Kepler Mission likely to confirm Milky Way hosts 100 million habitable planets

news.com.au ^ | 07/26/10

[KevinDavis]

SCIENTISTS are celebrating the discovery of more than 700 suspected new planets - including up to 140 similar in size to Earth - in just six weeks of using a powerful new space observatory.

Early results from NASA’s Kepler Mission, a small satellite observing deep space, suggested planets like Earth were far more common than previously thought.

[editor-surveyor]

“I take it you hate science”

.
No, only fantasies masquerading as science.
.

[marktwain]

I find the “rare earth” hypothesis rather persuasive, combined with the reasons that intelligent life may be rare. Still, it is interesting that of the stars sampled, about 14 percent were found to have planets that were near earth sized, though all found so far are in very fast orbits compared to earth, just by the nature of the small sample of observations collected.

It will be quite interesting to see what the results are after 10 years of observations instead of only six weeks.

[Dead Corpse]

If humanity is fallen and imperfect, yet made in God's image, does this mean God is "fallen" and "imperfect"? After all, God created us this way. Did God not understand exactly what they were doing? Or did God make us this effed up on purpose?

Silly arguments that really have ZERO to do with the topic at hand. The numbers purport to show mounting evidence of there being any number of solar systems in our own galaxy that offer us many interesting avenues for potential exploitation. Even if they aren't perfect Edens, there could still exist quite a few planets that could allow us to expand beyond where we are now.

This is a VERY good thing.

[editor-surveyor]

“Your ancestors burned people at the stake???”

.
Off your Thorazine I see!

When will you stop beating your wife? (scientific minds want to know)

[hosepipe]

Exactly.. believe in some kind of GOD!...
-OR- invent some bodacious Yarn about places we couldn't get to if we wanted to..

[editor-surveyor]

“”Self-aware intelligence”, being His image, is good enough for me....in which case, my mind is open to the Universe being filled with God’s children.”

.
If that is so, then its going to be awfully cruel of him to wipe all of them out when he destroys the universe with fervent heat at the end of his millenial reign here on Earth as he has promised to do.

I suspect that your “open mind” has opened too far and gathered some detritus.
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[dragnet2]

a VERY good thing.

One of my favorite Martian surface images.

And this is just one single planet that happens to be really close to us....We can only imagine what trillions more planets will eventually reveal.

Clouds above the rim of "Endurance Crater" in this image from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. These clouds occur in a region of strong vertical shear. The cloud particles (ice in this martian case) fall out, and get dragged along away from the location where they originally condensed, forming characteristic streamers. Opportunity took this picture with its navigation camera during the rover's 269th martian day (Oct. 26, 2004). (NASA/JPL)

[gore_sux]

"Yes, there are many stars in our galaxy, but more than 99% of them are the wrong TYPE, or in the wrong PLACE, or of the wrong SIZE.

Yes but I only need to have 0.00000000002% of the star systems in the galaxy to be habitable for you to be wrong. This doesn't account for the possiblity of multiple planets in the same star system.

[Raycpa]

We have here the second part of the sixth day’s work, the creation of man, which we are, in a special manner, concerned to take notice of, that we may know ourselves. Observe,I. That man was made last of all the creatures, that it might not be suspected that he had been, any way, a helper to God in the creation of the world: that question must be for ever humbling and mortifying to him, Where wast thou, or any of thy kind, when I laid the foundations of the earth? Job 38:4. Yet it was both an honour and a favour to him that he was made last: an honour, for the method of the creation was to advance from that which was less perfect to that which was more so; and a favour, for it was not fit he should be lodged in the palace designed for him till it was completely fitted up and furnished for his reception. Man, as soon as he was made, had the whole visible creation before him, both to contemplate and to take the comfort of. Man was made the same day that the beasts were, because his body was made of the same earth with theirs; and, while he is in the body, he inhabits the same earth with them. God forbid that by indulging the body and the desires of it we should make ourselves like the beasts that perish!II. That man’s creation was a more signal and immediate act of divine wisdom and power than that of the other creatures. The narrative of it is introduced with something of solemnity, and a manifest distinction from the rest. Hitherto, it had been said, “Let there be light,’’ and “Let there be a firmament,’’ and “Let the earth, or waters, bring forth’’ such a thing; but now the word of command is turned into a word of consultation, “Let us make man, for whose sake the rest of the creatures were made: this is a work we must take into our own hands.’’ In the former he speaks as one having authority, in this as one having affection; for his delights were with the sons of men, Prov. 8:31. It should seem as if this were the work which he longed to be at; as if he had said, “Having at last settled the preliminaries, let us now apply ourselves to the business, Let us make man.’’ Man was to be a creature different from all that had been hitherto made. Flesh and spirit, heaven and earth, must be put together in him, and he must be allied to both worlds. And therefore God himself not only undertakes to make him, but is pleased so to express himself as if he called a council to consider of the making of him: Let us make man. The three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, consult about it and concur in it, because man, when he was made, was to be dedicated and devoted to Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Into that great name we are, with good reason, baptized, for to that great name we owe our being. Let him rule man who said, Let us make man. III. That man was made in God’s image and after his likeness, two words to express the same thing and making each other the more expressive; image and likeness denote the likest image, the nearest resemblance of any of the visible creatures. Man was not made in the likeness of any creature that went before him, but in the likeness of his Creator; yet still between God and man there is an infinite distance. Christ only is the express image of God’s person, as the Son of his Father, having the same nature. It is only some of God’s honour that is put upon man, who is God’s image only as the shadow in the glass, or the king’s impress upon the coin. God’s image upon man consists in these three things:-1. In his nature and constitution, not those of his body (for God has not a body), but those of his soul. This honour indeed God has put upon the body of man, that the Word was made flesh, the Son of God was clothed with a body like ours and will shortly clothe ours with a glory like that of his. And this we may safely say, That he by whom God made the worlds, not only the great world, but man the little world, formed the human body, at the first, according to the platform he designed for himself in the fulness of time. But it is the soul, the great soul, of man, that does especially bear God’s image. The soul is a spirit, an intelligent immortal spirit, an influencing active spirit, herein resembling God, the Father of Spirits, and the soul of the world. The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. The soul of man, considered in its three noble faculties, understanding, will, and active power, is perhaps the brightest clearest looking-glass in nature, wherein to see God. 2. In his place and authority: Let us make man in our image, and let him have dominion. As he has the government of the inferior creatures, he is, as it were, God’s representative, or viceroy, upon earth; they are not capable of fearing and serving God, therefore God has appointed them to fear and serve man. Yet his government of himself by the freedom of his will has in it more of God’s image than his government of the creatures. 3. In his purity and rectitude. God’s image upon man consists in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10. He was upright, Eccl. 7:29. He had an habitual conformity of all his natural powers to the whole will of God. His understanding saw divine things clearly and truly, and there were no errors nor mistakes in his knowledge. His will complied readily and universally with the will of God, without reluctancy or resistance. His affections were all regular, and he had no inordinate appetites or passions. His thoughts were easily brought and fixed to the best subjects, and there was no vanity nor ungovernableness in them. All the inferior powers were subject to the dictates and directions of the superior, without any mutiny or rebellion. Thus holy, thus happy, were our first parents, in having the image of God upon them. And this honour, put upon man at first, is a good reason why we should not speak ill one of another (Jam. 3:9), nor do ill one to another (Gen. 9:6), and a good reason why we should not debase ourselves to the service of sin, and why we should devote ourselves to God’s service. But how art thou fallen, O son of the morning! How is this image of God upon man defaced! How small are the remains of it, and how great the ruins of it! The Lord renew it upon our souls by his sanctifying grace!IV. That man was made male and female, and blessed with the blessing of fruitfulness and increase. God said, Let us make man, and immediately it follows, So God created man; he performed what he resolved.

