Exciting planet discovery!

[Dregor Thule]

For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.

"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."

Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.

Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.

"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.

"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."

The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.

Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.

Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.

But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.

Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.

The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.

Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.

A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.

"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.

A potentialy huge find! I have no idea how they'll go about determining things like atmosphere, but still, sounds pretty awesome!

[Arborealus]

For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."

The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."

The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.

What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.

The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.

The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.

Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.

However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.

Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.

The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.

"This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."

Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.

Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.

"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."

Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.

"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."

The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.

Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.

Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.

But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.

Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.

Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.

The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.

Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.

A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.

"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.

A potentialy huge find! I have no idea how they'll go about determining things like atmosphere, but still, sounds pretty awesome!

Hrmmmm well if you know the emission spectra of a star that the planet occults you can look at that light coming through the atmosphere and see what is being absorbed and diffused by the atmospheric chemistry (in theory). At that range however that has got to be hellish to tease apart.

Finding a chunk of rock at that range is amazing. I guess they are making inferences about atmosphere from lensing effects. I hope Science and SA publish this...I gotta figure out how this HARPS works now...:/...Sounds like an extremely accurate method of looking for stellar wobble...Ah new toys...

[Nick]

Heard about this a few hours ago, it's very cool

Imagine if in around 500 years we managed to figure out a way to get there, and there was life there, you can only imagine all the mad different types of species and thingermajigs bopping around.

Space is great.

[Kaldaur]

A ray of bright hope on an otherwise dim horizon. This is great news. I hope one day my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grand kids might get a look at it

[kyoukan]

Can't they just vote on whether or not there's life on it? I thought astronomical decisions were being made by democracy now.

Poor Pluto.

[Al]

Can't they just vote on whether or not there's life on it? I thought astronomical decisions were being made by democracy now.

Poor Pluto.

I vote that it is a gas giant, like Saturn, with several large moons. That should make it easier to spectrographically scan the outer atmosphere.

[Deward]

As much as I hate to say, humans will likely never travel to another star system. First we would have to raise our technology levels way way higher and physics precludes faster than light last I checked. That makes any trip a multigenerational journey. The expense of something like that today would be in the trillions. Imagine the price in 50 years. Unless humans become a world full of nice happy communists then it isn't going to happen.

Cryogenics won't help either even if they existed. Most people don't realize that space is not empty. There is a lot of background radiation that over time destroys most objects.

Now if someone can come up with a FTL drive then humans would spread through the galaxy pretty damn quick but it would still have to be quite a bit faster than 1 light year per second otherwise the journey would just be too damn long. 10x the speed of light would still require a 12 year journey minimum (not counting acceleration and deceleration times).

Sorry to be a downer. I would like to see humanity in the stars as much as anyone.

[Winnow]

You're thinking with present day technology Deward.

Go back 100 years, 200 years and try to explain to them what tech is like in 2000. We are advancing exponentially. Of course, you always have to throw in, "if we don't destroy ourselves", but given another 100-200 years, I bet we'll be just as boggled by the tech in 2200....maybe less so as at this point, I think humans are starting to accept change at a faster rate. Advances in just the past 30 years are amazing.

[Xouqoa]

Technology is advancing faster now than at any other point in human history. I don't think we'll travel out of our solar system in our lifetime, but I do believe it will happen in the next 100-200 years.

Want a cheap laugh? Go to the library and find a PC Magazine from 1985 and look at the ads for hardware. (Hint: 300bps modems were over $1000 to purchase.)

[Arborealus]

Technology is advancing faster now than at any other point in human history. I don't think we'll travel out of our solar system in our lifetime, but I do believe it will happen in the next 100-200 years.

Want a cheap laugh? Go to the library and find a PC Magazine from 1985 and look at the ads for hardware. (Hint: 300bps modems were over $1000 to purchase.)

Dude...no laughing at 1985...

[Nick]

I was only 1 and a wee bit in 1985.

[Arborealus]

I was ermmm 4 years into uni by then...

Where is my wheelchair?!

[Nick]

[Kaldaur]

I just recently bought a collection of short stories written by Arthur C. Clarke, a British sci-fi writer from the 30's on. He predicted within three years when we would harness atomic energy, visit the moon, and do all sorts of other far-out things that were only dreamed up by sci-fi authors. To the people of his era, during the Great Depression, would anyone have taken seriously the claim that we would travel to the moon? Are you kidding? That's out in space. No one can ever make it there.

