Solar System

Astronomers report they have discovered a solar system far closer to our sun than any of the previous half-dozen planet discoveries. And the new planetary system has features strikingly similar to our own.Evidence presented yesterday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Madison, Wis., suggests that the fourth-nearest star from our sun has a Jupiter-sized companion orbiting at about the distance of Saturn -- and possibly a second, smaller, planet...

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory dedicated a new building in November on its South Campus. The five-story, 200,000-square-foot glass, brick and steel structure on 35 acres provides an array of modern offices, laboratories and conference areas. Designed with green features such as a reflective roof and energy-saver lighting, Building 200 houses scientists, engineers and support staff from APL's Space Department, who advance the knowledge of the space environment and the planets in the solar system, and address many other challenges faced by NASA and the Department of Defense, the primary sponsors of APL's space research.

You probably have more computing power in your pocket than what NASA's venerable Voyager spacecraft are carrying to the edge of the solar system. They have working memories a million times smaller than your home computer. They record their scientific data on 8-track tape machines. And they communicate with their aging human inventors back home with a 23-watt whisper. Even so, the twin explorers, now 33 years into their mission, continue to explore new territory as far as 11 billion miles from Earth.

It might not seem to be a bright investment right now, after weeks of seemingly endless clouds and rain, but solar panels are popping up on rooftops all over Maryland. With government help in the form of tax credits and grants, companies making equipment available through long-term lease and economies of scale bringing prices down, the industry is seeing steady and continuing growth in demand for drawing power from the sun. And Maryland is among the states experiencing a rapid expansion, with an increasing number of companies getting into sales, installation and leasing of the panels to homeowners and businesses.

DALLAS -- Astronomers have discovered an object on the fringe of the solar system, possibly a gigantic comet, farther from the sun than the outermost planets.It is the most distant body detected in the solar system since Pluto's discovery in 1930."If confirmed, it's fair to say that for astronomy this easily could be the discovery of the year, if not the decade," said Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "In my opinion it is as momentous as the discovery of the first asteroid.

The sun might have captured thousands or even millions of asteroids from another planetary system during an encounter more than 4 billion years ago, according to a report today in the journal Nature. Such an interstellar ballet would explain many mysteries of the outer solar system, including the strange behavior of the recently discovered Sedna, the system's most distant known object, which occupies a strange elongated orbit far beyond Pluto. If the alien asteroids could be found and studied, these bodies could provide testimony to the conditions under which the sun and the solar system formed, a time otherwise lost.

A probe that plummeted into Jupiter's atmosphere late in 1995 found more than twice the concentration of volatile elements, such as argon and nitrogen, than was expected, raising questions about standard theories of how the planets formed.The results, which a team of scientists led by Dr. Tobias Owen of the University of Hawaii is reporting in today's issue of Nature, suggest that at least some of the rocky, icy bits of dust and ice that crashed together to form Jupiter -- comet-like bodies called planetesimals -- must have originated under cooler conditions than prevail in the region of the solar system where the planet orbits now.Otherwise the planetesimals would not have been cold enough to trap the volatile gases, which would have been dispersed among the other tenuous matter in interplanetary space.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The world's champion planet-finders have discovered another new world, one tantalizingly close to Earth's doorstep.Two San Francisco State University astronomers and two of their colleagues found the planet orbiting a star called Gliese 876, 15 light-years away. It is far closer than any previously known planet outside Earth's solar system.The discovery of an extrasolar world so close to our own, and orbiting such a low-mass star, implies the galaxy is even more packed with these planets than previously believed, said lead researcher Geoffrey Marcy of San Francisco State.

IT TOOK 52 minutes for signals traveling at the speed of light from Galileo's probe of the planet Jupiter to reach NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California this week. But processing the signals took longer than expected, and the unexpected 10-minute delay before scientists knew they had the data in hand produced what was surely the most agonizing wait in a long and often frustrating attempt to peer into the huge and mysterious planet at the outer reaches of the solar system.Despite obstacles, Galileo had accomplished the core of its $1.3 billion mission -- dropping the probe into the stormy, gaseous atmosphere of Jupiter and putting itself in orbit around the planet, where it will stay for almost two years.

