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It 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
by binalpatel 10y ago
It 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.
- flippyhead 10y agoGravitational lensing is another mind blowing thing we do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
- juancampa 10y agoI don't think we do any gravitational lensing ourselves. Unless by "we" you mean the Milky Wayans. Edit: to be clearer, if I understand correctly gravitational lensing is a phenomenon that happens, not something we do :)
- pault 10y agoI think flippyhead (hi Peter!) meant that we are able to utilize gravitational lensing to see beyond the natural limit of our telescopes.