thesciencellama: NASA’s Kepler Discovers 461 New Planet Candidates As of January 7, 2013 Kepler has discovered 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars and among the 461 new discoveries, 4 of them are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit their sun’s habitable zone. “The large number of multi-candidate systems being found by Kepler implies that a substantial fraction of exoplanets reside in flat multi-planet systems,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “This is consistent with what we know about our own planetary neighborhood.”  Kepler discovers these candidates by measuring the brightness of the Sun as a planet passes by it or transits the star causing it to dim slightly. These candidates need additional, follow up, observations to be confirmed as planets. At the beginning of 2012, there were 33 candidates that were confirmed as planets, now there are 105. “The analysis of increasingly longer time periods of Kepler data uncovers smaller planets in longer period orbits— orbital periods similar to Earth’s,” said Steve Howell, Kepler mission project scientist at Ames. “It is no longer a question of will we find a true Earth analogue, but a question of when.”

thesciencellama:

NASA’s Kepler Discovers 461 New Planet Candidates

As of January 7, 2013 Kepler has discovered 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars and among the 461 new discoveries, 4 of them are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit their sun’s habitable zone.

“The large number of multi-candidate systems being found by Kepler implies that a substantial fraction of exoplanets reside in flat multi-planet systems,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “This is consistent with what we know about our own planetary neighborhood.” 

Kepler discovers these candidates by measuring the brightness of the Sun as a planet passes by it or transits the star causing it to dim slightly. These candidates need additional, follow up, observations to be confirmed as planets. At the beginning of 2012, there were 33 candidates that were confirmed as planets, now there are 105.

“The analysis of increasingly longer time periods of Kepler data uncovers smaller planets in longer period orbits— orbital periods similar to Earth’s,” said Steve Howell, Kepler mission project scientist at Ames. “It is no longer a question of will we find a true Earth analogue, but a question of when.”

(via sagansense)

skeptv:

The Planetary Society Says ‘Thank You’

via sagansense:

CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy is joined by project directors and staff around the world who want you, our members, to know how very grateful we are for your support. 2012 was a great year, here’s to the next.

jumpsuitsandteleporters:

Beep Beep! Sputnik — the satellite that instigated the space race — turns 55 years old today. About the size of a beach ball yet weighing 184 pounds, Sputnik 1 circled the globe every 96 minutes and made 1,440 orbits. It traveled approximately 60 million kilometers, transmitting satellite beeps all the way until it burned up on January 4, 1958. Three months later, Sputnik 2 was launched carrying a passenger dog named Laika — the first dog in space!

Enjoy this ditty from 1959 in celebration of Sputnik.

(via bbglasses)

sklogw: Prometheus Creating Saturn Ring Streamers What’s causing those strange dark streaks in the rings of Saturn? Prometheus. Specifically, an orbital dance involving Saturn’s moon Prometheus keeps creating unusual light and dark streamers in the F-Ring of Saturn. Now Prometheus orbits Saturn just inside the thin F-ring, but ventures into its inner edge about every 15 hours. Prometheus’ gravity then pulls the closest ring particles toward the 80-km moon. The result is not only a stream of bright ring particles but also a dark ribbon where ring particles used to be. Since Prometheus orbits faster than the ring particles, the icy moon pulls out a new streamer every pass. Above, several streamers or kinks are visible at once. The above photograph was taken in June by the robotic Cassini Spacecraft orbiting Saturn. The oblong moon Prometheus is visible on the far left. Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA

sklogw:

Prometheus Creating Saturn Ring Streamers

What’s causing those strange dark streaks in the rings of Saturn? Prometheus. Specifically, an orbital dance involving Saturn’s moon Prometheus keeps creating unusual light and dark streamers in the F-Ring of Saturn. Now Prometheus orbits Saturn just inside the thin F-ring, but ventures into its inner edge about every 15 hours. Prometheus’ gravity then pulls the closest ring particles toward the 80-km moon. The result is not only a stream of bright ring particles but also a dark ribbon where ring particles used to be. Since Prometheus orbits faster than the ring particles, the icy moon pulls out a new streamer every pass. Above, several streamers or kinks are visible at once. The above photograph was taken in June by the robotic Cassini Spacecraft orbiting Saturn. The oblong moon Prometheus is visible on the far left.

