ESO set to make astounding disclosure!

reply to post by VoidHawk


You're correct. But I think there's other aspect there too.

Many people, including scientists, are so scared of finding something diferent or unknown to their standarts that they will do anything to refute it.

Can you imagine i YOU were 1 of them people who was sent to that planet & set foot on that planet that was covered in oxygen rich atmosphere with signatures that lean towards life? New possible fruits to discover, animals, the weight of our bones are light that when we jump we could jump high in the sky! ahhaha

reply to post by FeelingPure


What planet are you talking about??

Damn!! I had my bags packed and was hoping they had discovered a planet totally devoid of boy bands, Richard Simmons, and candy corn. Where beer flows like a babbling stream in a meadow and bacon grows on trees.

Maybe another day.

reply to post by IamAbeliever


Mate. I love your signature about religion.


Now, ontopic. I can't understand why all the secret, press conferences and embargo and stuff on such a "disclosure". Perhaps the folks at ESO wanted some fun... I think this might just be a big "trollage"...

I dunno,
This whole caper seems to be more of an update from knowledge already gained, at least in part. This is from September of last year from the same outfit,

astropt.org... stronomia+do+astroPT%29

I guess the thrust of it all is that although this planet is much nearer to its sun than our own Mercury, and presumably too hot, (although Mercury is not our hottest planet) they have expectations of finding another, perhaps more Earth like planet in a more habitable zone. It looks like they were near certain, or certain of this planet find last year, so I wonder if next years autumn conference will be news of another planet find, only more compatible. We're just steps behind.

reply to post by scarybear


Thank you. And I have to agree, I can't understand why the embargo, and all the secrecy. It's a cool discovery nonetheless.

Deep down I think we all knew it wasn't going to be disclosure with a capital D. While I truly believe that it will come one day, it won't happen like this announcement was made. I'm convinced that TPTB already know and things such as this are merely part of the conditioning process.

1-10 a 5 max...sigh

imvho this whole press release seemed a wee bit too much like our sensationalist OMFG ATS threads that never live up to expectations

Is it possible there WAS going to be an important release but the MIB shut them up?

Finally ESO have revealed what all the fuss was about and, TBH, it was a storm in a tea cup.

Planet found in nearest star system to Earth

European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.

Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is the nearest stellar system to our Solar System — only 4.3 light-years away. It is actually a triple star — a system consisting of two stars similar to the Sun orbiting close to each other, designated Alpha Centauri A and B, and a more distant and faint red component known as Proxima Centauri [1]. Since the nineteenth century astronomers have speculated about planets orbiting these bodies, the closest possible abodes for life beyond the Solar System, but searches of increasing precision had revealed nothing. Until now.

“Our observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument and have revealed a tiny, but real, signal from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.2 days,” says Xavier Dumusque (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal), lead author of the paper. “It’s an extraordinary discovery and it has pushed our technique to the limit!”

The European team detected the planet by picking up the tiny wobbles in the motion of the star Alpha Centauri B created by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet [2]. The effect is minute — it causes the star to move back and forth by no more than 51 centimetres per second (1.8 km/hour), about the speed of a baby crawling. This is the highest precision ever achieved using this method.

Alpha Centauri B is very similar to the Sun but slightly smaller and less bright. The newly discovered planet, with a mass of a little more than that of the Earth [3], is orbiting about six million kilometres away from the star, much closer than Mercury is to the Sun in the Solar System. The orbit of the other bright component of the double star, Alpha Centauri A, keeps it hundreds of times further away, but it would still be a very brilliant object in the planet’s skies.

The first exoplanet around a Sun-like star was found by the same team back in 1995 and since then there have been more than 800 confirmed discoveries, but most are much bigger than the Earth, and many are as big as Jupiter [4]. The challenge astronomers now face is to detect and characterise a planet of mass comparable to the Earth that is orbiting in the habitable zone [5] around another star. The first step has now been taken [6].

“This is the first planet with a mass similar to Earth ever found around a star like the Sun. Its orbit is very close to its star and it must be much too hot for life as we know it,” adds Stéphane Udry (Geneva Observatory), a co-author of the paper and member of the team, “but it may well be just one planet in a system of several. Our other HARPS results, and new findings from Kepler, both show clearly that the majority of low-mass planets are found in such systems.”

“This result represents a major step towards the detection of a twin Earth in the immediate vicinity of the Sun. We live in exciting times!” concludes Xavier Dumusque.

Link

So, they found a planet in Alpha centauri that is closer to its sun than Mercury is to ours. The excitement is all about the fact they managed to detect it, not really about the planet itself.

The detail is that they spent 4 years to discover that, a planet in the neares sun like star. They should aim bigger discoveries to be really excited about.

reply to post by LightAssassin


meh...

seriously tho, someone disect and see what the hub-bub was about. Was it JUST to generate interest??? As one ATS member sd on pg1.... crap. At least CRAP to the average ATS'r.

sigh...

reply to post by LightAssassin


If that it then that's pretty sh!t! Hence why it wasn't mainstream as such.

