Astronomers Discover Ancient Star with Five Earth-Size Planets 117 Light Years Away

We could go there in a twinkling of an eye if we remembered how....
It takes a fair amount of remembering however, and few there are with the patience to perservere at it....
The more planets they find it seems that goldilocks planets must be fewer and further between......

when we combine and analyze all the observatories' pics and observations finding our planet not Unique in the galaxy

people (some) will be disappointed we're not the the only ones in space

There could be more planets in that star system yet discovered. I wonder how many planets a single star can hold. Perhaps dozens.

I can also imagine a massive star like UY Scuti somewhere in the universe (not necessarily in our own galaxy) that could be a sort of "life-center-system" where these alien civilizations who've built their own planet size starships all sort of gather and park their planets in agreeable orbits peacefully beside eachother. A star of that mass could host hundreds of artificial planets.

The probabilities are endless.

Wait, I thought the further something away from us is, the older it is...then we find a star that's 117 or so light years away that's 11 BILLION years old? How old is our Sun? I'm a little confused and cramped for time. I'll have to read into this more ...

a reply to: MystikMushroom

As far as I'm aware the Universe is around 15 Billion years old and our Galaxy around 10 Billion.
We and our sun are much younger at around 4.5 Bilion.

a reply to: gortex

Yeah nice find - "goldilock's" zones seem to be coming thick and fast ( maybe a result of our search efforts ... ) lately.

Yoyager missions have shown us that the energizer bunny does indeed keep on going. lol !

Faster - further - with HD and better data ...

The future is exciting !

originally posted by: Asynchrony
There could be more planets in that star system yet discovered. I wonder how many planets a single star can hold. Perhaps dozens.

I can also imagine a massive star like UY Scuti somewhere in the universe (not necessarily in our own galaxy) that could be a sort of "life-center-system" where these alien civilizations who've built their own planet size starships all sort of gather and park their planets in agreeable orbits peacefully beside eachother. A star of that mass could host hundreds of artificial planets.

The probabilities are endless.

Massive stars like UY Scuti have very short lives. Measured in the millions not billions of years. Better to build your star base around a K-Dwarf than a giant.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: MystikMushroom

As far as I'm aware the Universe is around 15 Billion years old and our Galaxy around 10 Billion.
We and our sun are much younger at around 4.5 Bilion.

Close. The Milky Way Galaxy is around 12 billion years old. The rest of your numbers are correct.

Interesting information, thanks! BTW i think they will definitely say aliens exist to put the humans in an inferior position.

**ATTENTION**

ENOUGH, of the off topic remarks. Post on topic, within context and with civility and tact if you wish to continue posting.

~Tenth
ATS Super Mod

The more we learn the dummer we get...

Id like Jumpdrives ala Galactica...
OR, wormholes ala Stargate...

5, that is nice actually...

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
Wait, I thought the further something away from us is, the older it is...then we find a star that's 117 or so light years away that's 11 BILLION years old? How old is our Sun? I'm a little confused and cramped for time. I'll have to read into this more ...

Ok, you're confusing light travel time with an object's age.

To simplify:

You are correct that the further something is away from us the longer it takes it's light to get to us. However that alone does not indicate the age of the object. Just how long it took it's light to get to us.

It is also possible for objects close to us to be old. Something does not have to be far away to be old. The light from something 117 light years away is 117 years old when it reaches us but the object it came from can and often is far older. Star ages are measured in billions (for the coolest smallest stars) down to millions (for the hottest brightest stars) of years.

Or to use a more familiar example closer to home, the light coming from our Sun is 8 minutes old when it reaches Earth but the Sun is actually 4.5 billion years old.

Stars have various lifetimes. Massive stars have shorter lives than smaller ones. This is due to how quickly it burns through it's hydrogen fuel.

Our Sun, a G-type star is kind of in the middle in terms of size in comparison to other stars. As a result its lifetime will be less than smaller M-type stars. Many M-types stars (also called red dwarfs) have lifetimes as old as the universe because the rate at which they burn through their fuel slower than more massive stars.

Here's a good chart which explains this:




The star the planets in the original post orbit and Kapteyn's star (the one 13 light years away that's even older than the one in the original post) are these ancient old, small, low mass M-type stars.

Our Sun will live another 4 billion years or so and begin to balloon outward in about a billion years as it begins its slow death. Smaller stars like the one in the original post will still be in the main part of their lives even after our Sun dies.

So how do we know how old various stars are? One way is by clocking their spin rate. Young stars spin faster than older stars. Another is by studying the spectra from such a star for certain chemical markers which indicate when in it's life it is.

originally posted by: Answer
It's amazing how quickly our views have changed from "the conditions to harbor life are so rare that it may not have happened anywhere else" to "hey, we found another planet today that could have harbored life."

It does almost seem like we're being slowly conditioned to the idea that life is abundant in the universe and it's only a matter of time until we find some.

Of course we are being conditioned. To what end is anyone's guess.
They aren't just going to come out and say, hey guys we found a planet with living, intelligent beings on it.
There's more at stake then simply finding something like that.
Do you really think humanity is mature and evolved enough to handle a truth like that being thrown at them abruptly and bluntly? Look what happened when the weather forecasters said a huge blizzard would hit New York with 2 feet of snow. People rushed to the supermarkets and emptied the shelves like crazy people as if the end of civilization was imminent. And that was over a snow storm.

I'm not saying TPTB have our best interests in mind.


Many people believe that intelligent life exists beyond our planet somewhere in the universe. I certainly do.
Maybe, although this is a conspiracy site, maybe, they haven't found anything yet? Maybe there has been no alien contact, like some people believe. Maybe they really are finding new discoveries, like this, all the time, and releasing the information out to us slowly, building it up until one day they do find other beings out there, somewhere, and humanity has reached a point where it can handle such a discovery without going bat # crazy in every city.

Personally I'm starting to think that the goal is to unite humanity under a global system, so that there is no Australia, Canada, China etc. But simply Earth. When this happens, maybe then such a discovery will be announced. Maybe that's one of the plans trying to be implemented.
Maybe there's other PTB who would push such a discovery into the open without a total global system being in place.

It's popular opinion, especially on this site, that they use Hollywood to condition us. Well, look at Star Wars. Planets have systems of government or power that span an entire planet, not individual countries with their own governments(unless I've missed something).
And now with Disney buying the rights to Star Wars, they are making a whole new series of Star Wars movies.
Right at the time when NASA etc are making all these discoveries of earth like planets that have the right ingredients for sustaining life.
Maybe it's just a coincidence. Or maybe they are going to condition and prepare humanity for something.
And I'm not suggesting or implying that the life that may found beyond our planet will look like the various species of intelligent life that features in Star Wars.

Keep in mind that in recent years we've had headlines about how this or that was only science fiction once upon a time, but now it's a reality.

i love how they make it sound like we can travel there... even if we tried and used cryo sleep it would take generations and generations to get there.

Very exciting news.
We have to start from some where, right?

It's more like boiled eggs on the stove....

originally posted by: JadeStar

Massive stars like UY Scuti have very short lives. Measured in the millions not billions of years. Better to build your star base around a K-Dwarf than a giant.

Like this one?
i.imgur.com...