Skywatch

[Palehorse]

What is even better is the fact that there was one the size of 4 football fields that went by, unknown before it did its flyby, early in september!

One of the most dangerous asteroids on record zipped close by Earth last month.
It made headlines on Thursday, when reports said that there's a chance it could strike our planet in less than 20 years. Such a collision could unleash a force as powerful as a couple of thousand atomic bombs.
But NASA was quick to calm nerves and point out some very good news. The most dangerous known asteroids don't really pose much of a threat. And there are very few of them.
Also, the chances that this one, which the Ukrainian astronomers who discovered it named 2013 TV135, will collide with Earth are extremely slim, NASA said in a statement it called "a reality check."
The space agency is 99.998% certain that when it whooshes back around the planet in 2032, it will simply sail past us again.. . .

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/18/tech/asteroid-near-pass/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/10/18/nr-brooke-intv-seager-asteroid-passed-earth.cnn.html

[libby]

 Hello out there?  Is that you, Klaatu? Have some interference here, so please re-transmit. What's that? Ask Duke Jupiter, you say? 


Other potential Earths? Try 25 billion of them.

The Washington Post
November 5, 2013

Roughly one in every five sunlike stars is orbited by a potentially habitable, Earth-size planet, meaning that the universe has abundant real estate that could be congenial to life, according to an analysis of observations by NASA's Kepler space telescope.

Our Milky Way galaxy alone could harbor billions of rocky worlds where water might be liquid at the surface, according to the report, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and discussed at a news conference in California.

If the estimate is correct, the nearest ocean planet might be just 12 light-years away, which, though extremely distant for all practical purposes (such as sending a robotic space probe), is just around the corner in our galactic neighborhood.

"When you look up at the stars in the night sky, how many of them have a planet like the Earth?" asked Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley and the lead author of the paper. "We're able to start answering this question."

The best estimate is 22 percent of stars like our own, with an error margin of plus or minus eight percentage points.

"Earth-sized planets having the temperature of a cup of tea are common around sunlike stars," said planet hunter Geoff Marcy, a Berkeley astronomer and a co-author of the study. He said the finding "represents one great leap toward the possibility of life, including intelligent life, in the universe."

Kepler, launched in 2009, is no longer able to search for "exoplanets" — outside our solar system — because it has been unable to point with precision after the failure of a steering mechanism this year. But the telescope amassed more than three years of observations before going on the blink. Kepler mission scientist Natalie Batalha said there is still another full year of data to rummage through.

The telescope's original mission was to obtain an estimate of the percentage of stars with potentially habitable planets, and this latest analysis comes close to meeting that goal. This is still an extrapolation of data and is not the same thing as taking a careful census of these Earth-size planets directly, said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not directly involved in the new analysis.

"Earth-size" doesn't necessarily mean "Earth-like," Seager noted. But she said this result will boost efforts to build telescopes that could obtain direct imagery of one of these extremely distant worlds.

"Earth-sized planets are not rare, so we'll know we'll have stuff to look at," Seager said. "It's reassuring for us."

Jill Tarter, a pioneer in "SETI," the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, said in an e-mail: "We haven't yet found Earth 2.0, but these statistics suggest that it should be forthcoming, and soon. When we can point to Earth 2.0 in the sky, it will seem completely natural to ask 'Does anybody live there?' and 'Can we go there?' I think Earth 2.0 will concretize SETI as nothing else has."

Kepler studied 150,000 stars in a small patch of the sky in the constellation Cygnus. The planets surrounding distant stars cannot be seen directly, because their faint, reflected light is swamped by the much brighter starlight. Thus Kepler looked for the periodic dimming of a star, which could be the signal of a planet passing across the star's face. Ground-based telescopes, such as the Keck I in Hawaii, helped produce an estimate of the size of these transiting planets.

The Kepler team has found amid the space telescope's data 10 "candidate" planets that, while not confirmed, appear to be roughly one to two times the mass of Earth and orbiting at "Goldilocks" distances, neither too close nor too far from the stars.

The scientists extrapolated in two ways. They know that most planets are unlikely to be in orbits that, just by chance, cause them to pass in front of the face of the star as seen from Kepler. That's a 1-in-100 long shot. For every planet seen, multiply by 100.

The scientists also knew that some planets would remain difficult to detect because of natural fluctuations in starlight — the "noise" in the signal. They found a way to test the accuracy of the algorithms for detecting planets by inserting 40,000 "synthetic" planets into the computer programs and seeing how many would be accurately retrieved by those programs.

The analysis does not prove that any of these "habitable zone" planets resemble Earth. The report states only that they are roughly the size of our planet and are not too close or too far from the star for water — if it is present — to be liquid at the surface.

