On May 19, 2011 front page news in The Dominion Post reported that software made by Massey University computer scientist and astrophysicist, Ian Bond, enabled findings of 10 giant free-floating gas planets around the size of Jupiter. The planets are believed to be about two-thirds of the way to the centre of the galaxy, which is about 25,000 light years away.
“It’s a big deal. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack—the sense of discovery is hugely exciting” said Dr. Bond, who led the team of researchers from Massey, Auckland, Canterbury and Victoria Universities, as well as from Japan and the United States. “It has profound implications and opens a new chapter in the history of the Milky Way.”
On May 18 in in the same paper, the famous physicist Stephen Hawkings declared he finds no room for heaven in his vision of the cosmos. Comparing the human brain to a computer he said “there is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers.”
It seems that the universe is growing bigger with escalating and exciting possibilities while Hawking’s vision has stalled, for isn’t this the man who asked the famous question: “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?”, says Catherine Hannan
Read about Ian Bond’s discovery
Image: Flickyr
