NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

http://www.space.com/35779-nasa-exoplanet-findings-announcement.html

by DonnyV • 9 years ago

110 39 9 years ago

colordrops2• 9 years ago

This 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.

jfoutz2• 9 years ago

Oxygen 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.

colordrops2• 9 years ago

I believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered:

https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen-at...

semaphoreP3• 9 years ago

Actually 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• 9 years ago

Wonderful 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• 9 years ago

An announcement of an announcement. Do we have any examples of announcement of announcement of announcement?

maxpblum• 9 years ago

The linked news story is exactly that.

lanewinfield• 9 years ago

And in fact, this very post is an announcement of an announcement of an announcement of an announcement.

dmix• 9 years ago

At least it's not a software announcement, which are always late.

btown• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Fore...

thefalcon• 9 years ago

Comprisal proclaims! [1]

[1] http://pic.blog.plover.com/lang/anagram-scoring/anagrams-sco...

nneonneo2• 9 years ago

NASA press release about the upcoming press conference: 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• 9 years ago

It'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)

nneonneo2• 9 years ago

Hmm, 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.

Balgair• 9 years ago

The 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.

semaphoreP3• 9 years ago

At 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.

wflynny• 9 years ago

Here is Nature's policy on embargo: http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/policy/embargo.html

They argue that

[the] embargo serves scientists, journalists and the public. Our policy is to release information about our content in a way that provides fair and equal access to the media, allowing them to provide informed comment based on the paper that is to be published. Authors and their institutions' press offices are able then to interact with the media in a well-ordered fashion ahead of publication, and benefit from the subsequent coverage.

binalpatel• 9 years 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• 9 years ago

Yeah!!!

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• 9 years ago

Imagine 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?

knz• 9 years ago

An earthly tangent to this is 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• 9 years ago

Gravitational lensing is another mind blowing thing we do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens

juancampa• 9 years ago

I 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 :)

ianai2• 9 years ago

They've discovered fossil fuels on another planet. Oil companies have already launched oil drilling probes.

Shivetya• 9 years ago

if 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• 9 years ago

Because 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.

bjd23853• 9 years ago

This is really cool. One day I'm going to build my own observatory and observe star light curves and survey for supernovae.

ianai2• 9 years ago

I hope that you do exactly that.

bjd23853• 9 years ago

Definitely planning on it!

tgb• 9 years ago

I read one blog post about detecting an (already known) exoplanet just using a telephoto lens and a DSLR. So it's definitely affordable!

bjd23853• 9 years ago

I'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• 9 years ago

That 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• 9 years ago

We've buried this post so that we can discuss the real thing tomorrow.

NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

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