At Least One in Six Stars Has an Earth-sized Planet



Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the analysis today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif. A paper detailing the research has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

The research team found that 50 percent of all stars have a planet of Earth-size or larger in a close orbit. By adding larger planets detected in wider orbits up to the orbital distance of the Earth, this number increases to 70 percent.

Extrapolating from Kepler's currently ongoing observations and results from other detection techniques, scientists have determined that nearly all sun-like stars have planets.

Planets closer to their stars are easier to find because they transit more frequently. As more data are gathered, planets in larger orbits will be detected. In particular, Kepler's extended mission will enable the detection of Earth-sized planets at greater distances, including Earth-like orbits in the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet.

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets orbiting in or near the habitable zone of the host star. NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is the home organization of the science principal investigator, and is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations, and science data analysis.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with JPL at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters.

To read more about the discovery, see the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics press release.

Read more about the Kepler Mission.

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Yeah, although apparently Neil wanted to talk about the moon landing stuff, Joe wasn't gonna bring it up. Those 2 quotes are awesome, but my favourite bit was he was talking about the rogue planets. That shit legitimately blew my fucking mind. Just a fucking crazily awesome concept.

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Kepler Space Telescope Data Reveals Billions Of Earth-Like Planets Near Earth

If ET phones home today, his long distance charge might not be as much as people believed when Steven Spielberg's classic film came out three decades ago.

That's because recent data from NASA's Kepler space telescope suggests that billions of Earth-like planets are much closer than ever before imagined.

"The information we presented today will excite the general public because we now know that the nearest potentially Earth-like world is likely within 13 light years of the sun," astronomer Courtney Dressing said in an email to The Huffington Post.

"Astronomically speaking, 13 light years is practically next door."

While we don't know if intelligent life exists on any of these planets, it raises the chances of that possibility.

The scientific team studied the huge number of red dwarf stars in our galaxy -- stars that are smaller and have a longer life span than our own sun.

Just doing the math, the odds of Earth-like planets in our galaxy are, well, astronomical.

Scientists estimate 6 percent of the 75 billion red dwarf stars may have Earth-size planets orbiting them at a possible habitable distance. That works out to approximately 4.5 billion Earths out there.

"Before today, it could have been that Earth-like planets did not exist, or that they were so rare that the closest one would be beyond the reach of any telescope we might construct. Thus we would never know whether or not we were truly alone," astronomer David Charbonneau told HuffPost in an email.

Charbonneau, co-author of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics study, acknowledges the intense interest the public has in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

"I would say that the single greatest question in all of science is 'Are we alone?' The announcement today moves the ball downfield significantly toward answering this question.

"In my conversations with people around the world, I have found that this great question provides enormous perspective on our lives, in much the same way that knowing the physical size of the Universe has humbled our view of our place in the cosmos," Charbonneau said.

But even if a planet like Earth is only a stone's throw away, at 13 light years from us, how could we even see it with our current technology?

"Future missions, such as the NASA James Webb Space Telescope (the successor to Hubble) and proposed extremely large ground-based telescopes, like the Giant Magellan Telescope, will be able to probe the atmospheres of nearby habitable planets," Dressing said.

"Those missions will be able to search for biosignatures, like oxygen, and possibly lead to the first announcement of life on another world."

The results of Dressing's and Charbonneau's study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Jupiter.

One of my patrons dismantled a telescope and spent about a week putting together a lense to take photos of the eclipse from the other day. I'm still trying to pry the images off him. They're superb.

[size=7]Scientists discover water from deep within moon's surface[/size]

Water spotted on the moon’s surface originates from deep within the moon's interior, scientists say.

The details of their discovery — made by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft — were published in Nature Geoscience.

It represents the first such remote detection of this type of lunar water.

The water-bearing rocks, which originated deep within the moon, were excavated in the central peak of the Bullialdus crater by the impact that formed the crater, said study lead author Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

The research confirms earlier lab analyses of moon rocks brought back to earth from the Apollo missions.

The magmatic water will provide information about the moon's volcanic processes and internal composition, according to Klima.

"Understanding this internal composition helps us address questions about how the moon formed, and how magmatic processes changed as it cooled," she said.

Klima said that the discovery further helps to solidify scientists growing realization that the interior of the moon is not as dry as previously thought.

China launches first moon mission

(CNN) -- China launched its first lunar probe early Monday, which, if all goes well, will make it only the third nation -- after the United States and the Soviet Union -- to soft-land on the moon.

