Is NASA About to Announce A 2nd Earth Found?




by Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media


The Kepler Mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.



Kepler Mission scientists will reveal the space telescope's latest discoveries at a news briefing in Washington on Monday, Jan. 4, 2010. The announcement will be made at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) at a news conference during the 215th national meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park hotel.



News media may participate remotely via a live audio conference call. Although the news conference will not be broadcast live on NASA Television, Kepler video will be aired on NASA TV immediately following the news briefing on the media channel.

NASA's Kepler mission looks for new planets



SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- As the story goes, on Christmas night 2,000 years ago, wise men followed a star in the night sky to reach the baby Jesus. NASA-Ames is following the stars too, looking for life on other worlds, and astronomers have a new celestial tool to help them.

"If we're going to be looking for planets, earth-like planets are the key," Foothill College Astronomy Department Chair Andrew Fraknoi said.

Fraknoi has loved astronomy since childhood. He says NASA's Kepler mission is one of the most exciting in quite some time.

Related Content

More: NASA's Kepler mission

More: Information about Johannes Kepler

More: Foothill College Observatory

More: Astronomical Society of the Pacific
"In the last 16 years, we've discovered over 400 planets going around other stars, but the methods so far that we have been using only allowed us to find big planets like Jupiter," Fraknoi said.

Kepler is a telescope designed to find planets orbiting other stars by looking for a break in the star light as a planet moves in front of it.

The challenge now is to find planets that are half to twice the size of the earth in the habitable zone of their stars, where it is possible that water and even life might exist.

"One of the best presents that astronomy could give the human species is the sense that we are not alone in the universe," Fraknoi said.

Rising from a sea of gas and dust, the Horsehead Nebula is one of the most photographed objects in the sky. But Fraknoi says Kepler has already made important discoveries, they are just not so well known.

"It's possible that Kepler will report already, just in these first six months of its operation, on the discovery of a few new planets around other stars; they may not yet be Earths, but they will demonstrate that Kepler has exactly the capability we wanted to build into it, which was rapid and interesting discoveries being made all the time from watching these 100,000 stars," Fraknoi said. "I think that it would be perhaps the most exciting discovery in the history of the human race, to know that there are other intelligent creatures out there, thinking about the universe the way that we are. The Kepler Mission is one step in that quest."

Kepler will spend 3.5 years surveying more than 100,000 sun-like stars.

The Big Reveal

http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/nasakeplernews...s&NewsID=15


CORRECTION - Remote participation dial-in information.
(The phone number for news media to remotely participate in the news briefing has been changed. Please use the corrected version of this media advisory).

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - Kepler Mission scientists will reveal the space telescope's latest discoveries at a news briefing in Washington on Monday, Jan. 4, 2010.

The announcement will be made at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) at a news conference during the 215th national meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park hotel.

News media may participate remotely via a live audio conference call by calling 866-579-8110 from within the U.S. or 720-279-9820 internationally; when prompted enter passcode 121518. A live Web feed of the speakers' slides will be available during the presentation by visiting http://www.showmaestro.com/press. In order to view the slidecast, you must have QuickTime installed on your computer. To download a free copy, visit http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download.

NASA Ames will post the speakers' slides for downloading at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/m...conference.html once the briefing begins.

In addition, Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist on the Kepler science team, will be available for interviews at NASA Ames following the news briefing. Media interested in interviewing Lissauer should contact Rachel Prucey at 650-604-0643, 650-930-6149 or by emailing rachel.l.prucey@nasa.gov.

Although the news conference will not be broadcast live on NASA Television, Kepler video will be aired on NASA TV immediately following the news briefing on the media channel.

For NASA TV schedule information and to watch NASA TV online, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/m...conference.html

Kepler telescope has turned up five 'exoplanets,' NASA scientist announces

By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 4, 2010; 11:33 AM

The universe is looking more familiar and yet stranger at the same time.

