Will PLATO Be The Mission To Finally Find Earth 2.0?

[@laurachapple6795]

I was going to ask why this mission is called Plato, but then I realized - we're trying to learn the truth of an object by looking at the shadow it casts. Perfect.

[@EmeraldEyesEsoteric]

It was Plato who wrote about other beings living on sky islands and he even described accurately how Earth was seen in space. Something that the writers of original Star Trek didn't get right, because science at the time had it wrong. I can think of no better name for a probe that seeks to find other earth like worlds.

[@ricksspeedshop]

Really interesting interview. As I am 63 years old, I hope I get to stick around long enough to see some of these projects come to fruition. We can always hope, am I right?

[@petpleased]

It’s truly bittersweet that life is short, and the unknowns and gateways that humanity is opening towards understanding existence might leave us behind.

[@TrevorGrismore]

I'm 27, and I feel that way, too. My grandma was big into science, and she said the same thing. I remember telling her that, even if I lived to be 1,000 years old, I would want to live a little longer because I would have unanswered questions. Let's hope we both live long enough to get some answers!

[@TheEyez187]

I'm 43, and feel the same, my mother's parent's were 102 and 97 when they died, so I might have some potential genetic luck! :D Moonbase by 2040 maybe*, Mars by 2060? * * hope unless some of Isaac Arthur's futurism life extension possibilities have become possible, we might all be good; probably not, but such things will be helpful for prolonged space travel and lots of fields overlap. If Demolition Man's Cryo-prison was a thing, I could see myself taking advantage of the time-travel; with years of learning programmed in at the same time; would be kind of silly not to! :D

[@jashpaper8370]

You may not be able to see everything that happens in the future. But you've seen things that we'll never see that happened in the past.

[@kayakMike1000]

More likely to become a citizen of the United federation of planets, duder.

[@walkerdobson7259]

Just found your channel for the first time this morning, and im loving every minute of your videos! Thanks for the HUGE info dump, compelling interviews, and amazing amount of research, dude! Keep up the great work!!

[@petpleased]

I loved the interview, but I must say, Fraser Cain's enthusiasm really stood out for me! His passion for discussing the PLATO project and the universe is truly infectious. It's always exciting to see someone so eager to share knowledge and explore the mysteries of space. Looking forward to more engaging discussions like this.

[@AnyOtherNamePlease]

Thank you! You have NO IDEA how long I have been waiting for this video! Bedtime has just been delayed an hour! 😂

[@marcelkernfx]

Thanks, Fraser. You're always able to pick very interesting topics. Much appreciated.

[@isaacplaysbass8568]

Cool, can't wait for Plato. Really good interview too! Good Reaction Wheels assured.

[@DreshAshes]

Appreciate the time and dedication you and your team put into this channel.

[@lucidstream5661]

Great interview! Can't wait for PLATO to find Earth 2. Our new home in the far, far future?

[@JAGzilla-ur3lh]

Or, maybe better, someone else's home right now!

[@lucidstream5661]

@@JAGzilla-ur3lh one does not rule out the other!

[@Mr_Kyle_]

PLEASE - more Astroseismology and Stellar Science stories! 100% agree with Dr Brown, exoplanets get all the limelight, but understanding the stars themselves is much more important (we still don't even know everything about our own star)!

[@zapfanzapfan]

I arranged a lecture by someone working on the computer for the mission sometime pre-pandemic. Maybe time for a repeat now that it is getting closer, the computer must be delivered if it launches in 2 years. Hope everything goes well and it delivers!

[@JamesCairney]

I, for one, am extremely interested in research like this. Properly excellent video!

[@Roguescienceguy]

First apparently. Giving this mission the name that honours this amazing figure of our past is definitely fitting

[@blkwings69]

I'd love an interview with an astro seismologist

[@Zurround]

What the hell is that?

[@greghall4836]

@@Zurround Googling might help you better than swearing in KZbin comments.

[@JAGzilla-ur3lh]

All right, good interview. Plato wasn't on my radar, but it certainly is now. One more thing to wait for and watch, hoping something cool happens in a few years.

