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To: EL KABONG!!! who wrote (50583)	5/27/2004 7:31:52 PM
From: Tom Swift	Respond to of 74559

Possible Baby Planet Spotted by Spitzer Telescope 2 hours, 17 minutes ago Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo! By Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The youngest planet ever detected -- a baby less than 1 million years old -- may have been discovered by NASA (news - web sites)'s Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists reported on Thursday. The possible infant planet was spotted circling a star known as CoKu Tau 4, some 420 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, according to astronomer Dan Watson of the University of Rochester, New York. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year. Researchers have identified more than 100 so-called extrasolar planets -- those found outside our solar system -- but generally these objects were thought to be a billion years old or more. Earth and its immediate planetary neighbors are all about 4.5 billion years old, well into middle age. This possible planet was detected by examining the dusty disk around the star CoKu Tau 4, where scientists found a donut-like hole in the dust. The putative planet may have formed by scooping together this dust, scientists said at a briefing at NASA headquarters. "The object is only a million years old," Watson said. "That probably makes it the youngest planet that we've ever seen, and young enough that it really causes problems for the major theories of planetary formation." One theory of planetary formation holds that planets form when small objects called planetessimals slam together and stick, gradually building up a planetary mass. A planet made by quickly collecting itself from the planetary dust around a star is a different way of looking at the problem, and would allow for planets to form much earlier in the process. The discovery of the possible infant planet was one of three findings by the Spitzer spacecraft, which looks at the universe through infrared light as it trails Earth in its journey around the Sun. Spitzer also found significant amounts of icy organic material in the dusty disks surrounding other infant stars, which could give a clue to the origins of icy bodies like comets, often described as dusty snowballs in space. This finding is significant because some astronomers believe comets may have brought water to Earth, along with life-enabling materials. These kinds of materials have been detected in space but this is the first time they have been clearly detected in the dust of planet-forming disks. Spitzer also uncovered more than 300 newborn stars in a stellar nursery called RCW 49, about 13,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. More information and images are available online at spitzer.caltech.edu and photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov. story.news.yahoo.com

To: EL KABONG!!! who wrote (50583)	5/27/2004 8:49:43 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Kerry, I got onto cloudiness as a major impact on greenhouse effect living in Antwerp in 1987/1988/1989. As DJ said, contrails are blocking the sun, reflecting light [and therefore heat] back out. In Antwerp, which is usually cloudy due to natural nasty weather, even bright, sunny days are dull. The sky gets covered with diffused contrails with insolation reduced by, I guess, about 60%. I took a photo it was so impressive one day. There's a constant stream of high-flying aircraft over the area. At the time, ozone depletion was also a concern and I wondered whether BP could develop "Jetozone" which would be a catalyst for production of ozone to be included in jet fuel. Part of my job was to come up with fuel technology, though that was a bit out of my realm. I didn't take it far - not even to the extent of figuring out what would do the job, if anything. Just as CFCs catalytically destroy ozone, I wondered whether some antidote could be deployed. Because Earth has been climatically stable for eons, with correction effects gaining as ice-ages or warm periods gain ground, it seems that the interplay of clouds, snow, CO2 levels, plants and animals is what maintains climate stability [within the wide variation between ice age and warm periods], sufficient to keep the whole show on the road]. Sunspots, bolide impacts and other extraterrestrial effects, as well as volcanic activity, and rising and falling sea levels also have an effect, but biggies on a day to day basis are cloud, snow and plants. The animals go along with the plants and move pretty quickly. I wonder what the distribution of clouds is by latitude. Modeling cloud activity must be a challenge. I suppose cameras in space monitor cloud cover constantly, so the data should be available. As Earth cools, or heats, clouds would predominate in particular latitudes. As that predominant latitude, the cloud cover centre of area, moves north or south, the proportion of Earth covered with cloud would shrink or expand, as there is a lot more circumference at the equator than nearer the poles. As the cloud centre of area nears the equator, the amount of light reflected would increase, cooling the Earth, so that the cloud would shrink back towards the poles. Depending on humidity and all the other variables. A warmer Earth must make more cloud. I guess there is plenty of data on that since every year we get winter and summer and more or less cloud as a result. I should ask Google about cloud variation. Mqurice