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA

(via sagansense)

sagansense: ABORTION AND THE 2012 ELECTION SEASON: LET’S GET THE FACTS STRAIGHTCarolyn Porco August 22, 2012 Once again, as the US prepares itself to elect another President and slogs its way through another drawn-out, gaffe-rich, truth-free, meaning-less, overmarketed election season, we Americans find ourselves in the midst of what has become a quadrennial tradition: an irrational debate about abortion. This year and more precisely this past week, the particular issue in question surfaced in a stunning remark by the US Republican Senatorial candidate from Missouri, Rep. Todd Akin, when he claimed, after citing doctors, that a woman’s body has the means to prevent a pregnancy from ‘legitimate rape’. Nevermind the callousness towards rape victims that such a statement betrays, which is shocking enough. Nevermind the audacious implication that some rapes may not be ‘legitimate’, whatever that might mean. [Really, let’s not even go there.] For me, it is the utter face-palming ignorance in Akin’s statement that sickens. And that is the root of all of it, really: The extraordinary ignorance to be found in the thinking of so many elected officials and their supporters on the matter of abortion and its related issues. Personally, I can relate to concerns that the annihilation of a living being inside a human womb might be murder. It is a reasonable question. Personally, I can relate to those who question the unilateral right of a woman to abort a fetus. The issue of abortion is complex, has deep moral implications, and if it really constitutes murder, it is reasonable to question the right of one person to decide. I get all that. But what I cannot fathom in an educated, supposedly advanced society like ours, where so much information is readily available to us, is the deliberate refusal to access and evaluate the facts as we know them, and from there, in sober fashion, construct guidelines for decision-making and behavior based on them. We have a robust (if underfunded) scientific enterprise in our country; our nation’s politicians must avail themselves of it if they are to construct sensible, meaningful laws that are consistent with reality. In the end, it is the fruits of scientific inquiry that can and must delineate the boundaries within which discussions of morality and politics can take shape, and within which laws can be written. In the matter of abortion, those boundaries were masterfully laid out in 1990 in an article written by Carl Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, and first published in Parade Magazine in April 1990. To this day, this is the most sane, objective, and balanced evaluation of the issues surrounding abortion that I have ever encountered. The facts concerning the evolving characteristics of a human fetus are used by the authors to judge the point before which abortion could not reasonably be considered murder and beyond which it could. It was a brilliant examination of a thorny social issue, written for the public. It should be required reading for high school students everywhere. So impressed am I still with Sagan’s analysis, and so disgusted am I with Akin’s remark and the here-we-go-again GOP anti-abortion platform that apparently will be advanced this year to exclude rape as an exception to the rule, that I reproduce the article here for all to read. [Years later, Sagan elaborated on that simple initial 1990 treatise in his book, ‘Billions and Billions’, published by Random House in 1997. A link to Chapter 15, “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers” is also provided below for those who want the full, lengthy exposition]. This particular website is surely not the place where such an article should be posted. I emailed Parade Magazine yesterday and requested that they post it anew on their website, since the subject matter is so timely and the election is pressing upon us. But having received the response that it would be 5 weeks before the Parade folks even get to it, and having no other website or better venue to display it, I temporarily post it here. Again, for those who wish the simpler elucidation, the Parade magazine article is excellent. [The pencil underlinings are mine from 1990.] If you wish a more in-depth examination of the issue, Sagan’s book chapter is for you. And of course, I’d be interested to know what you think. I can be found on Twitter at @carolynporco. Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, “Is It Possible To Be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice?”, Parade Magazine, April 22, 1990.Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions, Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, Chapter 15: “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”, Random House, 1997.

sagansense:

ABORTION AND THE 2012 ELECTION SEASON: LET’S GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT
Carolyn Porco

August 22, 2012

Once again, as the US prepares itself to elect another President and slogs its way through another drawn-out, gaffe-rich, truth-free, meaning-less, overmarketed election season, we Americans find ourselves in the midst of what has become a quadrennial tradition: an irrational debate about abortion.

