Seven Alien 'Earths' Found Orbiting Nearby Star

The Earth-size worlds orbit a star just 39 light-years away, and most may have the right conditions to host liquid water on their surfaces.

ILLUSTRATION BY M. KORNMESSER, SPACEENGINE.ORG/ESO

Seven rocky planets orbiting a nearby star may be roughly the size of Earth and could even be right for water—and maybe life—to adorn their surfaces, researchers announced Wednesday.

The planets, which circle a star called TRAPPIST-1 just 39 light-years away, are tucked together so tightly that they routinely spangle each others’ skies, sometimes appearing as shimmering crescents and at other times as orbs nearly twice as large as the full moon.

“The spectacle would be beautiful,” says the University of Cambridge’s Amaury Triaud, coauthor of a study describing the otherworldly heptad that appears in the journal Nature.

The TRAPPIST-1 system is now tied with several others that have seven planets for the greatest number of planets in a stellar system other than our own (which has eight, not counting dwarf planets like Pluto). The system’s existence suggests that Earth-size planets are much more plentiful than previously imagined.

And now, it’s among the best neighborhoods to study for signs of life beyond Earth: The relative sizes of the planets and star, plus the system’s proximity, mean that plucking the signatures of living, breathing organisms from the planet’s atmospheres could be within reach.

NASA Looks to Speed Timetable for Putting Astronauts in Deep Space

An artist’s rendition of NASA’s Space Launch System. NASA announced on Wednesday that it wanted to consider taking astronauts on the rocket’s first flight.

In the first public inkling of the Trump administration’s aspirations for space exploration, NASA announced on Wednesday that it wanted to consider taking astronauts on the first flight of its new heavy-lift rocket. That type of notable mission could speed up a return to the moon.

Robert M. Lightfoot Jr., the acting NASA administrator, said the agency was studying what it would take to add a crew to the first flight of the Space Launch System, a mammoth rocket under development for deep space missions.

Under current plans, the first launch was scheduled for late 2018 and did not include a crew for testing the systems aboard the rocket and the capsule, named Orion.

That would have been followed by a gap of several years before a second flight, with astronauts, that would take off no earlier than 2021.

Mr. Lightfoot spoke at a conference for companies working on the Space Launch System and Orion programs and also sent a memo to NASA employees.

“I know the challenges associated with such a proposition, like reviewing the technical feasibility, additional resources needed, and clearly the extra work would require a different launch date,” Mr. Lightfoot wrote in the memo. “That said, I also want to hear about the opportunities it could present to accelerate the effort of the first crewed flight and what it would take to accomplish that first step of pushing humans farther into space.”

NINTENDO ANNOUNCES AND DETAILS THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD SEASON PASS

Nintendo has announced an "Expansion Pass" for Breath of the Wild, offering the first ever DLC in a main series Legend of Zelda game.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Step into a world of discovery, exploration and adventure in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a boundary-breaking new game in the acclaimed series.

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Available from March 3 for $19.99 USD / £17.99 (Australian price unknown at time of writing), the Expansion Pass, which will be available for both the Wii U and Nintendo Switch versions of the game, will offer two extra content packs, to be released later in 2017, neither of which can be purchased individually. The details of each are:

Pack 1 - Summer 2017

• A new Cave of Trials challenge
• Hard mode
• "A new feature for the in-game map"

Pack 2 - Holiday 2017

• A new dungeon
• A new "original story"
• Additional challenges

We Are Wired To Be Outside

Science is demonstrating what we intuitively know: Nature makes us happy.

A young man dives into McDonald Creek at Glacier National Park in Montana. "The frontal lobe, the part of our brain that's hyper-engaged in modern life, deactivates a little when you are outside," says author Florence Williams. 

PHOTOGRAPH BY COREY ARNOLD, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

When we first see Elizabeth Bennett, in the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice, she is walking through a field, surrounded by birdsong and trees. Nature, for Jane Austen’s heroines, is always a source of solace and inspiration. And as Florence Williams shows in her new book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, modern technology is now revealing what goes on in our brains when we step outdoors—and why nature is so good for us. [Read Williams's National Geographic story "This Is Your Brain on Nature."]

When National Geographic caught up with Williams by phone in Washington, D.C., she explained why even a house plant can make us feel good, why the practice of “forest bathing” is now supported by the Japanese government, and how trees can lower the murder rate in our cities.

COURTESY W.W. NORTON

The Mappiness project was developed in the U.K. by a happiness researcher called George MacKerron. It’s a brilliant idea, which tries to capture in real time what people are doing and how it makes them feel. I downloaded this app onto my phone and used it for about a year. The way it works is, it pings you at random times a couple of times a day and gives you a list of options. Are you driving, doing childcare, cooking, hanging out with friends? Are you outside or inside and how are you feeling? Like, “I feel happy, not so happy.”

