Three Earth-like planets sighted around nearby star

[IDemo]

Source: International Business Times

A star with three lukewarm Earth-like planets has been discovered using the Kepler telescope with at least one of these capable of supporting life.

The farthermost planet around the red dwarf star is in the habitable Goldilocks zone which means it is rocky and could have the right temperature to support liquid water oceans, and life.

"A thin atmosphere made of nitrogen and oxygen has allowed life to thrive on Earth. But nature is full of surprises. Many exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission are enveloped by thick, hydrogen-rich atmospheres that are probably incompatible with life as we know it," said Ian Crossfield, the University of Arizona astronomer who led the study with astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and other institutions.

The star, EPIC 201367065, is a cool red M-dwarf about half the size and mass of our own sun. It is at a distance of 150 light-years from Earth.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/three-earth-like-planets-sighted-around-nearby-star-1483904

[tavalon]

1. Woah, fuck

Uh, kick. I'm gobsmacked.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. They weren't even looking at dwarf stars before....

They assumed they didn't have planets.

[longship]

24. Well, I think they pretty much assumed they had planets.

The only stars likely without planets are not the M dwarfs (which are about three quarters of the stars in the universe) but those stars at the other end of the mass spectrum, the O, A, and B stars, so massive and so short lived that they blast huge amounts of energy that would likely wipe out any planet that might form, if it could even form.

What was not known about M-dwarfs is whether there could be habitable planets, since their Goldilocks zones would be both be very narrow and very close to the star. But Kepler has shown that there are many, many planets around M-dwarfs, and there are plenty within the habitable zone. And given that the vast proportion of stars are M-dwarfs, and that M-dwarfs live for just about forever (they burn through their hydrogen very slowly) intelligent life may develop more easily in a system with an M-dwarf star, than even a G-type star, like the Sun.

From most massive to least, stellar classes: O, B, A, F, G, K, M, with decimal subdivisions (0-9). The Sun is approximately a G3 star. The vast majority of stars in the universe are M-dwarfs. The more massive the star, the shorter it lives.

Good article.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

30. I keep thinking about how long earth sat as primordial soup....

There may be trillions of pre-cambrian type planets.

[tavalon]

10. I often thought my grandparents had to have been amazed

The first horseless carriage to walking on the moon. But now, I feel it. The things we know about the solar system. Solar systems. The things we don't know. It just makes my head spin.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

31. The used to say Neil Armstrong's mother crossed the prairie in a covered wagon.

[oneview]

2. 150 Light Years. Thanks be to God for distance!

I don't doubt there's life out there in the Universe, but at least we're all so far away from each other that we all get to evolve on our own and at our own pace.

Otherwise we would have ended up as terrestrial Aztecs and Incas to alien Corteses and Pizarros!

[Chakab]

3. Yeah, I agree with Hawkins' take on extraterrestrial intelligence.

If there are civilizations that are capable of interstellar travel, we'd probably be fucked if they ever stumbled across our solar system.

[cstanleytech]

4. For all we know they did long ago and after encountering humans they shook

heads and said to each other "Lets get out of here as these people are crazy"

[Third Doctor]

5. I agree

I've had a slightly different thought. Aliens have monitored Earth more recently and saw chaos and violence so they smartly kept on flying.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. I have another theory, we're not unique.

[tavalon]

9. It would be awfully sad if we were, wouldn't it?

Then again, I don't know that we would in any way recognize one another. I mean, heck, there is a distinct possibility that there is a whole community of citizens who run things in ways we can't even imagine, in our own oceans, so how could we think that we could understand aliens or they understand us?

ps the Cetaceans might well have told the ETs to ignore us and who could blame them. Really how intelligent is a species that fouls it's own nest. Nasty, humans are dead apes walking and we're going to take most of the species with us. If I were an alien, I certainly wouldn't find much here to prove intelligence, whatever the hell that is, you know?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. Recently on Dr. Who someone mentioned the movie, "Alien"....

He said, "There's a horror movie called 'Alien'? That's REALLY offensive, it's no wonder everyone keeps invading you."

[tavalon]

13. Cute.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. I agree. I also find it interesting that people either tend to assume Alien intelligent life would

either be horrifically, Earth-destroying, humanity-enslaving bad, or else angelically pure and too fine and holy to muddy themselves with the likes of us.

