planets
Latest
NASA gives you a flyover view of Pluto's icy mountains
Hey NASA, stop blowing our minds, okay? Actually, no, please continue.
The Big Picture: giving birth to a solar system
While one hot topic regarding outer space lately is a work of science fiction, here's some fact to switch that up -- in case comets aren't really your bag. What you see above is the first result of the Alma telescope array set up in its near-final form, capturing the beginnings of a solar system that could be much like our own given enough time. HL Tauri is a star some 450 light years away that's surrounded by the dusty disc-shaped remains of star-birth, is around a million years old and already forming planets by the looks of things. As ESO reports, scientists say that this sole image will "revolutionize theories of planetary formation" because it means planets may actually, well, form, faster than previously expected. Even better? This image might give us a clearer idea of what our own solar system looked like in its early days.
It takes billions of years to see all of No Man's Sky
The universe is a pretty big place, and No Man's Sky's development team wants to replicate its span as best as it can. It's ambitions were grand enough for Hello Games' Sean Murray to say that the universe in No Man's Sky is "infinite" when it was revealed for PS4 at E3 in June. Of course, the game isn't really "infinite," and Hello Games is fully aware of that, and ultimately wants the game to "surprise" players. The developer addressed that late last week with IGN, discussing its previous use of a 32-bit number to automatically generate the planets in the game. "With that 32-bit number it would take you four or five thousand years to see every planet if you spent only a second on each one," it said. See? Not infinite. However, the developer noted that it is now using a 64-bit number to procedurally produce No Man's Sky's universe, which means it will take roughly five billion years to see each planet in the game. The still-not-infinite-but-rather-huge universe of No Man's Sky will arrive on PC after it launches on PS4, though it's unknown just when that will be. [Image: Hello Games]
Elite: Dangerous' Stellar Forge tech powers planetary creation
Maybe you think that creating solar systems for an MMO is nothing more than plunking down a few spheres and programming in physics for a gravity well. Well, you've got some nerve! The developers at Elite: Dangerous think about nothing else day in and day out, and as a result the team has come up with special tech to create the billions of systems that players will encounter in-game. In a recent newsletter, the team elaborates on the Stellar Forge system that it uses for most of the game's celestial bodies: "In Elite: Dangerous, when we are generating a system procedurally, each planetary system is formed from first principles. Bodies are gradually aggregated over a very long simulated time from available matter, taking into account its chemical composition. Depending on the angular momentum, this might begin to form into a single central body, or into multiple co-orbiting bodies." This explanation goes on in detail -- great detail -- and if you haven't appreciated how planets are made before now, you certainly will by the time you finish reading it. [Thanks to Cotic for the tip!]
EVE Evolved: EVE needs real colonisation now
MMOs have absolutely exploded in popularity over the past decade, with online gaming growing from a niche hobby to a global market worth billions of dollars each year. Once dominated by subscription games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, recent years have seen free-to-play games take centre stage. Global MMO subscriptions have been reportedly shrinking since 2010, and EVE doesn't appear to be immune to this industry-wide trend. Though February 2013's figures showed EVE subscriptions have technically grown year-on-year, those numbers were published just after the Chinese server relaunch, and CCP hasn't released any new figures since. Developers have done a good job of catering to current subscribers and polishing existing gameplay with the past few expansions, but the average daily login numbers are still the same as they were over four years ago. EVE will undoubtedly hook in plenty of new and returning subscribers when its deep space colonisation gameplay with player-built stargates and new hidden solar systems is implemented, but time could be running out on these features. Hefty competition is due in the next few years from upcoming sandbox games such as Star Citizen, EverQuest Next, Camelot Unchained, and Elite: Dangerous, and CCP will have to release something big soon to bring in some fresh blood. In this week's EVE Evolved, I ask whether CCP should focus on new players and suggest plans for two relatively simple colonisation-based expansions that could get EVE a significant part of the way toward its five-year goal in just one year.
