Earths Bigger, Older Planetary Cousin

Earth's Bigger, Older Planetary Cousin Ever since astronomers first began searching out planets around other stars, theyve found thousands of planet candidates and confirmed more than a thousand as actual worlds. There could be billions of worlds out there. The tools of the search are ground-based telescopes, the Kepler Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and others. The idea is to look for planets by watching for slight dips in the light of a star as the planet passes in its orbit between us and the star. This is called the  transit method because it requires that a planet transit the face of the star. Another way to find planets is to look for tiny shifts in the stars motion that are caused by a planets orbit. Detecting planets directly is very difficult because stars are quite bright and planets can get lost in the glare.   Finding other Worlds The first exoplanet (a world circling other stars) was discovered in 1995. Since then, the rate of discovery grew as astronomers launched spacecraft to look for distant worlds. One fascinating world that theyve found is called Kepler-452b. It circles a star similar to the Sun (a G2  star type) that lies about 1,400 light-years from us in the direction of the constellation Cygnus. It was found by the Kepler telescope, along with 11 more planet candidates orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. To determine the planets properties, astronomers conducted observations at ground-based observatories. Their data confirmed the planetary nature of Kepler-452b, refined the size and brightness of its host star, and pinned down the size of the planet and its orbit Kepler-452b was the first near-Earth-sized world found, and it orbits its star in the so-called habitable zone. Thats a region around a star where liquid water could exist on the surface of a planet.  It is the smallest planet ever found in a habitable zone. Others have been larger worlds, so the fact that this one is closer to our own planets size means astronomers are close to finding Earth twins (in terms of size).   The discovery does NOT tell whether or not there IS water on the planet, or what the planet is made of (that is, whether it is a rocky body or a gas/ice giant). That information will come from further observations. Yet, this system does have some interesting similarities to Earth. Its orbit is 385 days, while ours is 365.25 days. Kepler-452b lies just five percent farther away from its star than Earth does from the Sun.  Ã‚   Kepler-452, the parent star of the system is 1.5 billion years older than the Sun (which is 4.5 billion years old). Its also a bit brighter than the Sun but has the same temperature. All these similarities help give astronomers a comparison point between this planetary system and our own Sun and planets as they seek to understand the formation and history of planetary systems. Ultimately, they want to know how many habitable worlds are out there.   About the Kepler Mission The Kepler space telescope (named for astronomer Johannes Kepler) was launched in 2009 on a mission to spy out planets around stars in a  region of the sky near the constellation Cygnus. It performed well until 2013 when NASA announced that failed flywheels (that keep the telescope pointed accurately) were failing. After some research and help from the scientific community, mission controllers devised a way to keep using the telescope, and its mission is now called K2 Second Light. It continues to search out planetary candidates, which are then re-observed to help astronomers determine the masses, orbits, and other characteristics of the possible worlds. Once Keplers planet candidates are studied in detail, they are confirmed as actual planets and added to the growing list of such exoplanets.

Contrast of Women in Tess of the DUbervilles and The Wife of Baths Prologue essays

Contrast of Women in Tess of the D'Ubervilles and The Wife of Bath's Prologue essays The portrayal of Thomas Hardy's character Tess in his work Tess of the D'Ubervilles and Geoffrey Chaucer's character of Alisoun in his work The Wife of Bath's Prologue is such that both women are seen by society at the given time in history as rebellious, discontent, and badly behaved . Though these portrayals are the result of the cultural values held at said time, they have been immensely influenced by the ideas that the authors respectively had of women as well as the lens of context that each character is viewed through. The belief that these two characters 'behave badly' is highlighted through double standards in the novels' respective societies as well as pristine character representation that Chaucer and Although the mindset in which women are viewed has changed drastically over the years, the attitudes that men in the Victorian Era had towards women greatly influenced the representation of Tess that Hardy gives to us in his book. Throughout the Victorian Era, women who were married were treated as 'lesser humans,' and were valued by their husbands if they were efficient, submissive, and most importantly - faithful. The women that had acted in a sexually impure way were referred to as "fallen women," and in all essence were cast aside by society because of the 'dirtiness' that they carried with them. In Hardy's novel, the character of Angel Clare viewed Tess as a possible lover because he was under the impression that she was not sullied in any way. While observing her during breakfast as she talks to the other dairy-folk he described her as "a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature" (Hardy 137), but just a little while later, once Tess lets him know about her past affairs with Alec, his opinion of her changes instantaneously. Instead of being understanding or at the very least forgiving, he thinks of Tess now as an imposter and someone to stay clear of. The sudden chang...

Summary of America's 1 percent problem Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Summary of America's 1 percent problem - Essay Example vel of inequality in the American society is evident in the income of CEOs vis-a-vis the income of the average worker which stood at a ratio of 243: 1 in 2010 (Stiglitz, 2012, 3). While the top one percent are growing richer by the day, the poor are getting poorer even as the middle class continues to shrink. The problem is so grave that the middle class and the poor are driven toward living in poverty and without a safety net. Furthermore, the level of inequality is so great that economic insecurity even among workers is a reality. While many people believe that the U.S. is a land of opportunities to the extent that poverty is foreign to it, this is not the case according to Stiglitz (2012). He notes that apart from the levels of unemployment, poverty, and economic insecurity being high in the U.S., the standard of living is, in fact, on a decline (14). While several countries including Brazil have made strides to bridge the gap of inequality, the U.S. has done nothing in to reverse the