Scientist develop technique to find water outside Earth

Washington, May 31: As scientists search for signs of life outside Earth, American researchers have developed a technique to find if any celestial body contains liquid water on its surface.

Seen from a distance of light years through telescope an Earth-like exoplanet looks like a "pale blue dot," the term coined by the late astronomer Carl Sagan.

Using instruments aboard the Deep Impact spacecraft, a team of astronomers and astrobiologists has devised a technique to tell whether such a planet has liquid water, a major constituent for supporting life.

"Liquid water on the surface of a planet is the gold standard that people are looking for," said Nicolas Cowan, researcher, University of Washington.

The researchers from UW, MIT, Goddard Space Flight Center studied small colour deviations of two colours red and blue from surface features like clouds and oceans rotating in and out of view from the spacecraft. They interpreted the red as land masses and the blue as oceans.

The scientists made maps of Earth in dominant red and blue colors and then compared their interpretations with the actual location of the planet's continents and oceans.

"You could tell that there were liquid oceans on the planet," Cowan, the lead author of the paper said. "The idea is that to have liquid water the planet would have to be in its system's habitable zone, but being in the habitable zone doesn't guarantee having liquid water."

The observations on March 18 and June 4, 2008 were made when the spacecraft was between 17 million and 33 million miles from Earth, and while it was directly above the equator.

Observations from above a polar region likely would show up as white, Cowan said.

It will be some years before the launch of space telescopes capable of making similar observations for Earth-sized exoplanets, but devising this technique now could guide the construction of those instruments, he said. And while those planets will be much farther away, the technique still will be applicable.

"You will still have all the spectral information, and more importantly to us you'll still have the information so that you can see how the brightness of that speck is changing over time, Cowan said."

Cowan notes that some non-habitable planets, such as Neptune, also can appear to be blue, but the colour is constant and, in the case of Neptune, likely caused by methane in the atmosphere.

"It looks blue from every angle, the same blue all the way around. If you had an ocean planet it might look like that, but you can do other tests to determine that," he said.

"For Earth, the blue varies from one place to another, which indicates that it's not something in the atmosphere."

The paper will be published in Astrophysical journal.

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Sun using Earth’s solar defense to steal its atmosphere

Washington, May 30: A new study has suggested that the Sun is slowly stealing Earth’s atmosphere, with our planet’s main solar defense acting as a double agent, aiding and abetting the thievery.

Typically hailed as a protective buffer from the sun’s brute power, Earth’s magnetosphere is actually helping the sun’s energized particles strip away a tiny fraction of Earth’s atmosphere.

“We’re, in fact, losing more oxygen and more hydrogen than even Venus is today,” said Chris Russell, a professor of space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“We often tell our colleagues and ourselves that we are fortunate living on this planet, because we have this magnetic shield that protects us,” he added.

“It certainly does help, but we’ve come to the realization that, when it comes to the atmosphere, that’s not true,” he further added.

An international team of researchers has been tracking planetary atmospheres using the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Mars Express mission for Venus and Mars and NASA’s Small Explorer Mission (SMEX) for Earth.

SMEX also harbors an instrument for measuring magnetic activity on Earth.

“On Earth, the magnetosphere acts like an energy collector that interacts with the material that’s coming from the sun and can draw energy out of the solar wind,” Russell said.

But then, Earth’s magnetic field funnels and guides that energy to the upper atmosphere, heating the atmosphere and allowing bits of it to escape along the very same funnels that guided the energy in.

“The precise physics have yet to be worked out, but there''s no cause for alarm,” Russell said.

“At the current rate, our present atmospheric inventory can last at least until the sun—midway through its life now—turns into a red giant and engulfs Earth,” he explained.

“At that point, the loss of atmosphere becomes moot,” he added.

ANI

China to launch its first Mars probe this year

New Delhi, May 29: China’s first Mars probe, Yinghuo-1, is expected to be launched in the second half of this year, according to an official of the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST).

The probe had passed test of the research phase, Zhang Weiqiang, deputy secretary of SAST Committee of the Communist Party of China, told the third Shanghai International Aerospace Technology and Equipment Exhibition.

Yinghuo-1 will be launched by a Russian carrier rocket, accompanied by the Russian aerocraft Phobos-Grunt.

“The Russian aerocraft is making a sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars,” Zhang said.

