Month: February 2016

This artist’s impression shows the super-Earth 55 Cancri e in front of its parent star. (credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser)

No, 55 Cancri e isn't an exoplanet anyone will want to visit anytime soon. Because it orbits so close to its star, the world has a surface temperature of around 2,000 degrees Celsius. But that hasn't prevented the planet, recently named "Janssen" by the International Astronomical Union, from having an atmosphere. And it's an interesting atmosphere indeed.

Discovered back in 2004, Janssen was one of the first "super Earths" found by astronomers. These planets, larger than Earth but considerably smaller than the gas giants of the Solar System, are thought to be the most common type of planets in the galaxy. Now, using a technique to tease atmospheric data out of Hubble Space Telescope observations, scientists have been able to deduce the atmosphere of this particular super Earth.

According to results published in the Astrophysical Journal, European astronomers have found hydrogen and helium in the atmosphere around Janssen, which may have a diamond-like core due to its very high density. This atmosphere is likely a remnant of the nebula from which the planet and its star formed about 8 billion years ago. The planet has kept this atmosphere somehow, despite the proximity of its star.

Do you like piloting spaceships? Do you like blowing other spaceships out of the heavens? If the answer to those questions is yes and you still haven't got a copy of Elite Dangerous, then good news! Elite Dangerous: Arena is now available for the PC, and it's just $7.49.

Elite Dangerous: Arena will be familiar to those of you who've played the full game as CQC (Close Quarters Combat). You get four different ships, four different arenas, and three different match types (free for all, team deathmatch, and capture the flag), and best of all, it's fully compatible with the full versions of the game.

"Elite Dangerous: Arena is a different kind of multiplayer shooter, offering competitive gamers the chance to jump into thrilling space combat and challenge the world." Frontier CEO David Braben said. Players of Arena or CQC in the full game are also eligible to enter a $100,000 championship tournament to be held later this year.

After missing its planned release date last year, the Khronos Group has released version 1.0 of the Vulkan API specification, the next-generation version of OpenGL. Based on AMD's proprietary Mantle API, Vulkan (previously known as GLNext) is an open-source, low-overhead API that promises huge performance gains in 3D applications by giving developers low-level control of graphics and CPU hardware, much in the same way that games consoles like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One do.

To accompany the launch of Vulkan, AMD is releasing a beta driver for its Radeon graphics cards, which enables the use of the new API on PC. Rival Nvidia has also promised to support Vulkan with a driver update, although the company hasn't yet announced when it will be released. Both companies have pledged to support Vulkan's predecessor OpenGL for the foreseeable future too, which—given that OpenGL has been used in a huge amount of games and 3D applications since its release in 1992—should come as a relief to developers and consumers alike.

Vulkan is the latest in a number of modern graphics APIs that promise improved performance on modern multicore systems and graphics cards. They allow developers to manage memory and commands themselves, rather than leave it up to the driver, as well as allow the GPU to process commands in parallel, amongst other improvements. Microsoft released DirectX 12 as part of Windows 10 last year, with early tests showing huge frame rate improvements for AMD. No DX12-compatible games have yet been released, however.