ALIEN WORLD orbiting the Sun's LONG LOST TWIN

Boffins find ALIEN WORLD orbiting the Sun's LONG LOST TWIN

Could there be LIFE as well? Maybe, maybe not...

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's HARPS planet hunter in Chile and other telescopes around the world have found three such planets in the star cluster Messier 67.

Although a thousand exoplanets have been confirmed, only a handful have been seen in star clusters. Even rarer is that one of the worlds is orbiting a star that is almost identical to the Sun.

Yet another story about Stars and planets. Nothing pointing to life so far but we can always hope to find another Earth like planet and if and when we do hopefully there will be signs of life. Even if it's not 'Intelligent' life I think it'd be something fantastic.

Who knows, Someday, hopefully in the not too distant future they'll develop equipment sensitive enough to detect much smaller items and while some Mars rover scratches the martian dirt for possible fossils it could well pull a rabbit out of a hat and detect somebody else's 'Voyager probe" heading out of their solar system

Parallel universe comes to mind......

You always seem to be on the 'cutting edge' of fascinating information!

I often wonder if the generation being born today will be able to find answers to life in our vast solar systems. As rapidly as technology is leaping forward, science may have a hard time keeping up and digesting the information!

S&F

reply to post by SLAYER69


really cool, stokes me up to see this! I am a christian guy but i cant even think that we are the only beings in this universe!

Excellent find my good man!

What's fascinating about this is it has all the makings of a habitable solar system with a "bigger than Jupiter", one would assume gas giant orbiting as well. It's only a matter of time before we'll know if life's a fluke or an inevitability.

Cheers SLAYER

reply to post by SLAYER69


Personally, I hope we DON'T find life anywhere else, especially intelligent life. I mean look at us and what we consider "civilized". Based on our own standards derived from an imaginary scale, we don't even give ourselves Type 1 Civilization status. A more advanced civilization (if such a thing exists) would view us the same as bees or ants. When I look at a bee hive, I don't think about their lives or their kids, nor do I try to communicate with them before destroying their home for the honey.

Unless our planet is the source of all life in the universe, and we are the most advanced species to originate here, I don't see how anything good could come from finding life somewhere else. Even if we are the offshoot of a species that has already left Earth in the past, finding them would still be bad for us because obviously they don't want to be found.

Bone75
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

Personally, I hope we DON'T find life anywhere else, especially intelligent life. I mean look at us and what we consider "civilized". Based on our own standards derived from an imaginary scale, we don't even give ourselves Type 1 Civilization status.

Isn't that like a oxymoron? to say we don't want to find life based off of our (read: uncivilized) existence, yet base our potential experience from a type 0 point of view, seems counterintuitive.

Its not to say they couldn't or wouldn't do us harm. I mean assuming they were type 1 or greater, they would have learned there is no good/evil only polarity, I.e cause and effect.

reply to post by Bone75


I disagree, we are the dominate species of this planet, we cannot be compared to bee's, or ant's or any other living thing on this planet because we are unique, we not only build homes for ourselves, but we have invented things that only an advanced race could do.

I think if intelligent life wants to observe us, or maybe interact with us, then they should be embraced. We are capable of great compassion.

reply to post by skyblueworld


And we also have weapons that can destroy our planet. If we were to encounter an invasive superior alien species that wanted to rape this planet for her resources and kill all of us then we could at least go MAD on them.

What if there is an advanced alien species with a beehive or anthill mentality? A bunch of worker slaves all serving a queen? It could happen, and when we do find life elsewhere and eventually intelligent it will be an interesting study on how their civilizations evolved.

That's really fascinating, Slayer. Thank you for sharing! S & F. I couldn't even imagine what kind of orbit a planet would have caught in a star cluster. How close are these stars in the star cluster? I read the article, but I don't believe it touched on that, unless I missed something.

jrod
reply to post by skyblueworld

 

And we also have weapons that can destroy our planet. If we were to encounter an invasive superior alien species that wanted to rape this planet for her resources and kill all of us then we could at least go MAD on them.

What if there is an advanced alien species with a beehive or anthill mentality? A bunch of worker slaves all serving a queen? It could happen, and when we do find life elsewhere and eventually intelligent it will be an interesting study on how their civilizations evolved.

