Europeans Find 32 New Planets

[Genghis Khan]

This is awesome! 

Source.

Europeans find 32 new planets outside solar system

By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP) – 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON — European astronomers have found 32 new planets outside our solar system, adding evidence to the theory that the universe has many places where life could develop. Scientists using the European Southern Observatory telescope didn't find any planets quite the size of Earth or any that seemed habitable or even unusual. But their announcement increased the number of planets discovered outside the solar system to more than 400.

Six of the newly found planets are several times bigger than Earth, increasing the population of so-called super-Earths by more than 30 percent. Most planets discovered so far are far bigger, Jupiter-sized or even larger.

Two of the newly discovered planets were as small as five times the size of Earth and one was up to five times larger than Jupiter.

Astronomer Stephane Udry of the University of Geneva said the results support the theory that planet formation is common, especially around the most common types of stars.

"I'm pretty confident that there are Earth-like planets everywhere," Udry said in a Web-based news briefing from a conference in Portugal. "Nature doesn't like a vacuum. If there is space to put a planet there, there will be a planet there."

What astronomers said is especially exciting is that about 40 percent of sun-like stars have planets that are closer to being Earth-sized than the size of Jupiter. Jupiter's mass is more than 300 times that of Earth's.

Depending on definitions of the size of super-Earths, the discovery suggests that planets that have a mass similar to Earth's are "extraordinarily commonplace," said Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. He was not part of the European team. "The universe must indeed be crowded with habitable worlds."

Boss said finding 32 planets at once is a record "and it really shows that the Europeans have taken the lead" in finding planets outside the solar system.

The discoveries were made by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, which is an attachment to the European observatory telescope in Chile that looks for slight wobbles in a star's movements. Those changes would be made by the tug of a planet's gravity on the star. There are no photos of these planets.
On the Net:

    * European Southern Observatory: http://www.eso.org

 

[Perun]

Another indication why we must continue the space program.

 

[LooseCannon]

I can't believe the amount of people who say, "What has the space program ever done for me?" on the internet.

 

[Natalie]

Another indication why we must continue the space program.

Second that.

 

[Forostar]

Boss said finding 32 planets at once is a record "and it really shows that the Europeans have taken the lead" in finding planets outside the solar system.

I am glad my gift made the difference.

 

[SinisterMinisterX]

Aside from launching better telescopes, the "space program" is currently a waste. The shuttles are falling apart, the space station is scheduled to be abandoned in a few years, and we've made no significant progress towards reaching Mars. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a program. In fact, I think more energy should be put into Mars. We got onto the moon within a decade when the US was dedicated to the challenge; Mars within 30 years should be cake, if we really wanted to do it.

But the current program needs to be rethought. How many billions were wasted on that space station? What did we get for those billions?

 

[LooseCannon]

Right now, a whole lotta nothing.  Well, a fair bit of information and experiments done, but the ISS needs to be kept up there for years if it's going to be worth the money added in.  The USA has borne the brunt of the cost, but not all of it, not by a longshot.  Hopefully a way is found to keep it going for another decade or more, so that we can have long-term experiments and science gathering going on.  But most importantly, I think the ISS should be used as one terminus of a vehicle built in space for the purpose of going to the moon and coming back.

 

[SinisterMinisterX]

But most importantly, I think the ISS should be used as one terminus of a vehicle built in space for the purpose of going to the moon and coming back.

An interesting idea, but I don't see how it could work. You still need fuel, and unless they find a way to make that in space, that means sending up rockets full of fuel. Once you're doing that, it's a waste of that fuel to stop at the space station. If you're launching enough fuel to go to the moon and back, then that's what you should do, and a space spation doesn't help.

Now I'm sure someone has already tackled this problem, and maybe there are theories out there about how to make it work, but it seems like a huge hurdle to me.

The reason I prefer a focus on Mars is that it gets you to a planet that can be mined, and closer to the asteroid belt which may have even more resources. That's what is needed: completely space based manufacturing. And I mean everything: food and water for the workers, rocket fuel, clothes and medical supplies - everything. If we can't find a way to do this in our own backyard, longer space travel is almost impossible.

 

[Shadow]

I really liked a headline I saw about this earlier today: "Chance of contact with aliens increases"

 

[LooseCannon]

An interesting idea, but I don't see how it could work. You still need fuel, and unless they find a way to make that in space, that means sending up rockets full of fuel. Once you're doing that, it's a waste of that fuel to stop at the space station. If you're launching enough fuel to go to the moon and back, then that's what you should do, and a space spation doesn't help.

