NASA Has Just Discovered a New Planet Unlike Any in Our Solar System

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TheMindUnleashed.com

ELIAS MARAT

JUL 29, 2019 

NASA has announced the discovery of three mysterious “missing link” planets in the TOI-270 star system.

Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

(TMU) — NASA’s latest planet-hunting satellite has discovered three new worlds, including an entirely new alien planet with characteristics unseen within our own solar system.

The strange new exoplanets, which means they are outside of our solar system, are a part of the TOI-270 star system.

The new system, which revolves around a neighboring star, includes a rocky super-Earth that is slightly larger than our planet, as well as two other gaseous planets twice the size of Earth. Researchers claim that the planets are a “missing link” that sits between the smaller rocky worlds, including our Earth and Mars, and much larger gaseous planets such as Saturn and Jupiter.

The discovery, which is detailed in the latest issue of scientific journal Nature Astronomy, was made possible by NASA’s Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which was launched into space in 2018 and has since scanned the universe for stars and planets capable of supporting alien life.

The smaller super-Earth lies within the habitable zone, meaning that it lies within the range of distance from a Sun-like star that makes it temperate enough to allow for liquid-water oceans. It is also a “quiet” planet, meaning that it has fewer flares and scientists will be able to observe it and its neighboring planets with greater ease.

However, researchers believe that its atmosphere is so thick and dense that the planet is extremely hot, potentially making the surface too warm to support the type of life found on our planet.

Stephen Kane, a UC Riverside associate professor of planetary astrophysics and member of UCR’s NASA-funded Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center, said in a press release that the discovery is exactly what NASA’s satellite was designed to find.

Kane explained:

“We’ve found very few planets like this in the habitable zone, and many fewer around a quiet star, so this is rare. We don’t have a planet quite like this in our solar system.”

With a distance of only 73 light years away, the exoplanets are also among the closest ever found.

Kane explained:

“The diameter of our galaxy is 100,000 light years, and our galaxy is just one of millions of galaxies … So, 73 light years means it’s one of our neighboring stars.”

Researchers hope that the “missing link” solar system will shed greater light on why so few worlds exist at that size.

This graphic shows the worlds in the TOI 270 system. According to UCR, “temperatures given for TOI 270 planets are equilibrium temperatures, calculated without taking into account the warming effects of any possible atmospheres.” Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Lead researcher Maximilian Gunther from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said:

“TOI-270 will soon allow us to study this ‘missing link’ between rocky Earth-like planets and gas-dominant mini-Neptunes, because here all of these types formed in the same system.” 

Continuing, Gunther said:

“TOI-270 is a true Disneyland for exoplanet science, and one of the prime systems TESS was set out to discover.

It is an exceptional laboratory for not one, but many reasons – it really ticks all the boxes.”

Indeed, the researchers are hopeful that other planets within this solar system are waiting to be found.

The planets link together in what researchers describe as a “resonant chain,” meaning that their orbits line up in neat, whole integers—giving them a “resonance” with one another that gives researchers a method to discover more planets. Within our own solar system, the moons of Jupiter also line up in a “resonant” formation.

Gunther said:

“For TOI-270, these planets line up like pearls on a string.

That’s a very interesting thing, because it lets us study their dynamical behavior. And you can almost expect, if there are more planets, the next one would be somewhere further out, at another integer ratio.”

The team remains hopeful that additional planets will be discovered in the neighboring solar system. And while the smaller planet is unlikely to host life due to its dense atmosphere, those planets lying at a greater distance from the star could be cooler and more capable of allowing water to pool on their surface.

 

5 Possible New Earths Found: Hubble Observes Atmospheres of Exoplanets in the Habitable Zone (TRAPPIST-1)

Hubble Space Telescope

Published on 13 May 2019

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have conducted the first spectroscopic survey of Earth-sized planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system’s habitable zone. Hubble reveals that at least the inner five planets do not seem to contain puffy, hydrogen-rich atmospheres similar to gaseous planets such as Neptune. This means the atmospheres may be more shallow and rich in heavier gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and oxygen.

Astronomers say it’s time to take the search for aliens seriously

Astronomers are hoping to make looking for alien technology an official science goal of NASA.

