Ocean Planets on the Brink of Detection

Over in super geekland - Physorg.com has an interesting article about the possibility of other water world existing. Even though we don't have an "active" water world (beside Earth) in our solar system it seems reasonable that somewhere within the billions of other planets that exists there must be some that are water worlds.

And I thought that was a movie with Kevin Costner!

The article makes an interesting point about Earth and that the water content on Earth is 1 part in 4400, yet it covers two-thirds of the surface. The theory of water planets encompasses many variations of its composition and they are not necessarily built like earth.

The article concludes that our current best shot at detecting water planets will come from the recent launch of CoRoT satellite.

Remember where there is water there is the best chance for life - at least as know it!

Space telescope to hunt planets

The French have launched their planet hunter space telescope (Corot) from Kazakhstan. Their quest to monitor 120,000 stars and to find and document planets orbiting those stars.

Until now the smallest planet we have been able to detect is about 5 times the size of earth. The Corot can detect planets as small as twice our size...not perfect but a move in the right direction. Once we have a space telescope that can detect planets of our size and class I think some big things are going to happen.

It truly is only a matter of time now before we determine there is intelligent life on other planets. Given all the insanity on our blue marble I am looking forward to vacationing on a more sane piece of rock!

It is a multi-national effort but the French have taken the lead on getting this done.

This link takes you to the mission guide for the Corot telescope:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6213150.stm