Thursday, April 17, 2014

Most Earth-like Planet Yet...Kepler Discovery



It’s just one more on a long laundry list of exoplanets. But it’s the first on a list of  really Earth-like exoplanets. NASA’s Kepler mission announced the discovery of Kepler-186f — the smallest and most Earth-like planet found to date — in a press conference today. Only minutes after the embargo lifted, the media worldwide gleamed with fantastical headlines about this potentially habitable planet. But readers in the know may already have an inkling that these headlines suggest a bigger breakthrough than the research shows.
“Some people call these habitable planets, which of course we have no idea if they are,” says exoplanet expert Stephen Kane (San Francisco State University). “We simply know that they are in the habitable zone, and that is the best place to start looking for habitable planets.”
Here’s the problem: the crippled Kepler space telescope has unleashed a windfall of exoplanets over the years and we’ve been talking about habitable ones ever since. There’s one here, here, and three more here. Oh and we’ve even talked about habitable moons (but of course we haven’t had much luck on that front yet).
The discovery of habitable exoplanets and even extraterrestrial life is quite possibly the Holy Grail of science. Every astronomer wants to be the one to make the discovery and every reporter wants to be the first to write about it. So we throw around the term Earth-like like it’s a frisbee. But by definition, to be Earth-like, a planet must be both Earth-sized (less than 1.25 times Earth’s girth and less than twice Earth’s mass) and must circle its host star within the habitable zone — the band around a star where water could potentially exist in its liquid state, an essential component for life.
Of the nearly 1,800 confirmed exoplanets found in the past two decades, approximately 10 orbit their host star in the habitable zone. Before today, the smallest exoplanet on this list was Kepler-62f. But at 1.4 times the size of Earth, this exoplanet isn’t Earth-like at all (at least not by our regimented standards). It’s a super-Earth, which could mean it’s a rocky planet with oceans and an atmosphere, or it could be completely gaseous. Without a solar system analogue, the nature of any given super-Earth is hard to pin down.
Kepler-186f sizes in at 1.11 times the girth of Earth. But as with quite a few of Kepler’s planets, the system is too distant and therefore too faint to perform follow-up radial velocity observations, which would show the planet’s gravitational tug on its host star, and therefore reveal its mass. The team has to estimate its weight based on some pretty big assumptions.
A diagram of planets in the habitable zone. NASA
K-186f circled in red

The planet’s small size is a telltale sign that the composition is solid; it will have a hard time holding on to even the lightest elements, such as hydrogen and helium, so it probably doesn’t have a thick gaseous atmosphere either. But its composition could range from pure ice to pure iron, which results in a mass ranging from 0.32 to 3.77 times Earth’s mass. We may find in future years that this planet actually weighs more than twice as much as Earth, making astronomers re-classify it as a super-Earth after all.
Even so, there’s a huge difference between finding an Earth-like exoplanet and finding Earth’s twin. Kepler-186f’s orbit takes it along the outer edge of the star’s habitable zone so any liquid water on the surface would still be in danger of freezing. However, the team hopes that if the exoplanet is a little more massive than the Earth, this extra mass would result in a thicker atmosphere and therefore better insulation.
While Kepler-186f is a first, “it’s not a record we wish to keep,” Quintana says. “We want to find more of these.”
" I fully think that if Earth 2.0 is floating somewhere in the nearby cosmos, we’ll find it. Just not today."

2 comments:

  1. PIC ,
    This a must read and you will be surprise at how the hate is breeding . It has a lot to do with all the killing ...

    The headline is on top HUH ???

    Almost 100 Hate Crime Killings Linked To One Website: Report


    A white supremacist site has blood on its hands, according to a new report.
    Stormfront.org is linked to close to 100 killings in the last five years, the Southern Poverty Law Center found.
    From the Guardian:
    The White Nationalist web forum Stormfront.org says it promotes values of “the embattled white minority,” and its users include Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a 2011 massacre in Norway, and Wade Michael Page, who shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.
    The SPLC said ten murderers had links to Stormfront.

    Huff Post crime

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a great heads up PIC.
    I think it would make a great post. Thank you very much.
    Kudos to you.
    Luv PIC

    ReplyDelete

Through this ever open gate
None come too early
None too late
Thanks for dropping in ... the PICs