Line of Defense approaches beta test phase
After a few months of silence, Derek Smart is back with a Line of Defense update. He reports that the title is preparing to transition from alpha to beta testing, even with "setbacks" due to switching the game engine. The team transitioned the game from an internal engine to the Havok Vision engine, which oversees the 25 middleware engines that handle aspects like the AI, atmospheric effects, networking, and more. He says that optimizing the game has been "touch and go for the most part," however. Smart predicts that next year should be interesting for Line of Defense. "All things being equal, we should be rolling in awesomeness by Q2 2014," he writes. "Prepare to have your mind blown. Guaranteed."
NASA gives planet-hunting TESS space telescope go-ahead for 2017 launch
NASA's Kepler space telescope hasn't exactly been a slouch when it comes to planet hunting, but that effort will soon be getting a considerable boost courtesy of a new mission selected by NASA as part of its Explorer program. Dubbed the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (or TESS), this new space telescope will one-up Kepler with the ability to perform an all-sky survey (an area 400 times larger than previous missions) to search for transiting exoplanets, with an eye towards planets comparable to Earth in size. TESS was developed by an MIT-led team, and will be placed in what they describe as a new "Goldilocks" orbit, allowing it to travel close enough to the Earth every two weeks for a high-speed data downlink while still remaining safely beyond the harmful radiation belts. It's now set for launch in 2017, when it will be joined by the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an addition to the International Space Station also selected as part of the Explorer program last week that will use a process called X-ray timing to study neutron stars.
NASA's Kepler telescope spies smallest planet to date, no aliens
NASA's Kepler telescope is permanently on the lookout for celestial objects of interest, and its latest discovery is a small one. A small planet, to be exact -- in fact, the smallest its encountered during its search. Kepler-37b is a tad larger than our heavenly dance partner, the Moon, and whizzes round a star much like our Sun, with two larger planets in its system for company. NASA's issuing back pats all round, as finding Kepler-37b has highlighted "the precision of the Kepler instrument" (although admittedly, the star's behavior was favorable), and suggests there are many more humble worlds of similar size awaiting our detection. It's unlikely any aliens call Kepler-37b home: it's thought to be rocky, with no atmosphere, and hugs its sun in a 13-day orbit cycle, meaning surface temperature is terribly high. Still, an achievement for Kepler, no doubt, but what we really want it to find is a planet home to beings who can explain the plot-line of Prometheus. We're still a little confused.
David Braben is kickstarting a new multiplayer Elite sequel
Elite and its sequel Frontier: Elite II were arguably two of the most influential early space games ever made. They dropped the player into an immense sci-fi sandbox with just a tiny ship and a handful of credits. You could work your way up to larger and larger hauling ships, fight off pirates intent on taking your loot, travel the stars in search of lucrative deals or just wormhole into deep space. If that sounds familiar, it's because Elite was part of the inspiration for sci-fi MMO EVE Online. Space in Frontier was especially deep, with a full-scale galaxy containing 100 billion stars and several empires with their own legal systems and trading outposts. Players could choose to raid other ships or play it straight, mining moons, scooping fuel from gas giants, and landing on planets to survey them for materials. The magic that made this colossal universe possible was procedural generation and some incredibly good programming by developer David Braben. Today David took to Kickstarter to launch possibly the most anticipated sequel in the history of sci-fi sandbox games. Elite: Dangerous promises a Frontier-style sandbox with modern 3D graphics, a ton more content, and a seamless peer-to-peer multiplayer experience with no lobbies. Whether this will qualify as an MMO or not remains to be seen, but the project promises to blur the line between what is and isn't massively multiplayer.
EVE Evolved: Merging EVE with DUST 514
When console MMOFPS DUST 514 was first announced, players were cautious of the game's ambitious goals. Developers promised that DUST battles would decide the ownership of planets inside PC MMO EVE Online, and that this would tie into system sovereignty and ultimately ownership of entire regions of space. We expected the two games to have separate communities and economies that would interact only when EVE players hired DUST mercenaries to take over sectors of particular planets, but we couldn't have been more wrong. Two years later, CCP blew our expectations out of the water with details of how DUST and EVE will be practically joined at the hip. We learned that the two games would share the exact same corporations and that ISK would be transferable between games. We also got a glimpse of the incredible plans for realtime integration, with EVE ships able to deliver air strikes to planets and DUST players able to shoot down ships in orbit with ground cannon. But have those ambitious goals stayed in focus during development, and what can we expect from DUST when it launches early next year? In this week's EVE Evolved opinion piece, I look through the public information on DUST 514's launch integration with EVE Online and speculate on how the link may evolve after release.
