NASA discovers first Earth-sized planets beyond our Solar System

The Huntsville Times ^ | 12/20/11 | Lee Roop

[KevinDavis]

MOFFET FIELD, California - NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-sized planets orbiting a sun outside our Solar System. NASA says the planets - Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f - are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone. That's where where liquid water could exist on their surfaces.

[KevinDavis]

Good news!!!!

[KevinDavis]

[GeronL]

bump

start selling tickets!

[KoRn]

This continues to get more interesting. Too bad all we can do is observe....

[cripplecreek]

Reading about this earlier. We’re homing in on planets closer to earth similar.

[dragnet2]

And right under our noses.

[KevinDavis]

It is a matter of time that we find one..

[cripplecreek]

One good thing I’m seeing is teenagers talking about this stuff with some actual interest. My 19 year old nephew was posting about this on his facebook page talking about how cool it is and he’s not a science geek like me.

[KoRn]

"Reading about this earlier. We’re homing in on planets closer to earth similar."

Was reading a thread earlier today about cell regeneration and being able to grow new organs for individuals outside of their bodies, which won't reject them. Such technology, combined with better propulsion systems could be our key to deep space travel. Just thinking out loud. ;p

[Larry Lucido]

And with mortgage interest at an all-time low, financing a small plot should be a breeze! Flip it a few times, and you can retire! :-)

[SamAdams76]

Most likely there are an enormous amount of earth-like planets floating out there in the universe that can support life as we know it here.

The trick for us will be finding a way to get to them. Our current methods of space travel will simply not be adequate.

[KoRn]

"One good thing I’m seeing is teenagers talking about this stuff with some actual interest. My 19 year old nephew was posting about this on his facebook page talking about how cool it is and he’s not a science geek like me."

One thing that I believe did some harm to me, and perhaps my generation to some extent is that I was a young child during the early 80s. I was 4 or 5 years old, the Shuttle program, or even space exploration itself hadn't been around terribly long, but to me it always was. It unfortunately trivialized it to me somewhat. Not until my older years did I realize how totally remarkable going to the Moon was, and I began to truly appreciate it all. I would have loved to been around during the 60s and seen all of the early space exploration literally as it happened. Those had to be some remarkably exciting times like no other.

[Drew68]

Good news!!!!

It's really amazing that what just a few years ago was breaking news is now routine. Planets, they seem, are everywhere.

I wonder if we'll ever get to the point where the optics on telescopes are so good we'll be able to simply focus on a planet and tell immediately if there is life there?

[central_va]

Sorry to rain on the life on other planets parade but we are alone. Read Enrico Fermi's The Fermi Paradox. Pretty much proves there are no other intelligent civilizations out there.

The Paradox: The apparent size and age of the universe suggest that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.

[cripplecreek]

The trick for us will be finding a way to get to them. Our current methods of space travel will simply not be adequate.

Yeah. New Horizons is hauling butt for a Pluto flyby in 2015 at around 9 miles per second. Its currently about 3 hours and 10 light minutes out.

VASIMIR looks interesting as propulsion goes but it still falls far short of what's needed for any kind of interstellar flight. Still, cutting a trip to mars down to a few days would be a huge jump.

[LibWhacker]

Cool! In a sense, we’re way more than half-way there already even though the first ship going there hasn’t taken off yet. In other words, it’s taken mankind, what 100,000 years?, to find earth-like exoplanets. No way it’ll take us that long to actually land on one of them... We’re way more than half-way there already!

[cripplecreek]

We don’t need to find intelligent life. In fact I personally think that intelligent life would be the worst possible discovery we could make.

[Jack Hydrazine]

It’s going to take a while to get there.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks KevinDavis and KoRn!

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe ·

Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·

[cripplecreek]

Those had to be some remarkably exciting times like no other.

I was pretty young but it was still very exciting to watch men walking on the moon. I was lucky that my grandfather was friends with Jim McDivitt who one of the true rocket jocks. He didn't go to the moon but he took some steps down the path with a Gemini 4 and Apollo 9 flight.