Most Earthlike Planet Candidates to Date Revealed by NASA in Latest Kepler Data Release

Looking at that artist's representation of an earthlike planet made me think of something a lot of people may not know.

A lot of the people in the fields of astronomy, astrobiology and astrophysics are often musicians and visual artists on the side.

I've found in talking with kids a lot of them are often surprised when I tell them I minor in music and that a lot of people in the sciences are often fairly good artists.

Anyway I thought you might like this video as it sort of combines both the world of Kepler exoplanet science and art:

MysterX
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Life doesn't necessarily mean intelligent life.

That's a fair position...but to be totally fair, there's nothing to say that it isn't intelligent either.

In fact, it's just as possible that life is existing right across the spectrum, as it does here on Earth.

Single cell all the way to us.

And it would also naturally follow that the intelligent life that is certain to exist, is at every technological level there is, from a 'no-tech' tech to the levels we ourselves would reach in a couple of thousand years or more, and everything in between.

Good point however, we have no idea how hard it is for intelligent life to evolve. It is far from a certainty that life will always lead to intelligence.

The best example of that are the dinosaurs. Top of the food chain for millions of years but never developed intelligence. Had they not been wiped out then it's likely there still would be no intelligent life on earth.

My feeling, and this is speculation, is that life in the galaxy is probably common but intelligent life in the galaxy is probably rare enough that it will not be right next door. Down the road? maybe. Across town? likely.

Again, that's just speculation on my part. No one knows and the best part of that is we're going to be looking for, and possibly finding it in the next 30 years.

reply to post by JadeStar


My personal view is that the man behind the curtain already knows, but as you say, it's speculation.

JadeStar
a lot of people in the sciences are often fairly good artists.

Really?
Most I have worked with are awful.

Though I guess I can do clay sculptures pretty well.

But I live in the word of microbiologists, immunologists and biochemists so we may just be the untalented ones. That or big Pharma has sucked the life and soul out of us

crazyewok

JadeStar
a lot of people in the sciences are often fairly good artists.

Really?
Most I have worked with are awful.

Though I guess I can do clay sculptures pretty well.

But I live in the word of microbiologists, immunologists and biochemists so we may just be the untalented ones. That or big Pharma has sucked the life and soul out of us

I can not comment on the soul sucking of working with microbiology or big pharma but I can say that from what I can tell you guys lack the exotic locales that many of the world's observatories are in.

Its probably pretty easy to be inspired when your work takes you to the top of a mountain in Hawaii or to the Atacama Desert.

The heavens above us are pretty inspiring as well so that may have something to do with it.

How inspiring is looking a viruses? I don't know but one guy who embodies all of this stuff is Joe Davis of MIT. What a crazy wonderful man! A modern day Tesla in my book. I often wonder if the guy who made the time machine in the Back to the Future trilogy was modelled after him.

reply to post by JadeStar


Yeah I guess most our time is locked in a sealed lab in the centre of building with only artificial lighting and aircons, at least that what all my jobs have been. I suppose we used to create little pictures on petri dishes from the bacteria growth colonies when we got bored but don't know if Anthrax or Cholera flowers count as "art"

Eitherway the places I have worked have not exactly been in inspireing places, just located in places no one else wants to be. For some reason people dont like Micro labs that carry Pathogens on there doorstep haha

reply to post by JadeStar


Very cool and thank you much. I mainly just wanted to hear your
thoughts on if it is dwarf planet or a barren asteroid with no water
and most likely nil of life. But you more than covered it. And if you
think that vid is cheesy? Believe it or not it wasn't the worst I could find
on Ceres. I'm not kidding, the only thing out there seems to be the
worst doom porn on the net. It's pathetic.

randyvs
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Very cool and thank you much. I mainly just wanted to hear your
thoughts on if it is dwarf planet or a barren asteroid with no water
and most likely nil of life. But you more than covered it. And if you
think that vid is cheesy? Believe it or not it wasn't the worst I could find
on Ceres. I'm not kidding, the only thing out there seems to be the
worst doom porn on the net. It's pathetic.

edit on 7-1-2014 by randyvs because: (no reason given)

LOL, Ceres is a strange choice for doom porn since its orbit is pretty circular and well established. I'm surprised the more clever doom porn people don't look at the Near Earth Asteroid Hazard list at the Minor Planet Center and make doom porn out of whatever the top hazard of the month is.

