I'm :w00t: ing harder than I ever have before! :w00t:
http://www.hngn.com/articles/111924/20150723/another-earth-nasa-hints-about-possible-new-planet-discovery-with-kepler-telescope.htm
QuoteNASA Found Alien Earth? Space Agency Hints About Possible New Planet Discovery With Kepler Telescope
Has NASA found Earth's twin?
By Rachel Cruz | Jul 23, 2015 12:17 AM EDT
U.S. space agency NASA announced that it will provide details of its latest discovery with the Kepler Space Telescope in a press conference scheduled for 9:00 a.m. PDT on July 23.
The Kepler Space Telescope, which was launched back in 2009, is supposed to find other "habitable zones" in space. Specifically, the mission involves searching for planets that also support water, a vital ingredient for sustaining life. The mission has focused on six regions in space, looking into a star's brightness to indicate that it could be a planet.
For the last six years, the Kepler Space Telescope has made thousands of planetary discoveries and there have been 3,000 candidates for planets with a habitable zone, according to CTV.
"Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago," NASA said in the press release.
"Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years - another Earth," the agency further hinted.
"We're now closer than we've ever been for finding a twin for Earth," said Fergal Mullally from the Kepler Science Office back in January, when NASA announced that the telescope was able to find a planet that has Earth's size, according to Wired.
Doing a press conference, rather than just releasing a research paper or statement, suggests that NASA may finally confirm if one of these candidates is closest and most similar to Earth.
They may have finally found Earth's twin.
How far away is it?
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 23, 2015, 12:39:42 AM
I'm :w00t: ing harder than I ever have before! :w00t:
Impossible.
Time to start construction of the space fence against illegal aliens.
Quote from: Monoriu on July 23, 2015, 12:43:06 AM
How far away is it?
So far away, that if you were to travel as fast as physically possible, it would still take over half a millennia.
I expect lots of presumptions, educated guesses, and no real direct, solid evidence.
Quote from: Tonitrus on July 23, 2015, 04:55:26 AM
I expect lots of presumptions, educated guesses, and no real direct, solid evidence.
Kepler is solid as hell.
Quote from: Razgovory on July 23, 2015, 01:14:51 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on July 23, 2015, 12:43:06 AM
How far away is it?
So far away, that if you were to travel as fast as physically possible, it would still take over half a millennia.
Well we should get going then.
Have you seen Buenos Aires? I vote for WAR!
Quote from: Monoriu on July 23, 2015, 12:43:06 AM
How far away is it?
Thats a point that always gets me about these announcements. They're always around 10,000 light year away stars called L5025156.
Not good sci-fi fodder at all :(
Yeah if we do find something that would only take 500 years to get to I would consider that a win.
How hard are you, Tim?
No.
It's 9 a.m. PDT. Any new planets yet?
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on July 23, 2015, 11:14:37 AM
It's 9 a.m. PDT. Any new planets yet?
Yes: Kepler-452b
:w00t:? :mellow:
And it's only 1400 light years away, which is only 900 light years outside of the Valmy-perimeter.
Presuming we are traveling at light speed. Man can you imagine a human community traveling at light speed for 500 years? I wonder what that would do.
Won't they experience significantly less passage of time at light speed? :hmm:
Quote from: Liep on July 23, 2015, 11:29:25 AM
:w00t:? :mellow:
This shit always gets massively overhyped. Remember, the guys doing the announcing are massive nerds and it's much more exciting to them than Joe Sixpack. All Joe Sixpack cares about is:
:area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52: :area52:
...and here's the thing: if NASA discovered aliens it would be Obama doing the announcing, not some random press guy at NASA.
Quote from: Valmy on July 23, 2015, 09:53:18 AM
Yeah if we do find something that would only take 500 years to get to I would consider that a win.
The objects known to be traveling at the speeds I mentioned are subatomic particles that occasionally crash into the Earth. Nobody knows why the damn things are moving so fast or where they came from. Traveling as fast as any object that can be seen with the naked eye, it would probably take millions of years.
