Water found on ‘Goldilocks’ planet

The first time such a planet has been found, which opens the door for further research when the technology allows. The article details how the planet was found.

www.bbc.co.uk...

The good news is that as it’s such a large planet the gravity will be higher and any creatures should be smaller!

That's one hell of a news story.

Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

111 light-years is a bit far for any useful communication to take place between the world's, but we should be able to keenly observe it with next generation telescopes.

a reply to: TerraLiga

Attenntion please step away from the current BS on the TV or radio, this OP right here is the news we all need to be aware of, might take a while to get there but this is the HUMAN RACE's (thats all of us) 1st detection of what we believe to be essential for life to flourish





BEST OP EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Especially as you mention animals maybe smaller, shrink them spiders down to the point I cant see them

a reply to: TerraLiga

Fascinating discovery! Hopefully nothing crazy has happened to that world in the last 111 years (am I correct that we are "looking" at this world in the past, since it's so far away?)

Wow. Fascinating. How cool is that?!
Nice thread: S&F

111 light years in 3 dimensional linear space.
We could possibly ride the curvature of space time and shorten that span.
I am gearing up to go fly-fishing on K2-18b.
I'm building my own spaceship.

Thanks, it is fascinating. I’m hoping some great discoveries can come from this, albeit from afar for now.

I’m waiting for a friend to get back to me - he has a Nature subscription so I should get access to the full article.

originally posted by: TerraLiga
The good news is that as it’s such a large planet the gravity will be higher and any creatures should be smaller!

Infinitely smaller due to enormous pressure.

originally posted by: TerraLiga
The good news is that as it’s such a large planet the gravity will be higher and any creatures should be smaller!

Just don't let them hitch a ride back to earth, they would be super strong here and probably have laser eyes.

Interesting.

I can only imagine the conversations...

Earth: "So how's the weather up there?"

**222 years later***

Goldilocks 001: "Weather's great. What's been happenin' on Earth since we left; any news?"

**5 minutes later**

Earth: "zzzzzzzt, beep, click, click, beeep, click-click, pop, zzzzzzzt, pop-pop (translation: who are you and what do you want?)"

***222 years later***

Godlilocks 001: "Huh????"

This progression in the study of exo-planets makes me even more confident that if there is an ET out there, it has found us 100%

a reply to: TerraLiga

New algorithm, old data.

The new space telescopes should have their hands full. And, hey, why not the new China FAST radio telescope (if it pointed in the right direction).

As I stated earlier, we are on the verge of great discoveries!



ETA: They also expanded where the smaller planets can reside in the “Goldilocks Zone” which has not really been emphasized in the article and I thought was worth noting (Drake equation and all has been expanded)

Unfortunately we only have one example of life to call upon, so this colours our views a little.

It would be great to see a variety of complex multi-cellular creatures wandering vast and wondrous landscapes, but I’d guess all humanity will ever see in regards to extra-terrestrial life will be under the lens of a microscope. But who knows!

Well, the "data" is 111 years old. So we know it was there doing what it does 111 years ago in 1908. LOL

Seriously though. I think these conclusions are usually overly optimistic and probably there's a hell of a lot of guessing going on. It's fun to think about, I guess.

originally posted by: TerraLiga
Unfortunately we only have one example of life to call upon, so this colours our views a little.

It would be great to see a variety of complex multi-cellular creatures wandering vast and wondrous landscapes, but I’d guess all humanity will ever see in regards to extra-terrestrial life will be under the lens of a microscope. But who knows!

a reply to: TerraLiga

Maybe Sean Murray has insight beyond what we thought, could this be true, even better if the music was accurate I just started playing this recently, well worth a dabble if you have not yet.

Baby steps

There will be hundreds more discovered in the centuries to come

Closer ones will be found.

not to be a debbie downer but there is this aspect
www.usatoday.com... G9eTZ-Y5g2yOjPhXUZ2kyak-H6YxeukB0c

The planet orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18, which is about 110 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo. Given the high level of activity of its red dwarf star, the planet may be more hostile than Earth and is likely to be exposed to more radiation, according to the study. The radiation would be harsh enough to quickly inflict any human visitors with cancer, the study authors said.

quickly inflict cancer sounds pretty bad unless we can get some miracle cure, i guess we could try to build shielded habitats or underground?

but seems pretty important in the grand scheme of science and space exploration. with it being twice the size of earth mean the gravity would be doubled or is it more complex then that?

a reply to: TerraLiga

The good news is that as it’s such a large planet the gravity will be higher and any creatures should be smaller!

On the flip side … with a higher Gravity the Raindrops might fall at Terminal Velocity, or up to 200+ MPH, thus making a summer shower on that Planet a virtual Gauntlet-of-Doom to puny Earthling explorers !

The article here (K2-18b) states that the planet has a thick hydrogen atmosphere with some water vapor in it, with extreme surface pressure. So I doubt anything is crawling down there.

Still it is cool that we can detect water vapor at such distances.

Hey folks.

I'm late to this one. The scientific paper is available for free as a preprint (astronomers have embraced the idea science should be shared):

Water Vapor on the Habitable-Zone Exoplanet K2-18b

Authors:

Björn Benneke, Ian Wong, Caroline Piaulet, Heather A. Knutson, Ian J.M. Crossfield, Joshua Lothringer, Caroline V. Morley, Peter Gao, Thomas P. Greene, Courtney Dressing, Diana Dragomir, Andrew W. Howard, Peter R. McCullough, Eliza M.-R. Kempton Jonathan J. Fortney, Jonathan Fraine

(Submitted on 10 Sep 2019)

Abstract:

Ever since the discovery of the first exoplanet, astronomers have made steady progress towards finding and probing planets in the habitable zone of their host stars, where the conditions could be right for liquid water to form and life to sprawl. Results from the Kepler mission indicate that the occurrence rate of habitable-zone Earths and super-Earths may be as high as 5-20%. Despite this abundance, probing the conditions and atmospheric properties on any of these habitable-zone planets is extremely difficult and has remained elusive to date. Here, we report the detection of water vapor and the likely presence of liquid water clouds in the atmosphere of the 8.6 M⊕ habitable-zone planet K2-18b. With a 33 day orbit around a cool M3 dwarf, K2-18b receives virtually the same amount of total radiation from its host star (1441±80 W/m2) as the Earth receives from the Sun (1370 W/m2), making it a good candidate to host liquid water clouds. In this study we observed eight transits using HST/WFC3 in order to achieve the necessary sensitivity to detect water vapor. While the thick gaseous envelope of K2-18b means that it is not a true Earth analogue, our observations demonstrate that low-mass habitable-zone planets with the right conditions for liquid water are accessible with present-day telescopes.

arxiv.org...