We'll make it out of the solar system one day. It may take 1000 years, but it will get done.

[kyoukan]

The difference is that the difference between technology now and technology 200 years ago has not defied the laws of physics. Most credible physicists will tell you that faster than light travel is just not going to happen. But that doesn't rule out alternative forms of travel that are theoretically possible that involve more than just linearly transporting matter from one place to another.

The crappy part of it is running out of resources on this planet before our technology evolves to that point. We don't have much in the way of materials that drive our industries left.

[Arborealus]

LOL...

Reminds me of Bob Roberts...

[Kaldaur]

Indeed Kyo, that seems like a big hurdle. However, I would point out that as humanity has progressed, we seem to have rewritten laws as our knowledge increases. For instance, the knowledge of the spheres was the dominant theory of "truth" from Aristotle until about 1500. That's when we started to discover our new laws of physics. Maybe, with enough time and new knowledge, we'll completely rewrite the way we look at physics. I'm not saying it's going to happen; just that it's a possibility. I'm hesitant to say with 100% assuredness that the laws are immutable. If we want to break something, we find a way to do it. It may take 1000 years, but I think we can eventually find a way to bend current laws to not apply in certain situations.

No, it's not because I'm a Star Trek fan. I just have faith in humanity's ability to mess with our environment in both positive and negative ways. That one would be more of a positive.

[Winnow]

There's no need to go back 200 years. Here's the last ~50:

