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Kepler 22-b: Earth-like planet confirmed Astronomers have confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet in the "habitable zone" around a star not unlike our own.
The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.
It is the closest confirmed planet yet to one like ours - an "Earth 2.0".
However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid.
Ὅσον ζῇς φαίνου
μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.” | |
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Wonder if they have the org?
All these Earth-like planets are going to be consumed by giant black holes and unexplainable dark matter, anyway (yeah, sarcasm).
I dig this search that we (scientists and novices alike) are on to find these "Earth-like" planets. But I've always thought it was a bit self-centered and conceited to assume that other "life" in the galaxy will be the same as us. Its just as likely that when/if we encounter alien "life" that it will be unlike anything we've ever imagined as it is that it will look even remotely "human".
Another way I think about it is, what's the point in finding these planets if we'll never, EVER be able to get a closer look at them? Because as our technology and understanding of physics works right now, that's the way it is. We don't even have an IDEA of how to get a closer look at them, let alone get close to them. It seems like what we should be focusing on is finding a way to safely spend long periods of time in space, and a way to move through it more quickly. Or, at the very least, find a way to send high powered telescopes quickly into deep space.
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Scientists find monster black holes, biggest yetBy MARCIA DUNN | AP – 9 hrs ago http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-monster-black-holes-biggest-yet-162552569.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have found the biggest black holes known to exist — each one 10 billion times the size of our sun.
A team led by astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, discovered the two gigantic black holes in clusters of elliptical galaxies more than 300 million light years away. That's relatively close on the galactic scale.
"They are monstrous," Berkeley astrophysicist Chung-Pei Ma told reporters. "We did not expect to find such massive black holes because they are more massive than indicated by their galaxy properties. They're kind of extraordinary."
The previous black hole record-holder is as large as 6 billion suns.
In research released Monday by the journal Nature, the scientists suggest these black holes may be the leftovers of quasars that crammed the early universe. They are similar in mass to young quasars, they said, and have been well hidden until now.
The scientists used ground-based telescopes as well as the Hubble Space Telescope and Texas supercomputers, observing stars near the black holes and measuring the stellar velocities to uncover these vast, invisible regions.
Black holes are objects so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape. Some are formed by the collapse of a super-size star. It's uncertain how these two newly discovered whoppers originated, said Nicholas McConnell, a Berkeley graduate student who is the study's lead author.
To be so massive now means they must have grown considerably since their formation, he said. Most if not all galaxies are believed to have black holes at their center. The bigger the galaxy, it seems, the bigger the black hole.
Quasars are some of the most energized and distant of galactic centers.
The researchers said their findings suggest differences in the way black holes grow, depending on the size of the galaxy.
Ma speculates these two black holes remained hidden for so long because they are living in quiet retirement — much quieter and more boring than their boisterous youth powering quasars billions of years ago.
"For an astronomer, finding these insatiable black holes is like finally encountering people nine feet tall whose great height had only been inferred from fossilized bones. How did they grow so large?" Ma said in a news release. "This rare find will help us understand whether these black holes had very tall parents or ate a lot of spinach."
Oxford University astrophysicist Michele Cappellari, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the journal, agreed that the two newly discovered black holes "probably represent the missing dormant relics of the giant black holes that powered the brightest quasars in the early universe."
One of the newly detected black holes weighs 9.7 billion times the mass of the sun. The second, slightly farther from Earth, is as big or even bigger.
Even larger black holes may be lurking out there. Ma said that's the million-dollar question: How big can a black hole grow?
The researchers already are peering into the biggest galaxies for answers.
"If there is any bigger black hole," Ma said, "we should be able to find them in the next year or two. Personally, I think we are probably reaching the high end now. Maybe another factor of two to go at best."
[Edited 12/5/11 23:45pm] | |
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So I wonder where do they go from here? There is soooooo much going on out there. I wish I could live for another couple thousand years. | |
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look at that massive black hole sucking up all that light and matter.According to Hawking, a big black hole fart is what starting everything. However, i don't believe this.
