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Easy Online Backup
Backup that saves your files off-site is one cloud computing service everyone should consider. Here are a handful of our most recent online backup reviews.
Online backup ranks among the most popular software topics on PCMag.com. It’s no surprise, since all the numbers point to the need for backing up your treasured files: Every year, 43 percent of computer users lose irreplaceable data. Why? Because users don’t perform regular, frequent backups. An Iomega study showed that 69 percent of home users back up once a month or less.
Data loss can be heartbreaking enough when your personal photos, videos, and music make up the data in question. But if you’ve got a small business, the potential damage may be even more devastating: 70 percent of small firms that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year, according to a recent study by HP.
Simpler, More Reliable
Online backup services make this safeguarding your data easier and more reliable. Since the files are stored on remote, redundant servers, your lost laptop or crashed hard drive is covered, and if a disaster strikes your premises, your backup won’t rely on physical discs. And these services all automate the actual back up procedure, so you don’t have to remember to plug in your external drive or load a blank DVD and hit “Start backup.” As long as you’ve got an Internet connection, the services can automatically grab changed files up to their secure servers while your PC is idle.
Common pricing for online backup runs at about $55 a year for unlimited storage for one PC. Some services let you back up as many PCs as you want in an account, but charge you for storage space in 25GB increments.
What To Look For
When evaluating online backup services, I look for ease and flexibility of setting up your backup jobs, along with a secure and simple restore procedure. Plusses include the ability to back up network and external drives, to save multiple versions of backed up files, to watch and immediately upload changed files, and to add files to the backup set from within Windows Explorer. My Editors’ Choice, SOS Online Backup, has led the way in offering all of this.
This roundup highlights some of the less-popular options, some of which are nonetheless worth consideration. Since the last big roundup of backup services, I’ve revisited IDrive and Norton Online Backup, both of which came out unflatteringly in previous reviews. I’m happy to report that all have made great strides. A couple desirable features that distinguish both are their ability to handle multiple PCs within a single account and to backup up removable and network disks.
Recently rebranded as KineticD, Data Deposit Box is another smaller player that wasn’t reviewed in time for our last roundup. The service offers simple and powerful backup features, including multiple PC coverage in one account, versioning, and live protection. But it trailed other services a bit when it came to restoring data and couldn’t back up network drives.
Market leader Mozy also was due for another look, and the service MozyHome 2.0 got a shiny new, improved interface that makes the process of choose what file to back up and when much simpler. It also adds a local backup option, which means you can restore a lot faster than over the internet if you choose both online and local targets. And it saves 30 days worth of your file versions, but it still lacks the multiple PC and external drive capabilities.
The online portion of Nero’s BackItUp & Burn also offers both local and online backup, but could still use some smoothing out. The service now also comes as part of the company’s excellent media suite, so you might like it if you like getting all your tools as a bundle.
Our Next Reviews
Our longstanding Editors’ Choice, SOS Online Backup, also supports multiple machines in the base account along with offering the most options in the best designed interface. But SOS will be coming out with a new version in Summer 2010. A company representatives tells me the new version will expand on the mobile, media, sharing, and management features it released in late 2009 and have revised pricing.
Another market leader, Carbonite, is also being updated, with a target of this fall. That update will include a new Restore Manager that makes getting files back even easier, the company tells me.
Look for new reviews of Carbonite, SOS, and others in the coming months, along with a more in-depth guide to online backup. In the meanwhile, here are a handful of choice that can help you get your data backed up, the simplest, most reliable way—the online way.
Microsoft hopes to simplify the task of managing multiple passwords with the next major release of its popular operating system. According to a post on the company’s Building Windows 8 blog, a new feature will allow users to put an unlimited number of individual passwords behind one master password, and have them synchronize across all other Windows 8 machines they use.
Since the Live ID is the only password you’ll need to know, you can set complex and unique passwords for multiple websites — so if one site gets hacked and your credentials are stolen from their servers, you entire digital lives won’t be at risk. Windows 8 will automatically enter your login information when visiting a saved website. This is similar to what services like 1Password and LastPass currently offer.
