Astronomers Discover a Planet Almost Identical to Earth

It may as well have a toxic atmosphere consisting out of ammonia and the gravity might as well suqash any human being, but let's just call it "almost identical to earth".

An apple is also not "almost identical to an orange" just because it has roughly the same size and hangs roughly as high up a treee roughly the same size.

The arrogancy of science never ceases to amuse me.

This is a great find OP I really hope we develop the tech in my lifetime to see whether or not life exists on such planets. I've been fascinated with this subject since the first expo planets were discovered.

First we could only detect gigantic planets but they are getting smaller and smaller by the day

Exciting times indeed

Oh and don't be disheartened by some members posts about such matters some members live for an argument and can never be wrong quite sad really

Originally posted by 4U2decide
My thought is -- we are on the cusp of a "discovery" so tremendous and unique that it will trigger what biologists refer to as a "punctuated equilibrium" -- a sudden forward leap in our evolution -- both our DNA and our consciousness. And -- yes, Former Skeptic, it only follows reasonable logic because mankind in general has reached a very significant "crossroad" that requires a totally New Paradigm.

Exactly my feelings, too. Well spoken (written).

Originally posted by redtic
That's awesome! Now what do we do?..

Make a flag and get a fishing rod of course

Originally posted by superman2012
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

All that seems to be up, in my opinion, is a snowball effect.
1903 - Wright brothers flight
1908 - first series production aircraft
1926 - first liquid fuel rocket
1939 - first turbojet airplane to fly (380 mph)

With the amount of people on the planet now, combined with all the knowledge available to us to have more superior tech in a shorter amount of time, well, I'll be surprised if we don't head out to one of these planets before 2030.

The very very interesting thing is to compare all technologies by decade and you get a steady progression......but.....with air travel it all stops round the 60's with fastest plane being the SR71. Sure there have been advances like fly by wire and radar invisible etc but only to existing mach 1-3 craft.

A natural progression would have us going to the moon in a few hours and the latest craft under test able to get there in under an hour !!! (a week to get to Mars).

Call me suspicious but when the military's only access to space is via the shuttle they should have been super freaked out when they were grounded!......they weren't cos it's not their only way of getting there.

Originally posted by H1ght3chHippie
It may as well have a toxic atmosphere consisting out of ammonia and the gravity might as well suqash any human being, but let's just call it "almost identical to earth".

An apple is also not "almost identical to an orange" just because it has roughly the same size and hangs roughly as high up a treee roughly the same size.

The arrogancy of science never ceases to amuse me.

Please correct me if I'm wrong as I am not an 'expert' on this subject, but I believe that professionals can now determine the atmospheric condition, interior composition, accelleration of gravity and biosignatures of exoplanets. Common sense would tell me that thousands of calculations are made prior to releasing an article on a potential 'earth-like twin'.

A google seach alone will provide an abundance of information on how this is achieved. I suggest you give it a try. (the google search, not finding a planet)

reply to post by angryhulk

Please correct me if I'm wrong as I am not an 'expert' on this subject, but I believe that professionals can now determine the atmospheric condition, interior composition, accelleration of gravity and biosignatures of exoplanets.

Ok. You are wrong.
The only thing that can be determined about small rocky planets is their size (mass actually) and their distance from their star.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by angryhulk

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong as I am not an 'expert' on this subject, but I believe that professionals can now determine the atmospheric condition, interior composition, accelleration of gravity and biosignatures of exoplanets.

Ok. You are wrong.
The only thing that can be determined about rocky planets is their size (mass actually) and their distance from their star.

Ahhh... The naysayers still have much to cling to.

But science will eventually brush them off like dandruff.

reply to post by FormerSkeptic

What naysayers would that be?

The ones that say that it cannot be determined that the planet in question is "almost identical to Earth"? That may well change in the future but it cannot be done now.

Nice find, Slayer. S&F.

I'm still a bit burned by the non-announcement announcement regarding Curiosity's big find (yes, I know it was media hype and an overzealous scientist), so I'm taking NASA news with a grain of salt these days.

Either way, so many variables come into play and in the end does it make a difference - many scientists believe we're stuck on this rock.

Side note - I can't remember the name of the book, maybe "True Night Falls," but the story starts off with humans in deep sleep aboard a space craft; the craft has certain rules programmed-in to hunt for a habitable planet for its cargo. The ship cargo (humans) are getting close their expiration (death) because as this craft got close the planet they were aiming for so it did better analysis of the ecosystem the computer realized it was too dangerous to drop the humans there so it continued hunting for a perfect, habitable planet.

One thousand years later, the people on board are now dying so the space craft starts making adjustments to its rules and settles on a planet that's 96% perfect for humans. So it dumps the cargo there and all hell breaks loose for the people on their new planet... (don't want to ruin the story).

Anyway, finding this planet reminds of different problems that can ensue if things are not 100% habitable for people.

Edit: The book may actually be, "Black Sun Rising". Though not too sure anymore since it was awhile ago.

Originally posted by FormerSkeptic

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by angryhulk

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong as I am not an 'expert' on this subject, but I believe that professionals can now determine the atmospheric condition, interior composition, accelleration of gravity and biosignatures of exoplanets.

