'Waterworld' Is Most Earth-Like Planet Yet

SOURCE: Sky News
December 16, 2009

Astronomers have discovered a new "waterworld" 40 light years away, raising the chances of the existence of Earth-like planets.

Evidence suggests it has an atmosphere, and astronomers believe it to be more like Earth than any planet found outside the Solar System so far.

Although the planet is thought to be too hot to sustain Earth-type life, it is believed to consist of 75% water.

Planet GJ1214b is six times bigger than Earth and was discovered orbiting a small faint star 1.3 million miles away.

Although its red dwarf parent star is 3,000 times less bright than the Sun, it hugs the star so closely that its surface temperature is an oven-hot 200C.

"Since this planet is so close to Earth, Hubble should be able to detect the atmosphere and determine what it's made of."

Dr David Charbonneau, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre

Graduate student astronomer Zachory Berta, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US, who spotted the first hints of the planet, said: "Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a waterworld.

"It is much smaller, cooler and more Earth-like than any other known exoplanet."

He said some of the planet's water should be in the form of exotic materials such as Ice Seven - a crystalline form of water that exists at pressures greater than 20,000 times the Earth's sea-level atmosphere.

Scientists want to turn the Hubble Space Telescope towards the planet to allow astronomers to discover its composition.

Dr David Charbonneau, also from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre, said: "Since this planet is so close to Earth, Hubble should be able to detect the atmosphere and determine what it's made of.

"That will make it the first super-Earth with a confirmed atmosphere - even though that atmosphere probably won't be hospitable to life as we know it."

The discovery is reported in the journal Nature.

This article: here.

Super-Earth: Astronomers Find a Watery New Planet

Avatar's moon Pandora could be real

SOURCE: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
December 17, 2009

Cambridge, MA - In the new blockbuster Avatar, humans visit the habitable - and inhabited - alien moon called Pandora. Life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction. With NASA's Kepler mission showing the potential to detect Earth-sized objects, habitable moons may soon become science fact. If we find them nearby, a new paper by Smithsonian astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger shows that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to study their atmospheres and detect key gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen, and water vapor.

"If Pandora existed, we potentially could detect it and study its atmosphere in the next decade," said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

So far, planet searches have spotted hundreds of Jupiter-sized objects in a range of orbits. Gas giants, while easier to detect, could not serve as homes for life as we know it. However, scientists have speculated whether a rocky moon orbiting a gas giant could be life-friendly, if that planet orbited within the star's habitable zone (the region warm enough for liquid water to exist).

"All of the gas giant planets in our solar system have rocky and icy moons," said Kaltenegger. "That raises the possibility that alien Jupiters will also have moons. Some of those may be Earth-sized and able to hold onto an atmosphere."

Kepler looks for planets that cross in front of their host stars, which creates a mini-eclipse and dims the star by a small but detectable amount. Such a transit lasts only hours and requires exact alignment of star and planet along our line of sight. Kepler will examine thousands of stars to find a few with transiting worlds.

Once they have found an alien Jupiter, astronomers can look for orbiting moons, or exomoons. A moon's gravity would tug on the planet and either speed or slow its transit, depending on whether the moon leads or trails the planet. The resulting transit duration variations would indicate the moon's existence.

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Sci-Fi's Coolest Worlds
Avatar's 'Pandora' could be a reality
The Real Science of Avatar's Pandora
Pandora: A look at Polyphemis' Exomoon
Avatar's Pandora moon may actually exist
Avatar: A New World That NASA Is Ignoring
'Avatar': The Real-Life Science Behind the Fantasy
Newly Discovered Exoplanets Point the Way to Avatar's Pandora

Visit this great site: PANDORAPEDIA The Official Guide to Pandora.

The Alpha Centauri System and Traveling There

Articles on the Alpha Centauri system, the possibility of traveling there, and other interstellar related articles.

Alpha Centauri & here.
Destination Alpha Centauri
First Ark to Alpha Centauri
How to Get to Alpha Centauri

Traveling from Earth to the Alpha Centauri system
Voyage to Pandora: Humanity's First Interstellar Flight
The Science Behind James Cameron's Avatar Voyaging to the Stars
Cosmic Journeys: Voyage to Pandora: Interstellar Flight See Video!

To learn about Interstellar travel & here.
Spaceship Could Fly Faster Than Light
The Universe - "Science Fiction, Science Fact" See Video!
Mark Millis on the possibilities of interstellar travel See Video!

