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


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

 

kepler186f_artistconcept_0.jpg?itok=ebjn

 

Image Credit: 
NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech
 

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.

 

Read more:

http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/nasas-kepler-discovers-first-earth-size-planet-in-the-habitable-zone-of-another-star/index.html#.U1FDo1cvlLg

 

Saw this article flash across my news feed yesterday. I have since been envisioning the entirety of the Astro-physicisit community turning their collective telescopes to this spot as we speak to see if they detect anything.

 

The star system is within our own galaxy, roughly 500 light-years away...so within our cosmic neighborhood...very interesting. Keep your ears to the ground on this one. It could be the big one we've all been waiting for!

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Venus and Mars are both about the size of Earth and in the habitable zone as well. Just saying that it doesn't mean there is a likelihood of life on the planet. But cool that they ID'd this. The first of billions. 

 

Point well taken. Let it also be noted that a planet does not need to lay within the "Habitable Zone" to be able to sustain life. We know this from the discovery and observation of Extremophiles - more specifically, creatures that thrive at the bottom of the sea floor where there is absolutely zero sunlight to glean energy from. They thrive on the volcanic heat vents and hold up just fine under the extreme pressure within the deepest depths of the ocean.

 

The significance of finding a planet like Kepler-186f is that it could potentially harbor and sustain carbon-based life similar to ours and if the development conditions have been similar enough to Earth's, the planet could have the potential to harbor humanoid life forms.

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It is an exciting discovery. Not to be the wet blanket but.... the extreme expanse of the universe both in distance and time-wise vs. the likely lifespan of a humanoid civilization make it most likely that any interactions with ET life forms will be like Spender's in the Martian Chronicles, i.e. someone examining the remains of long extinct life form(s) and perhaps civilization or vice versa. It would sure be cool as hell to have it happen though, even if they were extinct. Not so much if it's the reverse. :)

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Point well taken. Let it also be noted that a planet does not need to lay within the "Habitable Zone" to be able to sustain life. We know this from the discovery and observation of Extremophiles - more specifically, creatures that thrive at the bottom of the sea floor where there is absolutely zero sunlight to glean energy from. They thrive on the volcanic heat vents and hold up just fine under the extreme pressure within the deepest depths of the ocean.

 

The significance of finding a planet like Kepler-186f is that it could potentially harbor and sustain carbon-based life similar to ours and if the development conditions have been similar enough to Earth's, the planet could have the potential to harbor humanoid life forms.

 

Add to that, even if there's no life there, this could be a future candidate for teraforming.

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It is an exciting discovery. Not to be the wet blanket but.... the extreme expanse of the universe both in distance and time-wise vs. the likely lifespan of a humanoid civilization make it most likely that any interactions with ET life forms will be like Spender's in the Martian Chronicles, i.e. someone examining the remains of long extinct life form(s) and perhaps civilization or vice versa. It would sure be cool as hell to have it happen though, even if they were extinct. Not so much if it's the reverse. :)

What about discovering life that still exists, but being too far away to reach it physically, so we communicate through radio? Of course we'll only be able to respond every 1000 years or so...
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It is an exciting discovery. Not to be the wet blanket but.... the extreme expanse of the universe both in distance and time-wise vs. the likely lifespan of a humanoid civilization make it most likely that any interactions with ET life forms will be like Spender's in the Martian Chronicles, i.e. someone examining the remains of long extinct life form(s) and perhaps civilization or vice versa. It would sure be cool as hell to have it happen though, even if they were extinct. Not so much if it's the reverse. :)

 

I always think about this. In the Astro-Biologist's quest for evidence of extra-terrestrial life, how many fleeting glimpses will we have of recently extinct civilizations, in which no visible trace of evidence is left?

 

One thing that confuses me is, the further you look out in space, the further you see back in time. If that's true, could you in theory observe a single object (planet) further back in time or are we stuck to observe it in the area of space that we currently see? Does that make sense?

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It's an interesting question. Common sense would say that unless it was reflected/bounced around somehow, it shouldn't be possible to see any light that left a body before an event happened. One never knows with that quantum physics and cosmology stuff what might be discovered though.  ...or maybe I didn't understand you.  :unsure:

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I always think about this. In the Astro-Biologist's quest for evidence of extra-terrestrial life, how many fleeting glimpses will we have of recently extinct civilizations, in which no visible trace of evidence is left?