Monday morning at an astronomy meeting here in Washington, the lead scientist for a new NASA space telescope announced the discovery of five more "exoplanets" far beyond our own solar system, and expressed optimism that his team is on a path to finding an Earth-sized planet in an Earth-like orbit in the near future.

But the new trove of data from the telescope named Kepler has also turned up space oddities that make astronomers wonder what exactly they're looking at.

For example, Kepler found a star with a small orbiting object that is hotter than the star itself. The object is too hot to be a planet but is the wrong size and density to fit any known profile for a dwarf star.

One of the five planets announced by William J. Borucki, the top scientist for the telescope, is so fluffy that "it has the density of Styrofoam," he said.

Kepler was launched last March and is in an Earth-trailing orbit around the sun. It was designed to look at more than 100,000 stars in our galaxy in a patch of sky in the constellation Cygnus. The telescope finds planets using a technique that measures the very slight dimming of starlight as a planet passes in front of a star.

Most planets, particularly small, rocky bodies like the Earth that orbit fairly far from the star, won't be properly aligned to be seen from our vantage point. But the detection of even a few "Earths" could be extrapolated to suggest that there are a great many such planets in our galaxy. Although hundreds of "exoplanets" have been found since the first such detection in 1995, most are "hot Jupiters," and none has been simultaneously the size of Earth and in the habitable zone -- the orbit where water might be liquid at the surface.

Borucki, speaking at the American Astronomical Society meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park, announced results from the first 43 days of Kepler data, with another eight months of data yet to be analyzed. The early results were necessarily skewed toward the most easily detected planets, which tend to be large, Jupiter-sized planets that orbit their parent stars in just a few days. Borucki said that about 100 candidate planets are currently being studied as ground-based telescopes follow up the initial Kepler detections.

The more significant result might be that Kepler is working splendidly. Astronomers not affiliated with Kepler were enthusiastic about the news announced Monday.

"If there are Earth-like planets in habitable zones, we will find them," said Mario Livio, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "This is going to be really a treasure of data that they will produce."

Alan Boss, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said that Kepler is finding things that no one has ever seen before.

"They're going to find all kinds of weird stuff," Boss said. "The universe, it really is a weird place. It's fantastic."

For example, Kepler found a star with a small orbiting object that is hotter than the star itself. The object is too hot to be a planet but is the wrong size and density to fit any known profile for a dwarf star. ***

They should measure the voltage potential of this 'hotter' object, if its charge is significantly higher than the body it's orbitting, then currents will be attracted to the object rather than the other body.

It's an electric Universe you dummies!!

The announcement should come within the next five thousand years,

no later.

I'm underwhelmed. Especially after reading this a few hours ago:


Keith's note: I am deliberately posting this press release - in advance of the embargo claimed by STScI - given that NASA HQ PAO (politically appointed offical) has repeatedly told me - officially - that official agency policy is that no news releases regarding NASA research or news are ever to be issued under media embargo. Moreover, two NASA civil servant PAO officers are listed on this release, John Grunsfeld is a NASA employee, and STScI is wholly funded by NASA.

If NASA PAO is going to claim that a policy regarding embargoes exists, then it needs to enforce that policy. Otherwise their "policy" is hollow and pointless - and also not in the best interest of the taxpayers who pay for this research in the first place. Oh, by the way, I already have several press releases regarding wholly NASA-funded research that are under embargo - in direct contravention to stated agency policy. Again, where is the "transparency"? Where is the "openness"?

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/01/exce...i.html#comments

FROM THE LOOKS OF DAT NASA LOGO THE SYMBOLISM LOOKS PURTY TRANSPARENT TO ME?

