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On December 21 2011 11:37 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Well not life sustaining, unless something we don't know, earth size planets have been discovered. Show nested quote +NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.
The discovery marks the next important milestone in the ultimate search for planets like Earth. The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth. Kepler-20f is a bit larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets reside in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.
Kepler-20e orbits its parent star every 6.1 days and Kepler-20f every 19.6 days. These short orbital periods mean very hot, inhospitable worlds. Kepler-20f, at 800 degrees Fahrenheit, is similar to an average day on the planet Mercury. The surface temperature of Kepler-20e, at more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, would melt glass. Source Even if this isn't a possible life sustaining planet, with every discovery there is an increase in probability that one exists. It's to the point now where we can guess pretty well that our solar system isn't "unique" in that it has the architecture to promote life on at least one large body. I have very few doubts whether life exists outside our planet now. It's just a matter of finding it.
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Reading such articles always gives me a strange feeling of ... I don't know.
Its hard to get a grasp on the thoughts that it creates in my head but its a sense of ... non-significance. Whenever I read something like this I question the sense of life as the only viable option seems to be to life his own life to the fullest as there are no huge accomplishments that can be made compared to the greatness of the universe.
And it also reminds me that the life that we are all living is man-made, the rules that we follow, the way we live and so on and so forth - I wonder how society works on other planets.
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On December 21 2011 18:34 Felo wrote: Reading such articles always gives me a strange feeling of ... I don't know.
Its hard to get a grasp on the thoughts that it creates in my head but its a sense of ... non-significance. Whenever I read something like this I question the sense of life as the only viable option seems to be to life his own life to the fullest as there are no huge accomplishments that can be made compared to the greatness of the universe.
And it also reminds me that the life that we are all living is man-made, the rules that we follow, the way we live and so on and so forth - I wonder how society works on other planets.
We are so insignificant on the grand scale of the universe, yet simultaneously extraordinarily rare and special. Even if millions of planets in our galaxy had life, that would only be 0.0000001% of them. Its hard to conceptualize because so many people don't understand the true scope of the Universe compared to life on Earth.
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The Milky Way is home to far more planets than previously thought, boosting the odds that life could exist on at least one of them, according to a newly released study.
Until recently, astronomers counted the number of "exoplanets" outside our own solar system in the hundreds.
But the new study, published on Wednesday, provides evidence that there are more planets than stars in our own stellar neighbourhood.
"We used to think that Earth might be unique in our galaxy," said Daniel Kubas, a professor at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, and a co-leader of the study.
"Now it seems that there are literally billions of planets with masses similar to Earth orbiting stars in the Milky Way."
Two methods have dominated the hunt over the past two decades for exoplanets too distant and feint to perceive directly.
One measures the effect of a planet's gravitational pull on its host star, while the other detects a slight dimming of the star as the orbiting planet passes in front of it.
Both of these techniques are better at finding planets that are massive in size, close to their stars, or both, leaving large "blind spots".
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It would be cool to build a self supplying independent spaceship, and set course for an exoplanet. When the ship had flown 50.000 years making it halfway to their destination, humans back on earth had developed technology far superior to the first spaceship, and set out on the same mission once more. When the second spaceship had traveled 25.000 years they caught up with the first spaceship, giving them the opportunity to laugh at the "stone-age" vessel. This process repeated itself whit the second spaceship aswell, and the third...and fourth..
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On January 12 2012 19:41 DenSkumle wrote: It would be cool to build a self supplying independent spaceship, and set course for an exoplanet. When the ship had flown 50.000 years making it halfway to their destination, humans back on earth had developed technology far superior to the first spaceship, and set out on the same mission once more. When the second spaceship had traveled 25.000 years they caught up with the first spaceship, giving them the opportunity to laugh at the "stone-age" vessel. This process repeated itself whit the second spaceship aswell, and the third...and fourth..
Sounds like a nice idea for a movie script !
