Planet found in Earth's nearest neighbour star system

[Grall]

i still don't understand why with this huge infinite galaxy

By "this galaxy", do you mean the milky way? It's not infinite. It's pretty large as far as galaxies go (~100k light years across), but definitely not infinite. Even our universe is very likely not infinite, that would cause some difficulties as how something like that might have come about, however some/many physicists believe the universe is a hypersphere (a four-dimensional sphere), making it technically classifiable as finite, yet unbounded, or in other words, it has a limited (probably expanding) volume, but no actual outer edge, or a center.

(Four-dimensional objects are wacky.)

we still haven't found other creatures on other planets.

We actually don't have the means to find creatures on other planets, not unless they were to directly advertise their presence to us, for example with beams of EM radiation transmissions aimed straight at us. Our telescopes are far too weak to directly image earth-like/sized planets, much less creatures living on them, or their technical artefacts.

I 100% believe there are many creatures (probably like us) that also live in their own world.

Undoubtedly that is the case, considering there are more stars in just the visible universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of planet earth (and the total universe is likely far larger still.) However, physical distances and the passage of time means we might never discover any of them during our entire existence as a living, breathing, technological species.

 

[UniversalTruth]

The most Earth-like planet yet has been discovered, scientists report in the journal Science.
The rocky planet, Kepler 186f, is close to the size of Earth and has the potential to hold liquid water, which is critical for life, the team says.
Nestled in the Milky Way, it is part of a five-planet system that orbits around a cool dwarf star.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27054366

However, a planet that is exactly the same size as Earth, orbiting a star just like the Sun, at the same distance has yet to be seen.
Such a find will almost certainly come with future technologies. The European Space Agency recently approved the development of an orbiting telescope call Plato, which will be tuned specifically to detect true Earth analogues.

 

[Sxotty]

Planets orbiting dwarf stars seem niftier though, don't dwarf stars last a lot longer? Could be handy for evolution.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Indeed, and ours is a dwarf at least classification-wise and compared to those that last ten million years.

Of course there are those extremely numerous "dwarver" and fainter stars, which last much longer than ours, more like hundreds billions years.
I'm concerned at the planet then, the timescale is so long it will cool off internally, even due to the decline of radio-activity, then the geomagnetosphere will shut down and the star will more or less slowly erode the atmosphere away just like what happened to Mars.

Or so I imagine, I haven't run the numbers . I am not familiar with the stability and strength of a red dwarf's solar wind nor to what would happen to Earth's atmosphere long term if the magnetic field went permanently missing overnight.

 

[nutball]

Low-mass stars tend to be a great deal more active than the Sun, so any planets in their HZs will likely be treated to the particle and radiation outputs of massive stellar flares.

Their relatively longer lives don't seem important - if you take life on this planet as an example, it seems to have started relatively quickly after the formation of the Earth, and evolution has been quite rapid compared to astronomical timescales, particularly in the past few hundred million years.

 

[UniversalTruth]

There have been also several mass extinctions unfluencing the so called "evolution".

Evolution in general is an interesting topic for discussion.

For example why cats don't evolve into smart creatures like humans, or why in the past those same animals were much bigger but for millions of years later, they are the same, just shrunk in size...

 

[Grall]

There are some rather big cats still in existence you know, even though we're busy squeezing them all out of existence.

Things don't continue evolving just for the sake of it. Evolution is driven by environmental pressure; if you're fine right where you are, you won't change. As is the case with lots of insects, amphibians, fish, even some mammals who have gone essentially unchanged for millions of years, perhaps many millions even.

Same thing with plants, of course.

And yeah, cats probably won't get much smarter than they already are, because they lack the means to employ intelligence for anything it would be useful for; for starters they lack opposable thumbs, so they can't grab anything (not to mention their gait requires four paws on the ground to be able to move around...)

Being bipedal with our hands free to hold other stuff probably influenced the rise of humans more than anything else.

 

[nutball]

One little milli-rant I need to have - given some comments I've seen in another thread about NASA discovering a habitable planet. The term "habitable zone" is very easy to misinterpret.

