LiveChat Roundup: Jan. 12, 2012

By Jim Gerard, INSPIRE Education Specialist, KSC, FL

Our first LiveChat of 2012 introduced 90 INSPIRE students to the hunt for new worlds. Dr. Steve Howell, Associate Director of the Kepler Space Telescope at Ames Research Center in California, led participants through the science involved in detecting new planetary systems around nearby stars.

There are two primary methods to detecting planets around other stars. When a planet orbits a star, they actually revolve around a common center, causing the star to wobble a little. This wobble creates a Doppler shift in the spectrum of the star. More precise detection and advanced computer analysis has led to the discovery of many extrasolar planets.

Kepler use the second method, which is to observe the brightness of the star and detect any variability that would be caused by a planet obscuring any of its light as the planet revolves around the star. To date, over 2000 potential planets have been identified.

Future spacecraft will further image these exoplanets, detecting gasses in the atmosphere that would indicate the presence of life. In this we way will be one step closer to answering that age old question, "Are we alone?"

Next week, Bill Cooke, the 'Doctor of Disaster' at Marshall Space Flight Center will return to the LiveChat to talk about meteorite impacts and other threats from space. Sign up now on the Discussion Board.