Extrasolar Planets

[immortal]

Hi everyone,

Out of the 90 extrasolar planets found so far only one planet has characteristics similar to earth and others being gas giants like Jupiter which are not much interesting.This earth like planet is 55 light years away from the earth and what's interesting is this planet is right in the middle of the habitable zone. So could this be the first planet where we will find some amazing life in it? I very well remember that life depends on lot of factors to originate on an alien planet.

[Gypsy Cake]

I don't think it's fair to say planets like jupiter are completing uninteresting...one of Saturn's moons, Titan, shows good simulariies to Earth's past I believe.

[Sayonara]

So could this be the first planet where we will find some amazing life in it?

 

Errr... if we visit, then yes. We could find life there.

[insane_alien]

that fact that we have only found one rocky planet so far doesn't surprise me. They are tiny compared to gas giants and we can only just about detect the gas giants. and even that depends on us looking at the system edge on almost.

[Martin]

Hi everyone,

Out of the 90 extrasolar planets found so far only one planet has characteristics similar to earth and others being gas giants like Jupiter which are not much interesting.This earth like planet is 55 light years away from the earth and what's interesting is this planet is right in the middle of the habitable zone. So could this be the first planet where we will find some amazing life in it? I very well remember that life depends on lot of factors to originate on an alien planet.

 

I haven't been following the extrasolar planet catalog lately. So I would appreciate a link and some indication which one you are talking about.

 

I remember hearing some such thing being found a couple of years back----presumed rocky, habitable zone, maybe 3 x mass of earth.

I assume there are lots and lots. Just much harder to see.

 

There are also quite a few Jupiters found in stars habitable zones, with not too eccentric orbits. These Jupiters might have habitable moons.

 

I think we have an ample field of interesting things of that sort to look at assuming humanity constructs instruments able to take a better look.

 

In any case please give us some URL pointing to what you think are especially interesting recent finds----the whole list is getting too long to scan.

[MolotovCocktail]

Here is the complete list of extra-solar planets compiled by the California & Carnegie Planet Search. Updated as of January.

 

link: http://exoplanets.org/planet_table.shtml

[immortal]

Here is the link which you asked for

http://www.websterworld.com/websterworld/scienceupdates/e/earthlikeplanets807.html

[swansont]

I have a colleague working on dFTS, (dispersed Fourier-Transform Spectrometer) that should be able to detect earth-mass extrasolar planets.

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0611495

[Martin]

Here is the complete list of extra-solar planets compiled by the California & Carnegie Planet Search. Updated as of January.

 

link: http://exoplanets.org/planet_table.shtml

 

It was updated as of January 2006, and it doesnt show any planet with estimated mass 3 x earth, that I can see.

 

Thanks, I'm familiar with this list from past years and tend to think of it as reliable. If there was a discovery of something 3 x earthmass, I tend to think it would be listed. Am I missing something?

[Martin]

I have a colleague working on dFTS, (dispersed Fourier-Transform Spectrometer) that should be able to detect earth-mass extrasolar planets.

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0611495

 

Sounds great!

would this consist of instruments in orbit, like at a Lagrange point

or would it be ground-based instruments?

 

Want to give an idea of how it's supposed to work?

[swansont]

Sounds great!

would this consist of instruments in orbit, like at a Lagrange point

or would it be ground-based instruments?

 

Want to give an idea of how it's supposed to work?

 

Ground-based. From my understanding, it's located at the center of an athletic field complex, which gives lots of flat ground nearby without much in the way of objects to disrupt the thermal profile.

 

FTS, as I understand it, is a Michelson interferometer with one mirror than can move (introducing a different delay), so as the mirror is scanned it maps out the Fourier transform of the source spectrum. If you calibrate that, e.g. with a reference laser, you can measure the Doppler shift of a star's wobble due to the orbit of a planet. But this is limited to about 1 m/s. The added part here is a grating on the output (i.e. it's dispersive), so that the interference pattern of very narrow bands can be analyzed in parallel as they hit different detectors, which increases the sensitivity.

[immortal]

Thanks swansont that was a good link.

 

The below link will give the information of the planet which I am talking about. Sorry about the previous one.

 

Link:

http://arxiv.org/find/grp_q-bio,grp_cs,grp_physics,grp_math,grp_nlin/1/all:+AND+draconis+cm/0/1/0/all/0/1