Project 1640 offers new way to search for planets beyond our solar system
It's taken more than six years of development, but a new imaging system for the Palomar Observatory's 200-inch Hale Telescope finally started capturing images last month, and promises to aid significantly in the search for planets outside our solar system (otherwise known as exoplanets). With the suitably mysterious name of "Project 1640," the new instrument is the first of its kind that's able to directly spot planets orbiting distant suns -- as opposed to existing systems that use indirect detection methods to determine the orbit of exoplanets. To do that, Project 1640 effectively blots out the light from stars, which allows astronomers to more clearly observe what might be around them, including objects up to 10 million times fainter than the star itself (the image on the right above is a nearby star captured with the imaging system in place, compared to the same star captured without the new system on the left). Those curious can find more specifics on just how that's accomplished in the official announcement linked below.
Take a trip to your favorite video game planet
Imagine: instead of spinning a disc or downloading a megabyte, you could simply hop an interplanetary transport to your favorite video game planet. Tim Hijlkema's video of game-themed planetary bodies takes a tour of several universes, some of which you're sure to recognize instantly.
Jumping out an airlock is a legitimate mode of travel in Line of Defense
Contrary to many of Derek Smart's previous expansive computer titles, Line of Defense will be "streamlined" to focus on a small corner of the galaxy. In a new dev blog, Smart outlines the scope of the MMO's territory and how it connects to his previously established game universe. Line of Defense consists of four space regions, each with its own planets and moons. The regions are connected by jump gates in the Sirius/Barnard's Star systems pathway. However, when the game first launches, players will only have access to the planet of Lyrius, with other planets and moons coming afterward. Players can teleport from base to base on planets using Dynamic Jump Pads or can transfer to a station via a carrier. Jumpgates, however, will allow players in vehicles to traverse entire regions. But probably the most interesting mode of transportation is to let loose with an orbital drop from a space station down to the planet surface below. The one thing that Line of Defense won't have, however, is the ability to seamlessly transition between planets, bases, and regions without loading screens.
Hyperspace Beacon: Sensing the future
I like making predictions. When it comes to Star Wars: The Old Republic, I've been spot on about several things, but I've missed the boat on some too. "Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is a path to the dark side," Yoda warned the young Jedi Knight in Revenge of the Sith. It's a good thing I don't have anything to lose by guessing what I think will happen in the future for this game. In 2011, we saw TOR launch with astronomical numbers, and all you have to do is look at our front page to realize how much people have been talking about this game. Hopefully, the future of the game is just as bright. Thankfully, developers at BioWare have been very talkative about what's coming in the future. Let's combine what players have said with the plans developers have spoken about to predict the future of the game. After the break, I'll mix the news with my Force powers to see in the the future... the future... the future... echo... echo...
Hyperspace Beacon: Force reflection
"Always in motion is the future," Yoda reflected to Luke Skywalker in the greatest of all Star Wars movies, The Empire Strikes Back. Even for a Jedi master, the future is unpredictable and always fluid. Likewise, I made predictions about Star Wars: The Old Republic that were completely off base and some that were spot on. Of course, the ones I got wrong were part of the BioWare plot to subvert everything I do. That's right, I'm looking at you, Georg Zoeller. This week, I'm going to borrow a phrase from the SWTOR-RP website: Force Reflection. Every weekday, these roleplayers pose a question about SWTOR, Star Wars, or some sort of roleplay trope to get you to think about how you play you character. However, I'm going to use the phrase to think back on the predictions I made in this column, specifically the first article of this year. Which ideas did I get correct? Which ideas did I get totally wrong? I can't be one hundred percent correct all the time. I have to leave room for some errors or else I'd lose my secret job as a psychic-hotline operator. Jump past the break to judge for yourself.
