Category: Exoplanets
Exoplanets break apparent rules for planet formation
| May 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
From Lisa Grossman at ScienceNews: Seven of those exoplanets are in the TRAPPIST-1 system, one of the most exciting families of planets astronomers have discovered to date. At least three TRAPPIST-1 planets might host liquid water on their surface, making them top spots to look for signs of life (SN: 12/23/17, p. 25). Yet those […]
2018: Serious exoplanet search begins
| April 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Intelligent Design |
From Lisa Grossman at Science News: TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is headed to an orbit between the Earth and the moon, a journey that will take about two months. In its first two years, the telescope will seek planets orbiting 200,000 nearby, bright stars, and identify the best planets for further study. TESS’ […]
Water forms superionic ice, a “new” metal-like state with H+ ions as charge carriers
| February 12, 2018 | Posted by kairosfocus under Exoplanets, Geology, Logic and First Principles of right reason, UD's Sci-Tech watch |
Water is of central interest to ID and to many other fields of study relevant to the cosmos and in the world of life. Accordingly, the recent experimental discovery of a predicted metal-like state with a grid of O atoms and with H+ ions flowing through, is significant news. As NY Times reports: >>This new […]
Tech advance may make Earth-sized exoplanet analysis easier
| February 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Good project. Hope differs from hype by more than a single letter. From Brian Wang at ScienceNews: Babak Saif and Lee Feinberg at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have shown for the first time that they can dynamically detect subatomic- or picometer-sized distortions — changes that are far smaller than an atom […]
ET life: Massive dust storms deprive Mars of water
| January 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
From Dan Garisto at ScienceNews: Storms of powdery Martian soil are contributing to the loss of the planet’s remaining water. This newly proposed mechanism for water loss, reported January 22 in Nature Astronomy, might also hint at how Mars originally became dehydrated. Researchers used over a decade of imaging data taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance […]
Some exoplanets may just be mirages
| January 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Intelligent Design |
From Leah Crane at New Scientist: Some exoplanets around red giant stars may be no more than an optical illusion. Variations in starlight that appear to be caused by orbiting worlds could come from ripples in the stars’ surfaces instead. … (paywall)More. Actually, they are never a mirage. No, really. Never. Some things are just […]
“Alien Megastructure Is Not The Cause Of The Dimming Of Tabby’s Star ” (Design Inference filter in action; Sci Fi Fans disappointed)
According to SciTech Daily in a January 3, 2018 article, Tabby’s star, aka KIC 8462852, has had a mysterious brightening and dimming cycle. (Such a cycle, of course raises the interesting thought of the erection of a Dyson Sphere or a similar megastructure.) As the article reports: >>A team of more than 200 researchers, including […]
Researchers: Chances of life on exoplanets less than supposed, due to stellar winds
| December 16, 2017 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
Despite the recent NASA announcement, which kind of fizzled. From ScienceDaily: Researchers led by space physicist Chuanfei Dong of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University have recently raised doubts about water on — and thus potential habitability of — frequently cited exoplanets that orbit red dwarfs, the […]
Rob Sheldon: NASA’s big announcement about exoplanets”underwhelming”
| December 15, 2017 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Fine tuning, Intelligent Design |
A mere desire to support the notion that we are nothing special. At 1:00 pm ET, December 14 (yesterday), we were told by NASA: NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Thursday, Dec. 14, to announce the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The discovery was made by researchers using machine […]
Pretty discouraging news from exoplanet research: We’re not sure what to look for
| November 21, 2017 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
And most don’t think life will be found on an exoplanet by 2040. From Alexandra Witze at Nature: It turns out that water worlds may be some of the worst places to look for living things. One study presented at the meeting shows how a planet covered in oceans could be starved of phosphorus, a […]
Researchers: Water flow on Mars turns out to be sand and dust
| November 21, 2017 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Not good news for Mars life. From ScienceDaily: Dark features previously proposed as evidence for significant liquid water flowing on Mars have now been identified as granular flows, where sand and dust move rather than liquid water, according to a new article. These findings indicate that present-day Mars may not have a significant volume of […]
Newly discovered giant planet does not follow the rules
| November 4, 2017 | Posted by News under Astronomy, Exoplanets, Intelligent Design |
From Nicole Mortillaro at CBC: The star is a red M-dwarf, the most common star in our universe. But until now, it wasn’t believed that a gaseous planet of such a size, would ever exist orbiting this type of low-mass star. … The reason astronomers believed that a gas giant this large wasn’t capable of […]
Rob Sheldon: The skinny on those ten new exoplanets
| June 21, 2017 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design |
As in: NASA said Monday it has found new evidence of 219 planets outside our Solar System. Ten of those exoplanets appear to be similar to the size of the Earth and orbit their stars in the habitable zone. From our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon The Kepler telescope had a glitch in 2013 that […]
Rob Sheldon: Are the seven new planets, three “habitable,” just hype? Read the fine print.
| February 23, 2017 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Intelligent Design, News |
Yesterday, NASA reported a record-breaking discovery of seven new Earth-size planets around a single star, three in the habitable zone: The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system [TRAPPIST-1]. All of these seven planets could have liquid water – key to life […]
Religion and ET: What’s wrong with science writing today
| December 19, 2016 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Media, Religion |
Exhibit A: “If we made contact with aliens, how would religions react?” From Brandon Ambrosino at BBC: The discovery of life on another planet might seem incompatible with faith in a deity. Yet many theologians are already open to the existence of extraterrestrials, argues the writer Brandon Ambrosino. In 2014, Nasa awarded $1.1M to the […]
Exoplanets: Robbing the term “Earth-like” of meaning
| October 22, 2016 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Intelligent Design, News |
From Nathaniel Sharping at Discover blogs: Every time astronomers discover another exoplanet, the first question is,”Does it look like Earth?” Finding an Earth-like exoplanet would certainly increase our chances of finding life, as we know it, on that distant world. We could finally prove that we’re not all alone in this big, cold universe. But, […]
Mashable: Quit promoting just any new planet as Earth-like
| August 29, 2016 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, News |
From science writer Miriam Kramer at Mashable: Yes, it’s amazing that this possibly rocky planet is orbiting a star just 4 light-years away, possibly close enough to one day launch a mission to, but there is still so much we don’t know about this brave new world. Plus, Proxima b is far from being a […]
Rob Sheldon on the new Earth-like planet
| August 27, 2016 | Posted by News under Exoplanets |
From Jacob Aron at New Scientist, A planet just 30 per cent more massive than Earth orbits in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, which is just 4.25 light years away. How Earth-like is it really? … The planet – Proxima b – was discovered by astronomers who spent years looking for signs of the […]
New Earth-like planet?
| August 12, 2016 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, News |
Don’t bet the farm but, from a href=”http://phys.org/news/2016-08-scientists-unveil-earth-like-planet.html” target=”another”>Phys.org: The exoplanet orbits a well-investigated star called Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system, the magazine said, quoting anonymous sources. “The still nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like and orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid […]
NPR: Were There Aliens Before Us?
| July 16, 2016 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, News |
Asks Adam Frank: Earlier this year, my colleague Woody Sullivan and I published a paper in the journal Astrobiology presenting new results that, I believe, throw new light on the ancient question. And, based on that work, last month I wrote an OpEd in The New York Times that ran with provocative title “Yes, There […]