http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/genesis/1.html

[James C. Bennett]

Click on the picture, and read the information on all the sections inside. This is one of the most awe-inspiring charts I've ever seen.

[backwoods-engineer]

e don't even have the technology to even see detail on the surface of planets orbiting stars closest to us, let alone planets in other galaxies.

We don't need to see surface detail. We need:

• Spectral type of the star
• Radial velocity variations on the star caused by the planet;
• Which leads to calculations of its mass and orbit.

  Stars of a certain spectral type are in the same size class. We need yellow/orange G stars, with a planet of terrestrial size inside the circumstellar habitable zone (about 90 +/- 10 million miles).

  The last two are hard with our present technology, because the radial velocities of the planet's "pull" on the star are much lower for a planet about the mass of the Earth and about the distance. But eventually (perhaps with the satellite in the original poster's article) we will be able to determine if such planets exist within so many light years of Earth. Then, we can work on looking farther out.

  But I believe the result will be negative.

[dragnet2]

Another of my favorite Martian surface photographs...

On May 19th, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover's 489th martian day, or sol. Spirit was commanded to stay awake briefly after sending that sol's data to the Mars Odyssey orbiter just before sunset. The image is a false color composite, showing the sky similar to what a human would see, but with the colors slightly exaggerated. (NASA/JPL>

[webstersII]

“and it is less than a spec of sand in the Sahara compared to the known universe”

You get the Captain Hyperbole award for that.

[dragnet2]

We don't need to see surface detail.

Yes, I happen to know a little about that. Learned all about spectroscopes when I was a youngsters. I had a feeling you'd go there...

But thanks for the tip...

By the way, did you know they found life, surviving and living just fine a few feet below ground at nuclear test sites?

[Dead Corpse]

Drop to your knees and pray for a paragraph...

[webstersII]

“then its going to be awfully cruel of him to wipe all of them out when he destroys the universe with fervent heat at the end of his millenial reign here on Earth as he has promised to do.”

You’ve got the story completely wrong, along with the Jenkins/Lahaye/Lindsey fans.

[backwoods-engineer]

I was being charitable with 99%. Ward and Brownlee are much less so.

0.00000000002% is 2 parts in 10^13. But there are only 4 x 10^11 stars in the Milky Way. And spectral type G stars make up only 14.6% of the total, or about 58 million stars. But most of these are too young, too active, too close to the galactic core, or too metal-poor to have planets. So you have already whittled down the 10^11 stars in the Milky Way to perhaps a million.

I am saying (well, I learned it from Ward and Brownlee) that Earth is one in a million.

[backwoods-engineer]

By the way, did you know they found life, surviving and living just fine a few feet below ground at nuclear test sites?

Life is indeed very tenacious. I would not be surprised to find bacterial life on Mars or one of the near-Earth asteroids.

But the question of where life, and more importantly the information that makes life possible came from is another question entirely. It has not been answered by the old standbys (Miller-Urey experiment), and the origin of life conventions, at least as of a few years ago, had no new theories; indeed, they are all moving toward panspermia, which just moves the question of origins back one planet.

[dragnet2]

I would not be surprised to find bacterial life I would not be surprised to find bacterial life on Mars

You bet....The big questions there is, where did the water go? What caused the changes?

The possibilities for life outside earth are endless.

[dragnet2]

which just moves the question of origins back one planet.

Nope, would not subscribe to that.