Astronomers Found Spirals Inside a Dust Gap of a Young Star Forming Disk
http://www.almaobservatory.org/...omers-found-spirals-inside-a-dust-gap-of-a-young-star-forming-disk

Planets form within disks composed of dust grains and gas. Planets can gather dust grains from their orbits, resulting in dust gaps or cavities,
and can also cause spiral waves within the parental disks based on theoretical predictions. To understand where and when planets can form at early
stages, ALMA’s capability of seeing disk material with high resolution can depict smoking-gun evidence of infant planets hidden in disks.

Both dust gaps and spirals have been seen separately in a handful of disks. The new ALMA images of AB Aurigae clearly depict gas spirals inside
a wide dust gap. These first reported gas spirals within a dust gap might indicate that there are at least 2 planets within this system. One planet
at a distance of 80 astronomical units (au; the distance between the Sun and Earth) from the star is required to create the sharp dust ring.
An additional planet at 30 au or closer from the star is required to produce such spirals.

Anna Bilous & Vlad Kondratiev: LOFAR's view on pulsar sky
ASTRON JIVE Daily Image
http://www.astron.nl/dailyimage/index.html?main.php?date=20160909

Imagine you are a sentient alien creature with a pair of superb radio eyes, capable of discerning
even the most minute splashes of radio emission... how would the night sky look to you? The image
above may give a clue to that. On top of the diffuse black-and-white Galactic background, the swarm
of color dots provides a one-second glimpse into the life of 158 northern pulsars, with the course
of time slowed down by a factor of 10.

These pulsars were observed within the LOFAR Pulsar HBA Census -- a large project which aims at
creating the first uniform low-frequency (110-188 MHz) portrait of all known non-recycled pulsars
in certain regions of the sky. All 196 pulsars with well-known positions within the grey lines were
observed, regardless of their estimated brightness and scattering level. Only 38 of those pulsars
escaped detection (still dots with black edges).

FADO—a ground-breaking tool to reconstruct the history of galaxies
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-fadoa-ground-breaking-tool-reconstruct-history.html

FADO is a new analysis tool developed by Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) astronomers Jean Michel Gomes and
Polychronis Papaderos, which uses light emitted by both stars and ionized gas in a galaxy to reconstruct its formation history by
means of genetic algorithms. This tool was presented in a recent article, accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Astronomers characterize two 'super-Earths' in a distant planetary system
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-astronomers-characterize-super-earths-distant-planetary.html

An international team of astronomers led by Eike W. Guenther of the Thuringian State Observatory in Tautenburg, Germany,
has characterized two "super-Earth" exoplanets orbiting a distant star designated K2-106, determining their size, mass
and density. The new findings were presented in a paper published May 11 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Located approximately 825 light years away from the Earth, K2-106 is a 5 billion-year-old star of spectral type G5. With
a radius of about 0.83 solar radii, the star is 7 percent less massive than the sun. In 2016, researchers detected two
planets transiting this star with orbital periods of 0.57 and 13.3 days.

Featured news - Scientists take first tentative steps to explore potential climate of Proxima B - University of Exeter
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_583299_en.html

Scientists take first tentative steps to explore potential climate of Proxima B

The quest to discover whether a planet orbiting our closest neighbouring star, Proxima Centauri (4.2 light
years or 25 trillion miles from Earth), has the potential to support life has taken a new, exhilarating twist.

Variable Winds on Hot Giant Exoplanet Help Study of Magnetic Field | Planetary Science Institute
http://www.psi.edu/news/press-releases/

Senior Scientist Tamara M. Rogers of the Planetary Science Institute has discovered that substantial variability in the winds on the hot giant
exoplanet HAT-P-7b are due to magnetism, and used those measurements to develop a new method to constrain the magnetic field of such an object.

HAT-P-7b was discovered by NASA’s Kepler Mission in 2008. It is nearly 40 percent larger and nearly 80 percent more massive than Jupiter.
It orbits its star every couple of days, and is so close that dayside temperature may be 2,200 degrees Kelvin (3,500 degrees Fahrenheit)
with a night side 1,000 Kelvin (1,340 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler.

