NASA's Kepler Satellite Locates Host of Earth-Sized Planets!

GOOD NEWS FOR ET!!!

www.foxnews.com...

"Scientists celebrated Sunday after finding more than 700 suspected new planets -- including up to 140 similar in size to Earth -- in just six weeks of using a powerful new space observatory."

"Astronomers said the discovery meant the chances of eventually finding truly Earth-like planets capable of sustaining life rose sharply."

"There is a lot more work we need to do with this, but the statistical result is loud and clear, and it is that planets like our own Earth are out there."

I just read that article. Will be interesting to see what can be determined about these new planets.

The only surprise here should be that we took so long to locate them.

reply to post by ufo reality


Good news Not really a surprise though.

Originally posted by Amagnon
The only surprise here should be that we took so long to locate them.

I have to disagree. I find it amazing that they're able to detect planets dozens of light-years away. Even with Hubble the best picture today we have of Pluto, once considered a planet, in our own solar system was nothing more than a couple blurry pixels.

Now, if we could only venture out further than our own moon. At least finding these planets may allow us to focus more instruments in their direction and possibly make "friendly" contact.

Unfortunately while this will probably be an accurate headline in the near future it would appear it is not currently so. Long story short it seems to be an exaggerated story based on them releasing some data containing various candidates that have yet to be confirmed.

Claims of 100 Earth-Like Planets Not True

Should have some exciting results soon though hopefully!

Everyone is making such a huge fuss over this. Earth-sized is nothing like Earth-like, there could be ten billion new planets discovered that are the size of Earth, and still not be suitable for life. I think people are really putting their cart ahead of their horse on this one.

reply to post by kadyr80


But at the same time there could be 100 million planets that ARE habitable.The quote from Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and a scientist on the Kepler Mission is encouraging , yes they are going on statistical data just now but that in its self is revealing.


quote from Dimitar Sasselov;
"There is a lot more work we need to do with this, but the statistical result is loud and clear, and it is that planets like our own Earth are out there."

[edit on 15/07/2010 by K-PAX-PROT]

reply to post by AgentSmith


not true how...?

www.dailymail.co.uk...

"Up to 140 of the newly-found planets are rocky and Earth-like containing both land and water, conditions which could allow simple lifeforms to develop."

'While an exhaustive study remains to be done, the implication is that many planetary systems have multiple planets,' William Borucki, the mission's principle investigator said."

[edit on 25-7-2010 by ufo reality]

reply to post by ufo reality


carefull , it looks like your attributing your first quote to William Borucki. He never said that the journo writing the piece did. Its impossible at this stage to tell if any have liquid water on the surface.

and this journalist seems oblivious to the fact the planets he names were found by other telescopes first. The clues in the name "CoRoT-7b" & "WASP 17b". I dont think writer has a clue about the subject.


[edit on 25-7-2010 by yeti101]

They don't know the composition of the planets yet, but they do know they have found over 100 planets which are close to Earth's size. And that is amazing just standing alone....

It will be very good news to get confirmation, although I always thought of it as a foregone conclusion. The universe being riddled with planets made perfect sense to me when I was a child.

In the end, all the data can hope to tell us is whether or not we could relocate and survive on some of these guys, and I'd be surprised if that wasn't the outcome of their analysis.

That's just one angle. The other, naturally, is life. If you're looking for Earth-type life, then I suppose you'd want to study Earth-like planets. I consider that enormously close-minded, however, but I guess it's a good enough place to start.

Whose to say where life can and cannot exist? Maybe there are life forms that flourish in 1000 degree F climates and drink sulfuric acid. Nobody knows. It just drives me up a wall whenever I read or hear about some Exoplanet not being habitable for life because it's not an Earth clone in the "Goldilocks" zone. Uninhabitable for life as we know it, sure. But for life, period? How arrogantly ridiculous.

If you had no knowledge whatsoever of sea life, and I told you that the oceans were teeming with life, you'd laugh and say that nothing could survive under water. After all, if people can't, nothing can.

At any rate, I look forward to their conclusions, but more importantly, to the confirmation of another foregone conclusion.

This is amazing!!!!!!

EVOLUTION!!!!!!!!

STAR AND FLAG!!!!!!

You guys need to post this in the Aliens and Ufo's forum,
Everyone is going to be happy as hell!!!!!!

Think of all the new information we could have!!!!

What we are witnessing here is the dawn of a New Age

reply to post by ufo reality


Whoops sorry I posted the wrong link! That was the Kepler page, as you can see there is no news of this.

This is what I was posting to:

Despite overzealous news headlines this week, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has not indentified more than 100 Earth-like planets in the galaxy.

The planet-hunting telescope, launched in April 2009, has so far confirmed only five alien planets beyond the solar system, mission scientists told SPACE.com.

The erroneous reports of new planets were generated in response to a recent videotaped speech Kepler co-investigator Dimitar Sasselov gave at a TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) conference in July.

www.space.com...

[edit on 26-7-2010 by AgentSmith]

Kepler update... data release date advanced by 4 months.

"Announcement of Earlier Kepler Data Release--from June 2011 to 1 February 2011"
www.spaceref.com...