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Old February 27th, 2014 #21
Jae Manzel
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Default Planet bonanza: NASA announces discovery of 715 new worlds

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/...w-planets-715/



NASA says its Kepler telescope has discovered a bonanza of 715 planets outside our solar system, pushing the number of planets discovered in the galaxy to about 1,700.

Scientists used a new confirmation technique to come up with the largest single announcement of a batch of exoplanets — what planets outside our solar system are called.

"We almost doubled just today the number of planets known to humanity," NASA planetary scientist Jack Lissauer said in a Wednesday teleconference, calling it "the big mother lode."

While Wednesday's announcements were about big numbers, they also were about implications for life behind those big numbers.

All the new planets are in systems like ours where multiple planets circle a star. The 715 planets came from looking at just 305 stars. They were nearly all in size closer to Earth than gigantic Jupiter.

And four of those new exoplanets orbit their stars in "habitable zones" where it is not too hot or not too cold for liquid water which is crucial for life to exist.

"Four years ago, Kepler began a string of announcements of first hundreds, then thousands, of planet candidates --but they were only candidate worlds," Lissauer said in a statement. "We've now developed a process to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds."

Douglas Hudgins, NASA's exoplanet exploration program scientist, called Wednesday's announcement a major step toward Kepler's ultimate goal: "finding Earth 2.0."

It's a big step in not just finding other Earths, but "the possibility of life elsewhere," said Lisa Kaltenegger, a Harvard and Max Planck Institute astronomer who wasn't part of the discovery team.

The four new habitable zone planets are all at least twice as big as Earth so that makes them more likely to be gas planets instead of rocky ones like Earth — and less likely to harbor life.

One of the new habitable zone planets, called Kepler-296f, orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, according to a news release.

"The more we explore the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home," said Jason Rowe, research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and co-leader of the research.

So far Kepler has found nine exoplanets in the habitable zone, NASA said. Astronomers expect to find more when they look at all four years of data collected by the now-crippled Kepler; so far they have looked at two years.

Planets in the habitable zone are likely to be farther out from their stars because it is hot close in. And planets farther out take more time orbiting, so Kepler has to wait longer to see it again.

Another of Kepler's latest discoveries indicates that "small planets are extremely common in our galaxy," said MIT astronomer Sara Seagar, who wasn't part of the discovery team. "Nature wants to make small planets."

And, in general, smaller planets are more likely to be able to harbor life than big ones, Kaltenegger said.

Kepler, the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets, has discovered more than 3,600 planet candidates, of which 961 have been verified as bona-fide worlds.
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Old March 5th, 2014 #22
Jae Manzel
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Default Nasa plots daring robotic mission to Jupiter's watery moon

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/h...w/31448522.cms


Last year, scientists discovered liquid plumes of water shooting up through Europa's ice.

WASHINGTON: Nasa is plotting a daring robotic mission to Jupiter's watery moon Europa, a place where astronomers speculate there might be some form of life.

The space agency set aside $15 million in its 2015 budget proposal to start planning some kind of mission to Europa. No details have been decided yet, but Nasa chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said on Tuesday that it would be launched in the mid-2020s.

Robinson said the high radiation environment around Jupiter and distance from Earth would be a challenge. When Nasa sent Galileo to Jupiter in 1989, it took the spacecraft six years to get to the fifth planet from the sun.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute astronomer Laurie Leshin said it could be "a daring mission to an extremely compelling object in our solar system."

Past Nasa probes have flown by Europa, especially Galileo, but none have concentrated on the moon, one of dozens orbiting Jupiter. Astronomers have long lobbied for a mission to Europa, but proposals would have cost billions of dollars.

Last year, scientists discovered liquid plumes of water shooting up through Europa's ice. Flying through those watery jets could make Europa cheaper to explore than just circling it or landing on the ice, said Nasa Europa scientist Robert Pappalardo.

Nasa will look at many competing ideas for a Europa mission, so the agency doesn't know how big or how much it will cost, Robinson said. She said a major mission goal would be searching for life in the strange liquid water under the ice-covered surface.

Harvard University astronomer Avi Loeb said going to Europa would be more exciting than exploring dry Mars: "There might be fish under the ice."
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Old April 17th, 2014 #23
Jae Manzel
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Default Mars Rover's 'mysterious light' photo causes wild speculations about alien life

http://rt.com/usa/mars-nasa-rover-photo-light-245/



A new photograph from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover appears to showcase a strong artificial light emanating from the planet’s surface, igniting speculation that the beacon suggests there is intelligent life on the Red Planet.

The photo in question was taken on April 3 by Curiosity’s right-hand navigation camera, and shows what looks an awful lot like a bright, shining light off in the distance. NASA itself has not commented on the nature of the light, but UFO watchers have wasted no time suggesting it’s not natural and, therefore, a sign of alien life.

"This could indicate there there is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do," Scott Waring wrote on his UFO Sightings Daily website. "This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process. Look closely at the bottom of the light. It has a very flat surface giving us 100% indication it is from the surface.”

“Sure NASA could go and investigate it, but hey, they are not on Mars to discover life, but there to stall its discovery,” he concluded.



Others aren’t quite convinced. The editor of All About Space magazine, Ben Biggs, told The Daily Mail that people shouldn’t be leaping to such dramatic conclusions so quickly.

“While the ‘light’ is as yet unexplained, it's quite a leap to assume that it has an intelligent source,” he said. “The public can afford to speculate wildly but NASA is an organization internationally renowned for credible science. It needs to exhaust every other likely explanation before it can begin to explore less realistic phenomena.”

lthough NASA has yet to release a statement, Doug Ellison of the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory dismissed the idea that the light was proof of intelligent life. On Twitter, he told NBC News the beacon is a “cosmic ray hit,” noting that there is no light on the image taken by the left-hand navigation camera, which was also captured at the exact same moment.

As for Curiosity itself, a recent NASA press release declared the rover had arrived at its next destination, an area dubbed “the Kimberly.” This area is known for having an intersecting section of four different rocks, and the rover will scheduled to drill into and analyze the rocks for signs that the planet could have harbored life in the past.
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Old April 18th, 2014 #24
Crowe
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They say that not even light can escape the event horizon of a black hole, but what is happening with a quasar, which they say is just a black hole that is feeding heavily? There are 2 beams of energy shooting from the poles, originating from the center of the black hole.



Do they even understand wtf is going on here? Or am I asking a stupid question?
 
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