[Edited 12/6/11 1:06am] | |
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The perfect holiday destination for all lawyers and cops. | |
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I heard this story yesterday too. It sounds like B.S. to me. Even with a telescope how can you see something 600 light years away??? Isn't a light year the distance light travels in a year??? so wouldn't it take 600 years for the light emitting from the planet to reach the telescope.....makes you wanna say hmmmm????? | |
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I'm endlessly fascinated by this. I'm happy we continue to look up and out. I think this searching and probing that we do is like an infant learning to walk...or crawl, even. Each discovery leads to something new and then furthers us along. It's wonderful. | |
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Black holes confuse me. Why do they stop? Shouldn't they grow and grow until they consume everything? There has to be a space where, if you were just one millimeter closer, you would be trapped in the event horizon of the black hole, but because you are not, you are outside of it. That boggles my mind. | |
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Why does this make you say hmmmm?
It takes 600 years for the light from that planet to reach us, so they're looking at that planet as it was 600 years ago (Earth time). | |
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Yeah but the Distance??? there is no way we could build a telescope to see something that far??? I guess you don't realize how fast the speed of light is? that's all I'm saying. | |
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i remember when i was in 7th grade they told us that 'space is a vacuum. there is nothing there', and i remember thinking wait a second, we can't see the entire spectrum of light, nor hear the full range of sound so why don't we just say 'we don't know what's out there.' many years later we finally have the technology to see, and it's wonderful!
and the more we learn, the more we find out we need to learn. my cousin works for NASA and tells me that an optimistic estimate of our knowledge base would be thus: at best, we understand 4% of what's out there in 'space'. | |
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My (very limited) understanding is that the distance is no problem--it's a relatively short distance. However, the incredibly small size of the planet in comparison to the much bigger object right by it (its star) means you can't see the planet itself, so I shouldn't have said that we're looking at that planet as it was 600 years ago. However, they can definitely see and take notice of the fact that an object is there. The reason the headline says Kepler 22-b was "confirmed" is because they had already noticed it. It took three passes (three of that planet's years) for them to confirm it, which is why they can be sure it is indeed a planet that's there. | |
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As fascinating and exciting as it sounds, the fact still remains that looking through a high powered telescope gives you no more concrete information about a planet than if you just made it up in your head. We've not gone there and its been surmised that it would take exactly 150,000 years to get there. The scientist feeding us this kool aid are the same ones that couldn't decide whether Pluto was a planet or a star or a dwarf planet. I believe we haven't even sent a space craft there yet.
Just saying don't believe the astrological hype.
~closeted skeptic I'M NOT SAYING YOU'RE UGLY. YOU JUST HAVE BAD LUCK WHEN IT COMES TO MIRRORS AND SUNLIGHT!
RIP Dick Clark, Whitney Houston, Don Cornelius, Heavy D, and Donna Summer.  | |
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The flip side? They know more than they are telling u.......so they tell u what ever they wish 2. | |
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I'll be lookin' at this from the Bay Area. Total Eclipse of the Moonhttp://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/02dec_lunareclipse/
Dec. 2, 2011: Waking up before sunrise can be tough to do, especially on a weekend. On Saturday, Dec. 10th, you might be glad you did. A total eclipse of the Moon will be visible in the early morning skies of western Northern America.
The action begins around 4:45 am Pacific Standard Time when the red shadow of Earth first falls across the lunar disk. By 6:05 am Pacific Time, the Moon will be fully engulfed in red light. This event—the last total lunar eclipse until 2014—is visible from the Pacific side of North America, across the entire Pacific Ocean to Asia and Eastern Europe.
For people in the western United States the eclipse is deepest just before local dawn. Face west to see the red Moon sinking into the horizon as the sun rises behind your back. It’s a rare way to begin the day.
Not only will the Moon be beautifully red, it will also be inflated by the Moon illusion. For reasons not fully understood by astronomers or psychologists, low-hanging Moons look unnaturally large when they beam through trees, buildings and other foreground objects. In fact, a low Moon is no wider than any other Moon (cameras prove it) but the human brain insists otherwise. To observers in the western USA, therefore, the eclipse will appear super-sized.
It might seem puzzling that the Moon turns red when it enters the shadow of the Earth—aren’t shadows supposed to be dark? In this case, the delicate layer of dusty air surrounding our planet reddens and redirects the light of the sun, filling the dark behind Earth with a sunset-red glow. The exact hue (anything from bright orange to blood red is possible) depends on the unpredictable state of the atmosphere at the time of the eclipse. As Jack Horkheimer (1938-2010) of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium loved to say, "Only the shadow knows."
Atmospheric scientist Richard Keen of the University of Colorado might know, too. For years he has studied lunar eclipses as a means of monitoring conditions in Earth's upper atmosphere, and he has become skilled at forecasting these events.
