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.
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!
In your opinion, do you think money should be spent learning about other planets more then our own? Because some people feel that there is no point in learning about planets that we can never reach. And do you think that we will ever get to the point where there is nothing else to learn from Earth?
Hey 07stoombs! I think that amongst all the research that gets done, there definitely should be space for learning about other planets. I think that learning about other planets helps us to understand our place in the Universe. And how can we resist the search for other forms of life? I’m probably biased, but I think it’s definitely worthwhile. Who knows what we might discover in the process of searching for other planets. I also think space science is worth funding because of the way it inspires people to get interested in science. What do you think about space research?
I doubt we’ll get to a point any time soon where we will have learnt all we can about the Earth. We know lots about things in isolation, but not a whole lot about how it all ties together. For example we know lots of chemical reactions that occur, but exactly how and why they occur is a mystery. And we know lots about particular species of animal, but much less about how different species interact with each other. The systems on Earth are incredibly complex, and constantly changing, so I think we’ll always have more to learn 🙂
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07stoombs commented on :
In your opinion, do you think money should be spent learning about other planets more then our own? Because some people feel that there is no point in learning about planets that we can never reach. And do you think that we will ever get to the point where there is nothing else to learn from Earth?
Josh commented on :
Hey 07stoombs! I think that amongst all the research that gets done, there definitely should be space for learning about other planets. I think that learning about other planets helps us to understand our place in the Universe. And how can we resist the search for other forms of life? I’m probably biased, but I think it’s definitely worthwhile. Who knows what we might discover in the process of searching for other planets. I also think space science is worth funding because of the way it inspires people to get interested in science. What do you think about space research?
I doubt we’ll get to a point any time soon where we will have learnt all we can about the Earth. We know lots about things in isolation, but not a whole lot about how it all ties together. For example we know lots of chemical reactions that occur, but exactly how and why they occur is a mystery. And we know lots about particular species of animal, but much less about how different species interact with each other. The systems on Earth are incredibly complex, and constantly changing, so I think we’ll always have more to learn 🙂