NASA Teams Scientific Experts To Find Life On Exoplanets 58
coondoggie writes: As the amount of newly discovered planets and systems outside our solar system grows, NASA is assembling a virtual team of scientific experts to search for signs of life. The program, Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) will cull the collective expertise from each of NASA's science communities, including earth scientists, planetary scientists, heliophysicists, and astrophysicists. They'll work with key universities to better analyze all manner of exoplanets, as well as how the planet stars and neighbor planets interact to support life.
Wow this is cool ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember a LONG time ago, before we'd found any exoplanets and largely it was a theoretical exercise.
Gravitational lensing was theoretical, finding a black hole hadn't yet happened, and planets were thought to be quite uncommon.
And 25 years or so later, now we're here. Sometimes, the mind just goes "holy crap, really?" about some of this stuff.
The universe just seems bigger, cooler, and wackier than we ever though it would be.
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Parent is dead right. I can remember (Fifties and Sixties) when elaborate stories were spun by science popularizers about the supposed rarity of planets, just like the stories you see now "explaining" the lack of SETI finds as proof that some special barrier exists to the evolution of intelligence. In fact, the prevailing hypothesis of planetary formation was another star happening to pass sufficiently close to the Sun to draw out a filament of gas, which then condensed into our planets. Naturally, the odds
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Re:What's the cost ? (Score:5, Insightful)
2) There is no such thing as 'a scientific curiosity with little practical value.' So called scientific curiosities routinely turn into extremely valuable science. Einstein's relativity time dilation effect is routinely used in GPS technology.
3)In fact, examining exo-planets, is most likely to directly affect Earth's climate, by showing us what happens without human interference .
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It's not about a false dichotomy. It's about utilization of resources and priorities.
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Corporate welfare
Iraq war (which created the ISIS
Travel expenses using First class air line tickets.
Paintings of government officials, etc.
There is no need to cut exoplanet research to fund climate research, we can cut other things.
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1) In this case, they are exclusive, because they are taking away resources from earth sciences and are deploying them for exoplanet work.
2) While I agree that any work may result in practical applications, some things are more likely to have practical value than others. Given limited resources, it would be smart to direct them based on expected results.
3) The information from exoplanets will be very sparse, so it's unlikely that it will tell us more about the earth than simply looking at the earth.
Re:What's the cost ? (Score:5, Insightful)
For example if you write 3 computer programs to predict weather and one of them works also on Mars and Venus, then you know it has a better understanding of weather.
Just imagine when they find 100 Earthlike rocky planets orbiting at 1AU and discover what weather is like in such systems - that will massively inform earth climate http://www.space.com/2071-stor... [space.com]. This makes Jupiter a test case of climate change prediction software. If the software can explain what happened on Jupiter it can inform what is happening here.
or http://astrogeo.oxfordjournals... [oxfordjournals.org] (cosmic rays affect climate)
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Just imagine when they find 100 Earthlike rocky planets orbiting at 1AU and discover what weather is like in such systems
If you can't even see the topography from here it will be very hard to build a useful model. And even if you build a model, you don't have any climate history to verify that it's remotely correct.
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Sorry, ...
the assumption that a climate modeling software would work the same on Mars, Venus, Earth, Jupiter is just so stupid beyond believe
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Isaac Newton and every physicist in history can only mock you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
You can be sure that there are climatologists working hard on universal software of climate change. The more examples of planets you have to test your software the better
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We are talking about CLIMATE models.
What has that to do with gravity? And for what would you need a model if you want to talk about gravity when you only need 2 or 3 formulars?
FTFY: You can be sure that there are climatologists working not at all on universal (as in working on all planets) software of climate change.
The links you quote have nothing to do with "universal climate models" ... facepalm.
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Also, solutions to a problem in one field can often help with problems in other fields - so it's a bit silly to tell a space agency to focus on only our planet.
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Most people won't benefit from interstellar travel, assuming it's even practically possible.
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Sorry, you should refrain from bitching about this. There's a long list of things you have to bitch about before you can get to this one.
What's that? Not everybody works on the same problems or has to wait until all other problems are solved first?
Wow, who knew.
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What's that? Not everybody works on the same problems or has to wait until all other problems are solved first?
In this case, we are talking about the exact same people, and the same limited budget. Unless they are getting an extra budget that I'm not aware of, and are using that to hire additional experts.
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I'd rather see people working on Earth's climate...
Then get off Slashdot and get to it!
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I doubt my personal contribution will be very useful. Why don't you get off slashdot and study exoplanets, so the NASA earth scientists can continue their focus on earth ?
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The cost is a drop in a drop in a bucket. Applying the savings to some Earth-local research budget might help that particular thing for a bit. Then when it is gone we've inched or millimetered our way towards knowledge included in the billions of dollars that we already spend on this stuff world-wide. And we would still have no further knowledge of exo-planets, therefore absolutely no chance of finding any other data points to compare with Earth.
Comparative planetology has greatly increased our knowledge of
To boldly go (Score:4, Interesting)
The quest for life in the universe is perhaps one of the more important endeavors of our time... I wish this search would take on more emphasis then the say the next weapon system. Collectively humans spend more on carnival cruise ship or Hollywood movies then we do in searching for life and intelligence beyond earth. The thought (as noted by Arthur C Clark) that either we are the only intelligence in the universe or we are not and there are other forms of intelligence out there - are equally powerful motivating forces towards an expansion beyond this little fragile womb.
Cull (Score:4, Funny)
Really? They're going to "cull the collective expertise from each of NASA's science communities"? Seems a bit harsh.
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Not all definitions of cull involve slaughter.
cull
verb
1. select from a large quantity; obtain from a variety of sources.
noun
1. a selective slaughter of wild animals.
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We're talking about something involving NASA and a program which costs money.
Tell me again about how there will be no slaughtering involved.
Overkill (Score:2)
Some signs are pretty obvious; you don't need experts:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap03... [nasa.gov]
Life? Or Intelligent Life? (Score:2)
So, if we're looking for intelligent life, I'd argue that we won't find it. Why on earth (yes, I said it) would intelligent life want to be found by us? I think they would do everything they could to prevent us from finding them, and maybe just monitor us, at least until we get our collective shit in one pile. All this becomes moot if they decided they wanted to overthrow the planet. But, suppose they had not already found us, and were hostile...now you've really screwed the pooch, assuming they've foun
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OMG I'm so sick of people phrasing scientific questions in terms of "ROI".
It's a perfectly valid approach. Of course, "satisfying curiosity" is a perfectly valid "R", so that doesn't mean you should stop doing this kind of stuff. It just needs to be prioritized.
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Gaia (Score:4, Interesting)
Hired to build machines to search for life on Mars, he investigated biology and quickly realized that over geologic time, extremophiles such as bacteria found in hot springs or in the arctic could not survive without all the rest of life creating the free oxygen and other elements and compounds necessary for life. NASA ignored The Gaia Hypothesis completely yet that was a discovery they paid for.
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The same people that want to stick Gaia in everyone's face seem to have no problem ignoring this:
James Lovelock: Nuclear power is the only green solution [independent.co.uk]
We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger
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I'm sure the experts are aware of the Gaia hypothesis. If they ignore it, they do that because they think it's rubbish, whether they paid for it or not.
There will be life, Jim ... (Score:1)
... but not as we know it.