If your Windows Live ID password is somehow lost or stolen, there will be a number of safety features in Windows 8 designed to detect compromise and limit account usage until you can successfully recover access to it. For instance, users can request a confirmation code be sent to a mobile phone number or email address registered with Windows Live. Also, even if your credentials are compromised, you will still have full access to your PC since Windows 8 will accept the last password successfully used to log onto the system.
Microsoft says it will also offer a a number of “convenience” sign-in methods such as Picture Password and biometrics — they didn’t go into details but promised to do so in a future update. You can read more about Windows 8′s security features in the characteristically long post atBuilding Windows 8.
British Telecom sues Google over Android (and almost everything else)
Summary: The world’s oldest telecoms company, BT, is suing Google over… well, pretty much everything, from Android to Google Maps, and even at the core of the company: Google Search.
British Telecoms (BT) has become the fifth major technology company to bring a patent infringement case against Google, as the company seeks unspecified damages and an injunction.
Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and eBay have previously taken shots at the search giant over patents of a similar nature.
The suit, filed with a U.S. District Court in Delaware, claims that a wide array of Google’s services violate a patent held by the telecoms, affecting Google Search, Google Music, and the Android Market. Even Google Maps and social network Google+ is not immune to the claim.
BT will not be an easy challenger to face in the courts. Having said that, it could go the same was as its fateful ‘hyperlink case’ went at the turn of the century.
(Source: Flickr)
Not only does BT hold the title as the world’s oldest telecoms company, its patent collection holds more than 10,000 patents, according to the court document.
The patents infringed includes a “navigation information system” in which Google Maps’ user location feature is in the crosshairs, as well as the seemingly more generic “communications node for providing network based information service”, where BT complains that the very foundation stones of the Android Market infringe its patents.
From the court papers, it seems BT had previously sought to license the patents, but Google had refused to pay.
Should BT prevail in its case against Google, the suit may force the search and mobile giant to change how it delivers the operating system to device manufacturers, according to FOSS Patentsauthor Florian Mueller.
While Mueller is not aware of whether BT has filed a similar case in any European courts, he notes that Android is once again in the patent infringement spotlight.
“Android already had more than enough intellectual problems anyway. Now Google faces one more large organisation that believes its rights are infringed. BT probably wants to continue to be able to do business with all mobile device makers and therefore decided to sue Google itself”, he said on his blog.
The complaint can be found here.
Speaking to sister site CNET, a Google spokesperson rejects BT’s claims. “We believe these claims are without merit, and we will defend vigorously against them”.
A BT spokesperson was unavailable for comment, probably because it’s past midnight here on a Monday morning.
Even lawyers need to sleep. That is, if you’re not working at News International.
Chrome scores a victory in the browser wars
It’s just one browser version during one particular week, and only one research firm is making the claim–but according to StatCounter, Google’s Chrome 15 is the world’s most popular browser.
In the last week of November,StatCounter says, 23.6 percent of the browsers tracked by its global system were Chrome 15. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 accounted for 23.5 percent.
Add up all versions of IE and Chrome and you still get a different story: IE is the most popular browser overall, well ahead of Chrome. StatCounter’s numbers still show all versions of IE taking a total of 40.09 percent of the market, vs. 26.31 percent for all versions of Chrome. Firefox is at 25.07 percent, Apple’s Safari is at 5.86 percent, and Opera gets 1.91 percent.
Chrome 15′s victory isn’t hugely meaningful. Google’s built-in updating system quietly but insistently auto-updates users to new versions, reducing the number of people who are running old editions of the browser. Microsoft, by contrast, is less pushy. That helps explain why a meaningful number of folks still run the ancient, obsolete, insecure mess known as Internet Explorer 6.
In January, Microsoft plans to use Windows Update’s Auto Updates to upgrade recalcitrant Windows users to newer versions of Internet Explorer–IE 8 for Windows XP, and IE 9 for Windows Vista and 7. Given Chrome 15′s extremely narrow victory over IE 8 and the massive number of Windows XP PCs in the world, IE 8 presumably has a decent chance at snatching its crown back next month.