Planet-hunting telescope unearths hot mysteries
By SETH BORENSTEIN
,
AP

WASHINGTON -NASA's new planet-hunting telescope has found two mystery objects that are too hot to be planets and too small to be stars.
The Kepler Telescope, launched in March, discovered the two new heavenly bodies, each circling its own star. Telescope chief scientist Bill Borucki of NASA said the objects are thousands of degrees hotter than the stars they circle. That means they probably aren't planets. They are bigger and hotter than planets in our solar system, including dwarf planets.
"The universe keeps making strange things stranger than we can think of in our imagination," said Jon Morse, head of astrophysics for NASA.
The new discoveries don't quite fit into any definition of known astronomical objects, and so far don't have a classification of their own. Details about the mystery objects were presented Monday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington.
For now, NASA researcher Jason Rowe, who found the objects, said he calls them "hot companions."
How hot? Try 26,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hot enough to melt lead or iron.
There are two leading theories for what the objects might be and those theories cover both ends of the cosmic life cycle:
_Rowe suggests they are newly born planets. New planets have extremely high temperatures, and in this case Rowe speculates they might be only about 200 million years old.
_Ronald Gilliland of the Space Telescope Science Institute says they could be white dwarf stars that are dying and stripping off their outer shells and shrinking.
The primary focus of the Kepler telescope's three-year mission is to find out how common other planets — especially Earth-like planets — are in the universe. To do that, it is scanning a small chunk of the sky, about one four-hundredth of the night sky with more than 150,000 stars to look for planets.
The telescope in just six weeks found its first five confirmed planets, slightly more than astronomers expected from such a quick search. There are hundreds of other candidates that need confirmation.
The five planets are all much larger than Earth, much closer to their stars than Earth is to the sun, and way too hot for life, Borucki said. A couple of these planets are close to 3,000 degrees.
"Looking at them is like looking at a blast furnace," Borucki said. "Certainly, no place to look for life."
One of the newly discovered planets is so airy that "it has the density of Styrofoam," Borucki said.
"There's going to be all kinds of weird stuff out there," said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, who wasn't part of the research. "This is an unparalleled data set. The universe really is a weird place. It's fantastic."
—

"Finding a Second Earth Could Happen Anytime Now": NASA/Harvard Search Teams



"It could happen almost any time now. We now have the technological capability to identify Earth-like planets around the smallest stars."

David Latham -Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

To date, Planet hunters have spotted more than 400 planets beyond our solar system, but the vast majority are hot, Jupiter-sized planets that would dwarf the Earth and are almost certainly lifeless.

Last summer, a collaboration between the COROT and HARPS systems detected a rocky expolanet five hundred light years away, a small stone ball less than twice the diameter and about five times the mass of Earth - giving it the same density as our place. Don't imagine any aliens just yet though (or if you do, make them pretty heat resistant) - it orbits only 2.5 million kilometers from its star, sixteen times closer than even Mercury gets. The expolanet's "year" is thus shorter than our day - meaning that even if there is an asbestos-based civilization their economy is utterly devastated by birthdays.

COROT is the COnvection ROtation and planetary Transit satellite, scanning thousands of stars to see the tiny dips in brightness caused by planets. HARPS is the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, a super-sensitive spectrograph installed on a Chilean telescope to accurately identify how fast a wavelength source moves. Between them, they were able to identify the location of the planet and work out it's orbital radius and speed, thereby working out the mass and size. And with names like that, they probably combine to form Voltron's big brother.

Astronomers may be on the brink of discovering a second Earth-like planet, a find that would add fresh impetus to the search for extraterrestrial life. Advances in technology suggest scientists are on the verge of being able to detect the presence of small, rocky planets, much like our own, around distant stars for the first time. The planets are considered the most likely habitats for extraterrestrial life.

Finding a rocky planet with an Earth-like density brings us one step closer to discovering another planet similar to our own. A twin-Earth beyond the solar system could provide the best chance of finding life elsewhere in the universe.

The majority of the atoms in our bodies were created in the Big Bang 15 billion years ago. Most of the mass in our bodies are oxygen atoms that were created by generations of stars that preceded the formation of our Sun. We are a subset of the physical universe. And through astronomy this negligible subset is slowly acquiring -however limited- an awareness of the total universe that created it.

