This crowded star field towards the center of our Milky Way Galaxy turns out to be a great place to search for planets beyond our solar system. In fact, repeatedly imaging about 180,000 stars in the field over a one week period, the Hubble Space Telescope enabled astronomers to conduct the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS). Their search looked for brief, periodic dips in brightness caused as a large planet eclipses or transits its parent star. Since chances of seeing such an eclipse are slim, it was a definite advantage to examine as many stars as possible. In the end, SWEEPS astronomers found 16 candidate stars (green circles identify 11 in this cropped picture) that are likely closely orbited by large Jupiter-sized planets with periods of a few days or less. Large planets orbiting so close to their stars are termed hot Jupiters. Kepler, a future NASA mission, is intended to extend the transit technique to search for Earth-sized planets.
Freedom is Not Free, a San Diego-based nonprofit group that helps injured military service members and their families, is selling a military beefcake calendar:
You may have heard about it or seen it in the media, now you can order the 2007 America’s Heroes Reconnaissance Marines Calendar for yourself and/or all your friends. 100% of the proceeds go to our wounded heroes and their families as directed by those who have been awarded the Purple Heart.
While the U.S. hems and haws over reviving nuclear energy as a less expensive alternative to oil, Russia has dug back 30 years in our nuclear history to find a solution for some of its own energy woes: the floating nuclear power plant.
The Russian nuclear-energy company Rosenergoatom is planning a mobile plant to deliver electricity to hard-to-reach northern territories near the White Sea, where harsh weather makes regular coal and oil fuel deliveries unreliable and expensive.
The First International Collection of Tongue Twisters has thousands of hard-to-say phrases in 108 languages. See if you can wrap your tongue around these:
Romanian
S-a suit capra pe piatra si a spart-o-n patru, de s-ar sparge capul caprei ca si piatra-n patru.
English
Something in a thirty-acre thermal thicket of thorns and thistles thumped and thundered threatening the three-D thoughts of Matthew the thug – although, theatrically, it was only the thirteen-thousand thistles and thorns through the underneath of his thigh that the thirty year old thug thought of that morning.
Baker Valentyn Shtefano and his bride Viktoriya show off her wedding gown, which Shtefano made out of flour, eggs, sugar and caramel in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod in Aug. 27, 2006. The edible dress, made of 1,500 cream puffs and weighing in at 20 pounds (9 kilograms), took the 28-year-old baker two months to make.
Provided as a public health service for all of the Neatorama readers who were grossed out by the horrific story about an elephant hanging Alex just posted.
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