Moreover, being in a star's habitable zone does not ensure that life will spring forth. Scientists have limited understanding of the origin of life on Earth. The Earth has a number of features that are amenable to life and that might not be common, including a nearly circular orbit, a large companion moon and tectonic activity that recycles the planet's carbon.

Kepler has found 3,538 candidate planets, Jason Rowe, a research scientist at the SETI Institute, said at the news conference Monday. Of those, 647 are Earthsize, 104 are in the star's habitable zone and 10 meet both criteria.

William Borucki, the principal investigator for Kepler, noted that some of the larger planets in the habitable zone might have moons amenable to life. "All of those 104, I think, are very interesting planets," Borucki said.

If the new estimate is correct, there should be about 25 billion Earth-size planets in habitable zones in our galaxy, by Borucki's calculation.

"Those numbers are pretty soft," he said. "We have a lot of corrections to make before we have really definitive numbers."

Monday's news can be viewed as progress in filling in numbers in the famous Drake Equation, developed in 1961 by astronomer Frank Drake as a way of estimating the abundance of communicative civilizations.

"It's encouraging," Drake, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, said Monday. "It gives us a number, and it's a number we can stick into the equation."

He said other factors in the Drake Equation remain highly uncertain — in particular, the evolutionary probability of intelligence.

joel.achenbach@washpost.com

Huh?

Libby

[Palehorse]

Hello out there?  Is that you, Klaatu? Have some interference here, so please re-transmit. What's that? Ask Duke Jupiter, you say? 


Other potential Earths? Try 25 billion of them.

The Washington Post
November 5, 2013

Roughly one in every five sunlike stars is orbited by a potentially habitable, Earth-size planet, meaning that the universe has abundant real estate that could be congenial to life, according to an analysis of observations by NASA's Kepler space telescope.

Our Milky Way galaxy alone could harbor billions of rocky worlds where water might be liquid at the surface, according to the report, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and discussed at a news conference in California.

If the estimate is correct, the nearest ocean planet might be just 12 light-years away, which, though extremely distant for all practical purposes (such as sending a robotic space probe), is just around the corner in our galactic neighborhood.

"When you look up at the stars in the night sky, how many of them have a planet like the Earth?" asked Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley and the lead author of the paper. "We're able to start answering this question."

The best estimate is 22 percent of stars like our own, with an error margin of plus or minus eight percentage points.

"Earth-sized planets having the temperature of a cup of tea are common around sunlike stars," said planet hunter Geoff Marcy, a Berkeley astronomer and a co-author of the study. He said the finding "represents one great leap toward the possibility of life, including intelligent life, in the universe."

Kepler, launched in 2009, is no longer able to search for "exoplanets" — outside our solar system — because it has been unable to point with precision after the failure of a steering mechanism this year. But the telescope amassed more than three years of observations before going on the blink. Kepler mission scientist Natalie Batalha said there is still another full year of data to rummage through.

The telescope's original mission was to obtain an estimate of the percentage of stars with potentially habitable planets, and this latest analysis comes close to meeting that goal. This is still an extrapolation of data and is not the same thing as taking a careful census of these Earth-size planets directly, said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not directly involved in the new analysis.

"Earth-size" doesn't necessarily mean "Earth-like," Seager noted. But she said this result will boost efforts to build telescopes that could obtain direct imagery of one of these extremely distant worlds.

"Earth-sized planets are not rare, so we'll know we'll have stuff to look at," Seager said. "It's reassuring for us."

Jill Tarter, a pioneer in "SETI," the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, said in an e-mail: "We haven't yet found Earth 2.0, but these statistics suggest that it should be forthcoming, and soon. When we can point to Earth 2.0 in the sky, it will seem completely natural to ask 'Does anybody live there?' and 'Can we go there?' I think Earth 2.0 will concretize SETI as nothing else has."

Kepler studied 150,000 stars in a small patch of the sky in the constellation Cygnus. The planets surrounding distant stars cannot be seen directly, because their faint, reflected light is swamped by the much brighter starlight. Thus Kepler looked for the periodic dimming of a star, which could be the signal of a planet passing across the star's face. Ground-based telescopes, such as the Keck I in Hawaii, helped produce an estimate of the size of these transiting planets.

The Kepler team has found amid the space telescope's data 10 "candidate" planets that, while not confirmed, appear to be roughly one to two times the mass of Earth and orbiting at "Goldilocks" distances, neither too close nor too far from the stars.

