Tag: Other Worlds

Silence will Fall.


“‘There is a huge irony,’ said SETI Director Jill Tarter, ‘that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don’t have the operating funds to listen.’ SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak compared the project’s suspension to ‘the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria being put into dry dock.’…This is about exploration, and we want to keep the thing operational. It’s no good to have it sit idle.”

Another casualty of the lousy economy and the budget crises (in this case, California’s) SETI’s Allen Telescope Array goes dark. “‘We have the radio antennae up, but we can’t run them without operating funds,’ he added. ‘Honestly, if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax forms, we could find out if we have cosmic company.‘”

My God, It’s Full of…Planets?


“‘The fact that we’ve found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy,’ said William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission’s science principal investigator. ‘We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water.’“

After its initial sweep of 1/400th of the sky, NASA’s Kepler telescope finds over 1200 planets — 54 of them potentially inhabitable. (The picture above is a rendering of the six-planet Kepler-11 system, 2000 light-years away.)

Discover‘s Phil Plait puts today’s findings in proper perspective: “Mind you, Kepler is only looking at a sample of stars that is one one-millionth of all the stars in the Milky Way. So it’s not totally silly to take these numbers and multiply them by a million to estimate how many planets there may be in the galaxy…70 million Earth-size planets, and a million in the habitable zone of their stars. A frakking million. In our galaxy alone.”

Earth Too.


“‘We’re pretty excited about it,’ admits Steve Vogt, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, a member of the team, in a masterpiece of understatement. ‘I think this is what everyone’s been after for the past 15 years.’” And then some! Apparently, astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet yet in Gliese 581g, a relatively short 20 light years away.

“[I]t probably has a solid surface just like Earth. Much more important, it sits smack in the middle of the so-called habitable zone, orbiting at just the right distance from the star to let water remain liquid rather than freezing solid or boiling away. As far as we know, that’s a minimum requirement for the presence of life.“

Some might remember that Gliese 581c was all the rage two years ago. Apparently, this one — in the same solar system but only just discovered — is even closer to the real deal. (Good thing the NASA authorization just passed…)

All these worlds are yours except Europa.

“Studies showed the moon could have enough oxygen to support the kind of life we are most familiar with on Earth…[T]he new study suggests this oxygen-rich layer could be far thicker than before thought, potentially encompassing the entire crust.” A examination of crust-stirring on Europa increases the potential for some kind of oceanic life on Jupiter’s moon. “‘I was surprised at how much oxygen could get down there,’ Greenberg said.”

Twenty Years of Hubble.

“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.” Let’s not forget Hubble too: As of today, Humankind’s first great orbital telescope turns 20. And to think we’re only at the beginning… [Greatest hits | A brief history of orbiting observatories | what’s next.]

A Hot Mess.

“‘There’s going to be all kinds of weird stuff out there,’ said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, who wasn’t part of the research. ‘This is an unparalleled data set. The universe really is a weird place. It’s fantastic.’” In the midst of its current planet–hunting sweep, NASA’s Kepler telescope discovers two examples of a new type of heavenly body that are “too hot to be planets and too small to be stars.” (Although some think they’re recently-born planets; others dying “white-dwarf” stars.) “‘The universe keeps making strange things stranger than we can think of in our imagination,’ said Jon Morse, head of astrophysics for NASA.”

Waterworld.

“Charbonneau said it’s unlikely that any life on the newly discovered planet would be similar to life on Earth, but he didn’t discount the idea entirely. ‘This planet probably does have liquid water,’ he said.” Don’t mean to turn GitM into the We Found a Planet Weekly, but this also seems like big doings: Astronomers discover a watery, Earth-like planet relatively nearby. (As in 40 light years away, orbiting GJ 1214b.) “While the planet probably has too thick of an atmosphere and is too hot to support life similar to that found on Earth, the discovery is being heralded as a major breakthrough in humanity’s search for life on other planets.” I’ll say.

Update: “‘I was instantly excited because the glint reminded me of an image of our own planet taken from orbit around Earth, showing a reflection of sunlight on an ocean,’ Stephan said. ‘But we also had to do more work to make sure the glint we were seeing wasn’t lightning or an erupting volcano.’” Might be some more water closer to home too: NASA confirms liquid on Saturn’s moon of Titan.

Hiding in Plain Sight.

“It could be a planet, though even if it isn’t, there’s plenty of reason to be excited. For one thing, astronomers got an image of it. The reason it’s so tough to image a planet is its proximity to the blinding light of its star, which in this case is about a million times brighter. It would be like trying to see a candle burning next to the beam of a million-candlepower searchlight.” Astronomers spot a new planet called GJ 785 B — by looking right at it. “In short, says McElwain, ‘We’re using state-of-the-art instruments on a state-of-the-art telescope.'”

Rock of Ages.

“‘We would have never dreamed you would find a rocky planet so close,’ he said. ‘Its year is less than one of our days.'” Astronomers discover the first rocky planet outside our solar system in CoRoT-7b.

But don’t prep the colony ship just yet: “It is so close to the star it orbits ‘that the place may well look like Dante’s Inferno, with a probable temperature on its ‘day face’ above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius) and minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius) on its night face,’ said Didier Queloz of Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, the project leader.” Eh, we’ll work with it.

Distant Mirrors.

“‘This is a landmark discovery because it implies that solar system analogs may be very common, at least scaled-down versions,’ said Sara Seager, an extra-solar planet expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ‘…We are on an inexorable path to finding other Earths.‘” Astronomers find a solar system not unlike our own 5,000 light years away. “We are seeing the emergence of a new planet-finding technique — one that opens up an entirely new capability for planet finding. It is more powerful than we ever thought possible.”