Atmosphere found around Earth-like planet GJ 1132b

GJ 1132b is 39 light years away and 1.4-times the size of Earth , it orbits a cool Red Dwarf and has now become the first near-Earth sized planet to have it's atmosphere detected although It seems likely that the planet is more akin to Venus than it is to the Earth.

"While this is not the detection of life on another planet, it's an important step in the right direction: The detection of an atmosphere around the super-Earth GJ 1132b marks the first time that an atmosphere has been detected around an Earth-like planet other than Earth itself," John Southworth, a researcher at Keele University in the United Kingdom and first author on the new work, said in a statement from the university.

While Earth's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with a large oxygen component, and Venus' is a thick shroud of carbon dioxide, the researchers said that GJ 1132b's atmosphere is likely rich in water vapor or methane, based on their measurements. (It could be "a 'water world' with an atmosphere of hot steam," Southworth said.)
he discovery is particularly exciting because M-dwarf stars like GJ 1132 are the most common star type in the galaxy — and make up 20 of the 30 nearest stars to Earth — but their high levels of activity, like flares and streams of particles, could potentially blow away any forming atmosphere on nearby planets. If planets like GJ 1132b can maintain atmospheres, it opens up the possibility that many more potentially habitable worlds exist in the universe, the researchers said.
www.space.com...

With each new discovery we inch closer to finding the ultimate prize.

a reply to: gortex

The depressing thing is, it would take almost 700,000 years for our current tech to reach such a planet and by the time it does get there anything could have happened to kill said planets potential for life and that's to a planet that's relatively close to us (in spacial terms)

I doubt anyone will find life on other planets in our lifetime unless that life pays us a visit first and shares FTL technology with us

a reply to: Discotech

If we do get there and there are intelligent life I'm more concerned of how corporations will treat them. After all, since corporate overlords are known to brutalize fellow humans what makes you think they'll treat non human species any better?

a reply to: Discotech

I am more hopeful, I think the James Webb space telescope stands a good chance of finding the signature of life on one or more of the candidate planets it will look at.

a reply to: gortex

It never stops amazing me how quick technology evolves, that fact that they can detect the atmosphere on a planet that far away and almost the size of earth (which lets face it is pretty efin small) is astounding... yes is not even a hop skip and a jump in the grand scale but its a big step up so far as we go.

This is just part of a gradual conditioning process aimed at getting people to contemplate that we are not alone!!! IMO

Im guessing this sort of news is going to come harder and faster, leading to proof in extraterrestrial life, in the not too distant future

Rather than this being part of some gradual conditioning process, presumably by TPTB or whatever, is the more likely explanation simply that advances in science mean we are just getting better at finding other planets?

originally posted by: Davg80
This is just part of a gradual conditioning process aimed at getting people to contemplate that we are not alone!!! IMO

What kind of conditioning process is it, if this news will go largely unnoticed by the majority of population, and many of those who do notice will not care a single bit?

Besides, people have been contemplating that we are not alone for centuries! Where have you been living all this time? Science fiction genre is built on this contemplation, and even space exploration and astronomy are spurred by it. Space agencies are actually designing missions to look for possible signs of habitability and past (or present) life.

So your comment is way off the mark, it seems.

a reply to: wildespace

well i would say this one is aimed at the budding scientist or those interested in that type of thing, of the things i am also interested in Tv, Movies, Music, PS4 Gaming....... all are upping the awareness level of all things alien and ufo etc, this conditioning process is in everything, and has been for a long time IMO, after nuclear bombs were used.... at least.
recent news and technological advances are going to see us discover if we are alone or not, they have found another world with an atmosphere, caltech have just developed an alien finder www.telegiz.com... we have just started looking and already we are seeing signs...
even if there is no proof and nothing but space out there..... people are trying to make us believe there is! For me the only true way to find truth is to look within, but hey i dont do that either, i'm too busy watching all this crazy stuff and SMH.

but i do believe big news is on its way.... Consciousness shifting news bigger than 9/11, i reckon that news will be here before the years out...

Am I the only one to think it's mighty arrogant to make claims like this without having any proof? I mean, isn't that what science is based on....facts? Without stepping foot on this planet or orbiting it or seeing oceans and #, how in the world can you bold say "it's got teh atmospheres!".

Sensationalist bull#.

I love space and science and facts and proof and technology but sorry, this is much-ado about nothing

originally posted by: TXRabbit
Am I the only one to think it's mighty arrogant to make claims like this without having any proof? I mean, isn't that what science is based on....facts? Without stepping foot on this planet or orbiting it or seeing oceans and #, how in the world can you bold say "it's got teh atmospheres!".

Sensationalist bull#.

I love space and science and facts and proof and technology but sorry, this is much-ado about nothing

Um...WHAT!?

Did you even read the article or anything associated with this, because if you did you would of found the proof you are arrogantly saying there isn't any of, and how they obtained the said proof of an atmosphere.

...

I could write up a detailed post about how it's done, but I have an idea what you'd post next and I'd be wasting that time.

a reply to: oldcarpy

yes we also have to be equipped mentally of the probability that there is not only life out there but intelligent life at that.

