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NASA finds planet outside of our solar system eerily similar to Earth


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Posted (edited)

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-finds-planet-thats-just-life-180545298.html

 

 

NASA has found a new planet outside Earth's solar system that is eerily similar to Earth in important aspects.

 

Scientists say the temperature on the surface of the planet is about a comfy 72 degrees (22 Celsius). Its star could almost be a twin of Earth's sun. It probably has water and land.

 

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Holy chit!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

im-not-saying-its-aliens-but-its-aliens.jpg

Edited by The Peon
Posted (edited)
It probably has water and land.

If you replace the "probably" with "possibly" or "might," concerning surface water then you would have a safer bet. Maybe within a couple hundred years we might be able to send a probe toward a new Earth. I expect it would be much easier to terraform Mars than it would be to inhabit a non-solar planet let's say 20 light years away. It's still very intriguing though.

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Edited by pantheory
Posted

If you replace the "probably" with "possibly" or "might," concerning surface water then you would have a safer bet. Maybe within a couple hundred years we might be able to send a probe toward a new Earth. I expect it would be much easier to terraform Mars than it would be to inhabit a non-solar planet let's say 20 light years away. It's still very intriguing though.

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And even if we can get a probe up to serious fractions of the speed of light it will take best part of 1000 years to get to Keplar 22b and a 1000 years to get anything back. Within 20 ly we might have a shot as a species - but much higher and it seems to me to be closed off to us without unimaginable future paradigm shifts

Posted (edited)

And even if we can get a probe up to serious fractions of the speed of light it will take best part of 1000 years to get to Keplar 22b and a 1000 years to get anything back. Within 20 ly we might have a shot as a species - but much higher and it seems to me to be closed off to us without unimaginable future paradigm shifts

I agree. Kepler 22b is too far away for the foreseeable future at 600 light years distance. I am looking forward instead to planets around Bernard's star, Wolf, and Lelande, single star systems at roughly 6-8 light years away. I am less enthusiastic about stellar planetary systems around multiple star systems because there seemingly could be multiple influences concerning the formation, maintenance and consistency of such stellar systems.

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Edited by pantheory
Posted

This is interesting but a planet 30,000 kilometers in diameter would seem more likely to be a mini Neptune than a Super Earth.

 

And even if we can get a probe up to serious fractions of the speed of light it will take best part of 1000 years to get to Keplar 22b and a 1000 years to get anything back. Within 20 ly we might have a shot as a species - but much higher and it seems to me to be closed off to us without unimaginable future paradigm shifts

 

 

I agree. Kepler 22b is too far away for the foreseeable future at 600 light years distance. I am looking forward instead to planets around Bernard's star, Wolf, and Lelande, single star systems at roughly 6-8 light years away. I am less enthusiastic about stellar planetary systems around multiple star systems because there seemingly could be multiple influences concerning the formation, maintenance and consistency of such stellar systems.

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If we can get to one star we can get to another star and then two and so on, even if we travel at .001% light speed colonization of the entire galaxy could easily occur within millions of years, a blink in the cosmic eye. Eliminate the need to for planets and use asteroidal type material as building materials for spinning torus colonies moved around the solar system by magnetic sails and you have potential star ships with slow drives, then again where are they if it's that easy....

Posted

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-finds-planet-thats-just-life-180545298.html

 

 

NASA has found a new planet outside Earth's solar system that is eerily similar to Earth in important aspects.

 

Scientists say the temperature on the surface of the planet is about a comfy 72 degrees (22 Celsius). Its star could almost be a twin of Earth's sun. It probably has water and land.

 

Lovelock would ask if this planet has an atmosphere. Because if it has no atmosphere, the chances of finding any form of life life there are very weak, following his hypothesis.

Posted

Pffft!!!! It's all about money there are tonnes of theoretical space craft able to reach astonishing speeds but there's no money to test so they remain theoretical. Once there is actually a NEED to travel great distances in space be it financial or for survival / overpopulation whatever then there will be a solution. I have no doubt in my mind we could develop technology to travel there in our modern day society and do it in a reasonable amount of time with an unlimited budget and an incentive to do so.

 

offer 1 trillion dollars to the first organization to travel there and return in 10 years and it'd happen.

