New Earths right around the corner?

[Space Toker]

Well now they say we have 8, along with all the moons and asteroids/KBO's and "dwarf planets", but yeah I still think of Pluto as a planet too. It seems we are close to finding life on Titan, Enceladus, Europa, and of course Mars. With all the water they found on the moon who is to say there aren't microbes there deep underground in some ice or pool of water? Some of these newly discovered "potential planets" are Neptune size, even Earth size in some cases. I think we are going to find that most stars have at least 1 habitable planet with liquid water ("Earth-like") on the surface. And most of these will have life. And a good percentage of those complex life, some as or more advanced than humans. It is an exiting time to be alive! I just hope they hurry up and invent warp drive or some aliens offer me a tour of the galaxy!

 

[Space Toker]

The story is in Scientific American and similar sources.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=kepler-planets-700

 

[sparkjumper]

I think eventually we will learn that mars is our home planet,and that we left it ions ago because we treated it as we are treating the earth.

 

[xmobotx]

the pluto is/isn't a planet argument is interesting to me - i guess if you consider pluto a planet you then have to add several other objects and pluto/charon become a dual planet system

it expands on the degree to which this star has so much orbiting it

i think the concept of accretion lends impetus to the idea that this is going on throughout the universe

 

[Space Toker]

sparkjumper,

Interesting theory. I've imagined we could have come from Venus or Mars before they became desolate, or that we came from another solar system when its sun gave out, and we decided to give up technology and hide our past or we crashed and had no choice since we had no technology left. Far out, but I don't rule out it COULD have happened.

xmobotx,

I see your point. I tend to think planets can be divided into categories and still fall under the umbrella of planets:
1). terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
2). gas giants: Jupiter and Saturn.
3). ice giants: Uranus and Neptune.
4). dwarf planets: Pluto, Eris, anything else massive enough to maintain a spherical shape, provided they do not orbit something else. (in other words, unlike the recently coined "dwarf planet" that is separate from planets, I consider it a subcategory).

Asteroids and small KBO's would be in a seperate category. I admit you got me on the Pluto and Charon thing. I want to call Pluto a planet, subcategory dwarf planet, and call Eris a planet, yet call Charon a moon. But, Charon does not orbit Pluto, as far as I know they both orbit a common point. So they have to be the same, either a double planet or a double something-else. Scientists will undoubtedly be puzzling over and arguing about this for years.

 

[Space Toker]

I hope exoplanet.eu comes up with a new category called something like "potential planet candidates" and includes that on it's website! I do not understand the link of candidates I posted but understand the exoplanet.eu website just fine. exiting times!

 

[LandOfTheHaze]

one time i was watching the history CH and some dude said something along the lines of

earth being created is like a tornado passing through a junk yard and creating an airplane.

BTW i didnt read any posts in this thread

 

[xmobotx]

i want to call pluto a planet as well and resisted the idea that it may not be (probably due to the fact i was well into my 20s when they began to decide it wasn't) as i have read and understood more the basis, it has become clear to me that many many objects would have to be added to the catalog in order to continue accurately defining pluto in this fashion. i enjoy astronomy (as i have a decent reflector scope) and i truly admire individuals like tombaugh (who discovered pluto) which are/were so dedicated as to make observations at that level.

planetoid seems a reasonable next category down

 

[Space Toker]

yeah planetoid seems reasonable

 

[LoudBlunts]

you guys are pretty cool and smart forsure!

thanks for the read!

wheres are the new cool sci fi space movies and shit?

 

[Space Toker]

yeah you gotta wonder right, where are the movies that depict reality or aliens going about their business? Hey I like to watch Star Trek as much as the next guy and maybe they have a point that evolution follows a common pattern, and Star Wars is a little bit more inventive but not much. For once, I would like to see sci-fi not from the perspective of humans, or shows about the interactions between humans and themselves or aliens that look almost like themselves, but true aliens behaving in truly alien ways, and humans accepting that they have differences with species out there, and that is OK. Just a thought.

 

[Space Toker]

Did I mention this already or not? I guess not, I should have posted this months ago:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/kepler-spacecraft-finds-hundreds-possible-planets-100618.html

over at the space.com forums some go on about how rare another earth would be or how impossible it would be to find a truly earth-like planet. Uh hello! I guess you did not see this link? Yes they are just "candidates" at this point, but surely some will be habitable terrestrial worlds, and confirmation on something should come as soon as a year or at most just a few years from now! Time to start planning a trip!

 

[Space Toker]

the way they are "holding on" to some of their findings leads me to believe they already found at least one terrestrial planet that is potentially habitable and want to write a book on it or make money off it somehow. Of course, they could have known since the 60's or before, who knows?

 

[Space Toker]

I was hopeful that with the website listed below being down for days, some major news would be revealed. No such luck, but it is just a matter of time before a planet is found where liquid water can exist on the surface and the size is close to ours.

http://www.exoplanet.eu/

 

[igrowone]

i was surprised when i found this nugget, could be a possible viable planet within 20 light years, which is damn close by interstellar standards
about a 3x earth mass, story may be hyped a bit with chances for life
but looks like the closest thing found so far: http://news.discovery.com/space/earth-like-planet-life.html

 

[Space Toker]

yeah man I saw that about 10 hours ago! SWEET!

 

[Space Toker]

I think the guy who said the chance of life was 100% was a little overboard, it depends on lots of variables, but it sure is promising! I do think that they can tend to be too pessimistic at times too, who's to say there isn't a moon that prevents it from being tidally locked. Or a tidally locked planet may not have a huge temp difference on day vs night sides if a thick enough atmosphere can circulate the heat to the other side. And more than one of the planets in that system may be habitable, I don't know why they act like this is the 1st one. But it is very exciting indeed. Hopefully this will spur development of spaceships that can travel that distance and back in a human lifetime. All very possible if people wanted it bad enough. I know I sure do!

 

[igrowone]

this is pretty wild stuff, and very promising in one respect
for a while, there wasn't much interest in the red dwarfs, but there seems to have been a change in the perceived chances of life on a red dwarf planet
for one thing, there are a lot of red dwarfs, think it's something like half the image-able stars
tidal lock(from what i recall) is a given with a planet in a red dwarf's habitable zone, but that's not the end of the world(so to speak), just a very different world with possible water

 

[Space Toker]

I could be wrong, but I think a massive enough moon in the right orbit could prevent tidal locking AND stabilize the planets rotation. It is exciting, I hope they fund TPF or a similar mission as a result!

 

[igrowone]

I could be wrong, but I think a massive enough moon in the right orbit could prevent tidal locking AND stabilize the planets rotation. It is exciting, I hope they fund TPF or a similar mission as a result!

that may well be, a solitary planet will tidal lock, but moons could change that
this does add a bit of a kick to TPF, or more likely, its successor, not sure of the TPF funding
what is changing even faster is the size and ability of earth bound adaptive optics, i think that one set of binocular scopes may have equaled Hubble's abilties(or old Hubble, it was upgraded)