NASA Releases Cool Kepler News But Bungles The Delivery
Keith’s 2:30 pm EST note: NASA Ames PAO just hosted a media briefing on new Kepler news being released today i.e. “22±8 % of the Sun-like stars have an Earth-like planet”‘ (per Tweet below). One small problem, they did not set the number of guests who could connect via on Adobe Connect so a lot of media were unable to connect untill well after the media briefing was underway. But the news was already being tweeted by participants (an hour ago) in that news briefing. When I asked NASA ARC PAO for a copy of the press release they refused to send me anything saying that NASA HQ PAO will be releasing the news at 3:00 pm EST. Meanwhile NASA has been sending copies of the paper around to hand-picked members of the news media. So … NASA holds a badly-planned news conference and whoever attends (or logs in early) can release the news to the public but NASA won’t let anyone else see the news that they have already released. Baffling strategy.
22±8 % of the Sun-like stars have an Earth-like planet – Erik Petigura #Kepler2
— Prof. Abel Méndez (@ProfAbelMendez) November 4, 2013
diagram of KOI1422 from todays press release #Kepler2 KOI1422 is on top, the Sun and the solar system below. pic.twitter.com/hdkwOIatfm
— Jason Rowe (@JasonFRowe) November 4, 2013
From “One in Five Stars Has an Earth-sized Planet in its Habitable Zone”:
“Scientists from University of California, Berkeley, and University of Hawaii, Manoa, have statistically determined that twenty percent of Sun-like stars in our solar system have Earth-sized planets that could host life“
Oops! All of the Sun-like stars in our solar system have Earth-sized planets with life. I’m guessing that should be in our galaxy.
The numbers I plug into the Drake Equation (Enhanced Drake Equation Calculator App on my smart phone) returns 11,000 civilizations with inter-stellar communication capability in the Milky Way. The nearest one is estimated at 820 light years away from us. That means that that one nearest civilization is the resident of one star in 1 million stars within 820 lights of the Earth. 1 in a Million stars within 820 light years has one Kardashev Type 1 or higher civilization.
It is likely that no one has heard our radio communications yet. It is somewhat likely, I think, that an advanced Type 1 (or greater) has looked in detail at our Earth and know we have complex life. It is possible maybe likely that a advanced Type 1 (or greater) civilization has noticed that there is a civilization with urban areas that are burning hydrocarbons (within 2500 light years of us… Rome, Han, Egyptian).
Fermi – “where is everybody”? We are just beginning to look and to look with good methods. Frank’s and SETI attempts using radio wave spectrum has had a low probability of finding any civilization. Searching in optical, for laser light and for Type 2 or greater (Dyson sphere, etc) has better chances. Of the million stars nearby to us (820 light years), not all are candidates – dismiss O, B, A, F stars. Still there are over 500,000 stars. They are out there. The Fermi question is a paradox because it is a space and time is big and there are a lot of stars to look at.
Excellent post, I learned a lot. Thanks!
Thanks. Let me emphasize that any count of the number of civilizations derived from the Drake Equation, as of today still borders between speculative and estimates; I’m being generous. We don’t, on average, how frequently life develops on a habitable planet, what percentage of those develop intelligent lifeforms, the fraction of those that can communicate across space and the amount of time their signals are detectable. The latter is a factor of survivability of the civilization and how long they use communications that are detectable. We are quickly moving from radio to microwave, cable and now lasers. We are becoming less detectable already in just 100 years.
Is 10,000 intelligent lifeforms that we can communicate with over interstellar distances a high or low estimate? It can go either way by easily a factor of 100, i.e. from 100 to 1 million. Lower because life does not develop or survive easily or because intelligent life doesn’t survive long or quickly evolves to exist beyond our reach – to places in time and space unknown. Higher because life is pervasive and persistent and simple life more often evolves into intelligent life than we would imagine. I last word is that 10,000 in the Milky Way is a fair guesstimate. I suspect life is very common and I think there are probably millions of planets with complex life like Earth but without humans. If the latter is true, then there should be a World like ours brimming with life within about 100 light years. But first of all, we need to find life elsewhere and we are on the verge of being able to detect the signature of life remotely. If we start finding such signatures (spectral data) within, say 100 light years of the Earth and many, it bodes well that life is everywhere and emergence of intelligence need only be marginal to lead to many civilizations.
We could have imagined that there would be a wide variety of planet types but now with Kepler we know there are. Our planet Earth might be a marginal means of existence for life. We might be very lucky to have a stable star in a quiet neighborhood living under a thin atmosphere. But there could be many more lifeforms that evolve to intelligence within thick atmospheres which may make it safer but also more chaotic to evolve. More massive planets – stronger lifeforms, thicker atmospheres or more oxygen permitting bigger more effective brains. Earth might be rather marginal in many respects but here we have a whole zoo of life and the rest of our solar system is lacking (it appears).
Nice work Rocky. Thanks for that.