"When" we detect water on other planets the probability that there is intelligent life out there are so high, that the chance that there is no intelligent life is near impossible, and thats just going by numbers.

a reply to: Davg80

Sadly in this case it looks like the temps at the surface would be in the region of 370c , perhaps a silicate based life form could live there but nothing we would recognise as life.

When the discovery of Alien life on another planet is announced (possibly in the 2020s) I don't doubt there will be much excitement about it but it won't really change anyone's life as it is likely to be many light years away , for people interested in the subject the thrill will continue as we scan all the available news and resources but for most people I think after a month or so it will be yesterdays fish and chip paper.

With the launch next year of James Webb space telescope I believe we will know sooner rather than later and will find many habitable planets with bio signatures in their atmosphere's , we may even get a picture of an exoplanet.
Sadly we won't know who or what lives there though.

originally posted by: MuonToGluon
Um...WHAT!?

Did you even read the article or anything associated with this, because if you did you would of found the proof you are arrogantly saying there isn't any of, and how they obtained the said proof of an atmosphere.

...

I could write up a detailed post about how it's done, but I have an idea what you'd post next and I'd be wasting that time.

Please point out the proof in this snippet taken from the story linked in the OP. I've highlighted some key-words for you.

But the researchers also found something strange, they said: One of the wavelengths showed a larger dip in brightness than the others each time the planet passed by. This world, for some reason, appeared larger at that wavelength than at others, suggesting that the planet had a surrounding atmosphere that this wavelength couldn't penetrate, the researchers said. While Earth's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with a large oxygen component, and Venus' is a thick shroud of carbon dioxide, the researchers said that GJ 1132b's atmosphere is likely rich in water vapor or methane, based on their measurements. (It could be "a 'water world' with an atmosphere of hot steam," Southworth said.)

a reply to: gortex

As I have said before, there may be forms of life we cannot recognise as life itself because of our somewhat blinkered viewpoint. Perhaps "blinkered" is the wrong term and maybe I should have used the word restricted. I don't know.

a reply to: TXRabbit

Arrogant? No.
Speculative? Yes.

Speculate to accumulate, as the old proverb goes.

a reply to: fromtheskydown

Not blinkered or restricted really , it would be wrong to search for life as we do not know it before looking for life we would recognise as life.
The search for the bizarre can take place after we've found other carbon based lifeforms out there I think.

originally posted by: Davg80
This is just part of a gradual conditioning process aimed at getting people to contemplate that we are not alone!!! IMO

Im guessing this sort of news is going to come harder and faster, leading to proof in extraterrestrial life, in the not too distant future

I doubt it.

If popular culture and popular media reports like this is a concerted effort by the big bad "TPTB" aimed at conditioning the masses, then they are taking their own sweet time of it.

Aliens and alien worlds have been in popular culture media, literature, and entertainment for over 125 years. HG Wells wrote about Martians in the 1890s. Filmmaker Georges Méliès made a popular culture movie in 1903 about a trip to the Moon and the "Moon Men" they found there. Radio shows since the 1930s and Movies and TV shows from the 1950s onward often include the idea of aliens and alien worlds.

The famous astronomer Percival Lowell spoke and wrote extensively in the late 1800s and early 1900s of a Martian civilization -- and many people believed his ideas to be fact. It was very common back then for people to believe that there was civilization on Mars.

Philosophers since the 1600s and 1700s had wondered aloud about the possibility of intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, and even ancient Greek philosophers 2000+ years wrote of the possibilities of aliens on other worlds.

It seems to me that the idea of intelligent beings possibly existing elsewhere in the universe is something that is already ingrained in our common culture, and we really don't require conditioning to further that idea.

I'd say that all of the science news about other planets and pop cultural references about aliens are not meant to be some conditioning program meant to indoctrinate the masses, but rather the opposite is true. The reason we have this long historical interest of intelligent ET that appears in our philosophy, literature, media, movies, and TV shows comes from a pre-existing cultural belief in the possibility of life elsewhere. There are news stories about other planets and movies about aliens because we like that sort of stuff, and the people in the news media, literature, and in film entertainment are just giving us what we like.

...so I don't think we require any additional indoctrination.

originally posted by: Davg80
This is just part of a gradual conditioning process aimed at getting people to contemplate that we are not alone!!! IMO

Im guessing this sort of news is going to come harder and faster, leading to proof in extraterrestrial life, in the not too distant future

I dont know anyone who doesnt think that there is life on other planets outside this solar system!

Its like gradually conditioning peopve to accept that McDonalds sell (tasteless) beefburgers. Or coke is a popular fizzy drink.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

the thing with Fear is that it is contagious, You and I May be fine, But Billions wouldn't, Many above a certain age that have spent their whole life in set conditioned belief of God and Death,and the more religiously indoctrinated, those 2 groups alone would be in the Billions, Mass Hysteria in whole countries, Mobbing and rioting, fanatics, this is hypothetical of course, there is no real way of knowing unless it happens, but the warning signs are there, when we see how rioting happens with less important things, and this is just from region to region, or within set countries, news of ET would be Worldwide in its effects.