First Earth Twin that's Habitable to be Announced By NASA on Wednesday?

schuyler

JadeStar
CONFIRMED: They just said they found an Earth 2.0

I called it

No you didn't. Saying they have a better way of finding Earth 2.0 is not quite the same as actually FINDING Earth 2.0. Stop patting yourself on the back; no one else is.

I've already corrected myself. Calm yourself.

Thank you for this lovely presentation. I just got educated in something I've already been interested in for many years. S&F for that!

Thanks Jade, I would have missed this if it weren't for you. With now nearly 1,700 confirmed exoplanets, and most of the rest of Kepler's finds on the fast track to confirmation, the Kepler mission has well earned its place in history. What a wonderful bunch of people to envision, design, and then work on something like this.

The science people on the audioconference sounded very enthusiastic that this was just the beginning of an new era of both confirmation and discovery, with the advances detailed (I wish I had perfect memory and perfect knowledge of the science involved). Onward and upward!

Didn't go through the entire thread....

So is this thing going down today or what?

Pacific Time or Eastern? Or anything changed?

Very eager to hear Earth 2.0.

reply to post by JadeStar


Is there some significance to the size of these planets being the same as ours? Does it make them more habitable, or is it just a novelty thing, like hey we found Earth's twin.

freelance_zenarchist
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Is there some significance to the size of these planets being the same as ours? Does it make them more habitable, or is it just a novelty thing, like hey we found Earth's twin.

I second that.

Let's go there and chop down all the forests.

What are the chances for our looking at ourselves. Could it be that all the data which has been gathered has, somehow, gone through a "gravitation lensing" and has been turned back toward it's point of origin.
Like sending light through a fiber optic cable turned in a big circle back to where it began.

Blue Shift
Let's go there and chop down all the forests.

Why not?

Better there than here

Cerdofuego
Thank you for this lovely presentation. I just got educated in something I've already been interested in for many years. S&F for that!

Thanks.

Right now I've been pouring through this paper: www.nasa.gov... - Which was released today coinciding with the conference.


And correlating with this database: exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu...

And this list: phl.upr.edu...

To get an idea when that list of high ESI candidates might be confirmed.

Today's announcement was from the first 2 years of Kepler Data. Many of ESI planet candidates were from the most recent data release (Q16) so they have 2 more years of data go through but some of those high ESI planet candidates were found in the 3rd year.

Kepler team needs to see 3 transits for a planet to be confirmed in the conventional sense. So an Earthlike planet around a warm G-star like our sun would have a similar orbit of around 280-400 days which means that if they are now working on Year 3 data the best confirmed planets are yet to come.

teamcommander
What are the chances for our looking at ourselves. Could it be that all the data which has been gathered has, somehow, gone through a "gravitation lensing" and has been turned back toward it's point of origin.
Like sending light through a fiber optic cable turned in a big circle back to where it began.

Zero chance of that but it is a fun idea. Like looking in a cosmic mirror.

If we did somehow find some very strange gravitational lens which bent light back to us we'd easily recognize our solar system from the transit data and the spectral characteristics of the star (in that case our Sun).

Also looking ahead to the K2 mission, i've been going through these 10 proposed star fields for the K2 mission:



keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov...

And running the co-ordinates for the fields through SIMBAD to get a list of the nearest stars in each field out to 125 light years.

I'll post them on ATS if and when the K2 mission is approved in May.

For instance here is what I got for Field 0 (the first field they will be observing):

Distance is in Parsecs so times that number by 3.26 to get the light-year equivalent.



As you can see there are some interesting G,K, and M stars nearby which will be in Field 0.



