http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/02/02/keplers-plenty-6-super-earths-and-1200-more-exoplanet-candidates/ Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:34:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/02/02/keplers-plenty-6-super-earths-and-1200-more-exoplanet-candidates/#comment-25032 GuruOfChem Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:04:53 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=25763#comment-25032 Way to go Kepler team and astronomers everywhere! Everyone should feel both a bit less alone and a bit more a citizen of the cosmos today - I know I do! Way to go Kepler team and astronomers everywhere! Everyone should feel both a bit less alone and a bit more a citizen of the cosmos today – I know I do!

]]> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/02/02/keplers-plenty-6-super-earths-and-1200-more-exoplanet-candidates/#comment-25031 Kip Ezra Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:39:57 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=25763#comment-25031 Ever since I finished reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan, I figured our galaxy must be full of life... let alone the billions of galaxies that are visible to us. Many scientists thought and think so, but getting confirmation must be very different. It was most striking when I read about the discovery of one particular planet some time ago, discovered by the Kepler team. The article of which I read on NASA's website, and neatly formatted along the text was an image, an artist's rendering of the discovered planet. I read and fully understood the text, but only after seeing the image did the profundity of the discovery dawn on me. Afterwards, I was very much bothered. How come it took concept art for me to fully comprehend? The same thing happened today. Before, I always thought something along the lines of: "Well, it wouldn't surprise me at all if we ended up finding over a million Earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone." Yet what was discussed today wasn't just surprising. I stared at my computer screen slack-jawed as a Kepler team member was spilling the details. You could stop me right now and say that the data doesn't say those millions of Earth-like planets are actually out there, but we can see where this is heading. Kepler has only been on-going for a little over a year and a half. Going forward, no matter how imaginative we can try to be or pretend to be, our minds will continually be blown. Ever since I finished reading Cosmos by Carl Sagan, I figured our galaxy must be full of life… let alone the billions of galaxies that are visible to us. Many scientists thought and think so, but getting confirmation must be very different. It was most striking when I read about the discovery of one particular planet some time ago, discovered by the Kepler team. The article of which I read on NASA’s website, and neatly formatted along the text was an image, an artist’s rendering of the discovered planet. I read and fully understood the text, but only after seeing the image did the profundity of the discovery dawn on me. Afterwards, I was very much bothered. How come it took concept art for me to fully comprehend? The same thing happened today. Before, I always thought something along the lines of: “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we ended up finding over a million Earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone.” Yet what was discussed today wasn’t just surprising. I stared at my computer screen slack-jawed as a Kepler team member was spilling the details. You could stop me right now and say that the data doesn’t say those millions of Earth-like planets are actually out there, but we can see where this is heading. Kepler has only been on-going for a little over a year and a half. Going forward, no matter how imaginative we can try to be or pretend to be, our minds will continually be blown.

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