At the end of the year I got my data, which showed how I was spending my time and which activities made me feel a certain way. I try to spend a lot of time outside, make an effort to exercise. But I was shocked at how few times the app caught me doing those things; and how often it caught me doing things that didn’t give me a lot of satisfaction. Things like commuting or doing chores.

Eugene Cernan, last man on the moon, dies

(CNN)Eugene A. Cernan, the last astronaut to leave his footprints on the surface of the moon, has died, NASA said Monday.

He was 82.

"We are saddened by the loss of retired NASA astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon," the US space agency said on Twitter.

We are saddened by the loss of retired NASA astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. https://t.co/Q9OSdRewI5 pic.twitter.com/gPdFTnXF2C

— NASA (@NASA) January 16, 2017

These 8 men are richer than 3.6 billion people combined

Eight men now control as much wealth as the world's poorest 3.6 billion people, according to a new report from Oxfam International.

The men -- Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Amancio Ortega, Larry Ellison and Michael Bloomberg -- are collectively worth $426 billion, the anti-poverty group said on Sunday.

"Such dramatic inequality is trapping millions in poverty, fracturing our societies, and poisoning our politics," said Paul O'Brien, Oxfam America's Vice President for Policy and Campaigns.

The release of the group's annual inequality report coincides with the World Economic Forum in Davos. The annual meeting in the Swiss mountain resort brings together political and financial leaders and some of the wealthiest people in the world.

Eight men now control as much wealth as half of the world's population.

First Bumblebee Declared Endangered in U.S.

The rusty patched bumblebee population has declined 87 percent over the past two decades.

The rusty patched bumblebee is the first bumblebee to be designated as an endangered species in the United States. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALAMY

For the first time in the United States, a species of bumblebee is endangered.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday on its website that the rusty patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis), once a common sight, is “now balancing precariously on the brink of extinction.” Over the past two decades, the bumblebee’s population has declined 87 percent, according to the announcement.

The news comes just a few months after the first ever bees were declared endangered in the U.S. In September, seven species of Hawaiian bees, including the yellow-faced bee (Hylaeus anthracinus), received protectionunder the Endangered Species Act. (Read “For the First Time, Bees Declared Endangered in the U.S.”)

 The threats facing those seven species are similar to the ones that have depleted rusty patched bumblebee populations: loss of habitat, diseases and parasites, pesticides, and climate change. This is a big deal not only for bees but for humans, too—after all, bees pollinate a lot of our food.

“Bumblebees are among the most important pollinators of crops such as blueberries, cranberries, and clover and almost the only insect pollinators of tomatoes,” according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s rusty patched bumblebee profile. “The economic value of pollination services provided by native insects (mostly bees) is estimated at $3 billion per year in the United States.” (See seven intimate pictures that reveal the beauty of bees.)

Former Trump advisor reportedly sends letter to McCain threatening the U.S. and our military

After spending the weekend trashing Civil Rights icon Rep. John Lewis, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted this morning: "Celebrate Martin Luther King Day and all of the many wonderful things that he stood for. Honor him for being the great man that he was!" Trump, who has routinely trafficked in and empowered white supremacy, either does not know the first thing about the Rev. King's advocacy and activism, or does not care.

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Donald Trump spent the weekend preceding Martin Luther King, Jr. Day attacking Rep. John Lewis, a lifetime Civil Rights activist, because Lewis criticized Trump and questioned the legitimacy of his presidency.

This morning, without a shred of irony or self-awareness, Trump tweeted:

Celebrate Martin Luther King Day and all of the many wonderful things that he stood for. Honor him for being the great man that he was!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2017

Goodbye CyanogenMod, hello Lineage Android

CyanogenMod is shutting down, but the Lineage Android Project is poised to keep its spirit alive.

CyanogenMod is no more.

In a post on the official CyanogenMod blog, we're told that the current state of everything Cyanogen means it's no longer feasible to continue and that the best path forward requires change. Nobody should be surprised after recent events within the Cyanogen Inc. parent company and today's announcement that it has reached the end of the road and will shut down operations.

Why American Jews Eat Chinese Food on Christmas

A lack of dining options may have started Jewish Christmas, but now it's a full-fledged ritual.

Kent Wang / Flickr

If there’s a single identifiable moment when Jewish Christmas—the annual American tradition where Jews overindulge on Chinese food on December 25—transitioned from kitsch into codified custom, it was during Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s 2010 confirmation hearing.

