The first transiting extrasolar planet, orbiting HD 209458, was a Doppler wobble planet before its transits were discovered with a 10 cm CCD camera. Wide-angle CCD cameras, by monitoring in parallel the light curves of tens of thousands of stars, should find hot Jupiter transits much faster than the Doppler wobble method. The discovery rate could easily rise by a factor 10. The sky holds perhap...

Small planets, 1-4× the size of Earth, are extremely common around Sun-like stars, and surprisingly so, as they are missing in our solar system. Recent detections have yielded enough information about this class of exoplanets to begin characterizing their occurrence rates, orbits, masses, densities, and internal structures. The Kepler mission finds the smallest planets to be most common, as 26%...

We point out an intriguing relation between the masses of the transiting planets and their orbital periods. For the six currently known transiting planets, the data are consistent with a decreasing linear relation. The other known short-period planets, discovered through radialvelocity techniques, seem to agree with this relation. We briefly speculate about a tentative physical model to explain...

The EXPLORE Project is a series of searches for transiting extra-solar planets using large-format mosaic CCD cameras on 4-m class telescopes. Radial velocity follow-up is done on transiting planet candidates with 8–10m class telescopes. We present a summary of transit candidates from the EXPLORE Project for which we have radial velocity data. 1 2 Mallén-Ornelas et al.

The observed properties of giant planets, models of their evolution and observations of protoplanetary disks provide constraints on the formation of gas giant planets. The four largest planets in our Solar System contain considerable quantities of hydrogen and helium; these gasses could not have condensed into solid planetesimals within the protoplanetary disk. Jupiter and Saturn are mostly hyd...

according to the story of dhul qarnayn and the sun – which is recounted in verses 86 and 90 of sūrat al-kahf – dhul qarnayn reaches the place where the sun sets and finds out that the sun sets in a hot or muddy spring. analyzing this qur’ānic report, the learned scholars have developed three major approaches. first, considering the story of dhul qarnayn as real and accepting the surface meaning...

Under the hypothesis that self-reproducing probes have formed a galactic-scale communication network by direct Gravitationally-Lensed (GL) links between neighboring systems, we identify Wolf 359, third nearest stellar system, as an excellent target for search alien interstellar emitted from our Solar System. Indeed, Earth is transiting planet seen meaning could pass in beam once per orbit. We p...

Flare occurrence on the Sun is highly variable, exhibiting both short term variation due to emergence and evolution of active regions, long-term from solar cycle. On solar-like stars, much larger stellar flares (superflares) have been observed, it interest determine whether observed rates superflare exhibit similar variability flares. We analyse 274 G-type stars using data Transiting Exoplanet ...

Robyn Ott is the 2004-2005 Managing Editor for the Oklahoma Journal of Law and Technology. She wrote this eBrief while working under the direction of Professor Drew Kershen on the Project on Intellectual Property Rights in Living Matter. Below, Ms. Ott gives an overview of patentability requirements in India for plants, animals, and microorganisms. India is a signatory country to the Trade Rela...