The great thing about outer space? It's absolutely full of fantastic stuff just waiting for us to be able to see it: every time we improve our observations, either the equipment or analysis, something new and brilliant jumps out of the universe saying "Here I am!" Now fans of interplanetary ideas have been rewarded with the very first rocky planet outside the Solar System.
Everything we've seen previously has been some Jupiter-like gas giant, a huge ball of not-solid-stuff-like-Earth that's still interesting but - since we don't imagine meeting alien clouds very much - not as exciting. But it isn't the case that space only features balls of gas, it's just that our technology couldn't see anything smaller. Until now.

It's awesome stuff for scientists. Yet another example of how we'll never be bored, how the universe is simply stuffed with things waiting for us to detect them.

Luke McKinney with Casey Kazan

The Earth is hotter than the Sun - at least the center is.

Astronomers Predict Discovery Of Avatar Moon
Habitable alien moons such as 'Pandora' – the world featured in the blockbuster film Avatar – could be detectable within a decade, says a new study. In that movie, the fictional, life-harbouring moon is found orbiting a gas giant called Polyphemus, which itself orbits the star Alpha Centauri A. NASA's Kepler Mission has already shown the potential to detect Earth-sized planets within the Milky Way. Until now, astronomers have mainly found Jupiter-sized planets; which are easy to detect because they are so large. But scientists have begun to speculate that life is also likely to be found on the moons of gas giants, orbiting within the 'habitable zone' of their stars – the region warm enough for liquid water to exist. "If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade," said study author Lisa Kaltenegger, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Boston, USA. "All of the gas giant planets in our Solar System have rocky and icy moons. That raises the possibility that alien 'Jupiters' will also have moons and some of those may be Earth-sized and able to hold onto an atmosphere," she said.

I do wonder - is the habitable zone larger than we think?

What controls the temperature more - the distance from the Sun, or the atmosphere itself?

Anyone care to explain how a moon of Jupiter has water?

COMING SOON: Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule

How often have you stepped outside on a clear night, looked up at the evening sky, and as you stared at the infinite expanses of space and the cosmos, felt a yearning in your heart for something more?

Regardless of where you’ve been, where you are, or where you’re going in life, you’ve probably questioned reality around you, and wondered what else might exist out there. Modern statistics tell us that nine out of every ten or so people not only profess a belief in the paranormal; they also claim to have had experiences of their own. Whether they’ve seen a ghost in an old house, a strange light or other object drifting through the sky, or maybe just had a “feeling” that ended up having a profound, if not life-saving effect later on, we’re met daily with examples of unseen forces that play outside the realms of human perception.

If you have ever wondered “what else” exists around you, witnessed something strange and inexplicable, or felt as though someone–or perhaps something–has extended an unseen helping hand from another realm, look no further. But be warned: the path to discovery hasn’t come to an end… in fact, it has only just begun.

I am proud (and very excited) to announce that my new book, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule: The Search for Sentient Intelligence from Other Worlds is literally only days away from being released. That’s why I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you, the readers of The Gralien Report, about this book before anyone else gets to hear about it.

It has been a long road to discovery in completing this book, which I feel best represents all the unique points and parallels that bridge psychology, the paranormal, and historical mystical practices dating back to the dawn of humanity. I know that’s quite a statement, but thanks to the stories, insights, and most of all, support from so many fine folks like you, I simply couldn’t think of this book as anything less. It is, in essence, the culmination of my own best evaluation of what my good friend, Nick Redfern, calls “the twilight world of Forteana.” Speaking of Nick Redfern, here’s an excerpt of what he had to say in the book’s foreword, which he was kind enough to write for me:

Hanks is, in my view, firmly on the right track. A new, fresh approach to the world of Forteana is sorely needed if we are to actually get some answers, instead of merely collecting more and more reports. Micah Hanks is one of those individuals at the absolute forefront of skillfully negotiating the dark waters that will ultimately provide us with the answers that we seek. Enjoy his book, digest its contents carefully, and above all else: learn. And before I forget: throw out your bulging, aged and yellowing files and reports. They are now as extinct and redundant as a T-Rex.

