NASA spots smallest planet yet discovered outside sun

NASA spots smallest planet yet discovered outside sun

www.cnn.com

"A NASA spacecraft has detected a rocky planet that is the smallest ever discovered outside our sun's solar system, the agency announced Monday.

The exoplanet -- so named because it orbits a star other than the sun -- has been dubbed Kepler-10b. It measures 1.4 times the Earth's diameter and was confirmed after more than eight months of data collection, the agency said. It is the first rocky, or Earth-like, planet discovered by Kepler."

(visit the link for the full news article)


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I love these more "mundane" discoveries. Show you that there's more mysteries closer to us than we usually think. Mysteries abound in our own solar neighborhood (relatively speaking, of course). Love it! As our optical and other exploratatory technologies continue to advance so will all these amazing discoveries continue to get more and more awesome.

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Makes me feel bad all over again for poor Pluto...

reply to post by Threadfall



Another wonderful discovery from our mysterious universe!

I love discoveries like these! It is finding new islands in the cosmic sea. Except we can't yet drop anchor and explore these new islands, but humanity is still young. Someday, we may well do just that

S & F

reply to post by Threadfall


I certainly love hearing about these new discoveries as well. However, this exoplanet is rather far away, 560 light years. The closest star, besides our Sun, is Alpha Centauri at 4.37 light years away.

It seems all these exoplanets are meny hundreds of light years away, how come none have been found nearer our SOL system, Like Alpha Cenauri. Have they found any stars without planets. Instead of looking way into the past we should start looking in our own neighborhood.

Maybe it has little dwarf aliens.

Originally posted by illuminateme
It seems all these exoplanets are meny hundreds of light years away, how come none have been found nearer our SOL system, Like Alpha Cenauri.

The Sol System is the name of our solar system. We have a bunch of discovered planets and satellite moons here

But I agree. I'm wondering why they're not combing over the system Alpha Centuari is in. Or perhaps they already did and didn't find much beyond more Uranuses and Mercuries?

Originally posted by ReginaAdonnaAaron
Makes me feel bad all over again for poor Pluto...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/600340760d6e.jpg[/atsimg]


On topic.
This is like window shopping.

I hate window shopping.

Originally posted by illuminateme
It seems all these exoplanets are meny hundreds of light years away, how come none have been found nearer our SOL system, Like Alpha Cenauri. Have they found any stars without planets. Instead of looking way into the past we should start looking in our own neighborhood.

How about the Gliese 581 system? Its only 20.3 light years





And we already sent them a message... only 19.42 years before it gets there

www.hellofromearth.net...

Originally posted by Threadfall

I love these more "mundane" discoveries. Show you that there's more mysteries closer to us than we usually think. Mysteries abound in our own solar neighborhood (relatively speaking, of course). Love it! As our optical and other exploratatory technologies continue to advance so will all these amazing discoveries continue to get more and more awesome.

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

edit on 10-1-2011 by Threadfall because: (no reason given)

OK great now we proved there are potential other earths. Now what? I tell you we sould stop most other extrasolar spending and put most NASA funding into advanced space propulsion research and Human colonization byond earths orbit of the Sun.

Why? Does us no good to know there are other earths if we can't get there so its time to use our funding to make some jumps in propulsion or movement into and through deep extrasolar space.

reply to post by Xeven

Not gonna happen Obama cut NASA's funding to put a base on the moon, they won't get to go to Mars for 25 years but he did say they can have money to land on an Asteroid

We will have to wait for private enterprise to do it... unless the NAVY reveals their hidden space fleet soon

I am waiting for the day when it is reported that some aliens land and poke the the first person they encounter with 2 fingers in the eyes, and then hit them on the head with a pan.

If it happens soon, and these aliens can travel near the speed of light, then we will know that they came from somewhere close to 35 lights years out from us.

Anyone else getting bored with the same old lines ....jeesh! 'oh we found another planet' but it doesn't support life, 'oh we found another planet but we are anlyzing the data before we make conclusions, we will let you know in a few years'

Isn't it about time before all of humanity finds out anyway when they come that we are not alone in the universe and that everything does not revolve around us human beings and that our existence encompasses something much bigger than we can ever comprehend. I mean how long does this BS have to go on before things start to change?

This does demonstrate how limited our detection capabilities are in identifying planets around other stars. We can only indirectly detect these planets. It sounds like the reason we were able to identify this planet is because it is so close to its sun.

Heck, every star system out there could have an Earth like planet, but we simply do not have the capability to detect it.

reply to post by Threadfall


crying about pluto again...