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gentrone wrote on 2011-02-03 16:35
A NASA team has found multiple planets in a distant solar system - dubbed Kepler-11 - transiting a sun-like star located about 2,000 light years away from Earth.
"This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system," NASA said.
With temperatures hotter than Venus -- likely more than 400 to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, the six planets range in size from twice to four and a half times Earth’s diameter, astronomers said.
The five confirmed planets are larger in mass but less dense than Earth, and closely packed, taking from 10 to 47 days to orbit the star. Astonomers said there is almost certainly a sixth planet orbiting nearly twice as far away, but its distance from the star makes its confirmation more difficult.
According to NASA, all of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is ten times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. Moving outward, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is from the sun.
The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few million years of the system's formation, NASA said.
These six planets, which are mixtures of rock and gases possibly including water, were found by tracking the dimming of a star’s light when planets pass between the star and the telescope, astronomers said.
The astronomers said the next step will be to determine mass and orbits of the planets more precisely, providing clues to how the planets formed.
"Much of the scientific community thought that multiple planets transiting the same star would be unlikely," said Eric Ford of NASA team and University of Florida associate professor. "That idea has been completely overturned by this new discovery. Without the transit-timing method, these planets might have gone unconfirmed for years."
The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Tuesday. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235.
DUN DUN DUN
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Cynic wrote on 2011-02-03 17:17
Lmfao. I love how creative they are with naming the rest of 'um.
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Skye wrote on 2011-02-03 17:28
I am anticipating an alien invasion any day now.
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Rebel wrote on 2011-02-03 17:31
No need to stay here anymore, let's hightail it to the biggest one, hoping that has the most resources.
A). If extraterrestrials are found, mate with them until our offspring can survive the heat.
(Not gonna lie, I only read halfway through)
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Tatsu wrote on 2011-02-03 17:34
So now, when are scientists going to broaden their horizons some more and get rid of that stupid Goldilocks phenomenon theory?
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Skye wrote on 2011-02-03 17:51
Quote from Gage;318641:
(Not gonna lie, I only read halfway through)
I read like 3 sentences.
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Rebel wrote on 2011-02-03 18:00
Quote from Skye;318653:
I read like 3 sentences.
LOL NO EXCUSE FOR THAT
On topic, this is really fascinating, I never knew such large planets could be so hot.
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EndlessDreams wrote on 2011-02-03 18:54
Quote from Gage;318641:
No need to stay here anymore, let's hightail it to the biggest one, hoping that has the most resources.
A). If extraterrestrials are found, mate with them until our offspring can survive the heat.
(Not gonna lie, I only read halfway through)
Just to let you know, that the closest star is around 4-5 light years away. The distance from Earth to Pluto is around 30-50 AU. One light year is equal to 63,239 AU.
The solar system is 2000+ light years away.
In other words, lets start going now so a human might get near it in a million years or something. When we get there in a billion years, the aliens will just smash our puny spacecraft.
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Rebel wrote on 2011-02-03 18:55
Quote from EndlessDreams;318766:
Just to let you know, that the closest star is around 4-5 light years away. The distance from Earth to Pluto is around 30-50 AU. One light year is equal to 63,239 AU.
The solar system is 2000+ light years away.
In other words, lets start going now so a human might get near it in a million years or something. When we get there in a billion years, the aliens will just smash our puny spacecraft.
Im down!
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TA wrote on 2011-02-03 19:20
I read the whole thing, but it only went so far as to remind me just how naive most of our scientists are.
As for the time to travel that distance talk, obviously it wouldn't take a million years to travel that distance as within that allotted time new technology would be invented. Although at our current level of technology that may be true; however, at our current level of technology we should keep our damn asses right on this planet and advance because if we find aliens, they just might not exactly be friendly. We've invented our own little perception of right and wrong and morality, but nothing is to say that they will have any semblance of that. They could be like the Space Hitlers, out to kill all inferior life. Or worse, they may not even be that sentient as to let on as much, they may be more like Aliens (the movie) -- hard to reason with something like that.
Though, like it was said in The Day The Earth Stood Still, "History has lessons to teach us about first encounters between civilizations. As a rule, the less advanced civilization is either exterminated or enslaved. Think of Pizarro and the Incas, Columbus and the Native Americans, the list goes on. Unfortunately, in this case the less advanced civilization is us."
It wasn't just that movie either, even Stephen Hawking thinks similarly, he wrote about it in his book Stephen Hawking's Universe. He doesn't particularly think humans and aliens can co-exist at all. He has no doubt there are other beings in the galaxy, because of a simple mathmatical deduction; however, he doesn't imagine they might be either especially pleasant or particularly bright.
He didn't think too many aliens would be intelligent or even particularly dangerous, but if we come into contact with them, he fears for us rather than them. "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," he was quoted saying.
He went on, "I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."
Think extra-terrestrial Visigoths. That didn't turn out so good.
Anyways, I'm of a similar line of thinking. We're too damn soft and stupid to go around looking for potentially extremely dangerous aliens hellbent on killing us. We need to be advanced enough to defend ourselves first. Because when you get right down to it, a civilization advanced enough to get to us is likely advanced enough to kick our asses like a bunch of little sissies.
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Joker wrote on 2011-02-03 19:21
Quote from EndlessDreams;318766:
Just to let you know, that the closest star is around 4-5 light years away. The distance from Earth to Pluto is around 30-50 AU. One light year is equal to 63,239 AU.
The solar system is 2000+ light years away.
In other words, lets start going now so a human might get near it in a million years or something. When we get there in a billion years, the aliens will just smash our puny spacecraft.
we need a warpdrive first xD
<3 stargate
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Phunkie wrote on 2011-02-03 19:22
Quote from Cynic;318629:
Lmfao. I love how creative they are with naming the rest of 'um.
That's how they name 'em.
Kepler-11 is the star all the planets orbit. Then the planets are named after the star, starting the with letter 'b'. Kepler-11b would be the first planet out from the star. Kepler-11c would be the second planet away from the star and so on.
Those remain their official names, until someone decides to give them a creative name, for whatever reason. There's just so many planets out there that giving them all a unique name makes no sense. Also, it's good for easy identification and organization.
Quote from Tasha;318808:
I read the whole thing, but it only went so far as to remind me just how naive most of our scientists are.
Of course. But scientists are mostly interested in finding habitable planets and understanding the conditions in which life arises. That's the most important thing to them or to any explorer who goes out to discover new lands.
There were Europeans that came here before Columbus and mainly traded peacefully with the Native Americans. And there were people liked to study their cultures and whatnot. It happens all the time with people who go into the Amazon.
Of course, you have to be careful, but it's all for the thrill of exploration.
But I agree. We have to improve our defenses if we ever reach that point of contact.
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EndlessDreams wrote on 2011-02-03 19:46
Quote from Tasha;318808:
I read the whole thing, but it only went so far as to remind me just how naive most of our scientists are.
As for the time to travel that distance talk, obviously it wouldn't take a million years to travel that distance as within that allotted time new technology would be invented. Although at our current level of technology that may be true; however, at our current level of technology we should keep our damn asses right on this planet and advance because if we find aliens, they just might not exactly be friendly. We've invented our own little perception of right and wrong and morality, but nothing is to say that they will have any semblance of that. They could be like the Space Hitlers, out to kill all inferior life. Or worse, they may not even be that sentient as to let on as much, they may be more like Aliens (the movie) -- hard to reason with something like that.
Though, like it was said in The Day The Earth Stood Still, "History has lessons to teach us about first encounters between civilizations. As a rule, the less advanced civilization is either exterminated or enslaved. Think of Pizarro and the Incas, Columbus and the Native Americans, the list goes on. Unfortunately, in this case the less advanced civilization is us."
It wasn't just that movie either, even Stephen Hawking thinks similarly, he wrote about it in his book Stephen Hawking's Universe. He doesn't particularly think humans and aliens can co-exist at all. He has no doubt there are other beings in the galaxy, because of a simple mathmatical deduction; however, he doesn't imagine they might be either especially pleasant or particularly bright.
He didn't think too many aliens would be intelligent or even particularly dangerous, but if we come into contact with them, he fears for us rather than them. "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," he was quoted saying.
He went on, "I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."
Think extra-terrestrial Visigoths. That didn't turn out so good.
Anyways, I'm of a similar line of thinking. We're too damn soft and stupid to go around looking for potentially extremely dangerous aliens hellbent on killing us. We need to be advanced enough to defend ourselves first. Because when you get right down to it, a civilization advanced enough to get to us is likely advanced enough to kick our asses like a bunch of little sissies.
So what you are suggesting is that we need GN Drives and Gundam Technology to get us into space to defend against the aliens. We might even need 00-Quantum Gundam and an innovator to communicate with these aliens.