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News of NASA's Kepler Mission discovery was a leak

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posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 07:11 AM
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reply to post by Copernicus
 


its where science people publish their papers to share with everyone else.

The person who submitted this paper is William Borucki whos the chief investigator on the kepler team. The kepler telescope was his idea.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 07:15 AM
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reply to post by yeti101
 


So you are saying that this was not a NASA leak since the information was published in that database 6 weeks ago?

Sounds reasonable enough.




[edit on 3-8-2010 by Copernicus]



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 07:22 AM
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reply to post by Copernicus
 


yes that is correct



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 01:26 PM
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Ok so now the man who spilt the beans so to speak is releasing this quote...www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov...
Two weeks ago, I gave a talk at TED Global 2010 which was very well received, but caused confusion. I talked about Earth-like planets, which many people would equate to Earth-size and 'habitable'.

Earth-size and Earth-like are certainly not the same. Take the example of Venus, an Earth-size planet whose surface will melt lead. I understand that the term "Earth-like" was misleading to most of the media coverage. The Kepler Mission is designed to discover Earth-size planets but it has not yet discovered any; at this time we have found only planet candidates.

The June 2010 Kepler data release with 306 candidates is an encouraging first step along the road to Kepler's ultimate goals, and specifically - the goal to determine the frequency of Earth-size planets in and near the habitable zone. However, these are candidates, not systems that have been verified sufficiently to be considered true planets. It will take more years of hard work to get to our goal, but we can do it.

Guess NASA is putting on the pressure to cover it up anyway.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 01:35 PM
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Actually 'Earth Like' planets does and always has meant small rocky planets. It's the opposite of Gas Giants effectively. The definition hasn't changed, but the problem is the public don't understand the terms used in the field so when they get wind of it they quickly become confused.

You can look it up quite easily, here is a Wikipedia entry for example.
Alternatively I recommend taking any good Astrophysics course.

en.wikipedia.org...



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 02:47 PM
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yeah seriously, who would want to hide something like this.
It's awesome to know that their are plenty of other planets like ours out there, sort of inspiring.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 02:47 PM
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yeah seriously, who would want to hide something like this.
It's awesome to know that their are plenty of other planets like ours out there, sort of inspiring.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 03:22 PM
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reply to post by AgentSmith
 


The wiki entry says "terrestrial planet" which is the terminology i used in my earlier post. Thats the terminology he should have used in his presentation.

Earth-like to me has always meant earth analogue

see here wiki says it means both. It should be earth analogue only imho en.wikipedia.org...

when people see the phrase "earth-like" they look out their window and think "oh just like here then". Also every time i hear exoplanetary astronomers like the CoRoT team they always use "terrestrial" not "earth-like" for venus , mars etc I think they recognize the confusion "earth-like" would cause.

and when you hear the astronomers from missions like TPF, Darwin etc they talk about "earth-like" planets they definitley mean earth analogue with oxygen etc Not other terrestrial planets


[edit on 3-8-2010 by yeti101]



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 03:33 PM
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Well it does actually say on Wikipedia:


The terms are derived from Latin words for Earth (Terra and Tellus), and an alternative definition would be that these are planets which are, in some notable fashion, "Earth-like".

en.wikipedia.org...

Besides, the original information is aimed at the scientific community who know what is meant and the correct terminology, not the general public.
It is down to the general public to educate themselves as to the meanings, not for the scientific community to constantly have to dumb things down for them to understand. This seems to be a sad but common mistake the public have, that they should not have to educate themselves but be spoon fed instead. When it is pointed out to them that they have misunderstood, they immediately start fingerpointing and refusing to accept responsibility.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 03:37 PM
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reply to post by AgentSmith
 


ive never heard an exoplanetary scientist use the term "earth-like" for terrestrial planets. Its always been in relation to earth analogs. Very specific.

This is the first time ive heard someone use it for terrestrial planets.

Also i disagree that its up to the public to educate themselves. The astronomers involved need to convey the data accurately & clearly. Carl Sagan was one of the best at this, seth shostak is right up there too. This guy made tons of vague statements and wild speculation in his TED talk. It was truely awfull

He never even said : by the way all these planet candidates have a max orbital period of 15 days , which is extremely close to their star , closer than mercury is to the sun. Thats all he needed to do to stop the # storm that followed.