I usually shy away from the Drake Equation myself because people can argue the parameters values to use all night and never agree. I’ve always thought that the logic in the equation was sufficient to make the point that the answer is not zero, and probably quite large. After the first time I heard Carl Sagan explain it, and then conclude that it was “mathematically absurd” to think we were alone, I’ve never had any doubt about the matter.
One thing about the equation itself, though; I would have included a factor for distance from the center of the galaxy (1.0 being the center and 0.0 being the outer edges, and ignoring the center black hole complications). It seems to me that what we’re really interested in is not the existence of other communicating life so much as detecting the evidence of it, and the closer you get to the center of the galaxy, the greater, on average, the planet density becomes, so the greater the chance of detection becomes. Also, the shorter distances closer in would help offset the mismatches in time, whereby two civilizations miss one another when one civilization either disappears or evolves technologies too far in advance of the other one. Just my thinking.
Yeah. There are variations on the Drake. One of the apps on my smart phone is called Enhanced. This calculator has a factor (0 to 1) of fraction of suitable stars that reside in the habitable zone of the Milky Way. There is quite likely a habitable zone. Too close to the galactic center and there is too high a risk of gravitational disturbance or irradiation and sterilization by energetic events (nova, etc.). The Sun orbits where there is and has been plenty of gas for accretion and not so much stellar density such that our system is roughed up by the neighborhood. So what you propose is similar to this factor in some Drake Equation variants. SETI talks has an interesting one on ‘statistical’ Drake worth watching (Dr. Maccone, youtube available).
I remind everyone that the Drake equation is a way to organize our ignorance and identify factors that need more research. No scientist should ever try to use it to calculate the number of communicating civilizations in our galaxy or in solar neighborhood, or to believe the results if he or she did. That is a fool’s errand.
In an article I just wrote last evening, I referred to it in that light – the Equation is used to help recognize and focus needed research. I agree and try to emphasize in my comments here that the calculations border on speculative and estimates. As Dr. Drake mentioned last evening, 3 of the 7 factors are known pretty well now (Kepler narrows the range of the 3rd). The 4th factor awaits spectroscopic observations of planets in habitable zones; not too far off. Yes, no scientists banter around a Drake Eq. calculation. For a news blog and comments, it is interesting to entertain what range of numbers are output – 100 to a million is one range but scientists and layman, I think, refuse to imagine a result of 1 or 10, now. One other thing that can be mentioned – the last 3 factors effectively require that we discover signals from ET and more details. Derived estimates for those last 3 await the long sought discovery.
That’s pretty cool, although it would be nice if we could find more of these planets to prove it empirically. So far, the only one I can think of that really qualifies is (maybe) Kepler-62f, which orbits around a K2V star. Most of the others are orbit red dwarf stars.
I’m definitely happy to see that chart of rates of discovery in certain types of planets: slow growth in Jovian numbers, moderate growth in Neptunian numbers, and highest growth in Super-Earth and Earth-size planets. More support for the argument that there are tons of them out there, and our measurements were just biased towards the discovery of big planets first.
We’re still being given “candidates” and “potentially” Earth-like planets, but the data suggest that the possibilities of Earth-like planets in significant numbers are better than ever. The Kepler program is a truly marvelous accomplishment. And the Fermi paradox is more relevant than ever.
I sure would like to see them resurrect the Terrestrial Planet Finder. Data from Kepler and other sources pretty much makes the Automated Planet Finder unnecessary, in my opinion. Don’t we really want to know more about Earth-like planets rather than cataloging the gas giants?
We forgive NASA for bungling. It is now T+5 hours since the news conference and release. Kepler data has changed our view of the Universe for all time. We have plenty of time to assess and absorb all this data and the news conference now matters little.
Its not just habitable planets that are being determined statistically but so much incredible information is being determined that will improve how we understand star formation, planetary formation and the aging of both. Very cool, big wow factor.
http://nasawatch.com/archiv…
Remember the Dimitar Sasselov controversy from a few years ago (2010). He apparently spilled the beans about the number of earth-like planes in the galaxy. So how does yesterday’s news measure up to what Sasselov already told us. This probably goes along with the points that Keith has been making about Keplar PR. Yesterday’s news was not as big a deal as it should have been because I think we already had an idea of it back in 2010.
The 2010 data refers to planet size distribution whereas yesterdays is about earth-sized planets in the habitable zone – 22% +- 8%.
The ire expressed by Keith Cowing over dissemination of results from projects paid by American tax dollars is justified. There is inequality. However, we live in a period of incredible transition on account of the internet, world communications.
The raw data should be freely available and it mostly is but competition and the transition of the analyzed data from public domain to the market place leads to the hanging price tag on knowledge. I think the dissemination of Kepler like data (publicly funded) and results (however not all publicly funded) should be fully socialized and open. A means of distribution of data and knowledge from publicly funded projects should be paid for by tax dollars and released freely to the public. Contentious issue ain’t it.
Guess humans only want to appropriate the Galaxy for our own race. So if Fermi is right then we will have a cakewalk. And if Kardashev is right thank the stars that these higher guys are so many light years away. As for communication with these beings I tend to agree with DeGrasse Tyson’s contention that we cannot even talk with apes…..
WOW!