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Kepler Spacecraft Finds System With Multiple Planets Transiting the Star
rhaas writes "NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star. They found two planets almost the size of Saturn, and possibly a third, small, very hot planet with a radius about 1.5 times that of Earth."
Hehe, your post kind of rubbed in a sentiment I got at work earlier today when I first read this story on Spaceflightnow. Something finally clicked, while I was sitting there at my cubicle, that we are literally probing other solar systems for planets. Did you play Mass Effect? I am sure someone here did. What about Star Wars Rebellion? Does anyone remember how most of the systems in those games are mostly unexplored. The entries in the galactic database, or whatever, were a few short paragraphs describing what conditions were probably like on the planet, but no explorers had ever returned to find out. I remember when I played those games I would click through the text unthinkingly so I could go blow some shit up. But when I was sitting at my cubicle reading this story today, it hit me:
Kepler is literally writing those first few galactic database entries for us. Some years from now, be it years, decades, or centuries, when our ancestors are poking around other solar systems, they are going to be pulling up a few scant words describing the likely surface composition and climate data of some of these planets. They will pull up the mass estimates and other numbers associated with each body before dropping onto the surface of the planet to update/verify the database. They will literally be using the information gathered by Kepler and its successors to give them some insight about what they are going to step into.
Does that register with anyone else? We are literally starting to compile a database on planets in other solar systems, so that one day explorers will have something, no matter how small, to refer to when stepping into the unknown. We are writing our own version of Mass Efffect's Codex. When that dawned on me today I almost crapped my pants. Sure folks, we joke about instant communication and flying robot overlords being signs that we literally are living in the future, but holy mother of crap, we have a spacecraft, on orbit, sending data down to us right now that is compiling data on systems that we hope to one day explore. That just makes my heart flutter to think about. Our infantile species, that leaped into orbit only half a century ago, can start to seriously consider studying, and maybe one day exploring, extra-system planets. Say what you will about how stupid and hopeless humans are, but I'll be damned if something like the Kepler mission doesn't make me gasp at how amazing a species we can be....
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