Tabby's Star? Would be wonderful if there was some sort of conclusion of that. Even if it's a completely reasonable natural phenomenon it looks like we'll learn something new.
Judging by the the first individual in the press release, Michael Gillon of the University of Liege, this may have something to do with their discovery published last year in Nature [1] on terrestrial planets with moderate surface temperatures ("temperate") around low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. All very nearby at less than 12 parsecs to boot! This article was on the front page of HN last year, and was discussed quite a bit in astronomy circles, but I'm having a hard time remembering the details without re-reading the paper.
Yes and no. (snipped... long scifi rant about StarWars navigation that explains distance as a measurement of time and why linear distance between bodies is not relevant.)
This better be something better than 'we got slightly bette at identifying planets like our own.' It's great that we're doing so but when they are teasing discoveries rather than simply announcing them it should be for some signficant qualitative difference from anything we've known before.
I think some of the teasing is that which we inflict on ourselves.
NASA wants to keep people interested and excited about their mission of course. But press conferences like these are also to stir up interest in the greater scientific community. Announcements like these might be disappointing to us lay persons who are waiting for the "we found life!" headline, but they can generate huge excitement in astronomy circles.
But that's the problem, it's too much marketing and not enough product.
So I see it turns out that we've now identified 7 earth-like planets orbiting a star, where previously we thought we had 3 planets. That's a significant technical advance, which is certainly a Good Thing.
But the average non-scientist/ non-technician looks at this and sees a big build-up followed by by a nothingburger, which is a very Bad Thing because it lowers public respect for science. It would have been much better to say 'exoplanet detection continues to improve, full details wednesday'.
We're not inflicting the teasing on ourselves because we're not the ones holding back information to create excitement and anticipation. This was a minor update that was presented as something major.
I see your point. But is it NASA that's responsible for all of the build-up?
Earlier today, Washington Post posted the big red "Breaking news" banner once the press conference started and announced 7 planets. The story is now front and center on their page.
Is it a "nothingburger" if the press presents it as major as well?
While I often think the general public isn't the primary audience for these kinds of announcements, seeing the mainstream excitement for this astronomy result has me wondering if we underestimate the public. Perhaps most people do have a greater respect than we realize.
First off, thanks for creating this. I definitely appreciate that this was created as a native app instead of trying to do it as a web app (which, from personal experience with WebGL, I imagine would have had terrible performance).
I doubt this is the best channel for bug reports, but I thought I'd mention the launcher does not work for me on Windows 7. I had to run explorer-win64.exe directly.
FWIW I've been working on a similar WebGL visualization for fun (http://uncharted.bpodgursky.com/) obviously much more primitive than the NASA version.
I've been pretty amazed by what WebGL can handle (obviously it's hopeless on mobile though).
On Feb. 24, NASA.gov will start streaming NASA TV in HTML 5 rather than Flash.
Shame; perhaps they don't want to risk deployment issues during their big announcement. Good timing on the announcement otherwise; lots of people will see that.
"On Feb. 24, NASA.gov will start streaming NASA TV in HTML 5 rather than Flash. Users with Windows computers should use the Chrome or Firefox web browser for the best experience."
Brief summary: Seven earth-sized planets found around M-star (red dwarf) TRAPPIST-1 40 ly away, three in the habitable zone, all with some potential for liquid water.
You would think NASA of all orgs would at least provide time-zone conversions for their news conference, or at the very least add a countdown timer to their site.
There needs to be a new unit that describes "a speed equal to the fastest humans have been able to travel in space" instead of "light years". Let's call it an "Apollo", since that record is held by the Apollo missions to the moon at 11,080 m/s. Speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. So humans can travel at ~0.0000367 x light speed, or 349,418,880,000 m/year.
So instead of saying 40 light years, we'd say 27,076 Apollo years.
Can that speed be adjusted to a theoretical value based on latest propulsion systems? What would that be now and how would it likely evolve over then next decades?
You could use it like economists use the consumer price index - all relative to year. So you could have the Apollo, or human space year, or something and reference HSY_{1969}, or HSY_{ion thruster}, etc.
Various probes have gone faster - with the cruising speeds depending whether they headed towards the sun or away. After New Horizons got a gravity boost from Jupiter, it sailed out to pluto at 23k/s and arrived going 15k/s. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-fast...
I'll have to look and see what they have planned for the Mars missions. I'm sure we've jumped ahead a bit in practical engineering terms, but just haven't had a mission to show it yet.
48 comments
[ 11.3 ms ] story [ 208 ms ] threadhttp://s2.quickmeme.com/img/68/68eb1932463fb0e215bc9b0e62ba1...
[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7602/full/nature1...
NASA wants to keep people interested and excited about their mission of course. But press conferences like these are also to stir up interest in the greater scientific community. Announcements like these might be disappointing to us lay persons who are waiting for the "we found life!" headline, but they can generate huge excitement in astronomy circles.
So I see it turns out that we've now identified 7 earth-like planets orbiting a star, where previously we thought we had 3 planets. That's a significant technical advance, which is certainly a Good Thing.
But the average non-scientist/ non-technician looks at this and sees a big build-up followed by by a nothingburger, which is a very Bad Thing because it lowers public respect for science. It would have been much better to say 'exoplanet detection continues to improve, full details wednesday'.
We're not inflicting the teasing on ourselves because we're not the ones holding back information to create excitement and anticipation. This was a minor update that was presented as something major.
Earlier today, Washington Post posted the big red "Breaking news" banner once the press conference started and announced 7 planets. The story is now front and center on their page.
Is it a "nothingburger" if the press presents it as major as well?
While I often think the general public isn't the primary audience for these kinds of announcements, seeing the mainstream excitement for this astronomy result has me wondering if we underestimate the public. Perhaps most people do have a greater respect than we realize.
http://eyes.nasa.gov/eyes-on-exoplanets.html
Requires download and install.
OS X and Windows only :(
Disclaimer: I am a developer of this software for NASA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q0Q3NvUA9Y
I doubt this is the best channel for bug reports, but I thought I'd mention the launcher does not work for me on Windows 7. I had to run explorer-win64.exe directly.
I've been pretty amazed by what WebGL can handle (obviously it's hopeless on mobile though).
On Feb. 24, NASA.gov will start streaming NASA TV in HTML 5 rather than Flash.
Shame; perhaps they don't want to risk deployment issues during their big announcement. Good timing on the announcement otherwise; lots of people will see that.
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public
checks date Damn it. :(
HN discussion w/ Nature article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13707547
Paper on Nature (paywall?): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7642/full/nature2...
SIMBAD entry for TRAPPIST-1: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=trappist-1
Edit: Added links.
https://twitter.com/NASA/status/834464283337560068
So instead of saying 40 light years, we'd say 27,076 Apollo years.
I'll have to look and see what they have planned for the Mars missions. I'm sure we've jumped ahead a bit in practical engineering terms, but just haven't had a mission to show it yet.
For those who don't know it:
- Trappistes are some special beer brewed by monks and Belgium is famous for a lot of them
- Speculoos are some kind of brown sugar based cookies. Caloric bomb we name them.