Scientist Find Most Earth-like Planet

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(OlsonBW @ Apr 25 2007, 11:51 AM) [snapback]429798[/snapback]</div>

Well, there's an optimistic attitude. Should we not even bother to try? <_<

As for 'pilgrims', humanity would have a far richer and more robust culture if the first Europeans had stayed home.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 25 2007, 10:51 AM) [snapback]429726[/snapback]</div>

Oh Yeah???!! Well when I die Im going to spend my vacation there..... :lol: :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lowlander @ Apr 25 2007, 06:59 AM) [snapback]429733[/snapback]</div>

Lowlander, the ESO new release

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2007/pr-22-07.html

suggests that they used Doppler radial velocity in this case. You are correct that other 'smallish' planets have been found by gravitational microlensing, but in that case one needs a nearer star to occult the light path. I reckon that there are not enough stars closer than 20 light-years to make that a high-probability event.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 25 2007, 10:51 AM) [snapback]429726[/snapback]</div>

Oh Yeah???!! Well when I die Im going to spend my vacation there..... :lol: :lol:

BTW I hear they are more advanced over there.. The Space guys like to cruise our planet that is also know as the HOOD in space and check out the HOOD RATS on thier way from point A to point B... :blink: :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 25 2007, 11:58 AM) [snapback]429802[/snapback]</div>

There's reality, and then there are perceptions of reality. When people say 'my reality', they're really talking about their perceptions. Reality's the big deep part that isn't affected by what we think about it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 25 2007, 07:51 AM) [snapback]429726[/snapback]</div>

Your constant unrelenting juvenile attack upon people that have different beliefs than you is tiresome and reveals a hatefilled and intolerant character.

Wildkow

p.s. BTW the Bible does speak about other beings in the universe other than ourselves, I suspect they have to live somewhere so by inference it does speak of other planets. Please add ignorance to the above traits in your character.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Apr 25 2007, 08:09 AM) [snapback]429746[/snapback]</div>

I think what they really meant by "Earth-like" is that it's the smallest exoplanet they've detected so far. I don't know if they've ever actually "seen" any of these planets. Generally they detect them by indirect methods. But they know nothing about any of them other than their mass. Smaller means more "Earth-like." But a planet that's really Earth-like (small enough, and far enough from its star) is probably still beyond our technological capability to find.

As for going there, who wants to volunteer for a trip that's going to take 50 generations? And can you imagine the squalor and chaos that would take over in a colony small enough to go off in a ship, but large enough to void degeneracy from inbreeding? By the time they arrived they'd either have killed themselves off in religious wars, or be divided into feuding factions incapable of cooperating when they got there.

Freezing people in an automated ship is pure fantasy. And attaining a fast enough speed for time dilation to shorten the journey appreciably would require a propulsion system many orders of magnitude more powerful than anything so far imagined, and a power source not yet dreamed of. So for now that's fantasy also.

Bottom line: The search for exoplanets is fascinating, and may teach us a great deal. But as far as a place to live, we've got this one planet, and when we ruin it we're SOL.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Apr 25 2007, 11:08 PM) [snapback]430311[/snapback]</div>

No way dude! Technocrats tell us that technology will save us and I believe em! Just ask Mr. Shwartzengggger or however you spell it. lol

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Apr 25 2007, 09:51 AM) [snapback]429726[/snapback]</div>

And so, by that logic, planes are impossible. Cars too. Phones, TV, lots of things can't be, if you base things solely on being in the Bible.


Good thing that is not the only book, then, right?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TJandGENESIS @ Apr 26 2007, 01:43 AM) [snapback]430324[/snapback]</div>

I know I've said many a prayer over my Signals and Systems book!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Apr 26 2007, 09:15 AM) [snapback]430413[/snapback]</div>

why do people have to demean or dismiss the religious beliefs of others?

 

Are you dismissing my beliefs just because my god is called electron and has nothing to do with Jesus?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Apr 26 2007, 06:23 AM) [snapback]430416[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Apr 26 2007, 06:38 AM) [snapback]430424[/snapback]</div>

Can't we just stop all this arguing about god once and for all, have a beer, and all agree that the world was not created by a god: it was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who is not a god, he's just a plain old flying spaghetti monster? Why does the creator have to be a god? Why can't he be a flying spaghetti monster? Give me one good reason. And (to bring this back on topic) maybe those exoplanets are not Earth-like because they were created by other kinds of monsters instead of by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Come on folks, this is the 21st century. Religious arguments are passe. We know the truth and you can stop arguing. Let His noodly appendages touch your heart and celebrate Him with pasta and beer.

