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NASA Teams Scientific Experts To Find Life On Exoplanets
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.
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Didn't see the 'to' in there for a second.
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.
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 .
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The study of many exoplanets will inform work here on climate. Planetary scientists have studied Mars, Venus and Jupiter's weather for many decades and you can be certain this has lead to many insights into Earth's climate.
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.... 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... (cosmic rays affect climate)
Really? They're going to "cull the collective expertise from each of NASA's science communities"? Seems a bit harsh.
Good luck with that, when we can only muster a scant majority that even believe there's any issue with the climate to begin with. 23% believe it's all false, and 14% say they "don't know", according to Yale.
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.
Moron
I'd rather see a better engine built for space, preferably something focused on interstellar travel. That would certainly be more practical to humanity.
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Some signs are pretty obvious; you don't need experts:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap03...
Table-ized A.I.
Science is not like construction where throwing more bodies at the project can result in it getting finished faster.
"Teams Scientific Experts" how obtuse is that?
It's NASA, we know they're not using clairvoyants or small children . . . "NASA assembles team to find life on exoplanets" or any other less markety way of saying it would work too.
This isn't the justice league for fucks-sake. Stop trying to make it sound like something overly exciting . . . forming a team, indeed.
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 found some way to break the laws of physics as we currently understand them.
If we determine a planet had low level life, what good does it do us? We can't go there and do anything with it. We can't learn anything from it.
So, if you want to look at this from a purely research oriented posture, fine it might be nice to know life exists somewhere else. But, there's no ROI on this project, and in fact there's money that would be better spent elsewhere IMNSHO.
Just another day in Paradise
It's not about a false dichotomy. It's about utilization of resources and priorities.
Just another day in Paradise
NASA will use all sorts of experts, but they will of course ignore the discoveries of the first expert they hired to help find life on Mars, James Lovelock.
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.
http://www.ikincielesyaalanlar.net/ Nev 2.El Eya Alanlar kinci El Eya Alm Satm Kullanlm Eya Alanlar Eski Eya Alanlar kinci Beyaz Eya Alnr Satlr kinci El Buzdolab Alm Satm kinci El Buzdolab Alnr kinci El Eya Alanlar 2.El Eya Alan Yerler kinci El Beyaz Eya Alan Yerler kinci El Mobilya Satmak 2.El Buzdolab Alm Satm 2.El Eya Satmak 2.El Mobilya Alm kinci El Beyaz Eya 2.El Çamar Makinesi Alan Yerler Kullanlm Buzdolab Al Sat Eski Eya Alanlar 2.El Eya Alnr Spot Eya Alan Yerler kinci El Bulak Makinesi Satmak kinci El Beyaz Eya Alnr.
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.
Most people won't benefit from interstellar travel, assuming it's even practically possible.
OMG I'm so sick of people phrasing scientific questions in terms of "ROI".
Science is not a business! If it was, all research would involve finding cures for male pattern baldness and erectile dysfunction.
Luckily for you, thousands of scientists have spent decades researching things that had no ROI. And many of the important technological advances (including life-saving medical ones) have been made by pure research that WAS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD JUST TO UNDERSTAND IT.
Of course, enjoy ranting about ROI-less scientists on your computer using the Internet. Both were invented before they had a fucking business model developed.
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.
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.
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.
... but not as we know it.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When we'll discover traces of life somewhere far far away, it'll long be dead and gone. And if that life somehow developed into some form of sentient beings, they'll also be long dead and gone. What'll remain,had they had time to achieve the required technological discoveries required, is super intelligent robots.
OMG I'm so sick of people phrasing scientific questions in terms of "ROI".
I'm sorry, but if you look at any grant process, it comes down to ROI. The return might not be measured in dollars, but with finite resources to distribute among science work, and multitudes of new project ideas, money gets distributed to projects based on their chances of working and the potential information learned, sometimes within context of a larger goal or scheme depending on the program. This includes everything from practical electronics research with intent to be in consumer goods within a decade, to rather pure research endeavors like the LHC and cosmology.
Both were invented before they had a fucking business model developed.
Both were invented with some intended uses and goals in mind though.
I'd rather see people working on Earth's climate...
Then get off Slashdot and get to it!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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 ?
Sorry, ...
the assumption that a climate modeling software would work the same on Mars, Venus, Earth, Jupiter is just so stupid beyond believe
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why are there no microscopes on Mars? Why no Petri dishes with the usual 'soup' of bacteria friendly growth agents?
The first serious attempt to answer the question used very cleverly designed chemical experiments- and they proved beyond doubt that Mars had simple life. BUT because the experiments had results that IMPLIED the existence of life using statistical methods, they could be safely down-played even in most scientific communities, let alone with the general public.
Earth is controlled by various hyper-powerful Organised Religions. NASA doesn't do a damned thing the Vatican opposes, for instance. The Churches are still arguing internally about the consequences of their 'flocks' learning that life exists outside the Earth. Their consensus is that they better play safe, and continue to suppress this knowledge amongst the general population (and that most certainly included you Betas reading this).
So there are no microscopes on Mars, and a legion of popular 'science' shills justifying this fact. NASA even had to claim its standard rock examining macro lenses were 'microscopes' so scum like 'bad astronomy' could reassure his readers.
Hooke's work revolutionised our understanding of life, but 300+ years later, NASA claims you must NEVER use microscopes to look for signs of life. And you Betas, like the sheep in Animal Farm, all bleat "yes, yes, you must never use microscopes on Mars- what a waste of time that would be".
And then you dribble over a NASA announcement like this- dear lord. If NASA won't allow you to know about the tiny primitive life on Mars, they sure as heel would never reveal if they discovered something much more significant about some distant planet around another star.
Because doubling or more of our available resources would obviously not help anyone.
NExSS for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) so that it is an infinite hub for searching? Like Gnu is Not Unix (GNU) only more science-y....
Are you suggesting that physics is variable?
Not cures, treatments. Ongoing treatments(???) for chronic problems. Proceed directly to step three.
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
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 Earth systems. I feel your argument is similar to someone in the 70's who would have argued "why send spacecraft to other planets to study them? We have enough problems here".
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
lol. Are you suggesting the assumption that a gravity modeling software that would work the same for apples on Earth, rockets to Venus, the moons of Jupiter and rovers on Mars and the orbits of exoplanets is just so stupid beyond belief....
Isaac Newton and every physicist in history can only mock you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
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 you understand the problem.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
> NASA Teams Scientific Experts To Find Life On Exoplanets
Hey, Nasa scientists, OK, it's hard to get a girlfriend -- but this is becoming ridiculous...
How about building a few more large visible spectrum orbiting telescopes. Link them together, do some interferometry and see life on other planets first hand?
Parallels to such things have happened in other fields. I've seen codes for particle propagation through matter, neutronics and tokamak plasma physics all get extensively modified to handle more general cases than they were originally intended for. The original authors always said, "That is not possible, the code was not written to handle your case," probably out of laziness. There were many assumptions and shortcuts used that had to be dealt with and it was far from trivial to do so. But in the end, the result was not only code that handled the alternative tasks needed, it was unified in away that both the original and new task fed into validation of the same code. In that case, drastically different situations provided much stronger validation. It becomes a net gain for everyone involved.
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
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.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.