[@Robertc-lv4gs]

Thanks for this!

[@pkr3141]

Awesome interview! Thanks!

[@jim.franklin]

Another excellent interview Fraser.

[@atticmuse3749]

Awesome interview so far! Just wanted to leave a comment after watching the bit about seismology and TESS increasing the precision of stellar age measurements. I hadn't heard about this before but that's fascinating. Do you have any videos covering it in more detail?

[@franksposato6072]

Would be nice to know if there are any updates to the system called Kepler 62

[@jcollins8639]

I appreciate you Mr. Cain

[@leoncorns1450]

To find just one planet with a confirmed bio signature, means the pressure is off us as the consciences of the universe.

[@Nomad77ca]

I was thinking more that not bio, but confirmed techno-signatures, and multiple of them, would actually take the pressure off. We may be early to the party. Can you imagine us trying to guide a maturing galaxy? Oh my!

[@JAGzilla-ur3lh]

It introduces new pressures, though. To KNOW that other life is out there and that we need to be very careful about how we interact with it for the sake of everyone involved, will change everything about how we approach space exploration.

[@christophermeyer5986]

I would find it to be so powerfully positive and inspiring of hope: that someone else has made it! It can be done!

[@smorrow]

Not really. Abundant life is the expected result. The most likely great filter is rare carboniferous (-> rare kerogen -> rare cheap,plentiful,reliable energy). But scientists don't consider that one at all because they culturally _can't_ - they're all middle-class prosperity-for-granted progressives-to-socialists whose level of thought in political economy is you can change something and everybody just gets this one extra thing (or one bad thing taken away) with no unintended consequences, costs, or second-order effects. Fossil fuels actually being good just isn't part of the milieu. They really think hydrocarbons being 80% of our energy is just a coincidence or something. (And it's really 100% if you count the bootstrapping.)

[@phoule76]

that should help fill in one of the Drake variables, for sure, as well as our Fraser bingo card

[@Casimir-t3i]

Good interview.

[@glyngreen538]

I remember Plato from my Philosophy degree. Nice that he’s reincarnated as a telescope now.

[@markwebster8371]

A burning question I have had whilst watching this video, over several days I must admit: What of the planets which don't transit at all from our point of view? How many stars in the galaxy might have planetary systems whose plane is not in line with our viewing angle? Or is that just extremely rare like Uranus being tipped on its side? Do all solar systems in general follow the same plane of the galaxy?

[@grumpik6693]

this was a good 'un Fraser!

[@kortzite5204]

Why would they be switching fields at regular intervals? Would it not be better to switch at more "irregular" times (like 3 then 5 then 4 years) to decrease the likelihood of a 2-year transit falling through the gaps? Or to perhaps catch a third transit of a 1-year cycle?

[@christophermeyer5986]

How will PLATO help to detect potentially habitable exo-moons? And once enough stars are able to be categorized over time, might their intrinsic brightness variation over time be able to allow us to understand more fully the 3D density variation of the interstellar medium? Also, how would free floating planets between the stars appear in the PLATO data?

[@antonandoliver]

Decent video

[@alfonsopayra]

so a telescope with wifi and an app! (the follow-up team) I like it!

[@montylc2001]

I hope to live long enough to see some science results from it. But don't hold your breath finding any twins of Earth any time soon. Our planet's formation was extremely unusual and the odds are...astronomical?....that another one like Earth will be relatively close to us.

[@GadZookz]

Sometimes I wonder what the namesakes of these space probes and telescopes would have said if they knew what the missions were all about. Some of them might scarcely believe it. 🙂

[@EmeraldEyesEsoteric]

Plato would not be the least bit surprised.

[@kenwood6802]

Looking forward to Plato. Thanks! HOWEVER, How much of Kepler's original mission was kicked to the curb to go sideways? Lesson Learned, Fair Enough. In the meantime, do we have another X-Ray Observatory in the works that will stay on target with it's mission?

[@harryhodge3049]

Have you done a video onpast/current/future near term looking at what say Carl Sagan and his peers speculated to what we know know and how that may change in another generation?

