Nasa find 3 new planets which could host life

zonEEE

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/18/us/planet-discovery/index.html

Are we close to finding out about Aliens?

Jonny7

Most planets are detected by a "wobble" in the light from a star, from this they can roughly determine it's size and distance from the planet

but not much more than that

Whether the planet holds life is impossible to distinguish as of yet

The closest Earth-like planet at the moment is about 13 light years away..

Unfortunately we can't travel at the speed of light.. and even if they tried to send a probe there tomorrow, at the fastest possible speed, it would still take 400,000 years to reach it.. yup space is big

So unless aliens come to us, it's unlikely we can seek them out in our life-time

thiarfearr

Would an advanced race still live on a planet? The earths going to eventually get destroyed, if I was planning for the future I'd look towards building some sort of self-sustaining unit instead of planet hopping.

I'd love if evidence was found somewhere though, even if we couldn't reach it or it was on a microscopic level. The dream would be meeting an advanced civilization though, however unlikely

thebman

Jonny7 wrote: »

Unfortunately we can't travel at the speed of light.. and even if they tried to send a probe there tomorrow, at the fastest possible speed, it would still take 400,000 years to reach it.. yup space is big

So unless aliens come to us, it's unlikely we can seek them out in our life-time

With current technology, Nasa is researching and developing new propulsion types all the time.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/index.html

Duiske

Jonny7 wrote: »

Most planets are detected by a "wobble" in the light from a star, from this they can roughly determine it's size and distance from the planet

There are two different ways of detecting planets orbiting stars and I think you may be getting them mixed up. The "wobble" method is measuring the wobble of the star as it is gravitationally tugged by the orbiting planet. The "light" method is simply measuring the dip in visible light from a star as an orbiting planet pass's in front of it. The Kepler space telescope is just sitting out there in space, constantly staring at close to 150,000 stars at once, watching for those dips in light. Amazing technology.

Cookie_Monster

thiarfearr wrote: »

I'd love if evidence was found somewhere though, even if we couldn't reach it or it was on a microscopic level.

Well they are pretty sure there is life on Europa under the ice and it's realistic to think that within our life time a probe will be landed there to confirm it.

Hoop66

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Well they are pretty sure there is life on Europa under the ice and it's realistic to think that within our life time a probe will be landed there to confirm it.

I think you're getting a wee bit ahead of yourself there.

There may be liquid water on Europa - the thin ice ocean model is more accepted than the thick ice model, but this doesn't necessarily mean that it is the definitive one.

So, if the liquid water exists, there may be a case for geothermally-dependent organisms.

I'd still like to be going up with the robotic boat though