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Keyword: geoffmarcy

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  • Are Jupiters Hard to Come By?

    08/12/2008 10:01:25 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 6 replies · 110+ views
    Sky and Telescope 'blogs ^ | July 11, 2008 | Camille M. Carlisle
    Using the new Combined Array for Research in Millimeter Astronomy (CARMA), Eisner and his colleagues observed more than 250 stars in Orion's central region and found that less than 8% had dust disks thought massive enough to create a Jupiter. The radiation from hot, massive stars in the cluster probably clears out a lot of surrounding material and keeps high-mass disks from forming, explains co-author John Carpenter (Caltech). In all, about 10% of the observed stars emit radiation associated with warm dust disks. The results agree almost perfectly with findings by Geoff Marcy (UC Berkeley) and his colleagues, who conclude...
  • Stephen Hawking announces $100 million hunt for alien life

    07/20/2015 5:36:42 PM PDT · by 2ndDivisionVet · 50 replies
    The Washington Post's Speaking of Science ^ | July 20, 2015 | Rachel Feltman
    On Monday, famed physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian tycoon Yuri Milner held a news conference in London to announce their new project: injecting $100 million and a whole lot of brain power into the search for intelligent extraterrestrial life, an endeavor they're calling Breakthrough Listen. "We believe that life arose spontaneously on Earth," Hawking said at Monday's news conference, "So in an infinite universe, there must be other occurrences of life." Geoffrey Marcy, a University of California, Berkeley, astronomer who found most of our first exoplanets, also spoke at the event as part of the group's brain trust....
  • A $100 Million Infusion for SETI Research (two parts: Breakthrough Listen and Breakthrough MESSAGE)

    07/20/2015 5:02:44 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 13 replies
    Centauri Dreams ^ | 7/20/15 | Paul Gilster
    A $100 Million Infusion for SETI Researchby Paul Gilster on July 20, 2015 SETI received a much needed boost this morning as Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, along with physicist Stephen Hawking and a panel including Frank Drake, Ann Druyan, Martin Rees and Geoff Marcy announced a $100 million pair of initiatives to reinvigorate the search. The first of these, Breakthrough Listen, dramatically upgrades existing search methods, while Breakthrough Message will fund an international competition to create the kind of messages we might one day send to other stars, although the intention is also to provoke the necessary discussion and debate...
  • Search for extraterrestrial intelligence gets a $100-million boost

    07/20/2015 3:24:26 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 23 replies
    Nature ^ | 7/20/15 | Zeeya Merali
    Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announces most comprehensive hunt for alien life.You could say that the silence has been deafening. Since its beginnings more than half a century ago, the dedicated search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has failed to detect the presence of alien civilizations. But at London’s Royal Society today (20 July), Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced a shot in the arm for SETI: a US$100-million decadal project to provide the most comprehensive hunt for alien communications so far. The initiative, called Breakthrough Listen, will see radio telescopes at Green Bank in West Virginia, the Parkes Observatory in Australia, and...
  • Russian Entrepreneur Pledges $100 Million in Search for Extraterrestrial Life

    07/20/2015 3:15:30 PM PDT · by lbryce · 12 replies
    .Entrepreneur ^ | July 20, 2015 | Nina Zipkin
    Is there anyone else out there in the universe? The endeavor to answer that eternal question got a serious shot in the arm this week thanks to Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner. At the Royal Society in London, the billionaire announced the launch of Breakthrough Listen, a 10-year, $100 million initiative to search for signs of extraterrestrial life. Related: The Power of Planning: NASA's Pluto Flyby Was Epic and Amazing Aided by the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in W. Va., the CSIRO Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia and the Lick Telescope in at the Lick Observatory in...
  • ‘Super-Earths’ and ‘mini-Neptunes’ abound among planets outside our solar system

    01/06/2014 5:21:47 PM PST · by BenLurkin · 9 replies
    washingtonpost.com ^ | Monday, January 6,
    Astronomer Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley presented data showing that about 85 percent of planets found by NASA’s Kepler space telescope are “mini-Neptunes” or “super-Earths.” Marcy noted that these planets orbit close to their parent stars and that it is possible, with advances in instrument sensitivity, that scientists will discover an abundance of small, rocky planets at more distant orbits. But that’s not what we see so far. Instead, there seems to be a distinct cosmic preference for this intermediate range of planet. These planets also seem to follow a pronounced pattern: Up to about twice...
  • Inside the planet hunter's lair [ Geoff Marcy ]

