Academia, Environment, Science

Kepler Mission Reveals As Many As 140 Possible Earth-Like Planets

The recently activated Kepler Mission is already paying off great dividends. The deep space observatory has reportedly found up to 140 planets that may be habitable, Earth-like bodies. This is just after six weeks on the job.

These are but a part of over 700 new planets identified by the mission.

Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and a scientist on the Kepler Mission, noted “The figures suggest our galaxy, the Milky Way [which has more than 100 billion stars] will contain 100 million habitable planets, and soon we will be identifying the first of them.”

What is most revealing for me is how programs like Kepler yield such fantastic results — an argument against the massive cuts imposed on NASA by the Obama Administration. These programs cost a tiny fraction of what we spend in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like national parks, it appears that our most successful programs are the first to be cut by politicians because they lack a powerful lobby in Washington.

Source: Daily Mail

146 thoughts on “Kepler Mission Reveals As Many As 140 Possible Earth-Like Planets”

  1. Tootie said:

    “…Creationists simply disagree with you about how to read the evidence. They are skeptical and circumspect.

    Which is truly in keeping with the best traditions in science.”

    Tootie – you are a Poe, right? Nobody could be that obtuse and still operate a computer. 😀

  2. @ buckeye:

    Oh that pesky, pesky reading comprehension! That article you linked to contains this tidbit:

    “Overall, Obama’s proposed budget increases the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s budget by $6 billion over the next five years. The president’s budget would give NASA a $19 billion budget in 2011, compared to its $18.3 billion budget this year.”

    Maybe I’m just a bad writer, but I thought I said Obama was cutting part of NASA’s budget while adding to it. That’s a net gain!

  3. Tootie–

    I should reword my question to you so it will be clearer. Were you implying that all Christians are creationists?

  4. Tootie–

    Buddha beat me to the punch–but I’ll respond for myself anyway.

    You said: “Elaine, you implied it.”

    I didn’t imply any such thing. You THINK I implied it. Actually, you incorrectly INFERRED it from the comment I wrote.

    Just because most creationists are Christians–it doesn’t follow that all Christians are creationists. Is that what YOU were IMPLYING?

  6. You need to learn the difference between “imply” and “infer”.

  8. Elaine, you implied it. ]

    The Creationist movement here in this country is mainly a Christian one. You must know that. A myriad of organizations of Christian creationists abound. They are everywhere to be found on the internet. We don’t find any other religious group with so prominent a role in it.

    Clearly, other small religious non-christian groups have joined in (and are welcome), but no one hardly knows about them. Since you were referring to “our citizens” I assumed you meant American citizens, most of whom are Christians or of a similar persuasion. Since Muslims make up no more than 1 percent of the US population, I doubt you referred to them.

    The Jews make up a little more of a percentage of the population and even less of that number devout biblical Jews. And many devout Jews are of the variety of this Rabbi:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p80zQQPJ3Ec

    So there just isn’t anyone else left to count as the people you were referring to and I take your objections seriously.

    The majority of creationists who are “our citizens” are in fact Christians and that is probably who you were talking about.

  12. Tootie–

    I don’t appreciate folks who say I make blanket claims about things when I never did any such thing. Where did I make any claim that all Christians are either anti-science or creationists? I don’t, in fact, believe that most Christians are ultra-religious zealots.

    And spare me the part about creation scientists being real scientists.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs&hl=en_US&fs=1]

  13. Elaine M

    The only anti-science people I see are those who make blanket claims that Christians (creationists) are anti-science.

    The only people I see perpetuating this unscientific claim that Christians/creationists are anti-science are those who claim to revere science.

    Creation scientists are scientists.

    They generally use the same scientific methods as non-creationists and while people can disagree with their conclusions about what the evidence says, it is not accurate to say they are anti-science.

    The people who follow creationist research love science, contrary to the bigoted knee-jerking myths spread by the slanderers in the non-creationist camp.

    The creationist is also very aware of how that the sciences has from time to time been led by a stubborn elite who thinks they own the place and try to keep others from a set at the table. And they know these elites at times have hampered the development of the sciences because of personal weaknesses like impertinence, jealously, arrogance, or greed.

    Creationists simply disagree with you about how to read the evidence. They are skeptical and circumspect.

    Which is truly in keeping with the best traditions in science.

  15. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ5sWfhkpE0&hl=en_US&fs=1]

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