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Nasa announces major press conference on a 'discovery beyond our solar system'

Attending the press conference will be astronomers and planetary scientists from across the world.

Nasa is to host a major press conference on a “discovery beyond our solar system”.

The event will see the revelation of major information about exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars other than our sun, according to a release. It made no further mention of the details of what would be revealed.

Exoplanets are the major hope for life elsewhere in the universe, since many have been found that resemble our own Earth and could have the building blocks of life. More of them are being discovered all the time.

The event will take place on 22 February at 1pm New York time, it said. It will be streamed live on Nasa’s television station and on its website.

Attending the press conference will be astronomers and planetary scientists from across the world.

Nasa said that the public will be able to ask questions using the hashtag #AskNasa during the conference. The agency will also hold a Reddit AMA, or ask me anything, session straight after the briefing.

Largest Batch of Earth-size, Habitable Zone Planets

Our Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in an area called the habitable zone, where liquid water is most likely to exist on a rocky planet.

This exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile. In May 2016, researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had discovered three planets in the system.

Assisted by several ground-based telescopes, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven.

This is the FIRST time three terrestrial planets have been found in the habitable zone of a star, and this is the FIRST time we have been able to measure both the masses and the radius for habitable zone Earth-sized planets.

All of these seven planets could have liquid water, key to life as we know it, under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

At about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets. To clarify, exoplanets are planets outside our solar system that orbit a sun-like star.

In this animation, you can see the planets orbiting the star, with the green area representing the famous habitable zone, defined as the range of distance to the star for which an Earth-like planet is the most likely to harbor abundant liquid water on its surface. Planets e, f and g fall in the habitable zone of the star.

Using Spitzer data, the team precisely measured the sizes of the seven planets and developed first estimates of the masses of six of them. The mass of the seventh and farthest exoplanet has not yet been estimated.

For comparison…if our sun was the size of a basketball, the TRAPPIST-1 star would be the size of a golf ball.

Based on their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further observations will not only help determine whether they are rich in water, but also possibly reveal whether any could have liquid water on their surfaces.

The sun at the center of this system is classified as an ultra-cool dwarf and is so cool that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun.

 The planets also are very close to each other. How close? Well, if a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.

The planets may also be tidally-locked to their star, which means the same side of the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either perpetual day or night. This could mean they have weather patterns totally unlike those on Earth, such as strong wind blowing from the day side to the night side, and extreme temperature changes.

Because most TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky, and they are very close to one another, scientists view the Galilean moons of Jupiter – lo, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede – as good comparisons in our solar system. All of these moons are also tidally locked to Jupiter. The TRAPPIST-1 star is only slightly wider than Jupiter, yet much warmer. 

How Did the Spitzer Space Telescope Detect this System?

Spitzer, an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun, was well-suited for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light, whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see. Spitzer is uniquely positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing (aka transits) of the planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the system. 

Every time a planet passes by, or transits, a star, it blocks out some light. Spitzer measured the dips in light and based on how big the dip, you can determine the size of the planet. The timing of the transits tells you how long it takes for the planet to orbit the star.

The TRAPPIST-1 system provides one of the best opportunities in the next decade to study the atmospheres around Earth-size planets. Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler will help astronomers plan for follow-up studies using our upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018. With much greater sensitivity, Webb will be able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone and other components of a planet’s atmosphere.

At 40 light-years away, humans won’t be visiting this system in person anytime soon…that said…this poster can help us imagine what it would be like: 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Please subscribe, like, comment, and donate! Next episode March 18. 2017. Stay tuned for Bloopers from this episode on March 11, 2017. Starring: Candice Lola Directed by Rebecca Berger Produced by Rebecca Berger and Candice Lola Written by Candice Lola Editing, Color, Sound Design by Rebecca Berger Animation by Rachael K McDonald Links: Music: http://ift.tt/1JICaNj and http://ift.tt/2lquxdO http://ift.tt/2lINlQJ http://ift.tt/2lqtjzr http://ift.tt/2lIL08B http://ift.tt/2lqvuCQ (Donations are always welcome!) http://ift.tt/2lITyw7 http://ift.tt/2lqvQJO

This Black History Month, let’s celebrate the first African-American woman who traveled in space.

Let’s celebrate black people, who made history! This is so important to know that some of us didn’t give up and were strong enough to achieve something great like this. These stories are inspirational , but we don’t see them in our history books. Even though she was told women can’t go into space, she never stopped believing in her dreams. 

“As a little girl, I was excited, and people kept trying to explain to me why women couldn’t go into space,” Jemison said, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Plainsman. “I always thought they were full of it.”

She’s the role model for every black kid, who has big dreams! She is a living proof everything’s possible!

#BlackHistoryMonth

Drunk Science at @columbiachi drumming up excitement for March 4! Are YOU excited?? #stem #funny #networkmarketing #youtube http://ift.tt/2kj2Ejv

a galactic rainbow

Ancestor of all vertebrates was a big mouth with no anus

A tiny fossil from China could be the earliest of all deuterostomes, creatures that eventually led to evolution of all vertebrates, including humans

The ancestor of all vertebrates, including fish, reptiles and humans was a big mouth but apparently had no anus.

The microscopic creature named Saccorhytus, after the sack-like features created by its elliptical body and large mouth, lived 540 million years ago. It was identified from microfossils found in China.

“To the naked eye, the fossils we studied look like tiny black grains, but under the microscope the level of detail is jaw-dropping,” says team member Simon Conway Morris, of the University of Cambridge, in the UK.

Researchers believe it was about a millimetre in size, lived between grains of sand on the sea bed and had a large mouth relative to the rest of its body.

They also think the creature was covered with a thin, relatively flexible skin, had some sort of muscle system which could have made contractile movements and allowed it to move by wriggling.

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