"I expect this eclipse to be bright orange, or even copper-colored, with a possible hint of turquoise at the edge," he predicts.
Earth's stratosphere is the key: "During a lunar eclipse, most of the light illuminating the moon passes through the stratosphere where it is reddened by scattering," he explains. "If the stratosphere is loaded with dust from volcanic eruptions, the eclipse will be dark; a clear stratosphere, on the other hand, produces a brighter eclipse. At the moment, the stratosphere is mostly clear with little input from recent volcanoes."
That explains the brightness of the eclipse, but what about the "hint of turquoise"?
"Light passing through the upper stratosphere penetrates the ozone layer, which absorbs red light and actually makes the passing light ray bluer. This can be seen as a soft blue fringe around the red core of Earth's shadow."
Look for the turquoise near the beginning of the eclipse when the edge of Earth's shadow is sweeping across the lunar terrain, he advises.
A bright red, soft turquoise, super-sized lunar eclipse: It’s coming on Saturday, Dec. 10th. Wake up and enjoy the show.
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How and When Could We Visit Kepler 22B?Long ass link to the original web page
Time Magazine reports how the Kepler Space Telescope has confirmed the existence of a planet about 2 1/2 times the size of Earth, designated Kepler 22B, orbiting a sunlike star 600 million light years away.
What makes the discovery of interest is that Kepler 22B resides in an orbit that is within the so-called "habitability zone" where liquid water and hence life might exist. It has a 290-day orbit, making it slightly closer to its sun than Earth is to ours. Scientists are as yet unsure whether the planet is mainly rocky, water, or gaseous.
Current telescopes, whether Earth-bound or space-based, have a limited ability to study extra-solar planets. Even the James Webb Space Telescope, due to be launched in 2018, will only be able to image gas giants on the scale of Jupiter and larger, according to NASA. There are not any telescopes such as the canceled Terrestrial Planet Finder, planned that can provide too much information on worlds the size of Kepler 22B.
Actually sending a probe or even a manned expedition to Kepler 22B is only within the realm of science fiction. Even a spacecraft that can accelerate close to the speed of light, perhaps using a Bussard ram jet or an Orion spacecraft propelled by the explosive energy of nuclear bombs, would take centuries for a one-way trip.
According to Discovery News, physics does allow for a kind of Star Trek-style warp drive. All one would have to do is to find away to expand space behind a spacecraft and shrink it in front of it. This kind of warp drive would require the amount of energy that would be created by turning the entire mass of Jupiter's pure energy, something that is far beyond human technology at present.
The use of so-called wormholes, which can be envisioned as a kind of tunnel with each end in different points in space/time, has also been explored. However the technology and energy required are also unimaginable.
Thus, as intriguing as the discovery of Kepler 22B is, it will be a long time, likely some centuries, before the equivalent of the Star Ship Enterprise can pay it a visit. | |
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Meteor Crater Helps Unlock Planetary HistoryThe Barringer meteorite crater — known popularly as "Meteor Crater" — near Winslow, Ariz., was formed some 50,000 years ago in the flat-lying sedimentary rocks of the Southern Colorado Plateau in Arizona. Now, scientists are using the crater to study mysteries near and far.
This out-of-the-blue geological feature is considered a prime example of a young, well-preserved and well-documented simple impact crater.
That means it represents one of the most common morphological features on planetary surfaces, both on Earth, and elsewhere in our solar system. Scientists are using this crater to probe not just our own planetary history, but the mechanics of space rock impacts throughout the universe.
Meteor Crater is one of very few impact sites on our planet where the geologic details of crater excavation and ejecta emplacement are preserved. While the outline of most simple craters is circular, the shape of Arizona's Meteor Crater strongly deviates from a circle and resembles a quadrangle. [Fallen Stars: A Gallery o...Meteorites]
"Hole Earth" catalog The bowl-shape crater is surprisingly well preserved by terrestrial standards. That makes it a "kiss and tell" terrestrial feature that is being plumbed by researchers far and wide.
The crater is roughly 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) in diameter. That giant hole in the ground sports a rim that rises up to 196 feet (60 meters) above the surrounding landscape. The crater floor falls to a depth of 590 feet (180 meters).
The upper crater walls have average slopes of 40 to 50 degrees, although they also include vertical to near-vertical cliffs. The rock ejected from the crater forms a debris blanket that slopes away from the crater rim out to a distance of 0.6 miles (1 km).