Source: Astronomers say it’s time to take the search for aliens seriously | Science News

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http://www.sciencenews.org

By Lisa Grossman

January 28, 2019

Some scientists are pushing for NASA to make looking for alien technology an official goal

WE’RE LISTENING  A radio telescope in Green Bank, W.Va., was the first to listen for signals from intelligent aliens in 1960. Now scientists are using another instrument, the Green Bank Telescope (shown), to search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

 

Long an underfunded, fringe field of science, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence may be ready to go mainstream.

Astronomer Jason Wright is determined to see that happen. At a meeting in Seattle of the American Astronomical Society in January, Wright convened “a little ragtag group in a tiny room” to plot a course for putting the scientific field, known as SETI, on NASA’s agenda.

The group is writing a series of papers arguing that scientists should be searching the universe for “technosignatures” — any sign of alien technology, from radio signals to waste heat. The hope is that those papers will go into a report to Congress at the end of 2020 detailing the astronomical community’s priorities. That report, Astro 2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics, will determine which telescopes fly and which studies receive federal funding through the next decade.

“The stakes are high,” says Wright, of Penn State University. “If the decadal survey says, ‘SETI is a national science priority, and NSF and NASA need to fund it,’ they will do it.”

SETI searches date back to 1960, when astronomer Frank Drake used a radio telescope in Green Bank, W.Va., to listen for signals from an intelligent civilization (SN Online: 11/1/09). But NASA didn’t start a formal SETI program until 1992, only to see it canceled within a year by a skeptical Congress.

Private organizations picked up the baton, including the SETI Institute, founded in Mountain View, Calif., in 1985 by astronomer Jill Tarter — the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact (SN Online: 5/29/12). Then in 2015, Russian billionaires Yuri and Julia Milner launched the Breakthrough Initiatives to join the hunt for E.T. But the search for technosignatures still hasn’t become a more serious, self-sustaining scientific discipline, Wright says.

“If NASA were to declare technosignatures a scientific priority, then we would be able to apply for money to work on it. We would be able to train students to do it,” Wright says. “Then we could catch up” to more mature fields of astronomy, he says.

Wright himself is a relative newcomer to SETI, entering the field in 2014 with a study on searching for heat from alien technology. He was also one of a group to suggest that the oddly flickering “Tabby’s star” could be surrounded by an alien megastructure — and then to debunk that idea with more data (SN: 9/30/17, p. 11).

THE SETI VANGUARD Astronomer Jason Wright (third from the left, wearing sunglasses) and his students visited the Green Bank Telescope as part of the first-ever SETI graduate course at Penn State University.nline, November 1, 2009.

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Math proves there is a something hiding beyond Pluto at the edge of our Solar System say astronomers

http://www.sott.net

Chris Mahon
Outer Places
Thu, 22 Mar 2018 

© YouTube

No, it’s not Pluto. Unfortunately for die-hard astronomy fans, Pluto is still languishing in its dwarf planet classification, and now it may become replaced by an even more distant planet, hidden somewhere in the mysterious Kuiper Belt. The supposed planet, creatively nicknamed Planet Nine, has not been proven to exist yet, but astronomers have a wealth of data that points to something about 10 times the size of Earth lurking at the edge of the solar system.

The search for Planet Nine started relatively innocuously with some research in 2014: astronomers Scott Shephard and Chad Trujillo published a paper studying a strange object called Sedna, a 1,000-kilometer-wide trans-Neptunian object (TNO). TNOs are minor planets, asteroids, and other bodies who orbits taken them farther out than Neptune, and include Pluto and 10-30 other objects.

The strange thing about Sedna was that it’s incredibly long and eccentric orbit seemed to tie it to an unknown planet somewhere outside the solar system, leading Shephard and Trujillo to hypothesize there may be a ninth planet beyond Pluto.

This led a different pair of astronomers, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin, to start investigating other TNOs in hopes of finding a pattern that would show Planet Nine’s gravity in action.

In 2016, they announced that they had: several TNOs were shown to have orbits that were perpendicular to the normal orbital plane of the solar system, a phenomenon that can be explained by the existence of super-Earth-sized planet.

Based on the data collected, Brown and Batygin are 99.99% sure that Planet Nine exists.