[edit on 3-8-2010 by yeti101]



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 04:14 PM
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I'm not sure really it doesn't seem that uncommon to be honest:


Using a revolutionary new camera, UK astronomers have a real chance of being the first to find Earth-like planets around other stars. PhD student Neale Gibson of Queen’s University Belfast will present the first results from the RISE instrument in his talk on Wednesday 2 April at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.
www.ras.org.uk...



Those two things put together give you a relatively low mass of the planet for reasons I'll make specific in just a second. This is one of the lowest mass planets that's been discovered in this way. It's only about ten times the Earth's mass. That's kind of comparable to--a little less than Neptune and Uranus. And so, in this case, it isn't actually clear whether you should think about this thing as a kind of low-mass outer planet or a big Earth-like rock. And so, that isn't clear in this particular case.
Professor Charles Bailyn, Yale University (Extract from a lecture explaining the detection of exoplanets
oyc.yale.edu...


I'm sure it's not that hard to find more examples, the point is that a newspaper ran with a story, people misunderstood and got excited and now the reality of it all has been explained and pales in comparison to what so many expected and hoped for they would rather believe it's a 'cover-up'. It's not, I don't know anyone who when seeing the original headline didn't think it meant anything other than rocky planets such as Earth/Mars/Venus/Mercury, apart from my friends with non-scientific backgrounds.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 04:21 PM
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reply to post by AgentSmith
 


fair play the term "earth like" is more widely abused than i thought. The reason it annoys me so much is becuase we're not there yet. Its crucial we convey the science to the public & press as accurately as we can.

It detracts from the day we do discover a true earth-like planet. Other planets like earth have been speculated about for 2000 years. Our generation has the chance to find the answer.

The result might still be zero, we dont know yet. For him to stand there and say "100 million" etc is wreckless. He's setting us up for a fall when future missions turn up venus-like planets in the HZ of sun like stars.

The press & public will say "but you said earth-like" not "venus like" it makes us all look stupid.

[edit on 3-8-2010 by yeti101]



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 04:41 PM
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Yes I agree with you actually when you put it that way. I have a nasty habit of becoming overly defensive on these matters and you're right, it should probably be made clearer for the public, particularly on matters like this. I just get annoyed in cases where when you try and explain something to someone they refuse to accept it because it doesn't agree with their ideas, even though you're explaining something you're familiar with and they arn't! But using more accurate terminology would perhaps make this easier, I know I have an extreme amount of arrogance and from some of the things I've read on scientific forums I don't think it's particularly unusual so it doesn't surprise me if plenty of scientists don't care to think about public perception.
So while I still feel the public should make more effort to educate themselves in a topic if they claim to have an interest in it and want to put forward an opinion, we should also make more effort in our terminology to help discourage misunderstandings.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 06:13 PM
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reply to post by Chadwickus
 




Oh this is rich. This isn't proof of NASA lies, it's proof that NASA scientists are human. It is also proof of there being a lot of unconfirmed earth sized planets in the galaxy, that's it.


Do us a favour! Of course it is proof of NASA keeping the public in the dark regarding discoveries! Not telling the public, is not telling the public. You cannot spin this inescapable fact! They didn't tell us, and were not going to tell us, until and if they decided to.



And that's the kicker here, unconfirmed. that team members had been allowed to keep to themselves for further analysis until next February.


So..it's too difficult to post a disclaimer along with the information?
Oh i don't know...something along the lines of.."this information is subject to confirmation"?!

No..too difficult?
Much easier to keep the information to themselves eh?

So, they know the date they would have 'confirmation' by do they?!
How, i wonder..do they know it is going to be Feb 2011 when they would have their confirmation of their findings, and not March or June or December? If clairvoyance is so prevalent at NASA, why bother with probes and technology at all?

This instrument finds unprecedented numbers of approximately Earth sized, rocky worlds in more or less mere weeks, yet they need until next year at the least, to clarify the findings?



NASA wasn't planning to withhold this information


Oh yes they were. And they did. And they would have continued, if the information wasn't leaked.



they wanted to investigate further and confirm their findings before sharing the news, this is what real scientists typically do, I say typically because, Dimitar Sasselov got a bit ahead of himself obviously.