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There are over 100 of these 'super' earths infact, most of which are unreachable in the near future. FYI a light year is how far light travels in a year, whcihc is around 10 trilion km. Unless we develop tech to go faster than light, we'll all be very old by the time we arrive at one of these super earths
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On January 12 2012 19:56 BlaCha wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2012 19:41 DenSkumle wrote: It would be cool to build a self supplying independent spaceship, and set course for an exoplanet. When the ship had flown 50.000 years making it halfway to their destination, humans back on earth had developed technology far superior to the first spaceship, and set out on the same mission once more. When the second spaceship had traveled 25.000 years they caught up with the first spaceship, giving them the opportunity to laugh at the "stone-age" vessel. This process repeated itself whit the second spaceship aswell, and the third...and fourth.. Sounds like a nice idea for a movie script !
There was an interesting sci-fi short story.... humans in a generation ship come up to their destination world and find out that it is already populated with humans who passed by them. The travellers then get one of the more advanced (0.99.. light speed) ships and set out for the nearest galaxy (so they will probably be surpassed again...but if not)
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Given that our only experiences with life are those from Earth, I personally think there's types of life in the universe that are so radically different that we can't even fathom how it functions, and as such, would be potentially found in places that we know "Earth life" couldn't exist. So there's the potential for life in closer parts of the galaxy/universe...
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With the data determining planets around most star systems. There could theoretically be trillions of planets in our Galaxy alone.
There are 200-400 billion Stars after all and it is also believed that there is as many planets orbiting stars as there are rogue planets not orbiting stars.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2072290,00.html
Planets of all sizes could theoretically be roaming free without a star.
They do not have enough Data yet to determine the average amount of planets per star. So the estimate of 1.6 planets per star is just a conservative estimate.
The actual number could be more closer to 10 planets per star system like ours. (Not counting Dwarf Planets)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9008012/Billions-of-habitable-planets-in-Milky-Way.html
Yeah maybe the Zerg could be a real life race on one of these planets and be space-faring insects it's possible i guess.
Ants are kind-of like Zergs anyways they even have and fighter ants and different roles for different ant-types.
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On January 13 2012 00:21 Krikkitone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 12 2012 19:56 BlaCha wrote:On January 12 2012 19:41 DenSkumle wrote: It would be cool to build a self supplying independent spaceship, and set course for an exoplanet. When the ship had flown 50.000 years making it halfway to their destination, humans back on earth had developed technology far superior to the first spaceship, and set out on the same mission once more. When the second spaceship had traveled 25.000 years they caught up with the first spaceship, giving them the opportunity to laugh at the "stone-age" vessel. This process repeated itself whit the second spaceship aswell, and the third...and fourth.. Sounds like a nice idea for a movie script ! There was an interesting sci-fi short story.... humans in a generation ship come up to their destination world and find out that it is already populated with humans who passed by them. The travellers then get one of the more advanced (0.99.. light speed) ships and set out for the nearest galaxy (so they will probably be surpassed again...but if not)
I'm actually really interested in this short story. What is it called? And I can't wait till the day we can finally call a different planet home.
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A potentially habitable alien planet — one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface — has been found around a nearby star.
The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet's surface.
The researchers estimate that the planet, called GJ 667Cc, is at least 4.5 times as massive as Earth, which makes it a so-called super-Earth. It takes roughly 28 days to make one orbital lap around its parent star, which is located a mere 22 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius (the Scorpion). What's so super about super-Earths?
"This is basically our next-door neighbor," Vogt said. "It's very nearby. There are only about 100 stars closer to us than this one."
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I am jealous of the opportunities my grandchildren may have...I want to be frozen.
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While I do think discovering planets due to gravitational effects and light dimming is a really great idea, as an engineer I find it almost an exercise in futility. At most, we can find 'hot Jupiters' and super-fast rotating planets, and they have to pass between us and their sun for the Kepler telescope to even detect them.
