Water detected on distant planet

Water has been detected for the first time in the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System.

The planet, known as HD 209458b, is a Jupiter-like gas giant located 150 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.

Other scientists reported in February they were unable to find evidence of water in this planet's atmosphere, as well as in another Jupiter-like planet.

Details of the research are published in the Astrophysical Journal.


Understanding the distribution of water in other solar systems is important for understanding whether or not conditions for life are possible
Travis Barman
Water vapour (or steam) was expected to be present in atmospheres of most known extrasolar planets, even those that orbit more closely to their parent star than Mercury is to our Sun.

For the majority of exoplanets, their close proximity to their parent star has made detecting water and other compounds difficult.

The identification reported here takes advantage of the fact that HD209458b, as seen from Earth, passes directly in front of its star every three and half days.

As a planet passes in front of a star, its atmosphere blocks a different amount of starlight at different wavelengths of light.

In particular, absorption by water in the atmosphere of a giant planet makes the planet appear larger across a specific part of the infrared spectrum compared to wavelengths in the visible spectrum.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6544257.stm

The Philadelphia Experiment

The Philadelphia Experiment is an United States Navy experiment, done on October 28, 1943. During the experiment, the destroyer USS Eldridge was teleported from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Norfolk, Virginia, and back again to the Philadelphia Naval Yard. The experiment had terrible side effects, such as making sailors to go mad, and some of them never returned.The Navy quit exploring this exciting new technology.



The experiment was allegedly done by Dr. Franklin Reno as an application of Einstein's unified field theory. The experiment supposedly demonstrated a successful connection between gravity and electromagnetism: electromagnetic space-time warping.

The Navy denies that it ever did such a test. There are lots of questions for the creators, why they done this experiment on a such big object with people on it. They could do this on small objects, or animals, and watch their reactions, then decide that making this experiment on humans is a high risk. This experiment can be done on other object, but why it wasn't made ? because it is impossible.

This is my point of view, let's see other opinions.

The Navy does all kinds of experiments, but they keep it secret.It's true that the Navy was experimenting with "invisibility" in 1943, but not with making ships disappear. Edward Dudgeon, who says he was there on the U.S.S. Engstrom, claims that they hoped to make our ships "invisible to magnetic torpedoes by de-Gaussing them." Dudgeon described the procedure:

"They sent the crew ashore and they wrapped the vessel in big cables, then they sent high voltages through these cables to scramble the ship's magnetic signature. This operation involved contract workers, and of course there were also merchant ships around, so civilian sailors could well have heard Navy personnel saying something like, "they're going to make us invisible," meaning undetectable by magnetic torpedoes...."

The central claim of the Philadelphia experiment may have a basis in fact, however. Edward Dudgeon describes the event.

"I was in [a] bar that evening, we had two or three beers, and I was one of the two sailors who are said to have disappeared mysteriously...The fight started when some of the sailors bragged about the secret equipment [radar, sonar, special screws, a new compass, etc.] and were told to keep their mouths shut. Two of us were minors....The waitresses scooted us out the back door as soon as trouble began and later denied knowing anything about us. We were leaving at two in the morning. The Eldridge had already left at 11 p.m. Someone looking at the harbor that night might have noticed that the Eldridge wasn't there any more and it did appear in Norfolk. It was back in Philadelphia harbor the next morning, which seems like an impossible feat: if you look at the map you'll see that merchant ships would have taken two days to make the trip. They would have required pilots to go around the submarine nets, the mines and so on at the harbor entrances to the Atlantic. But the Navy used a special inland channel, the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal, that bypassed all that. We made the trip in about six hours"

Now, this experiment seems to be only a myth, but, who started the speculations about this experiment ? We don't have answers too many questions, and probably we will never know if the experiment is real or not.