Strange New Worlds: The Amazing Alien Planet Discoveries of 2013

Livescience.com ^ | December 27, 2013 | Mike Wall

[Farnsworth]

While astronomers didn't bag that elusive first "alien Earth" in 2013, they made plenty of exciting exoplanet discoveries during the past year.

Here's a list of the top exoplanet finds of 2013, from a tiny world about the size of Earth's moon to a blue gas giant on which it rains molten glass:

The most Earthlike world yet

Also this year, researchers found the closest thing to an Earth twin in size and composition, though it's far too hot to support life as we know it.

Kepler-78b is just 20 percent wider and about 80 percent more massive than our planet, with a density nearly identical to that of Earth. The alien world, which is about 400 light-years from Earth, lies just 900,000 miles (1.5 million km) from its host star and completes one orbit every 8.5 hours. Surface temperatures on Kepler-78b likely top 3,680 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius), researchers say.

1,000 alien planets

Astronomers found the first-ever planets orbiting a star other than our sun in 1992. And in 2013, barely two decades later, they notched alien world number 1,000 — at least according to some tallies.

Two of the five main databases that catalog alien-planet discoveries passed the 1,000 mark this year, with both the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia and the Exoplanets Catalog, run by theUniversity of Puerto Rico at Arecibo's Planetary Habitability Laboratory, recording 1,056 alien worlds as of today (Dec. 26).

[SunkenCiv]

Whoops, that was supposed to be just a “extra to APoD” message. I’m having some frustrating connection problems and got my wireless crossed.

[SunkenCiv]

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[ExCTCitizen]

I hope they will find a Liberal utopia planet and maybe Libs, RINOs, Muslims and Obama would leave Earth.

[Farnsworth]

If only we could get them their

[null and void]

It’s not necessary to actually get them there, only to convince them that we can...

[Farnsworth]

LOL.....yeah, up the ramp you libs, some nice alien’s willing to be lead await you.

[Squawk 8888]

Sub light isn’t going to cut if for those long distances

Relativity is our friend. If you can get to a high-enough fraction of c, from the traveller's perspective most trips would only last a few months. I can envision a scenario where the spacecraft is accelerated at 1G, coasts at a very high speed, then turns around and decelerates at 1G to the destination. This would provide gravity for most of the trip, with the zero-g portion of the trip being very brief for the travellers.

[Squawk 8888]

I hope they will find a Liberal utopia planet and maybe Libs, RINOs, Muslims and Obama would leave Earth.

Or we could just adapt the Golgafrinchan Solution to the same effect.

[sargon]

Relativity is our friend.

Not particularly. The problem with traveling at significant fractions of c is that mass also increases as you get closer to c.

The relativistic "benefits" to interstellar travel only begin to be tangible at very high percentages of c.

I don't have the exact figures in front of me, but for instance, even 90% of light speed produces no significant relativistic benefit WRT such travel. More like 95-98% of light speed, or even higher, is needed, and with the attendant increase in mass, more and more energy is required to gain even the smallest amount of additional speed.

It'd be great if we could somehow propel spacecraft to 98%+ of light speed, but such science is not within our grasp for the foreseeable future.

It will truly take a Zephraim Cochran-like breakthrough in order for single generation interstellar travel to become feasible...

[BigCinBigD]

One day man will sail the gulf between the stars as our ansisters sailed the unknown seas.

[Farnsworth]

Sub light opens us the solar system, not interstellar space. If you figure out how to do suspended animation with sub light, then it’s possible.

bottom line, we are sometime away from it, we’ll eventually get their, but only the youngest of us may have kids to see it.

[Farnsworth]

sure, eventually.