Wednesday
Craig,
Alta, Carol and myself left in two cars mid-morning, stopping for brunch at
First Watch off I-75. Six hours later we arrived at Collinsville for the night
at a Super 8, which are popular in the Mid-West. As it was quite warm and was
going to be hot before mid-day on Thursday we skipped the Botanical Gardens. I
took one look at the latest USA Today and was keyed to see the article
that I found later on the Time site. I have it posted at the conclusion
of this post. The next day drove on to Independence, Missouri for a stop at the
Truman Presidential Library.
** **
SCIENCE
One
Star Over, a Planet That Might Be Another Earth
By KENNETH CHANG AUG. 24,
2016
Another
Earth could be circling the star right next door to us.
Astronomers
announced on Wednesday that they had detected a planet orbiting Proxima
Centauri, the closest neighbor to our solar system. Intriguingly, the planet is
in the star’s “Goldilocks zone,” where it may be neither too hot nor too cold.
That means liquid water could exist at the surface, raising the possibility for
life.
Although
observations in recent years, particularly by NASA’s Kepler planet-finding
mission, have uncovered a bounty of Earth-size worlds throughout the galaxy,
this one holds particular promise because it might someday, decades from now,
be possible to reach. It’s 4.2 light-years, or 25 trillion miles, away from
Earth, which is extremely close in cosmic terms.
One
astronomer likened it to a flashing neon sign. “I’m the nearest star, and I
have a potentially habitable planet!” said R. Paul Butler, an astronomer at the
Carnegie Institution for Science and a member of the team that made the
discovery.
Guillem Anglada-Escudé, an
astronomer at Queen Mary University of London and the leader of the team that
made the discovery reported in the journal Nature, said, “We know there are
terrestrial planets around many stars, and we kind of expected the nearby stars
would contain terrestrial planets. This is not exciting because of this. The
excitement is because it is the nearest one.”
Beyond the planet’s size and
distance from its parent star, much about it is still mysterious. Scientists
are working off computer models that offer mere hints of what’s possible:
Conditions could be Earthlike, but they could also be hellish like Venus, or
cold and dry like Mars.
There
is no picture of the planet, which has been designated Proxima b. Instead, Dr.
Anglada-Escudé and his colleagues detected it indirectly, studying via
telescope the light of the parent star. They zeroed in on clocklike wobbles in
the starlight, as the colors shifted slightly to the reddish end of the
spectrum, then slightly bluish. The oscillations, caused by the bobbing
back-and-forth motion of the star as it is pulled around by the gravity of the
planet, are similar to how the pitch of a police siren rises or falls depending
on whether the patrol car is traveling toward or away from the listener.
From
the size of the wobbles, the astronomers determined that Proxima b is at least
1.3 times the mass of Earth, although it could be several times larger. A year
on Proxima b — the time to complete one orbit around the star — lasts just 11.2
days.
Continue
reading the main story
And
the planet’s proximity to Earth gives hope that robotic probes could someday be
zooming past the planet for a close-up look. A privately funded team of
scientists and technology titans, led by the Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner
and the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, have announced Breakthrough
Starshot Initiative, a project to develop and launch a fleet of iPhone-size
spacecraft within two to three decades. Their proposed destination is the Alpha
Centauri star system, which includes two larger, sunlike stars in addition to
Proxima Centauri.
“We
will definitely aim at Proxima,” said Avi Loeb, a Harvard astronomer who is the
chairman of an advisory committee for Breakthrough Starshot. “This is like
finding prime real estate in our neighborhood.”
This
newly discovered planet is much closer to its parent star, about five million
miles apart, than Earth is to the sun, 93 million miles. Even Mercury, the
innermost planet of our solar system, is 36 million miles from the sun.
While
Proxima b might be similar to Earth, its parent star, Proxima Centauri, is very
different from the sun. It is tiny, belonging to a class of stars known as red
dwarfs, with only about 12 percent of the mass of the sun and about 1/600th the
luminosity — so dim that it cannot be seen from Earth with the naked eye.
Thus
Proxima b, despite its closeness to the star, receives less warmth than Earth,
but enough that water could flow on the surface. Whether the planet has liquid
water or an atmosphere is “pure speculation at this point,” Dr. Anglada-Escudé
said in a news conference.
If
the planet formed close to the star, it could be dry and airless, but it might
also have formed farther out and migrated inward to its current orbit. It is
also possible that the planet formed dry and was later bombarded by comets or
ice-rich asteroids.
“There
are viable models and stories that lead to a viable Earthlike planet today,”
Dr. Anglada-Escudé said. Even if it is habitable, scientists studying the
possibility of life elsewhere in the universe spiritedly debate whether planets
around these red dwarfs are a promising place to look. Small stars are more
erratic, especially during their youth, and eruptions off the star’s surface
could strip away the atmosphere from such planets. Levels of X-rays and other
high-energy radiation bombarding the planet would be 100 times that on Earth,
the scientists said.
