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Information Technology News Google climbs aboard search for ET planets
Information Technology News Google climbs aboard search for ET planets | Google climbs aboard search for ET planets |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Thursday, 20 March 2008 | |
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According to the MIT report, Google wants to work on the development of ways of sifting through the huge volume of data that will be generated by the satellite to find useful information. Most searches so far depend on the gravitational attraction that planets exert on their stars in order to detect them, and therefore are best at finding large planets that orbit close to their stars. So far, most of the 200 plus planets discovered outside our solar system are much larger than Earth. TESS, however, would search for stars whose orbits as seen from Earth carry them directly in front of the star, obscuring a tiny amount of starlight. Some ground-based searches have used this method and found about 20 planets so far, but a space-based search could detect much smaller, Earth-sized planets, as well as those with larger orbits. This transit-detection method, by measuring the exact amount of light obscured by the planet, can pinpoint the planet's size. When combined with spectroscopic follow-up observations, it can determine the planet's temperature, probe the chemistry of its atmosphere, and perhaps even find signs of life, such as the presence of oxygen in the air. According to MIT researchers, two years after launch, the cameras - which have a total resolution of 192 megapixels - will cover the whole sky, getting precise brightness measurements of about two million stars in total. In that time, the scientists expect to have found at least a thousand planetary systems and up to 10 times as many planets. |
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