At least that would be a bit more plausible than doom porning Ceres. I mean what's next? Doom porning Pluto ?

Thankfully, those doom pornographers aren't very smart and probably don't even know such a list exists.

They'll be in full effect when Apophis comes around in 2028 though.

crazyewok
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Yeah I guess most our time is locked in a sealed lab in the centre of building with only artificial lighting and aircons, at least that what all my jobs have been. I suppose we used to create little pictures on petri dishes from the bacteria growth colonies when we got bored but don't know if Anthrax or Cholera flowers count as "art"

Eitherway the places I have worked have not exactly been in inspireing places, just located in places no one else wants to be. For some reason people dont like Micro labs that carry Pathogens on there doorstep haha

Yes, you guys are like in the same boat with nuclear physicists and whatnot. Of course you have one advantage in that you don't have to constantly explain to people you're not trying to blow up the world. Nevertheless your work environment and public perception is much different than those who study the sky.

Viruses are something people want to avoid and you guys work with them every day. Meanwhile for a lot of people the sky is fascinating, inspiring, mysterious, etc.

There is crossover potential in the growing world of astrobiology of course.

Your conversation at dinner parties might take on a little different path..

"So what do you do?"
You: "I study viruses and bacteria."
"Oh.....that's....interesting."
You: "To determine if we are alone or in a universe full of life."
"OMG Wow!"

JadeStar
Of course you have one advantage in that you don't have to constantly explain to people you're not trying to blow up the world.

Na we just had the joys of expaining how we arent going to infect everyone. As well as deal with the Eco terrorists that used to try and break in or in some cases send letter bombs to people because they thought we tested on animals (which we didnt).

JadeStar
There is crossover potential in the growing world of astrobiology of course.

Funny enough I have growing intrest in this . Im really intrested in Enceladus and Europa. If there anything living in our solar system they are huge candidates. But I have seen Bactria survive and even grow in some pretty insane places, if there is a energy source its not impossible. I can also seem some applications for potential mars terraforming too with microbs.

crazyewok

JadeStar
Of course you have one advantage in that you don't have to constantly explain to people you're not trying to blow up the world.

Na we just had the joys of expaining how we arent going to infect everyone. As well as deal with the Eco terrorists that used to try and break in or in some cases send letter bombs to people because they thought we tested on animals (which we didnt).

I don't envy any of that at all. I blame poor science education from an early age. If that gets fixed we'll all be better off.

I am a huge advocate of better science education, better funding for good teachers, for that reason. The world we're in is becoming more complex every day but it seems like people are getting dumber. Not the trend we'd want... I better stop now to preven thread drift.

JadeStar
There is crossover potential in the growing world of astrobiology of course.

Funny enough I have growing intrest in this . Im really intrested in Enceladus and Europa. If there anything living in our solar system they are huge candidates. But I have seen Bactria survive and even grow in some pretty insane places, if there is a energy source its not impossible. I can also seem some applications for potential mars terraforming too with microbs.

Yep, as was said in Jurassic Park, "Life will find a way."

And, yeah NASA and others since about 1990 have hired a lot more microbiologists both for planetary protection (don't want to kill any potential life on other worlds by bring our creepy crawlies with us there) and now for the detection of other microbial life.

And yes, microbes might be genetically engineered to help terraform Mars. It's a topic of study and I think Zubrin's books talk about it as well.

Microbes are our friend.

JadeStar

Ross 54
I'd be concerned about the potential for younger M class stars to flare, increasing their energy output markedly. Older M class stars, as a group, might represent more desirable situations for habitation, and so, a better field to search in.

Exactly. Older M stars would be better than younger ones.

I'm sure you know about this list of the top 100 nearest stars (ranked in order). You're interested in everything 1 through 11. (Stars within 10 lightyears)

www.chara.gsu.edu...

I'm sorry I have not been able to put it in graphic form but I think there may be some graphics on the RECONS website.

edit on 6-1-2014 by JadeStar because: (no reason given)

I count 9 stars, within 6 stellar systems, inside of 10 light years. Ross 154 at .33722 arcsec parallax, the farthest out within this range, apparently works out to about 9.66 light years. The next smaller parallax is for Ross 248, which gives around 10.3 light years.
I could have added Luhman 16 A and B to the count, since its theoretically possible that a brown dwarf could host habitable planets. The odds against long term habitability there appear rather discouraging, though.

