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Kakapo Wins New Zealand's Bird of the Year

New Zealand’s rare green kakapo parrot and chick. Photo: AFP
New Zealand’s rare green kakapo parrot and chick. Photo: AFP
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Kakapo Wins New Zealand's Bird of the Year

New Zealand’s rare green kakapo parrot and chick. Photo: AFP
New Zealand’s rare green kakapo parrot and chick. Photo: AFP

Kakapo, a critically endangered large parrot that can't fly and hides during the day is back in the limelight having been named New Zealand's bird of the year for an unprecedented second time, The Guardian reported.

The green and fawn kakapo– the world's heaviest, longest-living parrot – first won in 2008. After conservation efforts, the population of this large parrot has risen from 50 during the 1990s to 213 now.

Also known as "mighty moss chicken," the famous parrot used to live throughout New Zealand, but today survive only on predator-free islands.

Male kakapo emits a loud booming sound to attract females and smell "like the inside of a clarinet case, musty and kind of like resin and wood," said Laura Keown, spokesperson for the competition.

"The things that make kakapo unique also make them vulnerable to threats. They are slow breeders, they nest on the ground and their main defense is to imitate a shrub. Those qualities worked great in the island of birds the kakapo evolved in but they don't fool introduced predators like stoats, rats and cats," she explained.

Another endangered bird, the antipodean albatross, which is often caught in fishing nets, won most first-choice votes out of the more than 55,000 votes cast but under the competition's preferential system the kakapo came through. Organizers said they hoped the antipodean albatross did not feel robbed.

"The competition has boosted environmental awareness, compared with 15 years ago when bird of the year started. It is definitely part of a shift in thinking about the needs of New Zealand's unique environment and native species," organizers said.

It has also introduced the public to some weird and wonderful characters. The world's most famous kakapo is Sirocco, who reputedly thinks he is human. It has toured New Zealand to promote the plight of his species.

In 2009, he rocketed to global fame after attempting to mate with zoologist Mark Carwardine's head during filming for the BBC documentary Last Chance to See with British actor Stephen Fry, who likened the bird's face to that of a Victorian gentleman. The video of the incident, with commentary from Fry has had more than 18m views. Scientists believe kakapo can live for around 60 years.

Under the last Labor-Green government, the Department of Conservation received the biggest funding boost it has had in 15 years.

The government has promised to put cameras on all commercial fishing boats, and New Zealand has a goal to be predator free by 2050.

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Alien Planet Lashed by Huge Flares from its 'Angry Beast' Star

File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
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Alien Planet Lashed by Huge Flares from its 'Angry Beast' Star

File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger
File Photo: An imagined view of the three planets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star just 40 light-years from Earth discovered using a specialist telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatoryin Chile. ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger

Scientists are tracking a large gas planet experiencing quite a quandary as it orbits extremely close to a young star - a predicament never previously observed.

This exoplanet, as planets beyond our solar system are called, orbits its star so tightly that it appears to trigger flares from the stellar surface - larger than any observed from the sun - reaching several million miles (km) into space that over time may strip much of this unlucky world's atmosphere, Reuters reported.

The phenomenon appears to be caused by the planet's interaction with the star's magnetic field, according to the researchers. And this star is a kind known to flare, especially when young.

"A young star of this type is an angry beast, especially if you're sitting as close up as this planet does," said Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy astrophysicist Ekaterina Ilin, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

The star, called HIP 67522, is slightly more massive than the sun and is located about 407 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

This star and planet, as well as a second smaller gas planet also detected in this planetary system, are practically newborns. Whereas the sun and our solar system's planets are roughly 4.5 billion years old, this star is about 17 million years old, with its planets slightly younger.

The planet, named HIP 67522 b, has a diameter almost the size of Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet, but with only 5% of Jupiter's mass. That makes it one of the puffiest exoplanets known, with a consistency reminiscent of cotton candy (candy floss).

It orbits five times closer to its star than our solar system's innermost planet Mercury orbits the sun, needing only seven days to complete an orbit.

A flare is an intense eruption of electromagnetic radiation emanating from the outermost part of a star's atmosphere, called the corona. So how does HIP 67522 b elicit huge flares from the star? As it orbits, it apparently interacts with the star's magnetic field - either through its own magnetic field or perhaps through the presence of conducting material such as iron in the planet's composition.

"We don't know for sure what the mechanism is. We think it is plausible that the planet moves within the star's magnetic field and whips up a wave that travels along magnetic field lines to the star. When the wave reaches the stellar corona, it triggers flares in large magnetic field loops that store energy, which is released by the wave," Ilin said.

"As it moves through the field like a boat on a lake, it creates waves in its wake," Ilin added. "The flares these waves trigger when they crash into the star are a new phenomenon. This is important because it had never been observed before, especially at the intensity detected."

The researchers believe it is a specific type of wave called an Alfvén wave, named for 20th century Swedish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Hannes Alfvén, that propagates due to the interaction of magnetic fields.

The flares may heat up and inflate the planet's atmosphere, which is dominated by hydrogen and helium. Being lashed by these flares could blast away lighter elements from the atmosphere and reduce the planet's mass over perhaps hundreds of millions of years.

"At that time, it will have lost most if not all the light elements, and become what's called a sub-Neptune - a gas planet smaller than Neptune," Ilin said, referring to the smallest of our solar system's gas planets.

The researchers used observations by two space telescopes: NASA's TESS, short for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, and the European Space Agency's CHEOPS, short for CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite.

The plight of HIP 67522 b illustrates the many circumstances under which exoplanets exist.

"It is certainly no sheltered youth for this planet. But I am not sad about it. I enjoy diversity in all things nature, and what this planet will eventually become - perhaps a sub-Neptune rich in heavy elements that did not evaporate - is no less fascinating than what we observe today."