11–20 of 37 posts
I'm quoting a person who works on that project: "They discovered a huge number of Earth-like planets. The new count is vastly outnumbers previous estimations even over the gas giants due to imperfect technology." The remaining conclusions are up to you, even if they are not going to be voiced at the conference....
I'm quoting a person who works on that project: "They discovered a huge number of Earth-like planets. The new count is vastly outnumbers previous estimations even over the gas giants due to imperfect technology." The remaining conclusions are up to you, even if they are not going to be voiced at the conference....
This announcement refers to a 'new discovery about an intriguing planetary system' - in other ones, just one solar system out of the hundreds of possible candidates. Maybe it's nothing more than extreme cleverness being used to confirm one of them has 3 or more planets (which would be significant in itself), but I sense a mystery - either something we'd never seriously considered before (like planets with overlapping orbits?) or else something that looks unexpectedly familiar.
Most exciting of all would be confirmation by some other observation platform of something interesting at a particular location - the plan is to work with other observatories to take a more detailed look at interesting candidates (see http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-201005...). Small hope of that right now, though.
If you want to study the date yourself, it's available via http://archive.stsci.edu/ and http://nsted.ipac.caltech.edu/; http://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2010/speaker_talks/Plavch... gives a quick rundown on what you need to know in order to work with it.
I'm quoting a person who works on that project: "They discovered a huge number of Earth-like planets. The new count is vastly outnumbers previous estimations even over the gas giants due to imperfect technology." The remaining conclusions are up to you, even if they are not going to be voiced at the conference....
Depends on the definition of "Earth-like", really. Mars is Earth-like in some astronomical contexts.
I'm quoting a person who works on that project: "They discovered a huge number of Earth-like planets. The new count is vastly outnumbers previous estimations even over the gas giants due to imperfect technology." The remaining conclusions are up to you, even if they are not going to be voiced at the conference....
Looks quite likely. They started collecting data in June 2009 and expected that a year of observations will be necessary to confirm a big number of planets. What are your conclusions? We are not alone? There are places for humankind to expand to?
I'm quoting a person who works on that project: "They discovered a huge number of Earth-like planets. The new count is vastly outnumbers previous estimations even over the gas giants due to imperfect technology." The remaining conclusions are up to you, even if they are not going to be voiced at the conference....
Depends on the definition of "Earth-like", really. Mars is Earth-like in some astronomical contexts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does make me wonder to consider what NASA finds intriguing. Exciting would be a green planet of the right size orbiting the right distance from it's sun. What could fall into intriguing but not exciting to people that for most intents and purposes have seen it all?
Yeah, I want to know as well. I've read a little on the tech they use. Sounds pretty cool, but could some of these planets be false positives? They said they found a planetary system so I can only assume. Would be neat if they found a planet similar to ours.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does make me wonder to consider what NASA finds intriguing. Exciting would be a green planet of the right size orbiting the right distance from it's sun. What could fall into intriguing but not exciting to people that for most intents and purposes have seen it all?
I would be excited by a blue planet; a green planet (assuming that's shorthand for large masses of chlorophyll == extraterrestrial life) would probably be the most important announcement ever made.
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n7/full/nmeth0709-487...
EDIT: original PNAS article http://www.pnas.org/content/106/19/7816
I'm quoting a person who works on that project: "They discovered a huge number of Earth-like planets. The new count is vastly outnumbers previous estimations even over the gas giants due to imperfect technology." The remaining conclusions are up to you, even if they are not going to be voiced at the conference....
The reason I found it interesting was that the news about 'hundreds' of Earth-like planets (using a very ballpark description of 'Earth-like,' of course) filtered out back in June in the usual fairly low-key fashion. This announcement refers to a 'new discovery about an intriguing planetary system' - in other ones, just one solar system out of the hundreds of possible candidates. Maybe it's nothing more than extreme…
Perhaps it will be related to this? http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v6/n7/full/nmeth0709-487... EDIT: original PNAS article http://www.pnas.org/content/106/19/7816
BTW if you haven't seen it, you'll probably enjoy this (small pdf): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.43....