the golden fish: planet hunters

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

planet hunters

i titled this image "through snow darkly" as it shows the predominant colours these days as well as the barest flicker of light making its way through the piled up snow.

see, these are the dog days - waking up in darkness and getting home in time to see the last feathery light reaching up from the western horizon. in-between is work, and some play, but the kids - well the kids are feeling the downside of living in a northerly clime as well and no amount of telling them that the sun is coming up a minute or two earlier every day and setting a minute or two later every day is convincing them because it isn't even convincing me. and i'm the one spouting the science.

so today an escape to the future. to the discovery of other worlds. last night i saw one incredibly detailed close-up of mercury, from a mission that by 2011 - that's only three years from now folks - will be in orbit around that planet.

today's posting is another in the science series produced by kqed. it's entitled the planet hunters.

hunting planets has become almost commonplace now as articles appear in the daily press about the successes of scientists in not only locating planets orbiting other stars but actually predicting where they will show up. most exciting is the fact that they are able to pinpoint the presence of planets fortuitously located much like ours in the “sweet spot” around a star which is usually the third or fourth planet out.

i could conjecture (as do many of the scientists) that the chances of finding life on those planets is much greater than we have enjoyed despite the efforts of s.e.t.i. (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) arrays worldwide. the challenge is that these planets are many light years distant and the technology for precisely addressing a cosmic e-mail isn’t available just yet. however, you can’t help thinking that at some point, someone is going to say well you know there’s a possibility so let’s fire off a “hello, how are you. we’re fine. wanna meet for lunch?” kind of note.

so as i mentioned earlier, here's instalment number two of the kqed science documentary series, the topic is planet hunters. so without any more preamble let’s have a look........

planet hunters