[Vision2020] Earthlike Planet Found Orbiting at Right Distance for Life

[Paul Rumelhart]

I'd really like to see what this planet really looks like.

Unfortunately, this planet is 600 light years away.  The fastest 
spacecraft that I've been able to discover appears to be Voyager I, 
which is traveling at a sedate 17,260 m/s.  If the probe happens to be 
pointed exactly such that it will fly right by this planet (of which the 
odds of that happening are, if you'll pardon the expression, 
astronomical) then if my calculations are correct it will get there in 
just over 10 million years.  Assuming it's still functioning after all 
that time (which is to say the least, unlikely), then a mere 600 years 
later we'll get our first images of the planetary surface.

Space is big.

On the other hand, if we can get a conversation started with whatever 
may live there via radio or lasers or something, we only have to wait 
1200 years to ask them to send us some pics and to wait for them to get 
here.  That's not so bad.

Paul


On 12/06/2011 07:35 AM, Tom Hansen wrote:
> Courtesy of The National Geographic at:
>
> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/111205-earthlike-planet-confirmed-life-nasa-kepler-habitable-space-science/ 
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
>   Earthlike Planet Found Orbiting at Right Distance for Life
>
>
>     Kepler-22b is first planet confirmed "smack in the middle of the
>     habitable zone."
>
> *A possible Earth twin has been confirmed orbiting a sunlike star 600 
> light-years away—and the new planet may be in just the right spot for 
> supporting life, NASA announced Monday.*
>
> Discovered by the Kepler space mission, the new planet—dubbed 
> Kepler-22b—is the first world smaller than Neptune 
> <http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/neptune-article.html> to 
> be found in middle of its star's habitable zone.
>
> Also called the Goldilocks zone, the habitable zone is the region 
> around a star where a planet's surface is not too hot and not too cold 
> for liquid water—and thus life as we know it—to exist.
>
> Other planets have been spotted in the habitable zones of their stars, 
> but most of those worlds are Jupiter - or Neptune-size bodies that are 
> unlikely to harbor life.
>
> "The number of confirmed sub-Neptunian worlds in their habitable zones 
> are few and far between, because they are the hardest ones to find," 
> said Natalie Batalha, Kepler's deputy science team leader at San Jose 
> State University in California.
>
> In fact, only two known planets fit this description so far—Gliese 
> 581d and HD 85512—and both worlds orbit at the very edges of their 
> stars' habitable zones, making them more akin to Venus and Mars than 
> to Earth.
>
> "What makes this particular discovery so exciting is that this planet 
> is right smack in the middle of the habitable zone," Batalha said.
>
> "It's also orbiting a star that's almost a twin of our sun, whereas 
> the other two detections are orbiting significantly cooler stars."
>
> *Getting Closer to Truly Earthlike*
>
> The Kepler mission finds new worlds by simultaneously monitoring 
> 150,000 stars for dips in brightness, which are indicative of planets 
> passing in front of—or transiting—their stars.
>
> Kepler-22b was among the 54 roughly Earth-size planet candidates 
> announced by the Kepler team in February. But the spacecraft needs to 
> watch at least three transits to confirm that a signal is a planet.
>
> "Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet," William 
> Borucki, Kepler's principal investigator at the NASA Ames Research 
> Center in Moffett Field, California, said in a statement.
>
> "The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the 
> spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third 
> transit over the 2010 holiday season."
>
> The new planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth, but scientists 
> don't yet know its composition, because they are still missing a 
> crucial piece of information: Kepler-22b's mass.
>
> The Kepler team is hopeful, however, that the mass of Kepler-22b could 
> be calculated with the help of a new ground-based instrument in the 
> Spanish Canary Islands that will begin observations next spring.
>
> Called HARPS North, the new telescope is capable of measuring with 
> high precision a planet's doppler velocity—changes in the frequency of 
> light from an object in space as it moves toward or away from Earth.
>
> With this information, scientists can calculate the mass, and 
> therefore the density, of Kepler-22b and determine whether it's a 
> rocky planet or a water world.
>
> "We are really hopeful that HARPS North might be able to be a really 
> big help in this quest for the mass of this planet," San Jose State's 
> Batalha said.
>
> "We're just getting closer and closer to what is truly Earthlike, and 
> that progress is exciting to watch."
>
> /The new planet Kepler-22b will be detailed in an upcoming issue of 
> the AstrophysicalJournal. /
>
> /---------------/
>
> /Kepler-22b/
>
> /image.jpeg
> /
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> "If not us, who?
> If not now, when?"
>
> - Unknown
>
>
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