Wasn't easy being a planet hunter back in the day *promote

I'm looking for
1 tug
The pull of a planet
1 tell
A wobbling sun
I've searched for years
Haven't found a one
But they're out there

1 jump
In radial redshift
1 slip
Of spectral lines
They'll see if I can show them the sines

Pish tosh
Green men
Take five
Take ten

Just a little cash guys

Budget's tight
Don't fund this trash guys

I can take a hint
Better face the facts
Second-hand'll have to do

Eww
All you planet hunters at the bottom
You've got fact & fantasy entwined
Finding planets except they haven't got one

Well they gotta be forming readily
When you think about it given we've got nine

1 jump
A blip in the spectrum
1 shift of meters per second
1 graph of period power
They laugh but I'm not sour

Here goes
18 months of data
Cross & correlate it
All I gotta do is run

Pish tosh
Green men
Ah don't mind them
If only they'd look closer
Would they see a pure void
No sirree
They'd find out
There's worlds galore
To see

Make way for Pegasi
51 Pegasi

First was a world
Round an old pulsar
That's true
But the news
Is a sun-like star
With wobble
Too quick & precise
To be designed
No fluke not a spot
If you like it hot
You're gonna love this find

Pegasi 51b
Planet discovered
Orbit traced
Every 4 days
Hot as can be
Its order-Jupiter size
Was something of a surprise
Especially given its star's proximity

Pegasi 51b
It's a new era
To detect
Exoplanets
Soon there'll be three
As planet pulls on its Sun
It shifts the stellar spectrum
That's how we found 51b Pegasi

How'd a planet get so close in orbit
Cause I thought you needed ice to form it
Did it later undergo some strange migration
Star too small to be so long-pulsating
And too old to be so quick rotating
Is there any other good interpretation

This will certainly help with our funding

We got your funding
We got your funding

Got a surface of 1200 C

It's treacherous
So treacherous

If in time this new breakthrough feels mundane
Planets are common

That's proof
Of the truth
I've been telling you
This is no mean anomaly

Pegasi 51b
Planet uncovered
Round a far
Main sequence star
Spectral type G
We know its mass to be high
Half Jupiter by sine i

It's 15.61 pc from home
And it shakes our faith in how planets are formed
And its star is in Pegasus
Give it an A and thus
Label the planet as b
51 Pegasi

Plotting Doppler shifts is glacial-pace
And that astrometry never prevails
But baby you're in luck cause
Up in space
You got a planet-finder never fails

You got the power of statistics now
You got a view without an atmosphere
So no more nights spent locked up in your tower
All you gotta do is wait right here
And I say

Kepler the planet-searcher
Got a dip, no 2, no 3
We just measure brightness
Plot it out & that's transiting photometry

When your stars do this
And your curves displace
Then your star's got this
Transiting its face

Then you hit compute
And lookie here

You get good diameter data
From that dip
And orbit distance from the length of year

Well now we need this tale supported by
A ground observer with a good Échelle
We got 2000 planets certified
2000 more that only time will tell

But let's take em all, plot em out
And find out if we're really all alone
Is there a rocky world we've found no doubt
That orbits in the habitable zone
Like home?

Kepler the planet searcher
Got an Earth 452b
Part of a throng
40 billion strong

There ain't never been a field
Clever as the field
There ain't never been a field
Better than the field they call
Exoplanetology

I can show you a world
A shining shimmering planet
Found concealed in the band-shifts
Of the closest star in sight

I've found hope in the skies
And facing wonder I wonder
Could the sine wave discovered be
A planet fit for life

A whole new world
A new fantastic point of blue
Placed in that narrow zone
Where water flows
Midway tween cold & steaming

A whole new world
Its sun a faint, reddish hue
Could there be waiting here
A biosphere
Evolving in this whole new world to view

Fathoming a whole new world to view

Unbelievable find
Indescribable feeling
Earthlings someday revealing
Through directly captured light
A whole new world

Don't just stare from a far

Though nigh impossible to see

Wouldn't close up be bolder

Next to its parent's flair
If life is there
We'll know through atmosphere spectroscopy

A whole new world

Block the glare of the star

A laser starshot to pursue

With a star-shaped occulter

Chasing that crazy dream
That's always been
Of walking in a whole new world with you

a whole new world
That's where we'll be
A thrilling chase
A home in space
For you and me

I couldn't even make it to the full minute mark. I think the video posted and related where Sean Carroll responds to the idea of a fine tuned universe is a good response.

