Various Science Stories

Earth + 0.4: smallest exoplanet spotted "Today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, NASA's Kepler team announced the discovery of the smallest exoplanet yet identified. The planet, called Kepler-10b, is only 1.4 times the diameter of the Earth, but it's significantly more heavy and quite a bit hotter, since it orbits well inside the radius of Mercury."

Hide And Go Seek…. Supermassive Black Hole Peeks From Behind The Skirt Of A Dwarf Galaxy "According to the American Astronomical Society Press Release the surprising discovery of a supermassive black hole in a small nearby galaxy has given astronomers a tantalizing look at how black holes and galaxies may have grown in the early history of the Universe. Finding a black hole a million times more massive than the Sun in a star-forming dwarf galaxy isn’t exactly child’s play – but it is a strong indication that supermassive black holes formed before the buildup of galaxies."

Bacteria ate up all the methane that spilled from the Deepwater Horizon well "With the well unsealed, substantial amounts of the gas were released into the gulf. This plume of dissolved methane should have lurked in the water for years, hanging around like a massive planetary fart. But by August, it had disappeared. On three separate trips through the gulf, John Kessler from Texas A&M University couldn't find any traces of the gas above background levels. He thinks he knows why – the methane was eaten by bacteria."

It took a team of physicists all this time to figure out how DVDs work "In nature, of course, we see phase changes like this all the time. When water freezes, it goes from a disordered liquid to a crystalline solid. What makes AIST special is that it moves between two solid states: when you burn a DVD, you're turning its surface from an amorphous solid into a crystalline solid. Your DVD is frozen into a crystalline order with the heat of a laser."

A simple model could explain how the first cell came into being "ow two theoretical biophysicists at the University of Tokyo say they might have the answer. Their model holds that one of the two molecules reproduces much more slowly than the other, but this molecule would also last much longer than its counterpart before breaking apart. This means that a single working example of this molecule could sustain generations of the other molecule, providing some security for the system."