The answer of the oldest and most often asked question of mankind:
Are we alone in the universe?
"The discovery of life on
another planet is potentially one of the most important scientific advances
of this century, let alone this decade, and it would have enormous
philosophical implications."
- National Research Council
Get your place in history! It never was easier...
This site is dedicated to the search for a
second earth
You'll find here always the latest news what concerns
habitable extrasolar planets. Since this is one of the oldest questions of
mankind you should bookmark this site and add this site to your favorites.
Carnegie Institution of Science: "There could be one hundred billion
Earth-like planets in our galaxy...". and Berkeley says: "Earth-Sized Alien
Planets May Be Surprisingly Common" or "25% of Sun-like stars have
Earth-like planets.. (and)...there could be even more Earth-size planets"
The more planets there are the greater the odds that
life exists somewhere else in
the universe.
If you want you can get here also by following these links:
Until now, only two planets outside our solar system were even considered to be in the habitable zone. Both of those discoveries are highly disputed. In Feb 2011 the 2009 launched Keppler will narrow its sought on 54 planets believed to be in the "Goldilocks zone".
Read also: Exoplanets on the cheap
Planets worth a second look:
Kepler-22b . It orbits its star which is smaller and cooler than our own sun every 290 days.
SuperEarth GJ 667Cc a planet which is at least 4.5 as massive as Earth
How and why the search for extrasolar
planets started you can read here.
Simbad database, Strasbourg
CDS Portal, simultaneous search in
Simbad, Aladin and VizieR
The exoplanets catalog maintained
by Jean Schneider (CNRS-LUTH, Paris Observatory)
The Transiting Planets (Frédéric
Pont)
Solstation becomes more and more useful
Still useful: Exoplanets Rising: Astronomy and Planetary Science at the Crossroads (March 29 - April 2, 2010)
keep an eye on this site: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1898942
The following is mostly in C++ :
Celestia The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Free astrophysics software with source code (No comment on quality)
GPS-library and AA+ v1.45 A class framework for Computational Astronomy etc
Fits Liberator is now a stand alone application (Photoshop since Version 3.0 no more required) pdf here, downloads here
Photometric Software for Transits (PhoS-T) rather archaiac: only available per email-!
Radiative Transfer Code for a Plane Parallel Multiple Scattering/ Absorbing Atmosphere and Kernel Functions for Radiative Transfer in Spectral Lines in C/C++ code. Homepage: http://www.plasmaphysics.org.uk/
Astronomy Software
Important addres for all who are interested in games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
Soon you'll find much more code here ( got to scan my hard disks...)