This video is likely made by the same sort of people who once argued that "just a few feet in either direction and life on Earth couldn't exist". Of course the Earth doesn't have a circular orbit, and our Sun's Goldilocks zone extends from just past Venus (Earth side) to past Mars. Leaving both Earth and Mars well within the habitable zone.

My bigger problem with the video is you are trying to get to point Z, and saying it had to go through A-Y first in specific order. This is an argument used frequently against Evolution. The huge odds you'd have to go through to get to a modern human in the time allowed is greatly against modern humans forming when they did. Problem is you are working from the end result back, rather than the starting point and going forward, and it you are also discounting some other forces of nature. I used to quote the mathematical problem myself when I was a Creationist, though an Old Earth one as I was long of the opinion that Young Earth Creationist make Christians look stupid.

I may be an atheist, but I have no problem with a God of the Gaps if people want to believe that. I however don't believe that Jehovah is that God (there's too much evidence against Him, such as the fact He couldn't or wouldn't reveal himself beyond a tiny little backwater tribe, not to people in the Americas or Asia or Europe, but to one tiny group of people, either He's a Racist, which makes Him unworthy of serving, or He's not any more real than any of the other so called Gods). Whatever, or Whomever may have kick-started the Universe into existence didn't do it for some divine plan for mankind. The arrogance that it takes to assume the Universe in all it's glory was created just to awe man, or for whatever other reasons related to man and our involvement with Jehovah is arrogance beyond belief.

EDIT: Perhaps the better related video would have been http://videosift.com/video/Pure-Imagination-1

As far as I've read, the only things we know are the size of the planet and the distance from its star. We have no idea of the exact mass (other than that it's relatively low, which is a good thing), composition, atmosphere, or actual habitability of the planet, just that it's located in the "habitable zone". That is all!

So, no, we have no clue if there's water and since temperature is subject to other factors (the one's which we have no information on yet) besides solely the distance from its star, we can't really say it's life-sustaining either.

Hopefully, the Darwin Telescope or something like it will be revived once policy makers realize just how many rocky planets are in the habitable zone of their stars.

Mars is not within our solar systems habitable zone, its just outside of it. The exciting thing about this discovery is that it is relatively close to our solar system, only 20 light years away. That means 2 habitable zone planets within a sphere of space with a radius of only 10 light years. If that density is at all representative of the whole galaxy it would indicate as many as 50 - 100 billion habitable zone planets in our galaxy, greatly increasing the chances of planets with liquid water and consequently some form of life.

Lol the fact that they dont evan know if its solid ,

IT WITHIN HABITAL ZONE WOOOW OOO so tupid how midea will jump on stuff like this and Stretch it so far .

just out of intrest , isent mars within the habital zone of our solor system , there are so manny verables outside of the distance from the sun that have to fall in place before u evan ar elikely to have water on a planet let allone basic life.

not saying the methods used to be able to pick up these relitavly small objects and evalute data about them is not remarcable and exciting , i just dont think it needs to be streched so far all you end up doing is bilding iunreolistic exsperctatoins in people.

You both surprise me. Theo's remark was crude, not all republicans are like QM, but I don't understand QM's tactic of simply politicizing issues and never really answering or entering into a normal discourse.

And Wallace, I can't believe you'd be so naive to think that we have so little impact on the environment. I never said that nature can adapt, nature can do whatever the hell it pleases. What you'll lose the climate zones, weather patterns, and the ocean currents we knew for decades, everything will change.

Yeah species go extinct at a natural background level, but when we are the cause of a drastic increase due to the loss of habitable zones? You honestly think that we can forever expand our condo communities outward into the wilderness? with nature adapting? tigers and ligers running on the streets as urban cats?