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NASA Finds Family of Habitable Planets

Posted by samzenpus on from the welcome-to-the-neighborhood dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA's star-gazing space telescope continues to find amazing proof that there are tons of habitable planets in space and we have only scratched the surface of what's out there. The space agency said today its Kepler space telescope spotted what it called its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in what it considers to be the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system."

3 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Okay, hold on a minute. by 2muchcoffeeman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can we call them "potentially habitable planets" instead of going all the way to "habitable" that quickly? I think I'd like to make sure of certain things before being so definite -- for instance: water, temperature, oxygen levels, lack of poisonous gases making the oxygen-level issue moot, edible flora and/or fauna, radiation levels ... hmmm, could be here awhile ...

    --
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    1. Re:Okay, hold on a minute. by bertok · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Another example, the people telling us the world's weather is going to be a specific number of degrees hotter or colder in a decade. They can't even accuratly predict a week out.

      Your ignorance of the scientific process doesn't invalidate it.

      The example you mentioned is a straw man argument based on ignorance. There's a huge difference between climate and weather prediction. The former is like trying to predict the temperature at which a pot of water will boil, the latter is like predicting the location on the surface of the water where the steam bubbles will appear. One of those is predictable and depends on simple thermodynamics that is well understood, the other is full of randomness and uncertainty, and is difficult to predict far into the future.

      Either way, none of that has anything to do with astronomy, which is about as precise, non-random, and rigorous as any science gets. The measurements these guys are making are just simple intensity measurements over time. There's no need to develop hugely complex models with trillions of unknowns and interacting nonlinear feedbacks and systems that require supercomputers to solve to a useful level of precision. The equations astronomers work with can be solved on the back of a napkin.

      To give you an idea of the kind of precision that astronomers are used to working with, the Gaia Mission will create a star catalogue with position measurements as accurate as 20 microarcseconds. If you think of that as a fraction of a circle, that is 15 parts per trillion! The Kepler spacecraft has a rather pedestrian precision of only 20 parts per million, which is still orders of magnitude better than what any climatologist has ever had to work with.

      On top of that, this mission is not making a prediction about the future, but making a straightforward measurement that can be trivially verified later. There's no uncertainty to speak of.

  2. Great!! So..... by blankoboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    can we stop killing each other and focus on space exploration now? For all you corporate types: I am sure there are plenty of diamonds, gold, oil and other fantastic elements on these planets.