This is my article assignment from my creative writing class, CREW200 with Frank Moher.
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After more than 1,000 days in space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Kepler Mission scientists announced new discoveries at their Calif. Conference on Dec. 5. One exciting find, Kepler-22b, orbits its sun-like star in the middle of the habitable zone, where liquid water could be found. The planet is 2.4 times the size of Earth, and its star is a little smaller than our sun. Whether it is a rocky world, or gaseous, is yet unknown.
The Kepler spaceship blasted off on March 6, 2009. The planned mission lifetime is 3.5 years. According to the mission's website:
“The challenge now is to find terrestrial planets (i.e. those one half to twice the size of the Earth), especially those in the habitable zone of their stars where liquid water and possibly life might exist.”
“The Kepler Mission is specifically designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.”
“Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy.”
Previous important finds include Kepler-10b, a rocky planet, the smallest planets detected outside our solar system. This discovery was announced on Jan. 10, 2011. Eight months previously, this planet had been one of hundreds of planet candidates waiting for the verification of data, to reveal that it was, indeed the rocky planet that scientists initially thought it to be. Slightly bigger than Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system. Unfortunately, Kepler-10b is very close to its star, so life is unlikely to be there. The planet is perpetually facing its sun on the one side, and out into space on the other.
Kepler-11 planetary system has six planets in a tight orbit around their dwarf star. If placed over our system, the outer planet's orbit would be between Mercury and Venus. All the planets are bigger than Earth, the largest about the size of Neptune.
A binary star system with a circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, orbiting the two suns has been upgraded to a definite find in Sept. 2011. NASA likens it to the two suns from Star Wars' planet, Tatooine, except Kepler-16b is a cold, gaseous planet, unlikely to harbour life.
Kepler finds exoplanets using the transit method, whereby, the telescope detects the dips in brightness caused when the planet crosses in front of its star. Three transits need to be witnessed by Kepler to identify a planet as a candidate. Some planets orbit their star (or stars in the case of a binary system) quickly, but some are slow. So, it's not surprising that it can take a long time to upgrade a candidate to a definite find. That's why the telescope must remain focused on one small area of our galaxy, in this case, the Cygnus constellation. No blinking … just staring, and waiting for those dimming dips. So far, there are 28 confirmed planets, and 2,326 planet candidates. Thus far, it seems there is a variety of diverse planetary systems in just this one section of the Milky Way galaxy.
NASA named the Kepler spaceship in honour of Johannes Kepler's contributions to the field of astronomy. Kepler (1571 – 1630) was born near what is now Stuttgart, Germany. He attended the University of Tűbingen, having won a scholarship there. He is most famous for his mathematical skills and his studies in astronomy. He also invented an improved version of the refracting telescope, called the Keplerian telescope, which makes naming the Kepler Mission after him all the more fitting.
During his time at Tűbingen, he was influenced by the ideas of Copernicus,including his belief that the sun is the centre of our planetary system. He is famous in the modern scientific community for his three laws of planetary motion (a more amusing version of the three planetary laws of motion) which states (courtesy of Wikipedia):
- The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.
- A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
- The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.
Dr. Greg Arkos, VIU astronomy professor, calls Johannes Kepler, “the most famous scientist no-one knows.” He says that from Copernicus, to Galileo, Kepler, Newton onwards to our more contemporary scientists like Einstein, the science of astronomy is advancing, ever evolving with each new discovery. The invention of the telescope made seeing farther into space feasible, and this made it possible to verify mathematical equations by observation. Arkos feels that the anticipated $600 million cost of putting a spaceship like Kepler into orbit, and focusing on one area of space, justifies the price for the scientific discoveries that could be made. He believes that if Kepler goes beyond the 3.5 mission years (as is currently being debated), it will likely continue to keep looking in the same direction to spy out planetary systems even farther away. Once the mission is completed, and it is seen that, for example, 25% of all systems have rocky planets, within the “goldilocks” zone, with liquid water (needed for life), he speculates that that could be the basic content of our galaxy, or even the universe. Thus, life could exist within that percentage. Professor Arkos explains that, “farther away – other galaxies – is conjecture, but we see similar chemical building blocks elsewhere.” He notes, about fifty out of the 1,200 plus candidates could be the size of Earth, more or less. And of these, perhaps a number will have potentially Earth-like conditions.
The sole Canadian scientist working on the Kepler Mission, York University astronomer John Caldwell, notes that, until Kepler came along, finding earth-like planets was much more difficult. In reference to astronomers using space and ground-based telescopes to detect earth-like planets, he says in an interview with CBC News, March 5, 2009. Since Kepler was launched, many gas giants and, more importantly, rocky planets have been discovered.
Man has looked to the stars for millenia, seeking the answers to life on Earth. The Mayan Empire, the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, even those who built the circles of stone called Stonehenge, have used the stars for various reasons: to guide them on travels, or to make predictions about the future.
Technology, such as the telescope has given us access to the wonders of our universe; from our own planetary system, and onwards to other suns and their planets via the Kepler spaceship's telescope. Who knows what the Kepler spaceship will find? Science is moving ever onward, and where it will take us, is the exciting question.
Perhaps one that would answer young Ellie in the movie, Contact, when she asks her father, “Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?” His reply is, “I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us … seems like an awful waste of space.”
Links:
Kepler website, About the Mission, Quick Guide
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