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POPSPlanet and star in puzzling waltz Instead, the system might have started out that way. "It could be a coincidence, but I don't like explanations based on coincidence," says Aigrain. She suggests that magnetic fields might have helped to lock the system together, but stresses that it is pure speculation at this point. During its mission, COROT should discover many more planets. Aigrain and her colleagues hope they will then have a better idea whether synchronised systems are common, and what causes the phenomenon.
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POPSLast Lecture Prof Dies For anyone depressed about life, the universe or anything, this "last lecture" is a must see. Randy will be missed.
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POPSQuiet Explosion: Object Intermediate Between Normal Supernovae And Gamma-ray Bursts Found Stars that were at birth more massive than about 8 times the mass of our Sun end their relatively short life in a cosmic, cataclysmic firework lighting up the Universe. The outcome is the formation of the densest objects that exist, neutron stars and black holes. When exploding, some of the most massive stars emit a short cry of agony, in the form of a burst of very energetic light, X- or gamma-rays.
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POPSMore bad news for alarmists For example, the recent summary by Fred Singer and 22 expert contributors to “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate” makes some extraordinary statements about computer models. (In addition to the many excellent contributors, this summary also contains 167 references to the scientific literature). This is important since computer models are being improperly, yet extensively, used by state legislatures as the basis of policies for greenhouse gas mitigation, rather than using actual climate data taken from the real world. These statements include: Computer models do not consider variations of irradiance and magnetic fields of the sun Computer models do not accurately model the role of clouds Computer models do not simulate a possible negative feedback from water vapor Computer models do not explain many features of the Earth’s observed climate. Computer models cannot produce reliable predictions of regional climate change.
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POPSIs a 'Dark Force' Pushing the Universe Apart? Astronomers now recognize that the eventual fate of the universe is inextricably tied to the presence of dark energy and dark matter.The current standard model for cosmology describes a universe that is 70 percent dark energy, 25 percent dark matter, and only 5 percent normal matter.
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POPSAre We Living in a Giant Void? Their theory posits that if in fact Earth and our surrounding neighbors are in fact in an unusual or special region of space, ie, a void, then our perspective on the universe would be severely challenged
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POPSNew Scifi Story About How Google Achieves Consciousness rom the story: When Ed examined the traffic, he realized that Google was doing more than mapping the digital universe. Google doesn't merely link or point to data. It moves data around. Data that are associated frequently by search requests are locally replicated—establishing physical proximity, in the real universe, that is manifested computationally as proximity in time. Google was more than a map. Google was becoming something else.
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