NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System | Hacker News Reader

NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System

nasa.gov

151 pointstuyguntn45 comments

Judging by the the first individual in the press release, Michael Gillon of the University of Liege, this may have something to do with their discovery published last year in Nature [1] on terrestrial planets with moderate surface temperatures ("temperate") around low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. All very nearby at less than 12 parsecs to boot! This article was on the front page of HN last year, and was discussed quite a bit in astronomy circles, but I'm having a hard time remembering the details without re-reading the paper.

[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v533/n7602/full/nature1...

This better be something better than 'we got slightly bette at identifying planets like our own.' It's great that we're doing so but when they are teasing discoveries rather than simply announcing them it should be for some signficant qualitative difference from anything we've known before.

I think some of the teasing is that which we inflict on ourselves.

NASA wants to keep people interested and excited about their mission of course. But press conferences like these are also to stir up interest in the greater scientific community. Announcements like these might be disappointing to us lay persons who are waiting for the "we found life!" headline, but they can generate huge excitement in astronomy circles.

But that's the problem, it's too much marketing and not enough product.

So I see it turns out that we've now identified 7 earth-like planets orbiting a star, where previously we thought we had 3 planets. That's a significant technical advance, which is certainly a Good Thing.

But the average non-scientist/ non-technician looks at this and sees a big build-up followed by by a nothingburger, which is a very Bad Thing because it lowers public respect for science. It would have been much better to say 'exoplanet detection continues to improve, full details wednesday'.

We're not inflicting the teasing on ourselves because we're not the ones holding back information to create excitement and anticipation. This was a minor update that was presented as something major.

I see your point. But is it NASA that's responsible for all of the build-up?

Earlier today, Washington Post posted the big red "Breaking news" banner once the press conference started and announced 7 planets. The story is now front and center on their page.

Is it a "nothingburger" if the press presents it as major as well?

While I often think the general public isn't the primary audience for these kinds of announcements, seeing the mainstream excitement for this astronomy result has me wondering if we underestimate the public. Perhaps most people do have a greater respect than we realize.

Less than a Kessel Run eh?

Yes and no. (snipped... long scifi rant about StarWars navigation that explains distance as a measurement of time and why linear distance between bodies is not relevant.)

You can visualize all confirmed exoplanets using NASA's Eyes on the Exoplanets software.

http://eyes.nasa.gov/eyes-on-exoplanets.html

Requires download and install.

OS X and Windows only :(

Disclaimer: I am a developer of this software for NASA.

Also available for After Dark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q0Q3NvUA9Y

First off, thanks for creating this. I definitely appreciate that this was created as a native app instead of trying to do it as a web app (which, from personal experience with WebGL, I imagine would have had terrible performance).

I doubt this is the best channel for bug reports, but I thought I'd mention the launcher does not work for me on Windows 7. I had to run explorer-win64.exe directly.

FWIW I've been working on a similar WebGL visualization for fun (http://uncharted.bpodgursky.com/) obviously much more primitive than the NASA version.

I've been pretty amazed by what WebGL can handle (obviously it's hopeless on mobile though).

Brief summary: Seven earth-sized planets found around M-star (red dwarf) TRAPPIST-1 40 ly away, three in the habitable zone, all with some potential for liquid water.

HN discussion w/ Nature article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13707547

Paper on Nature (paywall?): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v542/n7642/full/nature2...

SIMBAD entry for TRAPPIST-1: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=trappist-1

Edit: Added links.

@NASA: "New record! We’ve found 7 Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone around a single star outside our solar system: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-telescope-reveals-la... "

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/834464283337560068

There needs to be a new unit that describes "a speed equal to the fastest humans have been able to travel in space" instead of "light years". Let's call it an "Apollo", since that record is held by the Apollo missions to the moon at 11,080 m/s. Speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. So humans can travel at ~0.0000367 x light speed, or 349,418,880,000 m/year.

So instead of saying 40 light years, we'd say 27,076 Apollo years.

Can that speed be adjusted to a theoretical value based on latest propulsion systems? What would that be now and how would it likely evolve over then next decades?

Various probes have gone faster - with the cruising speeds depending whether they headed towards the sun or away. After New Horizons got a gravity boost from Jupiter, it sailed out to pluto at 23k/s and arrived going 15k/s. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-fast...

I'll have to look and see what they have planned for the Mars missions. I'm sure we've jumped ahead a bit in practical engineering terms, but just haven't had a mission to show it yet.

You could use it like economists use the consumer price index - all relative to year. So you could have the Apollo, or human space year, or something and reference HSY_{1969}, or HSY_{ion thruster}, etc.

Interesting that there is already Reddit AMA planned and mentioned in this official NASA communicate.

Tabby's Star? Would be wonderful if there was some sort of conclusion of that. Even if it's a completely reasonable natural phenomenon it looks like we'll learn something new.

If it's not a dyson sphere i'm gonna be real pissed off.

It's not emitting infrared like expected from a Dyson sphere. It's also not completely blacked out its star. Maybe it's one under construction?

HN expectations... ;)

It's not aliens.

Thanks, this is what I needed to know.

But aliens would make space great again!

downvoted for ruining the fun :-)

I'm not saying it's Aliens. BUT it's Aliens.

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/68/68eb1932463fb0e215bc9b0e62ba1...

Please don't

From a banner on https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ :

On Feb. 24, NASA.gov will start streaming NASA TV in HTML 5 rather than Flash.

Shame; perhaps they don't want to risk deployment issues during their big announcement. Good timing on the announcement otherwise; lots of people will see that.

Any rumours as to what this is about? (Don't want to get ahead of myself..)

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2017/02/spitzer-discove.html

Well, according to the article, exoplanets.

Most likely new ways to analyse distant exoplanets.

The link is there, but for the lazy:

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

"On Feb. 24, NASA.gov will start streaming NASA TV in HTML 5 rather than Flash. Users with Windows computers should use the Chrome or Firefox web browser for the best experience."

checks date Damn it. :(

Exoplanets, according to the article. Interesting but probably not world-shaking.

That depends on the seismic activity of the exoplanet.

You would think NASA of all orgs would at least provide time-zone conversions for their news conference, or at the very least add a countdown timer to their site.

Oufti !

For those who don't know it:

- Trappistes are some special beer brewed by monks and Belgium is famous for a lot of them

- Speculoos are some kind of brown sugar based cookies. Caloric bomb we name them.

Conference already started: 7 earth-sized planets orbiting 1 star, 3 of those planets in habitable zone.

hopefully, Neil DeGrasse Tyson translates for the public

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_cataclysm :)

Distractedly misread that as NASA holding a press conference from deep space, regarding some sort of discovery.

I did the exact thing....

Is this NASA trying to build up some buzz in hopes of avoiding massive defunding by our clown car administration?

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