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Kepler Discovers First Earth-Sized Exoplanets
ananyo writes "NASA's Kepler telescope has reached one of its major mission milestones: finding an Earth-sized planet outside the Solar System. What's more, it has done it twice in the same star system. Whizzing around the star Kepler-20, about 290 parsecs (946 light-years) from Earth, is not only an Earth-sized planet, but also something just a touch smaller — a Venus."
Um, what? What exactly do you think Johannes Kepler was, a washing machine?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Damn that's fast!
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Zzzzzzz??? Really??
Twenty five years ago, finding an exoplanet was considered to be some forward looking science that might not ever happen, and the belief then was that planets were likely quite rare. Ten years ago we'd found some planets, but they were all gas giants.
Now, we find a planet which is close to Earth in size, in a solar system with 5 planets in it, 1000 light years away That's some heavy stuff.
If you're incapable of understanding that this is actually pretty significant, maybe you should go back to your coloring books ... the estimate of the number of planets there are likely to be in our galaxy alone has likely gone up by several orders of magnitude in the last 20 years or so.
We're quickly changing from "oh there's likely not many planets" to "the universe is full of them" ... it's hard not to think that even if it's not what we'd call intelligent life, there's likely more than a few places that have evolved some form of life.
The more we see stuff like this, the more we see just how vast and astounding the universe around us actually is.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.