1950: Paul Dirac, first suggestion of string theory
1950: Seaborg, Ghiorso, Street, Thompson, element 98, californium
1950: Jan Oort, theory of comet origins
1950: Bjorklund, Crandall, Moyer, York, Neutral pion
1950: Albert Einstein, Einstein's failed unified theory
1951: Smith and Baade, identify a radio galaxy
1951: Petermann, Stueckelberg, renormalisation group
1952: Courant, Livingston, Snyder, Strong focusing principle for particle accelerators
1952: Alvarez, Glaser, bubble chamber
1952: Seaborg et al, elements 99; einsteinium, 100; fermium
1952: Walter Baade, resolves confusion over two different types of Cepheid variable stars
1952: Edward Teller et al, hydrogen bomb
1952: Joseph Weber, described the principle of the maser
1953: Gell-Mann and Nishijima, strangeness
1953: Gerard de Vaucouleurs, galaxy superclusters and large scale inhomogenieties
1953: Charles Townes, maser
1953: Alpher, Herman, Follin, first recognition of the horizon problem in cosmology
1954: Yang and Mills, non-abelian gauge theory
1954: Low and Gell-Mann, renormalisation group revisited
1955: caesium atomic clock
1955: Martin Ryle, radio telescope interferometry
1955: John Wheeler, describes the space-time foam at the Planck scale
1955: Ilya Prigogine, thermodynamics of irreversible processes
1955: Carl von Weizsacker, Multiple Quantisation and ur-theory
1955: Seaborg et al, element 101, mendelevium
1955: Chamberlain, Segre and Wiegand anti-proton
1956: Reines and Cowan, neutrino detection
1956: Cork, Lambertson, Piccioni, Wenzel, evidence for anti-neutron
1956: Block, Lee and Yang, weak interaction could violate parity
1956: Reines and Cowan, anti-neutrino detection
1956: Erwin Muller, field ion microscope and first images of individual atoms
1956: Cook, Lambertson, Piconi, Wentzel, anti-neutron
1968: Abdus Salam, 2-component neutrino
1957: Burbidge, Burbidge, Hoyle, Fowler Formation of light elements in stars
1957: Friedman, Lederman, Telegdi, Wu, parity violation in weak decays
1957: Bardeen, Cooper, Schrieffer, BCS theory of superconductivity
1957: nobelium
1957: Hugh Everett, Many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics
1957: Feynman, Gell-Mann, Marshak, Sudarshan, V-A theory of weak interactions
1957: John Wheeler, pregeometry and space-time foam
1958: Townes and Schawlow, theory of laser
1958: Martin Ryle, evidence for evolution of distant cosmological radio sources
1958: Seaborg et al, element 102, nobelium
1958: Gary Feinberg, predicts that muon neutrino is distinct from electron neutrino
1958: David Finkelstein, resolves the nature of the black hole event horizon
1959: MIT, radar echo from Venus
1959: Ramsey, Kleppner, Goldenberg, hydrogen maser atomic clock
1959: Tulio Regge, theory of Regge poles
1960: Theodore Maiman, ruby laser
1960: Martin Kruskal, new coordinates to study Schwarzschild black hole
1960: Eugene Wigner, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural science
1960: Pound and Rebka, measurement of gravitational red-shift
1960: Matthews and Sandage, optical identification of a quasar
1961: Sheldon Glashow, introduces neutral intermediate boson of electro-weak interactions
1961: Jeoffrey Goldstone, Theory of massless particles in spontaneous symmetry breaking (Goldstone boson)
1961: Gell-Mann and Ne'eman, The eightfold way, SU(3) octet symmetry of hadrons
1961: Robert Dicke, Weak anthropic principle
1961: Robert Hofstadter, necleons have an internal structure
1961: Ghiorso, Sikkeland, Larsh, Latimer, element 103, lawrencium
1961: Edward Ohm, prior detection of CMBR, but not identified
1961: Edward Lorenz, chaos theory
1961: Yuri Gagarin, first man in space
1961: Geoffrey Chew, nuclear democracy and the bootstrap model
1961: Tulio Regge, simplicial lattice general relativity
1962: Gell-Mann and Ne'eman, Prediction of Omega minus particle
1962: Leith and Upatnieks, first hologram
1962: Giacconi, Gursky, Paolini, Rossi, detection of cosmic X-rays
1962: Brian Josephson, theory of Jesephson effect
1962: Lederman, Steinberger, Schwartz, evidence for more than one type of neutrino
1962: Hogarth, proposes relation between cosmological and thermodynamic arrows of time
1962: Thomas Gold, time-symmetric universe
1962: Benoit Mandelbrot, fractal images
1963: Samios et al, Baryon Omega minus found
1963: Philip Anderson, Gauge theories can evade Goldstone theorem
1963: Roy Kerr, solution for a rotating black hole
1963: Schmidt, Greensite, Sandage, quasars are distant
1963: Nicola Cabibbo, weak mixing angle
1964: Brout, Englert, Higgs, Higgs mechanism of symmetry breaking
1964: Hoyle, Taylor, Zeldovich, big bang nucleosynthesis of helium
1964: Steven Weinberg, baryon number is probably not conserved
1964: Christenson, Cronin, Fitch, Turlay, CP violation in weak interactions
1964: Gell-Mann, Zweig, quark theory of hadrons
1964: Murray Gell-Mann, current algebra
1964: Bjorken and Glashow, prediciton of SU(4) flavour symmetry and charm
