Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Europe's New ET Life Search Programme

Posted by Hemos on from the testing-the-galaxy dept.

hotsauce writes "The Guardian has a report on Europe's ambitious new programme to search for extra terrestial life. ESA has started a program called Cosmic Visions which will launch a series of satelites, starting with Gaia in 2011, and possibly culminating with the Exo-Earth Imager, a mission consisting of 10.000 3-metre mirror telescopes. The French are leading the charge with Corot in 2008."

5 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. New processing algorithms by 2.7182 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've heard about new algorithms that are going into effect at the Aricibo telescope that use wavelets to get much better results. Apparently a lot of old data is going to be re analyzed.

    1. Re:New processing algorithms by Feminist-Mom · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's true - Coifman from the Yale math dept. that has a company that is doing this. But it hasn't hit the popular press yet. Among the mathematicians it is controversial whether it will work.

  2. 10.000 in European = 10,000 in the U.S. by benhocking · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those who didn't know.

    --
    Ben Hocking
    Need a professional organizer?
  3. Re:Whats with the EU using '.' instead of ',' by ZigMonty · · Score: 4, Informative
    Because in the EU they use ',' as the decimal separator?

    10,434.39 becomes 10.434,39

  4. Re:Whats with the EU using '.' instead of ',' by __aagctu1952 · · Score: 4, Informative
    OK people, why does the EU use '.' as the thousandth's place separater instead of ','? It's really stupid. How can you tell if 10.000 is 10,000 or ten point zero zero zero?? It's totally ambiguous! Oh sure, the CONTEXT, right, because scientists and engineers love figuring out the order of magnitude of a number based on it's context.

    First, as I really really hope you are aware, Europe is not a single hegemonous country, and neither is the EU (despite their attempts to make it so). Thus, customs will differ between countries.

    Second, how is "." for decimal places and "," for separators any less ambiguous?
    (if you must know, I prefer no separators myself)

    On topic: kudos to ESA! Although I severely doubt that we'll find any ETs, projects like these almost always get a lot of beneficial scientific data as a bonus... and if not, you at least get a few pretty pictures out of it ;-)