Earth like planet found!

[vihreekerma]

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2022489,00.html

Now it's the time to lean back and light a spliff.

[Giovanni Falcone]

Earth Like Planets.

Thank you for reminding me about this exoplanet, I completely forgot about it, because our solar system is highly considered to be teeming with life (extremophiles), so it's just about to get real buck in here. I usually check out Mars. But seriously think about the odds of 100% match visiting Earth. So that means better odds of aliens not being able to do much shit visiting Earth. Space is so infinite, and mathematical, that really the sightliest difference, it could be huge. Most aliens can't really being able to do much outside of their spaceship.

[vihreekerma]

Yeah you're right. I guess this was just  the nearest one, like 20 light years away.

[David]

So...
 

      ...no Lucifer?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010:_Odyssey_Two?wasRedirected=true

[tonysean]

and guess what... it's inhabited by 8 foot tall blue people and teeming with extremely valuable elements. sweet

[Jupiter]

as long as the women have total recall boobs then im cool

[Narcissus]

I always imagine that Giovanni Falcone is a space alien due to his fractious syntax and apparently tenuous relationship with reality.

[grimcity]

I still wish we could hurry up and scoop some life out of Europa's ocean(s), bring it all to Earth, then let me find a way to deep fry it.

[MrDreamPop]

this is very exciting.  the fact that the planet is 3-4x as massive as earth may mean that any form of higher life may be significantly different than anything we're aware of though.  this is too cool.

[Mooley]

Pretty cool, but it's 20 light years away from us... it'll be a really long time before we get any cool details about what the planet's actually like.

[Giovanni Falcone]

Actually that's not true. A sober me will post some links about how many earth like planets there are. We could build a telescope large enough right now to see if a planet has intelligent life, but that is far too expensive. The UK is working on establishing an ET Rep in case contact is made. We are actually pretty close to some raw shit. Another telescope in the works searches for oceans.

How exoplanets are discovered, astronomers look to see if anything passes in front of a star, which would look like a faint dot but would really be a gas giant. There have been over 500 discovered. There is more shit I just can't remember off the top of my head.

[Kage]

Actually that's not true. A sober me will post some links about how many earth like planets there are. We could build a telescope large enough right now to see if a planet has intelligent life, but that is far too expensive. The UK is working on establishing an ET Rep in case contact is made. We are actually pretty close to some raw shit. Another telescope in the works searches for oceans.

How exoplanets are discovered, astronomers look to see if anything passes in front of a star, which would look like a faint dot but would really be a gas giant. There have been over 500 discovered. There is more shit I just can't remember off the top of my head.

Please shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about.

[David]

and guess what... it's inhabited by 8 foot tall blue people and teeming with extremely valuable elements. sweet

[Magic Pizza]

[CUDDLEMONSTER]

Expand Quote

Actually that's not true. A sober me will post some links about how many earth like planets there are. We could build a telescope large enough right now to see if a planet has intelligent life, but that is far too expensive. The UK is working on establishing an ET Rep in case contact is made. We are actually pretty close to some raw shit. Another telescope in the works searches for oceans.

How exoplanets are discovered, astronomers look to see if anything passes in front of a star, which would look like a faint dot but would really be a gas giant. There have been over 500 discovered. There is more shit I just can't remember off the top of my head.

[close]

Please shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about.

but dude, space is so mathematical.

[Magic Pizza]

[Mooley]

Hibbert: Homer, this is your physician, Dr. Julius Hibbert.  Can you
             tell us what it's like in there?
 Homer: Uh...it's like...did anyone see the movie "Tron"?
Hibbert: No.
    Lisa: No.
  Marge: No.
Wiggum: No.
    Bart: No.
   Patty: No.
 Wiggum: No.
    Ned: No.
 Selma: No.
   Frink: No.
Lovejoy: No.
Wiggum: Yes.  I mean -- um, I mean, no.

[David]

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/13/aymara-peoples-rever.html

[TheFreshSC]

Hibbert: Homer, this is your physician, Dr. Julius Hibbert.  Can you
             tell us what it's like in there?
 Homer: Uh...it's like...did anyone see the movie "Tron"?
Hibbert: No.
    Lisa: No.
  Marge: No.
Wiggum: No.
    Bart: No.
   Patty: No.
 Wiggum: No.
    Ned: No.
 Selma: No.
   Frink: No.
Lovejoy: No.
Wiggum: Yes.  I mean -- um, I mean, no.

gnar'd

[grimcity]

Actually that's not true. A sober me will post some links about how many earth like planets there are. We could build a telescope large enough right now to see if a planet has intelligent life, but that is far too expensive. The UK is working on establishing an ET Rep in case contact is made. We are actually pretty close to some raw shit. Another telescope in the works searches for oceans.

How exoplanets are discovered, astronomers look to see if anything passes in front of a star, which would look like a faint dot but would really be a gas giant. There have been over 500 discovered. There is more shit I just can't remember off the top of my head.

Man, I'm pretty sure this is the first one we've been able to spot in a habitable zone as we know it. We lucked out because it's a big-enough object that isn't completely blotted out by a sun like ours.

...edited to add that the habital zone of a red dwarf isn't anything like ours in any regard other than temperature. Still, hopin' for oceans.

[MrDreamPop]

it was my understanding that we've found hundreds of exoplanets that are gas giants and nothing like earth, a very few found that are relatively closer to our mass and next to nothing that exist in the goldilocks zone.  this is the first one people have seen that meets all the criteria of our terrestrial idea of life.