More news from the conference:
Space.com: New Exoplanet Imager Snaps 1st Photos of Alien Worlds



Short excerpt:

WASHINGTON — Astronomers have detected nearly 1,000 planets outside of our own solar system, but little is known about their composition. Now, the Gemini Observatory's Planet Imager enables scientists to image exoplanets directly.

Current planet-imaging systems are only able to see gas giants about three or more times the size of Jupiter. NASA's Kepler space telescope has detected thousands of smaller planet candidates but cannot image these directly.

"Almost nothing is known about the composition of the planets Kepler is seeing," principal investigator Bruce MacIntosh, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in a news conference here today (Jan. 7) at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society. "Direct imaging is offering a way to do that."

The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), an instrument at the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, can see exoplanets in the outer solar system of young stars. Its goal is to improve the contrast of planetary imaging by an order of magnitude.

More at www.space.com...

Some unexpected -good- news out of the NASA Town Hall meeting today from astrobites.org.

Some good news! The WFIRST mission is still being planned. The plan is to use the 2.4 meter “Hubble-class” satellites recently donated by the NRO. There’s also discussion of adding a coronagraph to be used in the search for directly imaged exoplanets. NICER and TESS are also moving along according to plan. Additionally, SOFIA has three new instruments that will be commissioned this year.

Overall, there are issues. The budget is flat, the number of proposals are up, and therefore the fraction of supported proposals is down. There was no discussion about the upcoming senior review, which will decide on extensions for current missions such as Kepler, Spitzer, NuSTAR, and Hubble beyond the present year. There are bright spots: the currently planned missions are still moving along. But it looks like NASA is likely in for another difficult year.

Wow! I just want to thank you, OP, for a wonderful thread with great information! I had posted a couple of times in that thread of Human Extinction people who feel they want to save the Earth by eliminating humanity with the idea that Earth may have created us intentionally to grab the DNA of every living thing and get the hell out of the neighborhood: reply to post by schuyler
.

The whole thread is pretty depressing, so it's like I really needed this one to counteract it. Thanks a lot!

You're welcome.

You might like this as well.

Planethunters.org blog just published this video today:

Yesterday I gave a talk at the 223rd American Astronomical Society meeting titled ‘Planet Hunters: Kepler by Eye’ at the National Harbor outside of Washington, DC. The talk gives a brief overview of 3 years of Planet Hunters science. I decided rather than just posting the slides, I’d record one of my practice run throughs of my talk. Below is the recorded video. This was before I gave my talk, so there may been some minor tweaks and changes but the main points and slides are the same.

Another update from astrobites.org at the AAS meeting with relevance to this thread:

WFIRST-AFTA Town Hall

The WFIRST-AFTA telescope, with a 2.4m mirror, will perform near-infrared photometry and spectroscopy to learn about exoplanets and dark energy, among other goals. Two specific instruments will increase the power of this telescope: an integral field spectroscopic unit (IFU) and a coronograph. The IFU will measure 3D cubes of position versus wavelength, effectively taking a spectrum for each pixel in an image. The coronograph will be able to directly image planets and disks to learn about their properties and it will be the first time that this kind of instrument is brought into space.

The speakers covered WFIRST capabilities regarding dark energy, exoplanets and Galactic structure. WFIRST brings in the ability to study four probes of dark energy (supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions and weak lensing). It will see more galaxies per arcmin sq. than any other survey and it will be complementary to the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, Euclid and Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. WFIRST will be ideal for building lightcurves of supernovae, being able to subtract the image of the host galaxy. It will be able to remove major systematics to find supernovae up to redshift of 1.7. WFIRST will carry out a microlensing survey, probing planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune around other stars for the first time. It will open up a whole new region of parameter space that will allow for constraining theories of planet formation.

Using its coronograph, WFIRST will directly image and measure the composition of a diverse sample of exoplanets. It will also study the properties of disks and how they interact with the planets. It will survey 200 nearby stars with known extrasolar planets and it will target other stars for new discoveries. All of this information will allow astronomers to prepare for a future mission for detecting and characterizing Earth-size rocky planets in the habitable zone of nearby stars. From the point of view of Galactic structure, WFIRST will push the typical magnitude limit of 18-20th magnitude to at least 25th magnitude, being able to retrieve photometry and astrometry of many more objects in our Galaxy and leading to new science.