Reply With Quote
we are better off trying to inhabit mars underground, then tryin to reach these so called destinations which are 20+ light years away....
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/0...net/index.html
(CNN) -- Scientists have discovered the first confirmed Earthlike planet outside our solar system, they announced Wednesday.
"This is the first confirmed rocky planet in another system," astronomer Artie Hatzes told CNN, contrasting the solid planet with gaseous ones like Jupiter and Saturn.
But "Earthlike" is a relative term.
The planet's composition may be similar to that of Earth, but its environment is more like a vision of , the project's lead astronomer said.
It is so close to the star it orbits "that the place may well look like Dante's Inferno, with a probable temperature on its 'day face' above 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius) and minus-328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius) on its night face," said Didier Queloz of Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, the project leader.
Hatzes, explaining that one side of the body is always facing the star and the other side always faces away, said the side "facing the sun is probably molten. The other side could actually have ice" if there is water on the planet.
"We think it has no atmosphere to redistribute the heat," Hatzes told CNN from Barcelona, Spain, where he is attending the "Pathways Towards Habitable Planets" conference.
The astronomers were stunned to find a rocky planet so near a star, he said.
"We would have never dreamed you would find a rocky planet so close," he said. "Its year is less than one of our days."
The planet, known as CoRoT-7b, was detected early last year, but it took months of observation to determine that it had a composition roughly similar to Earth's, the European Southern Observatory said in a statement.
Astronomers were able to measure the dimensions of the planet by watching as it passed in front of the star it orbits, then carried out 70 hours of study of the planet's effect on its star to infer its weight.
With that information in hand, they were able to calculate its density -- and were thrilled with what they found, Hatzes said.
"What makes this exciting is you compare the density of this planet to the planets in our solar system, it's only Mercury, Venus and Earth that are similar," Hatzes, of the Thuringer observatory in Germany, told CNN.
They were helped by the fact that CoRoT-7b is relatively close to Earth -- about 500 light years away, in the constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn.
"It's in our solar neighborhood," Hatzes said. "The thing that made it easier is it's relatively close, so it's relatively bright. If this star was much much farther away, we wouldn't have been able to do these measurements."
At about five times Earth's mass (though not quite twice as large in cir ference), it is the smallest planet ever spotted outside our solar system.
It also has the fastest orbit. The planet whizzes around its star more than seven times faster than Earth moves, and is 23 times closer to the star than Mercury is to our sun.
The planet was first detected early in 2008 by the CoRoT satellite, a 30-centimeter space telescope launched by the European Space Agency in December 2006, specifically with the mission of detecting rocky planets outside the solar system.
At least 42 scientists at 17 ins utions on three continents worked on the project.
They are publishing their findings in a special issue of the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal on October 22 as "The CoRoT-7 Planetary System: Two Orbiting Super-Earths."
we are better off trying to inhabit mars underground, then tryin to reach these so called destinations which are 20+ light years away....
I think you might have assumed a little too much. The term Earth-like doesnt mean habitable or even if it were, that humanity would even want to.
waste of money
there aint out there but rocks and dust
has NASA done anything other than the MRI?
Screw the rocks. They need to find the planets with the green dancing girls. Or was Roddenberry lying to us?
Aliens live underground on mars.
colonize mars please
I say, go for the 20+ light year planets. Mars is a piece of . I don't pretend to know anything about astrophysics outside of reading a history of time, but apparently, there's a way to bend space - sort of pinch it off at a point by traveling at the speed of light. That'd make going many light years away a lot quicker.
It's all science fiction garbage as far as I'm concerned. There is no way to travel the vast distances of space effectively.
This coming from a person who thinks w/o monkeys he would't be here?
i bet thats the planet
This coming from a person who thinks an invisible boogie man is watching him from the sky and just snapped his fingers and everything magically came into being?This coming from a person who thinks w/o monkeys he would't be here?
how do you think humans were created? from eggs?This coming from a person who thinks w/o monkeys he would't be here?
This coming from a person who thinks an invisible boogie man is watching him from the sky and just snapped his fingers and everything magically came into being?
That's were you are wrong my butt hurt relationship gone sour friend.
I never said I believe in GOD or the Bible I just don't believe in your father Darwin's half baked theories that have never been proven.
Evolution is only a theory in the sense that it can be expanded on. Evolution is pretty much a fact, dude.
Just because you were not here when it all started and your little red bull induced mind can't begin to comprehend the complexity of this subject? you get a pass and you should do some more research before engaging in a topic you know little about. (just a heads up)
Translation:It's the only thing that makes sense to me, so I am going with this theory so my head doesn't explode.
There went your credibility on this subject please feel free to exit the topic save yourself any more embarrassment.Evolution is pretty much a fact, dude.
I'm curious to see what "research" you've done, or any education you have on any of the biological sciences. I can sit here and talk to you about speciation, convergence/divergence, logs/paralogs, antigenic shifts/drifts, mutations, consensus sequences, natural selection, genomics, or the conditions on which self replicating organisms appeared (protobions, reducing atmosphere, thermal vents, and precursor molecules). It doesn't mean you're going to understand any of it, because you don't have the proper context. You sound like some backwoods redneck without an education.
I can see those text books did their job your all ed up!
you first!
Look, I understand that people in retail or fast food might just be doing that as their dayjob until their research grant comes in, so I'm not expecting you to be an expert. Just tell me what "research" you did.Just because you were not here when it all started and your little red bull induced mind can't begin to comprehend the complexity of this subject? you get a pass and you should do some more research before engaging in a topic you know little about. (just a heads up)
This is the Evolutionist oldest trick in the book they try to cloud your mind with such big scientific words to make you feel your an idiot and therefore you will submit and believe in their cause.
Sorry brah been there seen it prove to me man came from ape and I may join in your silly debate....
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