Totally possible that they tend to be like us, in many ways. Flawed, but also capable of decency. Maybe they even have a sense of humor.

(Edited to add: I believe that even if intelligent life is spread thin throughout the universe, even a few intelligent civilizations per galaxy means there is a shitload of it out there. So probably generalizing any particular way about how "it is", is a mistake.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. Part of the "alien invasion" thing is classic fear of the Third World....

The arrogance that we have something they want and they're coming to take it from us is based in part on classic fear white people seem to have in America that everyone else in the world in envious of us and they would like to kick in the door and take it, and then turn everyone into their servants.

[Warren DeMontague]

23. Sure, and conversely people even as smart as Stephen Hawking have observed that our own

history of encounters with "less advanced" civilizations, has almost invariably gone VERY badly for the less advanced civilization. Reasonably enough.

But that ignores the fact that both civilizations were made up of human beings, and human beings, no matter who they are, share certain common wants, needs, and desires. Exploitation only happens when one entity has something the other is interested in exploiting.

Alien civilizations may have very little interest in most of our "stuff".

[Spitfire of ATJ]

32. More likely they would check out our entertainment....

Keeping in mind the majority of web traffic is porn.

[Warren DeMontague]

34. Hmmmm.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/british-man-arrested-sex-mailbox-article-1.2083035



Might explain some stuff

[on point]

28. Based on their own history, this is what they know

Just shoe would be on other foot

[DallasNE]

33. Fasinating Subject

Because we can allow our minds to wander due to the endless possibilities. For instance, other solar systems have anyway a 2-4 billion year head start on ours so intelligent life evolution could have taken the species through thousands of evolutional cycles, including all of the way to extinction both natural and unnatural. Does anyone really believe that today's humans won't evolve just as Neanderthal evolved into humans and it could happen in only another 100,000 years or so. That is just how it works. The only thing standing in the way is the human destruction of the ability of life to exist on earth. Even then some ocean life could survive and start the cycle all over again. Even plant life evolves for that matter. Just look at some of the plant fossils discovered in China.

[RKP5637]

27. Yep! Some appear to think they would be benevolent entities, there is IMO no reason to

believe that. Also, if they were that advanced, there is a distinct possibility they/it would be pure energy undetectable for the most part by lay humans. And, in terms of a multidimensional universe of infinite density, they could well already be here. And, if infinitely advanced, there is a distinct chance none could give a F about this spinning ball of dirt. We're just a speck, but have a lot of self importance having been confined to earth.

[brett_jv]

8. "Which means it is rocky?"

Since when does 'the distance from the star' dictate 'rockiness'?

Never heard that assertion before.

Also, this doesn't sound like NEAR enough information to assert positively 'capable of supporting life'. There's WAY more to being 'able to support life (as we know it)' than 'It's in the Goldilocks Zone (and hence rocky)'.

This article is really taking things way too far for my liking ...

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. As opposed to a ball of liquid or frozen gas which can't exist at room temperature.

[Fred Sanders]

29. There is a wide scientific consensus that planets in the Goldilocks zone must be rocky and gas

planets are further out....too hot for gas planets closer to the star.

[C Moon]

14. I'm packing my bags!! :)

[Man from Pickens]

16. 150 light years is not very close

What we really need is an Earth-like planet around one of these stars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars

Note there are 54 stars within 16.3 light years. That's a lot of stars and chances are good that many, if not most, of them have planets. We could probably make it to one of these with current technologies if we really needed to, to preserve the continued existence of the human race.

150 light years, on the other hand, will require a major technological leap forward - to get that far even at near light speed, we are talking several generations of people whose entire lives, birth to death, will be spent hurtling though space at some significant fraction of c. The existential implications of such a life may well drive the ship's crew mad, with catastrophic results for the mission. We'd probably have to figure out how to exceed the speed of light, and there's no telling whether that will ever be physically possible. If not, the only feasible way to get there is in steps, colonizing closer planets and working our way out.

