Scientists discover one of the most Earth-like planets yet.....

Another Earth Like Planet Discovered. Just a stone's throw away they say. What say ye?



Sci-News.com is reporting that astronomers at the University of New South Wales have discovered an Earth-like planet just 16 light-years away. The planet, dubbed Gliese 832c, is orbiting a red dwarf star half the mass and radius of our own sun. Gliese 832c has an orbital period of about 35 days, and a mass more than five times that of Earth's. More importantly, however, Gliese 832c is orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf, and receives the same average stellar energy as Earth does from the Sun.

Gliese 832c's mass means it likely has a far denser atmosphere than Earth does, which could make the planet's weather hot and volatile. If this is the case, the planet might be more like a super-Venus than a super-Earth. "If the planet has a similar atmosphere to Earth it may be possible for life to survive, although seasonal shifts would be extreme.

"[Gliese 832c is] one of the top three most Earth-like planets according to the [Earth Similarity Index] (i.e., with respect to Earth's stellar flux and mass) and the closest one to Earth of all three.....snip~

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/29/5...f-the-most-earth-like-planets-yet-gliese-832c

 

Statistically there will be millions of Earth-type planets...maybe tens of millions...maybe billions of them! On the one above we can send out a 'hello' signal today and not hear from them for 32 years...assuming we are technologically compatible and both of us remain in existence...huge 'ifs'.

Some day we will receive an intelligent signal and we will go bonkers tripping all over ourselves and frustrated because of the time to communicate which will give us years/decades to fabricate explanations regarding the impacts on politics and religion. The only way to have something fruitful from this is to have a face-to-face in the same time zone...

 

Let's go! I volunteer!......

 

Heya Nightmare. Well most of the Kepler planets that they found with water. Are bigger than the earth. Which in having Water.....is essential in order to sustain Human and animal lifeforms.

 

Heya OMOF Well, they still could be in our Zone and still not know we are here.

 

Heya GW Did you happen to see that they discovered a Planet that they thought couldn't exist. They call it the Mega Earth.


Scientists Have Discovered A Planet They Thought Was Impossible .....



The "Godzilla of Earths!" is in the foreground. Behind it is the smaller 'lava world'. Their sun, in the back, appears to have been created only 3 billion years after the Big Bang. Based on what we know about how solar systems form, researchers thought that a giant rocky planet could not exist. But they just found one that's 17 times Earth's mass. They're calling it the Mega-Earth.

Scientists say the new planet may have "profound implications for the possibility of life" on extra-solar planets, according to a press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They announced the finding in a talk at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston.

Researchers have always thought Mega-Earths were impossible since any planets that big would attract hydrogen gas, forming a gas planet like Jupiter.
Meet the Mega-Earth.

Mega-Earth, also known as Kepler-10c, is 18,000 miles in diameter and 2.3 times as large as Earth. It appears to be as solid as the planet beneath our feet. Kepler-10c was previously known to astronomers, but they had not yet measured its mass. Due to its size — 2.3 times that of Earth — it was assumed to be a "mini-Neptune," a planet encased in thick gas. But the new observations have confirmed that it is rocky, not gassy. It orbits an 11 billion-year-old star named Kepler-10 located 560 light years away from Earth. Its year lasts only 45 days.

Interestingly, this solar system is more than twice as old as our own — it was born less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang.....snip~

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-discovered-planet-thought-impossible-170448463.html

 

I heard about that planet, apparently it rotates around the sun, but doesn't rotate itself

 

It would be a hard argument that other lifeforms aren't carbon based, or oxygen "breathers" (including oxygen compounds like CO2). The carbon atom is very unique in its properties.

 

mass 5 times earth...you can't go there you'll die very quickly, we're restricted to planets our mass or less....

 

Mornin Wyly. How are we restricted? All the Kepler planets that they have found with what appears to be water.....are larger than the Earth.

 

Good luck living in a 5g environment for prolonged periods of time

Maybe we could send horse racing jockeys over there. Create a planet of little 250kg men.

 

If the gravity is stronger than on earth it will kill us...

 

This has been discussed before on the forum, someone mentioned that at even 1.5 g we could only survive a couple of weeks...

 

We need to send a new probe to Titan....we will find life there.

There are lakes and an atmosphere...plus, it rains organics.

It will NOT be life as we know it here, and thus difficult to understand....but it IS there.

 

These stories are sort of irresponsible, we don't know much about these planets so it's a stretch to describe them as "earth-like" just because it has a similar size.

 

In our 'time zone' and face-to-face...we need an 'in the moment' meeting. Actually it will be better to have a few months/years distance between us since there will be panic and negative spontaneous actions, etc. that having time will sort of mitigate. It's interesting how CNN and all media outlets like to sensationalize the news so can we imagine all the assumptions and controversy the talking heads will create if we detect an alien signal? My guess is within an hour of the discovery the media will have artist renderings of what they might look like, and all the potential evil intentions they have towards Earthlings, etc. It will give new meaning to 'media frenzy'!! In that movie Contact, when they show all those people gathered at the launch site, from religious zealots to every imaginable nut job, that was fiction but I'm guessing it's closer to reality than fiction...

 

Earth like, rocky, similar size, in their sun's goldilocks zone...I dont blame the scientists for implying anything else it's the media and the public

 

Can't be too far from the star or too close, can't be too big or too small, are critical parameters for life as we know it. Goldilocks kind of implies ignoring those extreme zones which are too hot or too cold...too hostile for life as we know it, and focusing on what we refer to as 'habitable' zones. Doesn't mean 100% of what we're looking for will be in the Goldilocks zone but it probably increases the odds. I tend to believe microbes are located throughout the Solar system and galaxy, in very hostile and/or extreme locations, and can be transported via asteroids and comets, and yes this would be great to prove this, but this is not the type of life we are searching via SETI...

 

Sure but the assumtion is complex life that is of interest us to requires liquid water which would be found in the goldilocks zone, microbes in obscure locations outside the zone doesn't hold much importance...

 

Well, the UN did put together a Committee to work out about who would Speak to any Extraterrestrial.....as it is clear. That there won't be speaking to any Leaders of Countries. Unless the ET can drop in for a Private one on one.

 

Gliese 832c orbits around a red dwarf [no, this doesn't mean that its star is a "little communist"!], this indicates that the planetary system is potentially quite aged [from an astronomical perspective]. Potentially ... If this is the case that planet could carry archaeological traces of a civilization which disappeared even many millions of years ago [if such traces are still there].

 

Update: About the 2 Planets Gliese.....g and d. What say ye?


US scientists said Thursday two distant Earth-like planets, which some believed might be able to harbor life, do not actually exist and that astronomers were confused by a star's sunspots.

The controversial pair of planets, Gliese d and g, some 22 light years away, were once believed to be in the Goldilocks zone -- not too close and not too far from the star, where the potential exists for water and perhaps life. They are part of a larger trove of potentially Earth-like planets that have been identified by astronomers so far, and NASA has said billions may be out there.

Too far to be seen with the naked eye or a telescope, they were spotted with a technique called Doppler radial velocity, orbiting a cool, red star called Gliese 581. The method takes starlight from telescope and analyzes its wavelengths. By detecting signs of a wobble from the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet, it can reveal the mass of a planet.

But astronomers at Pennsylvania State University now say Gliese 581 g and d were not planets at all, but a jumbled signal from the star itself. "These two Goldilocks planets that people have been talking about, unfortunately, based on our research are not real," said co-author Suvrath Mahadevan, assistant professor in the department of astronomy and astrophysics.....snip~

http://news.yahoo.com/two-earth-planets-dont-exist-211632207.html