Hundreds of Possible Alien Planets Discovered By NASA Spacecraft

news.yahoo.com...

www.space.com...

^^^ Same article, but it's the source.

Did anyone post this yet? This could be major!
Over 700 "candidates". It's about time we found out what was up with Kepler!

Ever since we discovered the first Exoplanets about 15 years ago, we've only found around 400. What a jump! If these pass, that would be 1,100!

Edit to add: Lets just be clear that they could be false positives. Unfortunately we won't know (the public, at least) until February 2011.


[edit on 6/19/2010 by impaired]

Great thread.

After reading an article like this - I just don't see how anyone can doubt there is intelligent life on other planets.

I wonder if a time will come on our lifetime when we'll get to see them?

peace

Ok, I was so fascinated with this that I dug a little deeper and found these (from a few days before):

www.nasa.gov...

And here's the site with actual scientific data on Kepler. I can't decipher it. Maybe someone else can:

archive.stsci.edu...

[edit on 6/19/2010 by impaired]

What really bothers me is they are looking for earth like planets.

That is no guarantee of life. This planet was around for millions, perhaps billions of years before life as we see it came around.. and one day when we are all gone and the earth is destroyed, it will have been a very small time window indeed when there was actually life here.

Why is Man so cocky that intelligent life must evolve under earth like conditions? We know on our own planet there are animals that live in such harsh environments that humans could not possibly survive.

It is totally possible and probable that intelligent life could evolve on planets that are very un-earth like.



[edit on 19-6-2010 by JohnPhoenix]

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


Whether we're looking for Earth-like planets or gas giants is basically moot at this point.

The very idea that we may have found over 700 planets after Kepler being up for less than a year is incredible to say the least.

I mean - the ultimate goal is to find a habitable planet - don't get me wrong. But like I said, just the fact that we've found so many possibles in so little time (via Kepler) is awesome. Let's not downplay that.




[edit on 6/19/2010 by impaired]

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
What really bothers me is they are looking for earth like planets.

That is no guarantee of life. This planet was around for millions, perhaps billions of years before life as we see it came around.. and one day when we are all gone and the earth is destroyed, it will have been a very small time window indeed when there was actually life here.

Why is Man so cocky that intelligent life must evolve under earth like conditions? We know on our own planet there are animals that live in such harsh environments that humans could not possibly survive.

It is totally possible and probable that intelligent life could evolve on planets that are very un-earth like.

[edit on 19-6-2010 by JohnPhoenix]

Sure, but we discover many many many more worlds that are un-earth like rather than earth like. Looking at the ones that we know at least have a possibility of life according to our own planet, it makes much more sense to just narrow it down to a specific type of planet.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm sure that if we knew that life existed on Saturn, we'd also include gas giants in our search for life too.

It is important to realize that Kepler is looking only for planets transiting in front of 145 000 stars, and has been doing it only for a year. The probability to find a planet around a star under these conditions is very low, some fractions of a %. This means that to find 700 planets implies that the universe is full of planets, and that our 8 planets orbiting around the sun could be a rule, not an exception!