Stephen Hawking's Warning (2006)
Move to new planet, says Hawking
Humans must colonize other planets: Hawking
Stephen Hawking: Humans Must Leave Earth to Survive
Hawking Says Humans Must Colonize Other Planets to Survive

Stephen Hawking's Warning (2010) UPDATE
Stephen Hawking's Ecological Warning
Stephen Hawking's Warning: Abandon Earth—Or Face Extinction
Abandon Earth or Face Extinction, Stephen Hawking Warns -- Again

Space colonization Click here, here & here.
Space Colonization: Future or Fanatsy?
NASA preps '100-year spaceship' NEW!
Is NASA Covering Up the 100-Year Starship? NEW!
Ion engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars
Do We Have the 'Right Stuff' to Put an Astronaut on Mars?

Space Historian Sees Cyborgs in Our Future
Future Space Explorers Could Be Humans 2.0
Humans Only Have 200-300 Years Left on Earth
Visit this great site: The Future of Human Evolution
 

An artist picture of a future astronaut`s 1st breath of air on an alien planet.

"The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star."
-- Stephen Hawking, Physicist

"By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow and I expect to be around in see it."
--President Barack Obama, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Speech outlining his administration's space policy, 15 April 2010.

"We'll build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the Moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own. . . . We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this: human beings are headed into the cosmos."
-- President George W. Bush, speech at NASA headquarters, 14 January 2004

"All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct."
-- Carl Sagan, Astronomer

First Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Sun-Like Stars

SOURCE: Science Daily
Dec. 14, 2009

An international team of planet hunters has discovered as many as six low-mass planets around two nearby Sun-like stars, including two "super-Earths" with masses 5 and 7.5 times the mass of Earth. The researchers, led by Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said the two "super-Earths" are the first ones found around Sun-like stars.

"These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away," said Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC.

The team found the new planet systems by combining data gathered at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in New South Wales, Australia. Two papers describing the new planets have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

Three of the new planets orbit the bright star 61 Virginis, which can be seen with the naked eye under dark skies in the Spring constellation Virgo. Astronomers and astrobiologists have long been fascinated with this particular star, which is only 28 light-years away. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties. Vogt and his collaborators have found that 61 Vir hosts at least three planets, with masses ranging from about 5 to 25 times the mass of Earth.

Recently, a separate team of astronomers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to discover that 61 Vir also contains a thick ring of dust at a distance roughly twice as far from 61 Vir as Pluto is from our Sun. The dust is apparently created by collisions of comet-like bodies in the cold outer reaches of the system.

Read More:
 
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Super-Earths Orbit Neighboring Stars
Super-Earths found orbiting nearby stars
Super-Earths Found Around Sun-Like Stars

Astronomers find 'super Earth' around another star; call it Rocky

SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor
September 16, 2009

Quick! Before you begin reading, drop down to the bottom of the post, activate the YouTube link, then quickly scroll back up here (all you really need is the sound).

Laydeeezzz and gentlemun, boyzzz and girlzzz, an international team of astronomers on the Third Rock from the sun gives you the best evidence yet for a rocky planet -- not too much bigger than Earth -- orbiting another star.

The planet is called CoRoT-7b. And it appears to have a sibling super-Earth, CoRoT-7c, though much less is known about it. This makes the system the first dual super-Earth system astronomers have found. The team summarized its findings today at the European Planetary Science Congress, meeting this week in Postdam, Germany.

You can find a lay-language summary here. You can find a PDF of the formal results, accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, here.

CoRoT-7b is the smallest exoplanet found so far. It's slightly more than 1.5 times as large as Earth. But any vague resemblance stops there.

The parent star -- 500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros -- is some 1.5 billion years old. The planet orbits its star at a distance of less then 2 million miles, giving it a "year" that lasts about 20 hours.

With an orbit that close, the team estimates that the temperatures on the planet's surface range somewhere between 1,527 to 2,327 degrees Celsius on the sunlit portion (think molten on the surface) and a frosty -200 degrees C on the night portion.

Read More:

First rocky planet found outside solar system

Kepler Spacecraft

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds. The mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral on March 6 2009, will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars for telltale signs of planets. Kepler has the unique ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans.

