Posted on 06/13/2002 4:17:37 PM PDT by Exit 109
Friday June 14, 3:19 AM
US astronomers announced the discovery of a solar system similar to our own, at a press conference at NASA's headquarters here.
Astronomers said they had identified an extra-solar planet orbiting this star at about the same distance Jupiter orbits the sun. They discovered a total of 15 extra-solar planets.
University of California at Berkley astronomy professor Geoffrey Marcy discovered the star, named 55 Cancri, 15 years ago, jointly with his colleague at Washington's Carnegie Institution Paul Butler.
In 1996, Marcy and Butler announced the discovery of a first planet orbiting 55 Cancri "in 14.6 days at a distance only one-tenth that from Earth to the sun."
55 Cancri is located 41 million light-years from the Earth, in the constellation of Cancer. The star, believed to be around five billion years old, is visible to the naked eye, astronomers said.
A six dollar word for twinkle as in "scintilate scintilate minute stellar body."
Rare Earth Hypothesis - Are we alone? Part 1
Rare Earth Part 2
Rare Earth Part 3
Rare Earth - The verdict
Do I think it is valuable to the race as a whole? Yes, very much so. Perhaps you are not that motivated by the race as a whole and I can't say I blame you but it just seems a little short-sighted to me.
Ok, this one is for RadioAstronomer. I am sure you are already aware of it but I thought I would give you a heads up if you were not. I might be a little fuzzy on the details as well, but here goes...
Scientists in Australia today were able to teleport light. They said that a human body would be extremely improbable as it has trillions of atoms in it.
Its a start though. I see definate potential in this. :D
Along with being mistaken about funding for SETI, you are also very wrong about the public's support for space exploration. In a Roper poll a year or so ago 55% of respondents said it was worthwhile while only 18% said it was "a waste of time and money".
Back when I was in school, I used a scintillator membrane to convert ion impacts into light flashes so we could count fragmentation products from collision-induced dissociation.
Your previous statement (again):
I just don't care about it. You do, that's great. I don't, lots of others don't, and don't want our tax money spent on it.
By definiton, that is public support.
I believe and it's my opinion, that one day, Earth based telescopes will actually be able to see some surface detail of planets orbiting other stars.
There is also a possibility that there could be planets out there that may possibly emit a small amount of natural light or the real possibility that a planet that may have life on it, may have some artificial light that is being produced and emitted, like Earth. That light could possibly be detected and analyzed with spectroscopes and other instruments to read the light. We are not quite there yet, but I am confident.
New telescopes are being developed all the time. Like the interferometers and other Earth orbiting optical telescopes.
Thought this may be of some interest.
Novel Telescope Array Achieves Milestone By Joshua Roth
#IMAGE_1# September 26, 2001 | Last week, astronomers achieved an esoteric but significant milestone in the quest to see more and more detail on cosmic objects. Scientists with the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) combined starlight from two telescopes atop historic Mount Wilson in California, and created a stable "image" with those beams. This has been done many times before on Mount Wilson and elsewhere. This time, however, the two telescopes were separated by 330 meters, the longest baseline used to date at optical wavelengths, says CHARA director and Georgia State University professor Harold A. McAlister. They are part of the six-telescope CHARA Array, slated to begin routine operations next year. A basic tenet of optics is that a telescope's angular resolution — the size of the smallest details it can show — is inversely proportional to the diameter of its light-gathering lens or mirror. Optical interferometers like the CHARA Array are designed to yield the angular resolution of a single mirror or lens hundreds of meters across. They do this by pointing two or more telescopes at a single target, then mixing the light beams thus gathered. The beams interfere with one another, creating fringes that can be analyzed to produce an image of the target (or at least to measure some of its properties). Several optical interferometers operate worldwide, but the CHARA Array's large mirrors and separations (and Mount Wilson's famed atmospheric stability) make it "uniquely suited" to measuring the fundamental properties — masses, diameters, and surface temperatures — of numerous stars, says McAlister.
While the CHARA array can't take "pictures" of extrasolar planets, it will be able to detect the wobbles that such planets induce on stars within binary systems. It also will measure the cyclical swelling and shrinking of pulsating variable stars and resolve disks and jets associated with young stellar objects, says McAlister. The array will work at visual and near-infrared wavelengths and will obtain spectra as well as images of individual stars in many previously unresolved binaries.
They'll be looking for oceans, water clouds, continents, who knows, maybe even prairies and forests.
Anyway, I am very surprised that none of you can see a solution(Albeit a very far off one.) to the problems of space travel as we know them.
I dont have time to get in on it but go to NASA's website and look at the layout for thier interstellar travel plan.
This post is addressed to myself as I am the only one listening to me. ;)
It... Just... Knows. There are some things Man was not meant to know.
Scintillators are also used to detect Alpha, Beta, Gama, and Neutrons. :-) Converts them into tiny flashes of light which a photomultiplier tube then can count.
Yeah, but those weigh a heck of a lot less than a Sc+ ion, much less a Zn+, especially those gammas...
How did we get to talking about my thesis instrument? Oh, yeah, scintillation. Anyway, so electromagnetic radiation suffers from frequency-dependent losses in interstellar space. What's absorbing it? The energy has to go somewhere.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.