Planet confirmed that could have water

[ShowtimeSBMVP]

Planet confirmed that could have water


Kepler-22b is the first confirmed planet in the “habitable zone,” the area around a star where a planet could exist with liquid water on its surface, that has been discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission.

The planet’s radius is about 2.4 times that of the Earth. It is located about 600 light years away. Its orbital period is shorter than that of the Earth: a "year" on Kepler-22b is 290 days instead of 365.

There were two other planets confirmed this year by other projects in the habitable zone, but their stars are much cooler than our Sun, and their orbits are more like that of Venus or Mars, scientists say.

Kepler-22b is 15% closer to its star and we are to the Sun. But since Kepler-22b's star is dimmer, lower in temperature and smaller than our Sun, researchers' modeling suggests it is a similar temperature to the Earth, said Bill Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center.

"If the greenhouse warming were similar on this planet and had a surface, its surface temperature would be something like 72 Fahrenheit, a very pleasant temperature here on Earth."

The warmer a planet, the more evaporation of water there would be, Borucki said. A planet can't have a surface temperature that's very hot without losing all of the surface water.

The Kepler mission reported in February that it had found 54 planet candidates in the habitable zone; Kepler-22b is the first of these to be confirmed, and those results will be published in The Astrophysical Journal. There are still 48 potential planets from that batch.

Researchers find planets by examining the brightness of stars as a function of time; brightness drops when a potential planet crosses the star. Three transits are required for a planet confirmation. The period of the transit of Kepler 22-b was 7.4 hours. It did not appear to give off its own light, indicating it is a planet and not a star.

Scientists do not yet have a measurement of the mass of Kepler 22-b, which would tell them more about the composition of the planet. This summer, when the planet's star will be high in the sky, ground-based telescopes can attempt to get its mass.

The planet is even more mysterious because its radius is between that of Earth and Uranus and Neptune, both of which have radii about four times the size of Earth's. So we don't know what a planet in this size range typically looks like.

"We have no planet like this in our solar system," he said.

Is life restricted to Earth, or could it exist somewhere like Kepler 22-b? It may be that the characteristics of Earth, with its particular position in the solar system, particular magnetic field strength and presence of larger planets like Jupiter make Earth very rare in having life (this is called the "Rare Earth Hypothesis.") But it's also possible that life in the universe is common, and we're only one example.

"As soon as we find an independent example of life somewhere else, we’ll know it’s ubiquitous throughout the universe. We’re all looking for No. 2," said Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute.

The Kepler mission has now identified a total of 2,326 planet candidates


http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011...red/?hpt=hp_t2

[tooge]

And the dream that 6 foot tall, brunette, 34-24-34 females will come to earth and enslave all of us males for sex continues.

[bevischief]

Now if we could find the StarGate...

[bevischief]

Originally Posted by tooge

And the dream that 6 foot tall, brunette, 34-24-34 females will come to earth and enslave all of us males for sex continues.

I am holding out for the Red heads...

[Saulbadguy]

I want no part of it unless it has a college football playoff system.

[Bowser]

Donger is already hard at work securing licenses that will allow him to drill for oil on Kepler-22b, or as it will soon be come to known - Terra Donger.

[bevischief]

Originally Posted by Bowser

Donger is already hard at work securing licenses that will allow him to drill for oil on Kepler-22b, or as it will soon be come to known - Terra Donger.

teedubya has already been there and claimed the place.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by bevischief

Now if we could find the StarGate...

yeah, the 600 light year thing is quite a hurdle.

[4th and Long]

In other space news ...

Two black holes most massive ever found, astronomers say


Black holes: They're the most destructive monsters in the universe. We already knew they can be powerfully massive. Now scientists say they've found the most massive ones yet, as reported in the journal Nature.

How big?

The mass of each is about 10 billion times the mass of our sun. The previous black hole record holder, first measured in 1977, has a mass of about 6 billion suns.

And for each black hole, the "event horizon" – basically areas from which nothing can escape their gravity – is about five times the distance between our sun and Pluto.

"We started this search several years ago," said black hole hunter Chung-Pei Ma of the University of California, Berkeley. Using Hawaii's huge Keck telescope, and the Gemini and McDonald observatories, Ma says her team "targeted the biggest galaxies in the nearby universe because the biggest galaxies are most likely to host the most massive black holes."

