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NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

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Re: NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

#11

Post by amha »

binalpatel wrote: post #10

It still blows my mind that we can detect planets orbiting an entirely different stars. And more so - that these tiny pixels that we can just barely detect, are full-fledged planets that may have atmospheres, water cycles, and who knows what else.

Yeah!!!

The way in which we detect them is so incredible: either by noticing the periodic slight decrease in light as the exoplanet orbits its star, or by noticing the periodic slight wobble of the star around it and its expolanet's joint center of mass. When you think of what a tiny difference we're measuring, of something so dim and so far away, and the fact that we're able to actually resolve those things––it's just staggering.

Re: NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

#12

Post by colordrops »

jfoutz wrote: post #9
colordrops wrote: post #3

This could be something very interesting. There have already been big exoplanet discoveries, such as planets in the habitable zone, and those with water and oxygen, so this announcement should be beyond that. Looking forward to it.

Oxygen i think is the missing piece. If that's the announcement, that's freaking huge. Oxygen is reactive, it does not exist in any sort of quantity without something regularly replenishing it. It wouldn't be unquestionable proof, but very very strong evidence for photosynthesis, so, you know. Life.

I believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered:

https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen-at...

Re: NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

#15

Post by knz »

binalpatel wrote: post #10

It still blows my mind that we can detect planets orbiting an entirely different stars. And more so - that these tiny pixels that we can just barely detect, are full-fledged planets that may have atmospheres, water cycles, and who knows what else.

An earthly tangent to this is remote sensing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_sensing). It's not quite as incredible as inferring whole ecosystems on distant planets but it is amazing what scientists are able to achieve using these techniques.

I think a lot of people are aware that the field exists but don't realize how much "hard" science is/was involved especially when it was a relatively new technology with more limited IT resources.

Edit. It also reminds me of the recent debate about automation taking jobs. I work in GIS and every office has someone near retirement age who remembers the days of mapping terrain with actual photos and a stereoscope - it's all automated these days and uses technologies such as LIDAR. The result has been a boom in geospatial jobs.

Re: NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

#16

Post by jfoutz »

colordrops wrote: post #12
jfoutz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxygen i think is the missing piece. If that's the announcement, that's freaking huge. Oxygen is reactive, it does not exist in any sort of quantity without something regularly replenishing it. It wouldn't be unquestionable proof, but very very strong evidence for photosynthesis, so, you know. Life.

I believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered: https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen-at...

You're right, and they've discovered the replenishment mechanism, "the planet is flooded with ultraviolet or UV light. UV light breaks apart water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen" - so no evidence of life.

edit

Not exactly replenishment, water gets broken up into H and O, some of the H streams off into space, leaving stray Os floating around. In that case everything is just slowly boiling away into space.

Re: NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

#17

Post by DanBC »

amha wrote: post #11
binalpatel wrote: post #10

It still blows my mind that we can detect planets orbiting an entirely different stars. And more so - that these tiny pixels that we can just barely detect, are full-fledged planets that may have atmospheres, water cycles, and who knows what else.

Yeah!!! The way in which we detect them is so incredible: either by noticing the periodic slight decrease in light as the exoplanet orbits its star, or by noticing the periodic slight wobble of the star around it and its expolanet's joint center of mass. When you think of what a tiny difference we're measuring, of something so dim and so far away, and the fact that we're able to actually resolve those things––it's ju…

Imagine there's an alien civilisation (very similar to our levels of tech) on that exoplanet, looking back at us.

Would they be able to detect Earth? How about Jupiter?

Re: NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

#18

Post by ellisv »

nneonneo wrote: post #6

NASA press release about the upcoming press conference: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news-confere... I find it surprising that the details are embargoed by the journal Nature until tomorrow. I haven't heard of such an embargo before - anyone know why this might be? Maybe it's related to Nature publication timing, or waiting until Nature's own press release is ready?

It's not uncommon for research to be embargoed (there is a whole wikipedia page on it), that said it's not super common either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embargo_(academic_publishing)

Re: NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

#19

Post by greeneggs »

jfoutz wrote: post #16
colordrops wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered: https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen-at...

You're right, and they've discovered the replenishment mechanism, "the planet is flooded with ultraviolet or UV light. UV light breaks apart water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen" - so no evidence of life. edit Not exactly replenishment, water gets broken up into H and O, some of the H streams off into space, leaving stray Os floating around. In that case everything is just slowly boiling away into space.

My understanding of that article (and the associated preprint [1]) is that they have not detected oxygen, but are setting up theoretical models and simulations to account for oxygen that might be detectable in the future.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03906

Re: NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

#20

Post by Balgair »

nneonneo wrote: post #6

NASA press release about the upcoming press conference: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news-confere... I find it surprising that the details are embargoed by the journal Nature until tomorrow. I haven't heard of such an embargo before - anyone know why this might be? Maybe it's related to Nature publication timing, or waiting until Nature's own press release is ready?

The publishing journal usually takes all the copyright, thus the data/news/info is theirs to announce in they way they want to. For a discovery like this one they'll all want to coordinate with the authors for the news and press releases such that it is represented correctly, accurately, and promptly. This is very standard and not at all unusual.
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