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NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

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Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#131

Post by antognini »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #122
Gravityloss wrote: post #111

The significance is this: it's very likely that there are a lot more such planets a lot nearer to us. This is because Kepler can only detect planets which lie in the same plane as earth and the star so the planet occults the star. Assuming random distribution, there's probably thousand fold amount of off plane planets. There are 259 stars within about 30 light years. Communication could be conceivable with such dista…

> This is because Kepler can only detect planets which lie in the same plane as earth and the star so the planet occults the star. What would be necessary for a more comprehensive survey?

If the planet is not transiting there are two other ways to detect it: radial velocity measurements, and direct imaging. In the radial velocity technique you measure the wobble of the star due to the gravitational pull of the planet. This also requires that the planet be somewhat edge-on, but the requirement isn't nearly as strict as with the transit method. The difficulty is that Earth size planets have very little mass, and so impart a very small wobble to the star, on the order of only ~10 cm / s.

In the second method, you just try to block as much light from the star as you can and go look for the reflected light of the planet. This is much, much more difficult and so far has only been done for very large, distant planets.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#132

Post by scrumper »

I had a bigger, older cousin when I was a kid. He was awesome. He showed me his Playboys and taught me how to shoot.

On a serious note, I'm looking forward to the discovery of a smaller cousin. That seems to me to be more promising for life: Stuff in water oceans won't sink as readily, so will be able to absorb more sunlight. Avian species will find life easier going (predicated on a suitably dense atmosphere). Any advanced civilizations will have an easier time getting out of its gravity well, and so on.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#134

Post by adrianm »

ilurk wrote: post #125

It feels extremely frustrating to know -- not just wonder but to know exactly where -- that there are planets similar to our own, which have a very high probability of harboring life, yet to be condemned to never be able to take a really close look at it. No FTL travel, no working cryonics, no mind-upload tech. Just harsh reality.

Not having those technologies but being captivated by the possibilities enabled by their existence is essentially what motivates many scientists. Instead of looking at it like a harsh reality, look at it like a grand challenge for yourself to be amongst those who contribute to their development (or provide the building blocks for later generations who do).

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#135

Post by TeMPOraL »

justindz wrote: post #87
eastbayjake wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. They would have no way of knowing that the descendants of those squabbling warlords just coo…

One can perhaps take comfort in the fact that a civilization advanced enough to be aware of us would likely be aware of the fact that we were more advanced than what they could see at any given moment (or they had found a way to narrow the perception lag).

They would likely have extrapolated the savagery they saw and realized that we may pose some problems for the galactic community. RKKVs are probably on their way towards Earth as we speak.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#136

Post by fao_ »

tatterdemalion wrote: post #110
qq66 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to wait 6000 years to see it on YouTube: 1500 for them to hear about YouTube and 4500 for them to upload (assuming TCP)

It seems like UDP is probably a better protocol for this use case.

Until a gamma beam disrupts the connection and you miss the best part, that is!

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#138

Post by sgt101 »

lucozade wrote: post #37
phantarch wrote: post #5

At 2 billion years older than Earth, I can't begin to imagine what kinds of things could possibly be living on this planet. Given, of course, that it's got the right ingredients for life to arise. What if it's suffered huge extinctions recently? What if there's a domineering species out to conquer the planet just like humans? What if there's a society there more sophisticated than us? It's a very exciting discovery.

The engineer in me says that it's overwhelmingly likely that there's nothing alive there. The little boy in me so wants me to be wrong.

I don't understand your reasoning!

There is good evidence that life apeared on earth more or less as soon as it cooled down, so there is just as much reason to think that this new place may have life as not.

However, by the same reasoning it seems to me that the life may be bacteria like!

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#139

Post by tomjakubowski »

eastbayjake wrote: post #76
phantarch wrote: post #5

At 2 billion years older than Earth, I can't begin to imagine what kinds of things could possibly be living on this planet. Given, of course, that it's got the right ingredients for life to arise. What if it's suffered huge extinctions recently? What if there's a domineering species out to conquer the planet just like humans? What if there's a society there more sophisticated than us? It's a very exciting discovery.

It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China. They would have no way of knowing that the descendants of those squabbling warlords just coo…

> It's jarring to think that if intelligent life were on Kepler 452-b and observing Earth, we're so far away that they would be seeing our "civilizations" in 615 AD: shrinking global population as the old Roman and Byzantine empires are overrun by barbarian hordes and Arab conquest, with some pockets of human progress in China.

Is there something uncivilized about the Arab conquest of Byzantine lands? Had the Kepler 452-b-ians been observing Earthians but a few hundred years prior, they'd have seen the Romans doing much the same to expand their own empire. And the Arabs did quite a good job to not only preserve the Roman intellectual and scientific state of the art, but to contribute their own advancements of those fields.

Re: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

#140

Post by crocal »

ilurk wrote: post #125

It feels extremely frustrating to know -- not just wonder but to know exactly where -- that there are planets similar to our own, which have a very high probability of harboring life, yet to be condemned to never be able to take a really close look at it. No FTL travel, no working cryonics, no mind-upload tech. Just harsh reality.

Frustrating or motivating? As far as I am concerned, if I live long enough to get even a blurry image of an exoplanet, I will die happy. And the best part: I have a good chance of this happening: http://exep.jpl.nasa.gov/presentations/AIAA_Space_2014Blackw...
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