Posted on 02/14/2017 5:49:48 PM PST by PROCON
The hunt for potentially habitable planets outside of our solar system is one of the most exciting frontiers of science, and you can become a part of it without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home.
This week, MIT and Carnegie Science Institute released a huge dataset containing close to 61,000 measurements of over 1600 stars. These measurements contain data that could potentially identify thousands of new exoplanets, many of which might be Earth-like in their nature. Unfortunately, the MIT and Carnegie Institute team simply doesn’t have the capacity to trawl through all of this information, so they’re looking to the public for help.
“This is an amazing catalog, and we realized there just aren’t enough of us on the team to be doing as much science as could come out of this dataset,” said Jennifer Burt, a Torres of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “We’re trying to shift toward a more community-oriented idea of how we should do science, so that others can access the data and see something interesting.”
The goal is to make this data as accessible as possible, so if you’re not an expert in Astrophysics, don’t worry, there’s a free online tutorial on how to sift through the data and turn yourself into Earth’s newest planet hunter.
The data was collected using the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) at Hawaii’s Keck observatory. HIRES was initially designed to take detailed measurements of the light emitted by stars and other distant celestial objects, but it soon became clear to the HIRES team that they could use the instrument to measure a star’s radial velocity – the fluctuations of its movements across our line of sight.
(Excerpt) Read more at comettv.com ...
I don't know about you, but I intend to become a world-famous Couch Astronomer.
Pingy
Where’s Zefram Cochrane when you need him?
You speak WAY over my head, Navy Bro.
I’m no expert in astronomy but I can tell you God’s Plan of Salvation is out of this world.
Not gonna make it to exoplanets without Warp Drive, Army Bro.
Alright, here comes the Uranus/Urectum jokes
With a well placed mirror, you might be able to discover Uranus from your couch. But, that’s not a new planet.
Someone should explain this public “data sharing” concept to the Climate Change scientists.
It usually takes years, and FOIA lawsuits, before the Climate Scoundrels can be coerced into releasing their data and their calculations.
I really like those screw saver type program that allow your computer to crunch data in the down time.
Unfortunately right now the “cutting-edge consol” download is not loading/timed out - maybe server overload ... you need this download to install the thingy and begin the hunt - from reading the directions on the first page it is not for the faint of heart technologically speaking.
I don’t speak technology. Guess I’ll just go back to being a lazy retired guy.
Note: this topic is from . Thanks PROCON.
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