You can argue, so we develop a model for what proportion of planets we find, and adjust the model according to the limited data we receive. What's the problem with that?
Well, originally when we first developed sophisticated light telescopes, we seriously thought we were the center of the universe. Truth be told we just couldn't see very far in any direction because light eventually gets absorbed by rarefied hydrogen.
Later we had all kinds of wild hypothesis about 'rare earth' and 'common earth' that seriously... it was ridiculous.
What I'm trying to say is the data we obtain now is very 'interesting' because it proves we knew shit all about planets 10 years ago, but this data isn't worth much because there are so many possible astral bodies that are impossible to detect with Kepler and similar technologies.
From what I've seen, we would need an array about three orders of magnitude more accurate to even begin to form stellar formation models with this data. But this is my opinion as a grounded-in-fact mechanical eng. Maybe some astrophysicists around here would care to comment?
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The planet lies in what they describe as a 'habitable zone', neither too near its sun to dry out or too far away which freezes it.
And the discovery could help answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe, which has been plagued astronomers and alien fanatics for years.
Scientists found the planet, Gliese 667Cc, orbiting around a red dwarf star, 22 light years away from the earth.
Red dwarf stars are the most common stars in the neighbourhood of the sun, usually hosting planets called gas giants, which are not composed of rock matter.
Re-analysing data from the European Southern Observatory, the astronomers found Gliese 667Cc is a solid planet with roughly four and a half times the mass of Earth.
The University Göttingen and University of California scientists have calculated the planet recieves ten per cent less light from its red dwarf star than the Earth gets from the Sun.
As the light is in the infrared area, the planet still receives nearly the same amount of energy as the Earth, meaning water could be liquid and surface temperatures could be similar to ours.
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On April 28 2012 05:27 MrHoon wrote:oh i love space updates :D It makes me sad I was born in a lifetime where space expedition won't be possible for another hundred years or so Oh well can't wait for the pluto photos atleast Don't be pessimistic bro, don't forget humans went to space from only more than 50 years. Just imagin what we will be able to do in the next 50 years (except if you are 50y/o or more)
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A new estimate of the number of habitable planets orbiting the most common type of stars in our galaxy could have huge consequences for the search for life.
According to a recent study, tens of billions of planets around red dwarfs are likely capable of containing liquid water, dramatically increasing the potential to find signs of life somewhere other than Earth.
Red dwarfs are stars that are fainter, cooler and less massive than the sun. These stars, which typically also live longer than Class G stars like the sun, are thought to make up about 80 percent of the stars in the Milky Way, astronomers have said.
One of the largest concerns about planets circling red dwarfs is radiation. A red dwarf's habitable zone is generally closer to it than Mercury is to our sun, so a planet there would receive a strong shock of particles when storms erupted on the red dwarf.
"They could essentially give everything on the surface that's exposed to the sky ... a heavy dose of radiation," Shostak said. "It could be fatal."
However, if the alien planet had a magnetic field, this could provide some protection. So, too, could an ocean of water. Life that evolved beneath an ocean might be shielded from the brunt of the radiation.
(That's not necessarily good news for SETI, which searches for signals from extraterrestrial life. "We're not sure intelligent life, if under water, will be building radio transmitters and we're going to hear from them," Shostak said. "But it's possible.")
Another problem with planets tightly bound to their host star is a phenomenon known as tidal locking, in which one side of the world is perpetually turned toward the sun and receiving almost all of the heat.
But this isn't considered as big of a problem now as it had been.
For one thing, research over the past few years has indicated that the presence of other planets can ease the grip of the parent star, keeping a planet from being perfectly stagnant.
Furthermore, if the planet has an atmosphere, it might also boast wind, which could move the hot atmosphere to the dark side and the cool atmosphere to the sunlit side.
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It's funny how most of the latest "can support life" planets are from Gliese systems. I've never seen any other planet discovered as close habitable as them. Let's hope something is going on there.
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