European Observatory to Make 'Major' Alien Planet Announcement Monday

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


I tend to go the other way with the definition of a "habitable planet." The term does not indicate a planet habitable by us but a planet that is merely habitable by whatever processes of evolution deem fit for the planet in question.

Take for example gravity. Life has evolved on this planet adapted to the gravity it has been exposed to. Life on one of these super massive rocky planets would evolve by the same rules. To us they would be super strong. Likewise, a rocky planet with lower mass would evolve a biology that seems super weak. But both are habitable.

Will we find "another Earth" out there? Considering our half assed attempts to find exo-planets and the amount we have found thus far in our own neighbourhood the likelihood is very high.

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People

Planetary habitability is the measure of a planet's or a natural satellite's potential to sustain life

In this it would typically be used to refer to Earth-like life as we are the only proven example we have to base our search on. It's also a fairly good base model since Earth seems to have such a strong natural bio diversity...though our race is certainly hurting that.

Just because the planet has 3.5x the mass of the Earth and thereby a stronger gravitational field, does not preclude it from this if it turns out to fit the models in other areas. It's not a matter of whether 'we' - aka human beings - would be comfortable living there, but whether the conditions exist for life as we know it to develop and thrive.

reply to post by PW229


Oh -- I agree.

It has just been my experience that when a story about "Habitable Planets" comes out, some people here on ATS start talking about grand ideas of how to colonize that planet with humans. They don't seem to realize that a planet so-called "Habitable" by astronomers can have a poisonous atmosphere, crushing gravity, and bathed in radiation, by human standards (not to mention the distance away, but that's another issue altogether).

Even the term "Earth-like" that is sometimes used by astronomers does not necessarily mean a planet that is just like a second Earth. It simply means a planet that is rocky, has H2O, and has temperatures that allow that H2o to be in a liquid state.

That so-called Earth-like planet could have 3 times the gravity and a poisonous atmosphere and still be called earth-like by astronomers. I agree that something could live there -- perhaps even an intelligent something -- but not humans (at least not unaided humans).

NASA to make announcement tomorrow (Thursday September 14) also about the planets: www.prnewswire.com...

A representative from Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., will join a panel of scientists to discuss the discovery. The briefing participants are:
--Charlie Sobeck, Kepler deputy project manager, Ames Research Center
--Nick Gautier, Kepler project scientist, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
--Laurance Doyle, lead author, SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.
--John Knoll, visual effects supervisor, ILM, San Francisco.
--Greg Laughlin, professor for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, University of California, Santa Cruz, Calif.

I always get excited when they say someone from the SETI Institute will be on hand for these conferences. Perhaps too excited. Maybe they did find something big. I am not holding my breath though.

Originally posted by DragonFire1024
...I always get excited when they say someone from the SETI Institute will be on hand for these conferences. Perhaps too excited. Maybe they did find something big. I am not holding my breath though.

I agree that I find this stuff fascinating, but the SETI person may only be there because they may be a relative expert in the possibilities of life elsewhere.

Therefore, for parts of the press conference that may discuss what possibilities exist for life on these 50 newly discovered planets, it would make sense to have that expert on hand to discuss those idea of potential life on those worlds.

I'm more curious about the inclusion of the ILM guy. I guess we'll find out.

For those of you wondering, you can watch the press conference live on NASA TV: www.nasa.gov... which is scheduled to begin at about 2:00pm EDT (11am PDT).

Originally posted by DragonFire1024
For those of you wondering, you can watch the press conference live on NASA TV: www.nasa.gov... which is scheduled to begin at about 2:00pm EDT (11am PDT).

Tomorrow (Thursday) -- Right?

Your post three posts above says "Thursday September 14". However, Today is Wednesday Sept.14, and tomorrow is Thursday Sept. 15.

The link says the conference is on the 15th.

Yes this newest conference is scheduled for Thursday the 15th there is some background on the panelists included in this thread
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

Originally posted by DragonFire1024
For those of you wondering, you can watch the press conference live on NASA TV: www.nasa.gov... which is scheduled to begin at about 2:00pm EDT (11am PDT).

Tomorrow (Thursday) -- Right?

Your post three posts above says "Thursday September 14". However, Today is Wednesday Sept.14, and tomorrow is Thursday Sept. 15.

The link says the conference is on the 15th.

Oh hell...Yeah it is tomorrow (Thursday Sept 15). Sorry I got a little ahead of myself being pretty excited about this. I can't wait until SETI@home starts to crunch workunits from the previous trove of Kepler finds.

Originally posted by DragonFire1024
Oh hell...Yeah it is tomorrow (Thursday Sept 15). Sorry I got a little ahead of myself being pretty excited about this...

