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NASA Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of another star

Van Basten

Van Basten

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NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star

Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.

While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth and understanding their makeup is challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.

"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like worlds."

Although the size of Kepler-186f is known, its mass and composition are not. Previous research, however, suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky.

"We know of just one planet where life exists -- Earth. When we search for life outside our solar system we focus on finding planets with characteristics that mimic that of Earth," said Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published today in the journal Science. "Finding a habitable zone planet comparable to Earth in size is a major step forward."

Read the rest of the article here.
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Interesting.
 
TheDemSocialist said:
We are not alone.
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Probably not, given the size of the universe and the probable number of habitable planets. However, finding a planet that has intelligent life is quite a long shot. Compared to the age of the Earth, the time in which there has been higher forms of life is pretty small, and the time that there have been humans capable of communication over space is miniscule.
 
heard about this one on the drive home. 500 light years away; distances like that seem almost unimaginable. there must be so many interesting things in the universe that we may never know about. maybe someday we'll prioritize finding some of those things out rather than fighting each other on earth.
 
500 lightyears away..........
 
Helix said:
maybe someday we'll prioritize finding some of those things out rather than fighting each other on earth.
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Sure, just as soon as all people are free.
 
ecofarm said:
Sure, just as soon as all people are free.
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i don't see a good way to accomplish that goal militarily. the sad part is that it would probably take something like a supervolcano or an alien invasion to get us to stop fighting over bull**** borders for five minutes.

anyway, it's a pretty spring evening after a long winter, and somewhere out there, our bonobo cousins are concerned mostly with ****ing and having a good meal.
 
Helix said:
i don't see a good way to accomplish that goal militarily. the sad part is that it would probably take something like a supervolcano or an alien invasion to get us to stop fighting over bull**** borders for five minutes.

anyway, it's a pretty spring evening after a long winter, and somewhere out there, our bonobo cousins are concerned mostly with ****ing and having a good meal.
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Well, you can speculate all you want, but there are many of us who refuse peace as long as our brothers and sisters toil beneath tyranny. We reject your peace until our demand is met.
 
ecofarm said:
Well, you can speculate all you want, but there are many of us who refuse peace as long as our brothers and sisters toil beneath tyranny. We reject your peace until our demand is met.
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well, then you should be devoting your energy to pressing the other regional hegemons to step up, because we simply don't have the resources to compel every part of the world to adopt the American system. we can't go this alone, and eventually, we need to start looking into fixing the roof.
 
Helix said:
well, then you should be devoting your energy to pressing the other regional hegemons to step up, because we simply don't have the resources to compel every part of the world to adopt the American system. we can't go this alone, and eventually, we need to start looking into fixing the roof.
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I do. I served during wartime and I've spent years in Africa pushing equal rights.
 
ecofarm said:
I do. I served during wartime and I've spent years in Africa pushing equal rights.
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and i appreciate your service and dedication. i just would like to see humanity reprioritize. i mean no insult or disrespect.
 
No doubt these scientists are lying about their research so as to procure more funding for themselves ...
 
Helix said:
and i appreciate your service and dedication. i just would like to see humanity reprioritize. i mean no insult or disrespect.
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I blaze a path and expect others will follow. I believe the way to address world poverty is to own it, not to throw money at it. To end the brain drain and finally own poverty, we need a neo-exodus of the developed world educated to the developing world.
 
ecofarm said:
I blaze a path and expect others will follow. I believe the way to address world poverty is to own it, not to throw money at it. To end the brain drain and finally own poverty, we need a neo-exodus of the developed world educated to the developing world.
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seems like the best way to do that is to export our culture, working conditions, and the pursuit of learning and career development. ****, we'd be a lot better off if we wired the world to the internet and dropped smartphones.
 
Van Basten said:
Interesting.
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N.A.S.A. administrator and retired Marine Corps. Major General Charles Bolden shocked the scientific community when he said, "Earlier today, astronomers using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope discovered an Earth-like planet, which has been named Kepler-186f. This planet is in what the space community calls the habitable zone. And, there was a second discovery… when astronomers probed this newly discovered planet, they observed and recorded that… we were being probed too."

:mrgreen:
 
We all have our priorities... but in my opinion space exploration is one of the most worthy.
 
Helix said:
seems like the best way to do that is to export our culture, working conditions, and the pursuit of learning and career development. ****, we'd be a lot better off if we wired the world to the internet and dropped smartphones.
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The way to do it is the developed world educated migrate.
 
I'm sure you've all seen this before, but it makes a great visual of how big and imposing the only home of man, and the only place we know for sure that life even exists actually is.

pale-blue-dot.jpg
 
The nice thing about technology that can read 500 light years away is last night April 22 on NBC nightly news they addressed the meteorite threat. They hopefully will build and launch a satellite that can spot these meteors headed for us many years in advance of them hitting. They claim then to try to land a booster on one and redirect it away from us. We live in an age of incredible technical promise and I cannot imaging where we will be 100 years from now.
 
Goshin said:
We all have our priorities... but in my opinion space exploration is one of the most worthy.
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I think it is a good catalyst to goal setting anyway.
 
The German said:
500 lightyears away..........
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And what Voyager has been out there since what the 70's and only now just outside of the Sun's gravitational pull.. Yeah 500ly no biggie if we can only just figure out how to travel faster than light or never get old, or freeze ourselves for eons.. :)


Tim-
 
Hicup said:
And what Voyager has been out there since what the 70's and only now just outside of the Sun's gravitational pull.. Yeah 500ly no biggie if we can only just figure out how to travel faster than light or never get old, or freeze ourselves for eons.. :)


Tim-
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It is impossible to travel at the speed of light.

It is only possible to slow light down....... if you are a black hole.
 
The German said:
It is impossible to travel at the speed of light.

It is only possible to slow light down....... if you are a black hole.
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I think light slows down when traveling thru water, glass or plastic?
 
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