NASA has confirmed the existance of 2 earth sized planets orbiting another star.....

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BruiserBear

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Scientists have found two Earth-sized planets orbiting a star outside the solar system, an encouraging sign for prospects of finding life elsewhere.

The discovery shows that such planets exist and that they can be detected by the Kepler spacecraft, said Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. They're the smallest planets found so far that orbit a star resembling our sun.

Scientists are seeking Earth-sized planets as potential homes for extraterrestrial life, said Fressin, who reports the new findings in a paper published online Tuesday by the journal Nature. One planet's diameter is only 3 percent larger than Earth's, while the other's diameter is about nine-tenths that of Earth. They appear to be rocky, like our planet.

But they are too hot to contain life as we know it, with calculated temperatures of about 1,400 degrees and 800 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.

Any life found on another plant may not be intelligent; it could be bacteria or mold or some completely unknown form.

Since it was launched in 2009, NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope has found evidence of dozens of possible Earth-sized planets. But Fressin's report is the first to provide confirmation, said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington. He's a member of the Kepler science team but not an author of the paper.

The researchers ruled out a possible alternative explanation for the signals that initially indicated the planets were orbiting the star Kepler-20. The star is 950 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra.

The planets are called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f.

Earlier this month, scientists said they'd found a planet around another distant star with a life-friendly surface temperature of about 72 degrees. But it was too big to suggest life on its surface. At 2.4 times the size of Earth, it could be more like the gas-and-liquid Neptune with only a rocky core and mostly ocean, scientists said.
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http://news.yahoo.com/2-earth-size-planets-spotted-around-distant-star-180146059.html
 
Amazing. The probability of life being out there somewhere gets higher and higher as we find more planets in their stars' Goldilocks zones, more rocky planets, and more planets comparable in size to Earth. Fire up the Drake equation and plug in some fresh variables!

And yes, this is still a big deal. These planets don't need to support life to tell us more about what kinds of exoplanets we should expect to find in the future.
 
This is a big deal because until now they had only been able to detect very large planets, like Jupiter sized. These are the first two they've discovered that are earth sized, and the fact that they're able to detect planets so small (relatively speaking), is rather amazing.
 
BruiserBear said:
This is a big deal because until now they had only been able to detect very large planets, like Jupiter sized. These are the first two they've discovered that are earth sized, and the fact that they're able to detect planets so small (relatively speaking), is rather amazing.
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Exactly. I wonder what method was used to confirm these planets, exactly? Probably the wobble method for their mass and the transit method for their relative size?
 
Teh Hamburglar said:
Our imaginations can take us there faster than any rocket.
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CaRpA.jpg
 
OP, you are hereby fined 250 internet spacebucks for intentionally misleading us with what is essentially non-news. Case closed, pay the cashier on the way out.
 
Shick Brithouse said:
OP, you are hereby fined 250 internet spacebucks for intentionally misleading us with what is essentially non-news. Case closed, pay the cashier on the way out.
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Confirming the existence of exoplanets with size and composition comparable to our own world is news. All charges against the defendant are dismissed, and I'm holding you in contempt of e-court.
 
Earlier this month, scientists said they'd found a planet around another distant star with a life-friendly surface temperature of about 72 degrees. But it was too big to suggest life on its surface. At 2.4 times the size of Earth, it could be more like the gas-and-liquid Neptune with only a rocky core and mostly ocean, scientists said.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this just highlights how narrow the range really is for "life-supporting" and especially "complex life-supporting" planets. Getting too much larger than Earth, gravitational forces will likely crush any solids from forming. Getting too close to a star, the surface temperature will be too high for liquid water. Getting too far from a star, the surface temperature will be too low for liquid water. Getting much smaller than Earth, the gravitational forces will be too weak to have consistent nuclear fission reactions at its core, which would create volcanic eruptions, and then potentially an atmosphere to stabilize the planet's temperature.
 
Even if it were considered unimportant, how would the title be misleading in any way?

^ what planets have fission reactions in their core?
 
Still waiting for that alien confirmation....

Question: If someone orbiting a nearby star were to look at earth/sol, is there absolutely NO way they could know some sort of life exists there? Electromagnetic spectrum analysis or some shit?

