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IMAGE: A five-planet system around TOI-1233 includes a super-Earth (foreground) that could help solve mysteries of planet formation. The four innermost planets were discovered by high schoolers Kartik Pinglé and Jasmine. view more
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This week, 16-year-old Kartik Pinglé and 18-year-old Jasmine Wright have co-authored a peer-reviewed paper in
The Astronomical Journal describing the discovery of four new exoplanets about 200-light-years away from Earth.
The high schoolers participated in the research through the Student Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Directed by astrochemist Clara Sousa-Silva, the SRMP connects local high schoolers who are interested in research with real-world scientists at Harvard and MIT. The students then work with their mentors on a year-long research project.
Both these explanations only exacerbate Venus phosphine puzzle that the recent findings have presented.
MIT s Dr Clara Sousa-Silva said the detection of phosphine on the planet was a reason to expend more effort in researching the planet s anomalies.
She added: Venus has been woefully overlooked in the past decades, but I don’t think rectifying that should come at the expense of investigating Mars; a fascinating planet with countless untold secrets. I do find the Venusian clouds a more interesting target for habitability than Mars, but that is primarily a personal opinion.
However, Dr Sousa-Silva added that she was not in favour of a floating colony on Venus, saying we could try to build a cloud city on Venus, but I don’t recommend it .
Updated:
December 29, 2020 18:00 IST
Apart from new findings on coronavirus every single day, the year was also filled with stories from outer space, archeology and anatomy
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Apart from new findings on coronavirus every single day, the year was also filled with stories from outer space, archeology and anatomy
The year 2020 also termed as the year of the pandemic, social distancing, work from home, was also the year of research at breakneck speed. Virologists, immunologists, computational biologists, epidemiologists, and medical professionals across the globe turned into superheroes without capes.
Quick sequencing of the whole genome of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) helped develop various test kits. We now have not one or two, but multiple COVID-19 vaccines that have succeeded in human clinical trials. Moderna s and Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccines that use messenger RNA have reported efficacy of about 95%, and the United Kingdom, the United States and the Unit
The Cosmologist Working to Preserve the Night Sky for the Future, reports Becky Ferreira for Motherboard Science.– Dr. Aparna Venkatesan studies the distant reaches of space and time, while advocating for a night sky undamaged by orbital clutter.
Astronomers Get Their Wish, and a Cosmic Crisis Gets Worse –We don’t know why the universe appears to be expanding faster than it should. New ultra-precise distance measurements have only intensified the problem, reports Natalie Wolchover for Quanta.
Should people take more than one type of COVID-19 vaccine? –All these authorizations foretell a world with vaccine choice. Here’s what research says about whether more is better for boosting your immunity, reports National Geographic..
2020 in review: The hunt for life on Venus continues
Clara Sousa-Silva spent most of 2020 sitting on a huge secret – the apparent detection of phosphine, a potential sign of life, on Venus. She tells New Scientist what it felt like and what comes next Space 16 December 2020
Jaxa Isasakatsuki Project Team
ONE of the biggest news stories of 2020 was the apparent sighting of phosphine in Venus’s atmosphere. On Earth, this gas is only produced by living organisms, and there seems to be no other way to make it on Venus, so this was interpreted as a sign that life may be floating in the Venusian clouds.