RESEARCH
From the people who first identified Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
OCEANOGRAPHY
ASTRONOMY
Robot Observers
Planetary Bonanza
T
U
HIS FALL thE UW WILL COMPLETE INSTAL-
lation of a massive digital ocean observatory. Dozens of instruments will connect to power and Internet cables on the sea floor, but the observatory also includes a new generation of ocean explorers: robots that will zoom up and down through almost two miles of ocean to monitor the water conditions and marine life above. Tests are under way for two types of tethered robot—one working at shallow depths and one in the dark depths—that will gather continuous, real-time data about the ocean environment. The robots are part of the UW-led cabled observatory, funded by a $239 million grant from the National Science Foundation and part of the national Ocean Observatories Initiative. The tethered robots will be able to collect long-term observations and respond to events such as large storms or microbial blooms associated with underwater volcanic eruptions. “By having this infrastructure positioned vertically throughout the water column, we will have an unprecedented capability to respond to oceanic events as necessary and to fine-tune our short-term and long-term observational strategies, all without going out there with a ship,” said project scientist Orest Kawka. The robots are now being tested at the UW campus in a saltwater tank and in a tank that can generate up to 10,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.—Hannah Hickey
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Editor: Paul Fontana
UWALUM.COM / COLUMNS
NIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON ASTRONOMER
Eric Agol played a key role in the discovery of 715 new exoplanets announced by NASA Feb. 26. Agol was on a team that found seven of those worlds, all in orbit around the same star, Kepler-90. It is the first planetary system with seven planets seen to transit, or cross in front, of their host star. Agol and colleague Josh Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, along with co-authors, discovered the grouping and helped confirm the high likelihood that it is a planetary system. An amateur astronomer assisted in identifying the seventh planet. The worlds were all detected by the Kepler Space Telescope. Many of the newly verified systems have multiple planets. The 715 worlds orbit 305 different stars, and the great majority are planets smaller than Neptune. In the seven-planet system Kepler-90 there are two worlds about the size of Earth, three super-Earths—planets larger in mass than Earth but less than 10 times so—and two much larger planets. Four of the 715 newly discovered worlds are less than two and a half times the size of Earth and their orbits are within their host star’s habitable zone, meaning the swath of space is just right for an orbiting planet’s surface water to be in liquid form. And that means it has the qualities that could support life. The NASA discovery increases the total number of confirmed exoplanets to 1,700.—Peter Kelley