Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu(JNS) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress on July 24, congressional leaders announced on Thursday. House Speaker…

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To date, astronomers have confirmed the existence of 5638 extrasolar planets in 4,199 star systems. In the process, scientists have found many worlds that have defied expectations. This is certainly the case regarding “hot Neptunes,” planets that are similar to the “ice giants” of the outer Solar System but orbit much closer to their stars. But when a Johns Hopkins University-led team of astronomers discovered TIC365102760 b (aka. Pheonix), they observed something entirely unexpected: a Neptune-sized planet that retained its atmosphere by puffing up. Sam Grunblatt, an astrophysicist with JHU’s William H. Miller III Department of Physics and Astronomy, led the research. He was joined by an international team that included NSF Graduate Research Fellow Nicholas Saunders, 51 Pegasi b Fellows Shreyas Vissapragada, Steven Giacalone, Ashley Chontos, and Joseph M. Akana Murphy, as well as researchers from many prestigious institutes and universities. The paper that describes their findings (which recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal) is part of a series titled “TESS Giants Transiting Giants.” Artist’s impression of JG436b, a hot Neptune located about 33 light years from Earth. Credit: STScI Puff planets are a new class of incredibly rare exoplanets, accounting for an estimated 1% of planets in our galaxy. The team discovered Pheonix by combining data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) with radial velocity measurements obtained by the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) at the Keck Observatory. Their data indicated that Pheonix is 0.55 times the size of Jupiter but only 0.06 times as massive, which orbits a red giant star with a period of 4.21285 days (about six times closer to its star than the distance between Mercury and the Sun). Based on the age and temperature of its star and the planet’s remarkably low density, the team expected that Pheonix’s gaseous envelopes should have been stripped away billions of years ago. Based on its density, the team also estimates that the planet is the puffiest “puff planet” discovered to date (roughly 60 times less dense than the densest “hot Neptune”) and that it will begin spiraling into its star in about 100 million years. As Grunblatt explained in a JHU HUB press release: “This planet isn’t evolving the way we thought it would. It appears to have a much bigger, less dense atmosphere than we expected for these systems. How it held on to that atmosphere despite being so close to such a large host star is the big question.” “It’s the smallest planet we’ve ever found around one of these red giants, and probably the lowest mass planet orbiting a [red] giant star we’ve ever seen. That’s why it looks really weird. We don’t know why it still has an atmosphere when other ‘hot Neptunes’ that are much smaller and much denser seem to be losing their atmospheres in much less extreme environments.” Artist’s impression of Pheonix, the “hot Neptune” orbiting a red giant star 8 billion light-years from Earth. Credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa/JHU These findings could have implications for new insight into the late-stage evolution of planetary systems and help scientists predict what will happen to the Solar System in a few billion years. According to standard models of stellar evolution, our Sun will exit its main sequence phase, expand to become a red giant, and eventually consume the inner planets. Based on these findings, they predict that Earth’s atmosphere may not evolve the way astronomers previously expected. Instead of our Sun blasting it away, our atmosphere may expand to become incredibly “puffy.” Pheonix is the latest puffy planet examined by the international team based on TESS data. While puff planets are known to be rare, exoplanets like Pheonix are especially elusive because of their small size and low density. In the future, Grunblatt and his colleagues plan to search for more of these smaller worlds and have already identified a dozen potential candidates by combining transit and radial velocity data. Further Reading: John Hopkins University, The Astrophysical Journal The post Instead of Losing its Atmosphere, an Exoplanet Puffed Up and Held Onto it appeared first on Universe Today.

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The late legendary guitarist Jeff Beck was certainly one of the most inventive and influential artists of all time. Often called a "guitarist's guitarist", he first achieved fame as a member of The Yardbirds and then with his own groups or in his solo career, he released albums that became a huge influence of countless artists worldwide. Also had many important collaborations with famous artists like Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger and more. During his career, Beck showed that he could really play anything he wanted, releasing albums of many different styles. He had the chance to see up-close many incredible guitar heroes appearing over the decades and one of them was Eddie Van Halen. What was Jeff Beck's opinion on Eddie Van Halen Although they never made a  really similar kind of music, Jeff Beck paid attention to Eddie Van Halen and liked his technique, although he once said he would love to see him playing a different kind of music. He was asked by Guitar World magazine in 1985, what was his opinion on "the whole Van Halen school of guitar". He said: "I love it, I think it's the greatest. I've been there, y'know, but he lives and dies for that whereas I don't. I'm not really a heavy metal boy, through and through. I'd love to go and see him but I probably wouldn't stay for the whole concert. I'd just get a flash of brilliance and then I'd go, saying to myself, 'That guy is really great.' I wouldn't want to get bored with it, which I could easily do with that style of music." "I like rock concerts, concerts in general, to go through different moods. But there aren't too many concerts like that now. I mean, those guys like Van Halen are so great. But they seem to be stuck in that kind of stuff. Still, he's got the most amazing technique, you've got to take your hat off to him for that. The speed and the frantic element. I could do well to learn from him some of those tricks he pulls," Jeff Beck said. Around that time, he had also told Guitar magazine that Eddie should take the credit for everything he was doing. For Beck, the Dutch guitarist was an innovator and the first one to record "tapping, hammering-on and harmonic screams". For Jeff, it wasn't Van Halen's fault that horrible players tried to emulate him https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5txwFv-zYM&pp=ygUQdmFuIGhhbGVuIHJ1bm5pbg%3D%3D After Van Halen released their self-titled debut album in 1978 and everyone heard Eddie's incredible technique, immediately, a whole generation of guitar players tried to copy that kind of playing. So Eddie was often blamed for the kind of guitar playing that was common in Hard Rock in the 80s, especially. But for Jeff Beck, Eddie had no fault that "horrendous" players tried to emulate him. That's what he said in an interview featured in the photo book "Van Halen: A Visual History". "He brought tapping to the forefront, and I still think he was one of the tastiest players doing it. It wasn't his fault that all these other horrendous people tried to emulate him. I actually saw Eddie play some Blues once and it was really beautiful. I would be great to hear him play more in that style," Jeff Beck said. Eddie and Alex Van Halen once went to see Jeff Beck play Although Jeff Beck was already a famous musician in the 60s, it was only in 1975 that Eddie Van Halen started listening to his records. As he recalled in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2011, "Blow By Blow" (1975) and "Wired" (1976) were some of the Beck albums he liked. “Jeff Beck is definitely a standalone. You never know what the hell he’s gonna do. My brother and I were in France 20 years ago, and Jeff Beck was playing. He was doing a rockabilly thing. And we were like, ‘What the hell is this?’ You never know what to expect with him,” Eddie Van Halen said.The post What was Jeff Beck’s opinion on Eddie Van Halen appeared first on Rock And Roll Garage.