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To help out anyone trying to search for stuff, * This exoplanet is now "Kepler-452b" (kepler_name), * In the "Kepler Object of Interest" catalog, it's KOI "K07016.01" (kepoi_name), * Its star is both K07016 and Kepler ID 8311864 (kepid), * In the broader 2MASS sky survey, the star has the id "J19440088+4416392" Sources (catalog search engines), http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/nph... https://a…
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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...
Not saying that getting an image of an exoplanet at all wouldn't be exciting, but I'd die happier if we could land a rover there.
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>> Assuming random distribution (of plane of planets), Has there been any research on this? I have no actual insight, but I'd guess the plane of the galaxy would affect plane of stellar rotation and perhaps also planetary disk alignment.
The milky way galaxy is about 200,000 light years in diameter, but only about 200 light years thick. Given this thickness, I imagine you'd need to look beyond the 200-light-year range to notice a significant influence of the plane of the galaxy on the distribution of stars (and planets).
Every eighteen year-old suburbanite[1] has already been pretty well socialised by local interactions in the context of a global system of local interactions, performed massively in parallel.
[1] metaphors mixed and units of measure utterly messed-around with
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Yup, but as others said it might be better since Kepler doesn't detect all orbital planes. So it would be 0.0066 * 1/(fraction of orbital planes) -- but this boost is probably less than an order of magnitude? So still probably no luck for planets reachable within a lifetime eh :P
Are you sure it will be probably less than 1 order of magnitude? Unless there is some restriction that limit the plane of the orbit around a star with relation to the galaxy, which is unlikely... Assume the plane needs to be within 1 degree from the line joining the star and kepler. I would guess it probably less. It would be a function of size of the planet, size of the star, radius of the orbit and distance of star…
Assuming you mean 1 degree in either direction, or 2/360 = 1/180, this is off by about a factor of pi/2 ~= 1.57. The correct answer is sin(pi/360) ~= pi/360 ~= 1/115. Still two orders of magnitude, but slightly better. The reason is that the degrees are not equally likely (small degrees, that you want, are more likely, and large degrees less likely).
Here's the calculation: Consider the unit vector normal to the equator of the orbit, using say the right-hand rule. This vector is uniformly distributed over the unit sphere (surface area 4pi). You want the vector to lie within +-1 degree of the rim of the sphere. Call the region of such vectors R; the probability of a good planet is P = area(R)/(4pi).
R is an annulus going around the equator and up/down by 1 degree. In area, this is close to a rectangle with width 2pi (circumference of sphere) and height 2pi/360 (i.e., 2 degrees), so P ~= (pi^2/90) / (4pi) = pi/360.
The area of R (an equatorial annulus) can be computed exactly using calculus---or looked up on Wikipedia [1]: area(R) = 4pi - 2(2pi(1-sin(pi/360))) = 4pi sin(pi/360). Thus, P = sin(pi/360).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cap#Volume_and_surfa...
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The milky way galaxy is about 200,000 light years in diameter, but only about 200 light years thick. Given this thickness, I imagine you'd need to look beyond the 200-light-year range to notice a significant influence of the plane of the galaxy on the distribution of stars (and planets).
This solar system orbits the galactic center every 250 million years or so; making us a young adult of around 18 Galactic years old, living in a suburb of quite a busy galaxy. Every eighteen year-old suburbanite[1] has already been pretty well socialised by local interactions in the context of a global system of local interactions, performed massively in parallel. [1] metaphors mixed and units of measure utterly mess…
Yes, I know, it's still from Earth, but I do think it's a weird way of looking at dinosaur fossils.
More other-side-of-the-galaxy dinosaurs:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/mesozoic...
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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.
> The engineer in me says that it's overwhelmingly likely that there's nothing alive there. Our planet has life in all kinds of niches. Why would an Earth-like planet not be overwhelmingly likely to have life on it? (I am an engineer also...)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Earth-like planets generally won't support life. I have no idea how many will. It just seems unlikely that the first one found happens to tick all the relevant boxes.
Having said that, the fact that they've found one so quickly, relatively speaking, seems like a good indicator that there are an awful lot of good candidates for life-supporting planets. The more there are, one would assume, the more chance that some will have everything in place.
But then again, we could just get lucky and hit it first time. Which would be stellar (sorry).
Now, if only NASA would announce that Kepler-452b is full of oil, we would have warp engines in under a decade.
Why go that far? Titan, Saturn's moon, is loaded with far more hydrocarbons than are available on Earth.