This year and more precisely this past week, the particular issue in question surfaced in a stunning remark by the US Republican Senatorial candidate from Missouri, Rep. Todd Akin, when he claimed, after citing doctors, that a woman’s body has the means to prevent a pregnancy from ‘legitimate rape’. Nevermind the callousness towards rape victims that such a statement betrays, which is shocking enough. Nevermind the audacious implication that some rapes may not be ‘legitimate’, whatever that might mean. [Really, let’s not even go there.] For me, it is the utter face-palming ignorance in Akin’s statement that sickens.

And that is the root of all of it, really: The extraordinary ignorance to be found in the thinking of so many elected officials and their supporters on the matter of abortion and its related issues.

Personally, I can relate to concerns that the annihilation of a living being inside a human womb might be murder. It is a reasonable question. Personally, I can relate to those who question the unilateral right of a woman to abort a fetus. The issue of abortion is complex, has deep moral implications, and if it really constitutes murder, it is reasonable to question the right of one person to decide.

I get all that.

But what I cannot fathom in an educated, supposedly advanced society like ours, where so much information is readily available to us, is the deliberate refusal to access and evaluate the facts as we know them, and from there, in sober fashion, construct guidelines for decision-making and behavior based on them. We have a robust (if underfunded) scientific enterprise in our country; our nation’s politicians must avail themselves of it if they are to construct sensible, meaningful laws that are consistent with reality. In the end, it is the fruits of scientific inquiry that can and must delineate the boundaries within which discussions of morality and politics can take shape, and within which laws can be written.

In the matter of abortion, those boundaries were masterfully laid out in 1990 in an article written by Carl Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, and first published in Parade Magazine in April 1990. To this day, this is the most sane, objective, and balanced evaluation of the issues surrounding abortion that I have ever encountered. The facts concerning the evolving characteristics of a human fetus are used by the authors to judge the point before which abortion could not reasonably be considered murder and beyond which it could. It was a brilliant examination of a thorny social issue, written for the public. It should be required reading for high school students everywhere.

So impressed am I still with Sagan’s analysis, and so disgusted am I with Akin’s remark and the here-we-go-again GOP anti-abortion platform that apparently will be advanced this year to exclude rape as an exception to the rule, that I reproduce the article here for all to read. [Years later, Sagan elaborated on that simple initial 1990 treatise in his book, ‘Billions and Billions’, published by Random House in 1997. A link to Chapter 15, “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers” is also provided below for those who want the full, lengthy exposition].

This particular website is surely not the place where such an article should be posted. I emailed Parade Magazine yesterday and requested that they post it anew on their website, since the subject matter is so timely and the election is pressing upon us. But having received the response that it would be 5 weeks before the Parade folks even get to it, and having no other website or better venue to display it, I temporarily post it here.

Again, for those who wish the simpler elucidation, the Parade magazine article is excellent. [The pencil underlinings are mine from 1990.] If you wish a more in-depth examination of the issue, Sagan’s book chapter is for you.

And of course, I’d be interested to know what you think. I can be found on Twitter at @carolynporco.

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, “Is It Possible To Be Pro-Life and Pro-Choice?”, Parade Magazine, April 22, 1990.

Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions, Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, Chapter 15: “The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”, Random House, 1997.

ikenbot: Hypatia of Alexandria ‘Influential Women of Astronomy’ Image: Hypatia as played in the film Agora by Rachel Weisz Sixteen hundred years ago, Hypatia became one of the world’s leading scholars in mathematics and astronomy. Hypatia’s legendary knowledge, modesty, and public speaking ability flourished during the era of the Great Library of Alexandria. Hypatia is credited with contributions to geometry and astrometry, and she is thought instrumental in the development of the sky-measuring astrolabe. “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all,” Hypatia is credited with saying. “To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing.” — Hypatia of Alexandria YES! YOU! I LOVE YOU!

ikenbot:

Hypatia of Alexandria

‘Influential Women of Astronomy’

Image: Hypatia as played in the film Agora by Rachel Weisz

Sixteen hundred years ago, Hypatia became one of the world’s leading scholars in mathematics and astronomy. Hypatia’s legendary knowledge, modesty, and public speaking ability flourished during the era of the Great Library of Alexandria.

Hypatia is credited with contributions to geometry and astrometry, and she is thought instrumental in the development of the sky-measuring astrolabe.

“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all,” Hypatia is credited with saying.

“To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing.” — Hypatia of Alexandria

YES! YOU! I LOVE YOU!

(via scinerds)