http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723 Surprised this hasn't been posted yet. What we know about Kepler 452-b: It's the smallest exoplanet discovered to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone of a G2-class star, just like the Earth and the Sun. Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its 385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from its parent star Kepler-452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger. The Kepler-452 system is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Spoiler
Already got my things packed, clothes, extra set of underwear, energy bars, batteries, Linsanity DVD, and a small tent. When will they announce our spaceship's launching date?
If I cant visit it, I dont really care. So what, another earth like planet. I could have told you it existed along with with 10000000000000 to the power of 4 other planets like it just on sheer probability alone. Our tax dollars are better spent exploring how to create vertical agriculture to feed the planet.
Expansion of sports leagues there a possibility ? LA Chargers vs LA Raiders in a 2020 regular season game , too soon ?
That would have been wrong, since we will never observe or understand enough of the universe to identify consistent, permanent and scalable enough multi-billion year solar and atmospheric processes to affix a firm probability.
Wouldn't that kill us? Even if it wouldn't kill us, i'm pretty sure it would seriously **** up our bones and organs long term.
It's cool to know about these other planets, but until we develop faster than light travel it's pretty useless.
And NASA's primary company, SpaceX, just lost their first NASA, cargo-mission rocket after 19 successful Falcon 9 flights. <iframe width="480" height="373" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="true" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" id="nyt_video_player" title="New York Times Video - Embed Player" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/bcvideo/1.0/iframe/embed.html?videoId=100000003769344&playerType=embed"></iframe>
I fail to understand why we look for these planets with such narrow criteria. The habitable zone means only that it could have life similar to Earths. But that means nothing. We only know life from one planet and we immediatelly presume that all life in the universe should be like in our planet. What if it's not carbon based? Why can't life be in a gas giant or much further from the sun? Not need 02 or water?
Serious question, I know very little about space besides what Christopher Nolan taught me: How do we know what this planet looks like and how old it is, etc. When it took us 20 years to reach Pluto?
After rewatching all of Firefly and Serenity a month or so ago, I am convinced that if there is a future for Homo sapiens it is out in the black. I just don't see any way humans will be on this planet and this planet alone in the distant future.
Maybe it could, but since the universe is so huge to begin with and we really have no idea what life would look like if it didn't mirror ours in SOME ways, then it makes more sense to confine the search to what would likely be more successful.
