NASA to Reveal "Big News" From Planet-Hunting Spacecraft Thursday

Originally posted by Ezappa
Wonder if they have found a planet in the goldilocks zone.
Maybe a planet with water and an atmosphere.

That would be awesome, but unlikely, I think.

Going back to Kepler's stated scientific goals:

• Goal 1: Determine the frequency of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of spectral types of stars.
  
• Goal 2: Determine the distributions of sizes and orbital semi-major axes of these planets.
  
• Goal 3: Estimate the frequency of planets and orbital distribution of planets in multiple-stellar systems.
  
• Goal 4: Determine the distributions of semi-major axis, albedo, size, mass and density of short-period giant planets.
  
• Goal 5: Identify additional members of each photometrically discovered planetary system using complementary techniques.
  
• Goal 6: Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems
  

Finding water and atmosphere over many light-year distances would involove detailed spectrometry observation, but it doesn't appear tha Kepler is equipped to do that. It's observing mass, axis, and density of planets, with only minimal spectral observation of the host stars, not the planets.

Maybe the telescope is as blind as Hubble used to be.

2nd

reply to post by DocEmrick


It will be the UN flag if anything

Man I hate being teased, I could have easily waited til Thursday if I wasn't expecting something. I hope it's not something really lame. Unfortunately it usually is.

As the pictures from Kepler came back, the scientists recognized what they were seeing. A bit baffled, they checked the direction and sure enough it was still staring towards Cygnus and Lyra. The odds of what they observed seemed rare and eerily familiar. Furthest from its star was a dwarf planet, followed by 4 gas giants and then 4 rocky planets. The third rock from the sun appeared to be mostly blue in color...

Maybe the "discovery of an intriguing planetary system" is that of our own twin planetary system and they said hi to ourselves.

On a more serious note, I speculate it'll won't be anything super spectacular or earth shattering as we would hope but rather another piece of the puzzle towards our understanding of the unknown.

Of course, with this information and taking it slightly our of context one could speculate something entirely different besides just a planetary system.

...results from Kepler, which include the "discovery of an intriguing planetary system

Follow-up observations are necessary to distinguish between actual planets and false alarms such as binary stars, which are two stars that orbit each other.

It's Omnicron for sure.

Or Niburi.

Or Mongo.

Or Yuggoth.

Or Gallifrey.

Or Zur-en-arrh.

Or Tyria.

Or Discworld.

Or Eternia.

Or a Culture run Dyson sphere.

Or Rimmerworld.

Or LV-426.

Or possible many more candidates.

There's a couple I'm hoping for and more than a few I'm not from this list.

-m0r

reply to post by m0r1arty


Some of your posts are good. That last one is a real turkey though mate! If you have nothing of substance to say the don't bother.

I would go with what some of the others are saying. They will announce the discovery of an earth like planet with water. If so, it really makes little difference to the E.T. debate anyway as there are almost certain to be millions of earth like planets out there among the billions of galaxies unless it is a very near neighbour.

[edit on 24-8-2010 by Pimander]

reply to post by Pimander


Appreciate the feedback truly

It was going to be longer too but a lil' alarm told me that was enough, might have to have that serviced!

We've nothing to go on here though - speculation is speculation and without the facts any conjecture is as good as the next.

I'm thinking that the Euro claim about finding a collection of varying planets might be what NASA will verify but again it may as well be Bizarro world for all we can guess.

As mentioned earlier 'Big news' by NASA most likely won't be anything that magnificent around here (fingers crossed I'm wrong).

Always fun reading what it could be though and I'm looking forward to seeing more of what our membership has to offer.

-m0r

A man can dream, right?

So... I can only WISH they would announce something like:

"... and we also found a planet just like our Earth: it has major blue oceans, probably steaming with life, an atmosphere rich in oxygen and carbon dioxide... there seems to be indication of large forests too. We also could notice some unnatural radio transmissions coming from it...
By the way we also found a portal on the dark side of the moon that can take a space shuttle to that planet in less then 5 minutes."