Really all it is is a statement about the global mean equilibrium temperature of a planet - and that equilibiurm temperature is estimated using very simplistic assumptions. It really doesn't say anything about the actual habitability of a planet - Venus for example is on the inner edge of our habitable zone, yet it is far from habitable by any conceivable form of life that is based on the assumed chemistry that goes into the current definition of the HZ, ie. one requiring the presence of liquid water.

So really all the HZ is is a good place to start looking for life, based on the life chemistry we currently know.

It's far from true that any planet in its stars HZ must be habitable, and nor is it really true that any planet outside the HZ is inhabitable if you're willing to invoke alternative chemistries, or invoke other mechanisms for sustaining water in a liquid state.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Venus for example is on the inner edge of our habitable zone, yet it is far from habitable by any conceivable form of life that is based on the assumed chemistry that goes into the current definition of the HZ, ie. one requiring the presence of liquid water.

Venus was very unlucky with its atmosphere and the greenhouse processes which led to the hot hell it is now.

And I see it slightly outside of the habitable zone.

I mean they probably very well calculated all possibilities for the atmospheres' evolution.

 

[nutball]

Venus was very unlucky with its atmosphere and the greenhouse processes which led to the hot hell it is now.

... which was my point. The definition of HZ is pretty much all about thermodynamic equilibirum as defined by the properties of the host star and the orbit of the planet.

I mean they probably very well calculated all possibilities for the atmospheres' evolution.

No they didn't. Which is what I meant by "simplistic".

 

[UniversalTruth]

Really all it is is a statement about the global mean equilibrium temperature of a planet - and that equilibiurm temperature is estimated using very simplistic assumptions. It really doesn't say anything about the actual habitability of a planet - Venus for example is on the inner edge of our habitable zone, yet it is far from habitable by any conceivable form of life that is based on the assumed chemistry that goes into the current definition of the HZ, ie. one requiring the presence of liquid water

"Although the surface conditions on the planet are no longer hospitable to any Earthlike life that may have formed prior to this event, it is possible that life could exist in the lower and middle cloud layers of Venus." [46][47][48]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus

 

[liolio]

I think life is almost everywhere in this universe. Things is it is like a gigantic desert and gigantic might be an understatement. THere oasis of life every once in a while, look at the various desert on earth sometime you find trees animals in what we call an oasis, sometime it is just some lichen cligging to life every couples of hundred meters. Those things are pretty advanced forms of life but it illustrates my pov well.

Now it is interesting that researchers have now the mean to search something else than stars though I think people that believe in long term space travels and colonizations of new planets are off their freaking rockers. It may not be impossible but it is a complete lack of understanding of our living conditions. We live in oasis in this humungous desert, for all we know this very oasis could the jewell of this galaxy and may be more than one galaxy, it flourishes with magnificent advanced life forms, it is a magnificent planet by self, tectonic forces and erosion have sculpted awesome paysage in lots of place.

Quite often exoplanets lovers think something in that kind, we will found resources "overthere" pretty much it is akin to leaving an oasis or properus area to go through the desert to find hypothetical wonder land. It is a lot less cool that it sounds. You don't leave your oasis out of a whim but out of overwhelming necessity. Think the exile of the Jews, 40 years in the desert, 2 generations, at that time most of those who left never saw the promised land (I don't want to discuss the historical accuracy of the Bible it is another topic but I think the story is relevant to the matter at hand).

So what does that tells me, I guess it is a complete disrespect for what we have here and it shows in the way we behaving as a speccy, for all we know we are close to triggering a massive extinction of advanced life form on this planet, in the course of 200 hundreds years following the discovery of the magical black oil we manage to use and in most cases waste the most easier to harvest resources on this planet, we are already digging reverse mountains to access the material we need.

No matter those serious threats we continue to proliferate at an exponential rate, may our last hope is indeed to confront the desert, live a terrible life for millenium in big iron coffins cruising the galaxy in search for a new haven, which usually is nothing else than the one you lost. What is lost is lost... by definition.

ALl the things we know about the cosmos, and the rest should be read as warning and trigger extremely cautious behaviours. It is not nice "out there", we actually know nothing that is less hostile...
Not only we may never travel the space but if we survive our own bullshit we may go for eons watching the stars and the "gran desert" we can't cross and dream of that promised land... from a desolate world that would barely be enough to provide the goods for our survival.