The end result is that the vehicle we need to send to the moon and bring back is much lighter, and because it goes a much further way than the rocket that would have to go into lower earth orbit, you save on quite a lot of fuel.  It's the same theory was used for Lunar Orbit Rendezvous - the original NASA plans for going to the moon involved one vehicle that would leave earth, land on the moon, and return to earth, all as the same vehicle.  But because the vehicle would be used for all the stages (liftoff, tli, lunar descent, lunar habitation, lunar ascent, tei, re-entry) it had to be able to do all those things.  Some crazy guy came up with an idea that we should actually split the lunar stuff out from the other stuff, and carry along a light-weight, space only craft designed just to land, stay, and leave from the moon.

What I'm discussing is saving time and money on multiple trans-lunar and trans-earth injection systems.  Basically, one "ferry" that moves back and forth from the earth to the moon, fuelled terrestrially...or perhaps with nuclear power....and all it does is go from lunar orbit to earth orbit.  This ferry would be lighter in weight, because it wouldn't have the needed hardware to re-enter the earth's atmosphere, and thus save on a lot of fuel in the long run.  However, this would mean we could move more people faster to a burgeoning moon base, and we could use existing hardware to power the first and last bit of the journey.  It would simplify the plan, because we are very good at moving people and material to the ISS right now in capsules (Soyuz & Progress), and the station already has the needed devices to assemble things in orbit (Canadarm 2, and any number of external holds and ports for astronauts working out-of-doors).

 

[Cornfed Hick]

Here is an interesting article (sorry, it's a bit long) on this subject from one of my favorite columnists, Gregg Easterbrook.  Of particular note are the bit about Mars travel -- under current propulsion technology, it would simply take too long to get there and back, more than human bodies and psyches could stand -- and his proposals about where space program dollars should be spent in the future, namely solar power and the "Armageddon/Deep Impact" scenario.

Soon, Barack Obama must make a decision on whether to continue funding NASA's daffy plan to build a Motel 6 on the moon. The president will be put on the spot when the final report of a space commission (here is its preliminary report) is delivered. Rumor is that in keeping with the tradition of Washington commissions, the report will contain extremely vague language about sweeping reform; then cite every item on every wish list of every interest group with a finger in this pie; then recommend nothing specific, so as to offend no interest group; then close with a call for higher subsidies. NASA is not one of the core missions of government, and spends only one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget, so space waste is relatively minor in the scheme of things. But if public policy can't get this right, what can it get right?

Right now NASA's budget is $18 billion annually, and the quarter or so spent on science -- planetary probes, telescopes that scan the far universe -- is going very well. The rest of NASA is a mess. The agency has just thrown $100 billion of your money down the drain on the space station, which has no scientific achievement and no known purpose other than keeping checks in the mail to favored contractors and congressional districts. The station is such a white elephant the current plan is to "deorbit" the thing in 2016. "Deorbit" is polite for "make it burn up in the atmosphere." So after spending $100 billion to build a space station, we'll destroy it. Your tax dollars at play!

Since 2004, NASA has said its next goal is a manned outpost on the moon, as a stepping-stone to manned travel to Mars. There's nothing a person could do on the airless, lifeless lunar surface that a tele-robot operated from a Houston office building could not do at a fraction of the price and risk. And the moon has nothing to do with Mars. Any Mars-bound mission will leave directly from low-Earth orbit to the Red Planet: stopping at the moon, then blasting off again, would consume the mission's fuel to accomplish nothing. Though NASA has been studying moon-base and Mars-mission proposals for five years, the agency refuses to give a cost estimate -- a sure sign the plans cannot pass a giggle test. Considering the space station price was $100 billion for a limited facility that was not accelerated to the speed necessary to reach the moon -- speed means fuel which means higher price -- even a Spartan moon base easily could cost several hundred billion dollars. For what? Why, for "economic expansion"! Today, no one is interested in economic expansion at Earth's poles, which are far more amenable to life than the moon, have copious resources, and can be reached at one-ten thousandth the cost of reaching the moon.

What about Mars? That planet is fascinating, and people are sure to go there someday. But until there is a fundamental breakthrough in propulsion, Mars travel will be ultra-expensive and extremely impractical. Today's chemical rockets are little different from those of the Apollo era, meaning the great cost of getting weight into orbit and then to escape velocity, coupled with long travel times, remains a high barrier to any Mars mission.

