Simulation shows a crowded early solar system

Artist's impression of a planet ejected from the early solar system. CREDIT: Southwest Research Institute

Hot Jupiter’s, possible water worlds or gas dwarfs, even one planet that could have a mantle of diamond, exo-solar planets remind us that the universe can still harbor secrets. In the last decade or two, as the number of strange exo-planetary denizens grew, it became clear that some must have migrated. Moved closer, or shot away, from their primary star. The early history of our own solar system, how the planets formed and ended up in the relatively stable configuration we see today, can be studied with the same techniques developed and refined to model those alien systems. One of the simulations that best explains the familiar worlds we know huddling around the sun comes with an extra planet, or maybe two: [Read more…]

And we’re back!

FreeThoughtBlogs was down for the last few hours to facilitate a server transfer. Visitors are growing in number so fast we needed more power to keep up! So that’s a good thing, we are most pleased and grateful. Service could be intermittent today as performance is tweaked. I’m going to use the time to get some reading done, good old-fashioned traditional books. But if anything interesting pops up that could change.

A cheater, a heretic, and a hustler

The leading GOP candidates: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Herman Cain. Photo credit AP

That’s what the GOP field boils down to for the fundamentalist base of the Republican Party. Bible thumping dominionists, associated neoconfederate racists, and a handful of reptilian corporate overlords have to choose between a serial adulterer, a flip-flopping heretic, and a controversial hustler. Right now the hustler leads by a hair, but insiders say the heretic is favored by the big money boyz and will thus probably prevail in the end. No one is giving the cheater much of a chance right now: [Read more…]

OMG, it’s full of stars

Dwarf Galaxies 9 billion light-years away in near infrared. Image courtesy NASA/ESA

The mighty eye of Hubble has been turned toward the genesis of galaxies and stars and found great big things start out in smaller, dynamic packages. Today the baryonic universe is dominated by elegant spirals like our own Milky Way and massive elliptical galaxies buzzing like a swarm of angry bees in ultra slow-motion. Each with supermassive black holes lurking in their center, some weighing over a billion times the mass of our sun. But Hubble has found it wasn’t always like that: [Read more…]

Black rhino officially extinct

The black rhino, now officially extinct in the wild, thanks to poaching and habitat destruction

There’s a great deal of healthy debate over the role humans played in the extinction of megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene. But there’s no doubt about what, or rather who, knocked off one of the lucky survivors of that period. The Black Rhino survived wave after wave of ice sheets and bands of clever, hungry hominids. They will not survive the superstitions and greed of modern man: [Read more…]

Perry pronounced DoA after senior moment at GOP debate

After weeks of Perrytales by Tricky Rick, the fat lady may have sung. Even if there is a little life left, the one time front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination suffered a senior moment so excruciating, and so critical for his rabid base, that his own party may decide to put him out of his misery. It was captured in video so there’s no getting around it (Below). Perry’s hitting the airwaves this morning to try to salvage his political life, but insiders say it’s over: [Read more…]