The Elusive "Wow!" - What We Do | The Planetary Society
The Quest for the "WOW!" - One Man's search for SETI's Most Promising Signal
Review of Robert H. Gray, The Elusive Wow: Searching for Extraterrestrial intelligence (Chicago: Palmer Square Press, 2011). A Radio SETI update by Amir Alexander. January 27, 2012.
<http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/seti_radio_searches/20120127.html>
"The existence of microorganisms in these harsh environments suggests — but does not promise -- that we might one day discover similar life forms in the glaciers or permafrost of Mars or in the ice crust and oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa," said Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.....Hoover said the creatures he has found might be able to survive in their suspended state for millions of years. The discovery opens up a whole new possibility that a future mission to Mars might be able to retrieve any life that's there."Reference:
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Dear SETI@home Volunteer:
We need your help to continue the search for extraterrestrial intelligence!
For the last eleven years, SETI@home has brought the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to millions of households around the world. SETI@home is the longest operating SETI search. We use the largest and most sensitive telescopes on earth to scan the skies for the faint whispers of another technology. Your tax-deductible donation will help enable us to continue the SETI@home and Astropulse projects at Arecibo Observatory, as well as pursue ambitious new experiments all over the world. SETI@home is primarily funded by the financial support of its participants. Your contribution is vital to sustaining our search for intelligent life on other worlds. During the last year, we have laid the groundwork for expanding SETI@home into new portions of the radio spectrum and new regions of the sky. We have performed observations of Kepler exoplanets with the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, USA, and we are very close to releasing these data to SETI@home and Astropulse volunteers. These observations will allow us to conduct the most sensitive search for intelligent life on these new worlds ever performed. We are also working with our colleagues at observatories all over the planet to install additional SETI@home data recorders to operate in piggy-back mode. In addition to conducting SETI experiments, the SETI@home group actively trains the next generation of SETI scientists, working with students from high school through doctoral studies. Your contribution directly affects our ability to support additional students working with our group. Engaging the next generation of astronomers and engineers in SETI is absolutely crucial to ensuring its future. Please consider a donation to SETI@home this holiday season. Any amount you can contribute would be an immense help in sustaining and growing the SETI@home search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. To contribute click here. Thank you for your support and continuing dedication to SETI@home.
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An exciting development - a Earth-like planet in a habitable zone (even possible that it has Earth-like temperatures). I am sure this planet will be the target of many investigations, especially as newer, more sensitive, equipment come on line.
Read more of this NASA press release at: <http://astrobio.net/pressrelease/4381/kepler-confirms-exoplanet-in-a-habitable-zone>.NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.
This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. Image Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.
Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.
Kamuela, HI – The first direct image of a planet in the process of forming around its star has been captured by astronomers who combined the power of the 10-meter Keck telescopes with a bit of optical sleight of hand.
What astronomers are calling LkCa 15 b, looks like a hot “protoplanet” surrounded by a swath of cooler dust and gas, which is falling into the still-forming planet. Images have revealed that the forming planet sits inside a wide gap between the young parent star and an outer disk of dust.
“LkCa 15 b is the youngest planet ever found, about 5 times younger than the previous record holder,” said astronomer Adam Kraus of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy. “This young gas giant is being built out of the dust and gas. In the past, you couldn’t measure this kind of phenomenon because it’s happening so close to the star. But, for the first time, we’ve been able to directly measure the planet itself as well as the dusty matter around it.”
Kraus will be presenting the discovery at an Oct. 19 meeting at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The meeting follows the acceptance of a research paper on the discovery by Kraus and Michael Ireland (of Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory), in The Astrophysical Journal (available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.3808)
Figure 1 Left: The transitional disk around the star LkCa15. All of the light at this wavelength is emitted by cold dust in the disk. the hole in the center indicates an inner gap with radius of about 55 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Right: An expanded view of the central part of the cleared region, showing a composite of two reconstructed images (blue: 2.1 microns, from November 2010; red: 3.7 microns) for LkCa 15. The location of the central star is also marked.
The optical sleight of hand used by the astronomers is to combine the power of Keck’s Adaptive Optics with a technique called aperture mask interferometry. The former is the use of a deformable mirror to rapidly correct for atmospheric distortions to starlight. The latter involves placing a small mask with several holes in the path of the light collected and concentrated by a giant telescope. With that, the scientists can manipulate the light waves.
“It’s like we have an array of small mirrors,” said Kraus. “We can manipulate the light and cancel out distortions.” The technique allows the astronomers to cancel out the bright light of stars. They can then resolve disks of dust around stars and see gaps in the dusty layers where protoplanets may be hiding.
“Interferometry has actually been around since the 1800’s, but through the use of adaptive optics has only been able to reach nearby young suns for about the last 7 years.” said Dr. Ireland. “Since then we’ve been trying to push the technique to its limits using the biggest telescopes in the world, especially Keck.”
The discovery of LkCa 15 b began as a survey of 150 young dusty stars in star forming regions. That led to the more concentrated study of a dozen stars.
“LkCa 15 was only our second target, and we immediately knew we were seeing something new,” said Kraus. “We could see a faint point source near the star, so thinking it might be a Jupiter-like planet we went back a year later to get more data.”
Figure 2 The location of LkCa 15 can be found using this chart.
In further investigations at varying wavelengths, the astronomers were intrigued to discover that the phenomenon was more complex than a single companion object.
“We realized we had uncovered a super Jupiter-sized gas planet, but that we could also measure the dust and gas surrounding it. We’d found a planet, perhaps even a future solar system at its very beginning” said Kraus.
Drs. Kraus and Ireland plan to continue their observations of LkCa 15 and other nearby young stars in their efforts to construct a clearer picture of how planets and solar systems form.
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The W. M. Keck Observatory operates two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The twin telescopes feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectroscopy and a world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics system which cancels out much of the interference caused by Earth’s turbulent atmosphere. The Observatory is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization and a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA.
