New planets have been discovered:
Thirty-two planets have been discovered outside Earth’s solar system through the use of a high-precision instrument installed at a Chilean telescope, an international team announced Monday….
[T]he device can detect slight wobbles of stars as they respond to tugs from exoplanets’ gravity. That tactic, known as the radial velocity method, “has been the most prolific method in the search for exoplanets,” according to the European Southern Observatory statement.
The instrument detects movements as small as 3.5 km/hr (2.1 mph), a slow walking pace, the observatory said.
With the discovery, the tally of new exoplanets found by HARPS is now at 75, out of about 400 known exoplanets, the organization said, “cementing HARPS’s position as the world’s foremost exoplanet hunter.” The 75 planets are in 30 planetary systems, the European Southern Observatory said.
Today, earth. Tomorrow, some random exoplanet! Or maybe we should try to get to Mars first…
Science is cool.
Science? I thought HARPS is a metaphysical way to talk with God, and he just revealed those planets to us. If it is science then I don’t believe those planets exists
/mode irony off
We need to get to Mars first because we can. It’ll also serve to test technologies, in a proof of concept sort of way, that will serve us well later. But I can’t see humans living on Mars long-term or in large numbers. (Whether “terraforming” the planet would even be possible is the subject of a lot of debate and, in any case, would take many centuries at least.) No, we’ll need to find another planet a lot closer to Earth-like if we want to move.
If we’re still around by the time solar expansion starts to become a problem, we’ll damn well have to go find a different planet to inhabit long-term and in large numbers.
But it won’t be in this system.
Is one of them KOLOB?
@Mark
I hope you meant Kobol. And if you did, you are awesome. If you didn’t, disregard this comment.
@ Anna
Kolob, planet where mormon gods have sex.
Kobol, planet where sexy robots have sex.
There is a thoery that BSG was based on mormon history.
http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/battlestar-mormonica.htm
Do you look more like Starbuck or Six?
Does anyone know how far the James Webb telescope is supposed to be able to view when it goes up? I’m guessing these planets would still be too far to view.
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/
This is going to make learning the planets in school really suck.
Glad I’m not a kid!
Learning is hard. There’s always new stuff happening!
I am wondering, we have not seen god lately for a few thousands yearsn maybe he left the building long time ago to create some other cool planets and life forms?
http://sc.tri-bit.com/images/thumb/8/87/7447.jpg/489px-7447.jpg
Some news from NASA just received:
“It’s the second planet outside our solar system in which water, methane and carbon dioxide have been found, which are potentially important for biological processes in habitable planets,” said researcher Mark Swain of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “Detecting organic compounds in two exoplanets now raises the possibility that it will become commonplace to find planets with molecules that may be tied to life.”
why I love my job almost as much as I love my hobby
Wow it’s fucking amazing how far we’ve come in 50 years. I’m so lucky to be alive in this century.
John Paul II declared one day, back in the mid-90s I think, that if Jesus had made himself known to aliens from other star-systems then they too would have been ‘Redeemed’ from their own version of the ‘Original Sin’. Talk about ‘hedging one’s bets’ XD (or ‘clutching at straws’?)
Any ideas as to what the Zeta-Reticulan Jesus would have looked like? Or how their ‘Fall’ would have come about?
In the Beginning, Xenu created the heavens and Zeta Reticula V. And the spirit of Xenu was kind of pleased, so Xenu kept on creating. Blah, blah, blah, Xenu created Zeta Reticulans out of the crusty outer shell of the planet. And for no apparent reason whatsoever, Xenu put a big bowl of diamonds in the middle of the first Zeta Reticulan compound and said, “Of all the other jewels and minerals, you may eat, but stay away from my precious big bowl of diamonds! Keep your grubby, six-handed selves away! SRSLY!”
Now, Grabdazh had been off collecting zinc for the evening feast, and has missed Xenu’s stern warning about the big bowl of diamonds. So when Grabdazh returned that evening, and saw the big bowl of diamonds, he was very intrigued. But not being very bright (actually, all of the Zeta Reticulans were rather stupid), the first thing Grabdazh did was scoop up a handful of diamonds out of that big, shiny bowl and started munching.
Let’s just say that Xenu was far from pleased.
LOL! But what if the Reticulans were actually Crystalline Entities? How would you crucify one of those???
Oh, ye of little faith. All you need is a deflector dish capable of emitting a graviton pulse. Apply a continuous graviton emission and voila! Entity crucified.
Ah-ha! So it’s the deflector dish then? Cool, huh-huh…
Which makes me think: there are some 75 billion galaxies in the Universe (as of 2006), each with about 500 billion stars on average. Let’s say there’s just ONE intelligent species per galaxy (a figure that is looking increasingly conservative as we discover more and more planets in our immediate vicinity), that would mean that JC must have died 75 billion excruciating deaths in order to save Everyone/the Believers/the Righteous Believers/Whatever in every galaxy. Sounds absurd? Sure, unless you _really_ believe that those billions upon billions of galaxies, stars, nebulae, black holes, planets and so on were ‘created’ just for the amusement of a bunch of mildly advanced apes with existential problems…