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ByMarciaDunn TheAssociatedPress CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. There'sanewrockyEarth- size planet on our galactic block, and it's a sizzler. Astrophysicists on Wednesday revealed the newfound world, GJ 1132b, named after the small nearby star that it orbits. Even though the mercury can hit 450 degrees at this planet, it's cool enough to have a thick Venus-like at- mosphere. Lucky for scien- tists, it's close enough to find out. Planet GJ 1132b is just 39 light-years away, within the atmospheric study range of the Hubble Space Telescope. Given that a single light-year repre- sents 5.87 trillion miles — the distance light can travel in a year — this planet is about 230 tril- lion miles away. A team led by Massachu- setts Institute of Technolo- gy's Zachory Berta-Thomp- son discovered the planet in May, using telescopes in Chile. He and his col- leagues reported their find- ings Wednesday in the jour- nal Nature. While the scientists say the planet is too hot for life, it's still much cooler than the rocky fireballs known to orbit stars beyond our solar system. The official term for a planet outside our solar system is exo- planet. "If we find this pretty hot planet has managed to hang onto its atmosphere over the billions of years it's been around, that bodes well for the long-term goal of studying cooler planets that could have life," Berta- Thompson said in a state- ment. Berta-Thompson and the others estimate that GJ 1132b has a diameter of about 9,200 miles, slightly bigger than Earth. Its mass, however, is thought to be 60 percent greater than Earth's. Its home star — GJ 1132 — is a red dwarf one-fifth the size of our sun. The planet circles every 1.6 days from just 1.4 million miles out, thus the heat wave. A slight dip in the starlight every 1.6 days was the giveaway for the observing team. "Our ultimate goal is to find a twin Earth," said as- tronomer David Charbon- neau of the Harvard-Smith- sonian Center for Astro- physics, one of the authors, "but along the way we've found a twin Venus." He added in a statement: "We suspect it will have a Venus-like atmosphere, too, and if it does, we can't wait to get a whiff." The astronomers are seeking follow-up observa- tions from Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope, due to launch in 2018, and other future craft could provide even more de- tails. In a companion arti- cle in Nature, the Univer- sity of Maryland's Drake Deming points out as- tronomers will be able to study GJ 1132b with "un- precedented fidelity" given its proximity and also the small size of its star, which should minimize light in- terference with the mea- surements. That, in large part, makes it in his words "arguably the most impor- tant planet ever found out- side the solar system." He was not involved with the study. It's unknown, for now, whether this star system harbors other planets. Online: Massachusetts Institute of Technology: http://space.mit.edu/ NEWFOUND WORLD The Associated Press SIAK, INDONESIA Forest fires difficult to control? Call in the pachyderm pa- trol. Officials in Indonesia are using trained elephants outfitted with water pumps and hoses to help control fires that have claimed vast amounts of forest while sending thick haze into neighboring countries. For nearly three months, Riau province in East Su- matra has been blanketed by smoke from forest fires and land clearing, espe- cially in peat-rich areas where flames are difficult to contain. At the elephant conser- vation center in Siak dis- trict, 23 trained elephants are being used as "forest watchdogs." Carrying water pumps and other equipment, ele- phants and their crews pa- trol burned areas in the na- tional forest to ensure that fires don't reappear after smoldering beneath the peat lands. Supartono, the head of the Riau Forestry Divi- sion, who uses one name, said the elephants had ear- lier been trained to help pa- trol forests to find people encroaching illegally, as well as to resolve frequent conflicts between wild ele- phants and people by driv- ing the wild elephants that enter human settlements back to their habitats. So far, Indonesia has been unable to put out the raging fires this year be- cause of intentional burn- ing and a rain shortage. Much of the forest land that was burned in the past 17 years was converted into oil palm and pulp planta- tions. Data from the Riau Forest Fire Prevention Taskforce show more than 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of forests and land have been burned in the province. Environment and For- estry Minister Siti Nur- baya says about 1.7 mil- lion hectares (4.2 million acres) of forests and plan- tation land have been razed by fires throughout Suma- tra and Borneo. INDONESIA Trainedelephantstocontrolforestfires RONYMUHARRMAN—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Officials in Indonesia are using trained elephants to carry water pumps and other equipment to help patrol burned areas in the national forest to ensure that fires don't reappear a er smoldering beneath the peat lands. DANA BERRY — SKYWORKS — NASA This artist's