Humans... we are supposedly evolved and yet the 20th century might have been the most dreadful century ever when it comes to wars, crimes, massacres of all sorts. That is only 100 freaking years. What we call civilization is a couple of millenium old. Now for all we know reaching the closest planet would at least as long (and a tenth of god speed is actually awesome). It is insanity to consider the option with a straight face. Not too mention that we may only reach a dead end, a desolated place.

It is a great things that researchers explore the gran universe but those researches even-though it helps with founding... should not be diverted from the real goal: accumulating knowledge and understanding.
It should not be presented as a form of salvation to overcome our ginormous lacking and our irresponsibility in managing the oasis we walk on.

It is not the time to discuss exploring those uncharted territories, startreck is a tv show, we have more serious matters at hand before even starting discussing those hypothetical travels to quite potentially desolated places...

 

[UniversalTruth]

Those who rule the world and lead our way are way too primitive. Well, yes, they do some discoveries but in general their moral and values will lead to our self-destruction. Which is sad, normal ordinary people are way better but when they try to fight those, it is a lost battle.

 

[entity279]

@liolio:

Right, we are better off creating thousands of phone models labeling each the greatest thing. And writing millions of words on Facebook. and.. whatever is it that we do.

 

[liolio]

@liolio:

Right, we are better off creating thousands of phone models labeling each the greatest thing. And writing millions of words on Facebook. and.. whatever is it that we do.

That is just another symptom of the state of our evolution, self centered, no long term thinking, a more and more instant relationship to the reality. Not too mention that the BS we write uses storage.

I'm not saying that researchers should stop doing researches just that for now all of this sounds to me like a mean to attract funds, selling an ideal to fund "down on earth" researches. Actually I don't disagree researchers needs funding but it is another hint about our maturity if people needs more and knowledge is no longer a self sufficient end to fund researches, researchers have to sell some dream along with it. I guess it is better than not doing the researches altogether

 

[UniversalTruth]

That is just another symptom of the state of our evolution, self centered, no long term thinking, a more and more instant relationship to the reality

Have no idea why. But I guess this is the worst possible. Like digging ever deeper and deeper.

We live in the age of Materialism and Egoism.

When even if we are surrounded by some others, the basic is to satisfy ourselves. Everything what is done is based on our own interest, and we don't care about those others.

 

[zupallinere]

I think life is almost everywhere in this universe. Things is it is like a gigantic desert and gigantic might be an understatement. THere oasis of life every once in a while, look at the various desert on earth sometime you find trees animals in what we call an oasis, sometime it is just some lichen cligging to life every couples of hundred meters. Those things are pretty advanced forms of life but it illustrates my pov well.

Now it is interesting that researchers have now the mean to search something else than stars though I think people that believe in long term space travels and colonizations of new planets are off their freaking rockers. It may not be impossible but it is a complete lack of understanding of our living conditions. We live in oasis in this humungous desert, for all we know this very oasis could the jewell of this galaxy and may be more than one galaxy, it flourishes with magnificent advanced life forms, it is a magnificent planet by self, tectonic forces and erosion have sculpted awesome paysage in lots of place.

Quite often exoplanets lovers think something in that kind, we will found resources "overthere" pretty much it is akin to leaving an oasis or properus area to go through the desert to find hypothetical wonder land. It is a lot less cool that it sounds. You don't leave your oasis out of a whim but out of overwhelming necessity. Think the exile of the Jews, 40 years in the desert, 2 generations, at that time most of those who left never saw the promised land (I don't want to discuss the historical accuracy of the Bible it is another topic but I think the story is relevant to the matter at hand).

So what does that tells me, I guess it is a complete disrespect for what we have here and it shows in the way we behaving as a speccy, for all we know we are close to triggering a massive extinction of advanced life form on this planet, in the course of 200 hundreds years following the discovery of the magical black oil we manage to use and in most cases waste the most easier to harvest resources on this planet, we are already digging reverse mountains to access the material we need.

No matter those serious threats we continue to proliferate at an exponential rate, may our last hope is indeed to confront the desert, live a terrible life for millenium in big iron coffins cruising the galaxy in search for a new haven, which usually is nothing else than the one you lost. What is lost is lost... by definition.

