Plus: Unveiling a Mini-Hotel for Air Travelers and Discovering a New Earth-like Planet.

Mini-Hotel for Weary Air Travelers
For all the road warriors out there, Russian architecture and design firm Arch Group has designed a miniature hotel intended for use in airports, railroad stations and even expo centers.

The Sleepbox pod is 7 feet deep and 9 feet tall, and has all the amenities needed to catch some shut-eye or work while you wait to catch your flight. The portable hotel room includes up to three beds with self-changing sheets, luggage storage, ventilation, a bedside table, power outlets and a reading lamp. It’s also equipped for optional Wi-Fi, a TV, an alarm clock and a safe deposit box.

“Payment can be made on a shared terminal, which provides the client with an electronic key. It is possible to buy from 15 minutes to several hours,” Arch Group explains. “Application of the device can be very broad, not only in the form of paid public service, but also for internal purposes of organizations and companies.”

Last month, Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport was the first to get a Sleepbox, according to Gizmodo. Check out Dezeen for a collection of photos.

New Planet Could Support Life
The conditions required for producing and sustaining organic life are so particular that the Earth has long seemed like the sole exception to an otherwise barren universe. But astronomers have discovered a new potential candidate for supporting life outside our solar system.

A team from the La Silla Observatory in Chile, part of the European Southern Observatory, recently discovered HD85512b, a planet roughly 35 light years away that is the correct distance from its star and has the right mass to allow for the possibility of sustaining life. It is one of 50 new exoplanets discovered by the team, and the only one that occupies the “Goldilocks zone,” an area that is neither too hot nor too cold for the presence of water, a prerequisite for Earth-like organisms.

“The planet’s orbit is nearly circular, which would provide a stable climate, and its parent star, HD85512, is older — and therefore less active — than our sun, which would lower the likelihood of electromagnetic storms damaging the planet’s atmosphere,” National Geographic reports.

HD85512b has 3.6 times the mass of Earth, making its gravity stronger, and early measurements suggest its average surface temperature is in the range of 77 Fahrenheit. It would have to feature more than 50 percent cloud cover in order to reflect enough energy from its star to keep from overheating, and without an atmosphere that produces water vapor clouds, its temperatures could be considerably higher. However, the team, known as HARPS, is optimistic about HD85512b’s potential, as well as the other recently discovered planets.

“This is hopefully just the beginning, for both HD 85512 b and the HARPS team,” science and sci-fi blog io9 notes. “The researchers explain that these 50 newly discovered exoplanets offer some of our best opportunities yet to provide detailed analyses of these faraway worlds, and we could soon gain unprecedented levels of insight into the composition and structure of planets located many light-years away.”

Breaking News: Mondays Can Be Miserable
New research claims to prove what we’ve always suspected: Lots of people hate Mondays.

In a new survey of 2,000 adults, conducted by Flomax Relief, a third of respondents said they hate the first day of the working week more than any other day, and more than half said they spend Monday complaining.

The survey also discovered that the average respondent spends 34 minutes complaining on Monday mornings, 12 minutes more than they spend on any other day of the week.

“Feeling a bit down and under the weather is a common Monday morning problem. In fact, the average respondent moans for around 34 minutes on a Monday morning, compared to just 22 minutes during the rest of the week,” a spokesperson for Flomax said in a statement. “And while people continue to grumble about aches and pains, heavy workloads and tiredness the rest of the week, Mondays tend to be when people suffer most.”

Dreading the workweek ranked No. 1 on the list of the “top 10 Monday moans,” followed by feeling tired and already missing the weekend, the Daily Mail reports. Some respondents complained that it takes time to get back into the swing of working after a couple of days off, while others lamented about overindulging in food over the weekend and not getting enough sleep.

Relevant:


Until next dreaded Monday, enjoy your weekend, folks. Cheers.