Another question: I know that it takes 8 minutes for the suns light to reach us, but if the sun were to vanish instantly (hypothetical) we would know for 8 minutes, right? Or does gravity 'travel' faster?

Just thought i'd throw some q's out there for the gaf geniuses..
 
Something Wicked said:
Yeah, this just highlights how narrow the range really is for "life-supporting" and especially "complex life-supporting" planets. Getting too much larger than Earth, gravitational forces will likely crush any solids from forming.
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Wait, what? We've found plenty of rocky "super-Earths" that have solid surfaces and quite a bit more gravity. Whether or not solid (organic) compounds could form on them is more a function of whether or not they have an atmosphere in the first place.

Something Wicked said:
Getting too close to a star, the surface temperature will be too high for liquid water. Getting too far from a star, the surface temperature will be too low for liquid water. Getting much smaller than Earth, the gravitational forces will be too small to have consistent nuclear fission reactions at its core, which would create volcanic eruptions, and then potentially an atmosphere to stabilize the planet's temperature.
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There's always the greenhouse effect for the bolded. Though hopefully not too much of it so you don't end up like Venus.
 
Shick Brithouse said:
OP, you are hereby fined 250 internet spacebucks for intentionally misleading us with what is essentially non-news. Case closed, pay the cashier on the way out.
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This is great news, actually. If we can detect earth sized planets, it opens up our search so much more. Now we just need to find them in the Goldilocks zone.
 
Re: fission in planet cores

Looking around, fission is thought to be producing a bit more than half of the heat in the earth's core. That's pretty interesting.
 
Technosteve said:
It's too bad we are only seeing into Those planets past.
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Eh, 950 years isn't that bad on a geological timescale. If those planets have life "now," they'll probably still have it many years in the future when we can perhaps get some optical data on those planets.

Sentry said:
Still waiting for that alien confirmation....

Question: If someone orbiting a nearby star were to look at earth/sol, is there absolutely NO way they could know some sort of life exists there? Electromagnetic spectrum analysis or some shit?

Another question: I know that it takes 8 minutes for the suns light to reach us, but if the sun were to vanish instantly (hypothetical) we would know for 8 minutes, right? Or does gravity 'travel' faster?

Just thought i'd throw some q's out there for the gaf geniuses..
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1. Radio telescopes like SETI's array would be our best hope for finding life on planets orbiting relatively close stars. If we were to pick up something like, say, an encoded string of prime numbers, we'd know it was sent by a civilization.

2. Gravity "travels" at the speed of light, so it's the first case.

KHarvey16 said:
Re: fission in planet cores

Looking around, fission is thought to be producing a bit more than half of the heat in the earth's core. That's pretty interesting.
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Fun fact: Neptune generates more heat internally than it gets from the sun.
 
Something Wicked said:
Yeah, this just highlights how narrow the range really is for "life-supporting" and especially "complex life-supporting" planets. Getting too much larger than Earth, gravitational forces will likely crush any solids from forming. Getting too close to a star, the surface temperature will be too high for liquid water. Getting too far from a star, the surface temperature will be too low for liquid water. Getting much smaller than Earth, the gravitational forces will be too weak to have consistent nuclear fission reactions at its core, which would create volcanic eruptions, and then potentially an atmosphere to stabilize the planet's temperature.
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You're looking at Earth Life Supporting.

Doesn't mean life can't evolve in different conditions. We have creatures living in the depths of ocean that would crush surface life. Chemosynthesis is happening down there. Which proves that there are ways of producing nutrients without the sun. We've discovered life living in sulfuric lakes. Worms and bacteria living deep deep deeeeeeep underground.

All this just on our own planet.

There could be life out there based on silicon rather than Carbon. Life that breathes other gasses for sustenance, such as methane. What about floating life on Gas planets?
 
Strike that actually, I should have read the article. They credit the decay of radioactive elements as the source of heat, not fission.
 
Orayn said:
Eh, 950 years isn't that bad on a geological timescale. If those planets have life "now," they'll probably still have it many years in the future when we can perhaps get some optical data on those planets.

