NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System

Tabby's Star? Would be wonderful if there was some sort of conclusion of that. Even if it's a completely reasonable natural phenomenon it looks like we'll learn something new.

neom• 9 years ago

If it's not a dyson sphere i'm gonna be real pissed off.

Gravityloss• 9 years ago

HN expectations... ;)

Houshalter• 9 years ago

It's not emitting infrared like expected from a Dyson sphere. It's also not completely blacked out its star. Maybe it's one under construction?

geggam• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm :)

adamcharnock• 9 years ago

Distractedly misread that as NASA holding a press conference from deep space, regarding some sort of discovery.

kombucha2• 9 years ago

I did the exact thing....

Dowwie• 9 years ago

hopefully, Neil DeGrasse Tyson translates for the public

autocorr• 9 years ago

Judging by the the first individual in the press release, Michael Gillon of the University of Liege, this may have something to do with their discovery published last year in Nature [1] on terrestrial planets with moderate surface temperatures ("temperate") around low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. All very nearby at less than 12 parsecs to boot! This article was on the front page of HN last year, and was discussed quite a bit in astronomy circles, but I'm having a hard time remembering the details without re-reading the paper.

[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7602/full/nature1...

JohnJamesRambo• 9 years ago

Less than a Kessel Run eh?

sandworm101• 9 years ago

Yes and no. (snipped... long scifi rant about StarWars navigation that explains distance as a measurement of time and why linear distance between bodies is not relevant.)

anigbrowl2• 9 years ago

This better be something better than 'we got slightly bette at identifying planets like our own.' It's great that we're doing so but when they are teasing discoveries rather than simply announcing them it should be for some signficant qualitative difference from anything we've known before.

ckozlowski2• 9 years ago

I think some of the teasing is that which we inflict on ourselves.

NASA wants to keep people interested and excited about their mission of course. But press conferences like these are also to stir up interest in the greater scientific community. Announcements like these might be disappointing to us lay persons who are waiting for the "we found life!" headline, but they can generate huge excitement in astronomy circles.

JoeAltmaier• 9 years ago

Exoplanets, according to the article. Interesting but probably not world-shaking.

andrewclunn• 9 years ago

That depends on the seismic activity of the exoplanet.

Tloewald• 9 years ago

Is this NASA trying to build up some buzz in hopes of avoiding massive defunding by our clown car administration?

pkituu• 9 years ago

You can visualize all confirmed exoplanets using NASA's Eyes on the Exoplanets software.

http://eyes.nasa.gov/eyes-on-exoplanets.html

Requires download and install.

OS X and Windows only :(

Disclaimer: I am a developer of this software for NASA.

devindotcom• 9 years ago

Also available for After Dark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q0Q3NvUA9Y

callinyouin• 9 years ago

First off, thanks for creating this. I definitely appreciate that this was created as a native app instead of trying to do it as a web app (which, from personal experience with WebGL, I imagine would have had terrible performance).

I doubt this is the best channel for bug reports, but I thought I'd mention the launcher does not work for me on Windows 7. I had to run explorer-win64.exe directly.

bpodgursky• 9 years ago

FWIW I've been working on a similar WebGL visualization for fun (http://uncharted.bpodgursky.com/) obviously much more primitive than the NASA version.

I've been pretty amazed by what WebGL can handle (obviously it's hopeless on mobile though).

Cyphase• 9 years ago

From a banner on https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ :

On Feb. 24, NASA.gov will start streaming NASA TV in HTML 5 rather than Flash.

Shame; perhaps they don't want to risk deployment issues during their big announcement. Good timing on the announcement otherwise; lots of people will see that.

noobermin• 9 years ago

The link is there, but for the lazy:

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

ethbro2• 9 years ago

"On Feb. 24, NASA.gov will start streaming NASA TV in HTML 5 rather than Flash. Users with Windows computers should use the Chrome or Firefox web browser for the best experience."

checks date Damn it. :(

FeatureRush2• 9 years ago

Conference already started: 7 earth-sized planets orbiting 1 star, 3 of those planets in habitable zone.

cgriswald• 9 years ago

Brief summary: Seven earth-sized planets found around M-star (red dwarf) TRAPPIST-1 40 ly away, three in the habitable zone, all with some potential for liquid water.

HN discussion w/ Nature article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13707547

Paper on Nature (paywall?): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7642/full/nature2...

SIMBAD entry for TRAPPIST-1: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=trappist-1

Edit: Added links.

dmix• 9 years ago

@NASA: "New record! We’ve found 7 Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone around a single star outside our solar system: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-telescope-reveals-la... "

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/834464283337560068

skc• 9 years ago

You would think NASA of all orgs would at least provide time-zone conversions for their news conference, or at the very least add a countdown timer to their site.

russellbeattie2• 9 years ago

There needs to be a new unit that describes "a speed equal to the fastest humans have been able to travel in space" instead of "light years". Let's call it an "Apollo", since that record is held by the Apollo missions to the moon at 11,080 m/s. Speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. So humans can travel at ~0.0000367 x light speed, or 349,418,880,000 m/year.

So instead of saying 40 light years, we'd say 27,076 Apollo years.

random3• 9 years ago

Can that speed be adjusted to a theoretical value based on latest propulsion systems? What would that be now and how would it likely evolve over then next decades?

nhf• 9 years ago

You could use it like economists use the consumer price index - all relative to year. So you could have the Apollo, or human space year, or something and reference HSY_{1969}, or HSY_{ion thruster}, etc.

russellbeattie2• 9 years ago

Various probes have gone faster - with the cruising speeds depending whether they headed towards the sun or away. After New Horizons got a gravity boost from Jupiter, it sailed out to pluto at 23k/s and arrived going 15k/s. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-fast...

I'll have to look and see what they have planned for the Mars missions. I'm sure we've jumped ahead a bit in practical engineering terms, but just haven't had a mission to show it yet.

johnchristopher• 9 years ago

Oufti !

For those who don't know it:

- Trappistes are some special beer brewed by monks and Belgium is famous for a lot of them

- Speculoos are some kind of brown sugar based cookies. Caloric bomb we name them.

NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System

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