NASA to Announce New Discoveries About Alien Planets

on one hand this is always great and welcome news, but on the other can't say no one didn't expect this. kinda like the possibility of life existing that's not dependant on the assumed ingredients for life we thought. I assure you the numbers of exoplanets (HZ or otherwise) found with kepler and future instruments, will be staggering in following years.

hopefully this will thin out the number of nutjobs who still think our solar system and it's planetary layout is a rare, miraculous gift from god.

reply to post by ruffagii


That's funny ... basically, that is how I would call it. Yesterday, I posted on a thread - not realizing is was 5 years old - about the gold aspect of it. The current instability in the global currency system is causing Russia, China, India, et al., to acquire massive amounts of gold to back their currency just in case TSHTF. What they don't realize, is that this is all by design, so that everyone spends their days acquiring gold. Soon, the IMF will call for consolidation, create a global Fort Knox to house all the gold to back the NWO SDR. By that time, the ships will come in and the NWO will say, "Here you go master, we collected all the gold for you as you have instructed." Then they leave. NWO kills off all the people except a few and restarts the program.

reply to post by bjsmi2


Exactly. Like when they did a press release years ago that they found some kind of amoeba or some crap on Mars that indicated there may have been life there at one time, bla, bla, bla. Really, who cares? A fossil of an amoeba millions of years old? It's never something like, "we found a skeleton of a Grey". It's always something microscopic that has no bearing on anything of importance. And to think they spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money to tell us this "news".

That being said, I no longer trust any agency that has any ties to our government. Everything is orchestrated and has an agenda. Our own government has been feeding us disinformation for decades. Everything they say is weighed and calculated to give an intended result. I see the word "NASA" and I go right past it.

NASA?

N...ever

A...dmit

S...ay

A...nything

Here a video from the BBC about the planets:

BBC video

reply to post by the2people

really...I mean really? There are still people like you that believe the moon landing was faked.. Of course we went to the moon!

reply to post by General.Lee


I think your standards are too high. If they found ameoba fossils, even millions of years old, it means life did exist on another planet at some time. If life could exist somewhere other than Earth, and life does exist on Earth currently, then it leads to the logical conclusion that life most certainly could currently exist somewhere other than Earth.

I think you should realize that we are dealing with a governmental agency that is not going to come out with a revalation about finding the skeleton of a grey without first throwing us bits and pieces to prepare us for such an announcement. I welcome these small bits of exciting news because it puts us just THAT MUCH CLOSER to the big revelation!

“The Kepler spacecraft uses a super-sensitive photometer to monitor the light from more than 156,000 stars in an area located in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. When potential alien planetscross [sic] in front of their parent stars, they can cause a dimming effect in the star's light that Kepler can measure, NASA officials said.”
(from the OP’s link)

So the instrument detects a tiny regular variability in the luminosity of a star, and from this the scientists deduce the mass, density, orbital characteristics of a solid planet whose passage across the disk of the star is the definite cause of the regular variability?

Many stars have been known since ancient times to have variable luminosity, and in some cases the variance is so great that it cannot be ascribed to a planet obscuring the disk of a sun, indicating that there is some process other than the passage of a planet across the disk of a star governing the variability of stellar luminosity.

It seems to me they might not be ‘discovering new worlds in the habitable zones of distant stars’ but rather detecting a slight variance in the luminosity of star, calculating the characteristics of a body that would ‘explain’ this variability, assume that the hypothetical planet *is the cause of the variability, then announce that they have discovered yet another planet in the habitable zone of another star!

And just look at Venus. If by some technological marvel that has not been invented yet you could *directly detect a planet like Venus around a distant star, no doubt the scientists would be high-fiving that they had found the perfect abode for life around another star…a virtual ‘twin’ of the Earth.

In fact, it was not too long ago that many astute scientific minds were virtually certain that life would exist on Venus, and if probes had not visited the planet and discovered how absolutely inhospitable to life it really is, some would probably continue to think so to this day.