You contradict yourself. Which is it? They were not hiding it from the public, or they were hiding it from the public, but only until they got clarification? You can't have it both ways, and neither can they.



But please, continue with your ignorant witch hunt against NASA, it's quite funny to watch actually.


If the cap fits.
If you find our 'ignorant witch hunt' against NASA so amusing to watch, you are doing yourself a disservice by commenting against our views, surely you would be encouraging our 'hunt' if you find it so pleasurable?

Never fear though, all the time a corrupt organisation such as NASA pulls this kind of crap, there will be armies of people around the world to highlight it. So you'll still get your jollies from our 'ignorance' in spite of yourself.


[edit on 3/8/2010 by spikey]



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 07:52 PM
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reply to post by spikey
 


I'm going to explain why the Kepler team delay public announcement of some of their planet candidates

When they think they've found a planet they pass their findings to a ground based telescope team who use a different method to detect planets. The ground based teams use the "wobble" method Kepler uses the "transit" method.

When you cross check using different methods you can be sure your telescope is working correctly and you have a bonified planet discovery. So far about 50% of the candidates they have passed to the ground teams, those ground teams have been unable to detect the planet.

This is known as a false positive, it can be caused by the variability in the star or eclipsing binary star systems. So far Kepler has about 700 candidates but they expect only 350 will be real planets.

The worst thing for any exoplanet mission is to publicly announce a planet then later have to retract it when further data shows it was just noise from the star or an error with instrument/ software. It makes them look bad

This mission is important. It's the most fundamental in terms of telling us about the nature of planets in our galaxy. The Kepler team members reputations are on the line with every planet candidate they announce or confirm.

Kepler is finding candidates too small for ground telescopes to cross check. This is where it gets tricky. They need to be sure the only way to do that is to collect more data and see if the transit reoccurs.

Kepler has only confirmed 5 of the 700 candidates they have so far. It will take months for ground teams to work thru the bigger candidates Kepler gives them and the Kepler team need to study more data to confirm the smaller ones.

They have a big task, Kepler is monitoring over 150,000 stars. Their team is small it wil/ take time. Hope that helps.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 07:55 PM
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Originally posted by yeti101
reply to post by AgentSmith
 


fair play the term "earth like" is more widely abused than i thought. The reason it annoys me so much is becuase we're not there yet. Its crucial we convey the science to the public & press as accurately as we can.

It detracts from the day we do discover a true earth-like planet. Other planets like earth have been speculated about for 2000 years. Our generation has the chance to find the answer.

The result might still be zero, we dont know yet. For him to stand there and say "100 million" etc is wreckless. He's setting us up for a fall when future missions turn up venus-like planets in the HZ of sun like stars.

The press & public will say "but you said earth-like" not "venus like" it makes us all look stupid.

[edit on 3-8-2010 by yeti101]

Funnily enough,
A new (2010) National Geographic programme was on here a couple of hours ago on Alien life, it featured the Kepler programme. The spokesman for the Kepler programme talked about how they were able to detect the planets, and also size them. However, part of what he said was this, " Mars, Venus and planets like Earth" I did miss the rest as I was momentarily distracted. I'm not sure then of the context in what he said was placed.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 08:00 PM
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Originally posted by spikey
reply to post by mother1138
 


The really important question has yet to be asked it seems...exactly WHY would they be planning to 'sit on the information' or shelve it indefinitely, in the first place?

And doesn't this revelation, that they had intended to keep the information hidden, at least tell those that are ready to believe anything the government and their agencies tell them (or don't tell them) to at least be a little less trusting of what is served up to them as the truth of a matter?

There is no credible reason to hide this from the public, none at all.

If the 'settle upon' reason was one of clarification, it would be a simple matter to state 'subject to clarification' as a disclaimer on the accuracy of the finds.

But no...they were planning to lie to the public instead.(a lie by omission, is still very much a lie)

Which begs the obvious question...if they plan to lie about something as benign as finding other 'Earth like' planets in the galaxy, one can imagine they would not be exactly forthright regarding really important issues and discoveries eh?

Food for thought...eyes open folks.