Finding planets around the nearest stars through Kepler and other observatories is important because they can be studied in detail with future instruments. The stars in the original Kepler star field had an average distance of 600 light years making most of the planets which orbit them very hard to study in greater detail.

freelance_zenarchist
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Is there some significance to the size of these planets being the same as ours? Does it make them more habitable, or is it just a novelty thing, like hey we found Earth's twin.

lots of factors go into whether a planet is habitable. one of the primary considerations other than the atmospheric mix and temperature is gravity. gravity much over one earth gravity will kill or at least reduce lifespan of most humans. so gravity is an important concern. without data about the mass and density of a world the best rule of thumb to apply for finding livable gravity is the size of the world relative to earth. that is why they get excited when they see a world is approximately earth sized.

but the formula that determines a world's gravity is more complex than that. it relies on the masses of the world and another object over it for example a human body. it also relies on the distance between the world and the other object in question. so if you play with the mass and distance you alter the value of the gravity of that world. also this factor of distance is usually related to the density of a world as well. while we cannot manipulate gravity (yet) these facts are good because you can have a big world made of pumice and it could be bigger than earth and still have earth gravity. because pumice (just as an example) is not dense the "pumice" planet in question would be far less massive than it would appear from it's size. or conversely if the planet is made of denser matter than earth it could be smaller and have gravity equal to or greater than earth. because the denser the more massive and generally the more compact the world will be. so the distance between the two masses decrease which affects the result of the gravity equation.

so to sum up: absent detailed information about a planet the size relative to earth gives an estimate of the gravity it produces among other things.

reply to post by stormbringer1701


Gravity is far from a deal-breaker. Look at all those flimsy fragile looking lifeforms that people find when they explore the bottom of the sea. I still have no understanding how those things can live in environments where humans would be crushed like an eggshell. That's a mystery to me, but the point is that they do live, in a place where tons-per-square-inch of weight is pressing down on them.

another thing about the size of the world terrestrial class planets over a certain size above earth tend to have crushingly dense atmospheres. they call the largest of this mini neptunes. but the problem though not always present on super earths manifest on smaller world too. venus for example. the pressure on venus will destroy any craft we know how to construct so far. the probes last about 15 minutes before they implode like a submarine that goes below crush depth in our oceans here on earth.

Aleister
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Gravity is far from a deal-breaker. Look at all those flimsy fragile looking lifeforms that people find when they explore the bottom of the sea. I still have no understanding how those things can live in environments where humans would be crushed like an eggshell. That's a mystery to me, but the point is that they do live, in a place where tons-per-square-inch of weight is pressing down on them.

I am talking about for human visitation or colonization. of course other life forms can live in extreme enviroments. but we could never live in thier world.

now we found em, lets use that alien reversed technology to go to em

stormbringer1701

Aleister
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Gravity is far from a deal-breaker. Look at all those flimsy fragile looking lifeforms that people find when they explore the bottom of the sea. I still have no understanding how those things can live in environments where humans would be crushed like an eggshell. That's a mystery to me, but the point is that they do live, in a place where tons-per-square-inch of weight is pressing down on them.

I am talking about for human visitation or colonization. of course other life forms can live in extreme enviroments. but we could never live in thier world.

I missed that, and you're right. So the size and metallic makeup of the inner-core of the planet, the weight of its atmosphere, its closeness to its star, and many other factors related to gravity would have to balance perfectly for humans to have a chance of someday colonizing or visiting it. So why didn't the Star Trek away-teams ever have a problem with gravity? (smiley here)

Aleister

stormbringer1701

Aleister
reply to post by stormbringer1701

 

Gravity is far from a deal-breaker. Look at all those flimsy fragile looking lifeforms that people find when they explore the bottom of the sea. I still have no understanding how those things can live in environments where humans would be crushed like an eggshell. That's a mystery to me, but the point is that they do live, in a place where tons-per-square-inch of weight is pressing down on them.

I am talking about for human visitation or colonization. of course other life forms can live in extreme enviroments. but we could never live in thier world.

I missed that, and you're right. So the size and metallic makeup of the inner-core of the planet, the weight of its atmosphere, its closeness to its star, and many other factors related to gravity would have to balance perfectly for humans to have a chance of someday colonizing or visiting it. So why didn't the Star Trek away-teams ever have a problem with gravity? (smiley here)

because it would make for a boring show otherwise.

but remember the inhabitants of the star trek universe had mastered gravity control. if that were possible you could for example have gravity generators in the floor decks of a colony so that mars colonists do not become too de-conditioned to ever return to earth's gravity. conversely you could have suits that reduce the gravity exerted on an explorer on the surface of a world with a 10 g environment.

edit: note that the distance from the star does not affect the planet's gravity. as far as newton is concerned the two masses that matter are the planet and an object on the surface on up to orbital distance.

Wow Lots of places to be