Science NASA is making a big announcement about an exoplanet Thursday - Page 2

**DaFace** · 07-22-2015, 10:30 PM

Press conference is tomorrow at 11am Central. And a ton of money just got thrown at SETI. Coincidence?

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...et-annoucement

Nasa may have found the most Earth-like planet to date

The US space agency is holding a press conference tomorrow, 23 July, to reveal the latest discoveries of its exoplanet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope. The scope, launched in 2009, seeks out planets that reside in the habitable zone, known colloquially as the Goldilocks zone. Planets in this location orbit their star at a safe enough distance to potentially host liquid water on their surface. The majority of the planets identified by Kepler have been giant gas planets, akin to Jupiter in our own Solar System, with only eight being less than twice Earth's size and in the Goldilocks zone. It's suspected that the Nasa announcement could confirm the identification of the most Earth-like planet to date.

"Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago. Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years -- another Earth," a Nasa release teases, before confirming that Kepler's data analysis lead Jon Jenkins and Kepler research scientist Jeff Coughlin would be in attendance.

Kepler has already confirmed more than 1,000 exoplanets and 3,000 planet candidates using something called the transit method. The 0.95m-diameter telescope monitors the brightness of around 100,000 stars, looking for any dimming. That dimming occurs when a planet passes behind its star in orbit. Nasa compares that change in light to "the drop in brightness of a car's headlight when a fruitfly moves in front of it" -- hence, very few have been found to date. If Kepler identifies one instance, that is then repeated at regular intervals, a planet is confirmed. Planet size and temperature is estimated based on the intervals between transits, which in turn lets us know what the chances are it's habitable. The Kepler research team has also worked with crowdsourcing initiative Zooniverse to build Planet Hunters, a platform that allows the public to look for changes in brightness themselves.

Earlier this year Kepler found another eight new planets in the Goldilocks zone, doubling the number of exoplanets found that have a diameter less that double Earth's. "We're now closer than we've ever been for finding a twin for Earth," astronomer Fergal Mullally of the Kepler Science Office said at the time.

The two most Earth-like planets in this new discovery were named Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, but both were larger than Earth and orbiting red dwarf stars far cooler than our own Sun. Nevertheless, it was calculated that the planets had a 60-70 percent chance of being rocky like Earth. This is one of the key factors planetary scientists seek out since, more often than not, the Earth-like exoplanets Kepler identifies are gaseous. The planets were given a 70 and 97 percent chance of being in the habitable zone, respectively. But like the "Earth-like" planets before them, both receive far more or less light than our own planet -- 40 percent more and two-thirds less respectively.

The fact that Nasa is holding a press conference on the news, rather than it being released to the public via research papers as has often been the case in the past, suggests the mission may have discovered a candidate that even more closely resembles our own planet.

**alnorth** · 07-23-2015, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tk13

The NFL has scheduled a press conference tomorrow afternoon with an announcement that three 2017 regular season games will be played on the newly discovered exoplanet.

**DaFace** · 07-23-2015, 10:08 AM

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/na...ousin-to-earth

NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”

The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030.

"On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0."

Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky.

While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its 385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from its parent star Kepler-452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger.

“We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment," said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, who led the team that discovered Kepler-452b. "It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth. That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet.”

To help confirm the finding and better determine the properties of the Kepler-452 system, the team conducted ground-based observations at the University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory, the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona, and the W. M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These measurements were key for the researchers to confirm the planetary nature of Kepler-452b, to refine the size and brightness of its host star and to better pin down the size of the planet and its orbit.

The Kepler-452 system is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The research paper reporting this finding has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal.

In addition to confirming Kepler-452b, the Kepler team has increased the number of new exoplanet candidates by 521 from their analysis of observations conducted from May 2009 to May 2013, raising the number of planet candidates detected by the Kepler mission to 4,696. Candidates require follow-up observations and analysis to verify they are actual planets.

Twelve of the new planet candidates have diameters between one to two times that of Earth, and orbit in their star's habitable zone. Of these, nine orbit stars that are similar to our sun in size and temperature.

“We've been able to fully automate our process of identifying planet candidates, which means we can finally assess every transit signal in the entire Kepler dataset quickly and uniformly,” said Jeff Coughlin, Kepler scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who led the analysis of a new candidate catalog. “This gives astronomers a statistically sound population of planet candidates to accurately determine the number of small, possibly rocky planets like Earth in our Milky Way galaxy.”

These findings, presented in the seventh Kepler Candidate Catalog, will be submitted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. These findings are derived from data publically available on the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

Scientists now are producing the last catalog based on the original Kepler mission’s four-year data set. The final analysis will be conducted using sophisticated software that is increasingly sensitive to the tiny telltale signatures of Earth-size planets.

Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

**DaFace** · 07-23-2015, 10:09 AM

So about what I expected - they've got one out there that our models say is in the right zone where it could have water, and it's been around a lot longer than us - meaning that life has had plenty of time to develop compared to how long it took here.