1964: Roger Penrose, black holes must contain singularities
1964: Ginzburg, Doroshkevich, Novikov, Zel'dovich, black holes have no hair
1964: Salpeter and Zel'dovich, black holes power quasars and radio galaxies
1964: John Bell, a quantum inequality which limits the possibilities for local hidden variable theories
1964: John Wheeler, foundations of canonical formulism for gravity
1964: soviets, element 104, rutherfordium
1964: Salam, Ward, SU(2)xU(1) model of electro-weak unification
1965: Thomas Kibble, Higgs mechanism for Yang-Mills theory
1965: Greenberg, Han, Nambu, SU(3) colour symmetry to explain statistics of quark model
1965: Zabusky and Kruskal, Numerical studies of solitons
1965: Penzias and Wilson, detection of the cosmic background radiation
1965: Dicke, Peebles, Roll, Wilkinson, indentification of cosmic background radiation
1965: Rees and Sciama, quasars were more numerable in the past
1966: X-ray source Cygnus X-1 discovered
1967: Steven Weinberg, electro-weak unification
1967: Bell and Hewish, pulsars
1967: Irwin Shapiro, radar measurment of relativistic time delays to Mercury
1967: John Wheeler, introduced the term "black hole"
1967: Andrei Sakharov, three criteria for cosmological abundance of matter over anti-matter
1967: soviets, element 105, dubnium
1968: Joseph Weber, first attempt at a gravitational wave detector
1968: Brandon Carter, Strong anthropic principle
1968: Gabriele Veneziano, Dual resonance model for strong interaction, beginning of string theory
1968: James Bjorken, theory of scaling behavior in deep inelastic scattering
1968: Richard Feynman, scaling and parton model of nucleons
1969: Kendall, Friedman, Taylor Deep inelastic scattering experiments find structure inside protons.
1969: Ellis, Hawking and Penrose, singularity theorems for the big bang
1969: Roger Penrose, conjectures that singularities are hidden by cosmic censorship
1969: Donald Lynden-Bell, black hole at the centre of galactic nuclei
1969: Raymond Davis, solar neutrino detector
1969: Charles Misner, cosmological horizon problem revisited
1969: Robert Dicke, cosmological flatness problem
1969: Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon
1969: first attempts to verify solar deflection of radio waves from quasars
1969: David Finkelstein, Space-time code
1970: Claude Lovelace, Veneziano amplitude has special properties in 26 dimensions
1970: Nambu, Nielsen, Susskind, realisation that the dual resonance model is string theory
1970: Goto, Hara, Nambu, Action for bosonic string as area of world sheet
1970: Simon Van der Meer, stochastic cooling for particle beams
1970: Glashow, Iliopoulos, Maiani, GIM mechanism and prediction of charm quark
1970: Stephen Hawking, the surface area of a black holes event horizon always increases
1971: Kenneth Wilson, the operator product expansion and the renormalisation group for the strong force
1971: Dimopolous, Fayet, Gol'fand, Lichtman Supersymmetry
1971: Ramond, Neveu, Schwarz String theory of bosons and fermions with critical dimension 10
1971: 't Hooft, Veltman, Lee, renormalisation of elctro-weak model
1971: Roger Penrose, spin networks
1971: Bolton, Murdin, Webster Cygnus X-1 identified as black hole candidate
1972: Jacob Bekenstein, black hole entropy
1972: Fritsch, Gell-Mann, Bardeen , Quantum Chromodynamics
1972: Kirzhnits, Linde, Electro-Weak phase transition
1972: Roger Penrose, Twistors
1972: Salam, Pati, SU(4)xSU(4) unification and proton decay
1972: Tom Bolton Cygnus X-1 identified as black hole
1973: Wess and Zumino, space-time supersymmetry
1973: Ostriker and Peebles, dark matter in galaxies
1973: CERN, Evidence of weak neutral currents
1973: 't Hooft, Gross, Politzer, Wilczek, Coleman, theory of asymptotic freedom in non-abelian gauge theories
1973: Klebesadel, Strong, Olson, Gamma Ray Bursts are cosmic
1973: Edward Tyron, the universe as a quantum fluctuation
1974: Yoneya, Scherk, Schwarz interpretation of string theory as a theory of gravity
1974: Ting and Richter, found J/psi, charmed quark
1974: Kenneth Wilson, lattice gauge theory
1974: Taylor and Hulse, binary pulsar and relativistic effects
1974: Kobayashi and Maskawa, CKM mixing matrix; CP violation in weak interaction requires three generations
1974: Georgi and Glashow, SU(5) as Grand Unified Theory and prediction of proton decay
1974: Georgi, Weinberg, Quinn, Convergence of coupling constants at GUT scale
1974: 't Hooft, Okun, Polyakov, heavy magnetic monopoles exist in GUTs.
1974: Stephen Hawking, black hole radiation and thermodynamics
1974: soviets and americans, element 106, seaborgium
1975: Martin Perl Tau lepton
1975: Gail Hanson quark jets
1975: Chincarini and Rood lumpiness in galaxy distributions
1975: Unruh and Davies acceleration radiation effect
1975: Mitchell Feigenbaum, universality in chaotic non-linear systems
1975: Belavin, Polyakov, Schwartz, Tyupkin instantons in Yang-Mills theory
