As James Cameron’s animated sci-fi movie Avatar goes on general release, astronomers point out that the movie’s habitable moon called “Pandora” may exist in reality.

Although none have been found to date, “exomoons” orbiting exoplanets are sure to exist. Could an exomoon be detected? If so, could that exomoon’s atmosphere be probed? Yes and yes, according to today’s announcement by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Mass.

Pandora is a fictional alien world 5 light-years away from Earth orbiting an exoplanet in the system of Alpha Centauri A. As detailed in an exclusive Discovery News interview with the visionary director of Avatar, Cameron has been very careful to base his creation on science fact (unlike some movies I won’t mention). The biology of Avatar’s alien creatures are no doubt impressive, but what about the planetary physics? Could an exomoon be habitable… even inhabited?

“If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade,” said CfA’s Lisa Kaltenegger.

Kaltenegger and her colleagues point out that all the gas giant planets in our solar system (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) have moons, and if these moons are large enough, they possess an atmosphere.

One example is Saturn’s large moon Titan that has a very thick atmosphere and — as the 2005 ESA Huygens mission learned — a lot of the surface features are very Earth-like. It’s not a huge leap of the imagination to reckon that a larger rocky moon, orbiting a gas giant (a large Jupiter-like exoplanet) in another star system might have an exomoon with an atmosphere too.

“All of the gas giant planets in our solar system have rocky and icy moons,” Kaltenegger added. “That raises the possibility that alien Jupiters will also have moons. Some of those may be Earth-sized and able to hold onto an atmosphere.”

But, seeking out exoplanets is hard, and although over 400 of these worlds have been detected, some hi-tech piece of kit would be needed to go on an exomoon hunt.

When searching for exoplanets, astronomers will often look for a slight dimming in star light as an exoplanet passes in front of it. The exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope is currently looking for these exoplanet “transits” and it is hoped that the presence of exomoons orbiting the exoplanets may be detected too.

As an exomoon orbits its host exoplanet (in the same way our moon orbits the Earth), the exomoon will “tug” on the exoplanet very slightly. From Kepler’s point of view, the telescope will see the transiting exoplanet wobble very slightly as it passes in front of the star. This could be the signature of the presence of an exomoon.

Say if Kepler could detect the presence of an exomoon (not necessarily in the Alpha Centauri A system as no exoplanets have been spotted there, yet), how could astronomers work out if it’s a real-life Pandora?

“Alpha Centauri A is a bright, nearby star very similar to our Sun, so it gives us a strong signal” Kaltenegger clarified. “You would only need a handful of transits to find water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and methane on an Earth-like moon such as Pandora.”

“If the Avatar movie is right in its vision, we could characterize that moon with JWST [the James Webb Space Telescope] in the near future,” she added.

Fascinatingly, exomoons provide an exciting opportunity for the survivability of life. In the case of an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star, the exoplanet would have to orbit very close to the star to exist within the “habitable zone” (the region surrounding a star that’s neither too far away or too close, but in just the right location for water to be maintained in a liquid state). This is because red dwarfs emit less light than a star like our sun; therefore an exoplanet needs to be closer to a red dwarf to receive a quantity of light for life as we know it to survive.

But there’s a problem. If an exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf is within the habitable zone of the star, there’s a high probability that the exoplanet will be “tidally locked” with the star. Tidal locking means that the same side of the exoplanet will always be facing the star, continuously getting heated. The far side will be forever cold. This kind of situation is very terrible for life to survive as there will be no such thing as “days,” just one eternal, dull “day.”

But, place an exomoon in orbit around this tidally locked exoplanet and we’ll have a situation where the exomoon is always orbiting (it will therefore have days). The exomoon would become the more likely location for life to survive, even thrive.

Whether or not Pandora is really out there, perhaps there’s more chance of an Earth-sized exomoon (with an atmosphere) rather than an exoplanet nurturing life…

[via: news.discovery.com - Ian O'Neill]

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Here’s another incredible preview video from James Cameron’s upcoming movie Avatar, where the character Jake flees from the vicious Thenatar, the alien world’s alien predator.

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There has been a torrent of news lately on space. Earlier today, the annual Orionid meteor shower left trails of comet debris that vaporized into Earth’s atmosphere as “shooting stars.”

“Earth is passing through a stream of debris from Halley’s Comet, the source of the Orionids,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors per hour.” Orionids appear every year around this time when Earth orbits through an area of space littered with debris from the ancient comet. Normally, the shower produces 10 to 20 meteors per hour, a modest show. The past few years, but, have been much better than usual. – NASA.

Of course, Orionids is symbolic of the radiant meteors from the constellation of Orion, aka the Hunter.

