NASA exoplanet anmt. 9/15

[Dr Mordrid]

A highly hyped & embargoed announcement coming the 15th from NASA's Ames Research Center involving the Kepler mission, the spacecraft that's been looking for planets in other stars habitable zones - the distance at which water would be liquid.

I have only one idea why a representative from Lucasfilms Industrial Light & Magic F/X lab is there: they've created imagery/video depicting what ever they've found.

SETI's probably there to discuss implications.

My guess: a near-Earth mass water world.

NASA's webcast page: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

NASA To Announce Kepler Discovery At Media Briefing

Source: Ames Research Center

Posted Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 11 a.m. PDT, Sept. 15

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA will host a news briefing at 11 a.m. PDT, Thursday, Sept. 15, to announce a new discovery by the Kepler mission. The briefing will be held in the Syvertson auditorium, building N-201, at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The event will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency's website at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet. Although additional observations will be needed over time to achieve that milestone, Kepler is detecting planets and planet candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances to help us better understand our place in the galaxy.

A representative from Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., will join a panel of scientists to discuss the discovery.

The briefing participants are:

--Charlie Sobeck, Kepler deputy project manager, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. --Nick Gautier, Kepler project scientist, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. --Laurance Doyle, lead author, SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.

--John Knoll, visual effects supervisor, ILM, San Francisco.

--Greg Laughlin, professor for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, University of California, Santa Cruz, Calif.
>

[Evildead666]

Sweet

[Jammrock]

Looks Europe may have jumped the gun: http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011...solar-system/?

16 'super-Earths' found outside solar system

It's not like aliens put up a welcome banner or anything, but scientists now have newly identified at least one planet that could potentially sustain life.

The European Southern Observatory has just announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets (planets outside our solar system), including 16 super-Earths (planets whose mass is between one and 10 times that of our own planet).

One of these planets in particular could theoretically be home to life if conditions are right. It's called HD 85512 b, and scientists say it's about 3.6 times the mass of the Earth. This planet is about 35 light years from Earth. Its location with respect to its star suggests that this planet could have liquid water under certain circumstances...

[Dr Mordrid]

Different studies. The European work was dine using the ESO's HARPS instrument in Chile while NASA's was done using the Kepler spacecraft - a dedicated Earth-type planet hunter.

[Dr Mordrid]

They've discovered a Tatooine-like system; two stars orbiting each other with a planet in a stable orbit around both. The planet is a cold gas giant about the size of Saturn and just outside the habitable zone, but this means a real Tatooine is very possible.

This is an extremely important discovery because many stars are in binary pairs like this, so it greatly expands the possible configurations where an Earth-like planet could exist.

NASA page....

NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers a World Orbiting Two Stars

The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA's Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet -- a planet orbiting two stars -- 200 light-years from Earth.

Unlike Star Wars’ Tatooine, the planet is cold, gaseous and not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy. Previous research has hinted at the existence of circumbinary planets, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Kepler detected such a planet, known as Kepler-16b, by observing transits, where the brightness of a parent star dims from the planet crossing in front of it.

"This discovery confirms a new class of planetary systems that could harbor life," Kepler principal investigator William Borucki said. "Given that most stars in our galaxy are part of a binary system, this means the opportunities for life are much broader than if planets form only around single stars. This milestone discovery confirms a theory that scientists have had for decades but could not prove until now."

A research team led by Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., used data from the Kepler space telescope, which measures dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, to search for transiting planets. Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet.

Scientists detected the new planet in the Kepler-16 system, a pair of orbiting stars that eclipse each other from our vantage point on Earth. When the smaller star partially blocks the larger star, a primary eclipse occurs, and a secondary eclipse occurs when the smaller star is occulted, or completely blocked, by the larger star.

Astronomers further observed that the brightness of the system dipped even when the stars were not eclipsing one another, hinting at a third body. The additional dimming in brightness events, called the tertiary and quaternary eclipses, reappeared at irregular intervals of time, indicating the stars were in different positions in their orbit each time the third body passed. This showed the third body was circling, not just one, but both stars, in a wide circumbinary orbit.

The gravitational tug on the stars, measured by changes in their eclipse times, was a good indicator of the mass of the third body. Only a very slight gravitational pull was detected, one that only could be caused by a small mass. The findings are described in a new study published Friday, Sept. 16, in the journal Science.

"Most of what we know about the sizes of stars comes from such eclipsing binary systems, and most of what we know about the size of planets comes from transits," said Doyle, who also is the lead author and a Kepler participating scientist. "Kepler-16 combines the best of both worlds, with stellar eclipses and planetary transits in one system."

This discovery confirms that Kepler-16b is an inhospitable, cold world about the size of Saturn and thought to be made up of about half rock and half gas. The parent stars are smaller than our sun. One is 69 percent the mass of the sun and the other only 20 percent. Kepler-16b orbits around both stars every 229 days, similar to Venus’ 225-day orbit, but lies outside the system’s habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface, because the stars are cooler than our sun.

"Working in film, we often are tasked with creating something never before seen," said visual effects supervisor John Knoll of Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., in San Francisco. "However, more often than not, scientific discoveries prove to be more spectacular than anything we dare imagine. There is no doubt these discoveries influence and inspire storytellers. Their very existence serves as cause to dream bigger and open our minds to new possibilities beyond what we think we 'know.'"

For more information about the Kepler-16 discovery, visit:

http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/kepler16b/