gets priced at $395
integration solutions: Dearborn announced today that the system will be a $395 option on new Focus, Edge, and Lincoln MKX vehicles starting this fall. Ford also said that Sync will be coming to nine other vehicles by 2008, but honestly, we're not going to be satisfied on the carputer tip until we get Turbo Boost and a sweeping red scanner light.
No comments:
Post a Comment