Hyperspace Beacon: Hyperspace... beacons
A hyperspace beacon in Star Wars lore guides a space traveler from one safe lightspeed jump to the next. Basically, a nav computer communicates with a hyperspace beacon, requesting jump points to its intended destination, and the hyperspace beacon, being in contact with other hyperspace beacons, replies with the fastest route to that star system. Explorers, like Gav Daragon, would take risky jumps in directions beacons didn't point to. That is how they found Korriban. By the time period of Star Wars: A New Hope, hyperspace beacons were no longer in service. However, we know for certain that less than 300 years before Star Wars: The Old Republic, hyperspace beacons were still in use. Since technology appears to advance quite slowly, I can only assume that they are still used in some capacity during SWTOR. As evident by the galaxy map that BioWare launched this past Friday, the worlds of this time period are strongly divided into territories. The planets of the movies appeared to be united under one banner (although that's not entirely accurate). What I'd like to do today is give you a little tour of the galaxy, comparing this map to something you may be a bit more familiar with: the Star Wars movies. So strap yourself in, kid -- we gotta make the jump to hyperspace!
Volunteer scientists discover two possible planets, tell NASA it missed a spot
Proving it's not all about edu-mah-cation, a group of casual star-gazers has stumbled upon what might well be a pair of new planets. Following on from gamers' success with complicated medical puzzles, an army of 40,000 online volunteer astronomy nerds signed up to the Planet Hunters project to help mine through NASA data. One of the possible planets they discovered is roughly two and a half times the size of Earth, while the other a whopping eight times bigger than this revolving ball of blue and green we call home. The project uses data from NASA's Kepler telescope, which registers fluctuations in brightness as objects pass in front of distant stars -- a setup that's helped scientists discover 1,235 potential alien planets in its first four months. Obviously, though, the technology isn't perfect, which is where the project's muggle volunteers (assisted by Oxford and University of Chicago researchers) come in. They've been combing through NASA's readings and are now sifting through the next 90 days of Kepler observations. [Image credit: NASA]
ExoPlanetSat nanosatellite to begin search for alien worlds next year
SETI's search for intelligent life in outer space may be on ice for the time being, but the search for alien planets that may possibly support life of some sort is now being bolstered by a number of new efforts. One of the latest is the so-called ExoPlanetSat nanosatellite developed by MIT and Draper Laboratory, which recently got the go-ahead from NASA's Cubesat Launch Initiative and is now set to hitch a ride into space sometime in 2012. While not quite as "nano" as the SIM card-sized satellites that launched with the Shuttle Endeavor, the smaller-than-a-breadbox ExoPlanetSat is still pretty tiny by satellite standards, yet it packs all the necessary optics and technology required for what's known as transit observation -- that is, monitoring a star for decreases in brightness, which could indicate a planet passing in front of it. What's more, while the launch of a single satellite is plenty to get excited about, the researchers hope that it lead the way for a whole fleet of similar nanosatellites that could greatly speed up the search for planets.
New radio wave technique could detect alien planets, receive interstellar tunes
Any experienced planet hunter will tell you: finding exoplanets is the real challenge, where hardened professionals go to test their mettle. These tricky bodies stymie conventional methods – like seeing a planet pass in front of its parent star – because exoplanets often have decades-long orbits, meaning you could spend a lot of lonely nights fruitlessly searching the skies. So scientists at the University of Leicester in England developed a new approach: looking for radio waves emitted when ultraviolet flares light up the atmospheres of planets like Saturn and Jupiter. The flares – auroras – even if invisible to ordinary telescopes, are detectable by radio telescopes like the European Low Frequency Array (or LOFAR, pictured above). The scientists hope those methods will help them discover planetary systems up to 150 light-years away, perhaps even some that can sustain life. And, of course, keep them one step ahead of Richard Branson. [Image credit: LOFAR / ASTRON]
NASA's MESSENGER begins orbit around Mercury, will start beaming back science early next month
Mercury, the innermost planet of our humble little solar system, is getting itself an orbital friend. The MESSENGER space probe (known as MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging to his nearest and dearest) is concluding a six-year sojourn through the dark void of space with an elliptical orbit around the tiny and otherwise inhospitable planet. Systems are about to get turned on and fully checked next week, before the data-gathering phase kicks off in earnest on April 4th. Science, isn't it beautiful?
