[gatagato]

NASA is holding a news conference today (Feb. 22) to discuss "new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets," according to a statement from the agency.

The news conference begins at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT). No other specifics about the "new findings" have been made public, but "details … are embargoed by the journal Nature" until 1 p.m. EST, according to the statement.

The news conference will feature five speakers: Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters; Michaël Gillon, astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium; Sean Carey, manager of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena; Nikole Lewis, astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Sara Seager is a leading exoplanet scientist who, among other things, is working on the problem of how to identify bio signatures in exoplanet atmospheres. The Space Telescope Science Institute is an astronomical research center as well as the mission operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope.

Following the news conference, the five scientists will participate in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), in which members of the public can pose questions to the scientists via a Reddit message board.

You can watch the webcast of tomorrow's news conference live on NASA TV or right here on Space.com.

http://www.space.com/35779-nasa-exop...ouncement.html
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/n...r-solar-system

[Wrapped2tight]

Lol..NASA

MORE fake news...hopefully no one falls for this BS

[kellyhound]

Beam me up, Scotty !

[FunkPumpkin]

NASA's Kepler space telescope has been finding a bunch of exoplanets that are supposedly in the "Goldilocks Zone" of a nearby star, meaning that those planets are located in a position relative to their star that would simulate solar conditions here on earth.

That makes for good seeding of sci-fi dreams, but I'd be surprised if anything truly world-shattering is going to be announced by NASA. If they were, it would have leaked to the press by now.