A hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way, says a study. The idea is being propounded by an international team of astronomers led by Chandra Wickramasinghe, professor and director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham.
They have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called “missing mass” of galaxies, the journal Astrophysics and Space Science reported.
The scientists calculate that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average.
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GENERATE POWER FROM YOUR FOOTSTEPS soon
London: Imagine generating electricity in your footsteps. Sounds utopian? But, this could soon be a reality, say scientists who have developed a paper-thin generator that harnesses the mechanical energy of one’s steps.
An international team says these “living generators” use viruses to convert the soles of one’s shoes into electricity.
So far, the generators can only create enough power to run a small LCD panel, but work in the laboratory simply by tapping a finger on an electrode, the Daily Mail reported.
In the future, the scientists could be used to power everything from portable electronics like phones — powered by footsteps — to lighting systems, powered by similar panels inside doors. The viruses are harmless, built to harness physical stress in an object to generate electricity. The technology already works say scientists. — PTI