Out of Pod Experience

I am now curious if this system will be in tutorial for the exoplanet discovery project.

Surely they have to train future planet seekers.

Here is the Space Telescope to watch: Its the WFIRST or Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope that is designed to explore areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.

More importantly exoplanets.

I was reading about honey bees and how they are able to see UV light which humans are not able to see. UV light comes in three flavors, Near, Middle and Far along with Extreme UV. Extreme UV caught my attention because of an interaction with oxygen.

Extreme UV is only present in a vacuum and is blocked by oxygen. Extreme UV is also within the UV scale of 10-180 nm which WFIRST will be looking for. Why is Extreme UV important? If a planet is releasing oxygen into space through natural processes then the Extreme UV would be blocked by oxygen releasing from a planet. As a planet transits its sun normal detection of Extreme UV would be blocked by the planet transiting across the sun which could leave a slight dip in the normal Extreme UV Light Curve being emanated from the Sun that would suggest that a planet within the habitable zone and had oxygen on it would be present.

The larger the volume of Extreme UV that is blocked out would suggest that a larger volume of oxygen was releasing from the planet and that an even larger amount of oxygen volume could be present on the planet allowing for life to exist. Life that would numerous types of insects such as bees, wasps, midges hoverflies and other insects to pollinate flowering plants such cucumbers and zucchini. But if not such flowering plant life was present then wind pollinated crops such as corn, soybean, wheat, etc. might be present.

Why is the honey bee critical in my opinion of discovering habitable planets? Honey bees see in a few colors unlike humans do and see the world in an every changing light spectrum to find the best flowers to take nectar from, honey bees will never pollinate a red flower because they see it as black and black does not have a reflective UV trait.

Think of a blacklight.

Planets that orbit a sun that is colored red would not be pollinated by honey which are responsible for 80% of the pollination of all flowers on Earth. Therefore the planet with a red sun would have to have insects that are attracted to the color red in the light spectrum and plants there were red in color in order to produce flowering plants. Not a very diverse and evolving planet.

Honey bees see in green, blue and purple and to some extent orange and yellow with their favorite colors being blue and purple and violet.

Planets that orbits Blue, Orange, Yellow, White and Green Supergiants might have a varying species of honey bee that would be attracted to the color of the flower that is based off of the sun. White suns, like our own, are multi-spectral meaning that the entire spectrum of light is created that creates the numerous colors of the flowers that we see.

Suns such as the Blue Giant which produces the color blue that bees like would possible only create blue based flowers depending of course on how the Blue Giants light is diffused through the other elements that are part of the planet such as water evaporating.

https://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html