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 Post subject: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 5th, 2011, 3:09 pm 
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Today NASA confirmed that Kepler 22b (discovered by the Kepler telescope) resides in the habitable zone. Average surface temperature of about 22 degrees (celsius of course). It's not known how much water it has (if any), if it's rocky, or what the atmosphere consists of. Most of these can be confirmed through more observation.

The downside, it's 600 light years away. The Gliese system is only about 20 lightyears away, where the nearest exoplanet is located.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/keple ... scicon-briefing.html

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PostPosted: December 5th, 2011, 3:09 pm 
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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 5th, 2011, 3:13 pm 
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^ shane... i was 2 seconds away from posting this.
Hell i'll do it anyway.

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new explanet candidates, researchers announced today (Dec. 5).

The new finds bring the Kepler space telescope's total haul to 2,326 potential planets in its first 16 months of operation.These discoveries, if confirmed, would quadruple the current tally of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system, which recently topped 700.

The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one which could conceivably harbor life, scientists said.

"We're getting closer and closer to discovering the so-called 'Goldilocks planet,'" Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during a press conference today. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

The newfound planet in the habitable zone is called Kepler-22b. It is located about 600 light-years away, orbiting a sun-like star.

Kepler-22b's radius is 2.4 times that of Earth, and the two planets have roughly similar temperatures. If the greenhouse effect operates there similarly to how it does on Earth, the average surface temperature on Kepler-22b would be 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius).

Hunting down alien planets

The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size alien planets in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, might be able to exist.

Kepler detects alien planets using what's called the "transit method." It searches for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — the star from Earth's perspective, blocking a fraction of the star's light.

The finds graduate from "candidates" to full-fledged planets after follow-up observations confirm that they're not false alarms. This process, which is usually done with large, ground-based telescopes, can take about a year.

The Kepler team released data from its first 13 months of operation back in February, announcing that the instrument had detected 1,235 planet candidates, including 54 in the habitable zone and 68 that are roughly Earth-size.

Of the total 2,326 candidate planets that Kepler has found to date, 207 are approximately Earth-size. More of them, 680, are a bit larger than our planet, falling into the "super-Earth" category. The total number of candidate planets in the habitable zones of their stars is now 48.

To date, just over two dozen of these potential exoplanets have been confirmed, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's discoveries should end up being the real deal.

More discoveries to come

The newfound 1,094 planet candidates are the fruit of Kepler's labors during its first 16 months of science work, from May 2009 to September 2010. And they won't be the last of the prolific instrument's discoveries.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

Mission scientists still need to analyze data from the last two years and on into the future. Kepler will be making observations for a while yet to come; its nominal mission is set to end in November 2012, but the Kepler team is preparing a proposal to extend the instrument's operations for another year or more.

Kepler's finds should only get more exciting as time goes on, researchers say.

"We're pushing down to smaller planets and longer orbital periods," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at Ames.

To flag a potential planet, the instrument generally needs to witness three transits. Planets that make three transits in just a few months must be pretty close to their parent stars; as a result, many of the alien worlds Kepler spotted early on have been blisteringly hot places that aren't great candidates for harboring life as we know it.

Given more time, however, a wealth of more distantly orbiting — and perhaps more Earth-like — exoplanets should open up to Kepler. If intelligent aliens were studying our solar system with their own version of Kepler, after all, it would take them three years to detect our home planet.

"We are getting very close," Batalha said. "We are homing in on the truly Earth-size, habitable planets."

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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 5th, 2011, 4:02 pm 
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Too bad space exploration is slowing down when it should be expanding. Atleast here in the u.s., I don't really know about the rest of the world's programs.


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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 6th, 2011, 10:06 am 
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This is really exciting stuff for me...

I watched the hour long press briefing and it's really great stuff, but I don't understand why people aren't excited about this! There were only about 5 people in the briefing room...
We just discovered another planet that is more than likely known to support life. Once they figure out the mass they can tell us whether or not that it is rocky like our planet, or just mainly composed of water...


