NASA Monday announced the discovery of a possible Earth-like world in the so-called "Goldilocks zone." That means it could possibly be charitable. The world may be able to support life as it is known to us. The world, called Kepler 22-b, is 600 light-years away from us. It was detected by the orbiting Kepler room telescope. Understanding this planet will be the next big NASA undertaking if it is viable for humans.
[URL REDACTED] -- see mod noteWarm planet in the zoneThe distance of a planet from a star that it orbits is called the “Goldilocks zone” typically. This world ends up being “not too hot and not too cold.” That means it can have life on it. Kepler 22-b is a comfortable 72 degrees.
This detection will be published soon. This will be done in the Astrophysical Journal. The Kepler team’s Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institute said:
Quote:
"This discovery supports the growing belief that we live in a universe crowded with life."
Just like EarthEarth and Kepler 22-b have a lot in common. It is not just temperature. It is blue and orbits a G5 star that has a mass and a radius only slightly smaller than that of our sun. A single orbit for Kepler 22-b takes 290 days, which is just 75 days shorter than an Earth year. The world is 2.4 times the size of Earth. It may be made mostly of ocean.
"It's not beyond the realm of possibility that life could exist in such an ocean," said Natalie Batalha, the Kepler deputy science chief.
The National optical Astronomy Observatory declared the Kepler-21b discovery. This occurred last week. That planet's radius is only 1.6 times that of the Earth. It has a surface temperature of 2,960 degrees Fahrenheit though as it is only 3.7 million miles from the sun.
The way planets are detectedWith orbiting planets, there are faint changes in the light coming from stars. The Kepler room telescope recognizes these as planets. This dip can’t quickly be considered to be a planet. It has to occur three times for that to work. That means it has taken almost three years to confirm that Kepler-22b is indeed a planet. About three days after Kepler was released in 2009, the first pass occurred.
Life on other planetsCNN reports that Kepler has found 2,326 planets ever since it was released. The Kepler team scientist Steve Howell said:
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"It's tremendously exciting. We're moving out to orbital periods that are nearly and equal to the Earth, and that means very soon we're going to be finding [planets] very near the earth, what we'd call true earth analogs. We'll be there. We'll be there probably within a year, very easily."
SourcesHuffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/0 ... 29591.htmlDaily mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... lanet.htmlNew York Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... e-1.987369Mod note:
This account was a spambot, trying to promote the news aggregator site (s)he was linking to. Link removed.
Interesting topic nonetheless, I guess, so ... carry on.
-- Stathol
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