One of the newly found black holes is 320 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Leo, and the other is 336 million light-years away toward the constellation Coma Berenices.

The awesome, overwhelming power behind black holes has captured the fascination of the astronomy world for generations, including great scientific minds such as Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. Their mass is so large they create gravity powerful enough to suck in stars, planets and even light. Some experts suspect black holes may be doors that lead to other galaxies or even alternative universes although it has not been proven.

Black holes abound in early universe

Up close, black holes would be invisible to the eye until they're ripping apart a nearby star or destroying a solar system. Then, said black hole specialist Janna Levin, they look like tornadoes.

Black holes can make sounds in the silence of space when their gravitational waves hit the Earth, Levin said.

Kip Thorne of the University of California, Berkeley, offered some ideas in his 1993 book, "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy," which made him famous in black hole circles.

"He's actually working on a Hollywood movie right now with Steven Spielberg," Ma says. "Thorne says if you were to fall into a black hole, the difference between the gravity near your feet and near your head would be so powerful that you'd be torn apart.

"You could try to curl yourself up into a ball, to reduce that gravity difference, but eventually you'd just get torn up."

The discovery underscores what Ma says is one of the many big questions vexing black hole hunters. How do black holes grow? Do the most powerful ones gain mass differently from lesser ones? Is there a limit to how massive black holes can be? Are these newly discovered black holes at the top of the heap?

"We could be near the top," she says. "We should continue observing to see if these black holes are the biggest, or if they're just the tip of an iceberg. Right now we're not sure."

[LiveSteam]

JFC! I just saw JFC
& hes not happy

[Bob Dole]

Originally Posted by HemiEd

yeah, the 600 light year thing is quite a hurdle.

After today, if anyone has any transport mode they'd like tested, Bob Dole would be more than happy to volunteer.

[Bowser]

He said "black hole hunter". Uhhuhuhuh

[bevischief]

Originally Posted by 4th and Long

In other space news ...

Two black holes most massive ever found, astronomers say


Black holes: They're the most destructive monsters in the universe. We already knew they can be powerfully massive. Now scientists say they've found the most massive ones yet, as reported in the journal Nature.

How big?

The mass of each is about 10 billion times the mass of our sun. The previous black hole record holder, first measured in 1977, has a mass of about 6 billion suns.

And for each black hole, the "event horizon" – basically areas from which nothing can escape their gravity – is about five times the distance between our sun and Pluto.

"We started this search several years ago," said black hole hunter Chung-Pei Ma of the University of California, Berkeley. Using Hawaii's huge Keck telescope, and the Gemini and McDonald observatories, Ma says her team "targeted the biggest galaxies in the nearby universe because the biggest galaxies are most likely to host the most massive black holes."

One of the newly found black holes is 320 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Leo, and the other is 336 million light-years away toward the constellation Coma Berenices.

The awesome, overwhelming power behind black holes has captured the fascination of the astronomy world for generations, including great scientific minds such as Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. Their mass is so large they create gravity powerful enough to suck in stars, planets and even light. Some experts suspect black holes may be doors that lead to other galaxies or even alternative universes although it has not been proven.

Black holes abound in early universe

Up close, black holes would be invisible to the eye until they're ripping apart a nearby star or destroying a solar system. Then, said black hole specialist Janna Levin, they look like tornadoes.

Black holes can make sounds in the silence of space when their gravitational waves hit the Earth, Levin said.

Kip Thorne of the University of California, Berkeley, offered some ideas in his 1993 book, "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy," which made him famous in black hole circles.

"He's actually working on a Hollywood movie right now with Steven Spielberg," Ma says. "Thorne says if you were to fall into a black hole, the difference between the gravity near your feet and near your head would be so powerful that you'd be torn apart.

"You could try to curl yourself up into a ball, to reduce that gravity difference, but eventually you'd just get torn up."

The discovery underscores what Ma says is one of the many big questions vexing black hole hunters. How do black holes grow? Do the most powerful ones gain mass differently from lesser ones? Is there a limit to how massive black holes can be? Are these newly discovered black holes at the top of the heap?

"We could be near the top," she says. "We should continue observing to see if these black holes are the biggest, or if they're just the tip of an iceberg. Right now we're not sure."

They haven't looked in Oakland yet?

[DMAC]

[teedubya]

Originally Posted by DMAC

That is an amazing image.