California threatens legal action against Uber unless it halts self-driving cars

Threat from the attorney general came shortly after Uber declared it would defy state regulations, a move the company said as ‘an important issue of principle’

Uber’s defiant stance appears to be setting the company on a collision course with California regulators in court. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

California’s attorney general Kamala Harris on Friday threatened legal action against the ride-sharing tech company Uber unless it “immediately” removes its self-driving from the roads in San Francisco.

The threat from the office of the outgoing attorney general was contained in a letter released to the public Friday shortly after Uber declared it would defy state regulations, a move the company said was “an important issue of principle”.

Twenty companies have been approved to test self-driving cars in California, according to the DMV. Uber is not one of them, and the company is refusing to abide by the same rules as its rivals – a defiant move that critics argue shows disregard for the law and public safety.

Friday’s development portends a dramatic confrontation between Uber and California state officials, amid mounting anger in San Francisco at Uber’s refusal to abide by the same rules as other companies.

Harris, a rising star in the Democratic party, was recently elected to the US Senate. The letter from attorneys in her office said they were acting on a request from California’s department of motor vehicles (DMV).

The DMV ordered Uber to either remove its self-driving cars from the road or obtain a permit on Wednesday, the first day the company began a trial of its self-driving taxis in San Francisco without permission.

The letter warns that if Uber does not remove the vehicles from the road until it obtains a permit, the attorney general will “seek injunctive and other appropriate relief”.

Earlier Friday, Uber made clear it had no intention of backing down.

E-Cigarette Use Falls Among Teens

Vaping and marijuana use more popular among teens than regular cigarettes, according to NIH

A Betamorph E-Cigs employee exhaling vapor from an electric cigarette at the company's store in Albuquerque, N.M. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS

E-cigarette use among teens dropped in 2016, reversing an upward trend that had prompted the U.S. Surgeon General to recommend increased regulation and taxation.

Among high-school seniors, 12% this year said they had used e-cigarettes in the past month compared with 16% in 2015, according to the National Institutes of Health’s annual Monitoring the Future survey.

E-cigarettes and marijuana are both more popular among teens than regular cigarettes, whose use among teens has been declining for more than two decades, according to the survey. E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that heat nicotine-laced liquid into a vapor.

Among high-school seniors, 23% said they had used marijuana in the past month, and 11% said they had smoked conventional cigarettes. Some 13% of high-school seniors said they had used tobacco with a hookah in the past year, down from 23% in 2014, the peak since the survey began measuring hookah use in 2010.

Lenovo K6 Note Price Leaked Before Launch, Starts At Rs 14,999

The Lenovo K6 Note, which was initially unveiled at IFA 2016, is all set to launch in India this week. Recent company tweets suggest that the upcoming Lenovo device will arrive in India as soon as December 14th. However, Indian e-commerce website OnlyMobiles has jumped the gun and revealed the price ahead of the official launch.

The Lenovo K6 Note flaunts a 5.5-inch Full HD display with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. It comes in all-metal unibody design, boasting Dolby Audio surround sound technology and stereo speakers at the back.

Under the hood, it is powered by a 1.4GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor coupled with Adreno 505 GPU for graphics. The phone comes in two variants — 3GB and 4GB RAM. The internal memory of 32GB is further expandable up to 128GB by means of a microSD card support.

Terminally ill boy dies in Santa's arms

(CNN) - Knoxville News-Sentinel columnist Sam Venable knew he'd found a sad story, but he didn't know just how many hearts it would break.

Venable's column about a terminally ill 5-year-old boy dying in Santa's arms has spread everywhere since its publication Sunday in the Tennessee newspaper. Among other things, it nails the emotional richness of the holiday season.

"I've gotten a big response to this," Venable told CNN. "People have told me that they were crying when they read it, and I tell them that I was crying when I wrote it."

It all started several weeks ago when Eric Schmitt-Matzen, the Santa in Venable's column, got a call after work.

Can Virtual Reality Help Women Cope With Childbirth?

Clinical trials in Los Angeles plan to explore how virtual reality can be used to deal with acute pain through coaching and distraction. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Clinical trials are using a VR headset to help manage pain during labor

rin Martucci had been enjoying the beach vista and gazing at a flock of birds overhead when something shook her view. The voice of Ralph Anderson, her gynecologist, broke through the sound of the waterfall next to her.

“We’re ready to push!” he said, gently taking Martucci’s virtual reality headset off and bringing her back to a hospital room at Orange Regional Medical Center in Middletown, New York. Martucci, 40, looked around at her husband and mother, their voices swirling excitedly around her: “She’s crowning! She’s ready!”

“I was like, ‘Wait, what are you doing?’. I thought I needed the goggles to push!,” Martucci says. She had been so engrossed in her virtual beachside hideaway, she hadn’t realised that her baby’s head was starting to show. It was time to take off the goggles.