The fastest trajectory available with current propulsion is a 520-day Mars mission, and that only gets you 30 days on Mars -- the rest is transit time. Now think about weight. The Apollo vehicle, which was 45 tons at departure from low-Earth orbit, carried three people on a maximum mission of 13 days. That's 1.1 tons per person per day. A Mars-bound mission would require less fuel per day, but a lot more weight for supplies, interior volume, multiple redundant systems and radiation shielding that was not required for moon flight. Interior volume is essential. The crew was strapped into seats in the Apollo command module; they couldn't even stand up. For a nearly two-year voyage, the crew will need to be able to get up and walk (or float) around to avoid going bonkers. The Russian and European space agencies recently locked volunteers into a spacecraft-like big chamber to see how long they could stand it; they were able to stand it for 105 days, a fifth of the length of the fastest possible Mars mission. (Hilariously, the agencies announced the volunteers "simulated a 105-day Mars mission full of experiments and realistic mission scenarios." This scenario is "realistic" only using warp drive.)

Any Mars craft will need to provide at least some private space for each crew member, and a decent exercise facility, to stave off the muscle loss and bone decay that is triggered by zero-gee. At least one fully equipped surgical theater will be required. Loads of spare parts and loads of equipment to use on the Martian surface will be needed, versus Apollo, which carried no spare parts and no equipment beyond a small, short-range dune buggy. (Most likely a Mars mission would not be a single vehicle -- unmanned cargo craft would go first, and people would not leave until supplies were in place -- but the weight's the same regardless of whether it's a single vehicle or a collection of launches.) Considering these things, the 1.1 tons per person per day of Apollo may prove conservative for a Mars mission.

Anyway, suppose that number is right. Assume a Mars crew of six people -- two astronauts, two scientists and two surgeons -- on a 520-day Mars mission. (Two surgeons are needed in case one of them gets injured.) Based on the Apollo experience, our six-person Mars mission gone 520 days would weigh about 3,400 tons at departure from orbit. That's approximately the displacement of an Oliver Hazard Perry class guided-missile frigate, and we are not launching a frigate to Mars anytime soon.

My weight estimate didn't pop out of the sky. These numbers have been debated by specialists for decades, and have not changed much by recent tech developments -- for example, electronics are a lot lighter now than in the Apollo era, but since electronics compromised less than 1 percent of Apollo's weight, new miniature stuff does not do much for weight. Two-thirds to three-quarters of the mission weight will be fuel, and fuel weight hasn't changed. In the 1950s, Apollo designer Werner von Braun projected that a Mars mission would weigh 3,700 tons. In the 1960s, von Braun supposed the mission could weigh 1,600 tons if nuclear propulsion was developed, but that hasn't yet happened. Discovery One, the imaginary planetary spaceship in the 1968 movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," was described as weighing 5,400 tons, which oddly sounds about right. In 2007, a NASA workshop supposed a Mars mission might weigh only 400 tons, an utterly unrealistic budgetary lowball number.

The true numbers are budget busters! Because it costs about $20 million to place a ton of anything into low-Earth orbit, the heavier the Mars craft, the higher the price. Merely placing into orbit the 3,400 tons of a conjectured mission would cost about $70 billion. That's just the launch cost -- construction of the spaceship is extra! If space station total costs are a basic guide, the full price of a 3,400-ton Mars mission would be $1 trillion. Converted to today's dollars, the entire Apollo program -- not one mission, the entire program -- cost about $140 billion.

Now you see why NASA won't estimate prices.

The shame is that while NASA toys with monumental waste of tax dollars on a moon base and speaks of a Mars mission it knows full well is inconceivable using current propulsion, the agency is not even considering two space initiatives that could return tangible benefits to taxpayers: protection against asteroids and space solar power. Sunlight collected in space where its energy value is far higher than on the ground, then beamed to Earth as microwaves, might provide a long-term fossil-free solution to the planet's energy needs. No one knows if space solar power is practical. But NASA won't as much as fund a demonstration project; all money must go to moon base subsidies and Mars plans.

Aware its current course makes no sense, NASA may soon roll out the reddest of red herrings -- we've got to go back to the moon to beat the Chinese and the Indians. During the Cold War, no one questioned NASA spending because national prestige was involved. Why must we "beat" China and India to something we already did 40 years ago? If China or India beats us to space solar power -- now, that would hurt.