Although the planet, lost in
the glare of the star, cannot be viewed by current telescopes, astronomers hope
to see it when they next close orbit suggests that the rotation of the planet
would probably be gravitationally locked by the star’s pull. Just as the same
side of the moon always faces Earth, one side of Proxima b is probably eternally
bright, always facing the star, while the other is ever dark.eneration is built
a decade from now.
Additional
visible light observations further convinced the scientists that they were not
being fooled by variations in the star itself erroneously mimicking the
presence of a planet.
The
discovery was more than a decade and a half in the making. Michael Endl, an
astronomer at the University of Texas and one of the authors of the Nature
paper, peered at Proxima Centauri for eight years beginning in 2000, looking
for hints of a planet.
“At
that time, I didn’t see anything highly, highly significant,” Dr. Endl said in
an interview. “Then we published our data and moved on.”
Later,
Dr. Anglada-Escudé, analyzing data from a different instrument on a different
telescope, found inconclusive hints of a planet. He reached out to Dr. Endl to
reanalyze the earlier data, and he also spearheaded the Pale Red Dot project,
which tried to observe Proxima Centauri daily for two months earlier this year.
The
new observations clearly revealed the 11.2-day period of the planet, and the
signal matched what Dr. Anglada-Escudé had suspected earlier. It also matched a
signal that was hidden in the noise of Dr. Endl’s data, which was lower in
precision and observed Proxima Centauri once a week or so, not every day.
There
are hints of perhaps another planet, perhaps more, but those hints are still
ambiguous, the scientists said. The discovery could provide impetus for
planet-finding telescopes. Ruslan Belikov of the NASA Ames Research Center in
Mountain View, Calif., has proposed a small space telescope costing less than
$175 million dedicated to the search for planets in Alpha Centauri. While it
would not be powerful enough to spot Proxima b, its existence would give more
confidence that terrestrial planets also orbit the two sunlike stars there.
“It just raises the
public awareness there’s a new world just next door,” Dr. Belikov said. “It’s a
paradigm shift in people’s minds.”
http://www.nytimesDOTcom/2016/08/25/science/earth-planet-proximacentauri.html?emc=edit_ta_20160824&nlid=54414085&ref=cta&_r=0
** **
This article is very exciting to me. It
would be very cool to eventually prove the planet contains life. If Mars shows
it has or had life it will change the chances that life exists in many more
places.
25 August 2016
We
thoroughly enjoyed the Truman Museum, Chapel and burial place, and also seeing
the Truman home. It was too late in the day to go inside, but we may stop and
do this on the way home. The museum was well worth the visit. That night we
spent the night at a Comfort Suite in Topeka, Kansas.
** **
The Harry S. Truman Library
and Museum is the presidential library and resting place of Harry S.
Truman, the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953), located
on U.S. Highway 24 in Independence, Missouri. It was the first presidential
library to be created under the provisions of the 1955 Presidential Libraries
Act, and is one of thirteen presidential libraries administered by the National
Archives and Records Administration.
** **
26 August 2016
Yesterday
we visited the Eisenhower library in Abilene, Kansas. It was also a great exhibit
– if you love American history from the 1940’s through the 1960’s you will
certainly enjoy both libraries. At least the four of us did. It was a long day
of driving afterwards (through several rain storms and lots of flat land farms)
– very pretty and certainly different from Ohio. We arrived at Colorado Springs
about six o’clock local time, eating dinner at Chili’s and staying at a Quality
Inn.
** **
The
Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum is one of The 8 Wonders of
Kansas because it tells of the remarkable lifetime achievements of Dwight D.
Eisenhower, five-star General and President of the United States!
Dwight
D. Eisenhower commanded the greatest amphibious military operation in history,
the 1944 Allied invasion of Nazi controlled Western Europe. His many military
achievements are interpreted superbly in the galleries at the Eisenhower Museum.
He
is the only five-star General to become President of the United States. The
displays interpret the highlights of his two terms (1953-1961). Significantly,
his administration initiated the nation's first civil rights legislation in
ninety years. He also sent Army troops when nine black students were
intimidated into leaving Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. More than
any other president, Eisenhower was responsible for the Interstate Highway
System. He was also so highly skilled in public relations that he seized the
opportunity to become the first "television president."
Five
galleries at the Eisenhower Museum tell the story of Eisenhower from his
childhood days in Abilene through his retirement years. One gallery represents
the life and lifestyle of one of America's most beloved First Ladies, Mamie
Eisenhower.
Visitors can also tour
the nineteenth-century wood-frame house, located on its original site, where
the Eisenhower's lived from 1898 until the death of the President's mother Ida
in 1946. The Place of Meditation is the final resting place of the President,
his wife Mamie, and their first-born son, Doud Dwight.
** **
27 August 2016
Today we
visited where we are staying tomorrow night and drove up to Divide and saw several
sites such as Pike's Peak and the Garden of the Gods – very impressive pieces of nature – most cool.
I am ready for bed and it’s not even eight o’clock yet. We are having a very
good time. The weather, for the most part, has been a delight. This is another great travel adventure with friends.
Post. - Amorella
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