According to Zhang, Yinghuo-1 would go into Mars orbit in 2010 after a 10-month, 380-million-kilometer journey, Zhang said.

But, unlike the Russian craft, Yinghuo-1 won’t land but would only orbit and observe, he added.

The Chinese probe is 75 centimeters long, 75 cm wide and 60 cm high. It weighs 115 kilograms and was designed for a two-year life, Zhang said.

“Yinghuo” means light from firefly in Chinese.

“Yinghuo-1 is expected to discover why water disappeared from Mars and explain other environmental changes of the planet,” Zhang said.

The project is China’s third major space exploration plan after the manned space project and the moon exploration program.

“It was also the first time that China would explore another planet,” Zhang said.

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Astronomers close to supermassive black hole’s edge

Paris, May 28: Astronomers have used new data from ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton spaceborne observatory, to probe closer than ever to a supermassive black hole lying deep at the core of a distant active galaxy.

The galaxy - known as 1H0707-495 - was observed during four 48-hr-long orbits of XMM-Newton around Earth, starting in January 2008.

The black hole at its center was thought to be partially obscured from view by intervening clouds of gas and dust, but these current observations have revealed the innermost depths of the galaxy.

“We can now start to map out the region immediately around the black hole,” said Andrew Fabian, at the University of Cambridge, who headed the observations and analysis.

X-rays are produced as matter swirls into a supermassive black hole.

The X-rays illuminate and are reflected from the matter before its eventual accretion. Iron atoms in the flow imprint characteristic iron lines on the reflected light.

XMM-Newton detected two bright features of iron emission in the reflected X-rays that had never been seen together in an active galaxy.

These bright features are known as the iron L and K lines, and they can be so bright only if there is a high abundance of iron.

Seeing both in this galaxy suggests that the core is much richer in iron than the rest of the galaxy.

The direct X-ray emission varies in brightness with time. During the observation, the iron L line was bright enough for its variations to be followed.

A painstaking statistical analysis of the data revealed a time lag of 30 seconds between changes in the X-ray light observed directly, and those seen in its reflection from the disc.

This delay in the echo enabled the size of the reflecting region to be measured, which leads to an estimate of the mass of the black hole at about 3 to 5 million solar masses.

The observations of the iron lines also reveal that the black hole is spinning very rapidly and eating matter so quickly that it verges on the theoretical limit of its eating ability, swallowing the equivalent of two Earths per hour.

This new technique will enable the astronomers to map out the process in all its glorious complexity, taking them to previously unseen regions at the very edges of this and other supermassive black holes.

ANI

Tomorrow, see Neptune using Jupiter as a guide

London, May 27: On Thursday morning (May 28), sky watchers, using Jupiter as a guiding light, will be able to catch a glimpse of Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system.

The gas giant Neptune is too far-flung to be visible to the naked eye.

Spotting the planet can be tricky even for observers using binoculars or backyard telescopes, because it appears as a small bluish dot in the sea of stars.

But, tomorrow morning, viewers worldwide will see Neptune and Jupiter in conjunction, or seemingly close together in the sky.

“Jupiter makes a great signpost for casual stargazers to find Neptune,” noted astronomer Mark Hammergren of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

Jupiter will be the brightest “star” in an almost moonless night sky, a sight Hammergren describes as unmistakable.

Viewers, using at least a small telescope or strong binoculars, can then search just north of Jupiter for a tiny bluish “star,” which Hammergren says will be fainter than Jupiter but still easily visible.

The two gas giants will appear closest to each other by about 2 am local time, but they will stay relatively near for several days.

Tomorrow’s conjunction will be the first of three this year, with the next two celestial meet-ups on July 9 and December 21.

Oddly, a Neptune-Jupiter conjunction nearly 400 years ago almost allowed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei to “pre-discover” Neptune, which was not confirmed as a planet until 1846, Hammergren said.

In 1612, shortly after the invention of the telescope, Galileo famously had his instrument trained on Jupiter and its moons.

“Galileo drew Jupiter along with some of its background stars—and one of those stars was actually Neptune,” Hammergren said.

Galileo saw the “star” again near Jupiter in 1613 and noted in his logs that it appeared to be slightly farther away from another previously recorded star.

“If only he had followed up a little more closely,” Hammergren said. “If he had, it would have been fantastic, because Neptune would have been discovered centuries earlier,” he added.