Posted

Offer that to me and I will not return.

 

you would have to return to collect silly it's a reward not a grant much like the 10 million dollar incentive that enabled ("impossible") private space travel to become a reality. It makes me feel disappointed that NASA with all it's brilliant engineers and huge budget never came up with a more economical design than the space shuttle. Yet private business with less money and resources figured it out in less time along with a way to make it profitable and even reasonable in terms of cost. 250 grand to go to space I think the lady who paid NASA to go into space (and then offered the reward of 10 million) paid 3 million for her trip aboard the space shuttle.

 

Neccessity (or greed) is definitely the mother of invention.

Posted

The first thing to check would be Kepler 22bs spectrum and look for oxygen lines. Since oxygen is volatile and combines easily with other molecules it would have to be constantly replentished to be present in the "free" state in the planets atmosphere. This would imply some form of photosynthesis and probable life. (As we can understand the term)

 

As to getting there, not in the near future. Using private companies to get to orbit is a difference in kind, but technically nothing really new. To break the "Relativity Barrier", if it can be broken, is going to require a whole new type of physics that we can't even imagine right now.

 

And even if a wonderful Stardrive was invented tomorrow we would be far too busy exploring the hundreds of stars with 100 light years to really bother with one 600 LY away. It would be on the list, but not as a high priority. The first three trips would be Alpha Centauri, then Barnards Star and then Sirius, for the logical reason that they are the closest. Then we would work outward from there.

 

What I do find stunning and isn't mentioned in the original article is that the Kepler satellite has so far found 2,326 possible planets with 139 of them potentially habitable. It's looking like planets are very common indeed.

 

Another article here.

Posted (edited)

Lovelock would ask if this planet has an atmosphere. Because if it has no atmosphere, the chances of finding any form of life life there are very weak, following his hypothesis.

 

 

I think I would have to ask how a planet 30,000 kilometers in diameter could not have an atmosphere, out gassing during formation, if our current ideas on planet formation are even close to being valid, should have formed an extensive atmosphere just from volcanic out gassing. Such a planet should have easily held onto hydrogen and helium and neon from the nebula it was formed from. I see it as a rocky planet covered by a layer of pressure water ice hundreds if not thousands of miles deep covered by an extensive mostly hydrogen atmosphere, It's just way to big to be "earth like"

Edited by Moontanman
Posted (edited)

It is said in the article that they don't know if it is a rocky planet.

 

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

from NASA.

Edited by michel123456
Posted (edited)

I think I would have to ask how a planet 30,000 kilometers in diameter could not have an atmosphere, out gassing during formation, if our current ideas on planet formation are even close to being valid, should have formed an extensive atmosphere just from volcanic out gassing. Such a planet should have easily held onto hydrogen and helium and neon from the nebula it was formed from. I see it as a rocky planet covered by a layer of pressure water ice hundreds if not thousands of miles deep covered by an extensive mostly hydrogen atmosphere, It's just way to big to be "earth like"

Because of Keppler 22B's more inward position in the goldilocks zone its mean temperature would seemingly be hotter than Earth. This seemingly would not be a problem for a water planet, or a water planet having some continents close to the poles. As far as hydrogen and helium in its atmosphere, I would expect these elements to be as rare as they are in our atmosphere on Earth since they would float above all other gases and would be slowly stripped away by the stellar wind as they are on Earth. But an extensive atmosphere seemingly would certainly be their because of its greater gravity. The atmospheric pressure seemingly could be many time greater than the Earth's and if so much of Earth's surface life probably could not live there. It's in the zone where liquid water would be expected as well as atmospheric water in the form of humidity and clouds since again it would be hotter than Earth. But as to its combined characteristics it seems interesting concerning the possibility of some kind of life if the planet's inclination and rotate rate is conducive to surface temperature consistency and if there are oceans or lakes of water that are not too saline or too carbonated.

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Edited by pantheory
Posted

Pffft!!!! It's all about money there are tonnes of theoretical space craft able to reach astonishing speeds but there's no money to test so they remain theoretical. Once there is actually a NEED to travel great distances in space be it financial or for survival / overpopulation whatever then there will be a solution. I have no doubt in my mind we could develop technology to travel there in our modern day society and do it in a reasonable amount of time with an unlimited budget and an incentive to do so.