The scientists extrapolated in two ways. They know that most planets are unlikely to be in orbits that, just by chance, cause them to pass in front of the face of the star as seen from Kepler. That's a 1-in-100 long shot. For every planet seen, multiply by 100.

The scientists also knew that some planets would remain difficult to detect because of natural fluctuations in starlight — the "noise" in the signal. They found a way to test the accuracy of the algorithms for detecting planets by inserting 40,000 "synthetic" planets into the computer programs and seeing how many would be accurately retrieved by those programs.

The analysis does not prove that any of these "habitable zone" planets resemble Earth. The report states only that they are roughly the size of our planet and are not too close or too far from the star for water — if it is present — to be liquid at the surface.

Moreover, being in a star's habitable zone does not ensure that life will spring forth. Scientists have limited understanding of the origin of life on Earth. The Earth has a number of features that are amenable to life and that might not be common, including a nearly circular orbit, a large companion moon and tectonic activity that recycles the planet's carbon.

Kepler has found 3,538 candidate planets, Jason Rowe, a research scientist at the SETI Institute, said at the news conference Monday. Of those, 647 are Earthsize, 104 are in the star's habitable zone and 10 meet both criteria.

William Borucki, the principal investigator for Kepler, noted that some of the larger planets in the habitable zone might have moons amenable to life. "All of those 104, I think, are very interesting planets," Borucki said.

If the new estimate is correct, there should be about 25 billion Earth-size planets in habitable zones in our galaxy, by Borucki's calculation.

"Those numbers are pretty soft," he said. "We have a lot of corrections to make before we have really definitive numbers."

Monday's news can be viewed as progress in filling in numbers in the famous Drake Equation, developed in 1961 by astronomer Frank Drake as a way of estimating the abundance of communicative civilizations.

"It's encouraging," Drake, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, said Monday. "It gives us a number, and it's a number we can stick into the equation."

He said other factors in the Drake Equation remain highly uncertain — in particular, the evolutionary probability of intelligence.

joel.achenbach@washpost.com

Huh?

Libby

And this is exactly why I believe when we die we just move to one of those other 25 billion planets and start all over again. . .

[libby]

And this is exactly why I believe when we die we just move to one of those other 25 billion planets and start all over again. . .

As my old friend Charlie the lawyer said to me the last time I saw him before he died, "It's not that I don't believe in reincarnation, I just don't want to come back as a cockroach!"

We were as different as day and night, and I used to try to get a response from him about things theoretical vs. practical. That was the first time he ever said a word when I talked about reincarnation.

[Palehorse]

  As my old friend Charlie the lawyer said to me the last time I saw him before he died, "It's not that I don't believe in reincarnation, I just don't want to come back as a cockroach!"

We were as different as day and night, and I used to try to get a response from him about things theoretical vs. practical. That was the first time he ever said a word when I talked about reincarnation.

So just think about the possibilities that such a "reality" represents.

Think about the odds against you running into someone you knew here, on one of those 25 billion other earths.

So does that mean that when you encounter someone for the first time here on earth, and you get that feeling that you "know them" already, (All of us have had this happen at least once in our lifetime here), that you've beat the odds already? 

[libby]

So just think about the possibilities that such a "reality" represents.

Think about the odds against you running into someone you knew here, on one of those 25 billion other earths.

So does that mean that when you encounter someone for the first time here on earth, and you get that feeling that you "know them" already, (All of us have had this happen at least once in our lifetime here), that you've beat the odds already? 

I'm not sure most of us could handle 'remembering' past lives.

After I became disillusioned with religion as I knew it, and began to read science fiction and whatever piqued my curiosity, I found myself drawn to reincarnation -- not the dark reincarnation of some, like the Hindus (if I'm remembering correctly), who believe that life or coming back again is punishment. Anyway, I found the subject fascinating but wouldn't, still won't, let myself get too deeply into it because it's one of those subjects -- like infinity -- that can make your head spin if you think too long and hard about it. 

That's one answer. The other is that your comments made me think of a movie starring Tim Robbins and a female actress whose name I can't remember. Although I thought it was quirky  at first, I got caught up in it and ended up thinking ... maybe ... what if ...?   I think the movie was "We Never Danced," about a young couple who met in "heaven," but not any kind of biblical or religious heaven you ever heard of. More like a way station. Didn't get into specifics. They were just 'there,' and seemed to instinctively know why. She had never been born, and he was there accidentally, before his time, so when she chose to leave to be born, he chose to follow, and they were given 30 years to find each other again, but with no memory of meeting in heaven when, if, they did meet again. 

Palehorse, I have a book I think you'd like. I think I found it in a used bookstore.

