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Coming less than a year after the announcement of the first circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, NASA's Kepler mission has discovered multiple transiting planets orbiting two suns for the first time. This system, known as a circumbinary planetary system, is 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

This discovery proves that more than one planet can form and persist in the stressful realm of a binary star and demonstrates the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy.

Astronomers detected two planets in the Kepler-47 system, a pair of orbiting stars that eclipse each other every 7.5 days from our vantage point on Earth. One star is similar to the sun in size, but only 84 percent as bright. The second star is diminutive, measuring only one-third the size of the sun and less than 1 percent as bright.

"In contrast to a single planet orbiting a single star, the planet in a circumbinary system must transit a 'moving target.' As a consequence, time intervals between the transits and their durations can vary substantially, sometimes short, other times long," said Jerome Orosz, associate professor of astronomy at San Diego State University and lead author of the paper. "The intervals were the telltale sign these planets are in circumbinary orbits."

The inner planet, Kepler-47b, orbits the pair of stars in less than 50 days. While it cannot be directly viewed, it is thought to be a sweltering world, where the destruction of methane in its super-heated atmosphere might lead to a thick haze that could blanket the planet. At three times the radius of Earth, Kepler-47b is the smallest known transiting circumbinary planet.

The outer planet, Kepler-47c, orbits its host pair every 303 days, placing it in the so-called "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet. While not a world hospitable for life, Kepler-47c is thought to be a gaseous giant slightly larger than Neptune, where an atmosphere of thick bright water-vapor clouds might exist.

"Unlike our sun, many stars are part of multiple-star systems where two or more stars orbit one another. The question always has been -- do they have planets and planetary systems? This Kepler discovery proves that they do," said William Borucki, Kepler mission principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "In our search for habitable planets, we have found more opportunities for life to exist."

To search for transiting planets, the research team used data from the Kepler space telescope, which measures dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars. Additional ground-based spectroscopic observations using telescopes at the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at Austin helped characterize the stellar properties. The findings are published in the journal Science.

"The presence of a full-fledged circumbinary planetary system orbiting Kepler-47 is an amazing discovery," said Greg Laughlin, professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Science at the University of California in Santa Cruz. "These planets are very difficult to form using the currently accepted paradigm, and I believe that theorists, myself included, will be going back to the drawing board to try to improve our understanding of how planets are assembled in dusty circumbinary disks."

Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed the Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's tenth Discovery Mission and funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

Yet another big display smartphone is ready to hit Indian market; Wickedleak, a Mumbai based manufacturer, has launched an Android Jelly Bean OS based phablet with attractive spec-sheet and commanding processor. This is just another device that has been added to quad-core arena and flaunts a beautiful 5-inch display as well. Aimed to compete with Micromax’s high-profiled phablet, Micromax A116 Canvas HD, this handset boasts over the top features with some improved specs. WickedLeak Passion Y HD will be available with retailers by 14th of March at a price tag of Rs 16,999. Currently, the smartphone is available for pre-order on the WickedLeak’s official website.

Passion Y HD runs on Android OS version 4.1 but as per the company's claim, it is upgradeable to Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS. It operates on a MediaTek 1.2GHz MT6589 quad-core processor that passes on the graphic tasks to PowerVR SGX544 GPU. The processor is occupied by 1GB of RAM to smoothen up the processes. On top of these hardware specs, a 5-inch HD IPS screen is well placed at the front, offering the HD resolution of 1280 x 720p. For these kind of powerful processor and HD display smartphones, the battery should be capable enough to keep the droids alive in case of heavy multi-tasking or multimedia chores.

Passion Y HD gets the power from 2,800 mAh lithium ion battery that is aimed to provided sufficient charge to the gadget. The memory front is equipped with 4GB of internal storage capacity, whereas the external memory could be stretched up to 32GB via microSD card slot. Commenting on the launch, a company spokesperson said, "At Wicked Leak, we constantly strive to innovate and develop great technological experiences for our consumers. With the launch of our first quad core phone in this segment, Wicked Leak continues offering consumers a great user experience with latest features and added functionality."