Unfortunately, spotting Planet Nine has proved harder than they expected-even working with Shephard and Trujillo, Brown and Batygin have to rely primarily on one telescope, the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.

Inclement weather and bad luck have repeatedly foiled their attempts at observing the planet directly. There’s always the chance that Planet Nine is ever farther out than expected, or that it’s much smaller than estimated, both of which would make it harder to see.

The other option? Planet Nine might not exist at all.

Canadian planet hunter seeking alien life: ‘The shifting line of what is crazy’

Source: Canadian planet hunter seeking alien life: ‘The shifting line of what is crazy’

http://www.timescolonist.com

Michael MacDonald / The Canadian Press

October 19, 2017

Toronto-born MIT professor Sara Seager is shown in an undated handout image. Seager has pledged to spend the rest of her life searching for another Earth among the billions of stars that inhabit our night sky. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-MIT-Justin Knight MANDATORY CREDIT

HALIFAX — Sara Seager has pledged to spend the rest of her life searching for another Earth among the billions of stars that inhabit our night sky.

“That’s our goal: to find life out there,” the Toronto-born astrophysicist says in a distinctly assured monotone, as if describing a walk to the local mall.

The highly acclaimed professor, who is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the heady topic later this week in Halifax, says the lofty objective is well within reach for the first time in human history.

And she should know.

“Forty years ago, people got laughed at when they searched for exoplanets,” she says, referring to planets found beyond our solar system. “It was considered incredibly fringe because it’s so hard … But there’s this shifting line of what is crazy.”

Seager, who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is considered one of the world’s leading experts on exoplanets. She has been profiled by The New York Times, CNN and Cosmopolitan, and won a MacArthur “genius” grant.

In the field of astronomy, she is a certified rock star.

Ultimately, her research could help answer some of the biggest questions facing humankind. But first, Seager and her team have plenty of work to do.

And that’s what she plans to talk about Friday when she delivers the third annual MacLennan Memorial Lecture at Saint Mary’s University.

Her mission to find alien life somewhere in the cosmos may sound like it was borrowed from an episode of “The-X Files,” but recent advances in astrophysics suggest this pioneer of planet hunting has good reason to be optimistic.

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Canadian planet hunter seeking alien life: ‘The shifting line of what is crazy’

We’re STILL Not Saying It’s Aliens, But Tabby’s Star Is Getting Weirder (4 min)

1 Aug 2017

The light from KIC 8462852 faded again, and scientists have some new theories about what’s behind astronomy’s most mysterious star.

We’re Not Saying The Kepler Discovery Is Aliens, But… – https://youtu.be/8V-TxYyyLI4
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Astronomers Have a New Explanation For The ‘Alien Megastructure’ Star
https://www.sciencealert.com/astronom…
“Strange dips in the light from Tabby’s Star have been puzzling scientists since 2015, with some hopefuls refusing to rule out the chance that some kind of “alien megastructure” could be blocking the way.”

Astronomers Identify the Origin of Peculiar Signals From Nearby Red Dwarf Star
https://www.seeker.com/space/astronom…
“Astronomers have finally solved the mystery of peculiar signals coming from a nearby star, a story that sparked intense public speculation this week that perhaps, finally, alien life had been found.”

How do you work out if a signal from space is a message from aliens?

Astronomers in Puerto Rico have picked up signal from a faint star that’s not like anything they’ve seen before.

Source: How do you work out if a signal from space is a message from aliens?

theconversation.com

Andrew Norton

Professor of Astrophysics Education, The Open University

July 18, 2017

The ALMA telescope is searching. ESO/C. Malin, CC BY-ND

 Astronomers working at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico have detected a weird radio signal, spotted when pointing their telescope at the nearby star Ross 128. They’re not getting too excited about the prospect of an alien civilisation contacting us just yet though. “In case you are wondering, the recurrent aliens hypothesis is at the bottom of many other better explanations,” said Abel Mendez, the scientist leading the campaign.

Of course, this doesn’t stop others speculating that the signal may be just that. And it begs the question, how do you work out if a strange signal from space really is a message from aliens? The simple answer is that you have to rule out everything else first and only then can you think it may be aliens. As Sherlock Holmes said: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” But eliminating all the other possibilities isn’t exactly easy.

