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Post by Wes on Feb 10, 2010 18:23:45 GMT 10
NASA announces 'unprecedented' achievement.
PASADENA, Calif. (UPI) -- NASA astronomers say they have developed a technique that can identify organic molecules on a planet nearly 63 light years from Earth.
The researchers, using a relatively small Earth-based telescope, successfully measured details of an exoplanet's atmospheric composition and conditions -- a feat NASA calls "an unprecedented achievement from an Earth-based observatory."
The accomplishment, the space agency said, promises to accelerate by years the search for prebiotic, or life-related, molecules on planets orbiting stars beyond our solar system.
The scientists used NASA's 30-year-old, 10-foot-diameter (3-meter) telescope at the space agency's Infrared Telescope Facility atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
"The fact that we have used a relatively small, ground-based telescope is exciting because it implies that the largest telescopes on the ground, using this technique, may be able to characterize terrestrial exoplanet targets," said Mark Swain, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the study's lead author.
The research that included scientists from the University of Arizona, University College London; UCLA, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Germany's Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy and the SOFIA Institute is reported in the journal Nature.
Copyright 2010 by United Press International
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Post by Wes Gear on Feb 10, 2010 20:34:11 GMT 10
very interesting.
the problem i have with all the breakthroughs in telescopic exploration is that its becoming too easy to just sit here on earth and let telescopes and robots do all the work. manned exploration is not even the top priority anymore.
i'm of the belief that mankind must explore space or we will stagnate on this rock. i am tired of nasa and politicians using the deaths of astronauts as excuses for scaling back our space program. these people give their lives willingly to the cause. if they knew their deaths would be used to kill the missions they so believed in they would have stayed on the ground.
sorry wes.........good article........it just reminded me of a story i read awhile back about us becoming to reliant on telescopes and robots to the point we gave up on manned missions altogether. then with all this recent nasa bullshit it seems as though that is exactly where we are headed.
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Post by brillbilly on Feb 10, 2010 22:20:39 GMT 10
so,im to believe that telescopes can see organic moleculs,lmao,NASA= NOW ANOTHER STUPID ANSWER.if they see organic moleculs,they are seeing life or the building blocks for life.This to me indicates that space could be teaming with life as they get blasted from A to B.
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Post by Wes Gear on Feb 10, 2010 22:33:34 GMT 10
not sure i doubt that they can do this..........at first i found it odd that they are only interested in doing this with ground based telescopes but then i realized it makes sense to use the ground based ones to look for targets that the space based telescopes can focus on. since space based telescopes are so mission orientated they don't have the time to look for these molecules.
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Post by Wes on Feb 10, 2010 22:46:59 GMT 10
...it just reminded me of a story i read awhile back about us becoming to reliant on telescopes and robots to the point we gave up on manned missions altogether. then with all this recent nasa bullshit it seems as though that is exactly where we are headed. Yeah Drex it is like we are going backwards. The full on space thing will need to be an international project. But why is it all stalling now? Like weren't we all going to Mars a while back via the Moon. The Moon has got water and Mars has water, that's what all the money was spent on wasn't it? Finding water. What is it now? "We found water but the water is too cold to drink".
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Post by brillbilly on Feb 10, 2010 22:47:39 GMT 10
only time will tell drex if this works well,i just think that sending mankind to other planets should be the biggest priority for NASA
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Post by theshee on Feb 11, 2010 4:02:18 GMT 10
Agree totaly! We have become too lazy on this little planet or is it they just cant do it, as in send people anywhere?!?!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2010 7:27:09 GMT 10
...it just reminded me of a story i read awhile back about us becoming to reliant on telescopes and robots to the point we gave up on manned missions altogether. then with all this recent nasa bullshit it seems as though that is exactly where we are headed. Yeah Drex it is like we are going backwards. The full on space thing will need to be an international project. But why is it all stalling now? Like weren't we all going to Mars a while back via the Moon. The Moon has got water and Mars has water, that's what all the money was spent on wasn't it? Finding water. What is it now? "We found water but the water is too cold to drink". The answer simply is money, no one has the trillions opf dollars to put into these projects anymore. The reason it costs trillions? They are government contracts, any little part will cost 100 times its value if you are selling it to the government, and they just pay it. Maybe thats as good an arguement as any for private enterprise to get involved.
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