kinetic
18-08-2013, 09:30 AM
I saw this unfortunate news today,
http://science.time.com/2013/08/16/the-kepler-space-telescope-may-be-dead-but-its-planet-hunting-mission-continues/
I didn't realise there was a problem with it.
But....oh what a legacy it leaves...
quote:
But the true quarry, as Borucki has stated openly from the beginning, was to find planets like Earth—about the same size as our home world, orbiting stars like the Sun, and in the “Goldilocks zone” in their solar system where temperatures are not too hot, not too cold, but just right for life to be possible. Kepler hasn’t found any of these yet, but it has come awfully close: it’s found Earth-size (and smaller) planets, but not in the Goldilocks Zone, and it’s found planets a bit bigger than Earth with just the right temperatures—but they’re orbiting stars dimmer than the Sun. Still, when scientists extrapolate from what the probe has already found, it’s clear that our galaxy conservatively holds at least 17 billion worlds about the size of Earth (http://science.time.com/2013/01/09/planetary-census-hundreds-of-billions-in-the-milky-way/)
Steve
http://science.time.com/2013/08/16/the-kepler-space-telescope-may-be-dead-but-its-planet-hunting-mission-continues/
I didn't realise there was a problem with it.
But....oh what a legacy it leaves...
quote:
But the true quarry, as Borucki has stated openly from the beginning, was to find planets like Earth—about the same size as our home world, orbiting stars like the Sun, and in the “Goldilocks zone” in their solar system where temperatures are not too hot, not too cold, but just right for life to be possible. Kepler hasn’t found any of these yet, but it has come awfully close: it’s found Earth-size (and smaller) planets, but not in the Goldilocks Zone, and it’s found planets a bit bigger than Earth with just the right temperatures—but they’re orbiting stars dimmer than the Sun. Still, when scientists extrapolate from what the probe has already found, it’s clear that our galaxy conservatively holds at least 17 billion worlds about the size of Earth (http://science.time.com/2013/01/09/planetary-census-hundreds-of-billions-in-the-milky-way/)
Steve