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For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.- Vincent Van Gogh

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Last Hope - Paramore

REAL LIFE DISNEY PRINCE TOM HIDDLESTON EXHIBIT

I knew it 😃

Could Planets Like Those Imagined in Star Wars Be Real??

Look at what we’ve found so far. 

Is your favorite Star Wars planet a desert world or an ice planet or a jungle moon?

It’s possible that your favorite planet exists right here in our galaxy. Astronomers have found over 3,400 planets around other stars, called “exoplanets.”

Some of these alien worlds could be very similar to arid Tatooine, watery Scarif and even frozen Hoth, according to NASA scientists.

Find out if your planet exists in a galaxy far, far away or all around you.

Planets With Two Suns

Were you going to the Tosche station to pick up some power converters? Hold on a minute and learn about Kepler-16b, 200 light-years from Earth. It’s the first honest-to-goodness planet ever found where you could watch two suns set like Luke. George Lucas himself even blessed its nickname ‘Tatooine.’ It’s not a perfect comparison: Kepler-16b is a cold gas giant roughly the size of Saturn. But don’t worry, kid.

The best part is that Tatooine aka Kepler-16b was just the first. It has family. A LOT of family. Half the stars in our galaxy are pairs, rather than single stars like our sun. If every star has at least one planet, that’s billions of worlds with two suns. Billions! Maybe waiting for life to be found on them.

Desert Worlds

If you’re like Finn and want to know why everyone wants to go back to Jakku desert planets, get this: Star Wars may be reflecting the real universe. Desert worlds are not only a very real possibility, but we think they are probably very common. They can be hot, like the fictional Tatooine and Jakku, or cold, like Jedha in “Rogue One” or our real planet Mars.

Perhaps it’s not so weird that both Luke and Rey grew up on planets that look suspiciously like each other. If you’re scouring the universe for a place to settle, you have a good chance of finding a desert planet.

Ice Planets

There is a Hoth in our galaxy! Though not the same Hoth from “The Empire Strikes Back” (no invading Imperials, for one). The icy super-Earth reminded scientists so much of the frozen Rebel base they nicknamed it “Hoth.” The planet’s real name is OGLE 2005-BLG-390L.

Our galaxy’s Hoth is too cold to support life as we know it. But life may evolve under the ice of a different world, or a moon in our solar system.

We’re currently designing a mission to look for life under the crust of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. We’re pretty sure ity won’t look like tauntauns, if it exists.

Forest worlds

Both the forest moon of Endor and Takodana, the home of Han Solo’s favorite cantina in “Force Awakens,” are green like our home planet. But astrobiologists think that plant life on other worlds could be red, black, or even rainbow-colored!

In August 2016, astronomers from the European Southern Observatory announced the discovery of Proxima Centauri b, a planet only four light-years away from Earth, which orbits a tiny red star.

The light from a red star, also known as an M dwarf, is dim and mostly in the infrared spectrum (as opposed to the visible spectrum we see with our sun). And that could mean plants with wildly different colors than what we’re used to seeing on Earth. Or, animals that see in the near-infrared.

And Beyond

The next few years will see the launch of a new generation of spacecraft to search for planets around other stars. TESS and the James Webb Telescope will go into space in 2018, and WFIRST in the mid-2020s. That’s one step closer to finding life.

You don’t need to visit a galaxy far, far away to find wondrous worlds. Just visit this one … there’s plenty to see.

Discover more about exoplanets here: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

The Most Influential Popular Science Books

Here is a list of legendary books on scientific discoveries and ideas that changed the world: true classics that are recommended for everyone.

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei (1632): “The most proximate cause of Galilei being brought to trial before the Inquisition. Using the dialogue form, a genre common in classical philosophical works, Galileo masterfully demonstrates the truth of the Copernican system over the Ptolemaic one, proving, for the first time, that the earth revolves around the sun. Its influence is incalculable. The Dialogue is not only one of the most important scientific treatises ever written, but a work of supreme clarity, remaining as readable now as when it was first published.” 

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: ”The publication of this book in 1859 marked a dramatic turning point in scientific thought. Selling out its first edition on its first day, The Origin of Species revolutionized science, philosophy, and theology. Darwin’s reasoned, documented arguments advance his theory of natural selection and his assertion that species started with a few simple forms that mutated and adapted over time.“ 

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (1988): “How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending? What will happen when it all ends? Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the realms of black holes, quarks, antimatter, the big bang and a bigger God. Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.” 

Cosmos by Carl Sagan (1980): “Cosmos is one of the bestselling science books of all time. Cosmos retraces the fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into consciousness, exploring such topics as the origin of life, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, spacecraft missions, the death of the Sun, and the list goes on.”

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962): “The marine biologist’s documented indictment of DDT led both to a U.S. ban on the insecticide and to the birth of the modern environmental movement. Carson argues that DDT not only indiscriminately kills insects, but also accumulates in the fat of birds and mammals high on the food chain, thinning eggshells and causing reproductive problems.”

Relativity: The Special and General Theory by Albert Einstein (1916): “In the early 20th century, scientists began to interrogate the Newtonian model of Physics that posits absolute time, intrigued by the possibility of a dimension in which space and time overlap. This text is Einstein’s philosophical explanation of the idea that changed the way we understand the physics of space and time.“

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A song can’t change the world. But the song can change his three minutes. His three minutes can change his three hours. His three hours can change his three days. His three days can change his three months. His three months can change his three years. His three years can change his life. His life can change peoples’ lives. And people can change the world.

— G-Dragon (via gd-quotes)