NASA Discovers 715 New planets Close to Doubling Known Planets

[Heretic]

You can't know that for sure, nobody can, the info you have about it taking five to fifty million years to colonise the universe is just pure speculation.

Of course I don't know that for sure, no one can, it's a scientific theory.

Just like intelligent aliens existing elsewhere in our galaxy is just "pure speculation".

[Guest Gumballthechewy]

Of course I don't know that for sure, no one can, it's a scientific theory.

Well it just seemed like you were saying because we're not colonised by aliens means aliens haven't colonised other parts of the universe if they exsist.

But it is fun to speculate.

[Pouria]

I'm pretty sure that people passionate about a subject are thrilled to learn new information about said subject.

Could you imagine how excited you would be if 715 new prostitutes moved into your village?

Could you imagine how competent you would be if you had 715 new brain cells in addition to the one you have now?

[Buddhas Hand]

Refer to my edit for other constraints towards finding life

It seems strange to me that many people assume that if there is intelligent life apart from us in the universe or even galaxy that it is life as we know it , what if other forms are silicon based ? Or on a planet that is uninhabitable by our species ?

You ask what defines intelligence , i would say that the ability to reason both discursively and intuitively makes a species intelligent.

[Buddhas Hand]

Good old Monty Python.

Space is my passion. I love reading and learning about it, and everything in it. Have you heard of a hypervelocity star? The universe is awesome.

Yep , read this article a couple of months ago

Surprising new class of “hypervelocity stars” discovered escaping the galaxy

by David Salisbury | Posted on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014 — 11:44 AM

Top and side views of the Milky Way galaxy show the location of four of the new class of hypervelocity stars. These are sun-like stars that are moving at speeds of more than a million miles per hour relative to the galaxy: fast enough to escape its gravitational grasp. The general directions from which the stars have come are shown by the colored bands. (Graphic design by Julie Turner, Vanderbilt University. Top view courtesy of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Side view courtesy of the European Southern Observatory.)

An international team of astronomers has discovered a surprising new class of “hypervelocity stars” – solitary stars moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way galaxy.

The discovery of this new set of “hypervelocity” stars was described at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week in Washington, D.C., and is published in the Jan. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Our new stars are relatively small – about the size of the sun – and the surprising part is that none of them appear to come from the galactic core.”“These new hypervelocity stars are very different from the ones that have been discovered previously,” said Vanderbilt University graduate student Lauren Palladino, lead author on the study. “The original hypervelocity stars are large blue stars and appear to have originated from the galactic center. Our new stars are relatively small – about the size of the sun – and the surprising part is that none of them appear to come from the galactic core.”

The discovery came as Palladino, working under the supervision of Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, assistant professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt, was mapping the Milky Way by calculating the orbits of Sun-like stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a massive census of the stars and galaxies in a region covering nearly one quarter of the sky.

“It’s very hard to kick a star out of the galaxy,” said Holley-Bockelmann. “The most commonly accepted mechanism for doing so involves interacting with the supermassive black hole at the galactic core. That means when you trace the star back to its birthplace, it comes from the center of our galaxy. None of these hypervelocity stars come from the center, which implies that there is an unexpected new class of hypervelocity star, one with a different ejection mechanism.”

Lauren Palladino, right, and Kelly Holley-Bockelmann. (John Russell / Vanderbilt)

Astrophysicists calculate that a star must get a million-plus mile-per-hour kick relative to the motion of the galaxy to reach escape velocity. They also estimate that the Milky Way’s central black hole has a mass equivalent to four million suns, large enough to produce a gravitational force strong enough to accelerate stars to hyper velocities. The typical scenario involves a binary pair of stars that get caught in the black hole’s grip. As one of the stars spirals in toward the black hole, its companion is flung outward at a tremendous velocity. So far, 18 giant blue hypervelocity stars have been found that could have been produced by such a mechanism.

Now Palladino and her colleagues have discovered an additional 20 sun-sized stars that they characterize as possible hypervelocity stars. “One caveat concerns the known errors in measuring stellar motions,” she said. “To get the speed of a star, you have to measure the position really accurately over decades. If the position is measured badly a few times over that long time interval, it can seem to move a lot faster than it really does. We did several statistical tests to increase the accuracy of our estimates. So we think that, although some of our candidates may be flukes, the majority are real.”

The astronomers are following up with additional observations.

The new rogues appear to have the same composition as normal disk stars, so the astronomers do not think that their birthplace was in the galaxy’s central bulge, the halo that surrounds it, or in some other exotic place outside the galaxy.

