Feb 08 2008
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Serious Search For Extrasolar Planets
NASA’s Kepler mission, specifically designed to search for extrasolar, earthlike planets is scheduled to launch in February, 2009. Apparently adaptive optics, the method used for clearing up images from ground-based telescopes does not provide the resolution needed for detecting the changes in the luminance of a star caused by a planetary transit. There are other reasons for the need of an orbiting telescope, listed at the Kepler site.
According to NASA, the chances of finding earthlike planets in zones that are promising for liquid water are very good. Of course, that’s what you’d expect them to say, since funding for the project was needed. With the discoveries of gas-giant-like planets over the past few years, the consenus among many astronomers appears to be that planetary formation is a relatively common occurence. Whether places that are accomodating for life as we know it are common as well remains to be seen.
Given the vast distances between us and these hypothetical planets, and according to current and accepted physics, travel to earth might be difficult or impossible. If some or all of our visitors indeed originate from other planets, they may have discovered methods to either travel physically though means we have not devised yet, or they may have found a way to opt out of the time and space constraints that current models dictate.
2/8: The Deep Impact comet smacker probe is looking for planets as well.
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February 8th, 2008 at 1:02 am
God I can’t wait till this project comes on line. It will be so exciting.
February 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I second misteranderson’s enthusiasm. It will really be a paradigm shift the moment we detect the first Earthlike planet with liquid water. It might just be the thing that triggers a dramatic change in the scope of the UFO phenomenon, because maybe that will be the time when most people will accept the fact that the idea of Man being the only sentient species in the Universe is ludicrous; and that may turn people more receptive to the fringe realities of UFOs and other things.
February 8th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
The real question is if we find Earth-like planets elsewhere in the galaxy, will humans have enough courage and tenacity to venture forth to those planets to explore them? Our current resource problems here on the 3rd rock from the sun aren’t really that large especially when you consider the size of available resources within the solar system. Why build space ships on earth when you can capture a small nickel-iron asteroid to build sturdy space craft from steel intstead of aluminum foil. There’s enough water and methane in a small comet to power a chemical rocket for a hundred years. Much of this can be done with remote-operated vehicles. We have had the technology for decades, why not the will?
February 8th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
crgintx, good question.
Why not the will? Frankly, I think because we don’t have a pressing-enough URGE, and urges always come from necessity.
If our scientists were to discover that an asteroid would hit the Earth in 50 years, I suspect NASA would find an increase in their budgets of 10-fold.
Sure, there’s global warming, and I for one think our generation is going to experience particularly interesting times (interesting like in the way the chinese curse); but nevertheless there is not a global enough consensus that we have to leave this planet in a haste.
And frankly, we really don’t yet know just how abundant or extremely rare Earth-like planets that contain liquid water are. Maybe they are extremely scarce, which would strenghthen the argument of ETH proponents, when dealing with the question of why in the hell would so many civilizations should find our little corner of the Galaxy so damn interesting.
February 8th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
RPJ, instead of waiting for ET, let’s go out there and meet them. There’s virtually no solid physical reason for humans to be stuck in low-earth orbit for the last 30 years except sheer stupidity and being a bunch of luddites. The fastest growing industry over the last 20 years has been space-based communications industries. If nothing else there’s a ton of money to be made from harvesting the resources that are just floating out there.
February 9th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
I’m with you my friend, let’s go!
I still have an old science magazine of 1985-6, with a beautiful cover that showed two astronauts’ faces on a reddish background: on ones’ helmet was the letters CCCP, on the other one’s the letters USA. The magazine had the headline “1992: Joint American-Russian Mission to Mars”.
20+ years, and I’m still waiting, and the chances of that magnificent event happening within my lifetime (I’m 34) are getting slimmer and slimmer
But I think in the future we’ll see the private industry taking the place of state agencies in the business of space exploration, with of course all the good and bad that comes from it (remember that first lines of the movie “Fight Club”? Planet Starbucks and the Microsoft Galaxy… ugh!)
February 9th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Actually, private enterprise is always way more efficient at getting things done then gov’t’s. Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace will put more people into space in the next 5 years than all the gov’t space programs have in the previous 47 years if they’re allowed to. Why do you think the Chinese are scrambling to get their manned program up and running? They don’t want to get left behind again. There’s money in them there asteroids and other planets. Imagine a serious mineral find on good old Luna such as gold,copper or silver? Not to mention about good old H2O?
February 10th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Forget gold and the like my friend. Whoever controls the helium-3 that is stored in the Moon shall control the world in the XXIst century. And yes, I think that’s the first priority in the chinese’s agenda.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
All y’all,
I don’t think that the discovery will cahnge too much. It will simply mean that there is a much greater possibility for life elsewhere. Whether it is sentient, self-conscious or not, is a question that a telescope probably cannot answer.