NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone

[Sexy Beast]

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."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-telescope-confirms-alien-planet-habitable-zone-162005358.html

Pretty interesting, I must say. Even though it's 600 light years away, it still presents possibilities that there's life outside earth.

 

[Will Graham]

They conservatively estimate that there is maybe a one in one billion chance of life arising on a planet similar to Earth. What do you think the chances are that this planet, one of the first we have has life forms? It's cool that we found another one, but alien life there is going to be very over-postulated now

 

[Ohri-Jin]

Dont mistake intelligent life forms with microbial life forms.

http://m.gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life
http://m.gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

Microbial life forms is exterrestial life all the same and there is a high possibility such things may in fact exist other than on earth.

 

[Big Casino]

Does this mean wel have somewhere to go after Iran establishes its nuclear program and blows half the world up in a few years?

 

[Marquis of Granby]

i dunno why we need scientific research for this. just read the bible, the torah or the quran. god/yahweh and allah are all high intelligent beings who created everything. just because we know they exist that does not mean we have a right to know them!

 

[C i d]

http://m.gizmodo.com/5704158/nasa-finds-new-life

This is surprisingly intriguing. Although it's an old piece of news.

All living organisms on earth have phosphorus in DNA, RNA, NAD, FAD, various nucleotides (e.g. ATP, ADP, GTP, etc), etc. As the video in the article mentioned, this new microbial lifeform has arsenic instead of phosporus. This is actually feasible because they have relatively similar chemical and physical properties.

It does change the definition of life somehow. We now know that universal DNA is not necessarily made up of phosphorus, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen.

 

[Linnaete]

All this speculation is well and good, but we've already quite a few potential candidates already, such as Gliese 581d, and any possible confirmation we can get from these planets that they do contain life, is a while off yet. Until we have the technology to somehow scan these planets and give us something conclusive, I can't really express any excitement. And I certainly don't expect to see any spacecraft reach any of these worlds in this lifetime, with the vast distances to cover.

Still, it's a really good find, so good work to the team there.

 

[The Witch]

As much as I love hearing about Kepler finding these other planets this one article about this specific planet is less meaningful than water on mars.

Just because the planet is at the perfect distance from the sun that doesn't automatically mean the planet even has water let alone life. This is just NASA trying to keep this thing going. Which they should, but this is no news of importance when discussing other habitable planets that are like Earth.

And there isn't going to be a way to even see if Kepler-22b even has water or goes through a green house effect. Like Dragonbyte said, we have to weigh many factors before even getting our hopes up about a planet even having the chance of being habitable like Earth is.

Until a planet is found to be of cool temperatures, an ozone, and water, I can't really see a duplicate planet existing. Even if you disregard religion, our planet is the way it is because of a big bang that was really more like an accident with a great outcome. We might find planets that we can walk on and create housing domes on but I just won't get my hopes up for another planet being like earth.

 

[Richard B Riddick]

Awhile ago, I watched a creationist documentary entitled The Young Sun which claimed the sun the earth orbits is exceedingly rare and unique in terms of its consistent and stable sunsports and respective radiation output, etc. And that other suns typically are not moderate enough for long enough spans of time for life to develop.

I'm clueless as to how true or false these claims may be.

But considering mars seems to not have enough of a magnetosphere to provide adequate shielding to maintain a relatively stable and hospitable atmosphere. And the way mass extinctions seem to be accompanied with the earth's poles swinging and the period of diminished shielding that occurs inbetween shifts.

I get the feeling there's a lot that isn't being disclosed with these publicized releases.

Its like mars all over again when NASA would photoshop images to make everything look red tinted and more exotic. And when NASA refused to disclose data which suggested planet x existed -- until they were forced by hackers who broke into their computers and forced disclosure.

In theory, its supposed to be all about accuracy and science and educating the public. In reality, things get political very quickly, which is a bit sad.

 

[Will Graham]

Those arsenic based life forms were blown out of the water. NASA were in a rush doing the experiments on them, in order to publish something. As it turns out there experiments didn't prove that this new organism was any different to every other one on Earth

As someone pointed out, there is a whole set of 'Goldilocks' criteria, not just distance from the Sun

 

[C i d]

Those arsenic based life forms were blown out of the water. NASA were in a rush doing the experiments on them, in order to publish something. As it turns out there experiments didn't prove that this new organism was any different to every other one on Earth

As someone pointed out, there is a whole set of 'Goldilocks' criteria, not just distance from the Sun

Oh that's disappointing. Anyway, that was quite an old piece of news. I shouldn't have taken it too seriously

thansk for pointing it out.

