New mechanism may double a planet’s lifespan

October 8th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Using new computer simulations, scientists have suggested that dirty stars that are full of dust and gas make good solar system hosts. When a star forms, collapsing from a dense cloud into a luminous ball, it and the disk of dust and gas orbiting it reflect the composition of that original cloud and the elements within it.

October 5th, 2009 LONDON - Taking a step closer towards a wonder pill that could extend people's lifespan by up to 25 years, scientists have claimed that over half of babies born in the new future in the UK and other wealthy nations will live to 100 years. The drug, touted as the "elixir of life" drug, works by using a molecule called spermidine, which helps to protect the body against damaging chemicals known as free radicals.

August 7th, 2009 LONDON - The planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has found its first extrasolar planets, in the form of three alien worlds that had been previously discovered with ground-based telescopes. According to a report in New Scientist, the finds confirm that Kepler's instruments are sensitive enough to detect Earth-like planets around sun-like stars.

July 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Warmer temperatures make cold-blooded organisms like fish, amphibians, crustaceans, and lizards live longer at higher latitudes than at lower latitudes, according to a study. Led by Stephan Munch and Santiago Salinas, from Stony Brook University, the study focussed on a diverse range of species whose body temperatures vary with the temperature of their surroundings.

June 21st, 2009 LONDON - Humans are not the only ones cribbing over weight issues, some planets too go through a "fat" stage that swells their waistlines temporarily. "Astronomers have found a lot of planets whose sizes cannot be explained by standard theory," says Laurent Ibgui of Princeton University.

June 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, a group of international scientists took the help of a lunar eclipse to take a snapshot of earth's chemical fingerprint, which could help to identify planets most similar to earth where life may be thriving. The team used some of the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain) to observe light reflected from the moon toward the earth during a lunar eclipse on August 16, 2008.

June 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have found a planet forming disk orbiting twin suns in images captured from radio telescopes. The sequence of images, collected with the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA), provide an unusually vivid snapshot of the process of formation of giant planets, comets, and Pluto-like bodies.

June 11th, 2009 Sydney, June 11 (ANI: In a grim scenario put forward by scientists, the gravity of Jupiter could one day pull Mercury off course, triggering a chain reaction of collisions in the Solar System. But despite the threat, there's only a 1 percent chance of this happening in the next 5 billion years, said French researchers.

May 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists at the University of California, San Diego claim to have identified a mechanism of oxidative stress that prevents cellular damage. "We may drink pomegranate juice to protect our bodies from so-called 'free radicals' or look at restricting calorie intake to extend our lifespan," said Dr Trey Ideker, chief of the Division of Genetics in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego's School of Medicine and professor of bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering.

May 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which launched into orbit on March 6, has being hunting for other Earth-like planets. The mission will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars for telltale signs of planets.

April 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have come across first time evidence of the destructive power of stars' tides, in the form of missing planets outside our solar system. According to University of Washington astronomer Rory Barnes, the idea that gravitational forces might pull a planet into its parent star has been predicted by computer models only in the last year or so, and this is the first evidence that such planet destruction has already occurred.

April 28th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Billions of planets are orbiting stars outside our solar system, but many have disappeared after being plucked by the gravitational pull of their stars, according to a study. Computer models over the last year or so have only predicted that gravitational forces might pull a planet into its parent star and this is such planet destruction has already occurred, said Washington University (WU) astronomer Rory Barnes.

April 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Kepler mission has captured its first images of the star-rich sky where it will soon begin hunting for planets like Earth. The new 'first light' images show the mission's target patch of sky, a vast starry field in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy.

April 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA's Kepler mission has taken its first images of the star-rich sky where it will soon begin hunting for planets like Earth. The new images show the mission's target patch of sky, a vast starry field in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy.

January 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have identified a cellular mechanism in mutated 'Indy' fruit flies that could help prolong life by cutting down the output of free radicals. The finding by Stephen Helfand and Nicola Neretti of Brown University and others adds another piece to the puzzle that Helfand, a professor of biology first discovered in 2000.