The real history-making moment would come if Chrome–or any non-Microsoft browser–overtook IE to become the world’s most popular browser, period. (The numbers reported by StatCounter and its rivals vary enough that I wouldn’t believe it had happened until every major stats service agreed.)
The last market-leading browser that wasn’t IE was Netscape Navigator. When its share crumbled in the 1990s, Internet Explorer gained a monopoly on the market that looked like it would probably be permanent.
By coming pre-installed on Windows, Internet Explorer still gets a huge head start over every other browser on the planet: It’s remarkable that the race is as close as it is. I wouldn’t reject the possibility of Chrome eventually overtaking IE, though, particularly given how rapidly it’s improving and how aggressively Google markets it.
Of course, a few years ago I thought that Firefox also had a shot at surpassing IE . Back in the days when Internet Explorer 6 was the current version of IE, and commanded more than 90 percent of the market, Firefox was downright dazzling. Simply by being wonderful, it quickly racked up millions of users–and forever disproved the depressing conventional wisdom that it was impossible to compete with Windows’ default browser.
When Google unveiled Chrome a little over three years ago, Firefox probably lost its chance at taking the top slot. All of a sudden, Chrome was the fresh, innovative alternative browser–and recently, Firefox’s share has flatlined, then dipped.
If open-source Firefox had managed to overtake IE, it would have been one of the great stories in tech history: A bunch of volunteer geeks banding together to beat the world’s biggest software company. If Chrome takes the lead, it’ll be one huge company beating another huge company. For me, at least, the emotional impact wouldn’t be the same.
And in a strange way, Microsoft is also a scrappy upstart when it comes to browsers. IE 9, the current version, is downright good, and admirably progressive when it comes to new technologies and standards. (Microsoft does its best work when its products have meaningful competition. Weird, huh?)
So I’m not rooting for any particular browser, and won’t take it badly if IE remains the most popular one for years to come. But boy, am I glad that the browser wars–which some once thought were over–show no signs of ending anytime soon.
Twitter, Facebook, Google+: Three-way brand page shootout
Twitter has finally joined the modern world of marketing and branding by rolling out support for company brand pages in its redesign today.
Facebook got here first, of course, and Google+ joined in more recently. So if you’re a marketer, you’ve got to be asking, what’s the best platform for you to focus on?
Let’s find the winning services in the important areas.
Reach: Facebook
Facebook wins this one, hands down. With a reported user base of over 800 million, if you want to put your brand on the platform where users are–and where they’re talking to each other–Facebook is the place.
Twitter is likely in second place, probably with about 10 to 12% of Facebook’s user base (depending on which sources you believe) but its social reflection model (retweeting) makes it more powerful than the raw numbers would indicate.
Google+, no matter what the numbers say, is new, is seen as the social network for geeks, and doesn’t have the breakout appeal of the other networks. You can’t say, “Find us on Google+” in an advertisement and expect people to know what you’re talking about.
Facebook puts a lot of control in the hands of brand managers. Some brands (not Best Buy, shown) even actively steer customer to Facebook over the own Web sites.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
Flexibility: Facebook
Facebook, again, wins on this front. A brand manager can make a Facebook page that does almost as much as a regular Web page, and with the added bonus of having a “Like” button in a standard position to encourage social sharing.
acebook also lets managers create nice lists of related Facebook pages in the left-hand navigation.
Neither Twitter nor Google allow you to dump huge blocks of HTML into brand pages. Google+ does, however, have more post types than Twitter. A string of photos or embedded videos can make a Google+ brand page look like a photo album.
Twitter brand pages are, not surprisingly, lists of tweets. Brand managers can pin a single tweet (with an image) to the top of the stream, but the rest is just text and links.
Design: Twitter
While Facebook offers the most flexibility of design, giving managers access to the whole middle of the page (see Best Buy), Twitter allows its brand users to do a far better job of reinforcing their company’s aesthetic.
Twitter gives managers the capability to change the color scheme of the entire brand page, as well as put in their own header art and background image. Check out these early examples of Twitter brand pages: Heineken, Dell, and Pepsi. They all share the same locked-down template, but reflect their corporate designs effectively.
