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Analysis of Spacecraft Data Reveals Most Earth-like Planet To Date
sciencehabit writes: Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Kepler satellite have boosted the tally of known or suspected planets beyond our solar system to more than 4000, they reported at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Most are inhospitable — too big, too hot, or too cold for any conceivable life form. But another team seeking to verify Kepler candidates announced they had identified eight new potentially habitable planets, including some close to Earth in size and situation. Unpoetically named 5737.01, one candidate has an orbital period of 331 days and is 30% larger than Earth, Mullally says. That’s good news, because scientists here reported yesterday that planets more than 1.6 times the mass of Earth are unlikely to be dense rocky worlds like ours — assumed to be the only plausible habitats for life.
Why is that a problem, are you concerned about surface gravity? Assuming a similar density to Earth, it would only be ~1.3 Earth gravities, since F_g falls off with r^2.
They have all the chemical ingredients, saturn and jupiter both have water clouds containing droplets of water and since we don't know how life actually got going it could well be possible for it to start in a gas giant and at least sustain bacteria or virus sized lifeforms. Even in earths clouds there are bacteria floating about as we've discovered in the last decade or so.
Is she dense and rocky?