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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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A new study from Georgia Tech astrophysicists Billy Quarles and Gongjie Li may have you seeing double — as in twin suns hovering over an alien exoplanet landscape. The researchers placed a (theoretical) duplicate of Earth inside so-called binary, or two-star, systems, and ran simulations on planetary axis tilts. The results indicate the planets would have tilts similar to Earth's, which bodes well for habitable climates that could potentially support alien life. There are a lot of multiple-star systems out there, so the study may boost the number of exoplanets that could harbor life. In addition to this CNET story, the study has also been covered in Daily Mail Online, King5 News in Seattle, and Express.co.uk. Li is an assistant professor in the School of Physics, while Quarles, the study's principal investigator, is a research scientist in Li's lab.
