Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Physics Forum 200+ Planets Discovered.........

.....discovery of Planets is becoming fast and furious.
Alien worlds, once hidden from knowledge, are now being discovered in droves, stunning astronomers with their unique features and sheer numbers.
The discoveries are so common, that more and more don't even get reported outside scientific circles

Take the announcement at the end of May of a massive planet, dubbed TrES-3, that zips around its star in an amazingly rapid 31 hours, giving the planet a 1.3-day year. Astronomers issued a press release, but you might not have heard about it because the discovery was so overshadowed by other planet announcements and barely received news coverage.

The ultimate goal, is to find Earth-like planets, or those with similar masses, orbits and rocky compositions to Earth.
So far, astronomers have identified only one Earth-like planet, that could support liquid water and harbor life.
This one "super Earth," Gliese 581 C, weighs about five Earth masses, and is either a rocky planet or one covered entirely by oceans, astronomers speculate. But more "super Earths could be found very soon.
Multi-planet systems are also a goal. So far, 25 multi-planet systems have been discovered. They also looking, and expect to find clones of our Solar System given more telescope time.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070424_exoplanet_side.html

Look at this, Mike. Could it be Carl Sagan's "Contact"?:

Square Kilometre Array

http://www.skatelescope.org/

"The SKA will be an interferometric array of individual antenna stations, synthesizing an aperture with diameter of up to several 1000 kilometers. A number of configurations are under consideration to distribute the 1 million square metres of collecting area. These include 30 stations each with the collecting area equivalent to a 200 metres diameter telescope, and 150 stations each with the collecting area of a 90 m telescope ( more about design and location proposals )."

"Approximately 50% of the collecting area is to be contained within a centrally-condensed inner array of 5km diameter to provide ultrahigh brightness sensitivity at arc-second scale resolution for studies of the faint spectral line signatures of structures in the early Universe. Another 25 % of the collecting area will be located within a diameter of 150 km, and the remainder out to 3000 km or more."

"Are there Earth-like planets around other stars? Do they host intelligent life? By observing the process of planet building in the dusty disks that form around young stars, the SKA will be able to tell us how Earth-like planets are formed. It may be the only instrument capable of imaging, with the angular resolution required, the thermal emission from dust in the inner regions of disks where Earth-like planets are likely to be located. In addition, the SKA offers the possibility of detecting radio transmissions that would provide evidence for intelligent life among the stars....If placed at 500 light years distance, our own Solar System would be about 1 arcsecond across , so observations at milli-arcsecond angular resolution are very important to zoom in on planetary gaps. The SKA will have this resolution."

Below is from one of several pdf files available on the website:

Key Science Projects
Extreme tests of general relativity with pulsars and black holes
Evolution of galaxies, cosmology, dark matter and energy
Probing the Dark Ages - the first black holes & stars
The Cradle of Life - searching for life and planets: There is increasing interest in the community in astrobiology and in the search for Earth-like planets. The SKA has the unique potential for finding evidence of extra-solar terrestrial planets and of other life like us. At 20 GHz, the SKA will provide thermal imaging at 0.15-AU resolution out to a distance of 150 pc, encompassing many of the best studied Galactic star forming regions. Such observations will allow us to study the process of terrestrial planet formation; such systems will evolve on timescales of months. For the first time with the SKA, we will have the capability of detecting leakage radiation from ETI transmitters out to a few hundred parsecs, involving of order a million solar type stars. Finally, the SKA will have the resolution and sensitivity to study the J = 1 transitions of amino acids and other complex carbon biomolecules, and to follow their progress from molecular clouds to protoplanets. [This topic is a combination of the proposals on SETI/Astrobiology and on Terrestrial Planet Formation.]
The origin & evolution of cosmic magnetism

This is a superb and colourful 28 page brochure [4,581 KB]: http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/ska/brochure/SKABrochure.pdf
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This is very exciting stuff, so excuse me for adding bits to this post.

Through necessity and good fortune, this is an international project. There are 18 participating nations including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States. (That's 17. I don't know why the 18th wasn't listed).

Cost: 1 billion Euros. Completion by 2020.
It will be 50 times more sensitive than any previous array, and will survey 10,000 times faster.
The 3000 km baseline will it provide extreme high res imagery