Earth's twin discovered 600 lightyears away

[Tranquil Surrogate]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/12/2011125225552973775.html

Think this could mean the search for extraterrestrial life is finally over? Looks pretty promising.

[Scarlet Flandre]

Tranquil Surrogate

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/12/2011125225552973775.html

Think this could mean the search for extraterrestrial life is finally over? Looks pretty promising.

And only 600 lightyears away heart

[Dieu des hommes]

I think that to assume any planet within the habitable zone features any form of life isn't good science. We will still need to use spectroscopic measurements to study the planet's atmospheric composition. Looking for signs typically correlated to our understanding of life, such as oxygen, methane or water vapour. Which will increase the probability that life has develop there. The unfortunate truth though, is we won't even be able to confirm whether life exists there until we are capable of getting a space probe to visit it. Which due to a myriad of problems, will probably not be within our lifetimes.

It is a spectacular discovery though. Finding planets within the habitable zones of their respective stars is something that is incredibly important to the question of whether we are alone in the universe, and to what extent we share the universe with other lifeforms. I hope any spectroscopic measurements they make, will come up with indicators of life.

[Dorinkingu]

Well hitch up the buggy! We'll be there in no time. *goes off to pack some snacks for the trip*

[Suicidesoldier#1]

Venus is our twin silly.

Just take a look at it.


TAKE A LOOK AT IT.

RAWR!

[Vannak]

Dieu des hommes

I think that to assume any planet within the habitable zone features any form of life isn't good science. We will still need to use spectroscopic measurements to study the planet's atmospheric composition. Looking for signs typically correlated to our understanding of life, such as oxygen, methane or water vapour. Which will increase the probability that life has develop there. The unfortunate truth though, is we won't even be able to confirm whether life exists there until we are capable of getting a space probe to visit it. Which due to a myriad of problems, will probably not be within our lifetimes.

It is a spectacular discovery though. Finding planets within the habitable zones of their respective stars is something that is incredibly important to the question of whether we are alone in the universe, and to what extent we share the universe with other lifeforms. I hope any spectroscopic measurements they make, will come up with indicators of life.

You can't really use spectroscopic measurements on something you can't see. We infer the existence of the planet by the wobble of the star it orbits. We rarely image planets. To image a jupiter sized planet orbiting our nearest star, you'd need a 175m telescope aperture or equivalent to just resolve its size. Because the star behind it is so bright, you probably wouldn't even be able to see it.

An Intensity Interferometer can better detect where the star image ends and the planet begins, but you can't use it for spectrophotometry.

[Krovahn]

Vannak

Dieu des hommes

I think that to assume any planet within the habitable zone features any form of life isn't good science. We will still need to use spectroscopic measurements to study the planet's atmospheric composition. Looking for signs typically correlated to our understanding of life, such as oxygen, methane or water vapour. Which will increase the probability that life has develop there. The unfortunate truth though, is we won't even be able to confirm whether life exists there until we are capable of getting a space probe to visit it. Which due to a myriad of problems, will probably not be within our lifetimes.

It is a spectacular discovery though. Finding planets within the habitable zones of their respective stars is something that is incredibly important to the question of whether we are alone in the universe, and to what extent we share the universe with other lifeforms. I hope any spectroscopic measurements they make, will come up with indicators of life.

You can't really use spectroscopic measurements on something you can't see. We infer the existence of the planet by the wobble of the star it orbits. We rarely image planets. To image a jupiter sized planet orbiting our nearest star, you'd need a 175m telescope aperture or equivalent to just resolve its size. Because the star behind it is so bright, you probably wouldn't even be able to see it.

An Intensity Interferometer can better detect where the star image ends and the planet begins, but you can't use it for spectrophotometry.

They've actually begun moving away from the wobble technique [they still use it, technically... it just is no longer the only method] and on to a star dimming technique, which relies on the planet moving in front of the star, inhibiting some of the light from reaching us.

Kepler being the big instrument using this technique [if memory serves me well]. It is far easier to detect planets when looking into how much light they block from a star, as opposed to the wobble they cause on a star [which stars with more than one planet are simultaneously effected by all planets with respect to gravitational effects].

This has a couple problems, but is generally a really good indicator:

One of the problems being that it takes several revolutions around a given star to 'confirm' a planet's existence. The drawback with this, is that we can detect planets that are close to their stars, generally not in the habitable zone, it takes much longer to detect planets farther out.