Quote from: Razgovory on July 23, 2015, 12:45:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 23, 2015, 09:53:18 AM
Yeah if we do find something that would only take 500 years to get to I would consider that a win.
The objects known to be traveling at the speeds I mentioned are subatomic particles that occasionally crash into the Earth. Nobody knows why the damn things are moving so fast or where they came from. Traveling as fast as any object that can be seen with the naked eye, it would probably take millions of years.
I guess when you said ' if you were to travel as fast as physically possible' I thought you meant as fast as I could physically travel. But you were addressing subatomic particles instead? :P
Cool stuff though. The planet is a lot older than Earth and maybe a decent chance of having life of some kind beyond microbial? That will be interesting if so, though we won't know for a very long time, or maybe with later tech improvements many years from now then who knows.
Quote from: Valmy on July 23, 2015, 12:50:04 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 23, 2015, 12:45:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 23, 2015, 09:53:18 AM
Yeah if we do find something that would only take 500 years to get to I would consider that a win.
The objects known to be traveling at the speeds I mentioned are subatomic particles that occasionally crash into the Earth. Nobody knows why the damn things are moving so fast or where they came from. Traveling as fast as any object that can be seen with the naked eye, it would probably take millions of years.
I guess when you said ' if you were to travel as fast as physically possible' I thought you meant as fast as I could physically travel. But you were addressing subatomic particles instead? :P
I was addressing physical objects.
Quote from: Razgovory on July 23, 2015, 12:59:03 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 23, 2015, 12:50:04 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 23, 2015, 12:45:21 PM
Quote from: Valmy on July 23, 2015, 09:53:18 AM
Yeah if we do find something that would only take 500 years to get to I would consider that a win.
The objects known to be traveling at the speeds I mentioned are subatomic particles that occasionally crash into the Earth. Nobody knows why the damn things are moving so fast or where they came from. Traveling as fast as any object that can be seen with the naked eye, it would probably take millions of years.
I guess when you said ' if you were to travel as fast as physically possible' I thought you meant as fast as I could physically travel. But you were addressing subatomic particles instead? :P
I was addressing physical objects.
Yeah I got it now.
Quote from: Caliga on July 23, 2015, 11:41:18 AM
...and here's the thing: if NASA discovered aliens it would be Obama doing the announcing, not some random press guy at NASA.
that's what they want you to think! :area52:
Obama may already be in contact with Aliens. It would explain how he came up with the idea of socialized medicine! :area52:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 23, 2015, 05:01:37 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on July 23, 2015, 04:55:26 AM
I expect lots of presumptions, educated guesses, and no real direct, solid evidence.
Kepler is solid as hell.
Like I said...
QuoteNASA finds 'Earth's bigger, older cousin'
By Michael Pearson, CNN
Updated 4:22 PM ET, Thu July 23, 2015
(CNN)NASA said Thursday that its Kepler spacecraft has spotted "Earth's bigger, older cousin": the first nearly Earth-size planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star similar to our own.
Though NASA can't say for sure whether the planet is rocky like ours or has water and air, it's the closest match yet found.
"Today, Earth is a little less lonely," Kepler researcher Jon Jenkins said.
The planet, Kepler-452b, is about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It's about 60% bigger than Earth, NASA says, and is located in its star's habitable zone -- the region where life-sustaining liquid water is possible on the surface of a planet.
A visitor there would experience gravity about twice that of Earth's, and planetary scientists say the odds of it having a rocky surface are "better than even."
While it's a bit farther from its star than Earth is from the sun, its star is brighter, so the planet gets about the same amount of energy from its star as Earth does from the sun. And that sunlight would be very similar to Earth's, Jenkins said.
The planet "almost certainly has an atmosphere," Jenkins said, although scientists can't say what it's made of. But (http://iftheassumptionsofplanetarygeologistsarecorrect), he said, Kepler-452b's atmosphere would probably be thicker than Earth's, and it would have active volcanoes.
It takes 385 days for the planet to orbit its star, very similar to Earth's 365-day year, NASA said. And because it's spent so long orbiting in this zone -- 6 billion years -- it's had plenty of time to brew life, Jenkins said.
