Astronomers part of the international collaboration Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork (PLANET) calculated the approximate number of planets based on statistical analyses from multiple surveys gathered from observatories, institutions, and ground-based telescopes, including NASA’s spacecraft Kepler, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the Niels Bohr Institute, the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), and the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA).

PLANET has taken 16 years to find planets, and six to make a statistical hypothesis (from 2002 to 2007). It is estimated that there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way and that each one has 1.6 planets in orbit on average, coming to a total of 160 billion hypothetical planets. This number is much, much higher than the number originally predicted.

Astronomers use three methods to search for planets. The first one is called transiting, in which one observes a stars’ level of brightness. If the level slightly drops, the dip acts as a signal that a planet is crossing the star during its orbit. The second method is the radial-velocity method. When planets orbit a star, the star does not remain stationary.

Rather, it moves in a small circular motion, causing the planet’s gravitational pull. Lastly, the third method is gravitational microlensing. In relation to an observer on Earth, two stars, one in front of the other, seem to form a straight line. The foreground star causes light from the background star to curve, thus magnifying the latter. If there is a slight temporary difference in the light curve from the foreground star, a planet is orbiting the star.

With the former two methods, astronomers can only find low-mass planets closely orbiting stars. They are what the Kepler spacecraft uses to hunt for planets. The third one, on the other hand, is more sensitive: astronomers can find planets of all sizes (from Mercury-sized to Jupiter-sized) and those that are near and far from their parent stars. In addition, planets’ masses can be determined.

“Together,” Uffe Gråe Jørgensen states in the Niels Bohr Institute press release, “the three methods are, for the first time, able to say something about how common our own solar system is.” Jørgensen is the head of the Astrophysics and Planetary Science research group at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

Based on the collected data, astronomers predict that Earth-like planets (small and rocky) are much more common in the galaxy than gas giants like Jupiter. According to Stephen Kane – who is a part of NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California – in the HubbleSite press release, “This is encouraging news for investigations into habitable planets.”

Ultimately, this new hypothesis significantly increases the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial life, even sentient life.

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In early December, an international team of astronomers discovered an incredibly fast rotating star, rotating at a radial velocity of 1.6 million km/h (1 million mph), which is approximately 100 times faster than the sun rotates (roughly four times a day). If the star, dubbed VFTS (short for VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey) 102, spun any faster, the centrifugal forces would rip it apart.

Working at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranel Observatory in Chile, the team located VFTS 102 160,000 light-years away from the Earth in the Tarantula Nebula, which is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way galaxy. They detected the star because its traveling velocity was 30 km/s (70,000 mph) – much faster than those of other stars in the vicinity.

Philip Dufton, lead author of the paper that presents the team’s findings, stated, “The remarkable rotation speed and the unusual motion compared to the surrounding stars led us to wonder if this star had an unusual early life.” Dufton works at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. “It was suspicious.”

The centrifugal forces of VFTS 102 (which is a blue giant and has twenty-five times the mass and 100,000 times the luminosity of the sun) are so great that the star has an oblate spheroid shape. Furthermore, they cause VFTS 102 to spin out a disk of plasma at its equator.

The team of astronomers speculate that VFTS 102 had a violent past. It may have been part of a binary star system in which it and its companion star closely rotated around each other. VFTS 102′s fast rotation may have come from the two stars being so close together, which could have caused the companion star to stream gas over to VFTS 102.

Another member of the team, Matteo Cantiello, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, further explains in the university’s press release, “This gas falls onto the companion star, increasing the mass and spinning it up. Similar to a tennis ball spinning fast after being hit by a glancing blow, a star rotates quickly after being hit off-center by the in-falling gas.”

At some point, the companion star went supernova, expelling much of its gas. The intense explosion ejected VFTS 102, which was sent hurdling through space at the current velocity in which it was discovered. Presently, a supernova remnant and pulsar lie near the blue giant. That these two objects are located nearby VFTS 102 serves as evidence that supports the team’s hypothesis, as the supernova remnant and pulsar may belong to the late companion star, which may have collapsed into a neutron star following its exploding.

“This is a compelling story because it explains each of the unusual features that we’ve seen,” Dufton writes. “This star is certainly showing us unexpected sides of the short, but dramatic lives of the heaviest stars.”

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J.J. Abrams, producer of many shows and movies like Lost, Cloverfield, Mission Impossible III, and Star Trek, has been working on his latest project, Super 8, for a while now. Now since it’s release people have been asking, “What about Star Trek 2?” J.J. Abrams and the writers Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman have been keeping their mouths shut about the movie. There is not a lot known about the project, except that the movie might not meet its release date on June 29, 2012.

The main reason behind such a delay is that the creators do not want to send out an inferior product. They want to take their time with the script, and with shooting it, in order to make it the best it can be. In an interview with CNN, Abrams said, “We’re working on the script and story and doing everything we can to make it well. I would just so much rather make a movie that’s worth people’s time than make a movie that’s on time.”

Alex Orci also stated that having no set deadlines is a problem. So far, dates for the shoot, or when they will begin pre-production, have not been given yet. He stated for TrekMovie.com, “let’s find out when we are really going to go and then we will really get to work.” As well as the dates not set in stone, JJ Abrams being the director is not either. He has helped tremendously with the project and talking regularly with the writers, so it’s extremely likely he will direct the movie, but it is not official yet.

This is not the first time this problem happened with JJ’s Trek films. The first movie was to be released in December of 2008, but the creators wanted to take their time with it, resulting in the later release date, summer 2009. This can only parallel and infer what the standard is going to be like for Star Trek 2. The writers know people are upset with the delayed release. Damon Lindelof, in an interview with TrekMovie.com, had said, “As fanboys ourselves, if the shoe was on the other foot we would be saying ‘get on with it already, when is the movie going to come out?’ And we are fully aware of that.”

So far, the writers have written a seventy-page outline of the movie but no definite answers were given out on who the villain is and what the mission will be about. Badassdigest.com got a whiff of what’s to come when a source of theirs said that the villain would be from the original season of Star Trek. What is fascinating is that Khan will not be the main villain in the movie. The villains that can show up are the Horta, Harry Mudd, the Talosians, Trelane, and Gary Mitchell.

As the movie process slowly turns its gears, TrekMovie.com asked the writers if they are strictly sticking to a set amount of classic material or not. Orci had this to say, “…we [are] not making any rules about whether or not you have to include a certain amount of classic stuff or any at all, or whether it has to be all something you have never seen. Obviously some of the familiarity is going to be part of the fun.”

People are getting antsy to see Star Trek 2. With J.J. Abrams always busy, nobody knows when it will officially release. If there is one thing that will be certain, it is that the creators are trying their best to create an enjoyable film. However, with this delay, there are many questions that spring up, like whom the U.S.S Enterprise’s crew face in the next movie? Every Star Trek fan has been racking their brains in order to find out, but with the writers keeping their tongues taught there is no way to find out for sure. Hopefully it will come out sooner rather than later, but fans will all have to keep their eyes and ears attentive for any new details about the movie.

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