 

One thing that confuses me is, the further you look out in space, the further you see back in time. If that's true, could you in theory observe a single object (planet) further back in time or are we stuck to observe it in the area of space that we currently see? Does that make sense?

I don't know whether I'm answering your question or not, but the reason we see things further back in time is because we're seeing the light that left their planet hundreds or even thousands or millions of years ago.  (Maybe you already knew that.)

 

Technically we see the sun as it was 8 minutes ago, not as it is right this instant.

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I don't know whether I'm answering your question or not, but the reason we see things further back in time is because we're seeing the light that left their planet hundreds or even thousands or millions of years ago.  (Maybe you already knew that.)

 

Technically we see the sun as it was 8 minutes ago, not as it is right this instant.

 

Correct. Just as we see the light from newly-founded Kepler-186f as it was, 500 years ago. But what I am speaking to, is the concept that there is actually no physical "edge" or barrier of the Universe. So, the further out Astronomers look, the closer in time they come to observing the Universe in its infantile state (whatever that may be) - this is where I get confused because that tells me that regardless of where they look in physical space, they will eventually see the origin point of matter. Or is it the microwave background, not the first pieces of matter? Maybe I'm just way off-base here. :unsure:

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One thing that confuses me is, the further you look out in space, the further you see back in time. If that's true, could you in theory observe a single object (planet) further back in time or are we stuck to observe it in the area of space that we currently see? Does that make sense?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Are you asking if we could see the same object in two places?
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I think we are going to find out that life is not uncommon, I that it is very common. If you look at the universe, it tends to do things over and over again. Now as far as communication and travel between stars.....If its possible then we will make it happen at some point. I also think  that life in our galaxy will probably be at the same point as we are give or take a bit. 

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In a sense, yes.

Then realistically, no. Light moves so incredibly fast compared to planets that the planet would not be able to move in such a way that at any one point in time (earth time?) light from the planet reaches us from two different places (and thus two different points in time from that planet).

However, what we DO see is an effect called red-shift, which is similar to the concept of the Doppler Effect.

You'll notice the Doppler Effect if you're standing by the side of the road and a truck passes by while honking it's horn. The pitch will appear to go higher as it approaches you and go lower as it gets farther away. This is because sound waves move at a constant speed regardless of the speed of the object producing them, so an observer of a sound-wave with a changing point of origin will hear a different frequency. If the object is moving towards the observer, the wave-length will be contracted as the subsequent parts of the soundwave are coming from closer, and since frequency is inversely related to wave-lenght, it creates a higher frequency sound-wave. Moving away will do just the opposite.

So for Red-shift, it's the same concept, except that instead of a sound-wave, you have light-waves, which also travel at a constant velocity regardless of the velocity of the object they are coming from. So as a planet moves away from us, we observe it's light-waves to have a lower frequency, resulting in us seeing a different color than what it's actual color is.

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Red dwarf star means this star system is much older than ours. If there is life there, it could potentially be very advanced. Right in our backyard.

Not that I'm confident in that. With current technology, we can't do much better than speculate. Still interesting to ponder.

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I think we are going to find out that life is not uncommon, I that it is very common. If you look at the universe, it tends to do things over and over again. Now as far as communication and travel between stars.....If its possible then we will make it happen at some point. I also think  that life in our galaxy will probably be at the same point as we are give or take a bit. 

 

Give or take a bit has huge meaning in space time. We are incredibly primitive compared to what we will be, IMO. 

 

What would the dinosaurs have evolved into if they hadn't gone extinct? What if humans existed back then and were able to survive. What will humanity be capable of in a million years? It is very possible that a planet with a similar origin to Earth is very far advanced compared to Earth. Of course, it's also probably likely that we are very far advanced compared to this particular planet. 

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I think we are going to find out that life is not uncommon, I that it is very common. If you look at the universe, it tends to do things over and over again. Now as far as communication and travel between stars.....If its possible then we will make it happen at some point. I also think that life in our galaxy will probably be at the same point as we are give or take a bit.

I was thinking the same thing. If life was found within our own galaxy, it seems like there's a good chance it has a similar timeline as Earth's. That doesn't mean they're not way ahead or behind technologically, though. Because if they started their civilization, say 10,000 years before we did, that's a huge advantage even though it is a very small percentage of the overall timeline.

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What about discovering life that still exists, but being too far away to reach it physically, so we communicate through radio? Of course we'll only be able to respond every 1000 years or so...

Then as far as they know we haven't even invented radio yet. 

 

edit: "discovered" radio.

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