1976: Scherk, Gliozzi, Olive Supersymmetric string theory
1976: Deser, Freedman, Van Nieuwenhuizen, Ferrara, Zumino Supergravity
1976: Levine and Vessot precision test of gravitational time dilation on rocket
1976: Gerard 't Hooft the instantons solution of the U(1) anomaly
1976: soviets element 107, bohrium
1977: James Elliot, rings of Uranus
1977: Olive and Montenen, conjecture of elecro-magnetic duality
1977: Fermilab, bottom quark
1977: Klaus von Klitzing, quantum Hall effect
1977: Tifft, Gregory, Joeveer, Einasto, Thompson, clusters chains and voids in galaxy dustributions
1977: Berkley, dipole anisotropy on cosmic background radiation
1977: Leon Lederman, upsilon, bottom quark
1977: Gunn, Schramm, Steigman, cosmological constraints imply that there are only three light neutrinos
1978: Charon, moon of Pluto
1978: Taylor and Hulse, evidence for gravitational radiation of binary pulsar
1978: Cremmer, Julia, Nahm, Scherk, 11-dimensional supergravity
1978: Prescott, Taylor, elctro-weak effect on electron polarisation
1979: Voyager, rings of Jupiter
1979: John Preskill, cosmological monopole problem
1979: Walsh, Carswell, Weymannquasar doubled by gravitational lensing
1979: DESY, evidence for gluons in hadron Jets
1979: Alexei Starobinsky inflationary universe
1980: Frederick Reines, Evidence of Neutrino oscillations
1980: DESY, measurement of gluon spin
1980: Alan Guth inflationary early universe
1981: Witten, Schoen, Yau positive energy theorem in general relativity
1981: Green and Schwarz, Type I superstring theory
1981: Binnig, Rohrer scanning tunneling electron microscope
1981: Witten and Alvarez-Gaume Difficulty of getting standard model from 11-D supergravity because of chiral modes
1981: Alexander Polyakov Path integral quantisation of strings, conformal symmetry and critical dimension
1981: Linde, Albrecht, Steinhardt new inflationary universe
1982: Green and Schwarz, Type II superstring theory
1982: Alain Aspect an experiment to confirm non-local aspects of quantum theory
1982: Darnstadt element 109, meitnerium
1982: limits on proton lifetime rule out many Grand Unified Theories
1983: Carlo Rubbia et al, W and Z bosons at CERN
1983: Andrei Linde chaotic inflationary universe
1984: Green and Schwarz, anomaly cancellations in superstring theory
1984: Darnstadt element 108, hassium
1985: Gross, Harvey, Martinec, Rohm, heterotic string theory
1985: David Deutsch, theory of quantum computing
1986: Bednorz and Mueller, high temperature superconductivity
1986: Abhay Ashtekar, new variables for canonical quantum gravity
1986: Geller, Huchra, Lapparent, bubble structure of galaxy distributions
1987: , supernova 1987a
1987: Masatoshi Koshibas, detection of neutrinos from a supernova
1988: Atiyah, Witten, topological quantum field theories
1988: Smolin and Rovelli, loop representation of quantum gravity
1989: SLAC, evidence that number of light neutrinos is 3 from Z width
1989: Tim Berners-Lee, The World Wide Web
1989: Bennett and Brassard, first quantum computer
1990: John Mather, black body spectrum of cosmic background radiation from COBE
1991: CERN, confirmation that number of light neutrinos is 3
1991: Connes, Lott, particle models from non-commutative geometry
1991: BATSE, Gamma Ray Burst distribution is isotropic
1992: Mather and Smoot, angular fluctuations in cosmic background radiation with COBE
1993: Aspinwall, Morrison, Greene, Topology change in string theory
1994: Philip Gibbs, event-symmetric space-time
1994: Fermilab, Top Quark
1994: 't Hooft, Susskind Holographic principle
1994: Seiberg and Witten, Electro-magnetic duality in supersymmetric gauge theory
1994: Hubble Space Telescope, Evidence for black hole at the centre of galaxy M87
1994: Peter Shor, factorisation algorithm for a quantum computer
1994: Hull, Townsend, Unity of String Dualities
1994: Darnstadt element 110
1995: Witten and Townsend, M-Theory
1995: Joseph Polchinski, D-Branes
1995: Cornell, Wieman, Anderson Bose-Einstein condensate of atomic gas
1995: CERN, Creation of Anti-hydrogen atoms
1995: Mayor and Queloz, first extra-solar planet orbiting an ordinary star
1995: Darnstadt element 111
1996: Strominger, Vafa, D-branes and black-holes
1996: Cumrun Vafa, F-theory
1996: Steven Lamoreaux, measurement of Casimir force
1996: Darnstadt element 112
1996: Banks, Fischler, Shenker, Susskind, M-theory as a matrix model
1997: BepoSAX, location of Gamma Ray Bursts demonstrates that they are extragalactic
1997: Juan Maldacena, AdS/CFT duality
1997: SLAC, photon-photon scattering produces electron-positron pairs
1998: Perlmutter, Garnavich et al, supernovae observations suggest that the expansion of the universe is accelerating
1998: Super-Kamiokande, neutrino oscillation demonstrated
1998: CERN, Fermilab, time reversal assymetry observed for K meson decay
2000: Fermilab, tau neutrino observed
2003: WMAP observations of Cosmic microwave background