That's why it'd be best if we looked first. Hopefully the element of surprise. If we see them first we can chose to engage or leave alone. If we wait until they find us, there's no telling who we'd get. What if they wanted to abduct us and modify our DNA?

This has been misreported to death.

This star is not the "Sun's long lost twin".

It's simply a star in a cluster of stars with a similar age and identical composition as the Sun. There are plenty of other stars which would qualify as the Sun's long lost twin in the galaxy if that's all we're talking about.

When astronomers talk about the Sun's twin, they are talking about a star which was formed out of the same nebula our Sun was like twin children are born of the same womb.

Unfortunately it was so long ago and the stars move throughout the galaxy and interact with each other gravitational so much that over time its almost impossible to find our Sun's true twin.

Call this star the Sun's long lost twin is like finding a person who shares your birthday and ethnicity and calling them your long lost twin.

nugget1
Parallel universe comes to mind......

You always seem to be on the 'cutting edge' of fascinating information!

I often wonder if the generation being born today will be able to find answers to life in our vast solar systems. As rapidly as technology is leaping forward, science may have a hard time keeping up and digesting the information!

S&F

Most experts including Sara Seager expect us to find life out there within the next 30 years. You can almost bank on it.

Pr0t0
Excellent find my good man!

What's fascinating about this is it has all the makings of a habitable solar system with a "bigger than Jupiter", one would assume gas giant orbiting as well. It's only a matter of time before we'll know if life's a fluke or an inevitability.

Cheers SLAYER

We already know of plenty of systems with giant planets. They're not flukes. We also know thanks to Kepler that about 22% of Sunlike stars have a rocky planet in a habitable zone like the Earth.

This kind of stuff always gets me pumped up! I still waiting for the day when they announce they have found a habitable planet. Really sucks that Kepler broke, but we can always be hopeful for the James Webb Telescope in 2018!!!!

reply to post by SLAYER69


Bugger!!!

Thought they discovered our suns binary twin.

You got me Slay!!!!

SullivanBlack
This kind of stuff always gets me pumped up! I still waiting for the day when they announce they have found a habitable planet. Really sucks that Kepler broke, but we can always be hopeful for the James Webb Telescope in 2018!!!!

Two of Kepler's reaction wheels broke but have no fear thanks to engineers (some very clever ones).

See this: NASA - A Sunny Outlook for NASA Kepler's Second Light

They figured out how to get Kepler to still work and do useful science, albeit in a slightly different way. They are going to use the Suns own pressure on the space craft to balance it like the broken reaction will would have if it were still functioning.

It's kinda going to be like Kepler will be riding a surfboard with the Sun's pressure as the "wave".

The new Kepler mission is called K2 and they are seeking approval of it. The first engineering test will take place in March and we should know by next year if it has been approved.

If it is then it will look at not one but FOUR different fields of stars all along the plane of the ecliptic every year. The good news is some very nearby stars will likely be in some of those fields meaning that the planets around nearby stars which Kepler finds could be studied in greater detail with Hubble, Keck and later the James Webb!

Here's a cool poster on how the K2 mission will work if approved:



I've got a real passion for Kepler if you didn't know already

I've also got a passion for TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) which is on schedule for a 2017 launch. Think of TESS as a Kepler for all of the nearby and bright stars.



K2 should fill the gap between Kepler's original mission and TESS and the James Webb.

LightAssassin
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

Bugger!!!

Thought they discovered our suns binary twin.

You got me Slay!!!!

Nope. If the Sun ever had a binary twin early in life it is long lost somewhere else in the Galaxy. We know from the WISE space telescope that no binary, not even a brown dwarf exists nearby right now.

reply to post by JadeStar


Yeh, I know this and after reading the body of the Op I quickly reaffirmed that notion.

Thanks JS

Dont forget that life may not want to be found, especially by us.

Though all these planets are cool they are dull. Im waiting for the next "wow" signal but aliens may be smart enough to avoid us or too stupid to create anything we could detect, like radiowaves or a lighthouse

reply to post by JadeStar


Wow how did I miss all of this? I usually catch this stuff. This is definitely awesome, thanks for posting this.