Kepler finds planet in habital zone, temperature 72f!

[jimmy olsen]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/uk-space-planet-idUSLNE7B501D20111206

By Irene Klotz

MOFFET FIELD, California | Tue Dec 6, 2011 6:10am EST

(Reuters) - The most Earth-like planet ever discovered is circling a star 600 light years away, a key finding in an ongoing quest to learn if life exists beyond Earth, scientists said on Monday.

The planet, called Kepler-22b, joins a list of more than 500 planets found to orbit stars beyond our solar system. It is the smallest and the best positioned to have liquid water on its surface -- among the ingredients necessary for life on Earth.

"We are homing in on the true Earth-sized, habitable planets," said San Jose State University astronomer Natalie Batalha, deputy science team lead for NASA's Kepler Space Telescope that discovered the star.

The telescope, which was launched three years ago, is staring at about 150,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, looking for faint and periodic dimming as any circling planets pass by, relative to Kepler's line of sight.

Results will be extrapolated to determine the percentage of stars in the Milky Way galaxy that harbour potentially habitable, Earth-size planets.

This is the first detection of a potentially habitable world orbiting a Sun-like star, scientists reported in findings to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Kepler-22b is 600 light years away. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

GROUND TELESCOPES

Planets about the same distance from their parent stars as Earth take roughly a year to complete an orbit. Scientists want to see at least three transits to be able to rule out other explanations for fluctuations in a star's light, such as small companion stars. Results also are verified by ground and other space telescopes.

Kepler-22b, which is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth, sits squarely in its star's so-called "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on the surface. Follow-up studies are under way to determine if the planet is solid, like Earth, or more gaseous like Neptune.

"We don't know anything about the planets between Earth-size and Neptune-size because in our solar system we have no examples of such planets. We don't know what fraction are going to be rocky, what fraction are going to be water worlds, what fraction are ice worlds. We have no idea until we measure one and see," Batalha said at a news conference at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California.

If Kepler-22b has a surface and a cushion of atmosphere similar to Earth's, it would be about 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 C), about the same as a spring day in Earth's temperate zone.

Among the 2,326 candidate planets found by the Kepler team, 10 are roughly Earth-size and reside in their host stars' habitable zones.

Another team of privately funded astronomers is scanning the target stars for non-naturally occurring radio signals, part of a project known as SETI, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

"As soon as we find a different, a separate, an independent example of life somewhere else, we're going to know that it's ubiquitous throughout the universe," said astronomer Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute in Mountain View.

The Kepler team is meeting for its first science conference this week.

[Neil]

Find something closer.  This one is impossible to investigate via robot.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

and use metric, this is science after all

[Josquius]

Read this today and just knew Tim would be posting it.

And yeah, it is rather annoying these kinds of things are always so far away. It doesn't make any practical difference but still, for sci-fi purposes...

[Neil]

and use metric, this is science after all

An excellent point.  When I see non-metric being used in a science article, I have a hard time taking it seriously.  The author comes off as a rube.

[jimmy olsen]

and use metric, this is science after all

An excellent point.  When I see non-metric being used in a science article, I have a hard time taking it seriously.  The author comes off as a rube.

Their audience is Americans (rubes) so they have to.

[Valmy]

Read this today and just knew Tim would be posting it.

And yeah, it is rather annoying these kinds of things are always so far away. It doesn't make any practical difference but still, for sci-fi purposes...

Once Vladimir Putin invents eternal life we can start our trip.  Granted I will probably kill myself 100 years in but whatever.

[DGuller]

Looks like we have ourselves a Plan B. Fuck global warming.

[garbon]

Looks like we have ourselves a Plan B. Fuck global warming.

Our plan is an anti-conception pill?

[Darth Wagtaros]

I say we arm ourselves against an invasion from these xeno scum.

[DontSayBanana]

I say we arm ourselves against an invasion from these xeno scum.

Honestly, they can't be that tough if they can be taken down by an intern with a crowbar.

[Razgovory]

Sure is big.  600 ly is a long way.

EDITED.  The galaxy is much bigger then I initially wrote.

[The Brain]

600 ly? Might as well be on the Moon.

[Eddie Teach]

Who'd want to live on the moon anyway, what with the overpowering cheese smell.

[Josephus]

I'm so ready to colonize