(And it's really in your best interest to believe in the FSM because if you don't you'll have to wait in the long line at the beer volcano after you die, instead of being able to go to the short line.)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Apr 26 2007, 10:56 AM) [snapback]430486[/snapback]</div>

And you personally define the problem.


How about "we just stop all this arguing about god once and for all, have a beer, and all agree that the world was" "created by a god"?

I might not believe in God, but I believe in a persons right to believe in one or two or whatever.

 

And yet you ridicule people when they express those beliefs and you find that those beliefs don't Jive well with yours... interesting...

 

This is a pretty interesting discovery. It is the first planet that has the potential to be "Earth-like" for a couple reasons. One is that it is relatively low mass (~5 times the mass of the Earth, which is among the lowest-mass planets we have found). Moreover, if you look at the luminosity of the star (quite a bit less than the Sun) and the distance from the star to the planet (much less than the Earth-Sun distance), you can figure out that it's getting about as much energy from its star as the Earth gets from the Sun.

One point that isn't really presented in the article is that the mass of the planet puts it between the rocky and gas giant planets; it could be a "Big Earth" or a "Small Neptune." From the metallicity of the star (low; there aren't a lot of heavy elements), the safer bet is probably on a "Small Neptune."

However, more planets are being discovered every day and I have no doubt that we will find an Earth twin around another star in the next 10 years (conservative estimate, I think). Just finding the planet (via its the reflex motion of its host star) doesn't necessarily mean that we can find anything out about it other than its orbital dynamics. However, technology is ever-advancing and the techniques to actually take images of extra-solar planets are already in development and I suspect it won't be long before we are able to actually see the (reflected) light from extra-solar planets.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Apr 25 2007, 10:50 AM) [snapback]429796[/snapback]</div>

It's incredibly disheartening to read this. One of the major things that scientists (well, good scientists anyway) try to do is communicate their results to the public. It is true that Astronomy has a lot of jargon that makes it hard for people not in the "club" to understand what's going on, but I actually view articles like the CNN one as a better version of the stuff that you usually read in the media (well, aside from the nonsensical mention of "galaxies" in the article). Just be glad they used lightyears and not parsecs as their distance measurement!

 

interesting article but they dont say a lot about where this planet is located so i contacted my cousin who lives on another planet and he assures me that its not his planet they are looking at. his planet has long since had technology that simply bends the reflection of his planet away from Earth essentially making his planet undetectable... well, not really. scientists have detected his planet indirectly by calculating the effect of gravity on other bodies in the near solar system. most scientists think its some sort of unknown law of physics that causes their calculations to be off because their formulas dont consider planets that are large enough and close enough to be seen because they cant see them.

what they should realize is that bending light is relatively primitive technology and that the scale is nothing to be daunted over.

 

Last night I was standing outside my house and kept seeing a light flicker overhead. My wife said it was just an airplane passing over, but I insisted that it was a planet, a newly discovered one. Anytime you look out into the distance and see a microscopic flicker of light, it's a planet and it's just like Earth and probably has really smart life on it.

The planet I saw was about 300 feet long, 300 feet wide, about 40 to 50 feet high and I estimate it had about 190 people on it. I estimate it to have been about 6000 feet from earth.

:lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Apr 26 2007, 11:59 AM) [snapback]430596[/snapback]</div>

I suspect you're not actually interested in understanding how these things work, but for everyone else, it is worth pointing out that this is not how planets are detected. We have not yet directly detected light (i.e. reflected light) from a planet*. Here's why: they are orbiting stars. The analogy that is sometimes given is trying to see the light from a firefly that's flying next to a search light 15 miles away; it's very, very, very difficult and you have to somehow "subtract" the light from the search light if you're going to see the firefly. So, what the planet-hunters do is just look at the bright thing (the star) and look at its motion due to the mass of the planet surrounding them. This isn't the only way, but it's the way that's produced (by far) the most results so far.

*Actually, this is not 100% true; there has been some suggestion that recent infrared light measurements of a nearby star have detected "excess" light that may be due to a planet. However, these are the first results of their kind and are still debated.