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Searching for New Earths
National Geographic ^ | 12/02/09

Posted on 12/02/2009 4:57:53 PM PST by KevinDavis

It took humans thousands of years to explore our own planet and centuries to comprehend our neighboring planets, but nowadays new worlds are being discovered every week. To date, astronomers have identified more than 370 “exoplanets,” worlds orbiting stars other than the sun. Many are so strange as to confirm the biologist J. B. S. Haldane’s famous remark that “the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” There’s an Icarus-like “hot Saturn” 260 light-years from Earth, whirling around its parent star so rapidly that a year there lasts less than three days. Circling another star 150 light-years out is a scorched “hot Jupiter,” whose upper atmosphere is being blasted off to form a gigantic, comet-like tail. Three benighted planets have been found orbiting a pulsar—the remains of a once mighty star shrunk into a spinning atomic nucleus the size of a city—while untold numbers of worlds have evidently fallen into their suns or been flung out of their systems to become “floaters” that wander in eternal darkness.

(Excerpt) Read more at ngm.nationalgeographic.com ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; Miscellaneous; Science
KEYWORDS: astronomy; newearth; science; space; spacescience; xplanets
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Our New Home

1 posted on 12/02/2009 4:57:53 PM PST by KevinDavis
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To: The SISU kid; Empireoftheatom48; Rio; Iowan; hattend; reader25; july4thfreedomfoundation; ...


For other space news go to: http://www.spacetoday.net
For a list of Private Space Companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies


2 posted on 12/02/2009 4:58:35 PM PST by KevinDavis (Can't Stop the Signal!)
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To: KevinDavis

I just wish these writers wouldn’t use the term “New Earth” or “Earthlike”. Science is taking a beating because of the climate scam and people read a title like that then find that the article mentions anything but earthlike planets and the scientists get the blame.

According to planetquest the number of planets found stands at 403 and the number of eartlike planets is listed at 0.


3 posted on 12/02/2009 5:08:48 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: cripplecreek

Amazing that we still seem to be unique. God made us special.


4 posted on 12/02/2009 5:10:59 PM PST by ilovesarah2012
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To: ilovesarah2012

We’ll always be unique even if we find other planets with life. Personally I’m not thrilled with the idea of finding intelligent life. I’m far more interested in finding life we can eat, water we can drink, and air we can breathe.


5 posted on 12/02/2009 5:15:13 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: KevinDavis

Caprica and Kobol were earthlike planets.


6 posted on 12/02/2009 5:16:20 PM PST by discomatic
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To: cripplecreek
The reason why Earth planets have not been discovered is because they are tiny. The parent star blots them out. Traditional methods of exoplanet detection all rely on indirect means of inferring the existence of orbiting bodies. These methods include:
1.astrometry - watching a star move slightly due to the gravitational influence of a nearby planet
2.Observing doppler shifts of the stars spectrum due to the star's movement
3.Observing the amount of light from a star change as an extrasolar planet transits the star, preventing a portion of the light from reaching the observer.
4.Pulsar timing
5.Gravitational microlensing
6.Observing radiation from Circumstellar disks in the infrared.
The Kepler Mission, is a NASA mission which is able to detect extrasolar planetsThe NASA Kepler Mission uses the transit method to scan a hundred thousand stars in the constellation Cygnus for planets. Kepler will be sensitive enough to detect planets even smaller than Earth. By scanning a hundred thousand stars simultaneously, it will not only be able to detect Earth-sized planets, it will be able to collect statistics on the numbers of such planets around sunlike stars
7 posted on 12/02/2009 5:19:05 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld ("We will either find a way, or make one."Hannibal/Carthaginian Military Commander)
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To: sonofstrangelove

I understand all that, I’m just more concerned with the credibility of the scientists with the word “Earthlike” being thrown around.


8 posted on 12/02/2009 5:22:11 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: KevinDavis
“the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

What a widely unimpressive and mundane statement.

9 posted on 12/02/2009 5:23:11 PM PST by Psycho_Bunny (ALSO SPRACH ZEROTHUSTRA)
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To: cripplecreek

I am very confident. NASA/Kepler and the data it sends back will make this a reality.


10 posted on 12/02/2009 5:23:33 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld ("We will either find a way, or make one."Hannibal/Carthaginian Military Commander)
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To: cripplecreek

The transit method that Kepler telescope uses also makes it possible to study the atmosphere of the transiting planet. When the planet transits the star, light from the star passes through the upper atmosphere of the planet. By studying the high-resolution stellar spectrum carefully, one can detect elements present in the planet’s atmosphere. A planetary atmosphere (and planet for that matter) could also be detected by measuring the polarisation of the starlight as it passed through or is reflected off the planet’s atmosphere.


11 posted on 12/02/2009 5:25:58 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld ("We will either find a way, or make one."Hannibal/Carthaginian Military Commander)
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To: sonofstrangelove

I hope so as well. With a little luck it will inspire us to try harder.

I don’t know if Kepler will look at Alpha Centauri but I’ve read some scientists theorize that its a prime candidate for small rocky planets.


12 posted on 12/02/2009 5:26:17 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: cripplecreek

I think that Alpha Centuri, Tau Cei, and Zeta Reticuli are prime candidates.


13 posted on 12/02/2009 5:28:19 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld ("We will either find a way, or make one."Hannibal/Carthaginian Military Commander)
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To: sonofstrangelove

The closer the better. Maybe we’ll see some real propulsion research that will put the Alpha Centauri system with in decades rather than thousands of decades. Even 1/8 or 1/16 light speed would put it within reasonable reach.


14 posted on 12/02/2009 5:36:08 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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To: cripplecreek

I agree. Maybe through the use of wormholes. Though, I prefer use wormholes to travel interdimensionally.


15 posted on 12/02/2009 5:38:19 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld ("We will either find a way, or make one."Hannibal/Carthaginian Military Commander)
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To: KevinDavis

Hate to say it, but that National Geographic article was 90% pablum. The magazine is overproduced — pictures too beautiful and writing too slick. It acts like it’s a great magazine. It’s stuck on itself. Also it shoves a lot of environmental stuff at us.


16 posted on 12/02/2009 5:43:56 PM PST by frposty (I'm a simpleton)
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To: Psycho_Bunny

And that was before Prop 8!


17 posted on 12/02/2009 5:49:57 PM PST by ilovesarah2012
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To: cripplecreek

It’s probably the reporters assigning these names to these exoplanets, but scientists and reporters should be more careful with the terms they use.

If it’s a rocky world at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, that ain’t “Earthlike”


18 posted on 12/02/2009 5:59:12 PM PST by Brett66 (Where government advances, and it advances relentlessly , freedom is imperiled -Janice Rogers Brown)
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To: KevinDavis

One more thing about National Geographic. Let’s see when they report on climategate, or even report that new analysis of the data shows reduced evidence of a warming trend.


19 posted on 12/02/2009 6:03:56 PM PST by frposty (I'm a simpleton)
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To: Brett66

Exactly.

Some of the large gas giants they’ve found are in the habitable zone which makes me wish we could get an idea about moons they may have around them.

Have you seen the interactive atlas planetquest has now? Its the 3-D new worlds atlas and its pretty cool. It shows where the star is in relation to us and you can zoom in on their planetary systems and get other info.

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/atlas/atlas_index.cfm


20 posted on 12/02/2009 6:10:37 PM PST by cripplecreek (Seniors, the new shovel ready project under socialized medicine.)
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