The big question is: what boosted these stars up to such extreme velocities?“The big question is: what boosted these stars up to such extreme velocities? We are working on that now,” said Holley-Bockelmann.

Katharine Schlesinger from the Australian National University, Carlos Allende Prieto from the Universidad de La Laguna in Spain, Timothy Beers from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Young Sun Lee from New Mexico State University and Donald Schneider from Pennsylvania State University also contributed to the discovery.

The research was supported by funds from the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need program, National Science Foundation grants AST 0847696, AST 0607482, Physics Frontier Center grants PHY 0216783, the Aspen Center for Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

I love space exploration to.

[UFCanuck]

The people who are millions of years ahead of us are going to steal all of our jobs and have sex with our women when they overpopulate their planet.

[Malaria]

Have watched something on TV some Days ago that was exactly about this.... how the Earth was Born and how the first Lifeforms came into the Ocean

very interesting...

People should throw away their "Holy Books" ...lol

Christianity and evolution are not mutually exclusive despite what any ignorant evangelical might tell you. People like Ken Ham or whoever are not the voice of all Christians.

[Heretic]

Didn't want to start a new topic, here's the latest find: Kepler-186f

Scientists who have been hunting for another Earth beyond our solar system have come across a planet that's remarkably similar to our world.

It's almost the same size as Earth, and it orbits in its star's "Goldilocks zone" — where temperatures are not too hot, not too cold, and maybe just right for life.

But a lot about this planet is going to remain a mystery, because it's 500 light-years away.

Researchers detected the planet while poring over data collected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. The telescope spent years staring at 150,000 stars, watching for telltale dips in brightness that might mean a planet was circling around a star.

One small star in the direction of the constellation Cygnus showed signs of five planets. Four of them are tucked in close to the star, so they're probably too hot for life.

But the fifth planet looked special.

"This planet orbits its star every 130 days," says Elisa Quintana of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center. It's called Kepler-186f, and it's just 10 percent bigger than Earth.

Kepler-22b, seen in this artist's rendering, is a planet a bit larger than Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of its star. Some researchers think there might be "superhabitable" worlds that may not resemble Earth.

The Two-Way

In Search For Habitable Planets, Why Stop At 'Earth-Like'?

At least in our solar system, Earth-sized planets are made of rock and iron and gas, says Quintana, "so we can guess that Kepler-186f, being so close in size to Earth, has a high probability of being rocky also and composed of those sorts of materials."

This artist rendering provided by NASA, shows Kepler-11, a sunlike star around which six planets orbit.

The Two-Way

'Planet Bonanza' Indeed: NASA Unveils 715 New Worlds

Conditions on the surface would depend on what kind of atmosphere it had, if any. If it was like Earth, temperatures wouldn't be balmy, Quintana says.

"Being on this planet would probably be like being in San Francisco on a cool day," she says. "It would be a much colder place to live."

It would be warm enough, however, for one thing that's thought to be essential for life. "If this planet had the right atmospheric conditions, and if there were water on the surface, it would be likely in liquid form," says Quintana.

But if it has oceans, they would look different.

"It's not going to have a deep rich blue ocean, such as we have, because there's less blue light coming from the star," says Tom Barclay of NASA's Ames Research Center, another member of the team that describes the planet in the journal Science. "So the ocean would probably be a duller, grayer blue."

And because this planet orbits a dim, red dwarf star, he notes that midday on this planet wouldn't be bright — it would look more like an hour before sunset on Earth.

"It's very romantic to imagine there'd be places out there that look like Earth, and that's what we're trying to find — places that remind us of Earth," Barclay says.

Although Kepler-186f shares characteristics with Earth, "it's not an Earth twin," he notes. "It isn't around the same type of star. It's perhaps more of an Earth cousin."

Still, it's the first time anyone has found an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a distant star, Barclay adds. "This is a really profound discovery. It's a major milestone."

Other experts on planets beyond our solar system agree that this discovery is a big deal.

"This planet really is the same size as the Earth and the same temperature," says David Charbonneau of Harvard University. "Up until this point, planets satisfied one of those two, but we really didn't have one that was both those things together."

Both those things are key to life on Earth, Charbonneau says, but we'll probably never know if this new planet has life. "And the reason," he explains, "is that this star system is just too far away from us."

Even though this planet is too distant for follow-up work with other telescopes, it suggests similar worlds might be out there orbiting other red dwarf stars, which are very common.

If scientists could find another planet like this around a nearby star, he says, "we could really study the atmosphere and really figure out something about whether it truly is Earth-like and maybe whether it actually has life on the surface."