"That's substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet," he said in a statement.
Before the discovery of this planet, one called Kepler-186f was considered the most Earthlike, according to NASA. That planet, no more than a 10th bigger than Earth, is about 500 light-years away from us. But it gets only about a third of the energy from its star as Earth does from the sun, and noon there would look similar to the evening sky here, NASA says.
The $600 million Kepler mission launched in 2009 with a goal to survey a portion of the Milky Way for habitable planets.
From a vantage point 64 million miles from Earth, it scans the light from distant stars, looking for almost imperceptible drops in a star's brightness, suggesting a planet has passed in front of it.
It has discovered more than 1,000 planets. Twelve of those, including Kepler-425b, have been less than twice the size of Earth and in the habitable zones of the stars they orbit.
Missions are being readied to move scientists closer to the goal of finding yet more planets and cataloging their atmospheres and other characteristics.
In 2017, NASA plans to launch a planet-hunting satellite called TESS that will be able to provide scientists with more detail on the size, mass and atmospheres of planets circling distant stars.
The next year, the James Webb Space Telescope will go up. That platform, NASA says, will provide astonishing insights into other worlds, including their color, seasonal differences, weather and even the potential presence of vegetation.
No planets have really actually been seen, just indirectly presumed to exist. And any surface properties are just wild guesses and assumptions.
I am not suggesting that there is no proof of planets around other stars...it would extraordinarily dense to presume otherwise. I just think NASA is overhyping this "ZOMG alien earth worlds!" angle a bit too much.
If the James Webb Telescope is actually able to see them...now that will be pretty friggen awesome.
So we send a colony ship with a self-sustaining population of several thousand people over there. After who knows how many years and generations past, they arrive at their destination, only to find a black hole or a gas giant there because somebody's assumptions were wrong...
Well, maybe not a gas giant or black hole. I will concede they might have a good guess for some kind of roughly earth-size object in the habitable zone.
Except it could just be "essentially a great rock in space". Or be completely toxic to humans. Or full of large-breasted succubi who will enslave our intrepid colonists for breeding.
Quote from: Tonitrus on July 23, 2015, 11:51:10 PM
Or full of large-breasted succubi who will enslave our intrepid colonists for breeding.
Caliga just volunteered for the mission.
Leather Goddesses of Phobos? :hmm:
Quote from: Caliga on July 24, 2015, 09:49:52 AM
Leather Goddesses of Phobos? :hmm:
The Latex Babes of Estros
Can't wait till we colonize it and make all its inhabitants our slaves.
Quote from: Josephus on July 24, 2015, 12:26:14 PM
Can't wait till we colonize it and make all its inhabitants our slaves.
But then they prove difficult to enslave on their home turf so we have to import slaves from another planet.
Quote from: Tonitrus on July 23, 2015, 11:39:06 PM
No planets have really actually been seen, just indirectly presumed to exist. And any surface properties are just wild guesses and assumptions.
I am not suggesting that there is no proof of planets around other stars...it would extraordinarily dense to presume otherwise. I just think NASA is overhyping this "ZOMG alien earth worlds!" angle a bit too much.
If the James Webb Telescope is actually able to see them...now that will be pretty friggen awesome.
Agreed. And the Webb Scope is scheduled to launch in 2017, so maybe not too many years after that we can start to see more detail like they hope/expect from it.
Quote from: Tonitrus on July 23, 2015, 11:39:06 PM
No planets have really actually been seen, just indirectly presumed to exist. And any surface properties are just wild guesses and assumptions.
I am not suggesting that there is no proof of planets around other stars...it would extraordinarily dense to presume otherwise. I just think NASA is overhyping this "ZOMG alien earth worlds!" angle a bit too much.
If the James Webb Telescope is actually able to see them...now that will be pretty friggen awesome.