Google+ allows designers to change company logo and header art, actually five little squares of header, but nothing else. The limitation can be used to good effect (Angry Birds) or mitigated through a mostly-white design (Hugo Boss).
Google+ is not the best option for building a custom brand presence, but some companies have used its design limitations to good effect.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)
Interaction: Facebook/Twitter tie
Facebook is all about the Like. Some brands have millions (Best Buy has 5.5 million). These Likes are valuable, as each represents social network reflection out to, potentially, millions more people.
Facebook also makes it easy for brands to bribe users, by restricting content or features to users who have Liked their pages.
Twitter’s interaction is about two things: The Follow and the @ Reply. While the Follow is the Twitter equivalent of the Like, a personal endoresement of a sort, Twitter’s large and plain inclusion of the reply box on its brand pages encourages users to send public messages to and about brands. The reply box is somewhat misleading, though: It says, “Tweet to…” instead of “Tweet about…” But it looks like an effective way to get users to reinforce brands by posting items with their Twitter handles in them.
Google+ interaction design is a bit of a mess, in comparison. The main interaction points are the +1 and “Share this page” buttons, but I wager that most users don’t know the difference, and they’re right next to each other. Users can also comment on individual items on a Google+ page, but these will not have the same social spread as the stronger overall brand mentions that Facebook and Twitter have engineered into their designs.
Mobile: None of the above
Each of the three services presents a constrained view when called up on a smartphone. Designs are removed, and any HTML elements are stripped out and and replaced with lists of posts. The services look much the same, in fact, on claustrophobic mobile devices. They all become just lists of updates, with easy access to their platforms’ primary social activities: Likes andcomments on Facebook, Retweets on Twitter, and Comments on Google+. None of the services offer brands a good, customizable mobile experience.
The winner
Facebook is where the power is, but Twitter’s clean design and interaction model makes it an attractive and necessary secondary platform for marketers to work on.
Google+ doesn’t have the features, reach, or clarity to compete with these two power players yet.
However, the clear and best course of action for a marketer or brand manager is to establish a presence on each platform. They can even reinforce each other to good effect.
Pepsi, for example, lists its Facebook page as the go-to link in its Twitter profile.
Yahoo awarded $610 million from lottery spammers
A judge has awarded Yahoo $610 million in a lawsuit against spammers who sent e-mails to people falsely telling them they had won a lottery prize from Yahoo.
The federal district court judge in New York ordered defendants, whom Yahoo did not identify, on Monday to pay Yahoo $27 million for trademark infringement, $583 million for violating the Can-Spam Act, and an unreleased sum for attorney’s fees.
Yahoo filed the lawsuit in 2008, alleging that spammers were using the fake lottery e-mails to defraud people. The messages were designed to trick recipients into providing their bank and other information to claim the “award,” and the consumer information could then be sold, according to Yahoo’s statement. In some instances, the “winners” were also deceived into sending the spammers money for processing and mailing charges, Yahoo said.
“Yahoo takes the protection of its users and its brand very seriously,” said Christian Dowell, legal director of global brand protection at Yahoo. “Our ultimate goal is to ensure that users continue to trust Yahoo as the leading U.S. e-mail provider.”
Yahoo is unlikely to see much, if any, of the judgment award given that the defendants are located in other countries and have not responded to the complaint or appeared in court, court documents indicate.
A group of Thai and Nigerian individuals, as well as a Nigerian and a Taiwanese corporation, were named as defendants in an amended complaint, but after several settlements, two people and two corporations — Ausdith Investments Ltd., and Alamin Industrial Corp. — remained as defendants.
To help educate people about the dangers of such lottery spam scams, Yahoo joined up with Microsoft, Western Union, and The African Development Bank to create a Coalition to Combat Internet Lottery Scams in 2008.
Microsoft’s Kinect: A robot’s low-cost, secret weapon
A Willow Garage PR2 robot equipped with a Kinect motion-sensing controller to help it see its surroundings and mix ingredients and bake cookies.(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–As robots seek to mimic humans’ ability to see and hear, they have a secret weapon in Microsoft’s Kinect game motion-sensing controller.