Speaking of symbolism, the NAZI boys over at NASA just rolled out the Ares 1 rocket onto their launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida yesterday. The rocket is intended to boost and propel the Orion crew capsules into low-Earth orbit, a venture designed to place astronauts back on the moon and importantly restore pride in the space program following the embattled Constellation moon enterprise and the ongoing budgetary cuts.

The super-slim, 100m-tall launcher is a demonstrator for the vehicle Nasa plans to use in the next decade to take its new astronaut crewship into orbit. The Ares I-X is expected to make an unmanned, two-minute flight at the end of the month. This is designed to check out basic design concepts and gather engineering data. - BBC.

According to Greek mythology, Ares/Mars, son of Zeus and Hera, is considered to be the God of war and blood-lust. Now, one must question why would NASA use a name that convey such a meaning for its future space program. Hmmm… Then again, it all seems to make sense when you consider the recent journey of the LCROSS Lunar Impactor Mission to bomb the moon.

Is the Obama Administration configuring NASA for imminent war? Considering the predictive linguistics from Clif High and the Web Bot Project regarding future human/alien wars, then one must wonder, right? Or does this have to do with approaching asteroids? Apophis? NASA recently refined the Asteroid Apophis’ approach path towards Earth:

Using updated information, NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid. The refined path indicates a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036.

“Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million,” says near-Earth object scientists Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. – NASA.

Based on NASA’s rich history of lies and manipulation, I would take that with a grain of salt. At least Dr. Carol Rosin’s testimony based on a statement from later Dr. Werner Von Braun, seems much more plausible.

Given NASA’s renewed thrust into space and the recent discoveries of water on the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter’s Moon Europa; it is not hard to see that this expansion will ultimately lead to the extraterrestrial narrative. Monday’s discovery of 32 extrasolar alien planets just outside of our solar system is another step pointing towards this emerging reality.

Astronomers announced today the discovery of 32 extrasolar planets, some just five times the mass of Earth and others five times heftier than giant Jupiter. The findings significantly boost the number of planets closer to Earth in size and help astronomers better know what types of stars birth what kinds of planets. – SPACE.com.

Therefore, the next step is to find a planet or planets that mirrors the conditions on Earth. A Twin Earth.

HARPS is zooming in quick on the discovery of a Twin Earth: The latest batch of exoplanets announced yesterday comprises no less than 32 new discoveries. Including these new results, data from HARPS have led to the discovery of more than 75 exoplanets in 30 different planetary systems. HARPS is the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher at the ESO 3.6m telescope at La Silla in Chile’s Atacama Desert dedicated to the discovery of extrasolar planets. Due to its incredible precision, the search for small planets, those with a mass of a few times that of the Earth — known as super-Earths and Neptune-like planets — has been given a dramatic boost. - Daily Galaxy.

Once that is found, the arrival of the extraterrestrials will be the next and final piece in the puzzle, to ensure the New World Order.

Consider that the central theme of highest grossing movie of 2009, Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen, deals with the return to prominence of a race of ancient Transformers led by the Fallen. Following Optimus Prime’s death, the Fallen is freed and orders Megatron to launch a full-scale and all out war on planet Earth. This all can’t be just seen as mere news or entertainment, but a portent of something imminent, momentously threatening and disquietingly significance.

Whether real or contrived, the current news headlines is pointing to it, the subtextual narrative from well loved culture is heralding it, the exopolitical culture is calling for it, and the masses have been neurologically programmed to yearn for it. It is what it is. The burgeoning reality. The pervasive convergence.

UPDATE: Michael Salla: Official Disclosure Of Extraterrestrial Life Is Imminent
In a most revealing article for the Examiner, that dovetails with my hypothesis, well known Researcher and Ufologist, Dr. Michael Salla wrote today that the disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence is imminent:

An official announcement by the Obama administration disclosing the reality of extraterrestrial life is imminent. For several months, senior administration officials have been quietly deliberating behind closed doors how much to tell to the world about extraterrestrial life. Dissatisfaction among powerful institutions such as the U.S. Navy over the decades-long secrecy policy has given a boost to efforts to tell the reality of extraterrestrial life and technology.

The impending disclosure announcement follows upon the secret implementation of a year long openness policy on UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Over the period February 12-14, 2008, the United Nations held closed doors discussions where approximately 30 nations secretly agreed on a new openness policy on UFOs and extraterrestrial life in 2009. The openness policy was implemented but never publicly announced due to threats against UN diplomats not to tell details of the secret agreement. The secret UN agreement was based on two conditions. First, UFOs would continue to appear around the world; and second, the openness policy would not lead to social unrest in liberal democracies. Both conditions have been satisfied making it possible for the next stage to start – official disclosure of extraterrestrial life.

Read the full article HERE.

Fascinating times ahead.

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