For more information:

New space telescope to search for earth-sized planets
Planet-Hunting Spacecraft Beams Home First Images
Telescope can find "oodles" of Earths: NASA
Kepler spacecraft sees its first exoplanets
Kepler Detects an Exoplanet Atmosphere
Spacecraft blasts off in search of 'Earths'
Nasa launches search for second Earth
The Inspiring Boom in "Super-Earths"
Let the Planet Hunt Begin
Kepler Spacecraft
Kepler works!

Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

SOURCE: BBC News
15 February 2009

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard.

Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms.

He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System.

Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter, and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one "Earth-like" planet.

This simple calculation means there would be huge numbers capable of supporting life.

"Not only are they probably habitable but they probably are also going to be inhabited," Dr Boss told BBC News. "But I think that most likely the nearby 'Earths' are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago." That means bacterial lifeforms.

Dr Boss estimates that Nasa's Kepler mission, due for launch in March, should begin finding some of these Earth-like planets within the next few years.

Recent work at Edinburgh University tried to quantify how many intelligent civilisations might be out there. The research suggested there could be thousands of them.

This article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7891132.stm
 
For more information:

The Milky Way Could have Billions of Earths
Galaxy may be full of 'Earths,' alien life

Telescope sees smallest exoplanet

SOURCE: BBC News
3 February 2009

The smallest planet yet found outside the Solar System has been detected by a French space telescope.

The rocky world is less than twice the size of Earth.

Only a handful of planets have so far been found with a mass comparable to Earth, Venus, Mars or Mercury.

The discovery was made by Corot, an orbiting observatory with a 27cm-diameter telescope to search for planets orbiting other stars.

About 330 of these "exoplanets" have been discovered so far. But most of them have been gas giants similar to Jupiter or Neptune.

"For the first time, we have unambiguously detected a planet that is 'rocky' in the same sense as our own Earth," said Malcolm Fridlund, Corot project scientist from the European Space Agency (Esa).

"We now have to understand this object further to put it into context, and continue our search for smaller, more Earth-like objects with Corot," he added.

The new find, Corot-Exo-7b, orbits its Sun-like star once every 20 hours. Although very close to Earth in terms of width, its mass is several times that of our own planet.

Because the planet is so close to its parent star, its temperature is between 1,000 and 1,500C - far too hot to support life.

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Rocky Planets May Form Around Most Sun-like Stars

SOURCE: Universe Today
Feb 18 2008

Astronomers have found numerous Jupiter-like planets orbiting other stars. But because of the limits of our current technology, they haven’t yet found any other terrestrial Earth-like planets out in the universe. But new findings from the Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that terrestrial planets might form around many, if not most, of the nearby sun-like stars in our galaxy. So perhaps, other worlds with the potential for life might be more common than we thought.

A group of astronomers led by Michael Meyer of the University of Tucson, Arizona used Spitzer to survey six sets of stars with masses comparable to our sun, and grouped them by age. "We wanted to study the evolution of the gas and dust around stars similar to the sun and compare the results with what we think the solar system looked like at earlier stages during its evolution," Meyer said. Our sun is about 4.6 billion years old.

They found that at least 20 percent, and possibly as many as 60 percent, of stars similar to the sun are candidates for forming rocky planets.

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Planet-hunters set for big bounty

Astronomers search for habitable moons

Source: National Geographic

Exomoon
September 2, 2009--A Jupiterlike planet peeks through the clouds above a so-called exomoon in an artist's rendering. It's possible that NASA's planet-hunting satellite Kepler, launched earlier this year, will find habitable moons as well as Earthlike worlds, astronomers announced this week.

Kepler looks for planets outside our solar system by searching for periodic dips in the brightnesses of distant stars, thought to be due to orbiting planets crossing the faces of the stars.

Now a new model suggests that the probe could also look for changes in the speed and position of a transiting planet caused by the gravitational tug of a moon. Knowing the host planet's size, mass, and distance from its star would then reveal whether the moon might be able to support liquid water, and thus life.

For more information:

Habitable moons could to be spotted by 2014
Scientists devise method to detect exomoons
Astronomers search for habitable moons
Planet wobbles could reveal Earth 2.0
Planet-hunter will find alien moons
Search for life elsewhere expands
How to spot moons far, far away
Detecting Life-Friendly Moons
Habitable Moons
And more

Artist’s impression of a hypothetical exomoon in orbit around a Saturn-like planet in another planetary system. (Click image to enlarge)