News tagged with planet search

The Eerie Silence

Why have we not made contact with aliens after so many years searching the depths of space? The Eerie Silence, a new book by SETI researcher Paul Davies, provides a fresh and thoughtful look at this question.

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Apr 15, 2010 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (36) | comments 71 | with audio podcast

US astronomers launch search for alien life on 86 planets

A massive radio telescope in rural West Virginia has begun listening for signs of alien life on 86 possible Earth-like planets, US astronomers said Friday.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 14, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (29) | comments 98

City lights could reveal E.T. civilization

In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 03, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (29) | comments 54 | with audio podcast

New definition could further limit habitable zones around distant suns

As astronomers gaze toward nearby planetary systems in search of life, they are focusing their attention on each system's habitable zone, where heat radiated from the star is just right to keep a planet's water in liquid ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jun 10, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (11) | comments 5

Goldilocks moons

The search for extraterrestrial life outside our Solar System is currently focused on extrasolar planets within the ‘habitable zones’ of exoplanetary systems around stars similar to the Sun. Finding ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jan 16, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (10) | comments 1

Probing Question: What is a Near Earth?

In the 1997 movie "Contact" (based on the novel by Carl Sagan), actress Jodie Foster plays an astrophysicist devoted to SETI -- the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Despite doubting colleagues, she ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 27, 2010 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (10) | comments 2

SETI Redux: Joining the Galactic Club

In this essay, David Schwartzman, a biogeochemist at Howard University in Washington D.C., explains why he thinks the aliens are out there, despite the fact that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (S ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created May 24, 2010 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (9) | comments 22

Let the Planet Hunt Begin

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds. The mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 6, will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created May 13, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (6) | comments 0

Refining the search for new planets

(PhysOrg.com) -- SF State's planet hunting team is trying new avenues of investigation in the quest to discover planets beyond our solar system. At the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in January, ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 03, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 7

Countering contamination for Mars spacesuits

To search for life on Mars, future astronauts would naturally want to step outside their living habitat for a walk. But the spacesuits keeping them alive might also carry Earth microbes or ingredients of life ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jun 16, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

SETI survey focuses on Kepler's top Earth-like planets

(PhysOrg.com) -- UC Berkeley is searching for evidence of intelligent life on planets identified by the Kepler space telescope team as having Earth-like environments. This search for extraterrestrial intelligence ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 16, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 1