Are We Alone? NASA Spacecraft Finds 706 Possible Earth-Like Planets

Hey ATS, found this article that I thought was pretty amazing. I am a firm believer that there is other life in our solar system and most definitely other life in the universe.
We may be one step closer to finding planets that could harbor life.

The first 43 days of NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have been very productive: the mission looked at over 156,000 stars and identified 706 candidates for Earth-like planets. The candidates will require follow-up research to determine whether they’re actually planets; if all 706 happened to meet the criteria for exoplanets, they would just about triple the number of known extrasolar planets.

For some reason all of the videos I have tried to embed lately come up as malformed ID's so here is a link to the video.
www.youtube.com...

The new set of data is exciting for scientists and for alien hunters. Identifying planets outside of our own solar system is the first step toward identifying planets that could possibly harbor life. After the newly-found objects are verified as planets, Kepler can then continue observing them to determine if they exist in the “sweet spot” that could support liquid water and, by extension, life. Kepler has already returned results far above the mission’s leaders’ expectations and will continue to watch its little patch of the sky to help us determine whether we have company in the galaxy.

gajitz.com...



[edit on 22-6-2010 by TV_Nation]

reply to post by TV_Nation


Here:




Just take (copy/paste) 11-digit video ID, the bits after the ' = ', and bracket them in the BB code. Use a

(Use the ' [ ] ', not the [ ], of course. I modified it, so as not to trigger BB coding).

[edit on 22 June 2010 by weedwhacker]

Signs of liquid water are good, but there is such a thing as sterile water. A spectrogram of an Earth-like planet with the balance of gasses roughly equivalent to our own would be good, since our atmosphere is only this way because there's life here.

Otherwise, my guess is that none of these planets will have life on them. My guess is that life is extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that we might be the only example of it around.

Just have to wait and see if I'm wrong or right. No way to tell at the moment.

Originally posted by Blue Shift

Otherwise, my guess is that none of these planets will have life on them. My guess is that life is extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that we might be the only example of it around.

"That's 500 billion planets out there, and bear in mind there are 100 billion other galaxies. To think this [the Earth] is the only place where anything interesting is happening, you have got to be really audacious to take that point of view."
Seth Shostak, SETI senior astronomer

reply to post by weedwhacker


Thanks I just realized for some reason I forgot how to embed videos properly recently.


I was putting in the entire URL

Originally posted by Blue Shift
Signs of liquid water are good, but there is such a thing as sterile water. A spectrogram of an Earth-like planet with the balance of gasses roughly equivalent to our own would be good, since our atmosphere is only this way because there's life here.

Otherwise, my guess is that none of these planets will have life on them. My guess is that life is extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that we might be the only example of it around.

Just have to wait and see if I'm wrong or right. No way to tell at the moment.

You also have to think about life being able to exist on planets with different chemical compositions from our own.

Life has shown itself to be very durable and inventive in many cases on Earth so I don't think it would be any different anywhere else.

nice .... just a few more trillions planets to investigate

problem is the tptb will love to subjugate these planets to make their grand empire

This is an interesting topic.

We are (in relation to the universe) one atom in one grain of sand on one beach.

The possibilities are endless.

I do not believe in aliens, but I believe the possibility and likelyness of there being aliens is greater than that are not.

If there are "aliens" out there with the technology to fly in space and travel faster then the light, im pretty sure they would find us and not the other way around. The probability of other lifeforms is greater then most people can imagine seing with the endless stars and galaxys. But im pretty sure that if there is such a civilization out there somewhere that they would be more advanced , seing as we´r just the newbies in this galaxy.

There i said it ,, your a newbie.

But on the subject of this post, good find and thx for sharing u get a smiley from me

reply to post by TV_Nation


the information on that webpage is bad.

they have 700+ candidates but around 50% will be false positives. Also they wont be "earth-like", all these planets so far will be very close to their stars. Maximum 15 day orbit and many will be alot bigger than earth. Although if some are around M stars that might put them in the HZ of the star they will be very diffirent from earth. (tidally locked etc)

we need to wait 3 years to find true "earth-like" planets. Terrestrial sized planets in the HZ of G type stars like sol.



[edit on 23-6-2010 by yeti101]

Originally posted by starwarsisreal
problem is the tptb will love to subjugate these planets to make their grand empire

I dont really think that an advanced civilization is just going to get hussled by TPTB on this planet. It would be interesting to see if the advanced race had any similarities to our own beginnings. Hopefully they have advanced past having a PTB type of government/social structure.
I guess that's the definition of a type 1 civilization though right?

The problem is the lack of education

They might be doctors and lawyers, but I'd like to video-tape every one of the elected officials in congress, explaining the structure of the universe as we understand it today. I bet it would be hilarious.

I have met well educated people with degrees, who didn't have a clue about Astronomy. They didn't even know that "some of those dots are planets". They were like "are you sure that's Venus?".

Heck, just these days, as the Moon went closer to the partial lunar eclipse, I noticed people didn't have a clue why this happens.

The full Moon was rising in the East as the Sun was setting in the West, which gave the Moon a very reddish color. People on the beach were like "Uhhh, I've never seen the Moon so red, what the hell is happening".

Jeez, many people frequently mix up the concepts of a star system and a galaxy.

My own 2 cents: There is no flapping way that we are the only sentient being in the Universe. We are also not the only sentient being in the Milky Way Galaxy. That's for sure.

There might even be another sentient race in the Solar System. We can't rule that out yet, given our primitive attempts on exploration.

But with all the failed predictions on ATS, I am predicting something that will come true: We will find life to be abundant in the Universe!

Originally posted by starwarsisreal
problem is the tptb will love to subjugate these planets to make their grand empire

How are we supposed to get to them to carry that out! You cant beat ATS for crazy statements.

It would be really ignorant of us to believe that in this entire universe our planet would be the only one capable of spawning life that resembles us. The challenge is and always will be "how the heck do we get there"