Posted on 11/05/2013 6:51:23 AM PST by BenLurkin
All of the potentially habitable planets found in their survey are around K stars, which are cooler and slightly smaller than the sun, Petigura said. But the team’s analysis shows that the result for K stars can be extrapolated to G stars like the sun.
...
If the stars in the Kepler field are representative of stars in the solar neighborhood, then the nearest (Earth-size) planet is expected to orbit a star that is less than 12 light-years from Earth and can be seen by the unaided eye. Future instrumentation to image and take spectra of these Earths need only observe a few dozen nearby stars to detect a sample of Earth-size planets residing in the habitable zones of their host stars.
“For NASA, this number – that every fifth star has a planet somewhat like Earth – is really important, because successor missions to Kepler will try to take an actual picture of a planet, and the size of the telescope they have to build depends on how close the nearest Earth-size planets are,” said Andrew Howard, astronomer with the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. “An abundance of planets orbiting nearby stars simplifies such follow-up missions.”
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Maybe we’ll lizards with big brains! Oh yeah—career politicians.
I predict we’ll eventually learn that none of them have life, and we’ll likely never visit a single one.
considering almost everything we see in our own backyard has a moon circling it, it is more likely closer to 100% of the suns have planets, and many of those planets have moons
Career politicians - lizards with pea brains.
You realized what you’ve started?
There are about 140 unique properties of earth that make life possible. When I see a planet with two properties I am totally unimpressed.
They could not be career politicians with “big” brains.
If “life” is bacterium then I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a lot of it out there in the galaxy.
If “life” means something you might want to have as a pet — or even converse with — then probably not so much.
And frankly, if it’s habitable — then I’d just as soon we be the first life to arrive. Simplifies things.
I know they have found a few of the supergiants orbiting in fairly circular habitable zone orbits. Moons around those could prove promising.
I’m not all that interested in “intelligent” life. It presents nothing but problems. What we need is life we can eat.
22% seems like a very high percentage of sun like stars that have potentially life sustaining planets.
What percentage of stars are ‘sun like’? (If this number is small, it makes more sense to me.)
No, but I get the feeling I’m about to find out.
bttt
Good show on the science channel right now talking about earth and the potential for life elsewhere.
I hope you don’t think we know everything there is to know in physics
I feel quite the opposite- that one day we will find faster-than-light travel.
I am betting it is in area 51 on the vehicles bob lazaar said he worked on, with the anti-gravity drive (yes I am serious)
thanks
Per the report, the nearest alternate “earth” is 12 light years away.
The report asked the question: why are other intelligence just observing?
Oh, the Heisenberg name comes to mind again.
We need to find some here first before we go looking elsewhere.
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