Planet Hunters find Earth size Planet , predict Alien Life discovered by 2020!

With the fresh discovery of a small Earth sized Planet roughly five times the mass of Earth, Professor Keith Horne has some interesting things to say about Planets and the possible discovery of Alien Life.

Scotsman.com News - Earth-like planet's chilly reception

Professor Keith Horne, leader of St Andrews's RoboNet "microlensing" planet search team - one project in an international collaboration involving more than 70 astronomers around the world - said a truly Earth-like planet could be discovered as early as this summer.

He said the astonishing discovery of alien life could come just ten years later, with a search for the main tell-tale sign of living organisms - oxygen in the atmosphere.

"We're very excited about this planet. It's only the third planet we have found with this experimental lensing method. It shows small planets are quite common," Prof Horne told The Scotsman. "Our equipment is 50 times more sensitive to the large planets. That suggests there are 20 to 30 times more little ones than big ones."

The astronomers are saying that finding an Earth sized planet in the first three Planets discovered means that small Earth like bodies and Planets are more common than the larger Jupiter sized Gas-Giants that have been discovered previously. It is largely considered that life would devlope on these smaller Earth like planets.

If Professor Horne is right about the ratio of small planets to large planets I'd say its a fairly safe bet that life is common in the Universe.

NASA also came out this summer announcing that the Universe is rich with organic matter, PANHs.

NASA discovers lifes building blocks in Space.

It seems to me that the stage is now truly set for the announcement of the Big discovery anytime now.




More articles.

Washington Post - Earth-Like Planet Found Outside Solar System

Reuters - New planet-hunting method could find more Earths

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new planet-hunting technique has detected the most Earth-like planet yet around a star other than our sun, raising hopes of finding a space rock that might support life, astronomers reported on Wednesday.

"This is an important breakthrough in the quest to answer the question 'Are we alone?'" said Michael Turner of the National Science Foundation.

"The team has discovered the most Earth-like planet yet, and more importantly, has demonstrated the power of a new technique that is sensitive to detecting habitable planets," Turner said in a statement.

The New Planet is called OGLE-05-390L b

Here is some info about the new Planet and its Star OGLE-05-390L.

vo.obspm.fr...




The New Technique used to find the Planet is called Gravitational microlensing. It was predicted by Einstein that light should bend around any mass.

Gravitational microlensing

It was Einstein who realised that gravity isn't only responsible for keeping our feet on the ground, but that it also governs the geometry and dynamics of the Universe. In his General Theory of Relativity he showed that objects which produce a gravitational field (that is all objects that have mass) distort the geometry of space and time around them (Karl Schwarzschild, using Einstein's theory, was first to derive the resulting space-time geometry around isolated compact objects).

This discovery led directly to the prediction that light does not travel along a straight line if it passes close to such a gravitating body, but instead follows the shortest route along the distorted space-time "surface". This effect came to be called gravitational lensing (an analogy to the way in which an ordinary lens distorts light) and was experimentally verified within a few years of the publication of Einstein's theory when background stars close to the line of sight towards the Sun were observed, during a Solar eclipse, to be shifted from their normal positions on the sky.

Basically in layman's terms a Planet passes in front of a background Star making it brighter and then the mass of the Planet can be determined.



[edit on 26-1-2006 by lost_shaman]

Ummm thats B.S

We have already discovered alien life..its just something we dont talk that much about.

2020? nope wrong answer..why dont you try 2010-2012.

Care to elaborate MagicPriest420 or are you just going to toss out some random text?

Extremely cool.

Although I believe aliens have known about us for a loooooooooooooong time, it's cool to see the majority of humans starting to warm up to the idea of them actually existing.

LOL, what a slow race we are.

I also believe aliens have known about us for a long time and we have known about them. If the universe is so huge and infinite then imagine how long certain planets have been around before us? We are so new and primitive still...there are probably civilizations out there that have been in existence for some crazy amount of time like 5 trillion years or something, something we can't even comprehend...

Originally posted by Diplomat
I also believe aliens have known about us for a long time and we have known about them. If the universe is so huge and infinite then imagine how long certain planets have been around before us? We are so new and primitive still...there are probably civilizations out there that have been in existence for some crazy amount of time like 5 trillion years or something, something we can't even comprehend...