ANI

Scientists find formula to uncover the Earth’s past and predict its future

Washington, May 27: In a new research, scientists have found a formula to uncover the Earth’s past and predict its future.

The novel method, found by a research team from California and Lancaster, involves reconstructing missing data that will shed new light on how and why our climate moved us on from ice ages to warmer periods.

That will be possible as researchers will be able to calculate lost information and put together a more complete picture.

Similarly, they will be able to tackle ecological studies that are currently incomplete or distorted.

Questions like, why do populations of animals like rabbits and foxes fluctuate so dramatically, and which factors most heavily influence population decline and, eventually, lead to extinction, might be answered.

The research may offer a solution to the problem of reconstructing missing or lost information in studies of dynamical systems such as the Earth’s climate or animal populations.

It could potentially uncover new findings on topical scientific issues such as climate change and the extreme population fluctuations in some animal species.

By developing a novel Hamiltonian approach to the problem, using a mathematical algorithm, assuming the dynamics of each system has unknown parameters and that the data are distorted by random fluctuations, the researchers were able to successfully recreate measurements in a study on a vole-mustelid community.

Many small mammalian species have cyclic population dynamics, periodically oscillating between large and small communities, a behavioral phenomenon that has puzzled ecologists for decades.

Reconstructed data on such predator-prey dynamics could now give new insight into why some species suddenly decline.

Climate evolution is subject to similar cyclical variations, which could be uncovered by applying the method to measuring the distribution of isotopes in sediments taken from the ocean floor, potentially giving further insight into the reasons behind climate change.

According to the researchers, “The method will also be applicable quite generally to cases where some state variables could not be recorded.”

These could include, not only climate change and ecology, but also contexts such as populations at risk from epidemics and rocket motors for new space crew exploration vehicles.

ANI

Snake Skeletons

The precaudal vertebrae have a more or less high neural spine which, as a rare exception (Xenopholis), may be expanded and plate-like above, and short or moderately long transverse processes to which the ribs are attached by a single facet. The centra of the anterior vertebrae emit more or less developed descending processes, or haemapophyses, which are sometimes continued throughout (Fig. II, A), as in Tropidonotus, Vipera, and Ancistrodon, among European genera.

In the caudal region, elongate transverse processes take the place of ribs, and the haemapophyses are paired, one on each side of the haemal canal. In the Rattlesnakes the seven or eight last vertebrae are enlarged and fused into one.

The typical Ophidian skull is characterized by a solidly ossified brain-case, with the distinct frontals and the united parietals extending downwards to the basisphenoid, which is large and produced forward into a rostrum extending to the ethmoidal region. The nasal region is less completely ossified, and the paired nasals are often attached only at their base. The occipital condyle is either trilobate and formed by the basioccipital and the exoccipitals, or a simple knob formed by the basioccipital; the supraoccipital is excluded from the foramen magnum. The basioccipital may bear a strong, curved ventral process or hypapophysis (in the Vipers).

The vertebral column consists of an atlas (composed of two vertebrae) without ribs; numerous precaudal vertebrae, all of which, except the first or first three, bear long, movable, curved ribs with a small posterior tubercle at the base, the last of these ribs sometimes forked; two to ten so-called lumbar vertebrae without ribs, but with bifurcate transverse processes (lymphapophyses) enclosing the lymphatic vessels; and a number of ribless caudal vertebrae with simple transverse processes. When bifid, the ribs or transverse processes have the branches regularly superposed.

The centra have the usual cup-and-ball articulation, with the nearly hemispherical or transversely elliptic condyle at the back (procoelous vertebrae), whilst the neural arch is provided with additional articular surfaces in the form of pre- and post-zygapophyses, broad, flattened, and overlapping, and of a pair of anterior wedge-shaped processes called zygosphene, fitting into a pair of corresponding concavities, zygantrum, just below the base of the neural spine. Thus the vertebrae of snakes articulate with each other by eight joints in addition to the cup-and-ball on the centrum, and interlock by parts reciprocally receiving and entering one another, like the joints called "tenon-and-mortice" in carpentry.

The prefrontal bone is situated, on each side, between the frontal and the maxillary, and may or may not be in contact with the nasal. The postfrontal, usually present, borders the orbit behind, rarely also above, and in the Pythons a supraorbital is intercalated between it and the prefrontal. The premaxillary is single and small, and as a rule connected with the maxillary only by ligament. The paired vomer is narrow.