Ok. You are wrong.
The only thing that can be determined about rocky planets is their size (mass actually) and their distance from their star.

Ahhh... The naysayers still have much to cling to.

But science will eventually brush them off like dandruff.

edit on 10-1-2013 by FormerSkeptic because: (no reason given)

How is science and knowledge nay-saying?

I want to believe...

But I mostly want to know what's real

Originally posted by havok
My thoughts? I am taking this into a new direction.

After many more "discoveries" and articles from these scientists...
A perceived threat will come from the skies in the form of "extra-terrestrials".
Just like the plan I read about years ago...

It will be the largest threat to ever hit modern civilization.
Global chaos will ensue.
But will it be real?

What will happen, you ask?
Everything from nationwide riots, to modern warfare.
The television will be it's greatest ally.
Striking fear into households daily.
Fear drives this nation to consume.
It will also drive it to accept whats coming.

More control.

Actually the analysis of wordwide panic (in the 50's) is one of the reasons why the military decided that suppression of alien contact would be needed (irrespective of whether it was occurring or not).

I think you will find most people would quite enjoy seeing them land. The only "freaking" would be with the religious nutters who always find something o freak out about anyway.....sad people.

Aliens would certainly have a profound effect on many religions and society in general. However, I suspect the Star Trek approach would kick in. As a comedian said last night in one of his sketches (about allegience, in UK) :

People in Manchester deride people in Liverpool until a yorkshireman turns up
Lancastrians deride Yorkshireman until a southern turns up
Northerners deride southerners until a Scotsman turns up
The English deride scots until a European turns up
The UK derides Europeans until an american turns
Europeans deride Americans until someone from the East turns up
Westerners deride Easterners until an Alien turns up
(All very true)

So you see we will merely all become "Human" when an extraterrestrial turns up. So I believe the Star Trek version of humanity bonding together will be the effect.

Site seeing is great, but unless we have a way of getting there we might as well be looking at a picture.

Don't get me wrong, I love that these type of planets are being discovered but anyone with half a brain has known for decades (probably longer) that many earth-like planets were out there somewhere.

reply to post by yorkshirelad


Thats it in a nutshell.

We are tribal creatures. The arrival of aliens would create the single human tribe for the first time in history.

reply to post by SLAYER69


The planets were always there, noone really discovered them. We finally realized them. I think people long ago knew these planets existed but lack of evidence proving thousands of years of Philosophy made it not real. How would it be possible that we are the only planet in the universe to have life. It is almost impossible that we are the only ones.

Originally posted by TheProphetMark
It seems to be a slow moving disclosure happening all at once these days.

It's call scientific research and discovery.

And yes, one day we may have the equipment and knowledge to be able to look at one of these exoplanets and say that we think there is probably carbon baed life on it. Though not yet.

There are millions of planets like Earth. Only they do not have life on them. Ours is the only one with life. The odds are against their even being bacteria anywhere other than our solar system. All life is on Earth and comes from Earth.

Originally posted by unitedeufope
reply to post by BlowinSmoke

 

If life didn't exist elsewhere we wouldn't be here, we didn't come from nothing, someone or somethiing had to seed us. It could well have come from this new discovered planet, it could be our orignal home and we were just sent here many years ago to colonise earth!

That statement fails on so many levels, sorry. If you truly, truly believe that, then somewhere 'things' must have originated - but your own argument says that is impossible, that something couldn't have come from nothing.

It is kind of silly for people that aren't even scientists and probably know zilch about Astronomy, say things about ONLY Earth having life, it is an utterly ridiculous suggestion and instead of addressing them directly, I have to see them as trolls or just plain deluded.

Perhaps a reminder from the scientists that are actually studying this would refresh this, here it is, and just for good measure please be aware that these studies are currently limited to THIS GALAXY, which itself is but a speck amongst all those in the UNIVERSE.

Basically the number of life possible planets in the UNIVERSE is infinite, more then a googolplex, infinite.

The universe is EXPANDING, and so it seems is the knowledge and conscience of some of humanity.

why.knovel.com...

The project has already turned up some fascinating results, from potentially habitable planets only a few light years away to a planet composed primarily of diamond, but the overarching trends in the data could be even more fascinating. "Our key result is that the frequency of planets increases as you go to smaller sizes, but it doesn't increase all the way to Earth-size planets – it stays at a constant level below twice the diameter of Earth," explained Andrew Howard, a former post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and a present researcher with the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Earth-like rocky planets are so common that as many as 17 percent of all stars in the galaxy could have such astral bodies just within an orbit roughly similar to Mercury's. That amounts to roughly 17 billion stars. Kepler is limited at this point in its ability to detect planets that are farther away from the sun, or smaller, but initial evidence suggests that planets with a similar size and orbit to Earth could be dramatically more common than many have imagined. They could be present in as many as half of all star systems.

Originally posted by jonnywhite
There're lots of planets and lots of people and machines looking for them.

We found our first extrasolar planet in the 1990's, I believe.

It's like the exponential growth of computing.

Nothing conspiratorial about it.

BUT I doubt we've found earth. Just an earth-like planet with remarkable similarity.

who said it was a conspiracy??

who said it was "earth"

read the post again mr know it all