6 ms·
NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agowho cares?
- colordrops 10y agoThis 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.
- jfoutz 10y agoOxygen 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.
- colordrops 10y agoI believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered: https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen-atmosphere-life.html https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen-at...
- jfoutz 10y agoYou'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.
- greeneggs 10y agoMy 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 https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03906
- privong 10y ago> I believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered: @greeneggs is correct[0], that article is talking about modeling of a hypothetical atmosphere for a given planet. There was not an actual detection of oxygen in the atmosphere. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700744
- dsp1234 10y agoWe do not know if GJ 1132b has oxygen in it's atmosphere, or even if actually has an atmosphere. Just that it's possible, and that if it does, we'll be able to detect in the future. From the abstract of the Nature paper: "Receiving 19 times more stellar radiation than the Earth, the planet is too hot to be habitable but is cool enough to support a substantial atmosphere, one that has probably been considerably depleted of hydrogen. Because the host star is nearby and only 21 per cent the radius of the Sun, existing and upcoming telescopes will be able to observe the composition and dynamics of the planetary atmosphere." Emphasis on "cool enough to support" (not supports) and "probably been" (not has), and "will be able to observe" (not has observed). http://news.mit.edu/2015/new-earth-sized-exoplanet-1111 http://news.mit.edu/2015/new-earth-sized-exoplanet-1111 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_1132_b https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_1132_b http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v527/n7577/full/nature15762.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v527/n7577/full/nature1...
- semaphoreP 10y agoActually I don't think oxygen has been detected in any exoplanet atmosphere. And typically the atmospheres in which water has been detected are large Jovian exoplanets. My sense is that we don't yet have the telescopes/instrumentation to detect things like oxygen in the atmosphere of an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoWonderful news. Probably more exoplanets being discovered, perhaps more closer to Earth or Earth-like, and some solid and innovative space science. Cue the "lame not aliens" crowd who really diminish NASA's amazing achievements for reasons I can't fathom.
- eof 10y agoAn announcement of an announcement. Do we have any examples of announcement of announcement of announcement?
- maxpblum 10y agoThe linked news story is exactly that.
- lanewinfield 10y agoAnd in fact, this very post is an announcement of an announcement of an announcement of an announcement.
- dmix 10y agoAt least it's not a software announcement, which are always late.
- btown 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Fore...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- thefalcon 10y agoComprisal proclaims! [1] [1] http://pic.blog.plover.com/lang/anagram-scoring/anagrams-scored.txt http://pic.blog.plover.com/lang/anagram-scoring/anagrams-sco...
- nneonneo 10y agoNASA press release about the upcoming press conference: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news-conference-on-discovery-beyond-our-solar-system 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?
- ellisv 10y agoIt'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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embargo_(academic_publishing)
- nneonneo 10y agoHmm, that page refers to an embargo on the entire paper, not to the publication or dissemination of crucial findings. I'm not sure it completely applies.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Balgair 10y agoThe 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.
- semaphoreP 10y agoAt least in astronomy, this is pretty standard when publishing in Nature or Science. Typically all the press releases are coordinated together with the release of the actual publication.
- binalpatel 10y agoIt 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.
- amha 10y agoYeah!!! 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.
- DanBC 10y agoImagine 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?
- semaphoreP 10y agoIf they have a 10 meter telescope in space, they may very well have the technology to see Earth.
- knz 10y agoAn earthly tangent to this is remote sensing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.
- ianai 10y agoThey've discovered fossil fuels on another planet. Oil companies have already launched oil drilling probes.
- Shivetya 10y agoif that is what it took to explore space I would actually sign on. alas we are probably two or more generations from actually being on more than one rock in our own system
- simonh 10y agoBecause oil tanker starships with crews in cold sleep passing near uninhabited planets worked out so well in fiction, we just have to try it in practice.
- bjd2385 10y agoThis is really cool. One day I'm going to build my own observatory and observe star light curves and survey for supernovae.
- ianai 10y agoI hope that you do exactly that.
- bjd2385 10y agoDefinitely planning on it!
- tgb 10y agoI read one blog post about detecting an (already known) exoplanet just using a telephoto lens and a DSLR. So it's definitely affordable!
- bjd2385 10y agoI've read about amateurs detecting them with their instruments, like 12" SCTs. I don't know when I'll be able to afford it (probably a small Meade, SBIG CCD, etc.), but I'll definitely be writing my own algorithms/code to process the data!
- partisan 10y agoThat website brings my MBP to a crawl. I was sure I would have to do a hard reboot after Chrome stopped responding for several seconds. For some reason, they want to know my location, they have popups that don't close, and more ads than content. Oh and there was nothing to be learned beyond the headline.
- sctb 10y agoWe've buried this post so that we can discuss the real thing tomorrow.