WHO SAYS AFFORDABLE SHOULD BE BORING?
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Searching for traces of life on Mars, like NASA is doing, is one thing. But scientists are also looking further afield. Could it be found beyond our solar system?
A study published on Thursday in the prestigious journal Science reveals the discovery of a new exoplanet that could be instrumental in the hunt.
Researchers will try to determine whether there is an atmosphere on the “super-Earth” and traces of life around a star other than our Sun.
“The end of the road is finding biomarkers or biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets, which is signs of life on habitable Earth-like planets,” said Jose Caballero, an astronomer at Spain’s Centro de Astrobiologia and one of the co-authors of the study.
About 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered during the past 25 years and some have been found to have an atmosphere.
But these are “gaseous planets or icy planets,” Caballero told AFP, and planets the size of Earth have not been investigated yet.
The latest discovery opens up the possibility for researchers to study an exoplanet that is “rocky in nature, like the Earth,” he said.
The name of the exoplanet is Gliese 486b and it is “only” 26 light years away. It is about 30 percent larger than Earth but with a mass 2.8 times that of our planet and is located in what is called a habitable zone around a star.
“We surveyed about 350 small red-dwarf stars for signs of low-mass planets,” said Trifon Trifonov, a researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the lead author of the study involving contributions from five continents.
Trifonov said Gliese 486b is a “remarkable discovery, which will likely become the ‘Rosetta Stone’ for atmospheric investigations of rocky exoplanets.”
He is anxiously awaiting the deployment later this year of the James Webb Space Telescope.
It should allow researchers to tell no earlier than three years from now whether the exoplanet has an atmosphere and its composition.
And eventually, in a couple of decades, to tell whether there are any traces of life, Caballero said.
Gliese 486b is located in what is called a habitable zone around a star.
Xiaomi unveiled this week in Beijing the Redmi 10 Pro designed to once again prove to consumers that midrange phones need not be stripped of features found in more premium brands and models.
The Redmi 10 Pro has a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen, a Snapdragon 732F chipset, more cameras anyone can ever ask for, and a fast 120Hz display. The unit will, however, not break the bank with its starting price of $279.
Not exactly cheap when those dollar numbers are converted to Philippine peso, but not that would categorize it as a luxury smartphone.
While Xiaomi’s latest in its Redmi line has tons of cameras, it is missing a telephoto lens that may not be a big deal for most buyers.
Two tiers below the Pro is Redmi Note 10 while sandwiched between them is the mid-level Redmi Note 10S. There’s a Redmi Note 10 5G, too, for those who want an alternative to the Galaxy A51 and Apple iPhone SE.
The latest Redmi should hit Philippine shores sooner than for those who may be considering buying it in the United States, with the US-China trade brouhaha still unresolved.
For those willing to spend more on a
Xiaomi, there’s the flagship Mi series.
CNet reported an upgraded display for the Redmi Note 10 Pro with the AMOLED panel and a refresh rate of 120Hz for gamers vis-à-vis the 60Hz in preceding units.
The Pro also boasts of a 108-megapixel wide-angle camera compared to the 64 megapixels of the Note 9 Pro.
“The 6.7-inch Redmi Note 10 Pro features a crisp AMOLED panel complete with a peak brightness of 1,200 nits, making the screen easy to read even in the sunniest of lighting conditions,” CNet said.
“The Redmi Note 10 Pro has a classic aesthetic, similar to the design seen in a number of its predecessors. The most obvious design difference on the Redmi Note 10 Pro is the camera,” added the tech website.
“Xiaomi redesigned and relocated the camera bump, shoving the rectangular bump to the upper left side of the device from the center of the phone. It houses four cameras, a flashlight and an IR blaster.”
Two tiers below the Pro is Redmi Note 10 while sandwiched between them is the mid-level Redmi Note 10S.