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NASA Finds Family of Habitable Planets
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."
There's only one of me
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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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Map
Stupid media hype. In that very same article it is stated that it would take 3 years -at minimum- to verify the existence of an Earth-size exoplanet. So clearly there aren't five of them on the books yet. Kepler went up in March 2009.
Surveys such as this tend to find lots of large planets close to their stars. It is worth pointing out that this is at least partly because such planets are easier to detect, and does not necessarily mean they are a high proportion of planets in the galaxy.
Kepler detects changes in stellar brightness due to transiting planets. The closer a planet is to its star, the less precise the alignment has to be for us to observe a transit. Also, the closer it is, the faster it orbits, and the more likely we observe a transit in the limited time we're observing that star. This second factor will become less restrictive as the Kepler mission runs for a longer time. (I presume they need at least two, possibly more, transits before they claim a detection.) Large planets will also give a larger, easier to detect change in brightness.
The other major way of detecting planets is spectroscopically: the planet wobbles the star slightly, and we observe the Doppler shift. This favours massive planets (they wobble the star more) and close planets (they wobble the star faster.)
There have I think also been a few cases where clever interferometry has allowed direct imaging of extrasolar planets. I don't know what the selection effects on this are - further away means easier to separate from the star (good) but less bright (bad.)
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It's not NASA's fault, the actual press release says nothing of the sort.
The NASA press release described a system of at least 6 larger -than-earth planets, all much closer to their sun than Earth is. Late in the release, they mention that "Kepler will continue conducting science operations until at least November 2012, searching for planets as small as Earth, including those that orbit stars in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet. Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is predicted to take at least three years to locate and verify an Earth-size planet. "
Then Michael Cooney appears to have invented from whole cloth the title, "NASA Kepler finds family of habitable, Earth-size planets". I do have to admit that the Slashdot title is pretty close to the Cooney source, but the article is... not even close to what it claims to be its source material.
the stargate takes just a few seconds to get there.
They've found 5 earth sized planet candidates in what they believe to be the habitable zone. That's pretty exciting to me whether they're confirmed or not.
That should be more like the title of the news story. We already had found hundreds of planet candidates by other means. Now with this report we have added a bunch more using the transit method. Kepler is only scanning one patch of the sky, and only catches planets whose orbits are edge on, so they pass in front of their star (transit). So it's a pretty small sample percentage wise. Extrapolating the Kepler results to the whole sky, and all orbit angles, means there's a LOT of planets out there, millions of them. That's probably the most important news - that there are lots of planets out there. The details of orbits, masses, temperature, etc will come eventually with better instruments, but from sheer random statistics, some of them will end up with the right mass, and distance from their star to be "possibly Earthlike".
Note that by the time we could visit such planets, we won't need them. We will have learned to live on the Moon, Mars, the Asteroids, and other non-Earthlike places long before we attempt an interstellar mission. All we really need is raw materials and sunlight. Habitable planets just make for cool news stories.
and if that's not ridiculous enough, you can click on 'Enlarge' for a better look at it.
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Not necessarily true. The universe could indeed have infinite space, or it could expand infinitely, but that wouldn't necessarily mean that it also contains infinite matter or infinite stars and planets. Perhaps there was a big bang, inflation took off, and there were 100 trillion galaxies that formed within the first 10 billion years. The universe might expand infinitely then, though the quantity of matter (and therefore the number of galaxies, stars, and habitable planets) could still be quite finite, unless there is something really crazy going on and matter is popping into existence. Even if the universe is infinite, you can't just assume that it is the same throughout unless you also know that it has always been infinite and is uniformly smooth. Infinite habitable planets would mean infinite mass, and infinite mass would force the universe to contract to an infinitely small point (zero dimensional?), wouldn't it? And we observe it to be expanding, probably at an increasing rate (and faster than the speed of light), right? Be careful multiplying by infinity, or attempts at mathematical proofs can get really screwy. Infinity is not a perfect substitute for even REALLY big numbers. Just a few thoughts that might make sense. Maybe not. After all, I'm only an amateur cosmologist.
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What it takes three years to find is a planet orbiting a star once a year, ie: in an earth-like orbit. They've found a bunch of earth-sized planets orbiting much closer than that.
From wiki.. Kepler-11 is a star in the Kepler spacecraft field of observations and is roughly 2000 light years away from our Solar System.
So only a few thousand generations and we are so there...
There were 10, but I just got an instruction saying "Spawn more overlords!"
I am officially gone from
And only 1200 so far may look reasonable.
Still a good ratio.
But, pay attention to the report, in that a large number, almost half have GAS giants in the zone...more than likely with Earth sized moons or smaller.
You could literally have Multiple Earths around a single body...I wonder how that affects the odds of life in general?
Compare that to the situation we are in, where a rocky planet has its own orbit. That so far is a very small percentage.
We could very well have a very unique situation.
I find it odd that Pandora as a movie of science fiction may in fact be much more common than a rocky planet in its own orbit about the sun that has life.
Very exciting though that we are starting to get ratios of stars to planets with habitable zones and even what sort they are.
In another 20 years we should have a trend line to plot!!!
All within my lifetime, which is very exciting!!!
(Well...God willing!!)
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
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.
so, it "looked potentially habitable" 2000 years ago. If we could go there at the speed of light, we'd be there 4000 years after what we've seen. If any-one is living there, I hope they take good care of their planet during those 4000 years, or else ...
If it is too far for us to reach within this life time (100 light years away or something)...it is useless to worry too much about it...log them for later, once we accomplish warp drive.