I agree, they where going to shelf this and the scientists knew they where. So he decided to present it in full. What is happening on this planet is that the old guard is slowly dying off and/or becoming senile. They where the ones that helped the powered elite and the religious elite keeping information of our history and of possible life in the Galaxy from the people. Most of the people my age and younger don't see Alien life as a world ender. And thats because we grew up with seeing everything from Star Wars, ET, Star Trek, Aliens etc. etc.. Yea we see movies of bad aliens and such, but we also see movies with good aliens too. But what astounds me and maybe others here and elsewhere is the idea of going to planet that has two moons, or a planet that is a moon of a massive gas giant like Pandora (which I hypothesis will be more of a norm), or a water planet etc. etc.. All the permutation you can come up with.

For humanity to live on, we have to leave the cradle of Earth and/or be a multiple planet species. Do any of you remember the Television Miniseries Merlin from 1998, it stared Sam Neill and Isabella Rossellini. Well toward the end when he was fighting Mab the witch he knew how to destroy her. He said that few people believe in the old ways anymore and he turns his back on her along with the people and forget her, she eventually fades away. The elite are afraid of this metaphorically. They know that if us humans knew our true history and knew about life on other worlds, we won't look to them and/or their agents for guidance anymore. We would demand or make a new paradigm of philosophy that would be brought into being from the new awakening of our history and our possibly future. The would fall from power and be forgotten.

If you don't think it can happen, I know one example that it did and that is christianity. I'm not a big believer in religion, but the philosphy of what was being taught was able to outlive the old religions and deities to the point that they where forgotten and the power base that was behind them and or used them where forgotten also. So imagine a woman giving birth to a child 600 years from now on a planet in the Gliese 581 system which is 20 lightyears away. It's a waterworld and people have adapted to the planet from the colonization of 300 years ago by building floating cities. She holds the baby and looks out her window on the planet that she has known since her birth, and to the problems that are associated with her people on the planet. She doesn't care about the Earth Elite, or the powers that be in politics, business and religion. She cares about her world, she has forgotten the old ways of earth and know those ways seem as legend or myth or even something to joke about.

The old always makes way for the new and every turn of this game has the old trying to stop the new and keeping things the way they are and should be.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 08:01 PM
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Originally posted by BlasteR

Originally posted by Thepreye
We should get this place tidied up, we might have visitors soon!


Perhaps this is why so many UFO's differ in size, shape and complexity and why abductees often report multiple types of creatures/beings.

-ChriS


Because...and I am serious when I say this as I too was very much the SAME believer as most when it comes to UFO's (even more so when my wife and 21 year old stepson had their very own sighting in San Diego, CA in April of this year which I have pics and filed a report with MUFON)...but anyways it hasn't been up until recently that I am really starting to believe that UFO's are nothing more than demons....ya know EVIL SPIRITS :-/

I mean think about it...in just what you said...different sizes/shapes, and unless the small orb's are RECON drones, how small would the aliens have to be to fit inside? The changing of size/shape and luminescence....just do a search (or youtube has some VERY interesting vids on the subject) and see if perhaps you too might come to the very same conclusion ;-)



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 10:52 PM
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reply to post by yeti101
 
It's been a pleasure to read your posts in this thread, your analysis is correct.

It's sad how one person's incompetence can sour the anticipation of results from a worthwhile scientific endeavor.


Originally posted by Argyll
reply to post by yeti101
 


You are absolutely correct.

NASA have confirmed that the data so far recovered does not confirm any Earth like planets.

Will people here believe that?........no

If NASA confirmed that they had found intelligent life on a planet in our galaxy (or anywhere else for that matter)........would people here believe that?............damn right they would!

why is that?
It's because of Confirmation Bias


Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses whether or not it is true. As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way.
I think some posts in this thread clearly reflect confirmation bias, like the supposition that NASA was hiding Earthlike planets when that's not the case. A planet the size of Earth orbiting a star at a distance closer than Mercury's orbit is not what most people would consider an "Earth-like" planet.



posted on Aug, 3 2010 @ 11:22 PM
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reply to post by mother1138
 


It would be super Dope to get Wal*Mart and Walgreens to set up house on these planets ahead of us.




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