Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Wednesday 18 July 2018

Jupiter’s moon count reaches 79, including tiny ‘oddball’

By EMILIANO RODRIGUEZ ters (miles) across, said as- way,” Sheppard said.
MEGA tronomer Gareth Williams Scientists believe moons
Associated Press of the International Astro- like Valetudo and its siblings
NEW YORK (AP) — Astrono- nomical Union’s Minor Plan- appeared soon after Jupi-
mers are still finding moons et Center. ter formed. The planet must
at Jupiter, 400 years after And he thinks Jupiter might have acted like a vacuum,
Galileo used his spyglass to have even more moons sucking up all the material
spot the first ones. just as small waiting to be that was around it. Some of
The latest discovery of a found. that debris was captured
dozen small moons brings “We just haven’t observed as moons.
the total to 79, the most of them enough,” said Wil- “What astonishes me about
any planet in our solar sys- liams, who helped confirm these moons is that they’re
tem. the moons’ orbits. the remnants of what the
Scientists were looking for The team is calling one of planet formed from,” he
objects on the fringes of the new moons an ‘odd- said. Telescopes in Chile,
the solar system last year ball’ because of its unusual Hawaii and Arizona were
when they pointed their orbit. Sheppard’s girlfriend used for the latest discov-
telescopes close to Jupi- came up with a name for it: ery and confirmation.
ter’s backyard, according Valetudo, the great-grand- Galileo detected Jupiter’s
to Scott Sheppard of the daughter of the Roman four largest moons, Io, Eu-
Carnegie Institute for Sci- god Jupiter. ropa, Ganymede and
ence in Washington. They Valetudo is in Jupiter’s dis- Callisto in 1610. The latest
saw a new group of ob- This April 3, 2017 image made available by NASA shows the tant, outer swarm of moons count of 79 known planets
jects moving around the planet Jupiter. that circles in the opposite includes eight that have
giant gas planet but didn’t Associated Press direction of the planet’s not been seen for several
know whether they were mers. “It took a year to fig- nounced Tuesday. Two rotation. Yet it’s orbiting in years. Saturn is next with 61,
moons or asteroids passing ure out what these objects were confirmed earlier. the same direction as the followed by Uranus with 27
near Jupiter. were.” The moons had not been planet, against the swarm’s and Neptune with 14. Mars
“There was no eureka mo- They all turned out to be spotted before because traffic. has two, Earth has one and
ment,” said Sheppard, who moons of Jupiter. The con- they are tiny. They are “This moon is going down Mercury and Venus have
led the team of astrono- firmation of 10 was an- about one to two kilome- the highway the wrong none.q

Lab-grown meat could be in restaurants in 3 years

BERLIN (AP) — A Dutch M Ventures is an invest- about the environmental production 2-3 years later, from a live animal.
company that presented ment vehicle for German and ethical impact of rais- with a typical hamburger Those cells are fed with
the world’s first lab-grown pharmaceuticals compa- ing and slaughtering ani- patty costing about $1. nutrients so that they grow
beef burger five years ago ny Merck KGaA. Bell Food mals. Environmentalists have into strands of muscle tis-
said Tuesday it has received is a European meat pro- Maastricht-based Mosa warned that the world’s sue. The company claims
funding to pursue its plans cessing company based Meat, which has in the past growing appetite for meat, it could make up to 80,000
to make and sell artificially in Switzerland.Smaller in- also received 1 million euros particularly in emerging quarter pounders from a
grown meat to restaurants vestors include Glass Wall from Google co-founder economies such as China, single sample. With a num-
from 2021. Syndicate, which supports Sergey Brin, said it hopes to isn’t sustainable because ber of startups and estab-
Mosa Meat said it raised several companies looking sell its first products — most beef, pork and poultry re- lished players hoping to
7.5 million euros ($8.8 mil- into cultured meat or meat likely ground beef for burg- quire far greater resources make cultured meat on
lion), mainly from M Ven- substitute products aimed ers — in 2021. The aim is to than plant-based proteins. a big scale in the coming
tures and Bell Food Group. at consumers concerned achieve industrial-scale Cows in particular also years, a battle has broken
produce large amounts of out over the terms used to
greenhouse gas that con- describe such products.
tribute to global warming. Some advocates have
The big challenge is mak- claimed the term “clean
ing meat that looks, feels meat” while opponents in
and tastes like the real the traditional farm sector
/arubatoday/ thing. Mosa Meat uses a suggest “synthetic meat” is
small sample of cells taken more appropriate.q