Kepler Spacecraft Finds System With Multiple Planets Transiting the Star

rhaas writes "NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star. They found two planets almost the size of Saturn, and possibly a third, small, very hot planet with a radius about 1.5 times that of Earth."

Comments

Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel

[Kethinov]

The exoplanets search is the most exciting thing in space exploration since the moon landings IMHO for one important reason: one day, a project like Kepler will find an Earth sized planet orbiting within a foreign star's habitable zone. It's the stated goal of the project, yes, but when it actually happens, things will be different.

Imagine what the day will be like when we find something like that. We'll know it's there, we'll know it's the right size and at the right distance from its star, but we'll know little else. We'll know that life very probably *could* exist there, but without getting much, much closer to it, we'd never know for sure.

And we're not talking about the extremely remote possibilities of microbial life on Mars, or some kind of funky aquatic life on Europa's hypothetical subsurface ocean, we're talking about plants and animals. Maybe even intelligent animals like us.

What could possibly be a better motivator for our society to start pushing the limits of propulsion technology again? If we had something *tangibly* interesting to explore in a relatively nearby star system, like the ones Kepler is exploring, we might just get that extra kick in our pants we need to start innovating again.

WWII motivated us to enter a brand new energy age with the development of atomic power and the perfection (I'll use that term loosely ;)) of rocketry. Would discovering a planet in another star system with a high degree of habitability give us the motivation we need to efficiently produce and harness antimatter or some other next-generation power source?

Yeah, I'm being all misty eyed here. Relativity is a pesky little fucker, among other issues. But I can't shake the feeling that we're an amazing species of innovators when properly motivated. And I just don't think exploring other star systems has captured our collective attention the way landing on the moon did.

I desperately want to see us that motivated again some day. And I think finding a reasonably high enough probability of habitability on a planet orbiting a foreign star would give us back what we let slip away from us in the 1970s.

Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Hehe, your post kind of rubbed in a sentiment I got at work earlier today when I first read this story on Spaceflightnow. Something finally clicked, while I was sitting there at my cubicle, that we are literally probing other solar systems for planets. Did you play Mass Effect? I am sure someone here did. What about Star Wars Rebellion? Does anyone remember how most of the systems in those games are mostly unexplored. The entries in the galactic database, or whatever, were a few short paragraphs describing what conditions were probably like on the planet, but no explorers had ever returned to find out. I remember when I played those games I would click through the text unthinkingly so I could go blow some shit up. But when I was sitting at my cubicle reading this story today, it hit me:

Kepler is literally writing those first few galactic database entries for us. Some years from now, be it years, decades, or centuries, when our ancestors are poking around other solar systems, they are going to be pulling up a few scant words describing the likely surface composition and climate data of some of these planets. They will pull up the mass estimates and other numbers associated with each body before dropping onto the surface of the planet to update/verify the database. They will literally be using the information gathered by Kepler and its successors to give them some insight about what they are going to step into.

Does that register with anyone else? We are literally starting to compile a database on planets in other solar systems, so that one day explorers will have something, no matter how small, to refer to when stepping into the unknown. We are writing our own version of Mass Efffect's Codex. When that dawned on me today I almost crapped my pants. Sure folks, we joke about instant communication and flying robot overlords being signs that we literally are living in the future, but holy mother of crap, we have a spacecraft, on orbit, sending data down to us right now that is compiling data on systems that we hope to one day explore. That just makes my heart flutter to think about. Our infantile species, that leaped into orbit only half a century ago, can start to seriously consider studying, and maybe one day exploring, extra-system planets. Say what you will about how stupid and hopeless humans are, but I'll be damned if something like the Kepler mission doesn't make me gasp at how amazing a species we can be....

Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel

[Kethinov]

The problem is if the rules of the universe dont enable us to get there in any practical way.

People used to say that about the moon. "Escape velocity is impossible to reach!" they'd say. Escape velocity wasn't impossible. It was a puzzle to be solved. I prefer to look at Relativity and faster than light travel the same way. Maybe one day we'll solve those puzzles. I still have hope. I guess I'm an optimist.

Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel

[Ihlosi]

We do not have the know-how to create a self-sufficient environment there or anywhere else. We need a nice friendly planet in the Goldilocks zone.

If I were to be, then my money would be on us reaching the technology to create a self-sufficient environment on, say, Mars much earlier than us reaching the technology to send anything other than a robotic probe over interstellar distances.

This is simply because travelling interstellar distances pretty much requires the technology to create a quasi-self-sufficient environment ... or warp drive technology.

Re:Exoplanets vs. inter-stellar travel

[InfiniteZero]

when our ancestors are poking around other solar systems

I think you are confusing space travel with time travel.

Re:Go on, rub it in why don't you?

[Eudial]

Stop anthropomorphizing the Trans-Neptunian objects.

Physical limits vs. technological limits

[mangu]

So people in the 1800s were stupid for thinking that reaching escape velocity was impossible given their current and foreseeable technology at the time? How is that any different than you saying reaching other star systems in a timely fashion is impossible given current and foreseeable technology?

The only limits in the 1800s were technological. Given enough development in stronger and lighter materials, escape velocity became possible.

The light of speed limit is an ultimate physical limit of the universe. The first hint of this limitation was found in 1887 and has been confirmed many times in many different ways. Simply put, given all the experimental data we have, if faster than light travel were possible time would be bidirectional; causality would be violated.

This does not mean FTL is absolutely impossible, maybe we will one day find a flaw in our current understanding of physics that will let us travel faster than light. However, the resultant implications would be so huge that travelling to distant stars would perhaps be one of the least interesting things to do with our new physics.