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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because doubling or more of our available resources would obviously not help anyone.
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...
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.