The palatine and pterygoid are elongate and parallel to the axis of the skull, the latter diverging behind and extending to the quadrate or to the articular extremity of the mandible; the pterygoid is connected with the maxillary by the ectopterygoid or transverse bone, which may be very elongate, and the maxillary often emits a process towards the palatine, the latter bone being usually produced inwards and upwards towards the anterior extremity of the basisphenoid. The quadrate is usually large and elongate, and attached to the cranium through the supratemporal (often regarded as the squamosal). In rare cases (Miodon, Polemon) the transverse bone is forked, and articulates with two branches of the maxilla.


Photos: ifun.ru
Text: Wikipedia

Scientists cure paralysis in mice

In a world first, West Australian scientists have cured mice of a devastating muscle disease that causes a Floppy Baby Syndrome – a breakthrough that could ultimately help thousands of families across the globe.

The research, published online 25 May in the Journal of Cell Biology, reveals how a team at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR) has restored muscle function in mice with one type of Floppy Baby Syndrome – a congenital myopathy disorder that causes babies to be born without the ability to properly use their muscles.

The currently incurable genetic diseases render most of the affected children severely paralysed and take the lives of the majority of these children before the age of one.

Dr Kristen Nowak, lead author on the publication, said the team was extremely encouraged that it had been able to cure a group of mice born with the condition.

“The mice with Floppy Baby Syndrome were only expected to live for about nine days, but we managed to cure them so they were born with normal muscle function, allowing them to live naturally and very actively into old age,” she said.

“This is an important step towards one day hopefully being able to better the lives of human patients – mice who were cured of the disease lived more than two years, which is very old age for a mouse.”

Dr Nowak said the team was able to cure the mice with the recessive form of the genetic condition by replacing missing skeletal muscle actin – a protein integral in allowing muscles to contract – with similar actin found in the heart.

“Earlier in our search to tackle these diseases, we discovered a number of children who, despite having no skeletal muscle actin in their skeletal muscle due to their genetic mutation, were not totally paralysed at birth,” she said.

“On closer inspection, we found it was because heart actin – another form of the protein – was abnormally “switched on” in their skeletal muscles.

“We had already begun investigating whether we could use heart actin to treat skeletal muscle actin disease, so that discovery spurred us on, and we’ve now proved it can be done – we can use heart actin to overcome the absence of skeletal muscle actin in mice.”

Heart actin is found in cardiac muscle and, during foetal development, it also works in skeletal muscles in the body, but by birth, heart actin has almost completely disappeared within skeletal muscle.

Using genetic techniques, the WAIMR research team has reactivated the heart actin after birth in place of skeletal muscle actin, reversing the effects of the congenital myopathy.

Head of the WAIMR research group Professor Nigel Laing said the team’s next step was to apply their findings to human patients.

“We are now screening more than a thousand already-approved medications looking for one that might increase heart actin in skeletal muscles, which could potentially offer a treatment for many patients,” he said.

“Current therapies only target the effects of these conditions, not the condition itself – we hope our approach could lead to a much greater improvement for a range of muscle diseases.”

This discovery is the latest for the team which has been investigating debilitating muscle diseases for more than 20 years.

The first major breakthrough for actin disease was in 1999, when the team identified that defects in the skeletal muscle actin gene, ACTA1 – responsible for producing skeletal muscle actin, cause multiple muscle diseases.

Since then, the team has classified and named a new muscle disease ‘Laing Myopathy’ – named after Professor Nigel Laing – and helped implement world-wide screening for families at risk of genetic muscle disease.

WAIMR Director Professor Peter Klinken said he was thrilled WAIMR was playing such an integral part in helping tackle devastating muscle diseases.

“The persistence and determination shown by Professor Laing and his team over many, many years is nothing short of inspiring,” he said.

“They’ve asked some big questions in their quest to find a cure for this Floppy Baby Syndrome and have worked tirelessly to find the answers to those questions in the hope of helping families across the world.

“Research institutes like ours exist to help people live healthier lives and I am delighted at the important discoveries we are making in this field.”

This research has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, WAIMR and a number of patient support groups including the Association Française contre les Myopathies (French Muscular Dystrophy Association) and the US Muscular Dystrophy Association.

