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Another Earth
buschmaster
Member Posts: 14,229 ✭✭✭
the eggheads at NASA announced today that they found the closest yet analog to Earth.
it orbits a sun every 385 days, it's twice the diameter of Earth, and it could be gaseous with a rocky core like Neptune but the odds of being entirely rocky like Earth are at least 50% if not 2 out of 3. they have to take another look at the size of its sun to get a better idea.
if it is rocky, it would weigh 5 times as much as the earth, with gravity twice as strong, the atmosphere would be thicker and cloudier, and still have active volcanoes.
it was found by the Kepler Orbiting Telescope 1400 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus. its sun is 1.5 billion years older than ours, 60% larger, and being 20% more luminous, means the odds are good that the planet supports life, as long as it is rocky.
so far the Kepler telescope has found 4696 planets, many of them the same size as Earth. from those observations the scientists estimate that 10% of all surveyed planets are similar to Earth, and since there are 600 planets within 30 light-years away, there must be 60 Earth-like planets within that distance.
while the rest of the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy are out of reach for examination by the telescope, they may stil be counted. there are 200 billion stars in the galaxy; scientists can now say, with some certainty, that 10% of those should be potentially habitable earth-like planets.
the name of the new planet is Kepler 425b... until we can get the official name from the inhabitants.
sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/science/space/kepler-data-reveals-what-might-be-best-goldilocks-planet-yet.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/07/23/science/ap-us-sci-another-earth.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/science
it orbits a sun every 385 days, it's twice the diameter of Earth, and it could be gaseous with a rocky core like Neptune but the odds of being entirely rocky like Earth are at least 50% if not 2 out of 3. they have to take another look at the size of its sun to get a better idea.
if it is rocky, it would weigh 5 times as much as the earth, with gravity twice as strong, the atmosphere would be thicker and cloudier, and still have active volcanoes.
it was found by the Kepler Orbiting Telescope 1400 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus. its sun is 1.5 billion years older than ours, 60% larger, and being 20% more luminous, means the odds are good that the planet supports life, as long as it is rocky.
so far the Kepler telescope has found 4696 planets, many of them the same size as Earth. from those observations the scientists estimate that 10% of all surveyed planets are similar to Earth, and since there are 600 planets within 30 light-years away, there must be 60 Earth-like planets within that distance.
while the rest of the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy are out of reach for examination by the telescope, they may stil be counted. there are 200 billion stars in the galaxy; scientists can now say, with some certainty, that 10% of those should be potentially habitable earth-like planets.
the name of the new planet is Kepler 425b... until we can get the official name from the inhabitants.
sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/science/space/kepler-data-reveals-what-might-be-best-goldilocks-planet-yet.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/07/23/science/ap-us-sci-another-earth.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/science
Comments
Planetary exploration isn't as simple as Star Trek made it out to be. (Although, the Transporter was programmed to filter out any foreign material or bugs from returning planetary explorers.)
but if we find another earth-like planet, who couldn't help but want to contact them?
travel is out of the question. we have problems trying to send a live human to Mars let alone out of the solar system, and 1000's of times farther.
I would think the first thing we do is to communicate with radio telescopes, then maybe send them a space probe (and they send us one), then possibly they could show our engineers how to do faster-than-light travel or teleporting or whatever.
most likely with some planet only a few light-years away. Kepler 425b is 1400 LY, way too far.
any planet that has intelligent life thousands of years older than us, would know how to do hyperspace communication and travel if it can be done at all. possibly one of those 60 that are within 30 light-years can show us how to do it.
and then we could communicate with, or travel to, a bunch more, including Kepler 425b.
so I suppose the value of Kepler 425b isn't that much at first. we need such a planet closer within communications distance so we can learn from them.
intelligent life that has been around millions or billions of years longer than us can only be unimaginably more intelligent. beyond anything we could even dream of.
and that may not be too hard to find.
of course, they might just as well want to eat us all...
we would just exploit and kill them, we can pretend we want friends but we really don't unless there is something to gain
I hear it is full of slaves.
That would be our luck and then a bunch of A hole liberals would want to free them and then they'd want reparations immediately that Obama would approve taking from social security with his pen!
I wonder if they have the New World Order in force yet.
it would be most interesting to see whether they have a free society, or are under some oppressive corporate-type rule like the communists.
interesting to see whether they value diversity, and retain a patchwork of diverse races around their globe, or have become some bland, aimless melting pot.
would they be an intelligent species to admire, or despise?
could you imagine ET's similar to our communists, hating freedom as much as they do, and end up siding with our Russians and Chinese, doing more trade with them, ultimately assisting them in extinguishing freedom in our world? that would be a nightmare.
we are just beginning to have the capability to communicate with another planet. the odds are practically 0% that some other intelligent life is exactly where we are; therefore odds are practically 100% that they are either too primitive to communicate by thousands of years, or they are more advanced by thousands of years.
easily 10,000's or 100,000's of years. easily.
so, whatever history they have, would have already been played out. we could see what ultimately triumphed and why. it may lead to what ultimately triumphs here, whether it's our own doing or... theirs.
quote:Originally posted by Rocklobster
I wonder if they have the New World Order in force yet.
it would be most interesting to see whether they have a free society, or are under some oppressive corporate-type rule like the communists.
interesting to see whether they value diversity, and retain a patchwork of diverse races around their globe, or have become some bland, aimless melting pot.
would they be an intelligent species to admire, or despise?
could you imagine ET's similar to our communists, hating freedom as much as they do, and end up siding with our Russians and Chinese, doing more trade with them, ultimately assisting them in extinguishing freedom in our world? that would be a nightmare.
we are just beginning to have the capability to communicate with another planet. the odds are practically 0% that some other intelligent life is exactly where we are; therefore odds are practically 100% that they are either too primitive to communicate by thousands of years, or they are more advanced by thousands of years.
easily 10,000's or 100,000's of years. easily.
so, whatever history they have, would have already been played out. we could see what ultimately triumphed and why. it may lead to what ultimately triumphs here, whether it's our own doing or... theirs.
I'd think that if they're thousands of years advanced, they have a sort of hive society, with a small ruling body; genetically-programmed beings designed from birth to perform the required tasks of each segment of the infrastructure.
No "diversity," since that causes discord. To operate at maximum efficiency, each member would be nearly identical, differing only in the skills they have to perform whatever task they are responsible for.
Or not.
and that would suck.
a society is for the benefit of the people in it. any other scheme and they are being used.
diversity has been our nation's strength. creativity, productivity, innovation, progress.
I believe that we have the most advanced society possible. it's just that 99% of the people don't appreciate what they have and certainly don't act like it.
so I would like to think that any civilization on another world, after so many thousands of years, finally breaks free of oppression and does as we have.
I would like to think what we have is absolutely right, confirmed throughout the universe.
If the govt will let me declare it as mine, I can start selling real estate there. Twice the diameter of earth there's some money to be made.
I bet if we do make contact with some ET's the first thing they would send is how to do hyperspace communications so they don't have to wait so frikkin long between messages.
Hey, who you callin' fat?