Yea man thats exactly how i feel.

If we can fly,whats not to say,that another race whos been around for millions of years hasnt done the same thing?

basically,They exsist

I'd say 20 years is pretty accurate for some solid evidance that alien life probably exists, of course we're not talking necessarily about Intelligent Alien life just the biomarkers of a Biosphere on an exoplanet, that's what we'll detect first, then maybe we'll get even better telescopes that may even be able to see the glow from Alien cities! We could make "First Contact" of a sorts within a generation.

If humans have not already made contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species, then there isn't really any way of judging exactly when something like that will happen in the future...

When I read about this same discovery on PhysOrg News the science team said it would be extremely difficult to ascertain the existence of life on an Earth type planet even if one is discovered soon--we can't even say for sure whether there is life on Mars, which relatively speaking. is right in our back yard. The existence of an atmosphere on such a newly discovered world, even an oxygen rich atmosphere, would not be sufficient proof of the existence of life. If and when we discover a planet with an oxygen rich atmosphere that is at the right distance from it's parent star to have liquid water, and we can confirm the presence of that water, then we can assume the planet probably harbors life. But even then we can't be sure.

I think just about every astronomer around now believes life is ubiquitous throughout the universe and someday we will discover some of that life, but just now we don't have the necessary tools to do so.

[edit on 26-1-2006 by Astronomer68]

I do wonder what effects it would have on disclosure if an alien civilization is found, will this accelerate the disclosure process or would they completely disclose everything they have known for the past 60 years?

OTOH, discovering primitive and/or undeveloped alien species wouldn't do much for disclosure, it would ease the population and make them get used to the idea.

True but it's still a pretty safe bet that there is at least microbial life. It would only be logical to assume.

Would detecting the glow from an industrialized Alien city be easier then detecting the biomarker in the atmosphere?

[edit on 26-1-2006 by sardion2000]

If one takes the age of the universe to be about 14 billion years, then the average planet floating around in that universe would be about 2.5-3.0 billion years older than ours. So, if life is ubiquitous and if complex, intelligent life flows naturally from simple, unintelligent life (and we are by no means certain of either proposition) then it is quite likely that the existence of life on Earth would be discovered by aliens before we would discover them. However, the only proof of alien life we are ever likely to get will most likely come about because that alien life found a means to tell us about themselves.

Unless Einstein was wrong about the speed of light and the inability to ever exceed that speed then the distances between stars is never likely to be bridged by mankind. We simply don't live long enough and we are too vulnerable to ambient radiation. Someday we may be able to send robots on a voyage of discovery but even that is improbable because we would need machines able to last tens of thousands of years and still function as intended. By far the best bet is some type of remote communication.

(Further to my first post)

The existence of an oxygen rich atmosphere and liquid water and hence the probable evolution of life on a planet having them is by no means guaranteed. The birth of a planetary system is such a violent event over such a long time period that any life could simply be overwhelmed by catastrophic impacts. In our case, Jupiter has had a profound shielding effect on the left-over material that could have, and probably would have, impacted Earth, that one could rightly say Jupiter may well be the father, protector of life on this planet.

[edit on 26-1-2006 by Astronomer68]

I don't think Einstien was wrong, I just think it likely that it will be found that he was only partially correct

Also if this theory turns out to be viable we could be meeting ET sooner then we all think, in a few hundred years. We also may be able to see it with our own eyes if extreme longevity research continues to progress as it has been over the past few years.

[edit on 26-1-2006 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by Astronomer68
If one takes the age of the universe to be about 14 billion years, then the average planet floating around in that universe would be about 2.5-3.0 billion years older than ours. So, if life is ubiquitous and if complex, intelligent life flows naturally from simple, unintelligent life (and we are by no means certain of either proposition) then it is quite likely that the existence of life on Earth would be discovered by aliens before we would discover them. However, the only proof of alien life we are ever likely to get will most likely come about because that alien life found a means to tell us about themselves.

Unless Einstein was wrong about the speed of light and the inability to ever exceed that speed then the distances between stars is never likely to be bridged by mankind. We simply don't live long enough and we are too vulnerable to ambient radiation. Someday we may be able to send robots on a voyage of discovery but even that is improbable because we would need machines able to last tens of thousands of years and still function as intended. By far the best bet is some type of remote communication.