[@johnvanderpol2]

Is that frequency of the star shifted or adjusted in another way by massive planets. and what could be deduced from it?

[@nerufer]

When? yes, I believe so too, but it might also be "If". 12 is a good number though. Also if Plato finds something really interesting, would they then go to JWST and point it at it?

[@andrewclimo5709]

At least if we can get the orbit and mass, we can follow up with other observations on other platforms. I'm not expecting a sudden announcement from Plato "Hey, here's a 1 Earth mass planet with an Oxygen-Nitrogen-CO2 atmosphere."

[@JohnTorrington-ut4ev]

I remember hearing about this around like 2012, but wasn't there a canceled project to make a lander for Pluto? It was going to take like 100 years to actually get there and land. Has a professor complain about it when it was cancelled.

[@bbbl67]

I had thought that Kepler and Tess, etc were just orbiting in the L2 point? It seems here that they are not.

[@karlputz6721]

Astroseismology interview please

[@frasercain]

Hah, okay. :-)

[@garreth629]

Am I the only one who first thought the title said Pluto. I then thought he misspelled it before realizing it said Plato. This was all before I started the video.

[@scottdorfler2551]

Hey Fraser, You've been my go to space news guy for 5 years now. I blame you completely for my ignorance concerning Astroseismology. This is the first time I've heard of this technology. Could you please step up your game and interview an expert in Astrosiesmology. 😂

[@frasercain]

Yup, will do.

[@ElmiraMarx]

the WASP and Super WASP thing with lots of small telescopes to make a big one and it being cheaper reminds me of when in the mid 2000s a nerd in the US Air Force figured out they could make a cheaper supercomputer by buying 1760 PS3s linking them together and running custom firmware on them than buying an actual supercomputer. so that what they did

[@AnonymousAnarchist2]

it uh, wasn't custom firmware for the PS3's, and that was thier second attempt. The PS2 super cluster that really wasnt stable had the custom firmware and I think only a few hundred units where installed. I think they where inspired by the massily multiplayer online games that where coming out at the time. And I dont know why they picked the PS2 when Sony's nearest competitor at the time (not sure if it was the Sega Dreamcast or Microsoft Xbox when they built it) had a built in modem but hey whatever its still the same cool idea.

[@denysvlasenko1865]

What do you think Google/Amazon/Azure clouds are? They started as literally huge numbers of consumer-grade machines, with no hardware customizations. Just rows of shelves with many, many network and power-connected motherboards with processors and RAM, not even enclosed in cases (better cooling, easy access, less cost). They discovered that since you can't have absolute 100.00% reliability even with very expensive "server-grade" machines, you have to write datacenter code so that failed machine is tolerated, so why bother buying very expensive "server-grade" machines?

[@jeffknott1975]

If we ever make the technology to travel to other planets we should make time to make the technology to fix this planet first!

[@user-pf5xq3lq8i]

The earth is not sick. It doesn't need fixed. Look up Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy.

[@GreySectoid]

Why are they using CCD sensors instead of modern BSI sensors?

[@crowguy506]

How does Plato compare to the canceled terrestrial planet finder?

[@colonelgraff9198]

It needs more cameras

[@TheebayOffroader]

Was it Dr David Brown the inventor of the Tractor beam?

[@rwarren58]

M understanding is that Kepler generated too much noise to find stars and exoplanets. This was discovered after launch.🚀

[@legoyodascream]

You ever play Outer Wilds?

[@frasercain]

No, I want to.

[@legoyodascream]

@@frasercain Banjos music is best in space.

[@deanlipska549]

Is Plato going to look only in the Milkyway or how far out will they look.😅

[@slowercuber7767]

Given the name of the mission ("Plato") I have to wonder if it will find real alternate earths or only their shadows....

[@ryutak4152]

We have planet hunters, but do we have star hunters?

