| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Want to Name an Exoplanet? Uwingu Has a Plan
Screenshot from the Uwingu exoplanet naming website.
Astronomers have now discovered over 1,000 planets orbiting other stars, and right now these exoplanets all have boring, license-plate-like names, such as HD85512 and GJ 436 instead of endearing, “real” planet names that might offer hints of what that world could be like. And recall the recent extrapolation of how many habitable planets might be in the Milky Way? A team using the ESO’s HARP’s spectrograph determined there might be upwards of 160 billion worlds out there for us to find, and perhaps eventually name. How might we come up with that many names?
Uwingu, a startup company that is hoping to use innovative ways to fund space and astronomy research, has an idea of how to do that. Their first commercial project is to challenge people to create a ‘baby book of planet names’ for all these planets, as suggestions for future names for other worlds.
(…)
Read the rest of Want to Name an Exoplanet? Uwingu Has a Plan (850 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: exoplanets, Extrasolar Planets, Uwingu
Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
2012-11-07 18:01:33
Source: http://www.universetoday.com/98366/want-to-name-an-exoplanet-uwingu-has-a-plan/
Source:
