E MANN

Voyager 1 still has two to three years to travel before reaching the boundary that separates the solar system from the rest of space.

SET TO CROSS THE BOUNDARY
Voyager 1 explores unknown region

Journeys To The Edge Of Solar System Before Entering Interstellar Space

Los Angeles: The unstoppable Voyager 1 spacecraft has sailed into a new realm of the solar system that scientists did not know existed.Voyager 1 and its twin,Voyager 2,have been speeding away from the Sun toward interstellar space,or the space between stars.
Over the summer,Voyager 1,which is farther along in its journey,crossed into this new region where the effects from the outside can be felt.We do believe this may be the very last layer between us and interstellar space, said chief scientist Ed Stone of the Nasa jet propulsion laboratory,which manages the spacecraft.
Stone presented Voyager 1s latest location at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.Voyager 1 is on track to become the first manmade object to exit the solar system.Exactly when that day will come is unknown,partly because theres no precedent.Stone estimated Voyager 1 still has two to three years to travel before reaching the boundary that separates the solar system from the rest of space.
Scientists were surprised to discover the unexpected region at the fringes of the solar system.For the past year,the team has seen tantalizing clues that heralded a new space environment.The amount of high-energy cosmic rays streaming in from outside the solar system spiked.Meanwhile,the level of lower-energy particles originating from inside the solar system briefly dropped.Because there was no change in the direction of the magnetic field lines,scientists were confident that Voyager 1 had not yet broken through.They have dubbed this new zone a kind of magnetic highway.
The Voyagers launched 35 years ago on a mission to tour the outer planets.Though Voyager 2 currently 9 billion miles from the Sun launched first,Voyager 1 is closer to leaving solar system behind.PTI

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Shell out46,000 for a flying tricycle,beat rush-hour traffic

REVOLUTIONARY SOLUTION
Shell out46,000 for a flying tricycle,beat rush-hour traffic

London: A man in the US has built a tricycle that will let you soar into the sky and cruise over rush-hour traffic jams.The motor-tricycle,called the super sky cycle,has been developed by Larry Neal from Aurora in Texas and consists of a 582cc engine and a three-blade 68-inch propeller.
It can fly at 56kmph,land in 20ft of space and has a top land speed of 104kph.It has a five hour flight time without refueling,and costs 46,000,the Daily Mail reported.
However,the vehicle requires a pilots licence to fly.Neal,of The Butterfly Aircraft LLC,has just been awarded a US Patent to build the vehicle on a large scale and sell it to the general public.He already has several orders for national and international companies.
The project has been in development for several years but hit a stumbling block as Neal could not work out what to do with the propellers once the vehicle landed.
However,he overcame this problem by making them foldable -- allowing the vehicle to be driven on regular roads.The Texas border patrol has already made a large order of these flying machines.PTI

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Galaxy is home to plenty of WARMER Earth twins

More Sun-like systems could be teeming with life than previously thought

By Brid-Aine Parnell • Get more from this author

Posted in Science, 4th December 2012 15:36 GMT

Boffins believe terrestrial planets orbiting Sun-like stars in the galaxy are probably more hospitable to life than Earth, thanks to their balmy subsurface temperatures.

The plate crust under the Atlantic Ocean

Tectonic plates meet under the Atlantic Ocean

From the stars found by the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher) spectrometer at the European South Observatory in Chile, geoboffins and astroboffins selected two solar twins of our Sun - stars roughly the same size, age and overall composition - and measured the amounts of radioactive elements they contained, a key indicator of their world-building abilities.
Elements such as thorium and uranium are essential because they help heat up a planet's interior and power its plate tectonics. It is believed these are needed to keep water - an ingredient for life - on the surface of the world.
Seven of the eight twins studied so far possess more thorium than our Sun, and if the planets orbiting in the habitable zone around those stars inherited this material, they may have warmer interiors. This means tectonic activity will have occurred for longer, giving life more time to arise.
One star, for example, had 2.5 times more thorium than the Sun, and the boffins now expect its habitable planets to be 25 per cent warmer inside than Earth. The findings have also encouraged the scientists to extend the habitable zones around each star, increasing the number of prospectively life-packed Earth-like worlds.
"At this point, all we can say for sure is that there is some natural variation in the amount of radioactive elements inside stars like ours," Ohio State doctoral student Cayman Unterborn said.
"With only nine samples including the Sun, we can't say much about the full extent of that variation throughout the galaxy. But from what we know about planet formation, we do know that the planets around those stars probably exhibit the same variation, which has implications for the possibility of life."
The relationship between plate tectonics and surface water isn't fully understood, but boffins do think that the same forces of heat convection in the mantle that move the Earth's crust regulate the amount of water in the oceans as well.
Microbial life in particular benefits from subsurface heat, with some microbes on Earth living directly off that source for energy instead of relying directly on the Sun.
To confirm its findings, the team wants to do a detailed statistical analysis of noise in the HARPS data to improve the accuracy of their computer model. The boffins will then ask for telescope time to look for more solar twins. ®