The discovery of what might be our solar system's 10th planet could change the way astronomers label the objects they find in the skies. The key question, still unresolved: Just what is a planet? Until the discovery of 2003 UB313 -- they'll choose a catchier name soon -- astronomers had loosely defined what objects they classified as planets, based on factors such as whether they (a) orbit a star, (b) are shaped into spheres by gravity and (c) are at least as big as Pluto, the smallest and most distant planet in our solar system.

After reading a number of recent articles and letters regarding the solar energy property tax credit, I thought it would be helpful to provide a historical perspective. The current credit of 50 percent of the cost of a qualified system, up to a maximum of $5,000, was enacted by the County Council in 2006. The positive impact on the solar-energy industry was immediate. Solar installations in the county skyrocketed by more than 500 percent the following year, new companies sprang up in and around the county, and hundreds of new jobs were created.

Baltimore's Constellation Energy Group, which agreed last month to sell itself to Exelon Corp., announced Wednesday that it will build the largest solar roof installation in the United States at a Toys "R" Us distribution center in New Jersey. The 5.38-megawatt solar rooftop project will be the largest at a single building, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. Constellation will build and own the solar system, while the toy retailer will purchase all of the electricity generated by the solar panels under a 20-year power purchase deal.

You probably have more computing power in your pocket than what NASA's venerable Voyager spacecraft are carrying to the edge of the solar system. They have working memories a million times smaller than your home computer. They record their scientific data on 8-track tape machines. And they communicate with their aging human inventors back home with a 23-watt whisper. Even so, the twin explorers, now 33 years into their mission, continue to explore new territory as far as 11 billion miles from Earth.

In 1977, NASA flung a message in a bottle toward the stars. After a 10 billion-mile journey that traversed the paths of Jupiter and Saturn, the hardy little Voyager I spacecraft approached the edge of the solar system last week, poised to carry humanity's greetings to the universe beyond. During its 33-year flight, Voyager I and its sister ship, Voyager II, captured the imagination of millions of Earthlings with the first detailed pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, along with stunning images of their mysterious moons and intricate rings.

If your mother wrote a weekly humor column and you were graduating from college this weekend, now really, what would you expect? You would expect a witty and insightful retrospective, composed in a letter format and printed in The Baltimore Sun. Dear Experimental Child, At last, the truth can come out — we really didn't know what we were doing when we brought you, our firstborn, into this imperfect world. My most vivid memory of your first night home is of picking you up at around 2:30 in the morning.

Dozens of area residents and business people filed into the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium Friday for the first day of the Solar & Wind Expo to see how much it would cost to install solar panels or wind turbines — and how much that would cut utility bills. The expo brings together companies that offer all kinds of renewable energy for home or office, sponsors said. They, the vendors and state officials on hand said there was a real demand for such products now that government incentives and declining prices are making the switch more affordable.

A Canadian astronomer has challenged evidence for the existence of the first planet reported found around another Sun-like star, saying that the phenomenon observed is actually caused by the star's own pulsations, not the gravitational effects of an unseen planetary companion."

WASHINGTON -- The search for life in outer space got a boost yesterday as astronomers announced the discovery of a newborn solar system -- 200 light years away in our own Milky Way galaxy -- that looks a lot like a snapshot of our own solar system in its infancy."

T HE SEARCH WILL CONTINUE In recent days, some of those criticizing NASA's proposed budget have tried to paint a picture of an agency without a vision. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. NASA's far-reaching ambitions in space science have been, and will continue to be, truly inspiring. Just a few decades ago, cynical scientists used to say that there are only two facts known with certainty about the cosmos at large: that the sky is dark at night, and that our universe is expanding.

In recent days, some of those criticizing NASA's proposed budget have tried to paint a picture of an agency without a vision. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. NASA's far-reaching ambitions in space science have been, and will continue to be, truly inspiring. Just a few decades ago, cynical scientists used to say that there are only two facts known with certainty about the cosmos at large: that the sky is dark at night, and that our universe is expanding. This situation has changed drastically, and it has changed largely thanks to NASA's bold efforts in space science.