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Special Task Groups - Extrasolar Planets |
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Extrasolar PlanetsThis Task Group will operate in an area that is both easy for the general public to understand and one of the greatest scientific adventures of the 21st century: extrasolar planets and the search for life on these planets. The Task Group will create and maintain www.exoplanet2009.org, an international, multilingual website.
Chair: Jean Schneider (
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)
Objectives
The International Year of Astronomy 2009 will have a large number of regional and national activities. It seems to us useful to conduct a transverse, thematic and transnational operation in a domain which is at the same time easy to understand by the general public and one of the greatest scientific adventures of the 21st century: exoplanets and search for life on these planets.
The medium
Although it apparently lacks of originality, we shall open in 2009 an international, multilingual, website Exoplanet2009.org. The advantages of a website are numerous: - • All the participants of this operation being very buzzy, maintaining a website demands only a moderate investment in time
- • Nowadays, it is the easiest and most efficient way to reach a wide public
It is easy to make it multilingual - • A single worldwide website is a witness of some solidarity among the researchers in this domain
- • In the spirit of this "globalization", it is a convenient way to have a delocalized cooperative activity
- • It can reach people even in the heart of desert, where there are no observatories nor large educative centers.
Participants
The participants are the managers of the 5 best world web sites professionally dedicated to exoplanets: - • California & Carnegie Planet Search
http://exoplanets.org/ - • Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia
http://exoplanet.eu - • Geneva Extrasolar Planet Search Programmes:
http://obswww.unige.ch/~udry/planet/planet.html - • Oklo
http://oklo.org - • PlanetQuest
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/
Since they are all professionals of exoplanets, it is a guarantee of first hand, high quality and up to date information. They have all given their agreement. Other websites have asked to participate; discussions are under way.
Content
There are two chapters:
1) Informative chapter (draft): - • Why exoplanets?
- • Exoplanets and Society (among other Astrobiology)
- • First findings
- • Short term, mid term and long term future
- • Other web resources
The level will be "educated outreach"
2) Interaction with the public
The site will enourage and collect reflections from the public on the interest (or not) to explore exoplanets and search for life in the universe. The public will be encouraged to propose any original idea and give his opinion on any subject regarding exoplanets. It is for us a very important aspect of this initiative and we will put much effort on it. Contacts are planned with journalists. A final advantage of a website: the content will evolve depending on new findings and the public's reaction.
Expected attendance
We expect several thousand connections per day.
This estimate rests on the following facts: - • The site exoplanet.eu has about 3.000 connections per day
- • The major participant sites (exoplanet.eu, exoplanets.org and PlanetQuest) are linked about 20,000 times each on the web (source Google)
Languages
One of the partners (http://exoplanet.eu) has a multilingual version in the main alphabetic languages (English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish) thanks to a network of international correspondents. The version in Farsi (Iranian) is almost ready thanks to an Iranian speaking astronomer in Paris. They are solicited for participate to a multilingual version of Exoplanet2009.org. Versions using non Latin characters (Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hindi, Japanese and Russian) are under study.
First implementation
The web site http://Exoplanet2009.org has been created
Presently only the home page is ready.
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