To my mind, if life is an accident, then it must be an extremely rare accident, because a vast number of circumstances are necessary for the origin and evolution of life to the point of an intelligent species, and all these circumstances would be ‘just right’ in an infinitesimally small number of instances.

That’s not to say that ET’s don’t exist. But if they do exist, the Earth and life are likely to be their handiwork.

New update

Planets found in the haibitable zone

there's an update on the site

54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone

5 are near Earth-sized

49 range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter.

So there you are 5 earth sized planet in the habitable zone capable of having a water surface and that only in the short amount of time kepler has been observing, I don't think it will be long until water or even life is confirmed at one point.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy,"

PS. you might want to change the thread title to "NASA has found earth sized planets in the habitable zone" or something like that...

Originally posted by aethron

To my mind, if life is an accident, then it must be an extremely rare accident, because a vast number of circumstances are necessary for the origin and evolution of life to the point of an intelligent species, and all these circumstances would be ‘just right’ in an infinitesimally small number of instances.

It is all just a coincidence, its just that there are so many stars and galaxy's that the chances are at least one planet would form with life on it, we just think its an amazing set of coincidences because its our planet... you can apply that logic to anything that has "little" chance...

A woman wins the lottery from a random set of numbers

It was lucky the day she bought the ticket that she wasn't ill or busy.
It was lucky she bought the ticket in the particular shop if she went to another shop her numbers might have been different.
It was lucky that she used that particular lottery machine that day.
It was lucky that she used the machine at that particular time.

going even further...

It was lucky she was born on the day and time she was if she wasn't she would have had an entirely different life of events.
It was lucky that she was born in the country she was in.
It was lucky that she lives in a day and age where the lottery even exists.

You can go on and on but my point is what may seem like an amazing set of coincidences is just that, people win the lottery all the time, planets and stars are form all the time...

That from a quote from one of my older posts

reply to post by roughycannon


You don't want to jump the gun and declare them "found planets".

There's a big difference between planet candidates and planets (confirmed). Although the vast majority will probably turn out to be confirmed, they aren't yet.

I think the moons of the 49 jovian planets will be much more interesting than the terrestrial planets in the habitable zone once confirmed. If they are anything like other Gas giants we've seen there's gotta be moons a' plenty out there.

Sweet!
From the Kepler Website:



It seem Kepler11f is the one more "earth-like" (although i don't know how much that name fits)
It has 2.3 Earth Masses, and 2.6 Earth radius, it orbits Kepler11 at 0.250 au (some 37.399.467Km if google is correct)

About the star:

Stellar Parameters

G dwarf star
Kepler magnitude = 13.7
Visual magnitude = 14.2
Alternative designations used in catalogues: KIC 6541920 and KOI-157.
Distance from Earth: about 2,000 light-years
Spectroscopic analysis of a high-resolution spectrum taken at the Keck I telescope leads to:
Effective temperature Teff = 5,680 ±100 K
Surface gravity log[gsurf (g cm s-2)] = 4.3 ±0.2
Metallicity [Fe/H] = 0.0 ±0.1 dex,
Projected stellar equatorial rotation of vsini = 0.4 ±0.5 km s-1.
Mass = 0.95 ±0.10Msun
Radius = 1.1 ±0.1Rsun
DrakusComment: So it's mass and radius is comparable to our Sun, which means those planets are nicely baked, probably...

Huge find, kepler dudes!
PD: Metallicity [Fe/H] = 0.0 ±0.1 dex, -> hmmm...

Originally posted by General.Lee
reply to post by bjsmi2

 

. It's always something microscopic that has no bearing on anything of importance. And to think they spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money to tell us this "news".

The discovery of fossil ALIEN LIFE has no bearing on anything of importance!
You'r good, man!

why do we still think that every conceievable or inconceivable civilisation has to eat or drink water?
i dont get that at all

reply to post by questcequecest


We dont, its long been thought there can be other forms of life that don't necessary live like us, did you not read about the arsenic life form recently:

arsenic lifeform

Originally posted by roughycannon

PS. you might want to change the thread title to "NASA has found earth sized planets in the habitable zone" or something like that...

