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<br>
I'd really like to see what this planet really looks like.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Space is big.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Paul<br>
<br>
<br>
On 12/06/2011 07:35 AM, Tom Hansen wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:5ACE2627-F8F5-4982-A08A-7FDAB8A421D5@moscow.com"
type="cite">
<div>
<div>Courtesy of The National Geographic at:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/111205-earthlike-planet-confirmed-life-nasa-kepler-habitable-space-science/">http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/111205-earthlike-planet-confirmed-life-nasa-kepler-habitable-space-science/</a>
<div>
<div> </div>
<div>------------------------------</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:
Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);
line-height: 15px;">
<h1 style="margin: 1px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; font-size:
2.125em; font-weight: bold; line-height: normal; clear:
left;">Earthlike Planet Found Orbiting at Right Distance
for Life</h1>
<h2 class="subtitle" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding:
0px; clear: left; float: left; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);
font: 1.375em/1.5 Georgia,'Times New Roman',serif; width:
600px;">Kepler-22b is first planet confirmed "smack in the
middle of the habitable zone."</h2>
</span>
<div class="article_text" style="margin: 20px 0px 0px;
padding: 0px; border-style: none; clear: left; font-family:
Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);
line-height: 15px;">
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;"><strong
style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;">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.</strong></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">Discovered
by the Kepler space mission, the new planet—dubbed
Kepler-22b—is the first world smaller than <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/neptune-article.html"
style="color: rgb(4, 78, 142); text-decoration: none;">Neptune</a> to
be found in middle of its star's habitable zone.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">"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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">"What
makes this particular discovery so exciting is that this
planet is right smack in the middle of the habitable
zone," Batalha said.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">"It's
also orbiting a star that's almost a twin of our sun,
whereas the other two detections are orbiting
significantly cooler stars."</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;"><strong
style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold;">Getting
Closer to Truly Earthlike</strong></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">"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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">"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."</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">"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.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;">"We're
just getting closer and closer to what is truly Earthlike,
and that progress is exciting to watch."</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;"><em
style="font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit !
important;">The new planet Kepler-22b will be detailed
in an upcoming issue of the AstrophysicalJournal. </em></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;"><em
style="font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit !
important;">---------------</em></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;"><em
style="font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit !
important;">Kepler-22b</em></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(51,
51, 51) ! important; line-height: 1.6 ! important;"><i><img
src="cid:part1.00070308.09040500@yahoo.com"
alt="image.jpeg"
id="93F5068D-CCB9-4A3B-A3F2-C48094640C79" width="728"
height="484"><br>
</i></p>
</div>
<div>------------------------------<br>
<br>
<div>Seeya round town, Moscow.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Tom Hansen</div>
<div>Moscow, Idaho</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>"If not us, who?</div>
<div>If not now, when?"</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>- Unknown</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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