Here is where I have a problem with the science: the corona of a star based on observations of our own sun have been shown to be several millions of degrees higher than the surface temperature (~6000K/10000F). Ignoring the effects of coronal mass ejections for a moment – such radiation on the outside of the planet and a core temperature of 1000F+ from the surface should provide sufficient energy for atmospheric molecules to vaporize off into space , be picked up by the solar winds, and blown off. In short - the planet shouldn’t have an atmosphere that close to the sun’s corona.

What then are we looking at? Most likely the culprit is superheated gas trapped in the magnetosphere of the planet providing the illusion of an atmosphere where none should exist. However even there we have a bit of a problem.

See – for the planet to have a rotation period equal to it orbital period – this would suggest that any internal metallic core had long since stopped spinning. This is in part what accounts for planetary magnetic fields. So if we can infer from the rotation of the planet that its magnetic field is weak then there shouldn’t be a residual atmosphere due to interaction with solar wind.

The other other two mechanisms I can think of that may be responsible for the presence of an atmosphere would be venting of carbon dioxide and methane from within the planet’s core as the planet cooks like being in a microwave oven. The issue with this theory is that for a planet to get this close to its star it is likely that any such residual gas may have leached from the planet surface millions of years ago.

The second mechanism is a combination of gravity and thermal currents that may cause molecules to bind more tightly to the surface of the planet. If so then it may be possible to get a much more accurate read on the size / mass of the planet simply by figuring out at what point the pull of gravity counteracts the vacuum of space considering the amount of heating that needs to occur to heat the planet’s surface temperature to 4000F.

Of course there is another possibility – the one which I found myself drawn to immediately upon reading the article. The science could just be out and out wrong. Personally I hope this isn’t the case as I would like to think that we can identify earth sized planets in other star systems that our children can one day visit. I’m just more than a little disappointed however that those people who purport to be on the cutting edge of this science who just out and out assume that what they are looking at represents an atmosphere without critiquing the possibility that what they are doing is inherently at the cutting edge.

It wouldn’t be the first time that humanity’s exploration of science has shot off on a tangent. Let’s hope that other communications about Kepler will be a bit more considered.

Approximately every 3 months (give or take) I will publish a codeword and an email address. That code word will have been selected 3 months prior and retained in a filing system not connected to the Internet. Anyone that has knowledge of the future can email the address and/or provide a comment on the blog here.

The comment should provide information which clearly shows foreknowledge of a soon to come event which is not easily guested at. The event predicted should be something that can be verified within 3 months of the prediction. So examples of such information would be along the lines of

• Significant world event(s) (political, geographical, cosmic events, births, deaths, etc.)
• Significant weather event(s) (rainfall, temperature, snowfall, etc..)
• Stock values at a given date and time
• Sport scores at a given date and time
• Winning lottery numbers (personally this would be helpful ;-)

So for example, the code word and email might be something like

Code Word: crispers enginery 
eMail: copycats165@timeodyssey.com
Validity Dates: Oct 1 to Dec 31, 2008

The email address will only be valid for the period of time indicated and will be taken down prior to being published on the web site here. As of the date and time of this posting the first email address has been created and is ready to accept emails. 

For those that are interested in the odds of someone selecting the code word and email address correctly through random chance, they are approximately 24,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. So the odds are definitely stacked in the favour of only someone who is either lucky in the extreme or someone that can send a message back in time to show that time travel is in fact possible.

Regardless – I didn’t know that ESA had a series of high powered radar stations up near the Arctic Circle. Which of course sort of begs a question since the old mind then is going a mile a minute. If we really wanted to communicate with other civilizations out there, assuming they exist, then why would we be beaming communications out along the galaxy’s central plane? Would it not make more sense to beam any transmissions out parallel to our solar system’s axis?

Here is my reasoning. Almost all the really key discoveries in terms of astrophysics that have been made in the last 50 years or so have come about because some galaxy, sun, or solar system was facing almost perpendicular to the way we were looking at the time. To me that would suggest that any type of communication signal would be more readily picked up by civilizations that are perpendicular to ours since any advanced civilization which was looking for signs of life would be naturally predisposed to be looking at those xray, gamma, and other sources which are aligned towards their home planet.

The other thing I was thinking of is this whole concept of using radio and other types of artificially generated electromagnetic radiation as a basis of communication. This assumes that someone is out there actually listening which requires specialized equipment that may only be relevant to a specific period of time in a civilization’s development. To some degree this doesn’t make sense.

Why not think at a much more basic level. How did early Native American’s communicate? Smoke Signals. The idea of getting a fire going with poor combustion so that it creates a lot of smoke in a stream and then interrupting that stream with a blanket creating gaps or messages through the size and timing of the smoke puffs.

The idea here is simply this – put some type of a deflector in front of the sun in order to block out the sun’s radiation in a pattern representing a series of primes or fibonaccinumbers which are not naturally occurring. (the first 100 numbers of pi might also work). The effect would be both instant and long ranging allowing us to more effectively cover larger areas of space.  If you put a solar deflector of sufficient size out at a given distance from the sun so that it either partially or completely blocked out the radiation from the sun – that blockage would extend out more or less forever for whatever number of arc-seconds of the sky the array was designed to address.

The effect is similar to that of opening an umbrella. The sun is very big, but an umbrella will block out the sun’s rays even through it is very small. The farther away from the sun you are, the smaller the size of the deflector array you need in order to generate the effect. The trade off however is that the number of arc-seconds you can cover in this way is very small. However, if done in a strategically placed location, such blockages should be more effective than sending radio signals.

The reason is that it is far more likely that someone out there will be looking at us with a telescope than a radio astronomy dish as there are far more interesting things out there to tune into that a Doritos commercial – regardless of how long they stay fresh. – K