I must agree with Stuffed here. They haven't been confirmed as yet, also, I don't think I can actually change the thread title anymore at this point.

So the instrument detects a tiny regular variability in the luminosity of a star, and from this the scientists deduce the mass, density, orbital characteristics of a solid planet whose passage across the disk of the star is the definite cause of the regular variability?

Many stars have been known since ancient times to have variable luminosity, and in some cases the variance is so great that it cannot be ascribed to a planet obscuring the disk of a sun, indicating that there is some process other than the passage of a planet across the disk of a star governing the variability of stellar luminosity.

I'm no expert in this, but in fact just yesterday got interested in it to register myself to planethunters.org. There upon I already learned to read the light curve data to some extent.

There are a lot of different type of varying luminosity being detected by the kepler. At planethunters, you are given a graph of a random star, which you then classify. The stars data can show the star being pulsating (luminosity varying in matter of hours or days basically all the time), or stars luminosity varying regularly (matter of days, weeks, months(?)) or irregularly. Then the data is showing and being able to distinguish more rarely occuring sudden and short lasting varying of luminosity, which they seem to deduce as relating to transiting event. They are able to detect the luminosity of a star every 30 minutes. In case of a suspected transiting event, the star shows for example slightly, unusually dim luminosity, then on the next image, it has dimmed just a little more, and on the next one it is back being just slightly more dim from the normal.

If they, me or you find a suspected 'transiting event' -like behaviour from the data, it will be inspected further with other instruments and methods, such as looking at the radial velocity. You can find more information on these methods from this thread www.abovetopsecret.com...

By the way, planethunters.org has just yesterday quadrupled its kepler data, and is inviting you all to search for these transiting events and planet candidates. I only just joined yesterday, but I can already tell that the interface is very friendly, the data reading and classifying these stars is easier and faster than I thought. There is more info on planethunters aswell in the thread I linked above.

I think this is great news. Thank you for posting this.

Kepler is just an amazing piece of equipment and a gift to science. In only a few years it has made some of the greatest discoveries in mankind. It is only a matter of time before advanced alien life is proven to be real by science.

Goodbye fermis paradox.... hello drakes equation...

To think a thousand years ago we thought the earth was flat.

Originally posted by Starwatcher
....To think a thousand years ago we thought the earth was flat.

Not to go off-topic, but for accuracy's sake, only some people though the Earth was flat 1000 years ago. The earth was widely known by science to be spherical.

The idea that the Earth was spherical was believed by the Ancient Greeks since about 600 BC because of their empirical observations of the world around them. The mathematician Pythagoras believed the earth was a sphere, and Plato and Aristotle both taught that the Earth was a sphere. Around 250 BC, the Greek scientist Eratosthenes proved the Earth was a sphere by astronomical observations, and measured its circumference.

Greek teachings spread throughout the world, and the idea that the Earth was a sphere became widely accepted.

I suppose that some people in general believed the earth was flat 1000 years ago, but scientists knew it was a sphere. However, the idea of a spherical Earth went even beyond the science of the time. In Dante's Divine Comedy, written in the 1300's, he referred to the "southern hemisphere" of the Earth.


...and back on topic:

In the same way that most scientists 2500 years ago believed the earth was a sphere, most scientists today believe that ET life probably exists elsewhere.

Even though it is "vogue" for people to say that scientists don't believe in the possibility of alien life, that could not be further from the truth. Practically every scientist today believes that there is a great possibility that other life exists somewhere in the universe -- or even in our own galaxy. Many scientist even believe it is almost a certainty.

NASA is full of astrobiologists whose job it is to find ET life. Those scientists are pretty well convinced that ET life exists, and all they need to do is find it.

Only just came across the press release on the Nasa website.

Its such a pleasant surprise to get the odd bit of good news like this.

Fascinating stuff. This is what dreams are made of for me.