16 New 'Super-Earths' outside solar system

Someone sent me this article this morning. Hope some of you find it interesting .

16 new Super earths discovered outside our solar system, which scientists believe at least one planet could sustain life.

One of these planets in particular could theoretically be home to life if conditions are right. It's called HD 85512 b, and scientists say it's about 3.6 times the mass of the Earth. This planet is about 35 light years from Earth. Its location with respect to its star suggests that this planet could have liquid water under certain circumstances.




Heres the full article from CNN

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/13/16-super-earths-found-outside-solar-system/?hpt=hp_c1

seamus

With the rate of exoplanet detection going up and up, it's only a matter of years (if not months) before we discover a planet that we can say with almost certainty has liquid water on the surface.

Exciting times.

Maybe thats why they are building this

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The design for NASA's newest behemoth of a rocket harkens back to the giant workhorse liquid rockets that propelled men to the moon. But this time the destinations will be much farther and the rocket even more powerful.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_NASA_ROCKET?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

AugustusMinimus

The amount of guessing and optimism is frightening.

16 planets which are a bit like earth and they are predicting that at least one is likely to harbour life ?

In reality they don't have a clue. Even with the correct condition, scientists have no idea what the chance is of the necessary molecules combining to forum replicating molecules leading eventually to one cell organisms etc etc.

Until we find microboes elsewhere, or life on earth which is completely unrelated to everything else, then we can't prove jack ****.

slade_x

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

The amount of guessing and optimism is frightening.

16 planets which are a bit like earth and they are predicting that at least one is likely to harbour life ?

In reality they don't have a clue. Even with the correct condition, scientists have no idea what the chance is of the necessary molecules combining to forum replicating molecules leading eventually to one cell organisms etc etc.

From the article:

identified at least one planet that could potentially sustain life

also from the article:

One of these planets in particular could theoretically be home to life if conditions are right. It's called HD 85512 b, and scientists say it's about 3.6 times the mass of the Earth. This planet is about 35 light years from Earth. Its location with respect to its star suggests that this planet could have liquid water under certain circumstances.

Don't get too excited, though; there's a lot more work to be done to explore whether this planet is truly fit for life, in addition to whether there are alien life forms there.

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

Until we find microboes elsewhere, or life on earth which is completely unrelated to everything else, then we can't prove jack ****.

Why the hostility, So we shouldnt even bother looking for life until we already find it? .
Finding a needle in a haystack would be a much easier task if you could narrow your search area. If the field had an unlimited amount of resources and knowledge with which to search every nook and cranny for any and all possibilities that's what would be done.

Areas such as these are where we are most likely to find life like ours because that is the only form of life we know of. We know what we are searching for and narrowing down where we might find it is the topic of that article. Its clear you already know this from your activities here on the forums but i dont understand your reaction

Our biggest achievements and understandings evolve from guess work. we wouldnt be where we are right now without constantly refining and tweaking our methodologies. Finding these planets and further studying them is a start, no one is saying that these planets actually have life but given where they are and the right circumstances as quoted from the very article itself there is potential.
The prediciton made by many is that eventually we will find life other than that of earth. And by that definition. Life that is not on this planet, finding life anywhere else would be monumental. The argument for life being common in the universe is based on the argument that we may find life independent from our own with a completely different origin. That would change everything for the vast majority of us.

The potential for the type of life we know to look for is greatest in these zones as we have a perfect example of it right here.

Looking for a needle in a haystack is far better than wasting your time looking for "something somewhere". Parameters are everything. What are you looking for, "dont know" where are you going to look for it, "everywhere"

If you need milk from the local store dont just send someone on an errand with the parameter "to just pick up anything" and hope that they'll bring back milk. Very crap analogy i know but you wont find anything if you dont even know what it is your looking for and where.

The current practice: find a planet that has favourable conditions for a form of life as we know it. Later then try and ascertain whether there is life there.

AugustusMinimus

slade_x wrote: »

From the article:



also from the article:





Why the hostility, So we shouldnt even bother looking for life until we already find it? .
Finding a needle in a haystack would be a much easier task if you could narrow your search area. If the field had an unlimited amount of resources and knowledge with which to search every nook and cranny for any and all possibilities that's what would be done.

