NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow | Hacker News Reader

NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow

space.com

110 pointsDonnyV39 comments

We've buried this post so that we can discuss the real thing tomorrow.

NASA press release about the upcoming press conference: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news-confere...

I find it surprising that the details are embargoed by the journal Nature until tomorrow. I haven't heard of such an embargo before - anyone know why this might be? Maybe it's related to Nature publication timing, or waiting until Nature's own press release is ready?

It's not uncommon for research to be embargoed (there is a whole wikipedia page on it), that said it's not super common either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embargo_(academic_publishing)

Hmm, that page refers to an embargo on the entire paper, not to the publication or dissemination of crucial findings. I'm not sure it completely applies.

The publishing journal usually takes all the copyright, thus the data/news/info is theirs to announce in they way they want to. For a discovery like this one they'll all want to coordinate with the authors for the news and press releases such that it is represented correctly, accurately, and promptly. This is very standard and not at all unusual.

At least in astronomy, this is pretty standard when publishing in Nature or Science. Typically all the press releases are coordinated together with the release of the actual publication.

Here is Nature's policy on embargo: http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/policy/embargo.html

They argue that

> [the] embargo serves scientists, journalists and the public. Our policy is to release information about our content in a way that provides fair and equal access to the media, allowing them to provide informed comment based on the paper that is to be published. Authors and their institutions' press offices are able then to interact with the media in a well-ordered fashion ahead of publication, and benefit from the subsequent coverage.

It still blows my mind that we can detect planets orbiting an entirely different stars. And more so - that these tiny pixels that we can just barely detect, are full-fledged planets that may have atmospheres, water cycles, and who knows what else.

Yeah!!!

The way in which we detect them is so incredible: either by noticing the periodic slight decrease in light as the exoplanet orbits its star, or by noticing the periodic slight wobble of the star around it and its expolanet's joint center of mass. When you think of what a tiny difference we're measuring, of something so dim and so far away, and the fact that we're able to actually resolve those things––it's just staggering.

Imagine there's an alien civilisation (very similar to our levels of tech) on that exoplanet, looking back at us.

Would they be able to detect Earth? How about Jupiter?

If they have a 10 meter telescope in space, they may very well have the technology to see Earth.

An earthly tangent to this is remote sensing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_sensing). It's not quite as incredible as inferring whole ecosystems on distant planets but it is amazing what scientists are able to achieve using these techniques.

I think a lot of people are aware that the field exists but don't realize how much "hard" science is/was involved especially when it was a relatively new technology with more limited IT resources.

Edit. It also reminds me of the recent debate about automation taking jobs. I work in GIS and every office has someone near retirement age who remembers the days of mapping terrain with actual photos and a stereoscope - it's all automated these days and uses technologies such as LIDAR. The result has been a boom in geospatial jobs.

Gravitational lensing is another mind blowing thing we do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens

I don't think we do any gravitational lensing ourselves. Unless by "we" you mean the Milky Wayans.

Edit: to be clearer, if I understand correctly gravitational lensing is a phenomenon that happens, not something we do :)

I think flippyhead (hi Peter!) meant that we are able to utilize gravitational lensing to see beyond the natural limit of our telescopes.

This could be something very interesting. There have already been big exoplanet discoveries, such as planets in the habitable zone, and those with water and oxygen, so this announcement should be beyond that. Looking forward to it.

Oxygen i think is the missing piece. If that's the announcement, that's freaking huge. Oxygen is reactive, it does not exist in any sort of quantity without something regularly replenishing it. It wouldn't be unquestionable proof, but very very strong evidence for photosynthesis, so, you know. Life.

I believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered:

https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen-at...

You're right, and they've discovered the replenishment mechanism, "the planet is flooded with ultraviolet or UV light. UV light breaks apart water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen" - so no evidence of life.

edit

Not exactly replenishment, water gets broken up into H and O, some of the H streams off into space, leaving stray Os floating around. In that case everything is just slowly boiling away into space.

My understanding of that article (and the associated preprint [1]) is that they have not detected oxygen, but are setting up theoretical models and simulations to account for oxygen that might be detectable in the future.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03906

> I believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered:

@greeneggs is correct[0], that article is talking about modeling of a hypothetical atmosphere for a given planet. There was not an actual detection of oxygen in the atmosphere.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13700744

We do not know if GJ 1132b has oxygen in it's atmosphere, or even if actually has an atmosphere. Just that it's possible, and that if it does, we'll be able to detect in the future.

From the abstract of the Nature paper:

"Receiving 19 times more stellar radiation than the Earth, the planet is too hot to be habitable but is cool enough to support a substantial atmosphere, one that has probably been considerably depleted of hydrogen. Because the host star is nearby and only 21 per cent the radius of the Sun, existing and upcoming telescopes will be able to observe the composition and dynamics of the planetary atmosphere."

Emphasis on "cool enough to support" (not supports) and "probably been" (not has), and "will be able to observe" (not has observed).

http://news.mit.edu/2015/new-earth-sized-exoplanet-1111

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_1132_b

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v527/n7577/full/nature1...

Actually I don't think oxygen has been detected in any exoplanet atmosphere. And typically the atmospheres in which water has been detected are large Jovian exoplanets. My sense is that we don't yet have the telescopes/instrumentation to detect things like oxygen in the atmosphere of an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone.

This is really cool. One day I'm going to build my own observatory and observe star light curves and survey for supernovae.

I hope that you do exactly that.

Definitely planning on it!

I read one blog post about detecting an (already known) exoplanet just using a telephoto lens and a DSLR. So it's definitely affordable!

I've read about amateurs detecting them with their instruments, like 12" SCTs. I don't know when I'll be able to afford it (probably a small Meade, SBIG CCD, etc.), but I'll definitely be writing my own algorithms/code to process the data!

That website brings my MBP to a crawl. I was sure I would have to do a hard reboot after Chrome stopped responding for several seconds. For some reason, they want to know my location, they have popups that don't close, and more ads than content.

Oh and there was nothing to be learned beyond the headline.

They've discovered fossil fuels on another planet. Oil companies have already launched oil drilling probes.

if that is what it took to explore space I would actually sign on. alas we are probably two or more generations from actually being on more than one rock in our own system

Because oil tanker starships with crews in cold sleep passing near uninhabited planets worked out so well in fiction, we just have to try it in practice.

An announcement of an announcement. Do we have any examples of announcement of announcement of announcement?

The linked news story is exactly that.

And in fact, this very post is an announcement of an announcement of an announcement of an announcement.

At least it's not a software announcement, which are always late.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Fore...

Comprisal proclaims! [1]

[1] http://pic.blog.plover.com/lang/anagram-scoring/anagrams-sco...

Wonderful news. Probably more exoplanets being discovered, perhaps more closer to Earth or Earth-like, and some solid and innovative space science. Cue the "lame not aliens" crowd who really diminish NASA's amazing achievements for reasons I can't fathom.

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