Showing papers by "N. C. Wickramasinghe published in 2008"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that the action of the solar wind leads to erosion of parts of the atmosphere of the planet Venus, forming a comet-like tail in the antisolar direction.
Abstract: The possibility of the clouds of Venus provid- ing habitats for extremophilic microorganisms has been dis- cussed for several decades. We show here that the action of the solar wind leads to erosion of parts of the atmosphere laden with aerosols and putative microorganisms, forming a comet-like tail in the antisolar direction. During inferior conjunctions that coincide with transits of the planet Venus this comet-like tail intersects the Earth's magnetopause and injects aerosol particles. Data from ESA's Venus Express spacecraft and from SOHO are used to discuss the ingress of bacteria from Venus into the Earth's atmosphere, which we estimate as ∼10 11 -10 13 cells for each transit event.
14 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of intergalactic graphite whiskers of radii in the general range 0.03-0.07 μm and lengths in excess of ∼5 μm on the brightness of Type 1a supernovae was investigated.
Abstract: The concept of a Universe undergoing an acceleration in its expansion rate and predicating the existence of dark energy is based on observed deficits in brightness of Type 1a supernovae at high redshifts, amounting to Δ m∼0.3–0.5. We show that the effect of intergalactic graphite whiskers of radii in the general range 0.03–0.07 μm and lengths in excess of ∼5 μm will be to mimic the effects of dark energy in the redshift magnitude relation for Type 1a supernovae. The mean intergalactic density of whiskers required for such an effect is ∼3×10−34 g cm−3, about 10−5 of the critical closure density.
3 citations