The research project centred at the WAIMR laboratory was a collaborative effort with groups at the Medical Research Council and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center as well as the Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis at the University of Western Australia and Perth-based Proteomics International which have also assisted the team’s work.

ANI

Scientists snapshot life on Mars

Melbourne, May 25: Planetary scientists have provided a view of what life may have looked like on ancient Earth and other planets in the solar system, including Mars.

In its study, an international team, led by Curtin University of Technology and University of Western Australia, focused on deposits formed by microbes in ancient sediment cavities in Pilbara sandstone. The fossils, which are in rocks about 2.75 billion years old, are more than one-and-a-half billion years older than previously studied fossils of cavity-dwelling life.

According to lead scientist Prof Birger Rasmussen, the research gives a window into the Earth's ancient history, and insights into the possible habitats of ancient, even current, life beneath the Martian surface.

The fossils resemble centimetre-scale stalactites and are believed to have been built up in layers by bacteria living on the "roofs" of small, cavities in the sediments.

"In Western Australia's Pilbara region, we were able to study preserved fossils of ancient bacterial life better than anywhere else in the world," he said.

Not only does this discovery have implications to the study of ancient life on Earth, it may also be relevant to the search for life on other planets.

"Synsedimentary cavities are an important new target for the search for life on Mars. The surface environment of Mars appears to have been inhospitable for much of its history.

"However, earlier in its history, the sub-surface environment may have been be quite hospitable for simple organisms, such as bacteria, just as in the Pilbara," Prof Rasmussen said.

The descendants of any such underground organisms may still survive. "If we can find the fossilised remains of these microbial deposits on Mars, then it is a good indicator of the existence of life," he said.

Bureau Report

Victoria Crater unveils Mars' wild, windy and wet past

A two-year exploration of Victoria Crater on Mars by the rover Opportunity has thrown up more evidence of the red planet's wild, windy and wet past.

Victoria Crater, half-mile wide and 250 feet deep, yielded a treasury of information about the planet's geologic history and supported previous findings indicating that water once flowed on the planet's surface, according to Steve Squyres.

Squyres is Cornell University professor of astronomy and the principal investigator for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission. The rover is now heading south toward Endeavor crater, 8.5 miles away.

Many of those observations - of hematite spheres ("blueberries"), sulphate-rich sandstone and small chunks of rock containing kamacite, troilite and other minerals commonly found in meteorites - are consistent with Opportunity's findings across Meridiani Planum.

"It shows that the processes that we investigated in detail for the first time at Endurance crater (where Opportunity spent six months in 2004) are regional in scale, (indicating that) the kinds of conclusions that we first reached at Endurance apply perhaps across Meridiani," said Squyres.

Still, there are a few key differences. The rim of Victoria Crater is about 30 metres higher than the rim of Endurance, said Squyres; and as the rover drove south toward Victoria the hematite blueberries in the soil became ever fewer and smaller.

Rocks deep inside the crater, however, contained big blueberries - indicating that the rocks higher up had less interaction with water - and thus the water's source was likely underground, said a Cornell release.

Detailed analysis of the Victoria data will occupy researchers for years to come, said Jim Bell, professor of astronomy and leader of the mission's Pancam colour camera team.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet in Gusev crater, Opportunity's twin rover Spirit caused consternation with an unexplained computer reboot in April. That problem hasn't recurred, but the rover is now stuck, possibly belly-deep, in a patch of fine Martian soil.

"The vehicle seems to be in a unique combination of soft, sandy material and slopes that we haven't encountered yet," said Bell. "Neither one has been particularly problematic in the past, but the combination of the two has us bogged down."

The overview of the findings has been published in the Friday edition of Science.

IANS

Grytviken Ghost Town

Grytviken is the principal settlement in the United Kingdom territory of South Georgia in the South Atlantic. It was so named by a 1902 Swedish surveyor who found old English try pots used to render seal oil at the site. It is the best harbour on the island, consisting of a bay (King Edward Cove) within a bay (Cumberland East Bay). The site is very sheltered, provides a substantial area of flat land suitable for building on, and has a good supply of fresh water.

