Finding Life Beyond Earth (DISCOVER)

[MrsRobertPlant]

David Charbonneau, an excellent scientist searching for alien life using the transit method. By examining how the planet blocks out some of the light from its star, David can see what gases are present in the planets atmosphere.

If you're interested, here's the link to the article:

Scientist Of The Year

[Cecil.]

David Charbonneau, an excellent scientist searching for alien life using the transit method. By examining how the planet blocks out some of the light from its star, David can see what gases are present in the planets atmosphere.

If you're interested, here's the link to the article:

Scientist Of The Year

What is the transit method? do you mean how you detect a planet is in orbit with a star?

[MrsRobertPlant]

www.iac.es/proyecto/tep/transitmet.html

[zero]

by transit , i guess they mean when a star's planet is between us and the star. the star's light would shine through the planet's atmosphere. they can use a spectrometer and look at the absorption lines in that light. it's an old idea. i guess we are only now getting to the point of our technology becoming sophisticated enough to do this.

well not really. they've known how to do this for half a century. it's hard to convince the public to spare money to build the telescopes and such needed to do the work.

we are also on some sort of agonizingly slow time table that they have purposely set. one of the reasons is they (space agencies and scientists) feel we should take a slow route so future generations will have things left to discover. i see a smokescreen..

[Cecil.]

by transit , i guess they mean when a star's planet is between us and the star. the star's light would shine through the planet's atmosphere. they can use a spectrometer and look at the absorption lines in that light. it's an old idea. i guess we are only now getting to the point of our technology becoming sophisticated enough to do this.

well not really. they've known how to do this for half a century. it's hard to convince the public to spare money to build the telescopes and such needed to do the work.

we are also on some sort of agonizingly slow time table that they have purposely set. one of the reasons is they (space agencies and scientists) feel we should take a slow route so future generations will have things left to discover. i see a smokescreen..

th

no no no please, if you are both in some cult fine. debate does not start with out on the limb theories. spectrometers will not work.