-NICK REDFERN, author of Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction

Within the pages of Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule, you’ll be given a perspective of some of history’s strangest mysteries in ways you’ve never before seen. For instance:

* What role did the infamous magician Aleister Crowley play in the history of modern Ufology? Furthermore, did he somehow manage to summon an alien “gray” during one of his magical rituals?
* Out of 80,000 plants that were available, how did native tribes in the Amazon jungles discover the right mix of ingredients that allow DMT, the psychoactive ingredient in their ritual ayahuasca brew, to become active; a feat anthropologist Jeremy Narby says stood a one in six-million chance of discovery?
* Do Tibetan mystics possess the strange ability to create “tulpas,” literal thought-forms that manifest physically from their thoughts alone? Even stranger, could a sixteenth century Jewish mystic have done the same thing in creating a “golem” in medieval Prague?
* Did famed scholar of the macabre, H.P. Lovecraft, somehow predict that the human pineal gland could act as a gateway between unseen worlds? If so, did the research of famous inventor Nikola Tesla not only prove Lovecraft’s own predictions, but illustrate ways we can literally contact creatures From Beyond?
* Do mirrors act as portals to other realms? According to Dr. Raymond Moody, the spirits of deceased loved ones can actually communicate through reflective surfaces… but what else might be capable of coming through?
* How are sleep paralysis, UFO abductions, out of body travel, psychedelic visions and near death experiences all interconnected? Could they all be much more similar than we’ve previously imagined?

If you have ever wondered about these enigmatic mysteries, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule is the practical handbook to understanding the unseen realms of consciousness and beyond. You too can learn the secrets that ancient magicians, modern mystics, entheogenic pioneers, and the technological innovators of tomorrow have used, and will continue to use, in reaching the inner realms of both human consciousness, as well as the outlying cosmos.

There is much, much more to come, and I can’t wait to bring you along on a fascinating journey of insight into our world’s greatest mysteries. Please visit The Gralien Report often during the next few weeks for more information about how you can purchase my new book, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule: The Search for Sentient Intelligence from Other Worlds.

http://www.proxywhore.com/invboard/index.p...c=190550&hl

DID YA NOTICE FLAN I POSTED THE STORY 2 WHOLE DAYZ BEFORE YOU?

Not a contest or a race. Compiling/keeping the info together and maybe fleshing things out for any reading is why I did/do it.
HTH

First Direct Spectrum of an Exoplanet Orbiting a Sun-like Star

Written by Nancy Atkinson

Image of the HR 8799 system. Image credit: MPIA / W. Brandner

Astronomers have obtained the first direct spectrum – a “chemical fingerprint” – of a planet orbiting a distant, Sun-like star, providing direct data about the composition of the planet's atmosphere. An international team of researchers studied the planetary system around HR 8799 a bright, young star with 1.5 times the mass of our Sun, and focused on one of three planets orbiting the star. While the results were unusual and pose a challenge to current models of the exoplanet's atmosphere, the accomplishment represents a milestone in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe.

The planetary system resembles a scaled-up version of our own Solar System and includes three giant planets, which had been detected in 2008 in another study. “Our target was the middle planet of the three," said team member and PhD student Carolina Bergfors, from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, (MPIA), "which is roughly ten times more massive than Jupiter and has a temperature of about 800 degrees Celsius,”


Caption: The NaCo instrument, mounted at ESO's Very Large Telescope on Paranal in Chile. NaCo is a combination of adaptive optics (which counteracts some of the blurring effect of the Earth's atmosphere) and the camera/spectrograph CONICA, which was developed at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Image credit: ESO

The researchers recorded the spectrum using the NACO instrument ion the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.

As the host star is several thousand times brighter than the planet, and the two are very close, obtaining such a spectrum is an immense feat.