 

offer 1 trillion dollars to the first organization to travel there and return in 10 years and it'd happen.

 

There are only 3 stars that even light could do a round trip in 10 years - I think a little more than a trillion dollars might be needed. You would need to average well above 80pct of light speed to get to any star and back in 10 years and frankly I don't think that's gonna happen for a long time - without fantastic shielding any craft would be swiss cheese and its contents would be irradiated crushed garbage by the time it got there

Posted

There are only 3 stars that even light could do a round trip in 10 years - I think a little more than a trillion dollars might be needed. You would need to average well above 80pct of light speed to get to any star and back in 10 years and frankly I don't think that's gonna happen for a long time - without fantastic shielding any craft would be swiss cheese and its contents would be irradiated crushed garbage by the time it got there

shhht, you are ruining my project.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Actually, i believe it is possible to reach this planet in the near future, our technology is exponentially increasing in it's utility and computing power, so i think we'll soon have a deeper understanding of the spacetime "fabric" and learn how to warp it, allowing us to travel large distances without actually surpassing or coming close to the speed of light.

Posted

Actually, i believe it is possible to reach this planet in the near future, our technology is exponentially increasing in it's utility and computing power, so i think we'll soon have a deeper understanding of the spacetime "fabric" and learn how to warp it, allowing us to travel large distances without actually surpassing or coming close to the speed of light.

 

 

I think I hope you are correct, I think....

 

There are only 3 stars that even light could do a round trip in 10 years - I think a little more than a trillion dollars might be needed. You would need to average well above 80pct of light speed to get to any star and back in 10 years and frankly I don't think that's gonna happen for a long time - without fantastic shielding any craft would be swiss cheese and its contents would be irradiated crushed garbage by the time it got there

 

 

Spoil sport, relying on reality to tell people what's possible.... what a concept....

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Yeah read something about this in FOCUS magazine in UK. Apparently NASA have come up with software to simulate faraway Planets and their conditions. Apparently it has simulated two habitable planets and simulated the conditions of a REAL habitable planet.

Posted

Pffft!!!! It's all about money there are tonnes of theoretical space craft able to reach astonishing speeds but there's no money to test so they remain theoretical.

There are no theoretical space craft able to reach astonishing speeds. The only space craft able to reach astonishing speeds are found in science fiction.

 

The one possible exception in the Alcubierre drive. However, many experts in general relativity find the physics of this to be dubious. Even taking it as valid, the energy required to move even a few atoms is more than the entire energy output of the Sun. So, a non-starter.

 

 

offer 1 trillion dollars to the first organization to travel there and return in 10 years and it'd happen.

While money can buy lots of things, one thing that it can't buy is a way to violate the laws of physics.

Posted

To get to Kepler9 you could use an Interstellar hibernation ships, but then you run into the problem of sending the travellers out, then sometime later discovering an incredible piece of technology that can take you anywhere instantaneously like worm holes, and the sleeper ship becoming unnecessary. You just never know!

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

Since we're apparently overdue for the periodical inversion of our planet's magnetic field, sooner or later it'll come. They say that as the magnetic field inverts itself, the planet will be fully vulnerable (for hours, or days, who knows) to the sun's harmful rays. Let's hope that this "planet eerily similar to earth" is deemed habitable soon, so that we can all slowly migrate over there before the magnetic field inverts itself.

Posted

Since we're apparently overdue for the periodical inversion of our planet's magnetic field, sooner or later it'll come. They say that as the magnetic field inverts itself, the planet will be fully vulnerable (for hours, or days, who knows) to the sun's harmful rays. Let's hope that this "planet eerily similar to earth" is deemed habitable soon, so that we can all slowly migrate over there before the magnetic field inverts itself.

"They" say this? The magnetic field doesn't just disappear — you lose the dipole for a period of time but have higher-order fields.

http://www.psc.edu/research/graphics/gallery/geodynamo.php

 

Further, the protection we have is that charged particles get deflected by the magnetic field. The "sun's harmful rays" is way to generic of a description.

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