Plenty more from 50-200 years ago.

1800-1899:

http://www.weburbia.com/pg/hist2.htm

Up to 1799:

http://www.weburbia.com/pg/hist1.htm

I'm confident we'll keep on truck'in in the physics department with new discoveries that we have no clue about presently.

[Arborealus]

Actually we are a bit off track thanks broken supercollider magnets...

[Winnow]

Actually we are a bit off track thanks broken supercollider magnets...

I hope that doesn't cause a 200 year delay!

[Arborealus]

Actually we are a bit off track thanks broken supercollider magnets...

I hope that doesn't cause a 200 year delay!

Well if they weren't built to spec then it will be a short delay...if they have to re spec them it could be a long delay but not, I think 200yrs!

[Kryshade]

I am by no means an expert, but I remember reading somewhere that our progression of technology is pretty much tied to certain factors.

Energy is one, we need HUGE amounts of energy to fuel some of the theories involved, and right now we don't have the ability to produce those sort of energy sources. Now, I watched something on anti-matter and if we can follow down that path, anti-matter may provide us with the needed energy for some of these theories.

Storage of information is another. We have huge quantities of information that we need stored/catalogued/processed. Some of this is evident in the SETI at home and the new thing with the playstation 3. We need to store and process these huge quantities of information.

There's also some rule or theory or saying that our advancements in technology are doubling in rate... something like the technology advancements are growing exponentially. The more technology we have, the faster we're able to develope new technology etc.

Space travel I think is something that we should concentrate a lot on. I've read a lot of Hawkins and also some other theories. Things like space folding etc. Right now they seem like science fiction, but 200 years ago, so did airplanes and helicopters....

[archeiron]

I am by no means an expert, but I remember reading somewhere that our progression of technology is pretty much tied to certain factors.

Energy is one, we need HUGE amounts of energy to fuel some of the theories involved, and right now we don't have the ability to produce those sort of energy sources. Now, I watched something on anti-matter and if we can follow down that path, anti-matter may provide us with the needed energy for some of these theories.

Storage of information is another. We have huge quantities of information that we need stored/catalogued/processed. Some of this is evident in the SETI at home and the new thing with the playstation 3. We need to store and process these huge quantities of information.

There's also some rule or theory or saying that our advancements in technology are doubling in rate... something like the technology advancements are growing exponentially. The more technology we have, the faster we're able to develope new technology etc.

Space travel I think is something that we should concentrate a lot on. I've read a lot of Hawkins and also some other theories. Things like space folding etc. Right now they seem like science fiction, but 200 years ago, so did airplanes and helicopters....

I believe that you could be referring to Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns; he muses that not only are we on an exponential growth curve, but that the rate of change of growth is also exponential.

One of his conclusions - the one relevant to space travel - is that people won't travel beyond the solar system in our existing biological bodies, but that the "human race" will begin expanding outwards at the speed of light some time in the relatively near future.

[Xyun]

"New Earth" is supposedly 20 light years away and would take 400,000 years to reach with our fastest current vessel. However, humans will have to colonize space sooner or later, and I suspect if there is a catastrophic event (i.e. gigantic meteor aimed at earth, nuclear war, ice age, etc.) the human race will ultimately find a new home.