Again, we haven't found aliens, but it's pretty exciting that they have a target out there like that to really study closely now.

**Donger** · 07-23-2015, 10:13 AM

That's a little bit of a let-down.

**DaneMcCloud** · 07-23-2015, 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

That's a little bit of a let-down.

When NASA does discover extraterrestrial life, I think that the public will be notified in stages, not "Hey, we found it! Check it out!".

**DaFace** · 07-23-2015, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

That's a little bit of a let-down.

Eh, I wasn't expecting TOO much. I kind of hoped they had some indications of life being present like presence of O2 in the atmosphere, but hopefully that's what's to come as they zero in on it.

**Donger** · 07-23-2015, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaFace

Eh, I wasn't expecting TOO much. I kind of hoped they had some indications of life being present like presence of O2 in the atmosphere, but hopefully that's what's to come as they zero in on it.

Yeah, I know. I'm still smarting from the Mars meteorite deal in 1996.

Nightfyre · 07-23-2015, 10:26 AM

1400 light-years away. Yikes. Imagine how life can change in 1400 years.

**Bowser** · 07-23-2015, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Donger

Yeah, I know. I'm still smarting from the Mars meteorite deal in 1996.

Maybe the government didn't give us the entire truth with that deal??

**BossChief** · 07-23-2015, 10:29 AM

Pretty cool stuff.

I might have to ask my father in law (who works at the Ames research center directly with Jon Jenkins) if he had anything to do with this and if he can pass on any cool info. I'll be out there early next month.

Should be interesting to follow this over the next 10 years.

**Bowser** · 07-23-2015, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nightfyre

1400 light-years away. Yikes. Imagine how life can change in 1400 years.

Kind of cool to think about it. Maybe they are along the same evolution stage we are, and they just discovered Earth for the first time and are wondering the same thing.

**Lzen** · 07-23-2015, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by King_Chief_Fan

so interested in life beyond this planet but we destroy life through abortions on this planet.

Look, I agree with you but I'm not really sure that one is related to the other.

**ptlyon** · 07-23-2015, 11:40 AM

It's bigger than we are? We ain't gonna stand for this shit, are we???

ModSocks · 07-23-2015, 11:41 AM

Yeah but....1400 Light Years? Wtf are we going to study from 1400 Light Years away?

Discuss Thrower · 07-23-2015, 11:43 AM

Who's ready to go all Hernan Cortez on they asses and exploit some alien resources!?

07-22-2015, 10:30 PM
DaFace Kind of a mod Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Donkey Land Casino cash: $2026899	NASA is making a big announcement about an exoplanet Thursday Press conference is tomorrow at 11am Central. And a ton of money just got thrown at SETI. Coincidence? http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...et-annoucement Nasa may have found the most Earth-like planet to date The US space agency is holding a press conference tomorrow, 23 July, to reveal the latest discoveries of its exoplanet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope. The scope, launched in 2009, seeks out planets that reside in the habitable zone, known colloquially as the Goldilocks zone. Planets in this location orbit their star at a safe enough distance to potentially host liquid water on their surface. The majority of the planets identified by Kepler have been giant gas planets, akin to Jupiter in our own Solar System, with only eight being less than twice Earth's size and in the Goldilocks zone. It's suspected that the Nasa announcement could confirm the identification of the most Earth-like planet to date. "Exoplanets, especially small Earth-size worlds, belonged within the realm of science fiction just 21 years ago. Today, and thousands of discoveries later, astronomers are on the cusp of finding something people have dreamed about for thousands of years -- another Earth," a Nasa release teases, before confirming that Kepler's data analysis lead Jon Jenkins and Kepler research scientist Jeff Coughlin would be in attendance. Kepler has already confirmed more than 1,000 exoplanets and 3,000 planet candidates using something called the transit method. The 0.95m-diameter telescope monitors the brightness of around 100,000 stars, looking for any dimming. That dimming occurs when a planet passes behind its star in orbit. Nasa compares that change in light to "the drop in brightness of a car's headlight when a fruitfly moves in front of it" -- hence, very few have been found to date. If Kepler identifies one instance, that is then repeated at regular intervals, a planet is confirmed. Planet size and temperature is estimated based on the intervals between transits, which in turn lets us know what the chances are it's habitable. The Kepler research team has also worked with crowdsourcing initiative Zooniverse to build Planet Hunters, a platform that allows the public to look for changes in brightness themselves. Earlier this year Kepler found another eight new planets in the Goldilocks zone, doubling the number of exoplanets found that have a diameter less that double Earth's. "We're now closer than we've ever been for finding a twin for Earth," astronomer Fergal Mullally of the Kepler Science Office said at the time. The two most Earth-like planets in this new discovery were named Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, but both were larger than Earth and orbiting red dwarf stars far cooler than our own Sun. Nevertheless, it was calculated that the planets had a 60-70 percent chance of being rocky like Earth. This is one of the key factors planetary scientists seek out since, more often than not, the Earth-like exoplanets Kepler identifies are gaseous. The planets were given a 70 and 97 percent chance of being in the habitable zone, respectively. But like the "Earth-like" planets before them, both receive far more or less light than our own planet -- 40 percent more and two-thirds less respectively. The fact that Nasa is holding a press conference on the news, rather than it being released to the public via research papers as has often been the case in the past, suggests the mission may have discovered a candidate that even more closely resembles our own planet.
Posts: 51,772

