Solar system with six exoplanets, others in habitable zones found by NASA's Kepler

[Joanne98]

Source: WP

Scientists with NASA's Kepler mission announced Wednesday that they had identified more than 1,200 likely new planets in the past year - a revolutionary development in the quest to understand what lies beyond our solar system.

This celestial bonanza represents more than a tripling of the number of known distant planets. It also includes a remarkable single system with at least six planets orbiting its sun - the most populated solar system found so far outside our own.

The discovery of a system with so many planets could be a sign that other habitable solar systems may be common, according to an exuberant William Borucki, head of the Kepler mission, the small satellite launched two years ago to survey some far reaches of the Milky Way.

Borucki and others likened the importance of Wednesday's announcement to the discovery of the first planet outside the solar system some 15 years ago.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/02/AR2011020206539.html

[Joanne98]

1. Kepler spacecraft finds more than 1,000 planets

The Kepler spacecraft, searching far beyond our solar system, has found more than 1,000 possible planets orbiting distant stars, and at least 54 of them are within their suns' "habitable zones," where temperature could support liquid water and potentially life.

"It's very likely that life is common in our galaxy," said William Borucki, chief scientist of the Kepler mission at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View.

Borucki and his team announced the long-awaited results Wednesday of the first four months of data from Kepler's search for planets among 156,000 stars more than 2,000 light-years away from Earth.

Of the 54 planets whose orbits lie in those habitable zones, Borucki said, five are very close to Earth's size while others range from twice the size of Earth to as large as our solar system's gas giant, Jupiter.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/02/MNAR1HGO6C.DTL#ixzz1CuRG9ror

[bananas]

2. "It's very likely that life is common in our galaxy," said chief scientist of the Kepler mission

k&r

[liberal N proud]

3. I wonder if the life forms on those planets have screwed them up as bad as we have earth?

[WhiteTara]

4. if they're inhabitable, won't they be habited?

Or are they just waiting, a new Eden for us to trash?

[hunter]

5. It's a good thing they are so far away.

Maybe it's some kind of Universal Quarantine -- Intelligent species as screwed up as humans are never able to crawl out of our home systems.

The warp drive suppression fields will remain in place until we pass some kind of test.

[WhiteTara]

12. phew!

I was afraid we'd go screw up yet another planet.

[Xithras]

14. No, there's a million other variables that have to be factored in.

Planetary age. Atmospheric composition. The presence of liquids. Stable orbits. Solar radiation levels. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.

An Earth-sized planet in a beneficial orbit can still be extremely hostile to life, and the odds are pretty good that it will be. The odds of us finding an "Earth like" planet are extremely small.

It's more likely that we'll find a planet that is hostile to US, but which has life that is adapted to its own environment.

[sofa king]

16. That's the big question.

By now our own planet's track around the Sun probably has its own telltale trace of free oxygen and possibly also organic materials, which may have escaped from our planet through outgassing and large collisions (like maybe the K-T event, among others).

That track should be lit up by our sun, and it should have some spectral traces that are visible at a distance. If our instruments and software improve, similar tracks made by similar carbon-based life might also someday be detectable by us. A less indirect approach is to try to catch a spectral glimpse of the planets themselves, and their atmospheres.

The big question right now is that with a sample set of one (and a maybe, Mars, and large list of possibles), we don't yet know how common extraterrestrial life is.

Are we unique? Almost certainly not. But it will probably be a long time before we know for sure. And even then you can be sure that a bare minimum of 23% of all Americans will refuse to believe it, anyway.

[snooper2]

6. Has it found Jesus yet?

:hide:

[Leithan]

13. More importantly, has it found Michele Bachmann's parents yet???

:dilemma:

[Roland99]

7. Was just at the Kennedy Space Center this past Sunday (and going back Sat.)

Saw the Hubble3D movie and was just blown away at the imagery that's been returned so far.

Mind-boggling at just how insignificant the earth is compared to the known universe.

[CRH]

10. There are a lots of videos from the Hubble, ...

posted on the internet, using the Monty Python "Galaxy Song".

For the insignificance of the earth and our human existence, the lyrics to this song kind of puts it into perspective.

The Galaxy Song - Monty Python

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.

[Uncle Joe]

8. I believe it's just a matter of time before we discover intelligent life elsewhere or

are discovered by it.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

[blackspade]

9. Very cool stuff!

[Kingofalldems]

11. Soon it will all come out....

Preparing the way.

[StarsInHerHair]

15. they're not 'new planets', we have just only now been able to see them

I shudder to think how grade-school kids might misread that story, that we saw new planets forming....:7