[Leonaerd]

"New Earth" is supposedly 20 light years away and would take 400,000 years to reach with our fastest current vessel. However, humans will have to colonize space sooner or later, and I suspect if there is a catastrophic event (i.e. gigantic meteor aimed at earth, nuclear war, ice age, etc.) the human race will ultimately find a new home.

Ha. Not at this rate with our current capabilities.

[Kwonryu DragonFist]

Stargate : Atlantis will become reality!

[Al]

"New Earth" is supposedly 20 light years away and would take 400,000 years to reach with our fastest current vessel. However, humans will have to colonize space sooner or later, and I suspect if there is a catastrophic event (i.e. gigantic meteor aimed at earth, nuclear war, ice age, etc.) the human race will ultimately find a new home.

Ha. Not at this rate with our current capabilities.

In 1959 humans had no possible way of ever making it to the moon, it was simply out of grasp. Humans walked on the moon in 1969. "Our current capabilities" change on a day-to-day basis, and anything is possible if people work together and put their minds to it.

[Dregor Thule]

I say we declare war on space. War is a great engine for technological progress. If we declare on that smug bitch called space, we'll dominate it in no time!

[Hesten]

I say we declare war on space. War is a great engine for technological progress. If we declare on that smug bitch called space, we'll dominate it in no time!

Well, space already killed several people. Its a terrorist, keel it!!!!

[Lynks]

I heard space will kill you if you walk out naked. Damn anti-nudists.

[Kaldaur]

Space is anti-oxygen. That means death. You know what else equals death? TERRORISTS. If you're not with us, you're against us. War on space, 2008. It's us or them.

[Arborealus]

And of course space has been consistently bombarding us for billions of years...what did we ever do to space? And we are still under constant threat of obliteration from space!

[kyoukan]

You guys are treating this whole notion of a war on space like it's something that the bush administration couldn't convince half the US to get behind in a matter of weeks.

[Dregor Thule]

You guys are treating this whole notion of a war on space like it's something that the bush administration couldn't convince half the US to get behind in a matter of weeks.

And once they find some space oil out there I'm sure they will.

[masteen]

I'm sure the war on space would be as successful as our current two-dacade old war on drugs.

WE SHUR SHOWDEM DRUGS A'THANG R'TOO, AMIRITE?

[Winnow]

Mars represents the God of War. That's bullshit. Earth is the war planet. We can't let Mars get away with this. Damn the cosmic rays. Full speed ahead!

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

hmmmm....space is dark too.....we can always get behind beating some darkie ass

[Dregor Thule]

hmmmm....space is dark too.....we can always get behind beating some darkie ass

Hey shit for brains, you're supposed to post a joking comment!

I wonder what his response will be.....lolfat...

[masteen]

Free from the confines of gravity, Dregor's ass can reach it's full potential as Earth's new moon!

[Leonaerd]

"New Earth" is supposedly 20 light years away and would take 400,000 years to reach with our fastest current vessel. However, humans will have to colonize space sooner or later, and I suspect if there is a catastrophic event (i.e. gigantic meteor aimed at earth, nuclear war, ice age, etc.) the human race will ultimately find a new home.

Ha. Not at this rate with our current capabilities.

In 1959 humans had no possible way of ever making it to the moon, it was simply out of grasp. Humans walked on the moon in 1969. "Our current capabilities" change on a day-to-day basis, and anything is possible if people work together and put their minds to it.

Yeah. Totally. If we accelerate our rate of technological progression, sure. But at this rate, we're going nowhere. We haven't taken humans anywhere further than we did in 1969.

[Fash]

Free from the confines of gravity, Dregor's ass can reach it's full potential as Earth's new moon!

[Winnow]

Check out this planet simulation.

http://dan-ball.jp.nyud.net:8080/en/javagame/planet/

Cool stuff. Play around a bit and then add a second star!

Had two planets collide...wasn't pretty!...well it was kinda pretty...but wouldn't be pretty if you resided on one!...well maybe the sky would be pretty for a little while before you died!

I put one planet into a long, distant orbit but eventually it got sucked into the gravity well!

Figure eight patterns between two stars are fun to watch.