They also have to pass in a plane that takes them between our vantage point and the star. Since not all orbital planes are the same, we can only see part of what is out there.

Additionally, smaller planets block out less light, however, our instruments are getting to the point where they can detect the minute changes.

The dimming of the light from a star is much easier to quantify than the wobble that planets cause on a star because generally only one planet will be blocking the light from a star at a given time; whereas all planets will be affecting the wobble of a planet, thus it is more difficult to determine size and number of planets from it.

[next stop atrocity]

I wish people would stop calling it a "twin" or even "earth like"
Yes it lies within the habitable zone but in actual fact they don't even know if it's a rock planet or a gas one, admittedly we haven't found gas planets that close to a star before now but who knows.

Also on the good old wobble technique, after 12 hours of using this technique to identify planets I can see why people have moved on to using dimming. Seriously. Like the guy above me said it's so hard to quantify when there's more than one planet. It becomes very sketchy at that point. Besides which we can't really find earth-size planets with it, they have to be big enough to pull the star so tend to be closer to jupiter mass.
If someone was to look at our system with the wobble effect they would only detect jupiter because it's mass is so much higher, pretty much equal to the rest of the solar system combined.

Overall though I'm pretty excited. Exoplanet discovery is still open to some big advances and it captures the public attention because we like thinking that we might find other life. So yay for me actually maybe being able to do a research project into it for my phd c:

[lytrexifan]

Even if there IS life, it's probably just bacterial :L probably nothing advanced past more then a few cells, if that.

[Valkyrie Of Heaven]

would we technically be able to use, given the fact if we've invented it yet, the ability to warp time to get there. ....i mean the theory in and of itself is one of probability...the means to which are being taken into consideration, if not now more than ever.....so by saying it's not within our lifetimes.....idk.

[Noria-chan]

yum_strawberry

Okay now we need to figure out how we are going to bend space and time in order to drastically shorten that 600 light year gap, yeah?

[Tuah]

lytrexifan

Even if there IS life, it's probably just bacterial :L probably nothing advanced past more then a few cells, if that.

Or it could have a civilization millions of years more advanced than we have.

[Xiam]

Noria-chan

yum_strawberry

Okay now we need to figure out how we are going to bend space and time in order to drastically shorten that 600 light year gap, yeah?

BRB making a TARDIS.

[kjajames]

It is an awesome discovery. I didn't see that particular article. Though I believe it's the one about the Kepler-22 planet that was found inside the habitable zone of a star.

The only thing is it's difficult to assert that it's the earth's twin. Though they do have a fairly accurate estimation of the size of the planet apparently (which is supposedly 2.5x the earths diameter). The problem is we can only speculate on the planetary composition.

[MythosRattus]

next stop atrocity

I wish people would stop calling it a "twin" or even "earth like"
Yes it lies within the habitable zone but in actual fact they don't even know if it's a rock planet or a gas one, admittedly we haven't found gas planets that close to a star before now but who knows

Well, the assumption that there's liquid water on a planet in a star's habitable zone isn't really that unreasonable. The first and second most common elements in the universe are, respectively, hydrogen and oxygen and the two get along very well. An earth-sized planet will probably have a comparable level of gravity and being in the habitable zone means it likely has a similar temperature range as well. With H and O being such good friends, if they're present in any concentration -which given how common they are is very likely- in an environment similar to Earth, the presence of liquid water is highly probable. And there's also the fact that it's incredibly unlikely that it's a gas planet since the probable temperatures in the habitable zone wouldn't allow the gasses to be cool and dense enough to form a cohesive body. So in all likelihood it's a rock planet with a high probability of having some amount of liquid water. it's true that we can't know for sure until we get better information but just judging by the odds it's not an unreasonable hypothesis.
I can't wait 'till we know more either biggrin it's really exciting stuff.
To be fair, though, the media are calling it an 'Earth twin' more than the scientific community; it makes for a better sound bite than the rather unexciting term 'possibly Earth-like exoplanet.'

Noria-chan

yum_strawberry

Okay now we need to figure out how we are going to bend space and time in order to drastically shorten that 600 light year gap, yeah?

Bending space isn't all that difficult (in theory), the big problem is having an adequate power source to accomplish the task.