NASA Finds Earth-Size Planet Candidates In Habitable Zone

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by mineraljane, Feb 2, 2011.

  1. mineraljane

    mineraljane Gravity Hugger

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    Awesome.

    Basically, using only three months of data, out of 1,235 potential planets, 54 were identified as residing within the "goldilocks" zone. Very neat.
     
  2. NGW

    NGW Rawr

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    "Habitable zone" my ass. If it's a chunk of rock, life can exist on it, period.
     
  3. Brawlastator

    Brawlastator Well-Known Member

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    Oh man, really? Well put my ass on a spaceship and and send me to the nearest asteroid! :D 
     
  4. mineraljane

    mineraljane Gravity Hugger

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    Well, of course, but that's not the point. We know life can evolve on a planet with similar conditions to Earth, so they're starting to look elsewhere based upon those constraints. That doesn't negate the possibility of life existing in exotic forms in other environments, nor is the claim ever made that life can only exist on an Earth-life planet.
     
  5. NGW

    NGW Rawr

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    Life on another planet=/=life on earth/life as we know it, nor should it have to.
     
  6. KA

    KA Well-Known Member

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    Screw you guys, im going to kepler 11 /cartman
     
  7. 03Mach1

    03Mach1 Logic has been replaced with blind ignorance.

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    Sweet. Planets that may or may not have microscopic life forms that we'll never see in our lifetime.
     
  8. Aernaroth

    Aernaroth <b><font color=blue>I voted for Super_Megatron and Veteran

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    Damn shame this thing is 2000 light years away, or I'd say it's time to fire up a new set of probe missions.
     
  9. Prowl

    Prowl Well-Known Member

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    Call me when they find Cybertron.
     
  10. AlphaPrime

    AlphaPrime Neo Autobot Commander

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    They won't have too, Megatron will come calling US.
     
  11. mineraljane

    mineraljane Gravity Hugger

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    These data are mind-blowing when you place the results in perspective. Kepler is using a 100 megapixel (!) CCD to look at about 150,000 stars (out of about 200 billion) in a single galaxy (out of about 200 to 500 billion), while being limited by the planetary transit detection method.

    With that in mind, 54 potential Earth-like planets were identified out of 1,235 detected bodies.

    If you take 54/1235 and assume that is an average, even with the conditions restricting Kepler, and multiply that by the 200 billion (or so) stars in the Milky Way, you're left with 8.8 billion potentially habitable planets just in this galaxy.

    (To those seemingly unimpressed, within the lifetimes of a very large number of members on this site, we've gone from not knowing if planets existed outside of our solar system to identifying numerous potential Earth-like planets. Neat.)

    Still I cannot help but partly feel this with the news:

    [​IMG]