Gizmorama - June 17, 2013

Good Morning,

Get this - Astronomers say the Hubble telescope will have two opportunities in the next few years to hunt for Earth-sized planets around our sun's nearest neighbor star. What, Planet Hunters? Doesn't that sound like a new A&E reality show? It'll happen.

Learn about this and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Renewable energy project in Arizona, Nevada get U.S. approval --*
WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell has announced approval of three major renewable energy projects in Arizona and Nevada set to power 200,000 homes. The three projects, when built, are expected to deliver up to 520 megawatts to the electricity grid and support more than 900 jobs through construction and operations, an Interior Department release said Monday. The 350-megawatt Midland Solar Energy Project and the 70-megawatt New York Canyon Geothermal Project in Nevada, and the 100-megawatt Quartzsite Solar Energy Project in Arizona, will join the 25 utility-scale solar facilities, nine wind farms and 11 geothermal plants the Interior Department has approved since 2009. "These projects reflect the Obama Administration's commitment to expand responsible domestic energy production on our public lands and diversify our nation's energy portfolio," Jewell said. "Today's approvals will help bolster rural economies by generating good jobs and reliable power and advance our national energy security." All three projects underwent extensive environmental review and public comment, the department said, and the companies involved have agreed to undertake significant mitigation efforts to minimize impacts to wildlife, water, historical, cultural and other resources.


*-- Study: Meteors may have brought element key to life to early Earth --*
TAMPA, Fla. - A U.S.-led international research team says it's confirmed one key element that produced life on Earth -- phosphorous -- was carried here on meteorites. Team leader Matthew Pasek, a geology professor at the University of South Florida, said their research suggests during the Hadean and Archean eons -- the first of the four principal eons of the Earth's earliest history -- a heavy bombardment of meteorites provided reactive phosphorus that when released in water could be incorporated into prebiotic molecules. "Meteorite phosphorus may have been a fuel that provided the energy and phosphorus necessary for the onset of life," Pasek said in a university release Tuesday. The research team studied Earth core samples from Australia, Zimbabwe, West Virginia, Wyoming and Florida. "If this meteoritic phosphorus is added to simple organic compounds, it can generate phosphorus biomolecules identical to those seen in life today," Pasek said. No terrestrial sources of phosphorous could have produced the quantities of phosphite -- a salt formed in a reaction with water scientists believe could have been incorporated into prebiotic molecules -- needed to be dissolved in early Earth oceans that gave rise to life, the researchers said. However, meteorite phosphite would have been abundant enough to adjust the chemistry of the oceans, they said.


*-- Star's path in the sky will allow astronomers to hunt for planets --*
BALTIMORE - Astronomers say the Hubble telescope will have two opportunities in the next few years to hunt for Earth-sized planets around our sun's nearest neighbor star. The opportunities will present themselves in October 2014 and February 2016 when Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to our sun, passes in front of two other stars, a release from the Space Science Telescope Institute in Baltimore said Monday. "Proxima Centauri's trajectory offers a most interesting opportunity because of its extremely close passage to the two stars," institute astronomer Kailash Sahu said. The close passage will provide a rare opportunity to study warping of space by Proxima's gravity from the apparent displacement of the two stars in sky photographs -- an effect called gravitational lensing -- and the amount of warping will be used to calculate a precise mass for Proxima Centauri and look for the gravitational footprint of any planets orbiting the star, astronomers said. However, they added, the position shifts will be too small to be perceived by any but the most sensitive telescopes in space and on the ground, so in addition to Hubble the European Space Agency's Gaia space telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope will make additional measurements.

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