The launch of the unmanned probe took place at 1:30 a.m. Monday (12:30 p.m. ET Sunday), state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The Chang'e-3 blasted off from a Long March 3B rocket in Sichuan province located in southwest China and is expected to land on the moon's surface in mid-December.

The new space effort comes just over a decade after the country first sent an astronaut into space.

Unlike the soft-landing of the U.S. and the Soviet Union's unmanned spacecraft, Chang'e-3 will be able to survey the landscape first and determine the safest spot.

Researchers say an impact crater named Sinus Iridum, or Bay of Rainbows, is its likely destination. In 2010, China's previous lunar mission captured images of the crater while scouting potential landing sites for the 2013 probe.

On landing, the spacecraft will release Jade Rabbit (called Yutu in Chinese) -- a six-wheeled lunar rover equipped with four cameras and two mechanical legs that can dig up soil samples, a designer for the rover told Xinhua last month. A public poll determined the the solar-powered robot's name, which comes from the white pet rabbit of the Chinese moon godess Chang'e. The slow-moving rover will patrol the moon's surface for at least three months, according to Xinhua.

Timeline: China's race into space

In the United States, scientists are concerned the Chinese mission could interfere with a NASA study of the moon's dust environment. Chang'e-3's descent is likely to create a noticeable plume on the moon's surface that could skew the results of research already being carried out by NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), Jeff Plescia, chair of NASA's Lunar Exploration Analysis Group told Space.com, a space news site.

3 Unanswered Questions About Our Moon

"We've been there" is a common reaction these days to the idea of returning to the moon. Even moonwalkers like Buzz Aldrin say returning is not as important as blazing tracks into deeper parts of space, like Mars or an asteroid. President Barack Obama, while arguing to scuttle the proposed NASA moonshot, takes a similar approach: "I just have to say pretty bluntly here, we've been there before."

Maybe Obama and Aldrin are right about the current NASA program. Robots could plumb the secrets of the moon more cheaply than American astronauts, and there is more to be learned in deeper space. But it would be a shame if one byproduct of this debate is a lack of appreciation for the mysteries of our nearest celestial neighbor. How much do we know about the moon, decades after Americans first set foot on it?

Earlier this month a group called the International Lunar Exploration Working Group, comprised of 26 nations including the United States, met in China to discuss what humanity knows and doesn't know about the moon. More than 400 abstracts were accepted for oral and poster presentations—a clear sign that global interest in lunar science is strong. Here are some areas that bear examination.

The Origin
We still don't know for sure where the moon comes from. The idea that the residue of a massive impact of planetary bodies spun off the moon has gone from fringe to mainstream. Geology is the key to studying the past, and so far only one geologist has ever been on the moon. However, studying "the structure and composition of crust, mantle and core" will have implications for its origin—and the earliest history of Earth, the working group determined. Such research requires landing on the surface by human or robotic geologists.

The Dark Side
Even taking into account recent satellite missions, most of the best lunar data comes from Apollo crews and Russian Luna landers. These efforts focused on the near side of the moon, for obvious logistical reasons. But those small patches are not representative of the rest of the planet. The international working group in China says that "ground truth information on the lunar far side is missing and needed to address many important scientific questions." They recommend a sample return from South Pole-Aitken Basin, the deepest impact crater in the solar system, and the oldest on the moon. Every crater is a window into the past, but this one's chemistry and geology could hold answers to some lingering mysteries. Was the impact that caused it fast or slow moving? Why is the chemistry of the impact basin so different from the highlands?

The Water
The working group questions the "nature and origin of volatile emplacement and implications for resource utilization." That is a long way to go to make something exciting seem very dull. What they mean is water—how it got there and how much is available for human use. That means moon bases, permanent settlements off of earth—and we have not been there, nor done that. Recent findings from NASA and Indian missions are showing that there is likely more water in and on the moon than anyone ever suspected. But the most eye-catching study, released this week by scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, found that the water content has been undercounted by a factor of about 100. Where did this data come from? Analyzing a rock that Apollo 11 astronauts brought back in 1969 held the key. If robots or astronauts pluck more rocks from more areas and return them to Earth for study, who knows what other mind-bending breakthroughs could be revealed. We need to set spacecraft on the surface to solve these riddles.


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The 60 minutes interview with Commander Hadfield was pretty intense. I never had any idea that the Columbia deaths weighed so heavily. Even 10 years later he blames himself.