[@TheIrieman15]

I saw plUto 🙃

[@daverobert7927]

QUESTION - are we just looking in our galaxy for Earth2.0 Taking into account time to travel outside of our Galaxy. Maybe Alpha Centauri

[@FrancisFjordCupola]

I'll curb my enthusiasm until they launch Socrates. :P

[@Zurround]

Once they find another Earth like planet they should send astronauts to explore it.

[@Chris08TT]

@@Zurround that would never happen

[@Zurround]

@@Chris08TT Annoyed sarcasm. I fear that humankind will never venture beyond our solar system.

[@atlantasailor1]

@@Zurround wait until the year 2200…

[@toddablett4493]

how much of the sky or the milkyway does Plato look at?...

[@MrSimonw58]

English house, English sunlight

[@scottdorfler2551]

I thought Kepler was just barely capable of finding an Earth sized planet around a sun-like star. Even if Kepler remained fully operational, finding Earth 2.0 was very unlikely do to it's undersized mirror. Same thing with TESS.

[@user-pf5xq3lq8i]

Correct.

[@denysvlasenko1865]

Not "very unlikely". It'd be not easy, but well within the capability of the craft. Kepler found planets even more then twice as small as Earth. Example for ~Earth-sized planet around ~Sun-sized star: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-20e To detect these small planets, the more transits the better (for stacking, to remove noise and detect the weak transit). Fully-operational Kepler would mean many more transits for a planet with the period close to 1 earth year (which is a requirement for "Earth-2" rather than "hot Earth" much closer to the star, like Kepler-20e). Real mission only had less than 3.5 years of operation, which is not even enough to guarantee 4 transits for such planet.

[@scottdorfler2551]

David Kipping is really pushing the transit method to the absolute edge. Looking for exomoons requires many more transits because the moon could be anywhere in its orbit during the transit. If the moon is eclipsed by the planet or is eclipsing the planet, there's no difference in the signal. Plus, moons block such a tiny amount of light that their transit's could just as well be noise. He has time booked on JWST to observe a candidate exomoon. I remember reading that Kepler's reaction wheels failed in conjunction with solar flares. I'm pretty sure it was Kepler. It might have been Spitzer.

[@FirstAmendmentAudits]

Come back to 7:05

[@swissboycontrol]

We have Hubble and other astronomy telescopes already in earth orbit. Why can’t they be be deployed on the far side of the moon ?

[@hive_indicator318]

What is your proposal for getting them there?

[@stewiesaidthat]

​@@hive_indicator318Build a gravity wave generator on the moon and pull it into an orbit on the far side of the moon.

[@filmproduktionberlin2720]

You can't move them.

[@billmilosz]

It's hard to find small Earth-size planets

[@lazerithlazerith4012]

So what if we find one what then? It will be light years away. Lets say that is is 100 percent fact there is a perfect earth replica 50 light years away. So what now ? What does it matter or do for anything?

[@dhansel4835]

And we probably never will find a "Class "M" Planet". If we did what would we do about it? We don't have the technology to journey to it. If we did what would we fined? a civilization that would invite mankind to dinner. Remember the old Twilight Zone episode when earth was visited by extra-terrestrials and found a book they translated and found it was a cook book for humans !

[@derschmiddie]

We'd maybe send a probe at a fraction of the speed of light that takes a few pictures while zipping past. Maybe one of those micro-thingies with a solar sail. Depending on the distance, it would take decades or centuries before we get a signal back. We'll have figured out what to do by then. There are also concepts to use the gravitational lense of the sun for a telescope that would require a lot of telescopes (basically one per pixel) quite far out in the solar system but aiming right it would have a resolution that could resolve individual features like mountains or cities.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

2 months later: “Mission canceled. Insufficient funds”.

[@larry-om9tg]

I hope that aluminum foil secured enough.

[@blogsfred3187]

I looked up Asteroseismology on wiki, my god, can someone make it plain English, and talk about using it for star ages?

[@filmproduktionberlin2720]

Ask AI to dumb it down for you. That's what I'm going to do this evening.

[@stewiesaidthat]

A star that burns twice as bright lives half as long. E=mc where c is the absolute acceleration of the mass or lifespan. Once you determine the composition of the star (mass) and the amount of energy its producing (E) you can somewhat determine its age (c).