ALl the things we know about the cosmos, and the rest should be read as warning and trigger extremely cautious behaviours. It is not nice "out there", we actually know nothing that is less hostile...
Not only we may never travel the space but if we survive our own bullshit we may go for eons watching the stars and the "gran desert" we can't cross and dream of that promised land... from a desolate world that would barely be enough to provide the goods for our survival.

Humans... we are supposedly evolved and yet the 20th century might have been the most dreadful century ever when it comes to wars, crimes, massacres of all sorts. That is only 100 freaking years. What we call civilization is a couple of millenium old. Now for all we know reaching the closest planet would at least as long (and a tenth of god speed is actually awesome). It is insanity to consider the option with a straight face. Not too mention that we may only reach a dead end, a desolated place.

It is a great things that researchers explore the gran universe but those researches even-though it helps with founding... should not be diverted from the real goal: accumulating knowledge and understanding.
It should not be presented as a form of salvation to overcome our ginormous lacking and our irresponsibility in managing the oasis we walk on.

It is not the time to discuss exploring those uncharted territories, startreck is a tv show, we have more serious matters at hand before even starting discussing those hypothetical travels to quite potentially desolated places...

I don't know about how much of an oasis we are on BUT Fermi's Paradox does make you think about the tenacity of intelligent life or at the least balance between organic life and say a generic form of artificial life. While I don't think we should close our mind or budgets towards pushing forward and outward, INVESTING in ourselves is the most important step right now. Intelligent life doesn't have much of a future if we can't see past the many silly distinctions humans have decided to make important.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Right, we are better off creating thousands of phone models labeling each the greatest thing.

The same applies for labeling each language the greatest. I mean every nation does it, instead of agreement for a Universal language to rule / unite us all.

I read that we began with one language and then we were "punished" because our unity was so strong that we could achieve everything.

Hihi.

 

[benroveno]

By "this galaxy", do you mean the milky way? It's not infinite. It's pretty large as far as galaxies go (~100k light years across), but definitely not infinite. Even our universe is very likely not infinite, that would cause some difficulties as how something like that might have come about, however some/many physicists believe the universe is a hypersphere (a four-dimensional sphere), making it technically classifiable as finite, yet unbounded, or in other words, it has a limited (probably expanding) volume, but no actual outer edge, or a center.

(Four-dimensional objects are wacky.)

Well, i guess i was wrong about that. Yeah, i also agree with your point here. I heard that this universe used to stop expanding for many many years, but interestingly, it started expanding again and is still expanding ever since. And i also heard that, in the long future ahead, probably many million years in the future, caused by that expansion, all of the stars above us will disappear from us who are living on this earth. So there will be nothing up in the sky, like none, just plain black dark sky. Well, that's kind of scary, right?

We actually don't have the means to find creatures on other planets, not unless they were to directly advertise their presence to us, for example with beams of EM radiation transmissions aimed straight at us. Our telescopes are far too weak to directly image earth-like/sized planets, much less creatures living on them, or their technical artefacts.


Undoubtedly that is the case, considering there are more stars in just the visible universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of planet earth (and the total universe is likely far larger still.) However, physical distances and the passage of time means we might never discover any of them during our entire existence as a living, breathing, technological species. :smile:

I think it just doesn't make any sense that we human/animals are the only ones living in this universe. I just don't trust that theory. I mean, in this huge outer space, we, all of us here in this earth, are just like "dust" in this universe. So i think it would be interesting to see if in the far future, NASA will finally discover those other living things on other planets or probably other galaxies.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I heard that this universe used to stop expanding for many many years, but interestingly, it started expanding again

I'm not sure that's correct but I'd be interested to hear more if it is.

And i also heard that, in the long future ahead, probably many million years in the future, caused by that expansion, all of the stars above us will disappear from us who are living on this earth. So there will be nothing up in the sky, like none, just plain black dark sky. Well, that's kind of scary, right?

I think it's more in the order of trillions of years and long after the earth (and sun) are gone so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Hell, if humanity is still around at that point we'll probably be advanced enough to reverse the expansion of the universe ourselves! Either that or just hop into a younger one!