07-23-2015, 10:08 AM	#17
DaFace Kind of a mod Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Donkey Land Casino cash: $2026899	http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/na...ousin-to-earth NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.” The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030. "On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0." Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky. While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its 385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from its parent star Kepler-452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger. “We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment," said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, who led the team that discovered Kepler-452b. "It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth. That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet.” To help confirm the finding and better determine the properties of the Kepler-452 system, the team conducted ground-based observations at the University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory, the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona, and the W. M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These measurements were key for the researchers to confirm the planetary nature of Kepler-452b, to refine the size and brightness of its host star and to better pin down the size of the planet and its orbit. The Kepler-452 system is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The research paper reporting this finding has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. In addition to confirming Kepler-452b, the Kepler team has increased the number of new exoplanet candidates by 521 from their analysis of observations conducted from May 2009 to May 2013, raising the number of planet candidates detected by the Kepler mission to 4,696. Candidates require follow-up observations and analysis to verify they are actual planets. Twelve of the new planet candidates have diameters between one to two times that of Earth, and orbit in their star's habitable zone. Of these, nine orbit stars that are similar to our sun in size and temperature. “We've been able to fully automate our process of identifying planet candidates, which means we can finally assess every transit signal in the entire Kepler dataset quickly and uniformly,” said Jeff Coughlin, Kepler scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who led the analysis of a new candidate catalog. “This gives astronomers a statistically sound population of planet candidates to accurately determine the number of small, possibly rocky planets like Earth in our Milky Way galaxy.” These findings, presented in the seventh Kepler Candidate Catalog, will be submitted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. These findings are derived from data publically available on the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Scientists now are producing the last catalog based on the original Kepler mission’s four-year data set. The final analysis will be conducted using sophisticated software that is increasingly sensitive to the tiny telltale signatures of Earth-size planets. Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler
Posts: 51,772

07-23-2015, 10:09 AM	#18
DaFace Kind of a mod Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Donkey Land Casino cash: $2026899	So about what I expected - they've got one out there that our models say is in the right zone where it could have water, and it's been around a lot longer than us - meaning that life has had plenty of time to develop compared to how long it took here. Again, we haven't found aliens, but it's pretty exciting that they have a target out there like that to really study closely now.
Posts: 51,772

07-23-2015, 10:13 AM	#19
Donger "Think BOOM!" Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: 33.675° N 106.475° W Casino cash: $10349900 VARSITY	That's a little bit of a let-down. __________________ I think the young people enjoy it when I "get down," verbally, don't you?
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07-23-2015, 10:26 AM	#23
Nightfyre MVP Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Helena, MT Casino cash: $3638849	1400 light-years away. Yikes. Imagine how life can change in 1400 years.
Posts: 18,552

07-23-2015, 10:29 AM	#25
BossChief SuperBowl or bust Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: BF Iowa Casino cash: $1874088	Pretty cool stuff. I might have to ask my father in law (who works at the Ames research center directly with Jon Jenkins) if he had anything to do with this and if he can pass on any cool info. I'll be out there early next month. Should be interesting to follow this over the next 10 years. __________________ Dreams do come true... http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showp...postcount=1407
Posts: 47,127

07-23-2015, 11:40 AM	#28
ptlyon Bono & Grbac wasn't enough Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Sioux City, IA Casino cash: $13103829	It's bigger than we are? We ain't gonna stand for this shit, are we??? __________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Advertise here: $19.99 a month
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07-23-2015, 11:41 AM	#29
ModSocks Needs more middle fingers Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: San Diego Casino cash: $4284563	Yeah but....1400 Light Years? Wtf are we going to study from 1400 Light Years away? __________________ Life is like a dick. Sometimes it gets hard for no reason, but it can't stay hard forever.
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07-23-2015, 11:43 AM	#30
Discuss Thrower "You like to drink?" Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: "I like to drink." Casino cash: $3226869	Who's ready to go all Hernan Cortez on they asses and exploit some alien resources!? __________________ Chiefs 2016 Opponents: Home: JAX, TEN, NO, TB, NYJ. Away: HOU, IND, ATL, CAR, PIT Chiefs 2017 Opponents: Home: BUF, MIA, PHI, WSH, AFC North. Away: NE, NYJ, NYG, DAL, AFC South
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