The light from 156,000 stars
Jan 31, 2011 16:32:26 GMT
Post by bixaorellana on Jan 31, 2011 16:32:26 GMT
Click the text below for a beautifully written article about the search for other planets.
Gazing Afar for Other Earths, and Other Beings by Dennis Overbye, pub. 1/30/2011
Moffett Field, Calif. — In a building at NASA’s Ames Research Center here, computers are sifting and resifting the light from 156,000 stars, seeking to find in the flickering of distant suns the first hints that humanity is not alone in the universe.
The stars are being monitored by a $600 million satellite observatory named Kepler, whose job is to conduct a kind of Gallup poll of worlds in the cosmos. On Wednesday, Kepler’s astronomers are scheduled to unveil a closely kept list of 400 stars that are their brightest and best bets so far for harboring planets, some of which could turn out to be the smallest and most Earth-like worlds discovered out there to date. They represent the first glimpse of riches to come in a quest that is as old as the imagination and as new as the iPad.
The above is part of Life Out There, a series of articles in the NYTimes online Science section which will examine the search for Earth-like planets and for new forms of life in the universe.
An article by the same author has us Listening to the Stars (<-- click). Amazing stuff. When you click on the first recording, it cycles through the rest of them. At first I thought, "Oh. static." Then the second one started and mid-way through it really hit me what I was hearing, which stunned and moved me.
The graphic on the right really helps explain how it all works. Click on it to be taken to a page that can be magnified large enough for comfortable studying.
Gazing Afar for Other Earths, and Other Beings by Dennis Overbye, pub. 1/30/2011
Moffett Field, Calif. — In a building at NASA’s Ames Research Center here, computers are sifting and resifting the light from 156,000 stars, seeking to find in the flickering of distant suns the first hints that humanity is not alone in the universe.
The stars are being monitored by a $600 million satellite observatory named Kepler, whose job is to conduct a kind of Gallup poll of worlds in the cosmos. On Wednesday, Kepler’s astronomers are scheduled to unveil a closely kept list of 400 stars that are their brightest and best bets so far for harboring planets, some of which could turn out to be the smallest and most Earth-like worlds discovered out there to date. They represent the first glimpse of riches to come in a quest that is as old as the imagination and as new as the iPad.
The above is part of Life Out There, a series of articles in the NYTimes online Science section which will examine the search for Earth-like planets and for new forms of life in the universe.
An article by the same author has us Listening to the Stars (<-- click). Amazing stuff. When you click on the first recording, it cycles through the rest of them. At first I thought, "Oh. static." Then the second one started and mid-way through it really hit me what I was hearing, which stunned and moved me.
The graphic on the right really helps explain how it all works. Click on it to be taken to a page that can be magnified large enough for comfortable studying.
