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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNot the Onion: NASA discovers 715 new planets
(CNN) -- Our galactic neighborhood just got a lot bigger. NASA on Wednesday announced the discovery of 715 new planets, by far the biggest batch of planets ever unveiled at once.
By way of comparison, about 1,000 planets total had been identified in our galaxy before Wednesday.
Four of those planets are in what NASA calls the "habitable zone," meaning they have the makeup to potentially support life.
The planets, which orbit 305 different stars, were discovered by the Kepler space telescope and were verified using a new technique that scientists expect to make new planetary discoveries more frequent and more detailed.
"We've been able to open the bottleneck to access the mother lode and deliver to you more than 20 times as many planets as has ever been found and announced at once," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California.
Launched in March 2009, the Kepler space observatory was the first NASA mission to find planets similar to Earth that are in, or near, habitable zones -- defined as planets that are the right distance from a star for a moderate temperature that might sustain liquid water.
Tuesday's planets all were verified using data from the first two years of Kepler's voyage, meaning there may be many more to come.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/26/tech/innovation/nasa-new-planets/index.html
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)when we find we are not alone in the Universe. It will rate up there with fire, the wheel and salt.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)NDGT says one major discovery he expects to see in his life, is the detection of life elsewhere. I give it pretty good odds, if not somewhere in the solar system like Mars or Europa, then chemical signatures in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)We may not even notice each other.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Some of the theoretical work has been done. (Yes the drive in Star Trek is theoretically feasible)
I think we are just starting to understand the universe at that level and the laws that govern it. Will that happen in my lifetime? Outside of my own fiction, no. But it will happen as we accelerate that search for knowledge.
3catwoman3
(24,083 posts)...can we send all the RWNJs there? Pretty please?
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)as in life zone. I suspect humans will leave Sol within 200 years if we do not kill each other first.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Calling it mind boggling doesn't even do it justice. The amount of energy required to perform such a feat is so beyond the grasp of humanity that we will likely never see something like it come into fruition.
I'm talking about harnessing the energy of the entire sun at one time. Our first spacecraft has just departed the heliosphere. We've barely entered infancy when it comes to exploring the cosmos.
The more likely possibility is that, following the singularity, assuming we even make it to that point without blowing ourselves to hell, our more evolved technological offspring will obtain similar technology.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)Jeffrey LeeJeff Lee has recently been named Project Lead of the Icarus Interstellar X-Physics Propulsion & Power Project.
XP4 focuses on potential far term technologies that utilize methods of engineering spacetime itself, some of which may present the possibility of faster-than-light-speed travel. XP4 projects are at a much lower TRL (Technology Readiness Level), and are decades, possibly centuries or millennia away from actual development.
You'd be surprised at how many people are actually thinking along these lines now.
Two names to Google with:
- Marc Millis
- Harold 'Sonny' White
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)for the record, the technologies I am playing with right now in fiction are two that are very much in development right now
Solar Sails
Ion Engines
And a couple that are not in development but possible. One requires a dark matter containment field and folds space time across a higher membrane. It requires both the power of the sun, and computational power that we can barely comprehend or imagine.
Trust me, will be doing a lot of reading on this site. Thanks for that.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)Edited to add: You might find this interesting: What Would You See Traveling at Warp Speed?
Bandit
(21,475 posts)FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)Everything that we refer to as a 'law of nature' is really a limit or boundary that nature can't cross.
If all it took to undo that was imagination, then the human race should have torn reality apart by now.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Can God create an object so massive that they cannot move it?
What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?
Skittles
(153,254 posts)and want nothing to with us
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)more advanced civilizations will make contact.
Yes, I know the Fermi paradox, but if you are advanced enough to travel interstellar space why pray tell me would you make contact with us?
Now if you are an aggressive species and decide to make contact because you need those resources, I don't think humans will survive that encounter.
