ExoSeneology
Artist deptiction of Exoplanets
Pop that toast, grab your mouse, and settle into some tasty astronomy Sunday reading via Ian over at Universe Today. He reports about fledgling efforts of David Kipping and other British astronomers to start detecting moons around the extrasolar planets that we keep discovering around other stars. Like that wasn’t ambitious enough, Kipping wants to focus on hunting down earth-like exomoons capable of supporting life! Oh and hey, I heard a rumor from a friend of mine saying that it’s possible to also detect the chemical makeup of the breath of the magic flying unicorns who transport the exo-leprachauns around these moons. Okay, okay, I couldn’t resist - actually, Ian writes that after he’s reviewed some papers, the prospect of finding these extremely tiny objects around an already invisibly tiny speck of a planet doesn’t seem so far fetched. Never underestimate the power of clever minds and the product of supposed alien-engineered technology to extract the impossible from the Universe.
If the thought of magical exounicorns sends your mind to exotic distant horizons light years away, you have to breathe in the newly launched Exoplanetology.com, a new site devoted to all apsects about the science of exoplanetology and astrobiology. I though the author of the site (I can’t find a name – apologies to the author), was quite eloquant in expressing their passion about these distant worlds, and how of planets around other suns inspired them to create such a cool exoportal.
I never think of the Sun the same way again. It is a star, one among billions, and I am standing on one of its planets – a habitable one for me and all life I share it with.
On the other hand, I never gazed at stars thinking the same way again. They are other Suns, sign-posts for other solar systems with their own planets and moons, and possibly – Life.
I never looked at the horizon the same way again, with the setting or rising sun radiating marvelous rays, almost saying that just like light, the imperative of life is to spread far far away from where it started before it gets extinguished by the very spark that sustains it.
I never looked at the ocean and its waves the same way again, that it is a magnificent experience just to feel the wind and the water and know that it is the whole planet touching my face.
I never took a deep breath the same way again, without the thought of mankind’s responsibility for the planet, and the future of the biosphere at the hands of humanity.
Words will not fully express the mindset of an exoplanetary thinker. It will not suffice to tell of how one’s view of earth gets changed by the knowledge of other worlds around other suns, and the idea of life in those planets, all this amidst the ongoing peril of one’s home planet to the growing threat of runaway global warming.
Its been said that life is what we make it, thus we are at the cusp of a magnificent period in the history of mankind, where our history joins with the history of cosmic life, or it may well be the end.
That is spot on. It’s been a year since I decided to move from a successful career in the educational realm onto the playing field of this amazing time of discovery and awareness. I always refuel myself, and reignite the drive to do whatever it takes by remembering that we’re living through another scientific Renaissance, and appreciating how lucky we are to have the Universe revealing itself before us every day.