Obscured Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxiessu201717 | www.cfa.harvard.edu/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/su201717

CfA astronomers Francesca Civano and Stefano Marchesi and their colleagues prepared a precisely defined sample of obscured AGN -- those whose infrared emission
is more than twenty times larger than its X-ray emission (the X-ray emission was measured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory). They first collected a set of 265
AGN and then determined which ones were "obscured" by calculating the infrared emission of each to ratio with its X-ray emission. They did this by assembling
the full spectral distribution of the radiation, combining infrared with UV and optical data and then modeling the entire distribution to determine the total
infrared component from the AGN alone with a code that models and subtracts the contributions from stars and other processes. Once they had the infrared value,
they could tell which ones qualified as "obscured." Their final sample of obscured AGN had 182 objects.

New 'styrofoam' planet provides tools in search for habitable planets
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-styrofoam-planet-tools-habitable-planets.html

Fifth-graders making styrofoam solar system models may have the right idea. Researchers at Lehigh University have discovered a new planet orbiting
a star 320 light years from Earth that has the density of styrofoam. This "puffy planet" outside our solar system may hold opportunities for testing
atmospheres that will be useful when assessing future planets for signs of life.

The research, "KELT-11b: A Highly Inflated Sub-Saturn Exoplanet Transiting the V+8 Subgiant HD 93396," is published online in The Astronomical Journal.

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/rings/

Scientists have never before studied the size, temperature, composition and distribution of Saturn’s rings from Saturn orbit. Cassini has captured extraordinary
ring-moon interactions, observed the lowest ring-temperature ever recorded at Saturn, discovered that the moon Enceladus is the source for Saturn’s E ring, and
viewed the rings at equinox when sunlight strikes the rings edge-on, revealing never-before-seen ring features and details.

A Cold War Among Cosmologists Turns Hot - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/a-cold-war-among-cosmologists-turns-hot/526329/
Two camps of theorists are bickering in public—with one saying the others’ ideas don’t even qualify as science.

VIRGO:
Planetary (Transit) Cloaking is a bad idea. – Concept Parade
http://conceptparade.com/concept/planetary-transit-cloaking-is-a-bad-idea/

Recently several astronomers, professor David Kipping and graduate student Alex Teachey at Columbia University submitted a paper to the Royal Society of Astronomy detailing
how we could camouflage the earths presence via use of a laser array. The goal would be hiding the earth’s transit in front of the sun by making up the light that the earth
blocks from the perspective of another galaxy. More advance use of this method could hide more data such as the elements in our atmosphere. The rational behind hiding is
that if there were intelligent civilizations other than our own, they may be searching for planets and new civilizations in the same way that we do. It is possible that some
of these proposed alien civilizations are malevolent. If these civilizations have accomplished interstellar or perhaps even intergalactic travel capabilities they could travel
here and act out their malevolent intent.

It only takes a moment to realize what an exceptionally bad idea this actually is. Consider the goal here. The goal is to NOT attract the attention of an advanced malevolent
alien civilization. The method proposed to do this is to abruptly disrupt a natural “signal” that has been broadcasting for billions of years. In this case the signal is
the dip in light due to the earth’s transit between the alien civilization and our sun. Frankly, I can think of few things that an advanced alien civilization would find more
interesting that the abrupt disappearance of a previously stable planet that may have been noticed, categorized and mapped by said civilization thousands or even millions
of years ago.

The only good way to implement this camouflage would be to simulate a natural disruption to the earths transit system such as a slow orbital shift. In nature such a shift
would take (insert astronomical amount of time here). Our simulation would need to replicate the process over a very long time. It seems unlikely that such a timeline would
be achievable by humanity as we currently are. Any attempt to mask the atmosphere of Earth or the elements within would need to also mimic a natural process.
Here is a link to one of the many articles on this story below:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/31/tech/lasers-hide-earth-aliens-astronomers-irpt/

Q&A: Yuri Milner
Russian-born entrepreneur co-founded the Breakthrough science prize.

Q&A: Yuri Milner | DiscoverMagazine.com
http://discovermagazine.com/2017/april-2017/qa-yuri-milner

David Kipping / Cool Worlds - Einstein's (small) mistake
Einstein's (small) mistake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msK9d9k6K0E


[1704.04310] Relativistic Light Sails
https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.04310

AbSciCon2017 - All livestreamed talks are now available for on-demand viewing!
http://mailchi.mp/mail/abscicon-2017-live-webcast-1266245