[@frasercain]

I'll queue up an interview with someone. :-)

[@snowballs2023]

This telescope seems like a wasted opportunity go bigger having hundreds of cameras.

[@albertvanlingen7590]

how you gonna get to earth 2,0 if you find it ??

[@EmeraldEyesEsoteric]

26 Cameras? 26 is the master number for GOD and YHWH. The Receiving of RA is May 26, and 26 divides into 137 the universal constant 5.26 times.

[@mattym8038]

play-doh, final a use for that stuff. 😅

[@mrJety89]

say "play-dough"

[@snowballs2023]

I don't see the purpose of this satellite. If anything, why not just build another james webb replace gold with silver if after visible light.

[@mikegLXIVMM]

Earth 2.0 is in the same orbit as earth 1.0. We can't see it though, it on the opposite side of the sun and we can't see it. 😛

[@anibaldamiao]

@@mikegLXIVMM that’d be the most hilarious cosmic joke out there

[@frasercain]

Wouldn't the rovers on Mars see it?

[@mikegLXIVMM]

@@frasercain Too far, but if they equipped a Mars rover with a telescope, maybe it will.

[@frasercain]

We can see Mars without a telescope. The Mars rovers can see Earth, so why wouldn't they be able to see another Earth?

[@almoemason]

OK, so we spend all that money, and we actually find an earth like planet. What good is that information? We can't go there.

[@GrifHowe]

It gives humanity a goal to work towards. One day, with incremental steps, we will go there.

[@jonathanhughes8679]

Only 12?

[@kayakMike1000]

Yeah, they won't find earth 2.0 for awhile.

[@climbingworkouts]

It’s all bs

[@HaviccB]

No point in finding earth 2 if you don't first sort out taking care of earth 1

[@JamesCairney]

No point making comments like that, it totally ignores the hard work of millions of people doing good things, it pretends that all of humanity are just dossers making a mess. It isn't an intelligent opinion, sorry.

[@thegutlessleadingthecluele7810]

Who says that finding a new world couldn't help us solve our problems? Humanity is not bad. Some individual people are bad.

[@alikourdi3365]

@@thegutlessleadingthecluele7810 are you sure you live on earth 1?

[@frasercain]

Aren't you curious to know if there are stars out there with planets in the habitable zone? Wouldn't you like to know if the signal of life has been detected around any of them? We can multitask. Be concerned about the state of our planet and curious about the Universe at the same time.

[@Gear_labs]

So boring without graphics

[@terrific804]

And the point of all these billions spent on looking at things that are millions of years away from us?

[@frasercain]

These are only a few light-years away. Still beyond our technology to visit, but aren't you curious what's out there?

[@goiterlanternbase]

The point is, that to learn how to things, you got to have to do things and they are better not that important. Remember your time in preschool. Had the pages full of big A's written any use, beyond you learning how to hold a pencil?

[@jtjames79]

I agree. It's really disappointing. We could be spending millions of dollars, finding billions of dollars worth of local resources. Astronomers are way too focused on writing papers. They always want to do the next thing instead of finishing the thing that they are doing now.

[@JamesCairney]

​@@jtjames79what is it with this assumption that "all humans" are useless, and "they" need told how to spend every penny? How about do some research into the positive things that millions are doing to improve the lives of acual people, better still, be one of them. We don't need to hear you complain, fix things instead.

[@hive_indicator318]

The same point as history, even though we can't visit the past. Learning is good

[@RemyRAD]

But of course we will find another earth 2.0. The only question will be. How many millions of years will it take humanity to get there? Even if we freeze people. How long are we supposed to freeze people for? 1000 years? Or 10 million years? And how would you feel after waking up, 10 million years later? And just dying for a McDonald's hamburger. Then what are you supposed to do? There is no more Ronald. There are no more, Golden Arches. There aren't even, human beings. And you will be in a pickle... brine. Likely. In an alien critter's, Museum. Mars Attacks! ACK... ACK! RemyRAD