[Giovanni Falcone]

Gliese 581, which is a Red Dwarf star system has been observed for 11 years by the Keck Telescope. Planets were already known to orbit the red dwarf star, Gliese 581c was the main focus. There are six planets now, b, c, d, e, f, g. Gliese 581g is the newly discovered planet in the Goldi-Locks Zone for a red dwarf. I imagine the planet is pretty different having a red dwarf star and being 3 times the mass of Earth.

Cool.

But what is really cool is the Kepler Telescope.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/

With already 492 something exoplanets discovered, the Kepler telescope has 700+ more to confirm...

Kepler is going through about 156,000 stars. What amazes me is Alpha Centauri, our closest star, 4 something light-years away, no exoplanet discoveries have been made yet.

There are a few specific Earth Hunters and ET Hunters, Kepler, NASA SIM (Space Interferometry Mission), and SETI. And some scientist from UC Santa Cruz made the discovery of Gliese 581g...

Hoax, Hype, or Truth?



I don't blame you for skipping that video. Back to Kepler, of those 700+, there are some that are Earth-Sized, sometimes known as Earth-Like. This is way different than Habitable (Goldi-Locks Zone).

Here is the blog link to that youtube video
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/07/26/4756559-millions-of-earths-talk-causes-a-stir

A leader of the Kepler planet-hunting team has created a slow-moving scientific stir by telling an audience at a high-tech conference that our galaxy could harbor 100 million Earths, based on the space mission's raw data. The resulting buzz focuses not only on the findings, but also on the means by which they came to light.

The conclusions drawn by Harvard astronomer Dimitar Sasselov totally make sense, based on the composition of our own solar system. If we look at the eight dominant planets, four of them are Earth-scale, two are Neptune-scale, and the other two are big gas giants. (And then there are hundreds or thousands of smaller worlds like Pluto.)

but...

Responding to the buzz, NASA stressed that the Kepler team has confirmed detection of only five planets, not the 140 mentioned in the news reports. Sasselov, meanwhile, told Space.com that he was "simply repeating what was already announced" last month by the full science team.

"So no new news here - but more to come later in the year!" he told Space.com.

Here is the link to "what already announced"
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/15/4512943-an-avalanche-of-alien-planets

So who knows what will be announced next...

According to the Kepler site, the link I posted above, 7 planets are confirmed, and all their data can be found on that link.

All of this is pretty cool.

Here is the link to where I read about the ocean detecting telescope
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11218802

[Giovanni Falcone]

A space ambassador could be appointed by the United Nations to act as the first point of contact for aliens trying to communicate with earth.

Professor of space science John Zarnecki explains why earth should prepare itself for first contact.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9035000/9035520.stm

[frisco]

fuck just thinking about space and how infinitely massive it is makes my head explode

[David]

[Donkey Lips]

fuck just thinking about space and how infinitely massive it is makes my head explode

Yeah but you know what, we fucking got MJ.

[Mevs]

fuck just thinking about space and how infinitely massive it is makes my head explode

You should check this out then...similar to the gif you posted but interactive and goes all the way down to the sub-atomic level too. It melted my mind  

http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

The thing that I found interesting about Gliese 581g is the fact that it's fixed in an synchronous orbit, so that one side is always in scorching perpetual daylight and the other in freezing darkness. That's some Zelda: Link to the Past Light world / Dark world shit, and ample fuel for imagining how life could evolve there 

[Mein Fuhrer! I can walk!]

If all these aliens would come to Earth, we'd be bombarded with street corner ads and more sneaker facts than any man could ever know

[grimcity]

Kepler is going through about 156,000 stars. What amazes me is Alpha Centauri, our closest star, 4 something light-years away, no exoplanet discoveries have been made yet.

Alpha Centauri's a binary system, so we're trying to spot light differentiation and/or wobbles with two stars instead of just one (one of the stars is a lot like the sun, the other is just a little smaller).

Hoax, Hype, or Truth?

Not a hoax, it's good hype, and there's no truth or lie to question... but this is still the first extra solar planet we can officially say we've found in a temperate habitable zone. None of the extrasolar planets we've found are sitting in an area capable of retaining liquid water... we don't even know if this one has water.

Having said that, we don't know if there are airborne jellyfish swimming around the atmosphere of Jupiter, microbes living in ice in the bottom of craters of the dark side of Mercury, or love slaves suffering high pressure inside volcanoes on Venus. I mention this because it's virtually impossible for us to determine whether there is or isn't life on extrasolar planets, we can't even rule out planetary bodies in our own solar system. We don't even know if life outside the Earth is anything like us... we assume life needs water and excretes stuff like carbon and methane because that's how it works here, but for all we know life outside of our little place could be nothing more than silicate trees that float in sulfuric acid ponds and breath cyanide gas.

As for the video... interesting, very cool, but he's using "Earth-like" very loosely. He's only acknowledging rocky planets (most of which are "Super Earths"), but there's no way to factor in atmospheres, pressure, or anything of the sort. Spotting oceans will be awesome, but even then it'll be because we get light signatures back that say there may be bodies of water on these far away places. Also, I'm pretty sure his guesstimate was based on the Drake equation, but it's pretty ballsy to put a number in there when we don't have a fraction of a fraction of the data we'd need to determine how many of anything is out there.

[daddy]

Anybody watch this?





It's really fucking rad.