What about things such as wormholes/blackholes or any other crazy holes we don't know about? There might be ways to travel through space that we have no clue about yet...

check this link out

www.abovetopsecret.com...

it's just a hypothetical theory though and an extreme longshot at that but its an interesting thread nontheless.

[edit on 26-1-2006 by sardion2000]

[edit on 26-1-2006 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by Diplomat

What about things such as wormholes/blackholes or any other crazy holes we don't know about? There might be ways to travel through space that we have no clue about yet...

Indeed, such things may be discovered in the future and they may yield a viable means of interstellar travel. I am forever an optimist in that regard myself.

Originally posted by sardion2000
check this link out

www.abovetopsecret.com...

it's just a hypothetical theory though and an extreme longshot at that but its an interesting thread nontheless.

I don't think it really is that extreme of a long shot. Burkhard Heim's Theory correctly predicts the masses of fundamental particles.

www.newscientist.com...

Gravity reduction

But in 1982, when researchers at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg implemented Heim's mass theorem in a computer program, it predicted masses of fundamental particles that matched the measured values to within the accuracy of experimental error. If they are let down by anything, it is the precision to which we know the values of the fundamental constants. Two years after Heim's death in 2001, his long-term collaborator Illobrand von Ludwiger calculated the mass formula using a more accurate gravitational constant. "The masses came out even more precise," he says.

After publishing the mass formulae, Heim never really looked at hyperspace propulsion again. Instead, in response to requests for more information about the theory behind the mass predictions, he spent all his time detailing his ideas in three books published in German. It was only in 1980, when the first of his books came to the attention of a retired Austrian patent officer called Walter Dröscher, that the hyperspace propulsion idea came back to life. Dröscher looked again at Heim's ideas and produced an "extended" version, resurrecting the dimensions that Heim originally discarded. The result is "Heim-Dröscher space", a mathematical description of an eight-dimensional universe.

From this, Dröscher claims, you can derive the four forces known in physics: the gravitational and electromagnetic forces, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But there's more to it than that. "If Heim's picture is to make sense," Dröscher says, "we are forced to postulate two more fundamental forces." These are, Dröscher claims, related to the familiar gravitational force: one is a repulsive anti-gravity similar to the dark energy that appears to be causing the universe's expansion to accelerate. And the other might be used to accelerate a spacecraft without any rocket fuel.

There is alot to be said about that.

I was refering to the Hyperspace part of the theory, its a rather large leap of faith don't you think?

Originally posted by Astronomer68

Originally posted by Diplomat

What about things such as wormholes/blackholes or any other crazy holes we don't know about? There might be ways to travel through space that we have no clue about yet...

Indeed, such things may be discovered in the future and they may yield a viable means of interstellar travel. I am forever an optimist in that regard myself.

I am also an optimist when it comes to this, but unfortunately our lifespans are most likely too short to witness any of these type of discoveries...

Originally posted by Astronomer68


Unless Einstein was wrong about the speed of light and the inability to ever exceed that speed then the distances between stars is never likely to be bridged by mankind. We simply don't live long enough and we are too vulnerable to ambient radiation.

Even without the loop holes that Einstein allows for faster then light travel such as wormholes or bending space man can travel to the farthest reaches of the universe without ever breaking the light barrier.

Thanks to time dialation. You can go say 99.9% light speed which is perfectly acceptable according to Einstein. Doing this you could travel to the other side of the Milkyway in years or even months. For everyone eles back on earth 100,000 years would have gone by but for you on that ship it would seem like months.

If you pushed even closer to lightspeed say 99.9999% the time dialation would be even greater. You could in theory cover the known universe in something like 27 years but back on earth many billions of years would have passed and the earth long since gone.

Not ideal space travel but it could work if only for one way trips. Might not look like a bad option to abandon earth if theres still humans in a few billion years when its destroyed by our dying sun.


As for the planet discovery good news this is pretty amazing it seems like only alittle while ago that we could detect monster jupiter size planets. I wonder if they can determine if these planets are in the "goldie lock zone" of their sun. If we start finding planets in the right temp zone to have liquid water its going to be pretty amazing.