Earth-like planet found in Kepler 22 system

[SmartKit]

Actually jupiter is over 300 times more massive than earth. And mars and Venus are not in the "habital zone ".

Er... Yes Venus and Mars are. Mars may be cooler than earth, but it has been proven that humans can live in temperatures akin to ice age Europe.

 

[falcon786]

Er... Yes Venus and Mars are. Mars may be cooler than earth, but it has been proven that humans can live in temperatures akin to ice age Europe.

Which would be around?

 

[mercurial]

Pity we will never get to go there.

 

[MiY4Gi]

Planet much bigger than the Earth != gas giant.

There are several big rocky planets, like Earth (not necessarily habitable), that have been discovered by the Kepler telescope, some 5 times larger than the Earth.

Yeah, but then the gravity would be 5 times stronger. Imagine taking a kak under such gravity.

 

[SmartKit]

Which would be around?

Unless Mars develops an atmosphere similar to earth too much heat is lost back into space. Currently Mars has a maximum temperature of 20 degree but it can drop to minus 90 degrees. This would require global warming on a massive scale.

During the ice age temperatures averaged 0-5 degrees.

 

[falcon786]

taking in what?

 

[Knyro]

Yeah, but then the gravity would be 5 times stronger. Imagine taking a kak under such gravity.

That would be the least of your worries, rocky planets that big are usually too hot at the centre to have a solid, spinning core. Because of this they do not have a magnetosphere to protect it from radiation.

Anyway the point was made that not all planets that are much bigger than the earth share the properties of gas giants.

 

[h0ll0w]

Could one say that because it is 600 lightyears away, if the planet disappeared or got destroyed or whatever for whatever reason, we would only know it 600 years from now ?

That'd be quite the anti climax :\

 

[porchrat]

Could one say that because it is 600 lightyears away, if the planet disappeared or got destroyed or whatever for whatever reason, we would only know it 600 years from now ?

That'd be quite the anti climax :\

LOL so true.

Worse if we dispatch some sort of huge mission to reach this planet only to find out 100 years after we send the team of frozen spacefarers into the great void that the destination was destroyed.

 

[zippy]

Er... Yes Venus and Mars are. Mars may be cooler than earth, but it has been proven that humans can live in temperatures akin to ice age Europe.

Ok, I did more checking. Mars is, but Venus only enters the zone periodically. Venus is too close to the Sun much of the time.

There is lot of evidence that Mars did have an atmosphere.

Mars is the subject of ongoing research which seems to indicate that it lost its atmosphere due to some catastrophic event, possibly collision with a large object. That, coupled with it smaller size, compared to Earth, meant that it couldn't hold it's atmosphere. Also Mars has virtually no magnetic field. This is also crucial in protecting an atmosphere from the star. It may never have had one. Or it lost it. Maybe due to the same event.

This newly discovered planet is more earth like than it is Jupiter like. But it may turn out to be Mars like.

I think the main problem with mars is that it is too small. The moon is also in the habital zone. This planet, being rocky and larger than mars is far more likely to have a magnetic field.

I'm not sure when the technology will be available to take a closer look, but the mere fact that a rocky planet smaller than Jupiter is found in another star's habital zone is massive progress. It's one more step in the process of finding another planet which support life.

 

[zippy]

And the planet has a year of about 290 days and an average temperature of 22[SUP]o[/SUP]C. I think a key question is: does it have H[SUB]2[/SUB]O?

A magnetic field would help too.

Earth has also had the benefit if being in a relatively quiet part of the galaxy for a heck of a long time. In addition, the gas giants and the moon has taken a lot of hits which would otherwise have hit earth. In fact, what may have whacked mars may well have hit the earth where it not for mars.

 

[Picard]

If my math is correct it will take 190 years if you are travelling at 1 000 000km per second.

warp speed much ?

The voyager craft that NASA launched over 34 years ago is only traveling at 13km per second.

 

[bubbatentoe]

too true Zippy.
Jupiter acts like a giant magnet in our solar system attracting most of the "nasties" that zoom into our neck of the woods.
It has 62 known moons.

It also happens to be my favorite object for observing.
It never looks the same & you can actually see it rotate (during a viewing period of 2 hours)
1 Jupiter day = 10 hours.
It rotates REALLY fast.