We have been compelled to look back at events 20 years ago associated with the action to start the SIROP program.
With it today and note as we start this Blog events-
Yesterday His Holiness Pope Benedict celebrated his 80th birthday.
The very important French Presidential election for the first time in French history a woman standing as presidential candidate. Mr Sarkosy being the child of an EU migrant. The results Sarkosy 31% and Sogelan Royal 26%
Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik and his Australian-born wife, Crown Princess Mary have had a baby boy.
In Seychelles given that the nation is 90% Christians this Sunday as they go to church their thought, the government announcement that every Distirct to have its own office of SEnPA, the big challange this poses as families, individuals, young person and group try and get together to start small business in their respective Districts. On the Forums our contributions - requesting for joint effort to start a small production of Heraldic merchandising goods in Seychelles for export and the local market. The important impact this will make in wide areas of Seychelles affairs and the Indian Ocean region if undertaken.
The announcement by Barclays of the world largest bank merger so far with ABN Amro the Dutch bank. Because barclays was the leading colonial bank the very important discussion we held with their international division - East Africa. We discussed various aspect of the $500 -$800 millions SIROP exile program. Barclays had been in touch with KPMG and they were Seychelles government auditors. Barclays had served Seychelles government in various ways.
The world announced the death of former President Boris Yeltsin 76 the first elected President of the Russian commonwealth , he had taken power from former President Mikael Gorbachev - his vision of Perestroika which made so much possible and the former USSR. The Seychelles very important relation with former USSR and the COMECON.
We take the occasion to convey to his family, Government officials - President Putin, the Russian nation our nation, EU community condolence and sympathy .
(It has a relevancy to the above issue)
Earth-like planet discovery 'may support life'
25/04/2007 - 07:51:11
An Earth-like planet that could be covered in oceans and may support life has been discovered outside the Solar System.
The new world, which is 20.5 light years away, orbits a region with the right temperature to allow liquid water on its surface.
Scientists believe it is only 1.5 times larger and five times more massive than Earth, making it the smallest extra-solar planet known.
But the really exciting discovery is that the planet inhabits the habitable zone of its parent star, Gliese 581.
Also known as the “Goldilocks zone”, this is the narrow orbit in which temperatures are not too hot, not too cold, but just right for surface water to exist as a liquid.
The habitable zone varies according to the heat output of the star, and Gliese 581 is much smaller and colder than the Sun. So even though the planet is 14 times closer to the star than the Earth is to the Sun, it lies in a region where rivers, lakes and oceans are possible.
Liquid water is one of the pre-requisites for life as we know it on Earth.
Dr Stephane Udry, from the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, who led the European astronomers who announced the find today, said: “We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between zero and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid.
“Moreover, its radius should be only 1.5 times the Earth’s radius, and models predict that the planet should be either rocky – like our Earth – or covered with oceans.”
The vast majority of planets already discovered orbiting stars outside the Solar System are giant gaseous worlds the size of Jupiter or bigger.
Life as we know it could not exist on these planets. But the new planet is highly unusual because it is so small, and therefore probably rocky. Given its size and location, it is also likely to have an atmosphere.
Two other planets also orbit Gliese 581, which lies in the constellation of Libra and is among the 100 closest stars to the Sun.
One, Gliese 581 B, discovered two years ago, is a Neptune-like planet with 15 Earth-masses so close to the star that it makes an orbit every 5.4 days. The other, Gliese 581 D, has eight times the Earth’s mass and completes an orbit in 84 days. The new planet, with a 13-day orbit, is designated Gliese 581 C, but as yet has no name.
The planet was found by Swiss, French and Portuguese astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6 metre telescope at La Silla in Chile.
They employed a method of long-distance planet finding that looks for the “wobble” on a star caused by the gravity of a large object orbiting it.
By measuring the wobble motion, shown as shifts in the star’s light spectrum, astronomers can calculate a planet’s orbit and mass.
Gliese 581 C is certain to be a key target for future missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life.
“Liquid water is critical to life as we know it,” said Dr Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University in France. “On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X.”
COROT, the first space telescope specifically designed to search for Earth-like rocky planets around stars other than the Sun, was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) last December.
By 2020 at least one space telescope should be in orbit with the capability of detecting signs of life on planets light years from Earth.
Two such missions, Darwin and the Terrestrial Planet Finder, are planned by ESA and the American space agency Nasa.
Both craft will have instruments sensitive enough to spot water and oxygen on Gliese 581 C, should it exist.