When radio pulsars were first detected in 1967, “little green men” were at least considered a possibility – before it was that they are rapidly rotating neutron stars. The discovery opened up a whole new area of astrophysics, so could hardly be considered a disappointment.

The Arecibo Radio Telescope, at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. H. Schweiker/WIYN and NOAO/AURA/NSF.

There have been other cases. In 1977, astronomers detected a radio burst dubbed the “WOW signal” – and they have been debating its origin for decades. Only recently was it suggested that there could be a natural explanation: emission from a passing comet that happened to lie in the right part of the sky. However, other astronomers have cast doubt on the comet idea, so it can’t be considered to be settled just yet.

Another mysterious signal is that from Tabby’s star, which displays strange quasi-periodic dips in its brightness. Could this be evidence of orbiting alien megastructures, or is it merely a cloud of natural debris surrounding the star? Once again, the jury is still out on that one, but we have certainly not ruled out all natural possibilities yet.

The signal seen from Ross 128, which is 11 light years from Earth, consisted of quasi-periodic radio pulses across a wide range of frequencies. The observations were made on May 12 in the range 4-5 GHz and lasted about ten minutes. A periodic signal naturally draws attention to itself and could indicate an artificial origin. However, some natural processes can give rise to periodic signals too. The pulses could be due to something like solar flares coming from the red dwarf star (a small and relatively cool star). Such stars are indeed prone to this type of activity, but the researchers say the radio pulses are unlike anything ever seen from other similar stars.

Perhaps more likely is that the signals originate closer to home – arising as interference from a high altitude, Earth-orbiting artificial satellite which happened to pass through the field of view of the telescope during the observations. However, such a signal from a satellite has not been seen before either. The Arecibo team are planning further observations to try and check these possibilities.

Strange light from Tabby’s star. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Exoplanets and life

So, what are the chances the signal is evidence of aliens? The last 20 years have seen an explosion in the number of planets found orbiting other stars. It is likely that a large proportion of the stars in the Milky Way harbour habitable exoplanets, yet we still have no evidence of life elsewhere.

The lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life lies at the heart of the Fermi paradox. Simply put, if planets and life are common in the galaxy, why have we not found aliens yet?

My best guess, based on what we now know, is that simple life may well be common – there are probably billions of Earth-like planets out there, so it is almost inconceivable that life has only evolved on one of them. However, intelligent, communicating life may well be extremely rare – either because it doesn’t arise or because when it does, it gets wiped out fairly quickly. This idea is known as the great filter.

The best chance of spotting life in the galaxy may therefore not come from looking for radio signals, but from looking for the signature of a biosphere as an exoplanet transits across the face of its star.

By measuring the spectrum (breakdown of light according to wavelenght) of a star while its planet passes in front, then subtracting the spectrum of the star seen alone, any tiny difference must be due to the signature of the planet’s atmosphere. This signature could reveal the presence of gases like oxygen and methane, which may mean the planet hosts life – although this may just be microbes. But it may indeed be our best bet to find life in the galaxy.

What if you do spot an alien signal?

Let’s return to the signal from Ross 128. What if the astronomers at Arecibo rule out solar flares and artificial satellites as the origin of the signal? The problem is, we can only rule out the things we know about. So even if these possibilities are discounted, there may still be other causes that have not been thought of yet. In fact, this is how all science works. We can’t ever claim anything is definitely true, we can only rule out the things that are false and make a hypothesis that something else is true until proved otherwise.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t one day receive a signal that is unambiguously of alien origin. If a signal is received with such a high level of structured information that it can’t be a natural signal, then there may be no other explanation.

In this case, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), have clear protocols for what happens next. These specify that the discoverer must notify other signatories to the protocols, other astronomers around the world, and also the United Nations. All data surrounding the discovery must also be made public. Importantly, no response to the signal should be sent until international consultations have taken place. Whatever (if anything) is transmitted back in the direction the signal came from would indicate our presence, so we’d better be sure we want to announce our existence before doing so.

Maybe one day these protocols will be invoked, but until then, astronomers will keep looking for more prosaic explanations for all the weird signals they detect.