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Astronomy

NASA Finds A Way To Make Stunning News Boring

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 4, 2013
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The Numbers Are Astronomical, Seth Shostak, Huffington Post
“So check out the Milky Way next time you’re outside the glare of city lights, and ruminate on the thought that at least 33 billion habitable planets are somewhere up there. But that’s just the local population. We can’t see the entire universe, but the fraction we can see is studded with roughly 150 billion other galaxies; each with its own complement of habitable worlds. So the number of life-friendly planets that are currently in the part of the cosmos we can possibly observe is five thousand billion billion. That’s a big number. It’s bigger than the number of cells in all the people of Earth.”
Keith’s note: Think about it: these maps from the Star Wars and Star Trek Universes are now usable as illustrations of Kepler data. This is stunning news. What is baffling is how Ames PAO totally botched the release of this news – and the underwelming press release that NASA put out. This one discovery makes everything that Star Trek, Star Wars, and every other imagined universe envsioned now seem totally plausible. In some ways (read Seth’s entire piece) it almost makes many of these fictional universes far more probable today than they were this morning before the news burst out on Twitter. There are now just so many damn planets out there that almost anything is possible. Yet NASA itself seems to be sound asleep when it comes to the profound ramifications of this news. Indeed, it looks like NASA really doesn’t care.
1 in 5 Sun-like Stars Has Earth-size Planet in Habitable Zone
One in Five Stars Has an Earth-sized Planet in its Habitable Zone

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

18 responses to “NASA Finds A Way To Make Stunning News Boring”

  1. mfwright says:
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    I would not bring in those maps from ST and SW, it adds to confusing the public between space science and science fiction.

    Regarding PAO, maybe someone in the office had a spiffy idea(s) for a news release but had to go through proper channels prior to release, and if there are certain material that conference may not want to be released to general public. Then it takes time to make way through channels and returning emails… by that time the lose the excitement of the moment.

    Whatever, soooooo many planets….. makes what us earthers argue about seem so trivial in grand scheme of things. What would be really cool if spectrum observations can be seen to determine if some of these planets have oxygen in their atmosphere.

    • TheBrett says:
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      We’re getting there.

      That could be weird, in a way. Imagine if we find a planet that’s more or less nearby (within 20 light-years) that’s bearing strong signs of atmosphere shaped by life: free oxygen, methane, etc. You’d have to really wonder even more about what the Fermi Paradox means in that kind of situation, if Earth-Like planets are so common that they’re next door in stellar terms. I’d be a little sad if it turned out that intelligent, tool-using life is just super, super rare in the scheme of things.

  2. Rocky J says:
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    KC, be careful. You make it look like NASA released these Romulan empire maps. You did. Seth Shostak has put it in the right frame of thought in his statements of the Huffington Post article. It is truly remarkable but saying that Star Trek and Star Wars is possible is going too far. That Sci-Fi depends on faster than light travel to make it all possible. We do not seem to live in such a Universe.

    Related to the Fermi Paradox that comment writer Whitfield mentions, I like to entertain the thought that perhaps in due time advanced civilizations discover not worm holes but rather ways to enter other dimensions. String Theory points to potentially 11 dimensions in our Universe. Right now with 4 dimensions, it is hard enough to find the first other civilization let alone a life form beyond Earth. Now consider if we and others eventually discover a means of entering into other dimensions. The haystack becomes effectively impossible to search. Maybe civilizations do not go extinct but instead step into a livelihood amongst 11 dimensions. They would effectively disappear, never to be seen or found again. That could explain the paradox.

    • kcowing says:
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      Huh? I never said NASA released these maps. Stop making things up.

      • Steven Rappolee says:
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        I emailed you about this event this morning

        • kcowing says:
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          And I had updates from NASA from more than a week ago about this event with the link. I got half a dozen emails and one phone call from people today – all with the same problem that I had i.e. no access. I am the one who actually informed ARC PAO that the webcast was not working – they did not know until I told them.

      • Rocky J says:
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        I never did either. I said “it looks like”. Average readers jump to exaggerated conclusions all the time with a little help.

  3. TheBrett says:
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    It’s awesome news, although the real test now is to not only find more Earth-size and Earth-mass planets around sun-like stars, but to find some way to image them directly and do spectrographic analysis on their atmospheres to see if there are signs of habitability. And if or when we do that . . . more questions, obviously.