Dr Malcolm Fridlund, ESA project manager for COROT and study scientist on the Darwin project, said: “This is a very important step on the road to finding Earth-like planets. The planets we’ve found so far outside the Solar System have all been different from our own Earth, and more like Jupiter or Neptune.
“If this is a rocky planet it’s very likely that it will have liquid water on its surface, which means there may also be life.
“There are caveats, one being that the environment around a red dwarf is very full of radiation. All red dwarfs have a lot of flare activity, but this doesn’t necessarily exclude life.”
Scientists have calculated that the planet has about double Earth’s gravity. Any creatures living there would therefore be twice as heavy as they would be on Earth.
Their bodies would probably reflect this, said Dr Fridlund. Weak, fragile animals would not be able to support themselves or move around on land.
“Life on Earth evolved to fit the environment through natural selection,” Dr Fridlund added. “With a big pressure you would need a strong skeleton, or shell, or to be soft and malleable.”
Since Gliese 581 is much older than the Sun, life on the planet may have existed for longer than it has on Earth. Tantalisingly, it could therefore be more advanced.
Scientists at the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life) Institute in the US are understood to be taking the possibility seriously and turning their radio telescopes towards the planet.
A paper on the discovery has been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
SETI has already listened for intelligent signals from Gliese 581 on two occasions in 1995 and 1997, as part of a general sweep of stars within 45 light years of Earth.
Spokesman Dr Seth Shostak confirmed that SETI would be tuning in to the star again, using its new Allen telescope array in the Cascade Mountains of north east California.
The Allen array is still under construction but the first 42 of its 350 antennae should be ready for use this summer.
“We’ll be taking another look,” said Dr Shostak. “I suspect it will move to the top of the list.
“I am excited about this discovery. We have assumed all along that small planets will exist in great numbers, and some by chance will be in the habitable zone. But we haven’t been able to find them because the instruments favour big planets.”
He added that having an old star increased the likelihood of intelligent life.
“Life on Earth is four billion years old, and it’s taken all of that to produce us,” he said. “The older the star is, maybe the greater the chance that it has produced something that’s clever.”
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 Lionsgate presents the Sundance official selection ‘Away From Her,’ staring Julie Christie and directed by Sarah Polley. In theaters May 4th.
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| | | Legendary cellist Rostropovich dies 
Published: Friday April 27, 2007 |
| Legendary Russian cellist and emblem of resistance to the Soviet system Mstislav Rostropovich died Friday, his spokeswoman told AFP. He was 80. "He died in hospital today," Natalya Dolezhal said. Rostropovich had been ill for some time and had been receiving treatment at a Moscow cancer clinic. He was born in Baku and studied in Moscow under the celebrated composers Dmitry Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. He went on to a glittering international career, much of it spent abroad after he was persecuted, then expelled in 1974 by the Soviet authorities. He was hospitalised in February for a reported operation on a liver tumor and appeared pale and tired during television footage of his 80th birthday celebrations in Moscow. Rostropovich was considered one of the greatest cellists of all time. His exploration of the tonal range of the instrument was unrivalled and he entered productive collaborations with some of the 20th century's finest composers. But Rostropovich will be equally remembered for his battle against the Soviet authorities, ending with his exile, and his dramatic return to the democratic new Russia. Born on March 27, 1927, to a musical family in Baku, capital of then-Soviet Azerbaijan, Rostropovich gave his first concert at the age of 13. By the 1960s he was already on his way to winning over the rest of the world. Then on October 31, 1970, the cellist wrote an open letter to the newspaper Pravda defending author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had become the target of official abuse after receiving the Nobel Prize for literature. Decades later, the cellist would declare: "The best thing I produced was not music, but that letter to Pravda. Since then I have had a clean conscience." But the letter, which was never published in the state-controlled press, made Rostropovich a marked man. He was banned from the prestigious Bolshoi Theatre, barred from touring abroad and forbidden to conduct full orchestras. In 1974 he fled the Soviet Union with his wife and two daughters to settle in the United States. From there, the musician began a campaign to win freedom for another larger-than-life Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, who was confined to internal exile. In 1978, Rostropovich was stripped of his Soviet citizenship for "systematic acts bringing harm to the prestige of the Soviet Union." In August 1991, just months from the collapse of Soviet power, he flew to Moscow to help oppose a coup by Communist hardliners. A famous photograph showed him in front of parliament along with other pro-democracy supporters, a rifle instead of his beloved cello in hand. | | | |
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