An Earth-like planet at last?
| December 5, 2011 | Posted by News under Exoplanets, News |
In “A ‘major milestone’ in search for Earth’s twin” (MSNBC, December 5, 2011), Mike Wall reports
NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star’s habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new exoplanet candidates, researchers announced Monday.
The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one that could conceivably harbor life, scientists said.
“We’re getting closer and closer to discovering the so-called ‘Goldilocks planet,’” Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during a news conference on Monday.
Interesting:
Kepler will be making observations for a while yet to come; its nominal mission is set to end in November 2012, but the Kepler team is preparing a proposal to extend the instrument’s operations for another year or more.
Kepler’s finds should only get more exciting as time goes on, researchers say.
Okay. Got it.
See also: Exoplanets: Could they support life that has a different chemical composition?
8 Responses to An Earth-like planet at last?
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Very cool. I wonder if it will be visible to Hubble in order to check for atmospheric makeup during the next transit?
This article says:
Kepler 22b is in the habitable zone but may not be a rock:
NASA’s Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star
That would be 21b. the new one is 22b:
Neither Mars nor Venus have a 72 degree temperature. I don’t know if that is Fahrenheit or Celsius. Either would be compatible with known forms of life.
as to, The Kepler team realizes that much remains unknown about the new planet, dubbed Kepler-22b, except that its radius is 2.4 times that of Earth. “Scientists don’t yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets,” the article said. Very little, therefore, is empirically known to justify the accompanying artwork of a watery world.
as to, radius is 2.4 of earth
Yet just varying that one parameter throws all sorts of other things out of whack that make life improbable:
i.e. Bacterial Life is far more finicky than NASA would prefer the general public to know,,,
To give a rough idea of just how finicky, Dr. Ross lists 501 parameters that a planet must get right in order to have have a place for bacterial to survive for even a minimum of 90 days:
Let’s focus on just a few ‘chemical composition’ requirements for 90 day bacteria:
And remember that is just a very rough estimate for getting a planet with the right composition to host bacteria for 90 days!!!, As you well know the probability for life ‘randomly happening’ anywhere in this universe by purely materialistic means, even if you had a planet exactly like earth, which is the, ‘elephant in the living room’, underlying assumption in all this, you still, giving the most favorable conditions available, are living in a complete dream world to even begin to entertain the thought that it might have happened by accident!
further notes:
i.e. If we want to find life ‘out there’ somewhere, I suggest we look a little higher to the one who created the universe in the first place as well as defeated death, itself, on the cross!
Semi OT: