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I'm quoting a person who works on that project: "They discovered a huge number of Earth-like planets. The new count is vastly outnumbers previous estimations ev

I'm quoting a person who works on that project: "They discovered a huge number of Earth-like planets. The new count is vastly outnumbers previous estimations even over the gas giants due to imperfect technology." The remaining conclusions are up to you, even if they are not going to be voiced at the conference....

borisk 16y ago
Looks quite likely. They started collecting data in June 2009 and expected that a year of observations will be necessary to confirm a big number of planets. What are your conclusions? We are not alone? There are places for humankind to expand to?
- robryan 16y ago
  As far as I have been able to tell when looking a couple of weeks back the data they are mainly using for ground based confirmations is the stuff from the first few months. There seems to be quiet a big lag time between recording the data and actually getting it out for confirmations which themselves would be taking quiet some time.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  These are Earth-mass planets, not Earth-orbit (1 year period) planets. They need 3 transits for confirmation, which requires at least 2 years and more likely 3 years of observations. These are "hot Earths" to the previous "hot Jupiters" we had been discovering.
waterlesscloud 16y ago
Depends on the definition of "Earth-like", really. Mars is Earth-like in some astronomical contexts.
- sprout 16y ago
  Well, if you have the resources to get from here to a Mars-like planet, turning it into a habitable world should be trivial, so Mars is Earth-like enough for colonization purposes at least.
  - 0x44 16y ago
    That doesn't seem to hold up empirically. We have the resources to get from here to a Mars-like planet (namely, Mars), yet we don't have the ability to trivially turn uninhabitable areas of our own planet into earth-like enough places for human colonization.
    - njharman 16y ago
      >trivially turn uninhabitable areas of our own planet into earth-like enough places for human colonization. What? They're called "houses". See also, desert irrigation, slash/burn farming, terrace farming, and Lapplanders & Inuit peoples. Edit: But yes, parent's comment that Mars is trivially terraformed is as bonkers as your post.
      - sprout 16y ago
        I thought it was clear from my post when I said "Mars-like" that excluded Mars. (Since the subject of debate is extrasolar planets.) And I was speaking in reference to traveling to that planet, which is virtually impossible with current technology. And to expand a little more, I would say a generation ship of some sort would be required to get even to Alpha Centauri, so creating a self-sustaining ecosystem from whole cloth is a prerequisite for traveling to extrasolar planets. Now, you could make an argument that some magic FTL technology will appear, but I still think that terraforming is a trivial problem by comparison.
      - 0x44 16y ago
        Houses aren't terraformed colonies, and they're definitely not closed cycle. Anything we would set up on Mars (or a Mars-like planet) would necessarily have to be, because the planet lacks a human friendly biosphere and volatiles with which we could support them. We can't terraform the Sahara into something 200 people could live in for any extended period of time.
        mdisraeli 16y ago
        Teraforming an entire planet would, in many respects, be simpler than safely teraforming just the Sahara and nothing else at the same time. We don't even need to make Mars better than the Sahara. The primary objective would be to raise the pressure to that at which a pressure suit wouldn't be needed, and the temperature such that that too would meet what we currently can handle on earth. Once we've got that, the rest would be fairly straightforward (I'd argue that atmospheric manipulation is harder than getting life to colonise the regolith).
- chc 16y ago
  Venus is also Earth-like in the sense we're talking about here, despite being almoet a thousand degrees Fahrenheit hotter.
  - radu_floricica 16y ago
    Earth before life wasn't much to be looked upon, either.
anigbrowl 16y ago
The reason I found it interesting was that the news about 'hundreds' of Earth-like planets (using a very ballpark description of 'Earth-like,' of course) filtered out back in June in the usual fairly low-key fashion. This announcement refers to a 'new discovery about an intriguing planetary system' - in other ones, just one solar system out of the hundreds of possible candidates. Maybe it's nothing more than extreme cleverness being used to confirm one of them has 3 or more planets (which would be significant in itself), but I sense a mystery - either something we'd never seriously considered before (like planets with overlapping orbits?) or else something that looks unexpectedly familiar. Most exciting of all would be confirmation by some other observation platform of something interesting at a particular location - the plan is to work with other observatories to take a more detailed look at interesting candidates (see http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-20100503.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-201005...). Small hope of that right now, though. If you want to study the date yourself, it's available via http://archive.stsci.edu/ http://archive.stsci.edu/ and http://nsted.ipac.caltech.edu/ http://nsted.ipac.caltech.edu/; http://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2010/speaker_talks/PlavchanGettingData.pdf http://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2010/speaker_talks/Plavch... gives a quick rundown on what you need to know in order to work with it.
- nopassrecover 16y ago
  Overlapping orbits would be interesting. They would have to be equal size planets and directly opposite (my mind isnt alert enough to consider 3D right now) the star so as not to collide nor alter the other planet's orbit right?
  - anigbrowl 16y ago
    I have no idea if/how that would work - it was just the first wacky thing that came to mind blush
- pierre_M 16y ago
  If there's one they find "particularly intriguing" I'm guessing it's a rocky planet within the habitable (ie liquid water) zone. It would have to be a relatively cool star, since it would have to be orbiting more than once per Earth year if they'd had time to observe it. One more guess: they've observed something with moons. The Kepler instrument should, I think, be capable of resolving an Earth-sized moon orbiting a gas giant, once you've watched it go round enough times.

borisk 16y ago

Looks quite likely. They started collecting data in June 2009 and expected that a year of observations will be necessary to confirm a big number of planets. What are your conclusions? We are not alone? There are places for humankind to expand to?

robryan 16y ago
As far as I have been able to tell when looking a couple of weeks back the data they are mainly using for ground based confirmations is the stuff from the first few months. There seems to be quiet a big lag time between recording the data and actually getting it out for confirmations which themselves would be taking quiet some time.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
These are Earth-mass planets, not Earth-orbit (1 year period) planets. They need 3 transits for confirmation, which requires at least 2 years and more likely 3 years of observations. These are "hot Earths" to the previous "hot Jupiters" we had been discovering.

waterlesscloud 16y ago

Depends on the definition of "Earth-like", really. Mars is Earth-like in some astronomical contexts.

sprout 16y ago
Well, if you have the resources to get from here to a Mars-like planet, turning it into a habitable world should be trivial, so Mars is Earth-like enough for colonization purposes at least.
- 0x44 16y ago
  That doesn't seem to hold up empirically. We have the resources to get from here to a Mars-like planet (namely, Mars), yet we don't have the ability to trivially turn uninhabitable areas of our own planet into earth-like enough places for human colonization.
  - njharman 16y ago
    >trivially turn uninhabitable areas of our own planet into earth-like enough places for human colonization. What? They're called "houses". See also, desert irrigation, slash/burn farming, terrace farming, and Lapplanders & Inuit peoples. Edit: But yes, parent's comment that Mars is trivially terraformed is as bonkers as your post.
    - sprout 16y ago
      I thought it was clear from my post when I said "Mars-like" that excluded Mars. (Since the subject of debate is extrasolar planets.) And I was speaking in reference to traveling to that planet, which is virtually impossible with current technology. And to expand a little more, I would say a generation ship of some sort would be required to get even to Alpha Centauri, so creating a self-sustaining ecosystem from whole cloth is a prerequisite for traveling to extrasolar planets. Now, you could make an argument that some magic FTL technology will appear, but I still think that terraforming is a trivial problem by comparison.
    - 0x44 16y ago
      Houses aren't terraformed colonies, and they're definitely not closed cycle. Anything we would set up on Mars (or a Mars-like planet) would necessarily have to be, because the planet lacks a human friendly biosphere and volatiles with which we could support them. We can't terraform the Sahara into something 200 people could live in for any extended period of time.
      - mdisraeli 16y ago
        Teraforming an entire planet would, in many respects, be simpler than safely teraforming just the Sahara and nothing else at the same time. We don't even need to make Mars better than the Sahara. The primary objective would be to raise the pressure to that at which a pressure suit wouldn't be needed, and the temperature such that that too would meet what we currently can handle on earth. Once we've got that, the rest would be fairly straightforward (I'd argue that atmospheric manipulation is harder than getting life to colonise the regolith).
chc 16y ago
Venus is also Earth-like in the sense we're talking about here, despite being almoet a thousand degrees Fahrenheit hotter.
- radu_floricica 16y ago
  Earth before life wasn't much to be looked upon, either.

anigbrowl 16y ago

The reason I found it interesting was that the news about 'hundreds' of Earth-like planets (using a very ballpark description of 'Earth-like,' of course) filtered out back in June in the usual fairly low-key fashion. This announcement refers to a 'new discovery about an intriguing planetary system' - in other ones, just one solar system out of the hundreds of possible candidates. Maybe it's nothing more than extreme cleverness being used to confirm one of them has 3 or more planets (which would be significant in itself), but I sense a mystery - either something we'd never seriously considered before (like planets with overlapping orbits?) or else something that looks unexpectedly familiar. Most exciting of all would be confirmation by some other observation platform of something interesting at a particular location - the plan is to work with other observatories to take a more detailed look at interesting candidates (see http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-20100503.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-201005...). Small hope of that right now, though. If you want to study the date yourself, it's available via http://archive.stsci.edu/ http://archive.stsci.edu/ and http://nsted.ipac.caltech.edu/ http://nsted.ipac.caltech.edu/; http://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2010/speaker_talks/PlavchanGettingData.pdf http://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2010/speaker_talks/Plavch... gives a quick rundown on what you need to know in order to work with it.

nopassrecover 16y ago
Overlapping orbits would be interesting. They would have to be equal size planets and directly opposite (my mind isnt alert enough to consider 3D right now) the star so as not to collide nor alter the other planet's orbit right?
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  I have no idea if/how that would work - it was just the first wacky thing that came to mind blush
pierre_M 16y ago
If there's one they find "particularly intriguing" I'm guessing it's a rocky planet within the habitable (ie liquid water) zone. It would have to be a relatively cool star, since it would have to be orbiting more than once per Earth year if they'd had time to observe it. One more guess: they've observed something with moons. The Kepler instrument should, I think, be capable of resolving an Earth-sized moon orbiting a gas giant, once you've watched it go round enough times.