Astronomy NASA finds 7 Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby star

[Chief]

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.

The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system. All of these seven planets could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

“This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Answering the question ‘are we alone’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.”

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

The news made my day.

 

[Loonerty]

Awesome news. As someone on reddit mentioned, the sky on some of those planets would be amazing.

 

[Thrawn]

No one expected Pluto to be so active and beautiful. So I cannot fathom what these planets would look like.

 

[Long Live HFC]

i understand the goldilocks zone well enough, but is size also a factor?

 

[GreyCrow]

Look forward to more news on this system and the possible impetus for exploration it brings


And in other news scientists on Trapp 3 have discovered a planetary system of 8 planets that orbit around a solo star.

 

[Strapping Young Lad]

i understand the goldilocks zone well enough, but is size also a factor?

Possibly, but not a great deal I'd have thought.


I'm looking forward to finding out exactly what these planets atmospheres consist of....

Someone needs to hurry up wth that warp drive and get some bods on their way over there.

 

[Total Power]

Depressing thing being we will barely find out anything about these planets in our lifetime atleast. I am sure one of them can sustain life (if there is surface water). Wonder how have they evolved compared to us humans.

 

[Pessimistic]

If hypothetical life was limited to marine only. Would they develop high civilisation?

 

[Total Power]

If hypothetical life was limited to marine only. Would they develop high civilisation?

why not? life on earth was marine only once too.

 

[Pessimistic]

I mean if something prevented life leaving the 'ocean'

 

[chelseacarlton]

Depressing thing being we will barely find out anything about these planets in our lifetime atleast. I am sure one of them can sustain life (if there is surface water). Wonder how have they evolved compared to us humans.

With the launch of the Webb in a year or so,being 10 times more powerful than Hubble,we should have a great chance of working out what these planets are predominantly like,atmosphere etc.

 

[Pessimistic]

If we could contact any 'thing' in that place, at 42 years even by radio waves it would take a long time to have a conversation

 

[Total Power]

With the launch of the Webb in a year or so,being 10 times more powerful than Hubble,we should have a great chance of working out what these planets are predominantly like,atmosphere etc.

Yes but it wont take 40 years to see it. And what we would be seeing is what happened 40 years ago. I dont know how old are you but in 40 years time i will be pretty old mate

 

[chelseacarlton]

Yes but it wont take 40 years to see it. And what we would be seeing is what happened 40 years ago. I dont know how old are you but in 40 years time i will be pretty old mate

I don't see that as the immediate goal though TP.
This is a really exciting time given the power and imminent launch of Webb.
It's almost as if stars are aligning for "us" to gain enormous insight into "real" other worlds like our own.
Obviously light speed travel won't be available to our generation,but our children (mine are 11 and 5) or their children,children's children,whatever,might have the chance to get there.
Let's wait to the James Webb telecasts pics of these planets,sit back and marvel at how awesomely far we've come.
This is spach Zarathustra time and I'm ******* blown away excited.

 

[Taylor]

i understand the goldilocks zone well enough, but is size also a factor?

The magnetic field required to protect an atmosphere from being stripped away requires density.

Without the charged particle defection the star will sandblast the atmosphere off into space.

 

[chelseacarlton]

If we could contact any 'thing' in that place, at 42 years even by radio waves it would take a long time to have a conversation

Like I said to TP Pess,these issues are secondary to getting a good look at them via Webb.
The idea of communication and travel will be our great grand kids problem to deal with.
Let's just hope this little blue wonder doesn't wipe us out or the powers that believe it is their god given right to pass judgement upon us all do it either.

 

[kaiserchief13]

The most important question - Will they understand English?

 

[volcboy]

I mean if something prevented life leaving the 'ocean'

This area of astrobiology is currently a very active area of debate. Most of it surrounds the probable existence of an evolutionary event known as 'The Great Filter', which leads many astrobiologists to believe that, while simple life forms may be very common, complex multicellular lifeforms and complex ecosystems required to allow the development of advanced intelligent civilisations may be extremely rare.

The most likely 'great filter' that has been identified is the evolutionary transition from simple prokaryotic cells (e.g. bacteria) to much larger and more dynamic eukaryotic cells. However, there is no certainty that the so-called 'Great Filter' doesn't lie ahead of us.

Two other terms that come up quite often in this discussion are the Fermi Paradox (if there are so many stars/habitable planets, why has nobody yet visited us?) and the Rare Earth Hypothesis (the long climate stability and conditions on Earth, including a very large moon that prevents tidal locking with the sun, are extremely rare, but necessary to allow evolution of complex ecosystems).

A link to a very good website summarising all of this can be found here

 

[Frank Bunn]

The Fermi Paradox is not so much about why has nobody yet visited us. More why we haven't detected any signals from the estimated 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilisations in our galaxy.

 

[volcboy]

The Fermi Paradox is not so much about why has nobody yet visited us. More why we haven't detected any signals from the estimated 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilisations in our galaxy.

To a point, but if you consider the rate of our civilisation's technical advancement over the past 100 years, if there were other advanced civilisations even just a few thousand years more advanced than ours, it would be probable they would have developed the means to visit the Earth. Especially if they (or any type of robotic probes they may have devised) have had 4.6 billion years to do so. Either they haven't visited, we can't recognise they've visited, or they don't exist.

 

[sataris]

The Fermi Paradox is not so much about why has nobody yet visited us. More why we haven't detected any signals from the estimated 1 billion Earth-like planets and 100,000 intelligent civilisations in our galaxy.

Life appeared on earth almost as soon as it was possible.

It took 4 billion years for a civilisation to appear.

Life is (probably) extremely common, civilisations may be extremely rare.

 

[Frank Bunn]

To a point, but if you consider the rate of our civilisation's technical advancement over the past 100 years, if there were other advanced civilisations even just a few thousand years more advanced than ours, it would be probable they would have developed the means to visit the Earth. Especially if they (or any type of robotic probes they may have devised) have had 4.6 billion years to do so. Either they haven't visited, we can't recognise they've visited, or they don't exist.

Just because they haven't visited and made their presence known doesn't mean they don't exist. It could be that extremely fast travel that would allow them to visit isn't possible/feasible.

Life appeared on earth almost as soon as it was possible.

It took 4 billion years for a civilisation to appear.

Life is (probably) extremely common, civilisations may be extremely rare.

We don't know if our development on earth is typical or a statistical outlier. We could be a relatively late starter.

 

[grumbleguts]

I wonder if finding out they are spherical will put a spanner in the works of some of our colleagues on here.

 

[Benny78]

Lol no they didn't. God manipulated what the light would show us as a test of our faith.