[Warren DeMontague]

17. Here's the one I'm interested in exploring sooner* rather than later:

* "sooner" of course, being relative- no one is likely going to be doing any interstellar exploration in my lifetime, except by telescope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapteyn%27s_Star


Kapetyn's star, some 12 or so LY from us-- interestingly enough, astronomers believe that it is an ancient star, part of an older galaxy that was swallowed by the Milky Way aeons ago. And it has planets, at least one potentially in the habitable zone.

Which means these planets could conceivably be twice as old as the solar system, and most of the rest of the galaxy.

THAT, to me, sounds real fuckin' interesting.


http://www.universetoday.com/112363/discovered-two-new-planets-for-kapteyns-star/

Kapteyn B and C are both suspected to be rocky super-Earths, at a minimum mass of 4.5 and 7 times that of Earth respectively. Kapteyn B orbits its primary once every 48.6 days at 0.168 A.U.s distant (about 40% of Mercury’s distance from our Sun) and Kapteyn C orbits once every 122 days at 0.3 A.U.s distant.

This is really intriguing, as Kapteyn B sits in the habitable zone of its host star. Though cooler than our Sun, the habitable zone of a red dwarf sits much closer in than what we enjoy in our own solar system. And although such worlds may have to contend with world-sterilizing flares, recent studies suggest that atmospheric convection coupled with tidal locking may allow for liquid water to exist on such worlds inside the “snow line”.

And add to this the fact that Kapteyn’s Star is estimated to be 11.5 billion years old, compared with the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years and our own Sun at 4.6 billion years. Miserly red dwarfs measure their future life spans in the trillions of years, far older than the present age of the universe.

(emphasis added)

[Man from Pickens]

18. Yup, may be our best candidate right now

Too bad Tau Ceti and Epsilon Erdiani don't appear to have human-compatible planetary systems.

At 12 light years we're talking a trip that could be completed in a human lifetime if we manage to figure out how to accelerate a ship to 0.3c or so.

[Warren DeMontague]

22. Agreed.

What's interesting is, interstellar probes are now a serious topic of discussion, in some quarters. When I was growing up the concept was treated like an insane pipe dream, or sillier.

One thing is pretty certain, with advances in space-based observation we will be learning a great deal more about our corner of the galaxy in coming decades, however long it takes for us to develop any sort of real capability to leave our solar system (by no means a foregone conclusion, although occasionally I do let myself hope that Mr. Alcubierre is on to something) ... in any case, I don't get people who say nothing interesting has happened in space exploration, AND space science, in recent decades. We know probably several orders of magnitude more about several orders of magnitude more real estate, than all of human history combined.

It's an exciting time to be alive, I think.

[TeamPooka]

19. goodie, another planet for humans to ruin. nt

[Warren DeMontague]

21. Oh ffs.

Aside from the inherent goofiness of that statement, we're not that big, and we're not that powerful.

Anyway rest easy. No one is taking a set of backhoes and cement mixers 12 light years out to build strip malls and starbucks kiosks, any time soon. "Avatar" was just a movie.

Edited to add: aren't you in the least bit interested in the fact that there's a planet practically next door which is possibly twice as old as the galaxy itself? From a scientific perspective? I am.

[longship]

25. The star with one of the fastest proper motions.

That means its motion through the Earth's sky. Kapteyn's star is in the constellation Pictor, in the southern sky (45 degrees South declination). It is second fastest in proper motion, second only to Barnard's star in Ophiuchus, which is closer. Both are red dwarfs, like the grand majority of stars in the universe.

The star classes, from most massive to least are: O, B, A, F, G, K, M. Our Sun is a G3 star. Both Kapteyn's star and Barnard's star are M-dwarfs. They are small, dim, but burn their hydrogen so slowly that it is probable that all the M-dwarfs ever made in the universe are still burning, and will likely outlive any and all other stellar classes. They also have a tendency to be unstable and burp out proportionally huge flares for their small masses. I am not sure whether living on a planet close to an M-dwarf would be advisable. And that's the only way there could be life in such a system, as far as we know.

But there are so God damned many of them! 3/4 of the stars in the universe are M-dwarfs! God apparently loves beetles and M-dwarfs most. (Thank you JBS Haldane.)

[Warren DeMontague]

26. Interesting stuff!

Did not know that, about M dwarfs and flares, etc. Thanks!

[YOHABLO]

35. What is amazing is that we have a telescope that can see that far. Amazing.