    You know what would be weird? If we found tons of potentially habitable, living planets with atmospheres bearing what seems to be almost unmistakeable signs of life, but nothing resembling a sign of intelligent life. It would be an almost anti-climactic resolution of the Fermi Paradox, finding out that either intelligent life is some super-freak evolutionary occurrence, or simply too spread out to communicate.

    • JimGalasyn says:
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      Now that we know the precise location of the 10 Earth-like worlds, how long will it be before we get spectra? Seems like imaging techniques are advanced enough that it could be next week. Anybody giving odds on a chlorophyll signature?

      • TheBrett says:
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        It depends on the planet, and where they are. I think James Webb Space Telescope is supposed to be able to directly image planets in the IR spectrum, although its range in terms of smaller planets would be limited (about 10-20 parsecs out).

        There might be other telescopes that can do that as well, but I don’t know enough about them to say yes or no.

        • David_Morrison says:
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          To carry out such studies we probably will need the TESS mission to find nearby planetary systems. The Kepler planets are too far away, but what Kepler has shown is that exoplanets, even Earth-like exoplanets, are common.

  4. Mark_Flagler says:
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    I think the point is less about how NASA handled this (poorly) than the data which implies that it’s now almost impossible to believe that there are no other life-bearing planets, and/or advanced civilizations out there. We may not hear or see them, but it’s now nearly impossible to write them off.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      I agree. I think it’s a good idea to always precede the word “life” with one or more adjectives to qualify what you’re actually thinking. For example, microbial life being common in the universe is looking like a safe bet, but the incidences of intelligent life are, I think, still more of a philosophical question than a scientific one. But the line is shifting almost monthly.

      The question I like to see debated is “advanced civilizations” because there’s such a wide variation in how people envision them and their possible interactions with us. Stephen Hawking suggests keeping quiet and not drawing attention to ourselves because civilizations tend to get clobbered when encountered by more “advanced” civilizations. Yet other scientists, also highly respected, think meeting a superior civilization is the best thing that could ever happen to us. Realistically, we have no way of knowing in advance, since it’s probably meaningless to assume that they think and act like we do.

  5. David_Morrison says:
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    Hey Keith, think positive. This is a great opportunity for you and Seth Shostak and Phil Plait and dpzens of other fine science writers to tell this story the way you want. NASA supplies the basic facts, and others can run with them!

    • Rocky J says:
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      The Kepler Conference is great, astounding. Researchers have been theorizing and modeling for decades. Two books that are examples, “The Origin of the Solar System” (Ed. S.F.Dermott, ’78) [a couple of references to your work] and “Life Beyond the Earth” (V.A. Firsoff, ’63) are reference points from nearly half a century ago.

      Kepler data has open the flood gates! The resulting Kepler papers this week cover a wide range and the data reduction and the modeling is really impressive. And it should snowball into popular science writings too and science fiction. I took my first astronomy course at Rio Hondo College while in high school with the book by Abell. There was one mention of possible exoplanets – Barnard’s Star (which didn’t pan out). How things have changed.

  6. Synthguy says:
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    The more information we get in terms of the sheer number of exoplanets, and now, the potential huge number of habitable planets out there, makes me wonder whether we are wasting out time trying to crawl our way to the Moon and Mars with traditional rocket-based launch vehicles. Money invested in SLS, and probes to Mars, etc, could be reinvested in breakthrough propulsion systems that would make travel to nearby stars more possible, whilst at the same time, allowing us to really explore the Solar System. How quickly could we accelerate development? Is it really necessary to wait for hundreds of years before we think about interstellar exploration? Is a steady stepping stone approach to space exploration the best approach, or should we look at a determined attempt to leap ahead and exploit revolutionary advances in technology so that we could achieve interstellar flight within decades (think second half of the 21st Century)? If there are hundreds or thousands of potentially habitable worlds out there, surely thats the bigger goal than scratching out a living on a lifeless Mars?

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      But perhaps we will be judged by what we have accomplished, and the importance we place on those accomplishments. If we skip steps because somebody on some other theortical planet has already done them, how will that be perceived by visitors? Would we not be better off being percieved as methodical rather than impatient? Besides, what we learn serendipitously during these less ambitious tasks is often more important to society than the main goal.