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which I toured Friday, is piled high with all kinds of hardware, including laptops, unmanned submarines, and mechanical limbs. But when it comes to equipping robots with artificial eyes and ears, robotics hackers are clearly enamored with the Kinect motion-sensing controller and sensors like it.
The Kinect motion-sensing controller is attached to the head of the humanoid PR2 robot as it tries to bake cookies. It’s also attached to a robotic wheelchair, as well as unmanned vehicles for exploring the ocean and the air. For robot builders, Kinect’s depth camera provides a relatively cheap set of eyes–crucial to giving them more autonomy–that plug in nicely to onboard computers.
“Kinect costs $150 and replaces $7,000 in sensors,” said mechanical engineering student Mario Bollini. And plugging the control into a robot–Bollini is working with Willow Garage’s PR2 robot–and writing software for it is straight-forward, he said.
In another effort, the Kinect motion-sensing controller is attached to a wheelchair to improve automated navigation. Researchers are writing algorithms that would allow a person to teach the wheelchair the ins and outs of a nursing home by following a person around or taking voice commands.
The depth camera of Kinect can also be used to navigate environments where robots can’t take advantage of GPS. The Robust Robotics Group at MIT and a team at the University of Washington have equipped a quadrotor, which is a four-propeller helicopter, with a Kinect motion-sensing controller to create a three-dimensional map of a location, which could be a building post-earthquake.
As the system flies around, the Kinect sensor sends out an infrared beam and, based on the reflections, can start to build, point by point, a colored map of an indoor or outdoor space in software. The cameras also allow the quadrotor to avoid colliding into other objects.
All that sensor data requires some hefty onboard processing. The Robust Robotics Group’s machine, which is about as wide as a pizza box, has two computers, including one that’s about as powerful as a laptop processor, according to a researcher.
Giving robots a better way to understand their environment with off-the-shelf products is helping lead to more capable robots. iRobot CEO Colin Angle said because of its low cost and capabilities, the sensor in the Kinect controller is “incredibly disruptive” because of its consumer electronics price.
For its part, Microsoft is trying to attract more developers to use Kinect for robotic applications and is upgrading the hardware so that it can better “see” very close objects rather than have to rely on a separate sensor.
“Microsoft will continue researching even better Kinect hardware. This means that 3D depth data is now here to stay, so sharpen up your 3D geometry skills and get cracking on applications that take full advantage of these new devices,” said Trevor Taylor, program manager for Microsoft Robotics in a recent blog.
Android Market: 10 billion downloads and counting
Let’s face it. At the moment, there are only two major online app stores to speak of: Google’s Android Market and Apple iTunes. Sure, Amazon has an app store as does Barnes & Noble, among others, but these are still primarily feeders for the Android brand as a whole.
Based on the latest figures out of the Android Market, it would almost seem that Google doesn’t need much help. The Android Market has reached 10 billion downloads and counting as of this past weekend.
We can likely expect download numbers to increase even more rapidly as the Android Market is now growing at a rate of 1 billion app downloads per month.
To put it into perspective, the Android Market hit 1 billion downloads in July 2010 after launching in 2008, and later surpassed the 6 billion mark during July 2011.
Of course, one has to throw in the necessary comparison to iTunes. The Apple App Store reached 10 billion downloads as of January 2011 after launching in July 2008.
To celebrate and reward Android customers, Google will be making select paid apps available for 10 cents each. A new set of apps will be up for promotion each day for the next 10 days
Will Windows 8 be irrelevant to regular PC users?
Will the average Windows PC user jump to Windows 8 next year or snub the new OS as a platform geared more for mobile devices?
Weighing in with a strong opinion on that question is research firm IDC, which recently unveiled a list of its top ten predictions for 2012. Key among them was one forecast eyeing doom and gloom for Windows 8, certainly in the desktop arena.
The next version of Windows will be Microsoft’s first attempt to offer the same operating system for both PCs and mobile devices. IDC expects Windows 8 products to hit the market by August 2012 and possibly as early as the second quarter if Microsoft can move fast enough.
