Slashdot Mirror
Kepler Mission Could Detect Exomoons
Lord Northern writes "According to several news sources, NASA's Kepler mission is said to be able to detect habitable moons orbiting planets in other star systems. Kepler is a space telescope designed to detect exoplanets. Its mission will have it orbiting the Sun for 3.5 years, after which we'll be able to tell if any of our neighboring stars actually have planetary systems around them. However, apparently we will be able to detect not only exoplanets, but also exomoons orbiting those exoplanets. The Kepler team came to that conclusion after running a computer simulation which found that the telescope was sensitive enough to detect the gravitational pull of an orbiting moon (PDF). This means that the data expected by the end of the mission is going to be very rich, and it is said that moons as small as 0.2 times the mass of earth could be detected. Further details about the Kepler mission are available from NASA."
Actually, according to the lightcurve measured by Kepler, it is one. My bad.
by that logic a habitable zone is a complete farce as well considering that not all places in the habitable zone are habitable. [eg. Earth's moon]
It was on July 20th, 1969.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't think their use of it is wrong. The title is "On the detectability of habitable exomoons", and the abstract clarifies that to detect "habitable exomoons", this research proposes to detect "habitable-zone exomoons" (that phrase with the -zone qualification appears 4 times in the abstract), because presumably the actually habitable moons will be some subset of those.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No not zero at all. Nowhere near zero in fact. Chance is probability, and the probability is defined by the number of planets, which mathematically works out to "quite a lot". The chances of YOU finding a habitable planet are of course zero because you are not even interested in looking. So far we have a sample size of 8 (9 if you still appreciate Pluto), so to say there is no chance is premature. Not to mention of course the way we evolved to fly at 35000 feet at -50 C at twice the speed of sound.
Space does not "try" to do anything. Water does not "try" to drown you, in fact if you take your own air, it can be fun. How many "non-earth" planets do you know of ? How many of them have tried to kill you ? When you last crossed the road, how many cars "tried to kill you" ? What did you do to mitigate this risk ? Or did you see it as inescapable fate and stick to your original side of the road ? ...
Oceans for the most part are just empty space with storms that try to kill you, and any non-european continents aren't really much better either. Oh wait
Actually, we evolved to fit into the savannas of Africa pretty well, everything after that has been colonization. Theres been some small scale evolution to adapt to new environments, but all of that was after we moved to the new areas, relying on the primary tool evolution gave us: intelligence.
If colonization of other worlds is possible, then its worthwhile. Not because we want to find a better Earth, but because we want to find more Earths. It may very well be that we adapt those worlds to suit us as those worlds adapt the settlers. However, its our adaptability through intelligence that will get us there, and that makes more and more environments suitable for us. The colonizers have never had it easy, but they have a history of adapting and making it better for following generations.
The summary makes one error, suggesting that Kepler is capable of detecting the gravitational 'wobble' caused by a moon. Rather, Kepler, or any system of similar sensitivity, is able to detect the transit of a moon, and recognize it as being distinct from that of the parent planet.
Understandable mistake, since all of the early exo-planet detections were made using the 'wobble' method (detecting the Doppler shift corresponding with a stars motion due to a heavy, close planet). However, the transit method, which measures small dips in the brightness as the planet passes in front of its parent star is far more sensitive, though more difficult to use due to noise constraints.
Basically, imagine if you were looking at our sun from another star system, and Jupiter stood out clearly as a dip in the light curve, reappearing every 8 or 9 years(?). With this, something like Io or Europa would show up as a smaller periodic variation overlaid on that larger dip. Only noise levels are standing in the way of detecting it, and apparently they think Kepler can handle it.