“It's like trying to see what a candle is made of, by observing it next to a blinding 300 Watt lamp – from a distance of 2 kilometres [1.3 miles],” said Markus Janson of the University of Toronto, lead author of the paper.

Bergfors added, “It took more than five hours of exposure time, but we were able to tease out the planet's spectrum from the host star's much brighter light.”

However, the spectra of the exoplanet's atmosphere shows a clear deviation between the observed spectral shape and what is predicted by the current standard models. “The features observed in the spectrum are not compatible with current theoretical models,” said MPIA's Wolfgang Brandner, a co-author of the study.

The models assume chemical equilibrium between the different chemical elements present in the atmosphere, and a continuous temperature profile (hotter layers below colder layers). At longer wavelengths (above 4 micrometres), the planet is significantly fainter than expected, which points to molecular absorption in its atmosphere. The simplest explanation is that the atmosphere contains less methane and more carbon monoxide than previously assumed.

“We need to take into account a more detailed description of the atmospheric dust clouds, or accept that the atmosphere has a different chemical composition than previously assumed,” Brandner said.

In time, the astronomers hope that this technique will help them gain a better understanding of how planets form. Next, they hope to record the spectra of the two other giant planets orbiting HR 8799 – which would represent the first time that astronomers would be able to compare the spectra of three exoplanets that form part of one and the same system. As a much more distant goal, the technique will allow astronomers to examine exoplanets for habitability, or even signs of life.

Source: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

"Pandora Everywhere" -The Icon for Internet 3.0?

Pandoraeverwhere Pandora, the next-generation online music streaming service, is looking at life beyond the web, embracing what's emerging as the "device-agnostic" Internet.

“We became profitable for the fourth quarter of 2009, and now we’re shooting for profits for the entire 2010 ,” Pandora’s chief technology officer, Tom Conrad, told industry pundit Om Malik. The 10-year-old company plans to reach that goal by embedding itself in a wide range consumer electronics devices that feature an Internet connection from auto dashboards, to home HD TV panels, to the ubiquitous smartphone.


In 2009, Pandora’s U.S. audience of registered users reached 43 million and at present nearly 100 different consumer devices other than computers are streaming the service. In December 2009 alone, 3 million new listeners joined Pandora — of which 2.7 million of them activated the service on a device other than a computer, according to the company.

Malik points out that Pandora rapid growth is riding the crest of three major trends:

1. The marriage of computing and connectivity that can now take place without the shackles of being tethered to a single location. It’s among the biggest disruptive forces of modern times, one that will redefine business models for decades to come.
2. The pervasiveness of the mobile Internet.
3. The availability of low-cost, always-on computers (aka smartphones) that allow sophisticated software to conduct complex tasks on the go.

Pandora got a big boost at the recently concluded CES trade show in Las Vegas, where it showed off the fact that its music service is now being embedded in high-volume devices -everything from thin LED televisions to Blu-ray players to digital frames that are coming to market in 2010, among them devices made by LG, Samsung, Sony, Sanyo, Haier, Divx, Toshiba and Panasonic. The biggest victory, Conrad says is coming from the embedding of Pandora in automobiles through partnerships with Ford, Alpine and Pioneer -three companies that are going to be putting Pandora inside their cars and automobile music systems, respectively. The service will piggy-back on 3G wireless connections on the latest generation of cell phones. Conrad notes that “Nearly 47 percent of radio listening is in the car."

As Conrad explained, the web currently accounts for 20 percent of total radio listening, which means that Pandora needs to expand beyond just the browser if it wants to go after “80 percent of the opportunity.” Meanwhile, the iPhone and Google's Android platform have triggered the new smartphone-driven mobile era that has transformed Pandora into a true Internet powerhouse. In just 18 months, mobile (and other connected devices) have risen to account for nearly 30 percent of Pandora’s usage.

Our prediction: Pandora will do to traditional, terrestrial radio what the web is doing to newspapers and TV. And that's so cool!

