Planets that can potentially support life... - Page 15

On September 17 2011 06:58 Sausafeg wrote:


This is amazing, it puts loads of stuff into persective. I love seeing stuff like this.

On December 06 2011 08:10 Maenander wrote:

Cool series of pictures, but the artistic depictions of the large stars are not realistic. No way they have so well defined borders and are almost perfectly spherical, their atmospheres are very thin and their photospheres extended.


off topic:
The most realistic first contact scene ever shown in a Hollywood movie!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmSYXbgcozY

On September 13 2011 05:39 zimz wrote:
i always knew there were thousand if not millions of planets like earth out there like over 10 years ago. i thought it was quite close minded for many people to assume earth is exceptionally rare and maybe the only one etc.

On September 13 2011 05:39 zimz wrote:
i always knew there were thousand if not millions of planets like earth out there like over 10 years ago. i thought it was quite close minded for many people to assume earth is exceptionally rare and maybe the only one etc.

For the first time, astronomers have found a planet smack in the middle of the habitable zone of its sunlike star, where temperatures are good for life. “If this planet has a surface, it would have a very nice temperature of some 70° Fahrenheit [21°C],” says William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center here, who is the principal investigator of NASA’s Kepler space telescope. “[It's] another milestone on the journey of discovering Earth’s twin,” adds Ames director Simon “Pete” Worden.

Unfortunately, the true nature of the planet, named Kepler-22b, remains unknown. It is 2.4 times the size of Earth, but its mass, and hence its composition, has not yet been determined. “There’s a good chance it could be rocky,” Borucki says, although he adds that the planet would probably contain huge amounts of compressed ice, too. It might even have a global ocean. “We have no planets like this in our own solar system.”

Kepler-22b is 600 light-years away. Every 290 days, it orbits a star that is just a bit smaller and cooler than our own sun. The Kepler telescope, launched in 2009 to scan the skies for Earth-like worlds, found the planet because it sees the orbit edge on. That means that every 290 days, the world transits the surface of the star, blocking out a minute fraction of its light.

Borucki likes to call the new discovery the Christmas planet. “It’s a great gift,” he said at a press conference here this morning. “We were very fortunate to find it.” The first of the three observed transits occurred only days after Kepler started observing. The third one was seen just before Christmas 2010, shortly before the spacecraft was unable to carry out any observations because of a technical glitch. Says Borucki: “We could’ve easily missed it altogether.”

On December 06 2011 08:02 Chocolate wrote:
Wow that's pretty sweet. Since the star is smaller and cooler, that means it may last quite a bit longer than our own. I sure hope they can find its composition, but wouldn't that be pretty hard considering its distance? It would be cooler if we found one closer to Earth though, 600 light years is a long way away.

On December 06 2011 10:45 ryanAnger wrote:


Although it can't technically be proven (yet), we can reasonably assume (within a certain margin of error) what the atmospheric and planetary composition of an exoplanet is. A variety of data has come back suggesting that most stars comparable in size/heat to our own also have a similar planetary system, composed of smaller, inner planets, and a few larger outer ones.

Similarly, in order to maintain certain orbits, planets must be of a certain mass or they wouldn't "fit" into the puzzle of a stellar system without messing up everything else. In order to meet that mass, they need to be of a certain composition. Of course, most of this is purely hypothetical, but it's a good step in the right direction. Until we either develop telescopes that can see that far in vivid detail, or the technology to send probes there, we probably won't know with 100% certainty.

Also, one of the closest "habitable candidates" is Gliese581d, which is ~8x larger than the Earth, surrounding a much smaller star, with a much smaller orbit, but it's right in the middle of Gliese581's "habitable zone". However, the existence of that planet hasn't been "confirmed" in the same way this one has. If I recall correctly, the Gliese system is ~20 light years away, so this would most likely be one of our first focuses in the search for confirmed habitable planets.

On December 06 2011 12:30 DreamChaser wrote:


To be honest i doubt the human race would exist at that point. Even if we had the technology, since nothing we know (currently) can travel faster than speed of light it takes 20 light years but could be more like 5000 years depending how quickly the "ship" was going

On December 06 2011 12:33 FrankWalls wrote:
What i don't understand is what a planet has to have in order for it to be capable of "supporting life." I get the feeling that scientists take abstract ideas from our own planet and apply them to other planets when for all they know beings could exist that function on completely different standards than our own.

This is the main problem with Deep-space travel and I don't see it discussed enough:

Radiation.

Interplanetary is already prohibitive, Interstellar space is just retarded, who can only guess how hot Intergalactic space is. The further you get out of the solar system it starts to go nuts. There are pulsar and nebula flares with Gamma rays that would travel right through metal and turn you into bacon inside of a second.

I heard that we wouldn't be safe if we traveled in a ball of water or lead that was 50 feet thick. Here are a couple articles on the subject:

http://www.space.com/5190-space-radiation-deadly-mars-mission.html

http://www.infocusmagazine.org/8.2/hs_space_radiation.html

This isn't even considering the possibility of hitting small debris at near the speed of light. A pebble would make a gunshot look like a pin prick.

Yes yes, technology, but these are very real and hard to circumvent realities.