If it was to be another close-by exo-earth then it would be the world leaders making the announcements, unless wikileaks got there first.

reply to post by AnonLover


I tried to get in on the press conference by claiming to have a bloggers website under construction.

Suffice it to say, I didn't get an invite. Nor did I even get a reply.

Uber hack journalist Seth Borenstien must not be able to read embargo agreements.

Having read his garbage in the past I am not surprised he was the one to break it.

news.yahoo.com...;_ylt=AvYtX.22ybK1L8YUzc_47MP99XQA;_ylu=X3o'___'VxaW5mb3VtBGNjb 2RlA2dtcHRvcDEwMDBwb29sd2lraXVwcmVzdARtaXQDQXJ0aWNsZSBNaXhlZCBMaXN0IE5ld3MgZm9yIFlvdSB3aXRoIE1vcmUgTGluawRwa2cDMDlkNjUwYjQtODU0ZS0zM2ZhLWE3MTktZTVhMDM yYjVhZGQ5BHBvcwMxBHNlYwNuZXdzX2Zvcl95b3UEdmVyA2FhNDJkNTAxLTE3ZjEtMTFlMi1iNmZmLWQ1YmUxZTVlMThmOQ--;_ylg=X3o'___'JubHBlcnFoBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc 3RhaWQDZjRkNTg4NjQtODdhYy0zZTE1LWFlNTgtY2ZjZjRlMTY3NTcxBHBzdGNhdAN0ZWNoBHB0A3N0b3J5cGFnZQ--;_ylv=3

Disappointing, yet not too surprising. Well regarded scientists candid enough to discuss the issue still predict discovery of extraterrestrial life or evidence thereof is still the greatest within our own solar system. Makes sense to me...

Originally posted by LightAssassin
Finally ESO have revealed what all the fuss was about and, TBH, it was a storm in a tea cup.

Planet found in nearest star system to Earth

European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.

Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is the nearest stellar system to our Solar System — only 4.3 light-years away. It is actually a triple star — a system consisting of two stars similar to the Sun orbiting close to each other, designated Alpha Centauri A and B, and a more distant and faint red component known as Proxima Centauri [1]. Since the nineteenth century astronomers have speculated about planets orbiting these bodies, the closest possible abodes for life beyond the Solar System, but searches of increasing precision had revealed nothing. Until now.

“Our observations extended over more than four years using the HARPS instrument and have revealed a tiny, but real, signal from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.2 days,” says Xavier Dumusque (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and Centro de Astrofisica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal), lead author of the paper. “It’s an extraordinary discovery and it has pushed our technique to the limit!”

The European team detected the planet by picking up the tiny wobbles in the motion of the star Alpha Centauri B created by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet [2]. The effect is minute — it causes the star to move back and forth by no more than 51 centimetres per second (1.8 km/hour), about the speed of a baby crawling. This is the highest precision ever achieved using this method.

Alpha Centauri B is very similar to the Sun but slightly smaller and less bright. The newly discovered planet, with a mass of a little more than that of the Earth [3], is orbiting about six million kilometres away from the star, much closer than Mercury is to the Sun in the Solar System. The orbit of the other bright component of the double star, Alpha Centauri A, keeps it hundreds of times further away, but it would still be a very brilliant object in the planet’s skies.

The first exoplanet around a Sun-like star was found by the same team back in 1995 and since then there have been more than 800 confirmed discoveries, but most are much bigger than the Earth, and many are as big as Jupiter [4]. The challenge astronomers now face is to detect and characterise a planet of mass comparable to the Earth that is orbiting in the habitable zone [5] around another star. The first step has now been taken [6].

“This is the first planet with a mass similar to Earth ever found around a star like the Sun. Its orbit is very close to its star and it must be much too hot for life as we know it,” adds Stéphane Udry (Geneva Observatory), a co-author of the paper and member of the team, “but it may well be just one planet in a system of several. Our other HARPS results, and new findings from Kepler, both show clearly that the majority of low-mass planets are found in such systems.”

“This result represents a major step towards the detection of a twin Earth in the immediate vicinity of the Sun. We live in exciting times!” concludes Xavier Dumusque.

Link

So, they found a planet in Alpha centauri that is closer to its sun than Mercury is to ours. The excitement is all about the fact they managed to detect it, not really about the planet itself.

edit on 16-10-2012 by LightAssassin because: (no reason given)

reply to post by UnknownEntity


Something is very wrong with this story. They have pulled the news release about this off of the website and link you posted. It's GONE !

Well, I supposed we're supposed to be desensitized to the mere announcement process. Seems like they keep throwing hype, then just say .. .ooooo, another shiny rock!

I am all for disclosure, although I am sure it won't come. . .until it's needed. Too many people will just say it's a ruse, and they just may be right.

in on this thread


i know we are not alone, interested to see how this truth plays out