Now... wouldn't you all like to hear that?



Peace

Originally posted by jazabel51
reply to post by iamsupermanv2

 

i feel the same way-like nasa(never a straight answere) is gonna share. not even an ice particle worth of news-plus they-tptb-underestamate us anyway...no one should show to the party on thrusday...that would say it all!!

Maybe NASA will announce photographic and video proof of extraterrestrial visitors. Then ATS will explode with multiple threads saying that alien visits and UFOs are a myth.

People will be debunking their own pet theories...mass hysteria!

They're gonna announce that scientists found a star system with at least 5 Neptune-like planets. 13-25 times the mass of the earth.

Big news if you are really aware of the ramifications of all this.

Originally posted by ngchunter
They will say they have found a whole slew of candidate worlds much smaller than gas giants, more analogous to earth size, and that if you extrapolate the data it means that rocky worlds like ours outnumber gas giants by quite a bit.

I don't think they would announce the same thing twice.

NASA's Deep Space Camera Locates Host of 'Earths'

Source

Past discoveries suggested most planets outside our solar system were gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn -- but the new evidence tipped the balance in favor of solid worlds.

Very cool! This is the first "Telescope" of it's kind??. I think I know it's function.

It's main function is to collect data on stars and the shadows that pass over the stars blocking the light. Being Stars are so big and planets are usually much smaller, the only way to find them is to search for these shadow blips. img836.imageshack.us...

Like this, but a billion times smaller.

Another possibility: This news conference is damage control.

Back in July, Kepler scientist Dimitar Sasselov made some wild claims about the first load of Kepler data, stating that there was evidence that there are probably "100 million habitable planets in the Milky Way."
-Source

NASA even made him post a clarification to his statement, which you can find here.

So, you've got a senior mission guy making some very interesting, and perhaps misleading, comments about the mission...

So, you're NASA: What do you do? You host a news conference with boring, yet verifiable evidence, to make up for the fellow who jumped the gun.

Planetary system discovered around Alpha Centauri - majority of NASA efforts have been focused on our closet star. Due to the binary system, gas giants should be non existent and the likely hood of more terrestrial planets. According to NASA, that is.

[edit on 24-8-2010 by infinite]

I believe it probably has something to do with this announced today:

"Astronomers have discovered a group of at least five planets – with hints of two more – circling around a star in an arrangement similar to our own solar system. Confirmation of the extra planets would make this the highest tally of alien worlds ever spotted around a single star"

Sounds very much like the 'interesting' system they mention, only this was discovered from a ground based scope, so kepler could well have a LOT more interesting info! I hope it is. Check out the article for much more information below:

Alien solar system looks strikingly like ours


Can't wait to find out!

above beat me to it.

For the record, that discover was done us Europeans - NASA might have something else.

[edit on 24-8-2010 by infinite]

Originally posted by Faiol
reply to post by On the level

 

but really ... NIBARU?? I am expecting something they didnt expect to see ... maybe an artificial system ... it would be great

If by "artificial system" you mean "made by a non-earth intelligence", I doubt TPTB would EVER let that cat out of the bag. Perhaps someone along the information chain would leak it, but then it would become part of the misinformation/disinformation campaigns we've been seeing for the last 60 years.

But I agree with you, if it happened, it would be great.

I remember reading an SF story from the late 1950's that involved the first astronauts to orbit the moon. When they came around from the darkside and regained radio communication :

"Houston, your not gonna believe this........... it's a giant billboard!

Say again?

It's a prop, it's held up by giant 2x4's!

hmmmm......... maybe? Naw.

yeah I cant see anything 'artificial' being released to the masses, not until they had at least some clue of what it was or where it came from.

Other wise our nations budgets would be screwed due to the mass fear of the military and putting every penny they have int building something to defend ourselves as it would obviously pose a threat

But still, that would be ace