Photos by: Antarctic M

Photo by: Tor Lundgren

Photo by: Caoimhe G

Photos by: neurodoc1

The settlement at Grytviken was established on November 16, 1904, by the Norwegian sea captain Carl Anton Larsen as a whaling station for his Compañía Argentina de Pesca (Argentine Fishing Company). It was phenomenally successful, with 195 whales taken in the first season alone. The whalers utilized every part of the animals - the blubber, meat, bones and viscera were cooked to extract the oil and the bones and meat were turned into fertilizer and fodder. Elephant seals were also hunted for their blubber. Around 300 men worked at the station during its heyday, operating during the southern summer from October to March. A few remained over the winter to maintain the boats and factory. Every few months a transport ship would bring essential supplies to the station and take away the oil and other produce.

Photos by: yidnaMU

Photos by: Rita Willaert

The station's church is the only building which retains its original purpose, and is still used occasionally for services. There have been several marriages in Grytviken, with the first one being registered on 24 February 1932, between A.G.N. Jones and Vera Riches, and a most recent one on 19 February 2006 between Peter W. Damisch and Lesley J. Friedsam. January 28, 2007 a service was conducted in remembrance of Anders Hansen (Norwegian whaler buried at Grytviken cemetery in 1943) and to celebrate his great-great-grandson Axel Wattø Eide's baptism occurring in Oslo, Norway the same day.

Photos by: kpocheffy

Along with the surrounding area, the station has been declared an Area of Special Tourist Interest (ASTI).

Grytviken is a popular stop for cruise ships visiting Antarctica, and tourists usually land to visit Shackleton's grave. There is a small museum in part of the former whaling station, which is open during the summer tourism season.

Photo by: No Corners

Space station recycling urine to water

At the international space station, it was one small sip for man and a giant gulp of recycled urine for mankind.

Astronauts aboard the space station celebrated a space first yesterday by drinking water that had been recycled from their urine, sweat and water that condenses from exhaled air.

They said "cheers," clicked drinking bags and toasted NASA workers on the ground who were sipping their own version of recycled drinking water.

"The taste is great," American astronaut Michael Barratt said. Then as Russian Gennady Padalka tried to catch little bubbles of the clear water floating in front of him, Barratt called the taste "worth chasing."

He said the water came with labels that said: "drink this when real water is over 200 miles away."

The urine recycling system is needed for astronaut outposts on the moon and Mars. It also will save NASA money because it won't have to ship up as much water to the station by space shuttle or cargo rockets.

It's also crucial as the space station is about to expand from three people living on board to six.

The recycling system had been brought up to the space station last November by space shuttle Endeavour, but it couldn't be used until samples were tested back on Earth and a stuck valve was fixed on Monday.

So when it came time to actually drink up, NASA made a big deal of it.

Bureau Report

Space probe captures stealth storm eruption from Sun

London, May 20: Astronomers have captured what they claim is the rare sight of a "stealth storm" that erupted from the Sun even though its surface looked tranquil. A team at George Mason University caught the sight of the blurp of ionised gas that blasted into space from surface of the Sun without warning, using images taken by the STEREO twin solar probes.

According to the astronomers, the eruption was a coronal mass ejection -- a bubble of plasma that, if energetic enough and pointed at Earth, can well zap satellites, endanger astronauts, and knock out power grids.

The Sun ordinarily gives some warning when it is about to let loose a coronal mass ejection (CME). However the latest observation have shown that the eruptions are simply stealthy and without any prior indication.

"This proves coronal mass ejection (CMEs) exist that have no significant signature on the (solar) disk," the 'New Scientist' quoted Eva Robbrecht, who led the team, as saying. In fact, according to the team, the CME could emerge so stealthily as it didn't originate deep within sun. Instead, the shallow emission gathered up material over a larger area, causing less pronounced disturbance at the star's surface.

In fact, this particular blast cast out some 3 billion tonnes of solar material, a normal amount for a CME. But the eruption was not particularly energetic, reaching a speed of less than 300 kilometres per second.

If the plume had been pointed at Earth it would have created a minor geomagnetic storm by space weather standards, but strong enough to affect migratory animals and cause minor fluctuations on power grids, the astronomers said.

Ron Moore, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, said: "Chances are we will not have to worry about stealth CME's knocking out power grids. "All the big dangerous things come from much more powerful explosions, which as far as we know are always strong enough to make some signature on the face of the Sun. It's in some sense a mystery because we hadn't actually seen it. But, the team shown that yes, indeed, that's actually what it is."

The findings are to appear in the upcoming edition of the 'Astrophysical Journal'.

Bureau Report