Astronomers anticipate 100 billion Earth-like planets | KurzweilAI

University of Auckland researchers have proposed a new method for finding Earth-like planets in our galaxy and they anticipate that the number will be on the order of 100 billion.

Milky Way Galaxy (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The research supports an earlier estimate based on extrapolations of Kepler data.

The new research uses a technique called gravitational microlensing, currently used by a Japan-New Zealand collaboration called MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) at New Zealand’s Mt. John Observatory.

“Kepler finds Earth-sized planets that are quite close to parent stars, and it estimates that there are 17 billion such planets in the Milky Way,” says Dr. Phil Yock from the University of Auckland’s Department of Physics. These planets are generally hotter than Earth, although some could be of a similar temperature (and therefore habitable) if they’re orbiting a cool star called a red dwarf.”

Kepler measures the loss of light from a star when a planet orbits between us and the star; microlensing measures the deflection of light from a distant star that passes through a planetary system en route to Earth — an effect predicted by Einstein in 1936.

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IBM to develop telescope data analysis system | PC World

IBM will develop advanced technologies for what will be the world’s largest radio telescope, operational in 2024

IBM is developing new data management and analysis technologies for what will be the world’s largest radio telescope. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA), due to become operational in 2024, will produce so much data that even tomorrow’s off-the-shelf computers will have difficulty processing all of it, the company predicted.

“This is a research project to find out how to build a computer system,” to handle exabytes’ worth of data each day, said Ton Engbersen, an IBM researcher on the project.

The Netherlands has granted IBM and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) a five-year grant of €32.9 million (US$43.6 million) to design a system, with novel technologies, that can ingest the massive amounts of data that SKA will produce.

Funded by a consortium of 20 government agencies, SKA will be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, able to give scientists a better idea of how the Big Bang unfolded 13 billion years ago. SKA will actually be comprised of 3,000 small antennas, each providing a continual stream of data.

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Largest-Ever Simulation of the Universe Revealed - Technology Review The latest computer model of the cosmos involves 400 billion particles in a box about two thirds of the volume of the universe … Today, Juhan Kim at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul, and a few pals, show just how far this technique has come. These guys have carried out the largest simulation of the universe ever undertaken, consisting of 374 billion particles in a box some 10 gigaparsecs across. That’s roughly equivalent to about two thirds the size of the observable universe. This took some 20 days of computing time on the Tachyonii supercomputer in Korea, the 26th fastest in the world in the last set of rankings.

Largest-Ever Simulation of the Universe Revealed - Technology Review

The latest computer model of the cosmos involves 400 billion particles in a box about two thirds of the volume of the universe

… Today, Juhan Kim at the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul, and a few pals, show just how far this technique has come. These guys have carried out the largest simulation of the universe ever undertaken, consisting of 374 billion particles in a box some 10 gigaparsecs across. That’s roughly equivalent to about two thirds the size of the observable universe.

This took some 20 days of computing time on the Tachyonii supercomputer in Korea, the 26th fastest in the world in the last set of rankings.

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Citizen Planet Hunters Help Scientists Locate Distant Worlds Citizen science, first with protein folding video games, and now the search for distant planets: “This Planet Hunters project, with 400,000 users worldwide, supplements the work of scientists from the Kepler project, who are looking at light patterns of 150,000 stars for tell-tale signs of far away rocky worlds crossing in their path. The data from the Kepler Mission were released to the public in December, 2010, and the two exoplanets were flagged within the next month. The astronomers described the two new planet potentials—the first to be found by the public—in a new study that describes how crowd sourcing data from the Kepler Mission is valuable tool in the hunt for exoplanets. (Anyone who contributed to the project and chose to have their name released is publically acknowledged here).” (via Fast Company) jtotheizzoe:

Citizen Planet Hunters Help Scientists Locate Distant Worlds

Citizen science, first with protein folding video games, and now the search for distant planets:

“This Planet Hunters project, with 400,000 users worldwide, supplements the work of scientists from the Kepler project, who are looking at light patterns of 150,000 stars for tell-tale signs of far away rocky worlds crossing in their path.

The data from the Kepler Mission were released to the public in December, 2010, and the two exoplanets were flagged within the next month. The astronomers described the two new planet potentials—the first to be found by the public—in a new study that describes how crowd sourcing data from the Kepler Mission is valuable tool in the hunt for exoplanets. (Anyone who contributed to the project and chose to have their name released is publically acknowledged here).”

(via Fast Company)

jtotheizzoe:

(via jtotheizzoe)

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First Habitable Exoplanet Could Be Discovered by May |  Wired.com A new mathematical analysis predicts the first truly habitable exoplanet will show itself by early May 2011. Well, more or less. “There is some wiggle room,” said Samuel Arbesman of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, lead author of a new paper posted online and to be published in PLoS ONE October 4. His calculations predict a 50 percent probability that the first habitable exoplanet will be discovered in May 2011, a 66 percent chance by the end of 2013 and 75 percent chance by 2020.

First Habitable Exoplanet Could Be Discovered by May |  Wired.com

A new mathematical analysis predicts the first truly habitable exoplanet will show itself by early May 2011.

Well, more or less. “There is some wiggle room,” said Samuel Arbesman of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, lead author of a new paper posted online and to be published in PLoS ONE October 4. His calculations predict a 50 percent probability that the first habitable exoplanet will be discovered in May 2011, a 66 percent chance by the end of 2013 and 75 percent chance by 2020.


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