This impact crater is viewed as a treasured scientific site, not only here on Earth but in shaping future moon and Mars exploration plans. It has become a training ground for astronauts and robot hardware as well as a learning lab for planetary geologists who are investigating impact cratered terrains on other planets.
Indeed, it's a "hole Earth catalog" of processes that keeps on giving.
Honing exploration skills When a cosmic interloper slammed into Earth tens of thousands of years ago, more than 175 million metric tons of rock were excavated and deposited on the crater rim and the surrounding terrain in a matter of a few seconds, said David Kring, a senior staff scientist and geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
Kring has been engaged in studies of the crater for decades. He uses the site as a teaching tool for students, as well as a locale for honing the exploration skills to lunge beyond Earth.
"Those rocks and the processes they record remain the focus of our studies next year," Kring told SPACE.com. "At the same time, we will conduct training activities that are designed to enhance the success of exploration of the moon and planetary surfaces throughout the solar system."
There are a lot of activities at the crater, Kring said. He made two trips there in October alone, he added.
Training ground First of all, the crater is being used to instruct postdoctoral researchers in the field of lunar science, as well as educate graduate students who are studying impact craters on the moon, Mars, and elsewhere.
Furthermore, Kring added, Meteor Crater is being used to tutor astronauts for planetary surface operations, which require different talents than those needed for past space shuttle flights and work on the International Space Station.
In terms of active research, the crater is telling the story of how material is ejected and deposited after a space rock impact. Its revelations have implications for craters on all planetary surfaces.
Moreover, research at the site is being conducted to determine how water produces gullies and otherwise erodes the crater. This could help scientists interpret observations of Mars. Research is also being conducted at Meteor Crater, Kring said, to refine the age of the impact event itself. This work will help calibrate isotopic systems to date geologic events that occur elsewhere in the world.
Lastly, the crater is providing an on-the-spot opportunity for evaluating the design of traverses and geologic station activities on the moon, Mars and other exploration destinations.
New questions There are still many open scientific questions about the crater itself.
Kring said that an important remaining problem is that the trajectory of the impacting iron asteroid and the damage it caused to Earth's crust beneath the crater floor remain a mystery.
"Both might be solved with a shallow drilling campaign," Kring said.
"As we push farther into the solar system, new questions are constantly being developed and require an assessment of new ideas at the world's best preserved impact crater," he said. "Thus, the crater is important for what it can tell us now, but is also important for what it will tell us as we continue to explore beyond low-Earth orbit."
According to Brad Andes, president of Meteor Crater Enterprises, Inc., this year the crater attracted roughly 225,000 visitors.
"We are excited about the fact that Meteor Crater has had a very important role as a science research laboratory in the past, but what is even more exciting is that almost every year, researchers request a visit to the crater because of a 'new' question that has been asked," Andes told SPACE.com. "And the answer to that question may live in the crater. This has been happening for decades. I am sure it will continue to happen for many more decades and possibly even centuries."
There's also potential research at Meteor Crater investigating historical weather events. That information could even have a voice in the global warming debate, Andes said.
"It is humbling to consider the fact that every day researchers get to work at a place that may be viewed as the Rosetta Stone for astrogeological research," he said. "This clearly illustrates the need to preserve it to the greatest degree possible while allowing legitimate research to happen here."
Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of this year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999. | |
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Telescopes are being designed to do just this. The problem is that the star looks like a spotlight, and the planet looks like s small dimly lit cigarette butt beside the spotlight, and you're trying to image it from about 3,000 miles away.
However, it is possible, and the terestrial planet finder designs proposed would allow us to do this--but the funding was placed on 'indefinite' hold.
Kepler's camera is so sensative though, that even though it can't see the cigarette butt, it can dedect a diming as the cigarette butt moves in front of the spotlight persay. And once 3 of these dimming occorances happens, a "planet candidate" is proposed.
It then takes about a year for ground based telescopes to measure the wobble of the star (stars all wobble in relation to the planets around them---all objects do. For example, the moon doesn't truly rotate around the earth, but around the center-of-gravity between the two, which causes the earth to wobble). The measurement of this wobble at the correct measurements and timing as the kepler dimming data turns the planet from a candidate into a 'confirmed' planet.
There are other methods of confirming a planet too.
Either way, Kepler 22-B is one of 54 candidates in the Goldilox zone (one of 2,326 candidates), the first of which from the Goldilox class that has been confirmed.
Regardless of it's actual makeup, we're talking about a lukewarm planet with about the same gravitational charateristics as the earth.
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