On camera front, the device flaunts an 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and 4x zoom; however the type of zoom (optical or digital) has not been specified. The camera is able to click 99 shots in a minute at burst mode. Furthermore, the rear camera is well accompanied by a VGA front-facing camera. The dual-SIM handset supports 3G network over one SIM slot, while the other SIM is limited to 2G connectivity.

MUMBAI : Indian shares rose for the first time in five sessions and gained 1.4 percent on Monday, tracking world equities, while traders opted for large-cap bets as some of the companies under federal investigation in the bribes-for-loan scandal fell.

Eight executives from the public and private financial institutions were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation last week in the scandal, one of several to dog the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and test India's ability to crack down on corruption.

Shares of Money Matters , a company at the centre of the controversy, dived 10 percent and have lost nearly half the their market value since the news broke last week.

DB Realty , named in court documents filed by the CBI, plunged 6.5 percent although the company has denied any wrongdoing.

The CBI is looking into bad loan write-offs by some banks and financial institutions involved in the scandal, the Times of India newspaper said on Monday.

The 30-share BSE index rose 268.49 points, to 19,405.10 points, with 23 of its components advancing.

The 50-share NSE Nifty climbed 1.4 percent to 5,830 points.

"We bounced back today after the sharp decline last week. B ut then, there is definitely a slight dent in the image of Indian corporates in the near term,' said Sanjeev Patni, president and head of institutional equities at Prabhudas Lilladher.

"In the long run, if fundamentals prove themselves, things would stabilise again.

The real estate sector recovered from early lows and closed 0.9 percent higher, while the banking sector index gained 1.4 percent.

The CBI said those arrested included the chief executive of LIC Housing Finance and senior officials at state-run Central Bank of India , Punjab National Bank and Bank of India.

LIC Housing erased early losses and added 1.7 percent as Kotak Securities raised the stock to "add" from "reduce," saying it believes the recent price correction of the company's stock already factors in business moderation.

Bank of India rebounded 6.2 percent as Bank of America-Merrill Lynch upgraded the stock to "buy" from "neutral," dealers said.

Punjab National Bank closed 2.4 percent higher, while Central Bank shed 1.4 percent.

Hindustan Construction (HCC) closed 0.1 percent lower in a volatile session . It was the most traded major stock on the BSE with a volume of 15.3 million shares, more than 11 times its 30-day average volume.

HSBC Securities raised HCC to "overweight" from "neutral" on Monday, but lowered its target price to 53 rupees from 68.5 rupees earlier.

Separately, HCC's Lavasa unit said India's environment ministry acted "without jurisdiction" when it issued a notice asking for reasons not to shut down its town building project near the western city of Pune.

Energy giant Reliance Industries led the gains for the main index with a 3.7 percent rise, recovering from the recent underperformance.

"Whenever there is a reversal from a sharp decline, people look at large caps and known names as defensive bets," said Patni.

Ford and General Motors shakes hand to design and develop a completely new pair of new automatic transmissions. The reason behind this decision is to counter the increasing competition to offer highly efficient automatic transmissions. We last seen Land Rover showcased its 9-speed transmission, which was jointly developed with ZF and so did Jeep with its 2014 Grand Cherokee. Now, Ford and GM in conjunction ready to develop the 9 or 10 speed automatic transmissions, in a fastest and a cost effective way. Media reports suggest that, the two auto-giants have already started the work on new 9- and 10-speed transmissions, which would be used in their future vehicles.

Higher the number of gears, wider choices of gear ratios which ultimately converts into high efficiency under different operating conditions. As per reports, the transmissions will be made for both front-wheel as well as rear-wheel drive vehicles. The highly efficient transmission will share basic architecture and hardware, although the automakers will use new softwares to make them feasible for their vehicles. However, both company's didn't tell much about the transmissions and investment plans.

The two American giants were earlier joined hands twice to manufacture transmission. Both manufacturers had worked together and developed the 6-speed transmission with front wheel drive for cars like Chevrolet Malibu and the Ford Fusion. Both the manufacturers will jointly manufacture the transmissions, each will develop their own units at their respective facilities.