Posted on 10/01/2005 5:42:25 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Are we alone in the universe? Are there planets like Earth around other "suns" that might harbor life? Thanks to a recent technology breakthrough on a key NASA planet-finding project, the dream of answering those questions is no longer light-years away.
On a crystal clear, star-filled night at Hawaii's Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, NASA engineers successfully suppressed the blinding light of three stars, including the well-known Vega, by 100 times. This breakthrough will enable scientists to detect the dim dust disks around stars, where planets might be forming. Normally the disks are obscured by the glare of the starlight.
Engineers accomplished this challenging feat with the Keck Interferometer, which links the observatory's two 10-meter (33-feet) telescopes. By combining light from the telescopes, the Keck Interferometer has a resolving power equivalent to a football-field sized telescope. The "technological touchdown" of blocking starlight was achieved by adding an instrument called a "nuller
(Excerpt) Read more at jpl.nasa.gov ...
Nuller, nuller, neener, neener.
To boldly go...
Great! Now maybe we'll come closer to finding a place to send all the liberals!
I haven't lost hope that in my lifetime we'll be able to photograph extrasolar planets as clearly as those in our own solar system. That should give the younguns a nudge.
I would like to join thanks
The other planet will probably just pull the same thing on us.
"So far, scientists around the world have found 150 planets orbiting other stars. Most are giants, like Jupiter; none is as small as Earth. Scientists believe the best odds of finding life outside our solar system are on Earth-sized planets, particularly those with the right temperature, density and chemistry."
I'm in my 50s, and the march of science in my own lifetime is amazing to me. This is one great example. I can now hope we will find life on another planet within my own lifetime. This amazes me.
What's wrong with Pluto?
God is not only greater than we imagine, he's greater than we CAN imagine.
I can't believe someone at NASA wrote that.
2011 is the launch date of the earthlike planet finder scope. The excitement should start building sometime soon, because this is the real deal. It will be able to see and sort of image another blue marble out to 50 or 500 lightyears.
Heck, send them to Venus.
Send 'em there? Give them literally hundreds of millions of acres of untouched real estate and natural resources??
Personally, I'd rather set off with a bunch of like-minded Freepers to claim our own new world, and leave the liberals to their own insane sociological and economic fantasies here on Old Earth.
Any ship bearing the flag of the UN when entering the space of the United States of New America would be nuked on sight (Cylon style!), long before their poisons would be able to infect our new world.
up your alleys, I expect
That is true... They should stay here.. We should go there...
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