New planet "earth like"

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Rynie

Rynie

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Rynie
To put it in perspective: if you were traveling 58,632 km/h, it would take you 20 MILLION Earth - years to get there. The fact we even know anything about this planet is absolutely mind-boggling to me.
 
bluecoconuts

bluecoconuts

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Rynie said:
To put it in perspective: if you were traveling 58,632 km/h, it would take you 20 MILLION Earth - years to get there. The fact we even know anything about this planet is absolutely mind-boggling to me.
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The distance is pretty small compared to the size of our galaxy.

PIA19333_hires.jpg


The cone is where Kepler is searching, where we find most planets, including this one (hence the designator, Kepler).

We haven't even begun to make a dent.
 
beej

beej

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bluecoconuts said:
The planet is very interesting, and probably gives us a good look on how life on Earth will be in the future. Assuming it is indeed a terrestrial planet and not a gas one. We're about 49-62% sure it's a rocky Earth like planet though. Which if it is, there's a pretty good chance it has a solid atmosphere and perhaps even active volcanoes. The planet itself is a little older, about 6±2 Gyr, (billion years), similar to the estimated age of its parent star. We expect it to remain in the habitable zone for another 3 Gyr.

Due to the star being older and slightly bigger, the energy being put out by it is quite a bit different, about 10% more to be exact, as the star is nearing the end of its time on the main sequence. That significantly lowers the chance of habitability of the planet, because it could mean runaway greenhouse gasses, similar to what has happened to Venus. If that's the case then we wouldn't really be able to live on there if we could travel there. The strength of the gravity (about twice as much as Earth) would allow the planet to hold onto water longer though. If the runaway greenhouse gasses were starting, we likely wouldn't see oceans, but rather pockets water that are highly concentrated in minerals, before they eventually completely evaporate.

However what is more interesting to us is that this planet could give us a look into how conditions of Earth will change as our sun ages. We know that the energy output of the sun will change, exactly what that does to us we aren't sure. If we did find out there was life or anything like that, it would be a happy coincidence.

If there was life they would potentially be a billion years more advanced than us (somewhat scary thought), and they should know our planet is here. Assuming of course they advanced past the great filter (if we're to follow the Fermi paradox) in the first place.

Kepler 452b is an interesting planet to observe though, while it's probably not going to result in us confirming life (although that would be very cool) it's the closest planet to Earth we have found. With the new James Webb telescope being set to launch late 2018, we'll be able to get much more data on these planets though. The good news is also that we're starting to find more of the smaller planets, instead of the larger gas planets, as our understanding and technology improves. Obviously the smaller the planet the harder to find.
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I'm fascinated by the process of how we know all this stuff. I'd love to know how we figure all that out of there is any way to put that on layman terms.
I kind of get the process of locating the planets by measuring the light and lessening of light as a planet passes in front. I don't understand how they know the age and atmospheric conditions or even the distances.
 
bluecoconuts

bluecoconuts

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beej said:
I'm fascinated by the process of how we know all this stuff. I'd love to know how we figure all that out of there is any way to put that on layman terms.
I kind of get the process of locating the planets by measuring the light and lessening of light as a planet passes in front. I don't understand how they know the age and atmospheric conditions or even the distances.
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Typically when we determine the age of a planet we go off of the host star, and go from there. Determining the makeup is done by finding out the mass and volume, which give us the density, and allow us to determine if it's a rocky planet or a gassy one. It's never exact though, often times we attach a percentage to it that is between 40-70% odds we are correct. After that if we're able to gather any light from the planet (difficult depending on size and distance) we can get a pretty good determination of it's atmosphere by going off of the spectroscopy of the light that is passing though its atmosphere. Gasses (such as oxygen, methane, etc) absorb certain light wavelengths, so when we analyze the light, we can see what wavelengths are missing and then determine what the makeup is. Similar to how we determine the makeup of stars.
 
beej

beej

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bluecoconuts said:
Typically when we determine the age of a planet we go off of the host star, and go from there. Determining the makeup is done by finding out the mass and volume, which give us the density, and allow us to determine if it's a rocky planet or a gassy one. It's never exact though, often times we attach a percentage to it that is between 40-70% odds we are correct. After that if we're able to gather any light from the planet (difficult depending on size and distance) we can get a pretty good determination of it's atmosphere by going off of the spectroscopy of the light that is passing though its atmosphere. Gasses (such as oxygen, methane, etc) absorb certain light wavelengths, so when we analyze the light, we can see what wavelengths are missing and then determine what the makeup is. Similar to how we determine the makeup of stars.
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Fascinating, thanks!
 
RAMSinLA

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Who knows? maybe we are looking back at where human kind began. That planet is older and it appears to be much dryer than earth. Very interesting.
 
bluecoconuts

bluecoconuts

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RAMSinLA said:
Who knows? maybe we are looking back at where human kind began. That planet is older and it appears to be much dryer than earth. Very interesting.
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There's some pretty compelling evidence that suggests that life may have originated from Mars and hitched a ride on an asteroid to Earth. Nothing even close to being confirmed of course, but there is data to suggest this.

However the odds of life originating on Kepler 452 are essentially impossible. I won't say they are, but the odds are so low, its essentially that way.

First the planet would have to have held life (possible, perhaps even probable), then it hitch onto an asteroid, and be flung out of orbit of the parent star somehow. Afterwards it would fly through interstellar space, either avoiding other systems (which is pretty unlikely) and if it did enter another one it would then need to escape that one as well (very low chance), etc etc until it entered into ours and hit us with the life.

All in all the odds of that happening are so low, it essentially makes it impossible. Especially without any evidence.

What's more interesting is if the planet did have life, what happened? Did they become intelligent? No? Did they know what was happening to their home world? Did they escape? Scary thoughts..
 
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