1. Radio telescopes like SETI's array would be our best hope for finding life on planets orbiting relatively close stars. If we were to pick up something like, say, an encoded string of prime numbers, we'd know it was sent by a civilization.

2. Gravity "travels" at the speed of light, so it's the first case.

Fun fact: Neptune generates more heat internally than it gets from the sun.
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Sure, but is there no way for us to know any type of information about an exoplanet, i.e. other than size, distance from its sun etc?

And about gravity, is this confirmed? It's just weird to think about.
 
KHarvey16 said:
Strike that actually, I should have read the article. They credit the decay of radioactive elements as the source of heat, not fission.
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That is fission, dude. You break apart a nucleus and getting all that delicious binding energy in the form of heat, radiation, and stray neutrons that go flying all over the place. The aforementioned stuff is usually launched out in close proximity to other atoms of the same element, so lots of those will get hit and start to be "encouraged" to undergo fusion as well.

Sentry said:
Sure, but is there no way for us to know any type of information about an exoplanet, i.e. other than size, distance from its sun etc?

And about gravity, is this confirmed? It's just weird to think about.
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Well, it's possible to image them optically if you get a really good, really big lens.

And yeah, the gravity thing is confirmed. As far as we know, nothing happens faster than the speed of light.
 
KHarvey16 said:
Even if it were considered unimportant, how would the title be misleading in any way?

^ what planets have fission reactions in their core?
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For non-gas giant planets, there is Venus and Earth in our solar system. Mars may still have an active core, but there hasn't been much evidence of recent eruptions. So just to extrapolate a bit, a planet may have to be larger than Mars to have sustained nuclear fission reactions at its core.
 
Orayn said:
That is fission, dude. You break apart a nucleus and getting all that delicious binding energy in the form of heat, radiation, and stray neutrons that go flying all over the place. The aforementioned stuff is usually launched out in close proximity to other atoms of the same element, so lots of those will get hit and start to be "encouraged" to undergo fusion as well.
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Nope, fission and decay are two different processes!
 
leadbelly said:
What kind of news is this? A universe with probably billions of planets.
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So? We only know about dozens of them. Why wouldn't it be a big deal when we find more, especially with sizes and compositions that we haven't really observed before?

KHarvey16 said:
Nope, fission and decay are two different processes!
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Are you sure they weren't just generalizing? Blah, my bad I suppose. I stand corrected in that fission is a specific process involving radioactive decay.
 
A27 Tawpgun said:
You're looking at Earth Life Supporting.

Doesn't mean life can't evolve in different conditions. We have creatures living in the depths of ocean that would crush surface life. Chemosynthesis is happening down there. Which proves that there are ways of producing nutrients without the sun. We've discovered life living in sulfuric lakes. Worms and bacteria living deep deep deeeeeeep underground.
Click to expand...

You're confusing how life initially started on Earth and how organisms eventually evolved to live in different conditions. There's no way complex molecules like RNA and DNA form in non-liquid or very cold, stagnant conditions.


Also, I'll bring up another big factor in how life began on Earth: having the gravity of the Moon to stir our oceans, which were formed via a massive bombardment of water-containing asteroids/comets over at least 100s of millions of years. A planet may need some type of "stirrer," such as a moon, to initiate the very complex reactions to develop life.
 
Image we advance to the point of being able to have a craft collect samples from these planets to then come back and possibly be bacterial viruses that kill us all in the blink of an eye. Would be hilarious.
 
leadbelly said:
To some maybe, but Earth-sized planets in a universe of billions of planets is pretty much a given.

Now this interests me.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...med-life-nasa-kepler-habitable-space-science/
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Two sides of the same coin. We just need to combine the stories and then we'll be in business!

Also, for the reasons Something Wicked is describing, we should we putting more effort into figuring out whether or not there are alternate "types" of life that might exist on planets that would otherwise be unsuitable.

Juancho9 said:
Image we advance to the point of being able to have a craft collect samples from these planets to then come back and possibly be bacterial viruses that kill us all in the blink of an eye. Would be hilarious.
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I swear, every science story gets silly posts like this. What is accomplished by saying this, other than the generic "HAHA HUMANS ARE STUPID AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE!" implication?
 