Casey Kazan

Astro-snorts

By PETE SAMSON, US Editor

Published: Today

A BAG of cocaine has been found in a Space Shuttle hangar - sparking a Nasa investigation.

US space chiefs fear an employee was seeking a different kind of out-of-this-world experience in the restricted area at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

About 200 staff and contractors have access to the hangar, which houses the shuttle Discovery.

Six astronauts including Briton Nick Patrick are due to blast off in March. But space chiefs insisted the mission goes ahead as planned.

The US space agency started testing and interviewing all staff on Wednesday.

Drug sniffer dogs were also brought in to find the culprit. Three years ago, Nasa was forced to deny allegations of boozy parties after an official report claimed two astronauts had flown into space while drunk. The discovery of drugs in a hangar before a mission raises safety concerns and will embarrass new Nasa chief Charlie Bolden.

Nasa spokesman Allard Beutel said: "There are no obvious indications of anyone acting oddly or under the influence. People know how serious this is - it's not acceptable."

p.samson

Light from Faraway Planet Directly Detected
By SPACE.com Staff

posted: 13 January 2010
08:08 am ET

For the first time, astronomers have directly detected the light signature of a planet orbiting an almost sun-like star. This signature can tell scientists the chemical makeup of the planet, which can help them understand how it formed. in the future these signatures could be used to look for signs of life on other planets.

The planet is a giant, about 10 times as massive as Jupiter, and it orbits between two other giants around a star similar to our sun in a scaled-up version of our own solar system.

The three giant companions were detected in 2008 and range in mass from seven to 10 times that of Jupiter, with orbits between 20 and 70 times as far from their host star as Earth is from the sun. The system also features two belts of smaller objects, similar to the asteroid and Kuiper belts around our sun. The system's star is about 1.5 times as massive as the sun.

Previously, scientists have taken the spectra of stars – or the signature of the amount of light they reflect and radiate at different wavelengths – by watching an "exoplanetary eclipse" with a space telescope. As the exoplanet passes directly behind its host star from the perspective of Earth, the light that comes only from the planet can be subtracted out from that that comes from the star.

But, this method can only be used on the small fraction of exoplanets that have the right kind of orientation with respect to the Earth.

The team of astronomers that observed the giant planet were able to do so without looking for an eclipse, instead detecting the planet's light directly with a ground-based telescope: the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile.

"After more than five hours of exposure time, we were able to tease out the planet's spectrum from the host star's much brighter light," said team member Carolina Bergfors.

Picking out the planet's light is tricky because the host star is several thousand times brighter than the planet.

"It's like trying to see what a candle is made of, by observing it from a distance of two kilometers [1.2 miles] when it's next to a blindingly bright 300 Watt lamp," said team member Markus Janson of the University of Toronto.

The light spectrum of the planet can show what the atmosphere of the world is like, though in this case it reveals that the atmosphere is still poorly understood, not matching up to any current models.

Eventually, though, scientists hope to be able to more easily detect chemical signs of life on other worlds by their signatures in light spectra. Certain molecules that are important to life or a potential sign of it that have been found are carbon dioxide, water vapor, silicate minerals and sodium.

The team hopes to use the same methods to get the spectra of the other two giant planets in the system, to do a comparison between them.

"This will surely shed new light on the processes that lead to the formation of planetary system like our own," Janson said.

The team's findings are detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.

VLT Captures First Direct Spectrum of an Exoplanet

The bright and very young star HR 8799, about 130 light-years away from Earth, hosts a planetary system that looks like a scaled-up model of our own Solar System. This NACO image shows the star and the middle planet (marked), of which the astronomers were able to tease out the planet’s spectrum from the host star’s much brighter light.
Credit: ESO/M. Janson
By studying a triple planetary system that resembles a scaled-up version of our own Sun’s family of planets, astronomers have been able to obtain the first direct spectrum -- the “chemical fingerprint” -- of a planet orbiting a distant star, thus bringing new insights into the planet’s formation and composition. The result represents a milestone in the search for life elsewhere in the Universe.