 

[Richard B Riddick]

=P I'd be interested to see that documentary, more specifically i'd be interested in seeing where the got their data on sunspots, since we're nowhere near close enough to even 100 other stars to be able to get any sort of data like that on them.

Our sun is a very common type of star both in its point of life (main sequence) and in size (a little under 4.5 absolute magnitude). most stars in the milky way also hit both of those criteria. In addition larger stars are also capable of supporting life.

Most stars are very stable for a very long time - in general the larger a star is, the less stable, but the vast majority of the stars in the milky way are the size of our sun or smaller (and thus very stable).

I think, this is part of it. I saw it a longg time ago & don't really remember.

Not certain how accurate / inaccurate it is, but it is interesting.

For the record Mars DID have a magnetosphere in the past, it simply lost it as its core cooled down - a billion or two years ago Mars could well have been a very habitable place for life - probably more so than earth.

Yep!

I'd be interested in seeing what Planet X data you're referring to, since to the best of my knowledge it has been thoroughly debunked over and over again - it was initially postulated based on a perceived error in the orbit of neptune which turned out to be a mathematical error, and no data since has suggested there is any planet of significant size out there (or we would have noticed unexplainable characteristics in the orbits of the outer planets, which we don't).

Here's one source.

http://www.webpronews.com/hackers-force-planet-x-outing-2005-08

There may be better references out there, not sure rlly.

 

[Will Graham]

Well you can kind of understand their point about there being something to end an infinite regress i.e. God. That doesn't explain where God came from though, so you once again enter infinite regress. The Big Bang has similar problems though, anyways I digress

Finding planets like this is always great, but we know so little about it, to postulate life or any such notion would be premature at this point

 

[Richard B Riddick]

=P we're referring to a very different "Planet-X" then. What you linked to was the discovery of a Trans-neptunian object (Eris) of which we think there are probably about 100 larger than pluto =P

Its a petty contextual thing.

Is pluto a planet? Yes, most consider it the farthest planet from the sun as it is the traditional model that has existed for decades.

Planet X is simply considered to be a near planet sized mass existing further out than Pluto "conspiracy theorists" and other assorteds said existed for a very long time. The band Tool sheltered in a bomb shelter in their basement years ago because they really believed planet x would trigger the apocalypse.

NASA and other academics don't want to admit said "conspiracy theorists" were correct about Planet X. Or that people outside of an official capacity were correct about there being large, near planetary masses, farther out than Pluto.

So, they try to pretend that planet x was supposed to be a planet & ignore how terminology has changed from pluto being considered a planet to the new terminology with transplanet masses.

The context of planet x is that its a planet in the historic terminology of pluto being considered a planet. Its not a literal argument so much as one made under prior context.

Regarding the video: Didn't see anything at all in there about sunspots etc or aging stars like our sun. I DID see some absolutely hilarious stuff like "Physics cannot explain how dust coalesces!" and "If you need supernovae to make stars, and a supernova to make THAT star, then you need infinite supernovas to make stars!" Or, you know, some other large expulsion of energy, like... the big bang, sherlock =P

That documentary is years old and likely correct about accretion theory having gaping holes.

It was released before the scientific consensus realized accretion theory had gaping holes, so it may well be ahead of its time.

I recommend anyone who wants to see a creationist say *I* don't understand this, therefore that must mean NO ONE does, thus proving me correct! in a pseudo-scientific way watches that clip xD

Well, its not really about creationism or its polar opposite to me. Its just about ideas & theories. Yeah, some of the concepts differ from the consensus but that doesn't necessarily mean they're invalid...

Someone being a creationist or member of a demographic doesn't mean everything they say is flawed or incorrect. Creationists can make excellent arguments as well as anyone, sometimes.

I think anthropic principle and a lot of the historical cosmological arguments are pretty horrendous and inferior to creationism in terms of probability and observed precedents. But, I do acknowledge that fundamentalist creationists are horrible at context and auto interpreting everything within a literal vein.

I just tend to think that no one has all the answers, but every group does have at least a few answers that are valid. So, maybe, to get a valid overview or perspective requires some degree of eclectic collaging... Who knows...