The new CD from Radio 4 is out this week. R4 bring the dance punk, check it here.

Three New Planets Found Around Sun-like Star

(SPACE.com) -- Three medium-sized planets of roughly the same mass as Neptune have been discovered around a nearby sun-like star, scientists announced today.
The planets were discovered around HD 69830, a star slightly less massive than the sun located 41 light-years away in the constellation Puppis (the Stern), using the ultra-precise HARPS spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter La Silla telescope in Chile.
The finding, detailed in the May 18 issue of the journal Nature, marks a first for astronomers because previously discovered multi-planet solar systems besides our own contain at least one giant, Jupiter-sized planet.
"For the first time, we have discovered a planetary system composed of several Neptune-mass planets," said study team member Christophe Lovis of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.
The setup is similar to our own solar system in many ways: The outermost planet is located just within the star's habitable zone, where temperatures are moderate enough for liquid water to form, and the system also contains an asteroid belt.
The newly discovered planets have masses of about 10, 12 and 18 times that of Earth and they zip around the star in rapid orbits of about 9, 32 and 197 days, respectively.
Based on their distances from the star, two inner worlds nearest the star are rocky planets similar to Mercury, the scientists suspect. The outermost planet is thought to have a solid core of rock and ice and is shrouded by a thick gas envelope. (Source)

Rare Mirage Appears Off East China Shore

Thousands of tourists and local residents witnessed a mirage of high clarity lasting for four hours off the shore of Penglai City in east China's Shandong Province on Sunday.
Mists rising on the shore created an image of a city, with modern high-rise buildings, broad city streets and bustling cars as well as crowds of people all clearly visible.
The city of Penglai had been soaked by two days of rain before the rare weather phenomenon occurred.
The mirage took place during the week-long Labor Day holiday. The small city received over 30,000 tourists on Sunday.
Experts said that many mirages have been recorded in Penglai, on the tip of Shandong Peninsula, throughout history, which made it known as a dwelling place of the gods. They explained that a mirage is formed when moisture in the air becomes warmer than the temperature of sea water, which refracts rays of sunlight to create reflections of the landscape in the sky. (Source)

On Holiday

Saturn's moon Titan has dunes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Saturn's moon Titan has huge regions covered with dunes, possibly made out of ice crystals, sand or some other unknown material, international space scientists reported on Thursday.
Images of Titan beamed back to Earth from the joint U.S.-European Cassini mission look very much like sand dunes in the Sahara desert, Namibia, Saudi Arabia and Australia, the researchers said.
"It's bizarre," said Ralph Lorenz of the University of Arizona, who worked on the study.
"These images from a moon of Saturn look just like radar images of Namibia or Arabia. Titan's atmosphere is thicker than Earth's, its gravity is lower, its sand is certainly different -- everything is different except for the physical process that forms the dunes and resulting landscape."
The Cassini craft was launched in 1997 and reached Saturn in 2004 after an interplanetary cruise that took it past Venus and Jupiter.
The latest radar images show the dunes are up to 500 feet (150 meters) high and hundreds of miles (kilometers) long.
Dark patches on Titan, the largest of Saturn's 47 moons, were at first thought to be seas -- but now they appear to be largely made up of these dunes.
Titan's flat surface is very cold, with a temperature of minus 180 degrees Celsius and scientists believe its thick atmosphere may occasionally rain methane.
The existence of pristine dunes, piled over other geological features, shows that wind recently blew fine grains of some material around, the researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Science. It could be sand, ice or something else, they added.
But they called the presence of the dunes "comforting", because at least the processes that lead to their formation can be studied on Earth.
Also on Thursday, the European Space Agency released new movies of the descent of its Huygens probe to Titan's surface. The probe is piggybacked onto the Cassini spacecraft.
The four-hour movie shows what the probe actually "saw" within the few hours of the descent and the eventual landing.
"At first the Huygens camera just saw haze over the distant surface," said Erich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona, who created the movies.
Then the moon's sandy surface comes into view.Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The Cult on Kimmel

In case you missed it, click here to see The Cult perform "She Sells Sanctuary" & "The Phoenix" on The Jimmy Kimmel Show from Monday night.

The Global Domination has begun...

Shark Cam

Check out this live feed from the Australia Gallery's new "Sharks: Myth and Mystery" exhibit.