“The spectrum of a planet is like a fingerprint. It provides key information about the chemical elements in the planet’s atmosphere,” says Markus Janson, lead author of a paper reporting the new findings. “With this information, we can better understand how the planet formed and, in the future, we might even be able to find tell-tale signs of the presence of life.”

The researchers obtained the spectrum of a giant exoplanet that orbits the bright, very young star HR 8799. The system is at about 130 light-years from Earth. The star has 1.5 times the mass of the Sun, and hosts a planetary system that resembles a scaled-up model of our own Solar System. Three giant companion planets were detected in 2008 by another team of researchers, with masses between 7 and 10 times that of Jupiter. They are between 20 and 70 times as far from their host star as the Earth is from the Sun; the system also features two belts of smaller objects, similar to our solar system’s asteroid and Kuiper belts.

“Our target was the middle planet of the three, which is roughly ten times more massive than Jupiter and has a temperature of about 800 degrees Celsius,” says team member Carolina Bergfors. “After more than five hours of exposure time, we were able to tease out the planet’s spectrum from the host star’s much brighter light.”

This is the first time the spectrum of an exoplanet orbiting a normal, almost Sun-like star has been obtained directly. Previously, the only spectra to be obtained required a space telescope to watch an exoplanet pass directly behind its host star in an “exoplanetary eclipse”, and then the spectrum could be extracted by comparing the light of the star before and after. However, this method can only be applied if the orientation of the exoplanet’s orbit is exactly right, which is true for only a small fraction of all exoplanetary systems. The present spectrum, on the other hand, was obtained from the ground, using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), in direct observations that do not depend on the orbit’s orientation.

Spectrum of planet around HR 8799.
Credit: ESO/M. Janson


As the host star is several thousand times brighter than the planet, this is a remarkable achievement. “It’s like trying to see what a candle is made of, by observing it from a distance of two kilometers when it’s next to a blindingly bright 300 Watt lamp,” says Janson.

The European Southern Observatory in Chile.
Credit: ESO
The discovery was made possible by the infrared instrument NACO, mounted on the VLT, and relied heavily on the extraordinary capabilities of the instrument’s adaptive optics system. Even more precise images and spectra of giant exoplanets are expected both from the next generation instrument SPHERE, to be installed on the VLT in 2011, and from the European Extremely Large Telescope.

The newly collected data show that the atmosphere enclosing the planet is still poorly understood. “The features observed in the spectrum are not compatible with current theoretical models,” explains co-author Wolfgang Brandner. “We need to take into account a more detailed description of the atmospheric dust clouds, or accept that the atmosphere has a different chemical composition from that previously assumed.”

The astronomers hope to soon get their hands on the fingerprints of the other two giant planets so they can compare, for the first time, the spectra of three planets belonging to the same system. “This will surely shed new light on the processes that lead to the formation of planetary systems like our own,” concludes Janson.

Earth's twin planet will be found by the end of the year, leading astronomer says

By Graham Smith
Last updated at 12:02 PM on 26th January 2010


The first Earth-like planet outside the solar system will have been discovered by the end of the year, one of the world's leading astronomers said yesterday.

Professor Michel Mayor, the scientist in charge of the team who detected the first extrasolar planet in 1995, claimed that the chance of finding a planet that is habitable for humans is now imminent.

The astronomer, of Geneva University, said that recent technological progress that allows the observation of planets outside the solar system now makes the prospect of locating a planet of a similar make-up to Earth extremely likely.
Professor Michel Mayor

Twin Earth: Professor Michel Mayor said yesterday that the chance of finding a planet outside the solar system that is habitable for humans is now imminent

Professor Mayor said: 'The search for twins of Earth is motivated by the ultimate prospect of finding sites with favourable conditions for the development of life.

'We’ve entered a new phase in this search.'

He was speaking at a conference at the Royal Society to mark the anniversary of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, known as SETI.