Areas such as these are where we are most likely to find life like ours because that is the only form of life we know of. We know what we are searching for and narrowing down where we might find it is the topic of that article. Its clear you already know this from your activities here on the forums but i dont understand your reaction

Our biggest achievements and understandings evolve from guess work. we wouldnt be where we are right now without constantly refining and tweaking our methodologies. Finding these planets and further studying them is a start, no one is saying that these planets actually have life but given where they are and the right circumstances as quoted from the very article itself there is potential.
The prediciton made by many is that eventually we will find life other than that of earth. And by that definition. Life that is not on this planet, finding life anywhere else would be monumental. The argument for life being common in the universe is based on the argument that we may find life independent from our own with a completely different origin. That would change everything for the vast majority of us.

The potential for the type of life we know to look for is greatest in these zones as we have a perfect example of it right here.

Looking for a needle in a haystack is far better than wasting your time looking for "something somewhere". Parameters are everything. What are you looking for, "dont know" where are you going to look for it, "everywhere"

If you need milk from the local store dont just send someone on an errand with the parameter "to just pick up anything" and hope that they'll bring back milk. Very crap analogy i know but you wont find anything if you dont even know what it is your looking for and where.

The current practice: find a planet that has favourable conditions for a form of life as we know it. Later then try and assertain whether there is life there.

I misread the first post into saying that there was a good chance it contained life.

I have no issue for the search for earth size and similar planets.

Saying though that having the same conditions means that there is a good chance for life is jumping the gun quite a bit though.

slade_x

AugustusMinimus wrote: »

I misread the first post into saying that there was a good chance it contained life.

I have no issue for the search for earth size and similar planets.

Saying though that having the same conditions means that there is a good chance for life is jumping the gun quite a bit though.

Oh right somehow i misconstrued your intentions, i apologise, that is what confused me about what i thought your reaction to it was and yes i know but it is the best and only practical starting point

slade_x

On the subject of extrasolar planets

Nasa Spots first Planet in binary star system

...............................Read start of article at link.

"This is an example of another planetary system, a completely different type that we've never seen before," Doyle said. "That's why everybody's making a big deal of it. Nobody's ever seen a place like this before, with one exception. I seem to remember seeing a place like this about 30 years ago in a galaxy far, far away."

John Knoll, a visual effects supervisor for film maker George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic for three Star Wars movies, told reporters no one worried at the time that Tatooine did not reflect prevailing scientific theory

"I don't think George particularly concerned himself that the leading theory of planet formation made this setting somewhat unlikely," he said. "But Kepler-16b is unambiguous and dramatic proof that planets do form around binaries. It's possible there's a real Tatooine out there, a planet like that could really exist."

Re-imagining a scene from the first Star Wars movie, Doyle described a sunset on Kepler-16b: "Sometimes, the red star would set first, sometimes the orange star, sometimes they'd set touching each other, sometimes set together. So you'd get this very dynamic sunset. It's never two sunsets are the same."

If Skywalker could stand on Kepler-16b, he would see two shadows, Doyle said, adding that "if you wanted to tell the time by sundial, you'd need calculus, you know?"

The most surreal sunset in the universe

One of the most memorable scenes in the Star Wars series features Luke Skywalker on a dusty hill, watching a pair of suns set in tandem. Skywalker is standing on the fictional planet of Tatooine, but it turns out that similarly surreal sunsets are visible in reality – from the newly discovered exoplanet Kepler 16b, which orbits two stars.

A word of caution for any Earthlings hoping to glimpse a double sunset though: you'd need to travel for 200 light years first, and once you got there, you wouldn't be able to stand on the planet itself – it is gaseous.

At the heart of the newly discovered binary solar system, an orange star and a smaller red one orbit each other every 41 days, separated by about half the distance between Mercury and the sun. The orange dwarf and its red-dwarf partner have 69 and 20 per cent of the sun's mass, respectively.

The clues that the planet is there were picked up by NASA's Kepler space telescope. It detected tiny..................... continued at link

rccaulfield

I am suspicious of Keplers technique though. Anyone who has ever seen the earth compared to the sun to scale will see how HUGE the sun is and how little light the earth would block out when in transit at one astronomical unit let alone hundreds of light years. These minute dips in photons could be caused by any bit of space debris anywhere in the line of sight. Just my amatuer guess of course, if anyone can prove this wrong in true scientific fashion i will thank them!
I am aware that kepler will wait to see a pattern to to dip in photons to establish an orbit but how can they tell how big or at what distance from the parent star the planet/asteroid is?