Martucci is believed to be the first woman to use virtual reality (VR) for pain management during labor. With more women moving away from scheduled C-sections – which accounted for 32% of US births in 2015 – VR might offer another drug-free pain option during birth.

“I was on a beach, and there was a fire going,” Martucci recalls. “Wherever you moved, the scene moved with you. If I looked up, I saw the galaxy and the sun setting. On the right, there was a waterfall and a lot of movement with birds,” Martucci says. From time to time, a woman with an English accent peppered Martucci’s virtual world with guidance.

“You wanted to listen to her,” she says. “I remember her focusing on the breathing and your body tensing and relaxing, and tensing and relaxing. She kept saying ‘Focus on the birds,’” says Martucci. “It was really very calming. She would teach me how to breathe and be really in touch with your body.”

‘It made me feel I’m OK here’

Martucci had declined an epidural earlier in the day when she started to think her labor contractions were becoming too painful to manage on her own, but she was open to Anderson’s suggestion to try a pre-programmed VR headset.

A Frog That Freezes and Thaws, Plus More Ways Animals Cope With Cold

Wild creatures don't have the luxury of curling up under the covers—here's how they make it through winter.

When cold weather arrives, the Arctic fox grows into its winter coat—lighter fur that helps it blend into the snow. PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM MURPHY, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

Our winter survival skills often involve staying indoors with plenty of blankets, cocoa, and mindless TV at the ready.

But wild animals don't have that luxury—they have to tough it out in the cold. That made Weird Animal Question of the Week wonder: “What are some cool ways animals stay safe and warm in winter?” (See some incredible pictures of winter wildlife.)

French police defy government in growing protest movement over lawlessness

Hundreds of police officers have been protesting in Paris and other cities to denounce what they say are insufficient resources to fight mounting lawlessness, defying government demands that they stop the unauthorised demonstrations.

Six months from an election, the protest, now in its third day, has put President François Hollande’s Socialist government on the defensive at a time when security forces are struggling to combat the threat of further terrorist attacks.

Political opponents have seized on the discontent to accuse the government of letting violent crime and everyday lawlessness proliferate despite a large police recruitment drive.

“I understand the anger of the police,” conservative former president Nicolas Sarkozy said. “I’ve never seen such an erosion of authority in this country,” Sarkozy, who is campaigning to become president again, told Europe 1 radio.

Yemen: US-Made Bombs Used in Unlawful Airstrikes

Dozens of Civilian Deaths Underscore Need for Saudi Arms Embargo

(Beirut) – The Saudi Arabia-led coalition killed several dozen civilians in three apparently unlawful airstrikes in September and October 2016, Human Rights Watch said today. The coalition’s use of United States-supplied weapons in two of the strikes, including a bomb delivered to Saudi Arabia well into the conflict, puts the US at risk of complicity in unlawful attacks.

The attacks underscore the urgent need for foreign governments to suspend all arms sales to Saudi Arabia and for the United Nations human rights office to send additional investigators to Yemen to carry out credible investigations of alleged abuses by the coalition, the Houthis and their allies, and all other parties to the conflict, Human Rights Watch said.

“Saudi-led forces are bombing civilians in Yemen with newly supplied US weapons,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Obama administration is running out of time to completely suspend US arms sales to Saudi Arabia or be forever linked to Yemen wartime atrocities.”

Praying Mantis Looks Like a Flower—And Now We Know Why

The mantis orchid of Southeast Asia evolved in a way that's completely unique to insects.

An adult male Malaysian orchid mantis perches atop a female.

 
PHOTOGRAPH BY LIFE ON WHITE, ALAMY

When is an orchid not an orchid? When it's a female orchid praying mantis, a Southeast Asian insect that masquerades as a flower to attract prey.

With petal-like legs and a yellow or whitish pink color, females share little resemblance to males, which are about half the size and sport a dull, greenish brown color.

Boycotting Jews to prevent the boycott of Israel - Boycott

This week a German bank announced that it is closing the account of a Jewish human rights organisation because it supports BDS. What's next?

The German organisation Jewish Voice for Just Peace (JVJP) is a sister organisation of the US Jewish Voice for Peace and part of the coalition European Jews for a Just Peace (EJJP). It was founded in 2003.

Three weeks ago, the organisation - of which I am a board member - was shocked when it received a letter from its bank, the Bank for Social Economy based in Cologne, that it had decided to close JVJP’s account. No reason was given for the decision. 

This is the first time since World War Two that a German bank has closed the account of a Jewish organisation

But on Tuesday, the bank finally announced, in a second letter sent out by a spokesperson, the reason: JVJP supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.