Kepler Investigator Says 'Galaxy Is Rich In Earth-Like Planets'

astroengine writes "In a recent presentation, Kepler co-investigator Dimitar Sasselov unexpectedly announced news that the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered scores of candidate Earth-like exoplanets. Not waiting for the official NASA press release to announce the discovery, Sasselov went into some detail at the TEDGlobal talk in Oxford, UK earlier this month. This surprise announcement comes hot on the heels of controversy that erupted last month when the Kepler team said they were withholding data on 400 exoplanet candidates until February 2011. In light of this, Sasselov's unofficial announcement has already caused a stir. Keith Cowing, of NASAWatch.com, has commented on this surprise turn of events, saying it is really annoying 'that the Kepler folks were complaining about releasing information since they wanted more time to analyze it before making any announcements. And then the project's Co-I goes off and spills the beans before an exclusive audience — offshore. We only find out about it when the video gets quietly posted weeks later.' Although Sasselov could have handled the announcement better (and waited until NASA made the official announcement), this has the potential to be one of the biggest astronomical discoveries of our time — so long as these Earth-like 'candidates' are confirmed by further study."

Comments

Unconfirmed planets

[AC-x]

Kepler needs 3 transits to confirm a planet, so given that it's only been up there since March 7, 2009 any planet around the same distance as earth will only have had 2 transits max.

It's exciting that there are so many candidates but I guess NASA doesn't want the embarrassment of getting everyone all excited then having to hugely backtrack on the number if some turn out to be something else.

Re:brought to you by the letter..

[sznupi]

But we do have it, that's the point. And "planet" simply means one type of planetary bodies already.

Dward planet, terrestrial planet, gas giant (among them distinction between neptunes/jupiters and hot/cold), sub-brown dwarf; iron planet, chthonian planet, carbon planet, ocean planet, trojan planet, rogue planet...there's plenty of different classes.

Now you'd want to replace descriptive and flexible monikers with rigid symbol classifications?
OK, so perhaps, maybe, you're used to Star Trek fantasy setting, which also nicely covers most of the latin alphabet...but here, let me show you how it would look in practice:

Class (put in one symbol from this alphabet,; /. & unicode...) Planet
Class (put several, if some body is like that) Planet

And you know, the best would be to just settle with what a planet was for Greeks - that includes the Moon and the Sun... - but with Star Trek classification system.

Re:Only one factor is in question

[delt0r]

If there is no faster then light method of travelling possible, then there are unlikely to be any visitors ever. End of story.

This is quite false. You have left out a entire section of very possible developments.

• Longevity treatments. Whats 100 years when you live for 1000?
• "Cryo sleep" or suspended animation. No reason why it can't work.
• "Generation ships". No reason why a big arse space ship wouldn't be a pleasure to be part of. Even if you don't care about the destination.
• robotic overloads. You don't need AI here.

Note that nuclear fission fragment rockets can get ~5% C. Antimatter much more... sure we aren't doing it now. But there is no physics stopping it. Unlike FLT.

All we are missing is the desire or need to go in the first place.