• Question: What are your views on the new 'Kepler' discoveries?

    Asked by kristybryant to Alexander, Josh, Serena, Simone, Stuart on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Josh Makepeace

      Josh Makepeace answered on 18 Jun 2013:


      Hi! I’m assuming you’re talking about the new planets that the Kepler telescope is discovering.If I’ve got that wrong, let me know!

      Firstly, how cool is it that we’re able to look at the light we’re seeing from stars and work out things about the planets that are orbiting that star!? They do this by looking at how the light from the star dims as a planet passes in front of it. It’s really clever! 🙂

      I was just reading an article that says that it’s discovered over 3000 planets already! It certainly gets you thinking about how many planets in our Galaxy might be capable of supporting life. It makes the imagination run wild to think about what all these planets must be like.

      Did you see that they’ve had some problems with some of the wheels the telescope uses to position itself? Hopefully they can get it working properly again soon.

      Thanks for the question 🙂

    • Photo: Stuart Archer

      Stuart Archer answered on 21 Jun 2013:


      I love stuff like this, it’s the sort of thing that made me want to be a scientist! How awesome would it be if we managed to find another planet just like Earth? What would it look like? Would it have life on it? What would that be like? The answers to those questions are potentially life-changing!

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