When it comes to announcing new products at events, Samsung has typically used the term “Unpacked”, such as earlier this year where Samsung’s Unpacked Event was for the unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. However while the term has […]
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Similar to how Apple is slowly trying to reduce their reliance on Samsung, Foxconn, a long-time partner of Apple, has also been looking to reduce their reliance on the Cupertino company for fear that Apple’s iPhone products will eventually stop […]
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Yesterday, Nokia announced to some fanfare its new Lumia 1020: a 41-megapixel, Xenon-flashed, highly tweakable camera that, y’know, also makes phone calls. But how good does the camera on your phone really need to be?
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NASA‘s Hubble space telescope has identified the true color of a planet 63 light years away from Earth, a distant blue marble that, unlike our own planet, has torrential rainstorms of glass. HD 189733b, orbiting star HD 189733, would be seen by human eyes as a striking cobalt blue, the Hubble team says, ostensibly similar to Earth when viewed from space. However, in actual fact the exoplanet is one of a bizarre collection of “hot Jupiters” where temperatures can reach almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (over 1,000 degrees Celcius).
It’s that extreme temperature – caused by the planet’s very close orbit to the star – that gives HD 189733b what’s perhaps its most unusual feature: its storms of glass. The atmosphere is filled with silicate particles, NASA explains, and when they condense in the tremendously furious heat, they could rain down as tiny droplets of glass.
In fact, the potential glass storms could rage at up to 4,500 mph. It’s the silicate that gives the planet its distinctive color, with the droplets scattering more blue light than red in the visible spectrum.
Scientists have known about HD 189733b since it was first spotted in 2005, when the exoplanet’s unusual orbit was identified. Around 2.9m miles from its star, it is gravitationally locked and as such one side of the planet always faces it; the roughly 500 degree Fahrenheit difference between the bright and dark sides are what cause the violent winds.
HD 189733b is, unsurprisingly, not a candidate for supporting human life. However, the team responsible for figuring out its color believes that the same technique could be used again to spot planets more hospitable.
Frederic Pont, of the University of Exeter team in the UK who deduced the color, measured the changes in light before the planet passed behind the star, during that time, and then afterwards. “We saw the light becoming less bright in the blue but not in the green or red. Light was missing in the blue but not in the red when it was hidden” Pont said. “This means that the object that disappeared was blue.”
The same system could help identify planets similar to Earth, however, with the blue color being used as a useful telltale for water and atmospheric conditions, Pont says. NASA plans to deploy the TESS telescope in 2017 to further that search.
Blue planet with 2,000-degree glass rainstorms could help find new Earth is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Even the most ardent baseball fans have to admit it’s a long season. So it’s perhaps wise that MLB.com has just trotted out an update for its At Bat iOS app just before the All-Star break, all the better to get you in the mood for the more interesting second half. First off, it’ll let you access the All-Star week hoopla like the home run derby and the game itself. You’ll also get new tweaks like in-progress game highlights and custom MLB news push notifications, while iPhone users will see a brand new UI and real-time game day data. All that should carry you into the playoff stretch and the next update, assuming MLB.com follows form from last year — at which point, hopefully your team’s still in the mix.
Via: 9 to 5 Mac
Source: iTunes
Last week we reported that Jay-Z’s new album, Magna Carta, was leaked ahead of the album’s initial exclusive release for Samsung Galaxy owners. Given that albums are leaked onto the internet on a regular basis, we guess we weren’t too […]
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