    08/12/2008 11:44:41 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 2 replies · 65+ views
    Christian Science Monitor ^ | August 5, 2008 edition | Frank Kosa
    From a swivel chair in the basement of the astronomy department at the University of California, Berkeley, he's directing the world's largest functioning telescope, on Hawaii's 14,000-foot Mauna Kea volcano. Dr. Marcy's remote-controlled system of interconnected computers, screens, and a real-time audiovideo connection shows him what the telescope is "seeing" -- and it's not the twinkling light of a distant star. Rather, the screens fill with the spectrum of colors that starlight produces. To the untrained eye, it's no more than a blotch of 1960s psychedelia. Marcy is a planet hunter, a kind of Indiana Jones of the astronomy world...
  • X-Planets ( extrasolar planets, and the various planets X )

    06/09/2006 10:50:42 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 131 replies · 5,485+ views
    Our Tiny Little Minds ^ | various | self et al
    New Scientist for Dec 14, 2002, had a cover story for Planet X: The Hunt for Planet X by Heather Couperand Nigel HenbestJust over a year after the New Horizons' launch, it will... pick up enough velocity to reach Pluto, possibly as early as July 2015... In their new research, Melita and Brunini have explored three possible reasons for the Kuiper Cliff... The third possibility is that the region beyond was brushed clear by the gravity of Planet X... the KBO orbits they have investigated so far fit in best with the influence of a Planet X.
  • Blurry new line between star, planet

    08/08/2006 10:09:20 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 11 replies · 179+ views
    Statesman ^ | Saturday, August 05, 2006 | Kenneth Chang
    The tiny star, known as Oph1622, is so small that it never lit up, a failed star known as a brown dwarf. Even among brown dwarfs, it is small, with a mass equal to 14 Jupiters, or about a 75th that of the Sun... In a paper published this week on the Web site of the journal Science, astronomers at the University of Toronto and the European Southern Observatory report that a photograph of Oph1622 also shows a planet nearly as large as the star itself, with a mass equal to seven Jupiters.
  • Habitable Planet Possible Around Nearby Star System

    08/01/2006 7:24:01 PM PDT · by KevinDavis · 15 replies · 363+ views
    space.com ^ | 08/01/06 | Robert Roy Britt
    Someday astronomers will likely create a long list of Sun-like stars with Earth-like planets around them. But technology has yet to reveal such worlds, instead allowing the detection only of much larger planets. Most of the roughly 200 known extrasolar planets are larger than Jupiter. Many complete their orbital years in just a few days. This proximity to their stars creates noticeable wobbles in the stars that make the planets detectable. But astronomers figure the giants probably formed farther out, in a disk of material swirling around a newborn star, and migrated inward. In doing so they would have destroyed...
  • Solar system similar to ours discovered: US astronomers

    06/13/2002 4:17:37 PM PDT · by Exit 109 · 120 replies · 1,420+ views
    Yahoo! News via Drudge ^ | June 13, 2002 | Yahoo! News staff
    Friday June 14, 3:19 AMSolar system similar to ours discovered: US astronomers US astronomers announced the discovery of a solar system similar to our own, at a press conference at NASA's headquarters here.Astronomers said they had identified an extra-solar planet orbiting this star at about the same distance Jupiter orbits the sun. They discovered a total of 15 extra-solar planets.University of California at Berkley astronomy professor Geoffrey Marcy discovered the star, named 55 Cancri, 15 years ago, jointly with his colleague at Washington's Carnegie Institution Paul Butler.In 1996, Marcy and Butler announced the discovery of a first planet orbiting 55...
  • Barsoom, the Face, Structures on Mars

    05/16/2006 9:00:11 AM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 57 replies · 4,439+ views
    Our Tiny Little Minds | Past, Present, Future | various
    Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ... and"The Lost Cities of Barsoom" .... by Richard C. Hoaglandupdated 4/7/06The Enterprise MissionAnother close-up from the same MRO mosaic (rotated 50 degrees, clockwise -- below) demonstrates that not all "quasi-circular features" on Mars are simple "impact craters." This remarkably preserved example exhibits organized, interior geometric detail characteristic of a massive, designed building ... surrounded by six, geometrically aligned, surviving elevated "walls" -- minus a possible roof! The massive former structure is attended by an array of additional, still partially-buried rectilinear features just outside. NOT A PING LIST, merely posted to:
  • The 'planet finder' [ Geoff Marcy interviewed ]