I know it ranks a few folks here, but lets assume for a sec that UFOs are real. That would be your anthro class from Gliese 586, and would not be that unlike our own anthropologists researching more primitive societies. I used Gliesse 586 since it is quite brutally honest on the life zone, and a life candidate.
bigdarryl
(13,190 posts)With all the hate that's going on on this planet
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Yes, what could we possibly benefit from learning about the universe we inhabit.
Rex
(65,616 posts)All OUR resources...out there being held hostile by terrorist ETs!
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)I'll wait.
Rex
(65,616 posts)nt.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)system, if it takes 300,000 years for the tanker trucks to make the round trip.
Rex
(65,616 posts)Balderdash! I will take this up with the world's top scientist.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)I find the idea of our species being isolated in our solar system a bit sad. Depressing.
Of all the possible futures, I like the Star Trek type ones the best.
Edited to add: I agree with you (I think Miguel Alcubierre's ideas are interesting) that we'll figure it out IF it is feasable within the constraints of the laws of physics. I think it's possible that there is no techincal wizardry that can pull it off- it may simply not be doable.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)suggestions is the day we will travel the tracks and bend space and time to our will. It will happen.
Rex
(65,616 posts)Even if we can make such a device one day, there is no guarantee a human could survive that kind of transfer. We will send androids first imo.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)And how do you propose to deal with the problem of those meddling kids?
Rex
(65,616 posts)Yeah the BAD kind. By now they should be eating the mystery van.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Or something.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)past 20 years.
I'm sorry, I like the story, but I get frustrated with the limited science understanding and grasp of basic astronomical facts, among the general public at times. Yes, we now know there are thousands of planetary systems in our nearby galaxy. The cosmos as we understand it today is vastly different than it was a few decades ago. We have learned more about our immediate galactic environs in the past few decades, than all of human history prior, many times over.
longship
(40,416 posts)Probably many, many billions.
There's hundreds of billions of stars, most of them red dwarf stars which live effectively forever, simmering away, slowly burning their meager resources. All that came into existence are still burning. A really good place to look for life, IMHO.
Kepler put the lower limit at about 70 billion, but nobody believes, with about 200 billion stars that there are only 70 billion planets. Everywhere we look, at almost every star, we find planets. The model of star birth also predicts planets. Only the largest stars are unlikely to have them, and those are few and burn up very quickly.
Just filling in some details for others.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)It's pretty damn exciting, which is why you might sense my palpable frustration when people say science has done nothing interesting in space, in the past few decades.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)That's my guess, anyway.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)And getting beyond the little styrofoam-ball 9 planet solar system they were taught in school.
Witness the whole "pluto is SO a planet!" thing. Ask most people about Eris, or Makemake, and they'll go "...wha?"
Xolodno
(6,409 posts)What if we are the most "developed" species in our section of the Galaxy?
...or worse...the entire Galaxy.
longship
(40,416 posts)Red dwarfs, for instance, which last for a very, very, very long time.
But your scenario is possible. We just don't know yet.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)First, lack of heavier elements - if the star formed when the universe was much younger, the planet (and the life on it) will have far less iron and other heavy elements. AFAWK, that would make it more difficult for life to form.
Also, older means more time for the lifeforms to have wiped themselves out - we could have ended the cold war with a very spectacular 15 minutes.
But we currently have a sample size of 1, so we really don't know.
longship
(40,416 posts)But there are many, many red dwarfs which are not first generation.
As far as wiping themselves out, we don't know anything about alien sociology or psychology. It is likely to be quite divergent to human. That's always the problem with these speculations. One has to try not to anthropomorphize the aliens. Damned difficult not to do. As you aptly point out, we have one data point.
Nevertheless, I think it's fairly inevitable that there's life out there, and also likely intelligent life. The numbers are just too large for there not to be. (That's a very unscientific way of putting it, though.)
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Whenever anybody mentions a Red Dwarf. It is in the neighborhood.
Drew Richards
(1,558 posts)nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Drew Richards
(1,558 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)The dominant religions of earth claim that the entire universe was created just so OUR thoughts could be monitored.