Ironically, the most ill-informed suppositions here are yours. We're not going to "see" these planets for a couple hundred years- there is just no material yet known to man with optic properties that will allow that kind of magnification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system
While photometric transit timing has got its problems (mainly false positives), that's why Kepler isn't fully automated- the trick is separating out false positives. Once they've got a solid positive, though, the guess about the materials and atmospheric composition are actually really well-informed- they can use the incoming information like a really "blurry" spectrometer to figure out the major core and atmospheric elements, and since they know how those elements behave at certain temperatures (especially in the "habitable zone" of a star), they can hazard a very shrewd guess at whether those materials are more likely to be solid (a core) or gaseous (an atmosphere). It's not just "wild guesses and assumptions."
Quote from: DontSayBanana on July 25, 2015, 12:57:02 AM
Quote from: Tonitrus on July 23, 2015, 11:39:06 PM
No planets have really actually been seen, just indirectly presumed to exist. And any surface properties are just wild guesses and assumptions.
I am not suggesting that there is no proof of planets around other stars...it would extraordinarily dense to presume otherwise. I just think NASA is overhyping this "ZOMG alien earth worlds!" angle a bit too much.
If the James Webb Telescope is actually able to see them...now that will be pretty friggen awesome.
Ironically, the most ill-informed suppositions here are yours. We're not going to "see" these planets for a couple hundred years- there is just no material yet known to man with optic properties that will allow that kind of magnification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system
While photometric transit timing has got its problems (mainly false positives), that's why Kepler isn't fully automated- the trick is separating out false positives. Once they've got a solid positive, though, the guess about the materials and atmospheric composition are actually really well-informed- they can use the incoming information like a really "blurry" spectrometer to figure out the major core and atmospheric elements, and since they know how those elements behave at certain temperatures (especially in the "habitable zone" of a star), they can hazard a very shrewd guess at whether those materials are more likely to be solid (a core) or gaseous (an atmosphere). It's not just "wild guesses and assumptions."
Jame's Webb Space Telescope will be able to directly image them. They'll just be a dot of light, but it counts.
http://jwst.nasa.gov/origins.html
QuoteJWST and Exoplanets
One of the main uses of the James Webb Space Telescope will be to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, to search for the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe. But JWST is an infrared telescope. How is this good for studying exoplanets?
One method JWST will use for studying exoplanets is the transit method, which means it will look for dimming of the light from a star as its planet passes between us and the star. (Astronomers call this a "transit".) Collaboration with ground-based telescopes can help us measure the mass of the planets, via the radial velocity technique (i.e., measuring the stellar wobble produced by the gravitational tug of a planet), and then JWST will do spectroscopy of the planet's atmosphere.
JWST will also carry coronagraphs to enable direct imaging of exoplanets near bright stars. The image of an exoplanet would just be a spot, not a grand panorama, but by studying that spot, we can learn a great deal about it. That includes its color, differences between winter and summer, vegetation, rotation, weather...How is this done? The answer again is spectroscopy.
Spectroscopy
Spectroscopy is simply the science of measuring the intensity of light at different wavelengths. The graphical representations of these measurements are called spectra, and they are the key to unlocking the composition of exoplanet atmospheres.
When a planet passes in front of a star, the starlight passes through the planet's atmosphere. If, for example, the planet has sodium in its atmosphere, the spectra of the star, added to that of the planet, will have what we call an "absorption line" in the place in the spectra where would expect to see sodium (see graphic below). This is because different elements and molecules absorb light at characteristic energies; and this is how we know where in a spectrum we might expect to see the signature of sodium (or methane or water) if it is present.
Why is an infrared telescope key to characterizing the atmospheres of these exoplanets? The benefit of making infrared observations is that it is at infrared wavelengths that molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets have the largest number of spectral features. The ultimate goal, of course, is to find a planet with a similar atmosphere to that of Earth.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 23, 2015, 05:01:37 AM
Kepler is solid as hell.
Real hell or the frozen kind?
I demand one of those dark side of the moon observatories that we were meant to have by 2000 (according to hand me down science books I had as a kid).
Quote from: Tyr on July 25, 2015, 12:38:11 PM
I demand one of those dark side of the moon observatories that we were meant to have by 2000 (according to hand me down science books I had as a kid).
First we have to defeat the space Nazis.
You should've elected Newt.