going OT and geekoid…..got to attend a lecture last night by Bill Cochran who is a professor of astronomy at UT in Austin and is also a principle investigator on the Kepler space telescope mission. This instrument and its charter are fabulous. The telescope can monitor 150,000 stars continuously and it orbits in the Earth’s shadow. Its sole goal is to look for earth-like planets around other stars. It stares as a fixed region of space. To be able to detect an earth size planet it has the capability to see 84 ppm changes in luminosity as the planet transits its sun. Since to detect a transit the planet and us have to be in the same plane, there is only a 0.4% probability of the proper alignment. Thus looking at 150,000 stars is needed. The are also looking for periods of about 300 to 400 days. When they detect one, they then need a second detection (300 days later) and then they have to predict a third and have it happen. The sole goal of this mission is to determine if earth like planets are rare or common. Since the mission started in March, mark your calendar for some time in 2012 for a wealth of info to come out.