Tag Archives: NASA Kepler

Forty Million People Changed Their Minds

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Now that’s something you don’t see every day. Who said forty million people changed their minds? Well, I did, but I base it on a report by the Marist Poll.

Forty million people changed their minds

Some of you may not be familiar with the Marist Poll. It has been in existence since 1978. The Marist Poll is associated with Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York in the United States. It regularly measures public opinion on various subjects at the local, state and national level. The final Marist Poll of the 2016 US Presidential election was very close to the actual result. No one in my world complains about the Marist Poll. Therefore, I am taking their report at face value.

Forty million people changed their minds. Who were the forty million people? Forty million American adults, roughly. The Marist Poll conducted a survey in May of 2005. They conducted the same survey in February of 2018. So the forty million Americans changed their minds over a time period of a little less than 13 years. What did they change their mind about? The existence of intelligent life on other planets.

Forty million people changed their minds

In May of 2005, 52% of respondents answered Yes to the question “Do you think there is intelligent life on other planets?” In February of 2018, 68% of respondents answered Yes to that question. Suppose that these polls are representative samples of the United States. I have no good reason to believe that they are not. 16% of 240 million American adults works out to about forty million.

Exoplanet Discoveries. Forty million people changed their minds

What made the forty million American adults change their minds? It could be a number of things. I believe the explosion in the discovery of exoplanets, planets circling a star other than our sun, has something to do with it. The Kepler Space Telescope, launched in 2009, has been a remarkable scientific success in the time period between the two polls.

The New Message from God teaches that humanity is emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. This is the first paragraph from the revelation “Preparing for the Greater Community,” received by Marshall Vian Summers in April of 2011.

“Humanity is preparing for the Greater Community. It does not know this yet, of course, but that is its stage of evolution, and everyone is involved. The fact that humanity is unprepared for the realities of contact with life in the universe is very apparent, but at a more unconscious level, people are anticipating this. And that is why it emerges in your movies, in your books, in human imagination. There is a seed of truth, an element of truth here.”

Forty million people changed their minds. I consider this remarkable event to be part of humanity’s preparation for the Greater Community.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.

Many New Planets Swim Into Our Ken

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Artist's conception of Kepler-444 system. Many new planets swim into our ken.

The poet John Keats had an experience of wonder when he read a translation of Homer by George Chapman. He cried out,

“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;”

Many new planets swim into our ken

I mention this to share two items of space exploration news. The first item is the sixth anniversary of the launch of the Kepler space telescope. Many times scientists conduct experiments expecting to find certain things. Many times they fail to find what they had hoped for. But the Kepler mission has found what was looking for in abundance.

Many new planets swim into our ken. How many? Kepler has found 1,019 exoplanets, planets outside our solar system. By “found” I mean “found possibilities of exoplanets which were later confirmed by independent observation.” The above image shows an artist conception of 5 of those exoplanets who share the same star. In addition to this, Kepler has found possibilities of an additional 3,100 “candidates” which will either be confirmed or discarded in the future. The mission scientists believe that 90% of the candidates will be confirmed as exoplanets, although I don’t know how they know this.

Many new planets swim into our ken. Where does this figure of 1,019 exoplanets fit into the larger picture of exoplanet exploration? At this point, NASA reports a total of 1,827 confirmed planets. The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992. In other words, Kepler has discovered more planets in the past six years than all the efforts from 1992 to 2009. And that’s not counting the candidates. Even though crucial components of Kepler failed in May of 2013, I consider the Kepler mission to be a smashing, groundbreaking success.

Many new planets swim into our ken. How many of them are habitable? These scientists say “62, or around 3%, so far.” On the other hand, astronomer Charlie Lineweaver posited that the average number of habitable planets per star is 2, plus or minus 1. Since there are somewhere between 100 billion and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, that’s quite a few habitable planets.

Many new planets swim into our ken. What does it all mean? I say it means that Giordano Bruno might have been on to something in the 1500’s when he envisioned intelligent life on then-unknown exoplanets. I also say it means that the New Message from God teaching about a greater community of intelligent life to be a little more plausible than it was before these news items appeared.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.

Giordano Bruno, Prophet of the Greater Community

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Giordano Bruno, prophet of the Greater Community

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was many things in his full, eventful life. He displayed a talent for memory as a child. He was an ordained Catholic priest and a member of the Dominican order. He was considered a scientist of that time. His instrumentation was inadequate to prove or disprove his thought experiments. He expressed his scientific and philosophical arguments in the form of literary dialogues.

The part of his life I find mysterious is his ideas about the universe. Nicolas de Cusa had suggested a hundred years or so earlier that the sun is but another star. In the early 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus showed that the earth and the other planets revolved around the sun.

Giordano Bruno, prophet of the Greater Community

Giordano Bruno put together a number of ideas. Suppose the sun is but another star. Suppose there are planets around our sun. Why should there not be planets around other stars as well? Our planet has intelligent life on it. People believe that is a good thing. Why should there not be intelligent life on the many other planets revolving around the other stars? Why should that not be a good thing too?

Giordano Bruno envisioned what the New Message from God refers to as the Greater Community of Worlds. Sometimes it is just called the Greater Community. It is a universe swarming and teeming with intelligent life. I therefore call him the prophet of the Greater Community, someone who considered the idea quite a bit before its time.

Nicolas de Cusa would not be proven right by scientific observation until the early 19th century. The first exoplanet (planet outside our solar system) was discovered in 1992. Since that time, there has been an explosion in the amount of exoplanet research. Many new methods of exoplanet detection have been developed. Many new exoplanets have been confirmed.
multi_transits_many_full_0The NASA Kepler mission announced Wednesday (as in today, 26 February 2014) the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system. This brings us up to a total of 1,690 planets around 1,023 stars. All I know is that somewhere, Giordano Bruno, prophet of the Greater Community, is smiling.

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Welcome to Mystery of Ascension! We are students and advocates of the the New Message from God. We are members of a worldwide community. We seek to assist the world in successfully navigating difficult times ahead. We seek to assist the world in successfully emerging into a greater community of intelligent life. You will also find some poetry. Find out more about us here. Contact us here.