    09/30/2006 12:52:45 PM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 248+ views
    OC Register ^ | September 2006 | Gary Robbins
    They call him the "planet finder," a nickname Geoff Marcy seems to like and one that certainly fits. The UC Berkeley astronomer discovered 70 of the first 100 or so planets that have been found beyond our solar system. He's found many more since then, making Marcy the most prolific planet finder ever to study the night skies... "Every school child learns that our small bluish rock floats silently in a vast, dark cosmic ocean for eons, dwarfing our human lives in both space and time. We know that we play glorious bit parts in a gargantuan cosmic play whose...
  • Famous Star Hosts Distant World [ Pollux ]

    09/15/2006 7:44:01 PM PDT · by SunkenCiv · 8 replies · 323+ views
    SkyTonigh (Sky & Telescope) ^ | August 28, 2006 | Robert Naeye
    Two independent groups, led by Sabine Reffert (Heidelberg-Konigstuhl State Observatory, Germany) and Artie Hatzes (Thuringia State Observatory, Germany), discovered the planet using the Doppler technique. The planet has a minimum mass of 2.9 Jupiters and orbits Pollux in a 590-day, nearly circular orbit. "What a wonderful gift that anyone, even in the center of a city, can gaze up and see a star that has a planet," says Geoff Marcy (University of California, Berkeley), a member of Reffert's group. Marcy's group has also recently announced the discovery of five new exoplanets.
  • The Coming Age of Planets

    06/29/2005 7:06:31 PM PDT · by KevinDavis · 3 replies · 395+ views
    adAstra Online ^ | 06/29/05 | George T. Whitesides
    We live in a new age of discovery, the first days of a new renaissance. It is the dawn of the age of planets. The discovery of the first extra-solar planet -- 51 Pegasi B, later dubbed Bellerophon -- was the clarion call announcing this new age. It's an age which will come to revolutionize our relationship with the universe as much as Galileo's discovery of the four moons of Jupiter. In the decade since Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz announced their discovery, new discoveries have followed hot and fast, and with quickening pace. The recent announcement by Geoff Marcy...
  • The Big Bangs for Astronomers in 2005

    12/20/2005 6:08:41 AM PST · by Neville72 · 1 replies · 377+ views
    space.com ^ | 12/20.2005 | By Robert Roy Britt
    PHOENIX, Ariz. -- The past year in space science and astronomy was dominated by debate and some tantalizing near-findings. A hangover of heady Mars discoveries festered while astronomers on the ground obtained evermore intimate glimpses of the outer solar system and the solar neighborhood but stopped short of declaring agreement on what they’d found. To punctuate that ambiguity with some stark clarity elsewhere, NASA smacked a comet and found it to be all fluff. Among the highlights: The 10th Planet? You might think the discovery of an object larger than Pluto orbiting the Sun would automatically be hailed as the...
  • Having Pups Over Pluto And The Planetary Misfits Of The Kuipers

    03/12/2003 5:27:54 PM PST · by RightWhale · 10 replies · 320+ views
    spacedaily.com ^ | 12 Mar 03 | Robert Sanders
    Having Pups Over Pluto And The Planetary Misfits Of The Kuipers Ask any kid how many planets are in our solar system, and you'll get a firm answer: nine. But knock on a few doors in Berkeley's astronomy department, and you'll hear, amid the hemming and hawing, a whole range of numbers. Professor Gibor Basri, who plans soon to propose a formal definition of a planet to the international body that names astronomical objects, argues that there are at least 14 planets, and perhaps as many as 20. To the well-known list of nine he adds several large asteroids and...
  • What if Black Holes Didn't Exist?

    07/23/2006 1:05:35 PM PDT · by LibWhacker · 39 replies · 1,615+ views
    Seed Magazine ^ | 7/21/06 | Richard Morgan
    How an alternate theory of the universe exposes the 'war of words' that underlies modern cosmology. Theoretical physicists have recently been frustrated by a bold hypothesis concerning black holes—specifically, that they don't exist. In March, at the 22nd Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting in Santa Barbara, Calif., George Chapline, an applied physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, gave a talk based on ideas he's been incubating for several years. His goal: to amend astrophysics by applying theories of dark energy and condensed matter physics. His work reinvents black holes as so-called "dark energy stars," which are what is left over when...