Ten per cent of stars may have life

New research from Australia suggests that a full one tenth of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy could have the right conditions in their vicinity to harbour life. Moreover, the majority of these stars are a billion years older than our own sun, theoretically giving much more time for life to evolve than we’ve had. The findings come from the idea of a “galactic habitable zone,” a ring about 25,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way. Scientists stress that planets in this zone do not necessarily contain life, but might have the right conditions. In order for a planet to be considered “suitable” for life, it must orbit a star in this zone, have sufficient amounts of heavy metal, be far enough from any exploding supernova, and have existed for at least four billion years.

-Zoe Cormier
Source: New Scientist

Grant money spent on skipping stones

French physicists have used the tools of science to confirm what young boys have known for thousands of years. By firing aluminum discs into a two metre long tank of water they found that stones that are round, flat, spinning, and travelling fast will bounce more. They also found that a spinning stone should hit the water at a 20 degree angle in order to achieve maximum bounce. The world record for stone skipping was set in 1992 when a man in Texas skipped a stone 38 times. This new research could have applications for space exploration as space shuttles act much like skipping stones on reentry into the atmosphere.

-Z.C.
Source: Nature

Stone age Siberians

New findings from Russia suggest that stone-age people lived north of the Arctic Circle much earlier than was previously thought. A newly discovered site of human settlement from eastern Siberia along the Yanu River is twice the age of the oldest previously known Arctic settlement, carbon-dated at 30,000 years old. The area is about 2,000 kilometres from the Bering Strait. Archaeologists have long suspected that some of the earliest Americans crossed the Bering land bridge from northeastern Asia. However, scientists had little evidence of Arctic settlements in Asia older than 14,000 years-the age of the earliest Alaskan sites. The age of the Yanu River site shows that people lived in an Arctic ecosystem much earlier than previously thought, and might have reached Alaska earlier.

-Darien Davis
Source: New Scientist