NASA & Industrial Light & Magic Rep & SETI Rep to Announce Kepler Discovery at Media Briefing ?

Originally posted by roughycannon
Yeah really dissapointed this is the kind of stuff you should see on the news page not make a live announcment infront of the press...

NASA regularly holds these kinds of press conferences to announce discoveries that may seem mundane and boring to the masses, but are interesting to scientists and people interested in space science.

NASA has one of these about every month or so -- and every time they schedule one it seems someone on ATS thinks NASA is holding the conference to announce World-shattering news. In reality, however, these are simply routine press conferences that NASA uses to help announce the various scientific discoveries they are constantly making VIA their various tools, such as the Kepler spacecraft, the WISE spacecraft, Hubble, the DAWN spacecraft, etc.

Many people find these semi-regularly held press conferences to be interesting, even of others find the information mundane. Don't blame NASA if other people want to blow these press conferences out of proportion. If these people were paying attention, they would see these press conferences are common and rarely -- if ever -- deal with world-paradigm-changing announcements.

IT WAS ADVERTISING FOR LUCAS! Because starwars comes out on Blueray now I am not buying it and I HATE NASA even more!

Originally posted by Suspiria
Why do I suddenly think that was a really lame Bluray Star Wars release plug?.

Curses you beat me to it!

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

Originally posted by roughycannon
Yeah really dissapointed this is the kind of stuff you should see on the news page not make a live announcment infront of the press...

NASA regularly holds these kinds of press conferences to announce discoveries that may seem mundane and boring to the masses, but are interesting to scientists and people interested in space science.

NASA has one of these about every month or so -- and every time they schedule one it seems someone on ATS thinks NASA is holding the conference to announce World-shattering news. In reality, however, these are simply routine press conferences that NASA uses to help announce the various scientific discoveries they are constantly making VIA their various tools, such as the Kepler spacecraft, the WISE spacecraft, Hubble, the DAWN spacecraft, etc.

Many people find these semi-regularly held press conferences to be interesting, even of others find the information mundane. Don't blame NASA if other people want to blow these press conferences out of proportion. If these people were paying attention, they would see these press conferences are common and rarely -- if ever -- deal with world-paradigm-changing announcements.

edit on 9/15/2011 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)

I watched the last 2 conferences live they do put a spin on them, the water flow on Mars and the cyanide based lifeforms, the announcements are often cryptic to make people think its gonna be something else...

reply to post by roughycannon


I didn't really detect any spin put on this announcement. They announced the scheduling of this conference 2 days prior to the conference. If it was anything huge, I don't think they would have scheduled for 2 days later, I doubt it would be hosted from Moffett Field, and I doubt they would have included a guy from LucasFilms as one of the panelists.

The timing of the press conference coincides with the publication of Laurance Doyle's paper in the journal Science that is about this same topic.

My my, how jaded some have become. It wasn't that long ago anyone was sure there were planets outside of our solar system!

Since the majority of stars out there are Binary (or more) this is pretty big news. Planets are everywhere, stranger then we ever imagined and each one is unique.

Probably about this:

Real Live "Star Wars" Planet Seen

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People

Originally posted by roughycannon
Yeah really dissapointed this is the kind of stuff you should see on the news page not make a live announcment infront of the press...

NASA regularly holds these kinds of press conferences to announce discoveries that may seem mundane and boring to the masses, but are interesting to scientists and people interested in space science.

I don't recall a press conference for the other 42 planets they discovered. If it's only going to be interesting to the scientific community, then why put an embargo on scientific journals until after the announcement? Seems like a justification for funding to me.

Originally posted by Helmkat
Since the majority of stars out there are Binary (or more) this is pretty big news. Planets are everywhere, stranger then we ever imagined and each one is unique.

They indicated that, at least, there are an equal number or more of binary star systems, not the majority. This does, however, keep them from ruling out Binary systems all together. Each planet is uniquely rock or gaseous (or liquid), but none thus far that have indicated a true candidate for life.

Originally posted by Ecidemon
I don't recall a press conference for the other 42 planets they discovered. If it's only going to be interesting to the scientific community, then why put an embargo on scientific journals until after the announcement? Seems like a justification for funding to me.

This isn't the first press conference NASA has had regarding planets that have been discovered by Kepler. This is at least the third Kepler-related press conference I remember over the past several months to a year. I specifically remember one about 6 months ago (or so) that was about finding dozens of Earth-sized planets.

Being that today's conference was about a certain specific class of star systems (binary systems) and one of those other conferences was about a specific class of planets (Earth-sized planets), I'd say they choose to have press conferences on discoveries that are more scientifically interesting -- although I'm sure it could be argued that just about any subject would be considered scientifically interesting to one scientist or another.

I mean, it's like the various press conferences NASA has had on black holes in the past. There was one I remember a while ago (a year or two ago?) concerning a very young black hole, while there was another press conference just a few months ago about one of the largest black holes.

Using your argument, they should talk about ALL of the black holes they know about if they are going to bother talking about those two. But the way I see it, the very young black hole and the very large black hole are unique enough to be worthy of a press conference, while the others may not be (although all of them are interesting to a black hole researcher).

The same thing could be said about today's press conference. This star system is unique (for now -- but I'm sure not for long) and deserves a press conference.

It seems like a lot of people were let down with the information given in the conference.

I wasn't. I also wasn't incredibly impressed, but I am looking at this with my conspiracy goggles on - to make it a bit more fun. =-)

Maybe ILM was on hand, not only to have their baby 'Star Wars' plugged in literal application, but maybe also as a hint.

Maybe George Lucas applied real places, technologies, and life forms in his movies. How would he getinformation like this? Maybe he is an alien contactee - or maybe he is an alien plant, placed here to help condition us to what we will be dealing with once we go cosmic!

So, they are giving us hints to look closer at Star Wars and other ILM productions to learn what is really out there!

More than likely just very good foresight by Lucas and ILM. Afterall, Star Trek had many things used in the series that seemed impossible at the time it aired, but now are everyday items in current technology - such as the cell phone.

Hey, maybe Star Trek was another planted pop culture plant, placed in our living rooms and minds in order to make us aware of what is out there and what is to come.

I wonder which current fiction movies/tv series have high tech devices that seem impossible in todays tech, but will be commonplace 10-30 years from now?

reply to post by esteay812


Star Trek and Star Wars didn't invent the ideas they presented -- they were based on actual scientific speculation at the time.

Granted, many of those sci-fi ideas weren't part of the scientific mainstream in the 1960s and 1970s, but they generally-held speculative beliefs by the scientists at the time.

For example, when Lucas showed Tataouine as having two suns, the scientist of the time (1977) may have had no proof of two-starred planets (or any extra-solar plantes at all, for that matter), but that doesn't mean they didn't believe they existed. The just didn't have any direct evidence that they existed.

I doubt Star Trek was a plant to get those ideas out to the public. I mean, if you believe that then you may as well believe that the 1902 silent film A Trip to the Moon and the Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon films of the 1930s were the same thing.