But whenever Windows 8 is released, IDC doesn’t see much excitement among the desktop crowd.
“Windows 8 will be largely irrelevant to the users of traditional PCs, and we expect effectively no upgrade activity from Windows 7 to Windows 8 in that form factor,” the report said.
Though the research firm didn’t reveal the specific reasons for its dire prediction, it’s easy enough to guess.
Since the release of the Windows 8 Developer Preview in September, Microsoft has been battered by criticism from desktop users over the new Metro interface. In addition to those who just don’t like the new look and feel, many have complained that the touch-based UI simply doesn’t work well with a mouse and keyboard.
Behind the scenes of the Metro UI, Windows 8 will still offer the standard desktop that users know. But based on the Developer Preview, the desktop looks the same as it does in Windows 7. So users already turned off by the Metro interface may feel little or no reason to upgrade.
In response, Microsoft has cautioned people that the Developer Preview is far from the final product and has promised to tweak Windows 8 to work more smoothly on a desktop environment. The company has also tried to explain and promote all of the new features in Windows 8 through its Building Windows 8 blog. But many people remain skeptical.
The enterprise market may also be slow to adopt Windows 8 on its desktops and laptops. Many companies have already upgraded to Windows 7 or are in the middle of a migration, points outZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. Since a lot of businesses only upgrade every other version, Windows 8 could be bypassed by a significant number.
Ironically, Microsoft itself has told enterprises still running Windows XP to jump to Windows 7 and not wait for Windows 8, advice that many will probably take.
Windows Server 8
On a brighter note, IDC does have high expectations for Windows Server 8. With new enhancements to the Hyper-V environment, the server edition could be a good option for businesses setting up private cloud deployments.
“Windows Server 8 will be widely embraced by Microsoft customers,” the report said.
But Windows 8 is likely to face challenges in the mobile arena. Microsoft is counting on its new OS to make a dent in the tablet world, a market where the company has so far languished. And though Windows 8 is being designed as a tablet-friendly platform, Microsoft’s success in this area is by no means assured.
“There will be intense scrutiny on Microsoft’s ability to deliver a successful tablet experience aboard both x86-based tablets and on devices running ARM processors,” noted the report. “This is a tall order for Microsoft, and while the x86 tablet strategy makes sense as a transitional solution for today’s PC users, it will be the ARM-based devices that need to shine and clear a high bar already set by Apple.”
The support of the developer community will be critical in helping Microsoft achieve its goals in the tablet market, says IDC. If the company can prompt developers to recreate their existing apps for the Metro UI and build new ones for mobile devices, then Microsoft may stand a chance. If not, then the future doesn’t look good.
And so far, IDC isn’t painting a bright 2012.
“IDC believes that Microsoft’s success with Windows 8 on tablets will be disappointing during 2012,” the report said, “and if it does not change some of its philosophy in how it is approaching the mobile market, it will not be successful longer term.”
Earth-like planet found in distant sun’s habitable zone
For the first time, astronomers using NASA’s Kepler space telescope have confirmed a roughly Earth-size planet orbiting a sun-like star in the so-called “Goldilocks” zone where water can exist in liquid form on the surface and conditions may be favorable for life as it is known on Earth.
Along with the confirmed extra-solar planet, one of 28 discovered so far by Kepler, researchers today also announced the discovery of 1,094 new exoplanet candidates, pushing the spacecraft’s total so far to 2,326, including 10 candidate Earth-size worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars.
Additional observations are required to tell if a candidate is, in fact, an actual world. But astronomers say a planet known as Kepler-22b, orbiting a star some 600 light years from Earth, is the real thing.
An artist’s concept of Kepler-22b, a roughly Earth-size world orbiting within the habitable zone of a sun-like star 600 light years from Earth.
(Credit: NASA)
“Today I have the privilege of announcing the discovery of Kepler’s first planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star, Kepler-22b,” Bill Borucki, the Kepler principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center, told reporters. “It’s 2.4 times the size of the Earth, it’s in an orbital period (or year) of 290 days, a little bit shorter than the Earth’s, it’s a little bit closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, 15 percent closer.