It's Reincarnation

A Living Study of Reincarnation in All Ages;
Including Selections from the World's religions,
Philosophies and Sciences, and Great Thinkers
of the Past and Present.

Compiled and Edited by Joseph Head and S.L. Cranston

Copyright 1967 by the Julian Press, Inc.

[Henry Hawk]

Hey Libby I think the movie you are referring to is "Made in Heaven" with Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis, I know because my wife watches it everytime it is on..

[Palehorse]

  I'm not sure most of us could handle 'remembering' past lives.

After I became disillusioned with religion as I knew it, and began to read science fiction and whatever piqued my curiosity, I found myself drawn to reincarnation -- not the dark reincarnation of some, like the Hindus (if I'm remembering correctly), who believe that life or coming back again is punishment. Anyway, I found the subject fascinating but wouldn't, still won't, let myself get too deeply into it because it's one of those subjects -- like infinity -- that can make your head spin if you think too long and hard about it. 

That's one answer. The other is that your comments made me think of a movie starring Tim Robbins and a female actress whose name I can't remember. Although I thought it was quirky  at first, I got caught up in it and ended up thinking ... maybe ... what if ...?   I think the movie was "We Never Danced," about a young couple who met in "heaven," but not any kind of biblical or religious heaven you ever heard of. More like a way station. Didn't get into specifics. They were just 'there,' and seemed to instinctively know why. She had never been born, and he was there accidentally, before his time, so when she chose to leave to be born, he chose to follow, and they were given 30 years to find each other again, but with no memory of meeting in heaven when, if, they did meet again. 

Palehorse, I have a book I think you'd like. I think I found it in a used bookstore.

It's Reincarnation

A Living Study of Reincarnation in All Ages;
Including Selections from the World's religions,
Philosophies and Sciences, and Great Thinkers
of the Past and Present.

Compiled and Edited by Joseph Head and S.L. Cranston

Copyright 1967 by the Julian Press, Inc.

Yeah, the thing one has to keep reminding yourself of when reading such things, is that it is "always" slanted with some personal opinion or belief(s) that tend to take most writings on the subject off into the deep weeds. At times.

I tend to skim such writings at first, taking in a number of them quickly, then gather my thoughts over a period of time and refer back to them; sometimes reading specific chapters in depth. And when something "clicks" I will read the whole thing.

I wish I had time to read these days, but the sad fact is unless I am sick I rarely have time to read anything. The worst part about it is I have always been a "book worm"; from a very young age. It just seemed like once I learned to read as a child, a fire was lit and I have kept it blazing my entire life as much as I could.

My wife dreads to see me sit down in my chair on the weekend with a book in my hands, because she knows I will not put it down until I am either done skimming or, "heaven forbid", reading it. My grandchildren make sure I have as little chance as possible of this happening. 

I will add it to my list of books to purchase for future reading though.

Have you read "The Field" by Lynne McTaggert? http://www.amazon.com/The-Field-Quest-Secret-Universe/dp/006143518X

I've read it twice, as well as the sequel to it. VERY interesting.

[libby]

No, I haven't read it, PH. Will keep it in mind, though. Like you, I learned to love books at an early age, and read everything I could get my hands on.  And I keep buying them, even though I have many I haven't read yet.

[Y]

We've been in the process of getting rid of books for a while now...especially since we lost the vast majority of our collectible books in a storage room fire five years ago.

[Y]

As far as 'reincarnation', since energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only change form, you've always been here and will always be here.  We will always be 'stardust'.

[libby]

As far as 'reincarnation', since energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only change form, you've always been here and will always be here.  We will always be 'stardust'.

Speaking specifically  of the "energy" of our physical body, yes, I can believe "we will always be 'stardust,' " but what would you say if I ask if the "energy" that is left over after the body dies might be thought of as the soul? 

[Bo D]

Beautiful! The Orion Nebula ...

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/11/cosmic-hearth?et_cid=3608437&et_rid=41373174&location=top

[Palehorse]

Beautiful! The Orion Nebula ...

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/11/cosmic-hearth?et_cid=3608437&et_rid=41373174&location=top

Yes indeed! My old friend has been back for several weeks now, and I greet him every morning while the little pup does his thing.

I so look forward to the arrival of this constellation within my airspace each year, and only the warmth of spring can cure the sadness I feel when he departs.

[libby]

Beautiful! The Orion Nebula ...

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news/2013/11/cosmic-hearth?et_cid=3608437&et_rid=41373174&location=top

Yes indeed! My old friend has been back for several weeks now, and I greet him every morning while the little pup does his thing.

I so look forward to the arrival of this constellation within my airspace each year, and only the warmth of spring can cure the sadness I feel when he departs.