rendering made by Dana Berry of SkyWorks and provided by NASA on shows GJ 1132b, foreground, a rocky planet similar to the Earth in size and mass, orbiting a red dwarf star. Venus' twin? Earth-size planet is hot, may have atmosphere By Gene Johnson The Associated Press SEATTLE The New York attorney general's decision that daily fantasy sports betting sites FanDuel and DraftKings are illegal gam- bling operations in his state is a major blow to the com- panies, but the multibil- lion-dollar industry could have more legal headaches yet to come. While the sites have opted not to do business in a handful of states, includ- ing Washington, where regulators have made clear they're not welcome, they have been up and running in a number of others — like New York — where they're legally dubious. Several states in which the com- panies are operating have laws similar to New York and Washington, while a few, such as Tennessee, Ar- kansas and Vermont, have even stricter prohibitions. That could pose more risk than the companies or their backers — big me- dia companies and pro- fessional sports leagues — have let on. Federal law criminalizes gambling businesses that operate in violation of state law, with penalties that can include prison time, fines and sei- zure of assets. "This creates a real vul- nerability for the indus- try," said Daniel Wallach, a sports and gaming lawyer in Florida. "That statute gives the government the power to take it all away. They can shut you down." Byhiscount,dailyfantasy sports sites have been oper- ating on shaky legal ground in about a dozen states. New York Attorney Gen- eral Eric Schneiderman on Tuesday ordered DraftK- ings and FanDuel to stop accepting bets in the state. He said the companies were offering contests of chance — illegal gambling under state law — and he accused the companies of mislead- ing customers about their chancesofwinninginabar- rage of advertisements. The companies said Wednesday they intend to fight to re- main in New York, in court if necessary. While supporters have pointed to an exemption Congress carvedoutforfan- tasy sports in the 2006 Un- lawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, that legis- lation did not override state gambling prohibitions or other federal statutes, in- cluding the Illegal Gam- bling Business Act. That law makes it federally ille- gal to run a gambling busi- ness that operates in vio- lation of state law. Who- ever conducts, finances, manages, owns or partly owns such a business can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years. Moststateshavenolaws that specifically address fantasy sports but do have gambling laws that might dictate whether they're le- gal. Many permit betting on contests that depend more on skill than chance. Others, like New York and Washington, ban betting on games materially af- fected by chance, and still others prohibit betting if chance is a factor at all, no matter how minor. In Florida and Arizona, it's il- legal to wager on contests of chance or skill. Several states say they are reviewing the legal- ity of daily fantasy sports or whether to regulate them, and the industry says it would welcome what FanDuel's chief ex- ecutive called "sensible regulation." MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR INDUSTRY La ws p os es le ga l qu ic ks an d fo r fa nt as y sp or ts The Associated Press DUBLIN Tech giant Ap- ple will resist the Brit- ish government's efforts to get access to encrypted data through a new spying law, CEO Tim Cook said Wednesday. Last week, Britain pub- lished a draft law that seeks to ensure that telecommu- nication companies "pro- vide wider assistance to law enforcement and the secu- rity and intelligence agen- cies in the interests of na- tional security." That worries firms like Apple, whose iMessage ser- vice offers "end-to-end" en- cryption, meaning the com- pany doesn't have the abil- ity to read messages sent over the app. Cook told students at Trinity College Dublin that Apple didn't plan to intro- duce a "back door" ability to decrypt the messages. "We will productively work with the governments to try to convince them that's also in their best in- terests in the national secu- rity sense," he said. Cook said weakening encryption would be bad for online security, be- cause "if you leave a back door in the software then there's no such thing as a back door for the good guys only." "If there's a back door anybody can come in," he said. British Home Secretary Theresa May said last week that the draft Investigatory Powers Bill "will not ban encryption or do anything to undermine the security of people's data." But civil liberties and pri- vacy groups have expressed alarm at its provisions, which include requiring communications compa- nies to hold onto custom- ers' web traffic records for up to a year. The draft bill also says service providers will be legally obliged to as- sist the authorities in get- ting access to customers' devices. The bill has yet to be ap- proved by Parliament. TECH GIANT Ap pl e bo ss C oo k sa ys h e' ll r es is t UK government spy law plan | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2015 4 B