“But the star is a little bit dimmer, it’s a little bit lower in temperature, a little bit smaller. That means that planet, Kepler-22b, has a rather similar temperature to that of the Earth…If the greenhouse warming were similar on this planet, its surface temperature would be something like 72 Fahrenheit, a very pleasant temperature here on Earth.”
It is not yet known whether Kepler-22b is predominantly rocky, liquid, or gaseous in composition, but the finding confirms for the first time the long-held expectation that Earth-size planets do, in fact, orbit other suns in the habitable zones of their host stars.
That, in turn, greatly improves the odds for the existence of life, as it is commonly defined, beyond Earth’s solar system.
“I think there are two things that are really exciting about Kepler-22b,” said Natalie Batalha, the deputy science team lead at Ames. “One is that it’s right in the middle of this habitable zone.
“The second thing that’s really exciting is it’s orbiting a star very, very similar to our own sun. This is a solar analogue, almost a solar twin, very similar to our own sun and you’ve got a planet 2.4 times the size of the Earth right smack in the habitable zone.”
Equipped with a 95-megapixel digital camera, Kepler was launched from Cape Canaveral on March 6, 2009. The camera is aimed at a patch of sky in the constellation Cygnus that’s the size of an outstretched hand that contains more than 4.5 million detectable stars.
Of that total, some 300,000 are believed to be the right age, have the right composition and the proper brightness to host Earth-like planets. More than 156,000 of those, ranging from 600 to 3,000 light years away, will be actively monitored by Kepler over the life of the mission.
To find candidate planets, the spacecraft’s camera monitors the brightness of target stars in the instrument’s wide field of view, on the lookout for subtle changes that might indicate a world passing between the star and the telescope. By studying the slight dimming–comparable to watching a flea creep across a car’s headlight at night–and by timing repeated cycles, computers can identify potential extra-solar worlds even though the planets themselves cannot be seen.
Earth’s solar system and that of Kepler-22b drawn to scale, showing the habitable zones of both stars and the relative sizes of familiar planets.
(Credit: NASA)
But it’s a challenging observation. For a planet like Earth passing in front of a star like the sun, the sun’s light would dim by just 84 parts per million. To make sure an observation indicates the presence of a real planet and not some other phenomena, measurements over multiple orbits are required. For Earth-like planets in habitable-zone orbits, a full three years is needed to confirm an initial observation.
In June 2010, the Kepler team announced 312 planet candidates, most smaller than Neptune, in data collected over the first four months of the mission. In February 2011, based on 13 months of data, the number grew to 1,235 potential planets orbiting 997 stars.
The latest announcement pushes the total number of candidates to 2,326 possible planets orbiting 1,792 stars. Of that total, 367 stars–about 20 percent–show signs of multiple planet candidates.
Twenty-eight confirmed planets have been found in the Kepler data. Including Earth-based telescopes, more than 600 extrasolar planets have been found to date. But most of them are huge Jupiter-class worlds orbiting well outside the habitable zone.
With Kepler, “we’re getting very close, we are really homing in on the true Earth-size habitable planets,” Batalha said.
Also in the hunt: The SETI Institute, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, in Mountain View, Calif.
Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research at the institute, said a radio telescope array that was looking for signs of radio signals in the Kepler field of stars that might indicate the presence of intelligent life is back in operation after a budget-driven hiatus earlier this year.
“I’m really pleased to announce as of 6:18 this morning, as the Kepler field rose over the observatory, the ATA (Allen Telescope Array) was back on the air, continuing the search for Earth analogues.”
The Allen Telescope Array, originally funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is being used to make systematic observations of stars in the Kepler field, on the lookout for any signs of artificial signals.
Citing a 1993 paper by Carl Sagan and four colleagues that used data from NASA’s Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft as a test for detecting life on Earth, Tarter said “one of the strongest pieces of evidence for life, indeed intelligent life on Earth, was the presence of narrow-band pulse-amplitude-modulated radio transmissions.”
“While there may be some uncertainty about how to define the habitable zone, an exoplanet that could be detected through the techno-signatures of its inhabitants would surely qualify as an Earth analogue,” she said.
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