That's some SERIOUS narcissism!
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Our pants, too
SHRED
(28,136 posts)Perhaps they mean "newly discovered"?
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Do people really not understand, in 2014, that there is more to our universe than just our solar system?
Is that honestly a shocking, onion-worthy piece of information?
Serious question.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)I've seen the occasional announcements of one or two...
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Like I said upthread, sometimes I get frustrated when people can't seem to get past the model of the solar system they were taught in 1964.
It is a ton, no doubt. I've got an app on my ipad called "exoplanet" and it gives me updates on this stuff, today it had a red 768 in a circle on the icon!
opiate69
(10,129 posts)"Exoplanet", you say? Brb.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)but the ability to zip through the milky way and zoom in on different systems is sort of neat.
Botany
(70,627 posts)Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)he smoked teh pot, after all.
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)While 700 new planets sounds like a lot, it is basically like picking up a handful of sand on the beach and comparing what you are holding in your hand to all the rest of the sand on our entire planet. That is how small this discovery actually is.
It is still very exciting of course and we could learn a lot from this discovery, but 700 planets is not anywhere near as much as it sounds.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)It is definitely not a large number in the context of how many are actually out there, no.
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)It is a pretty big discovery in terms of what we already know, but the truth is we know almost nothing about the universe.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)decades ago, we have increased our knowledge of the solar system and the surrounding star systems by many orders of magnitude.
We know way more about Mars, about Titan and other moons of Saturn and Jupiter, we have learned a tremendous amount about these exoplanet systems.
Scientifically, this is a VERY exciting time.
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)NASA is doing great work no doubt about it, the universe is just so damn huge that no matter how much you know it amounts to a very tiny portion of the big picture.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)I think it's entirely possible that even the big picture is just a tiny part of an even bigger one.
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)One of the things that has always puzzled me is what exists at the end of the universe. It doesn't logically seem like it could go on forever, but it does not logically seem like it could end either. Astronomy is fascinating because there are just so many mysteries.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)exboyfil
(17,865 posts)Unfortunately the Kepler telescope died. Its mission, like that of the Hubble Deep Field, was to only take a slice. Probability dictates that the slice represents the whole. To find so many smaller planets in that tiny slice starts to add clarity to the Drake Equation. As we learn more about biology we could add some more certainty as well. It seems originating single cell bacteria is pretty common, but multicellular is much rarer. This is based on the time it took on Earth - are we a typical example?
I personally think we have at most four technological civilizations in our galaxy at any one time. This is based on how long it took for us to reach this point and the many keyhole events we went through to get here. I would love to be proven wrong (please in my lifetime).
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)I of course have no way of proving it, but I believe that a large percentage of the stars have planets which sustain life circling them. They are all so far away from us that we will probably never definitively prove another technological civilation exists, but I have no doubt there are many of them out there.
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)of 4.7 billion years only one species on this planet developed technology. Is there any potential candidate besides hominids? Did our mere advance stop others?
Evolution probably does not result in technology. It could be a happenstance related to the other factors that influenced our development. We know forming a eukaryotic cell takes time (2.7 billion years or more). Metal rich planets (those around mostly 2nd or later generation stars) are 8 billion years old or less. Kepler looked at about the oldest known cluster NGC 6791 -12,000 light years away.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)and yes, it is adding clarity, and the last time I solved it, given these values... mind you I might have done something wrong. I went all the way to 12.
Chathamization
(1,638 posts)When I listen to this I keep getting the urge to cheer:
aristocles
(594 posts)Earth is like an anthill on the edge of the incoming tide. Doesn't matter much. Live well and enjoy.
Panem et circenses.
seattledo
(295 posts)Is there a funding bill in the works that they're trying to influence?
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Nope, they do batch releases every so often as they confirm them.
This is the largest one, but that is about it.
I suspect though that the Religious right (of insert bronze age religion here) is not liking this at all.