Orayn said:
Two sides of the same coin. We just need to combine the stories and then we'll be in business!

Also, for the reasons Something Wicked is describing, we should we putting more effort into figuring out whether or not there are alternate "types" of life that might exist on planets that would otherwise be unsuitable.



I swear, every science story gets silly posts like this. What is accomplished by saying this, other than the generic "HAHA HUMANS ARE STUPID AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE!" implication?
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I didn't mean to jump in on that bandwagon, I fully support these advancements and discoveries, I was just being dumb on purpose lol.
 
Orayn said:
Two sides of the same coin. We just need to combine the stories and then we'll be in business!

Also, for the reasons Something Wicked is describing, we should we putting more effort into figuring out whether or not there are alternate "types" of life that might exist on planets that would otherwise be unsuitable.
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True, but those planets are too hot to support life, at least as we know it. It would be amazing if life could exist in those conditions, but there is nothing to suggest it.
 
So we've found planets in the Goldilocks zone, and we've now found planets the size of Earth. I can't imagine it being much longer until we find Earth sized planets in the Goldilocks zone. And only 1000 light years away...It makes my legs numb to think about how many planets there must be in a 10,000 ly radius, or in our own galaxy, or in another galaxy, or in our galactic cluster, or another galactic cluster.

Has anyone updated Sagan's formula to include what we have been finding recently? It feels like he may have underestimated the amount of planets per star system.

edit: Drake Equation was the term I was looking for. I confused Sagan explaining it for him inventing it.
 
PrivateWHudson said:
So we've found planets in the Goldilocks zone, and we've now found planets the size of Earth. I can't imagine it being much longer until we find Earth sized planets in the Goldilocks zone. And only 1000 light years away...It makes my legs numb to think about how many planets there must be in a 10,000 ly radius, or in our own galaxy, or in another galaxy, or in our galactic cluster, or another galactic cluster.

Has anyone updated Sagan's formula to include what we have been finding recently? It feels like he may have underestimated the amount of planets per star system.
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lol

You didn't click my link then.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...med-life-nasa-kepler-habitable-space-science/
 
Orayn said:
Also, for the reasons Something Wicked is describing, we should we putting more effort into figuring out whether or not there are alternate "types" of life that might exist on planets that would otherwise be unsuitable.
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Though I'm trying to make to distinction of the conditions: how life can start versus where life can potentially exist. As seen on Earth, life can evolve to utilize many different sources of energy to survive; however the microbiological reactions needed to start such first are extremely complex. I think many astrophysicists underestimate how complex such reactions really are. There could be a planet with the exact same conditions as pre-life Earth, but if certain reactions do not occur in a certain order, then molecules like DNA and RNA may never form and especially not a fully functioning cell.
 
Something Wicked said:
Though I'm trying to make to distinction of the conditions: how life can start versus where life can potentially exist. As seen on Earth, life can evolve to utilize many different sources of energy to survive; however the microbiological reactions needed to start such first are extremely complex. I think many astrophysicists underestimate how complex such reactions really are. There could be a planet with the exact same conditions as pre-life Earth, but if certain reactions do not occur in a certain order, then molecules like DNA and RNA may never form and especially not a fully functioning cell.
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Not to mention self-replication.
 
Orayn said:
Also, for the reasons Something Wicked is describing, we should we putting more effort into figuring out whether or not there are alternate "types" of life that might exist on planets that would otherwise be unsuitable.
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Do you mean other than carbon life form, like silicon based life form for instance?
 
Phoenician_Viking said:
Do you mean other than carbon life form, like silicon based life form for instance?
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Possibly. but silicon is a long shot since we don't know anything comparable to DNA that it would use. I'm thinking more about speculated forms of life that use some of the same building blocks as what we're used to, like RNA-based organisms more complex than viruses.
 
Juancho9 said:
Image we advance to the point of being able to have a craft collect samples from these planets to then come back and possibly be bacterial viruses that kill us all in the blink of an eye. Would be hilarious.
Click to expand...

How would it be hilarious? You wouldn't have time to laugh or make a thread on GAF. You'd be dead.
 
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