Exoplanets

[ddd999]

BBC News

"Astronomers have announced a haul of planets found beyond our Solar System.
...

"From [our] results, we know now that at least 40% of solar-type stars have low-mass planets. This is really important because it means that low-mass planets are everywhere, basically," explained Stephane Udry from Geneva University, Switzerland.
"What's very interesting is that models are predicting them, and we are finding them; and furthermore the models are predicting even more lower-mass planets like the Earth."

The discovery now takes the number of known exoplanets - planets outside our Solar System - to more than 400.

LINK

Are we alone?




...

 

[Rudolf Steiner]

Who knows, maybe we are alone (be open minded to that possibilitie), maybe we aren't.

 

[TClaeys]

I'm pretty sure we're not alone, but whether we are alone or not, the idea is quite staggering. Arthur C Clarke said something along these lines. Just wait til Kepler gets it's data in.

 

[Ezechiel]

Earth-like planet discovery could happen very soon

http://www.huliq.com/8684/87754/earth-planet-discovery-could-happen-very-soon

Prior to the discovery last week, scientists had found as many as 300 planets orbiting a single star, but they were all giant planets composed of gases, similar to our own solar system’s Jupiter and Saturn.

"So far we've found Jupiters and Saturns, and now our technology is becoming good enough to detect planets smaller, more like the size of Uranus and Neptune, and even smaller," said one of the top planet hunters on this world, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley.

"Being able to find three Earth-mass planets around a single star really makes the point that not only may many stars have one Earth, but they may very well have a couple of Earths," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C.

This discovery is very exciting for multiple reasons, but perhaps the most impelling reason for many is that this will spur scientists around the world to step up the search for extra-terrestrial life forms.

It is believed that an Earth’s "twin" will be found within our own galaxy sometime in the near future.

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

You don't need Earth sized planets for life - just a few sizable moons on a gas giant in the habitable zone.

Or not even in the habitable zone if you take into account non solar energy sourced life like the thermal vent organisms here on Earth. Hard to high-tech life developing on a submerged planet, but you could surely get to squid/dolphin/whale levels.

 

[Jose Collado]

I wonder if one of those planets is....*gasp*...Nibiru!

 

[truthseeker]

Even if none of those planets are populated it's still nice to know that we may eventually find earth-like planets in the near future and perhaps in the next few hundred years our descendents might be living there.

 

[ddd999]

... perhaps in the next few hundred years our descendents might be living there.

...or fighting wars there.

 

[Rudolf Steiner]

...or fighting wars there.

That's so cliché.