No worries!. Thanks for the heads up

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
...I'm more curious about the inclusion of the ILM guy. I guess we'll find out.

Now that I'm watching the press conference, the inclusion of the guy from ILM (George Lucas' Company Industrial Lights and Magic) makes some sort of sense now...

...the press conference is about a newly discovered planetary system called "Kepler 16", which is a binary star system that happens to have at least one planet -- a planet called Kepler 16b. This is the first time a planet has been found orbiting a binary-star system.

THAT'S the significance of this discovery. Nobody ever new if a binary star system could have planets, although they had no good reason to doubt that they could. However, this discovery shows positively that they can have planets -- i.e., it is "proof of concept".

Kepler 16b is thought to be Saturn-sized, so it probably isn't rocky, but rather a gas giant. However, it is possible that Kepler 16b may have rocky moons, or there may even be additional yet undiscovered planets orbiting Kepler 16, and some of those may potentially be rocky and/or Earth-like.

The point of including the representative from ILM was for a little fun, in as much as the movie "Star Wars" imagined over 30 years ago of a system like this -- Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine was orbiting a two-sun system. I suppose NASA wanted to give a little "tip of the hat" to George Lucas and his vision.

My first thought was that SETI experts were there to help explain how data is derived from radio signatures, and distilling that to laymen terms, as the LMI expert(s) could shed some light on how light wavelength signatures correspond to elemental makeup detected, I mean John was on the ground floor of developing Photoshop at a time public PCs were strained to display the visual interpretations of complex math. So maybe I'm wrong about that and it was just for show and public intrigue. I read in this thread that John Knoll is an avid astronomy enthusiast, creating the effects would almost nurture one to become an enthusiast.

reply to post by Kennit


Its interesting up to a point and I am starting to get past that point. Its all supposition and guess work, hell we are not even sure if there's water on Mars and we can see that with our naked eye! Its a breakthrough scientific discovery to find an earth like world, but what then, look for more? What is the point? its not like you, me or anyone else on the planet in their entire lifetime is ever going to actually know if these worlds can/did/are supporting life.
I'm sorry for being such a pessimist but until we develop much improved telescope's and detection systems it all appears pure speculation.

Originally posted by kansas
...hell we are not even sure if there's water on Mars...

NASA is quite certain there is water on Mars -- although exposed liquid water on Mars is very rare. Scientists are sure that it at least exists as ice and vapor.

...and we can see that with our naked eye!

Water was never confirmed to be seen with the naked eye until the Phoenix Polar lander saw small drops of condensation on one of its leg struts. Besides that, no large quantities have been observed.

Originally posted by kansas
reply to post by Kennit

 

Its interesting up to a point and I am starting to get past that point. Its all supposition and guess work, hell we are not even sure if there's water on Mars and we can see that with our naked eye! Its a breakthrough scientific discovery to find an earth like world, but what then, look for more? What is the point? its not like you, me or anyone else on the planet in their entire lifetime is ever going to actually know if these worlds can/did/are supporting life.
I'm sorry for being such a pessimist but until we develop much improved telescope's and detection systems it all appears pure speculation.

en.wikipedia.org...
According to the report, a 15-member panel, called the Special Study Group, was set up in 1963 to examine what problems would occur if the U.S. entered a state of lasting peace. They met at an underground nuclear bunker called Iron Mountain (as well as other, worldwide locations) and worked over the next two years. A member of the panel, one "John Doe", a professor at a college in the Midwest, decided to release the report to the public.

The heavily footnoted report concluded that peace was not in the interest of a stable society, that even if lasting peace "could be achieved, it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of society to achieve it." War was a part of the economy. Therefore, it was necessary to conceive a state of war for a stable economy. The government, the group theorized, would not exist without war, and nation states existed in order to wage war. War also served a vital function of diverting collective aggression. They recommended that bodies be created to emulate the economic functions of war. They also recommended "blood games" and that the government create alternative foes that would scare the people with reports of alien life-forms and out-of-control pollution. Another proposal was the reinstitution of slavery.

What's even more interesting is the view held of a space program, that (not quite verbatim) setting the impossible goal of landing and establishing a base on the moon would be deemed impossible and a sufficient waste of money to spurr the economy. Furthermore, if such a base was ever created on the moon, it would be prudent to set the next 'impossible' goal such as a beachead on Mars.


Why? To distract you and turn you into a slave, a debt slave, fat and happy.

Just saying,

CFCs were discovered to occur naturally in the atmosphere of Venus by the Pioneer spacecraft in 1978 (www.universetoday.com/.../guest-post-drifting-on-alien-winds-explo..)