But the distance... dammit. I wonder if humanoids on Kepler 22b are looking at us right now thinking "I wish we had the technology to visit Earth"

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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 6th, 2011, 11:09 am 
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Nerd-Tron wrote:
Too bad space exploration is slowing down when it should be expanding. Atleast here in the u.s., I don't really know about the rest of the world's programs.



I could be wrong, but I think China is investing a lot of money in it (hell with the surplus they have, why not?)

I read about this at work the other day. It is pretty awesome. I hope that in the next 50 years we can figure out a way to travel to these planets that wont take hundreds of years (or thousands!).

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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 6th, 2011, 11:47 am 
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Meltdown wrote:

I wonder if humanoids on Kepler 22b are looking at us right now thinking "I wish we had the technology to visit Earth"


The odds that there is anything alive on that planet are very low. The odds it's intelligent enough to spot a planet like ours even lower. The odds of them spotting our very planet out of millions are even lower.

Isn't likely.

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I could be wrong, but I think China is investing a lot of money in it (hell with the surplus they have, why not?)

I read about this at work the other day. It is pretty awesome. I hope that in the next 50 years we can figure out a way to travel to these planets that wont take hundreds of years (or thousands!).


You're not wrong. They are. I doubt they have any interest in visiting other planets however. Not unless it'll prove beneficial to them. Wont be finding a means to break the speed of light. Sorry. Impossible.

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 Post subject: Register and login to get these in-post ads to disappear
PostPosted: December 6th, 2011, 11:47 am 
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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 6th, 2011, 2:14 pm 
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honestly, if china is only doing the whole space exploration as a show of force.
besides, would you really want to fly in a shuttle with "made in china" tag on it?

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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 6th, 2011, 5:14 pm 
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pretty exciting stuff, talked about this today in class. Looks like we will have to wait for more details to come out.

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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 6th, 2011, 6:20 pm 
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trekkie wrote:
honestly, if china is only doing the whole space exploration as a show of force.
besides, would you really want to fly in a shuttle with "made in china" tag on it?

Lmfao, so true.


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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 6th, 2011, 10:51 pm 
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Quote:
The odds that there is anything alive on that planet are very low.


There's no way you're right on that dude.... water is a critical ingredient to life, liquid water that is. And on Keple22-b is it about 22 degrees c, or 75 F. Perfect for liquid water to exist.

You may argue that you need life to begin with, to manifest and use this water to it's advantage. In which case I could also argue that where did life on Earth come from?

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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 7th, 2011, 11:55 pm 
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trekkie wrote:
honestly, if china is only doing the whole space exploration as a show of force.
besides, would you really want to fly in a shuttle with "made in china" tag on it?


I'd be pretty wary of anything with a "Made in China" tag on it. Last major innovative creation of theirs derailed and killed people.

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 Post subject: Re: Kepler 22b
PostPosted: December 8th, 2011, 4:45 pm 
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There are potentially millions of planets revolving around 100s of thousands of stars. To think that we are the only planet out of these millions that can sustain life would be an extremely naive statement. We are hearing about these potential life-sustaining planets every few months now. The idea that we are somehow special and the only hospitable planet is quickly becoming an archaic statement. That they are looking back at us and wondering if there is life out here, is, however, a reasonable skepticism. It took many millions of years to get to where we are in the evolutionary process, so there is a good chance there's a world of dinosaur like creatures or a sea-covered fish world out there, but more than likely, there's worlds with bacteria and plant life at the very least. Sure it's exciting to look for, but this is ultimately irrelevant to us. We will never be able to travel such distances. The energy required would have to not only be pooled with every possible fuel source within our solar system, but probably the other closest solar systems as well.

I really doubt China plans any intergalactic missions to Kepler 22b anytime soon, unless they can sell them on inflated interest loans, too.


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