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NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

nasa.gov

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Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#81

Post by Retric »

cletus wrote: post #2

Kepler has certainly made a lot of discoveries. It should be fairly clear to us now that planetary systems are pretty common and, by extension, sentience must (by sheer odds) be out there too. But I have to wonder how many assumptions go into this so-called "habitable zone". Doesn't it greatly depend on the atmospheric composition? With a different atmosphere, couldn't Venus be habitable (actually it might be in our…

A planet's chemistry is influenced by it's size, distance from it's star, the the types of supernova that happened in the region where it formed etc. However, I don't think there is going to be all that much differences between basic planet chemistry. Due to basic physics we are never going to find a 'natural' planet that's 95% pure silver. (Someone could presumably make one though.)

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#83

Post by ChuckMcM »

finnw wrote: post #70
ChuckMcM wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find these questions interesting too, when the Global Warming group argues that we have to fix it because climate change caused a great die off, one wonders if we're in the 'habitable zone' for our Sun or if we're in the conditionally habitable zone if the planetary chemistry is correct. The latter would seem to both widen what could be habitable, and narrow the probability that somewhere is habitable (have to both…

What would happen if The Aliens put one of those in orbit around Earth?

Lots of great Science Fiction has started with that question. Eon comes to mind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eon_%28novel%29

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#84

Post by VladRussian »

nitrogen wrote: post #63
rokhayakebe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can we know if there is life on any planet (close or far) if we can only look for it using our senses? Forget Mars, is it just possible that there is life on earth that we simply cannot know of because we do not have the required senses to perceive it.

Physicalism is essential to science. What sense could we (and our instruments) lack that still exists in the physical world? There is no doubt that there are species we have yet to identify and categorize, but those species will still be made of the same matter that comprises the rest of the universe, detectable by the same means. The only major obstacle I see to knowing about some form of life on Earth is location -…

>of the same matter that comprises the rest of the universe, detectable by the same means.

man, that plugs nicely into the whole dark matter/energy discussion.

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#85

Post by VladRussian »

jarin wrote: post #10
ugh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the diagram for the habitable zone in our own solar system you can see that Nasa would class both Mars and Venus as habitable planets. They already place pretty generous bounds around the habitable zone. Given the very real possibility that there could have been (still is?) life on mars that makes a lot of sense. (Nasa just sent Curiosity on its way to Mars and one of its main goals is to look for sign…

Both Venus and Mars have good odds of having had liquid water oceans in the past. From what I understand, Venus would possibly be habitable today if it had a carbon cycle and planetary magnetic field to prevent the runaway greenhouse effect.

it allows to imagine that something could be a "life" in Venus like conditions as well:

"Scientists once thought that no living thing could survive the harsh combination of toxic chemicals, high temperatures, high pressures, and total darkness at these vents. "

"Vent bacteria use hydrogen sulfide as their energy source instead of sunlight. "

http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/ps_vents.html

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#88

Post by xer0 »

diego_moita wrote: post #54

> Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away So what we are seeing now are the light that came out the planet when Lorenzo Di Medici was inventing capitalism and financing the renaissance in Italy in 15th century. Not very good chances we'll get there soon.

But plausible to have a conversation.

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#89

Post by moe »

maratd wrote: post #60
cryptoz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I think of intelligent alien life, I think along the lines of Klingons, not alien dolphins. Are we going to find alien dolphins? Absolutely. Klingons? Nope. Why are you so sure that this is impossible, still? Aside from FTL travel, in what way are humans fundamentally different from Kingons? We both have space travel, some sentience, a taste for weapons, etc. You think this happened only once in the entire (sa…

> Why are you so sure that this is impossible, still? Aside from FTL travel, in what way are humans fundamentally different from Kingons? You don't understand my argument. We (and our intelligence) are the unique product of our evolutionary environment. There is no tendency in evolution towards intelligence. There are far many more organisms on this planet in far greater numbers than us that don't even have a brain,…

astronomically unlikely

Interesting choice of words. So while we're talking in astronomical terms: How big is the universe? How many earth-like planets does it contain? Are there other universes?

Until we can answer at least one of these questions I would refrain from calling anything in this context "astronomically unlikely".

Re: NASA Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

#90

Post by ceejayoz »

officemonkey wrote: post #71
kiba wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me, uninhabitable? I don't think our planet is going to become uninhabitable, not by a long shot.

In the long run, our sun will age, and could expand to a red giant phase where our planet would become uninhabitable. Scientists believe this will happen in billions of years, but it could happen tomorrow.

> Scientists believe this will happen in billions of years, but it could happen tomorrow.

I'm pretty sure that statement flies in the face of astrophysics.

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