That's why Charbonneau and other scientists will keep searching for other Earth-like planets closer to home.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/17/303806575/scientists-spot-a-planet-that-looks-like-earths-cousin

[Guest Gumballthechewy]

Didn't want to start a new topic, here's the latest find: Kepler-186f

-edited for length-

This is so cool!

[Junkyard Dog]

Somebody call Bryzgalov.

[Guest Gumballthechewy]

Somebody call Bryzgalov.

[Hobble]

La dee da. Wake me up when we start travelling to some of these planets. Or hell, even to our Moon again.

[Buddhas Hand]

Didn't want to start a new topic, here's the latest find: Kepler-186f

Scientists who have been hunting for another Earth beyond our solar system have come across a planet that's remarkably similar to our world.

It's almost the same size as Earth, and it orbits in its star's "Goldilocks zone" — where temperatures are not too hot, not too cold, and maybe just right for life.

But a lot about this planet is going to remain a mystery, because it's 500 light-years away.

Researchers detected the planet while poring over data collected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. The telescope spent years staring at 150,000 stars, watching for telltale dips in brightness that might mean a planet was circling around a star.

One small star in the direction of the constellation Cygnus showed signs of five planets. Four of them are tucked in close to the star, so they're probably too hot for life.

But the fifth planet looked special.

"This planet orbits its star every 130 days," says Elisa Quintana of the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center. It's called Kepler-186f, and it's just 10 percent bigger than Earth.

Kepler-22b, seen in this artist's rendering, is a planet a bit larger than Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of its star. Some researchers think there might be "superhabitable" worlds that may not resemble Earth.

The Two-Way

In Search For Habitable Planets, Why Stop At 'Earth-Like'?

At least in our solar system, Earth-sized planets are made of rock and iron and gas, says Quintana, "so we can guess that Kepler-186f, being so close in size to Earth, has a high probability of being rocky also and composed of those sorts of materials."

This artist rendering provided by NASA, shows Kepler-11, a sunlike star around which six planets orbit.

The Two-Way

'Planet Bonanza' Indeed: NASA Unveils 715 New Worlds

Conditions on the surface would depend on what kind of atmosphere it had, if any. If it was like Earth, temperatures wouldn't be balmy, Quintana says.

"Being on this planet would probably be like being in San Francisco on a cool day," she says. "It would be a much colder place to live."

It would be warm enough, however, for one thing that's thought to be essential for life. "If this planet had the right atmospheric conditions, and if there were water on the surface, it would be likely in liquid form," says Quintana.

But if it has oceans, they would look different.

"It's not going to have a deep rich blue ocean, such as we have, because there's less blue light coming from the star," says Tom Barclay of NASA's Ames Research Center, another member of the team that describes the planet in the journal Science. "So the ocean would probably be a duller, grayer blue."

And because this planet orbits a dim, red dwarf star, he notes that midday on this planet wouldn't be bright — it would look more like an hour before sunset on Earth.

"It's very romantic to imagine there'd be places out there that look like Earth, and that's what we're trying to find — places that remind us of Earth," Barclay says.

Although Kepler-186f shares characteristics with Earth, "it's not an Earth twin," he notes. "It isn't around the same type of star. It's perhaps more of an Earth cousin."

Still, it's the first time anyone has found an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a distant star, Barclay adds. "This is a really profound discovery. It's a major milestone."

Other experts on planets beyond our solar system agree that this discovery is a big deal.

"This planet really is the same size as the Earth and the same temperature," says David Charbonneau of Harvard University. "Up until this point, planets satisfied one of those two, but we really didn't have one that was both those things together."

Both those things are key to life on Earth, Charbonneau says, but we'll probably never know if this new planet has life. "And the reason," he explains, "is that this star system is just too far away from us."

Even though this planet is too distant for follow-up work with other telescopes, it suggests similar worlds might be out there orbiting other red dwarf stars, which are very common.

If scientists could find another planet like this around a nearby star, he says, "we could really study the atmosphere and really figure out something about whether it truly is Earth-like and maybe whether it actually has life on the surface."

That's why Charbonneau and other scientists will keep searching for other Earth-like planets closer to home.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/17/303806575/scientists-spot-a-planet-that-looks-like-earths-cousin

Had not seen this thanks for posting Heretic.

I am hoping that the first life forms we find that are not from this planet are not carbon based life forms.

NASA Finds New Life (Updated

Jesus Diaz

Expand

NASA has discovered a new life form, a bacteria called GFAJ-1 that is unlike anything currently living in planet Earth. It's capable of using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes. This changes everything. Updated.

NASA is saying that this is "life as we do not know it". The reason is that all life on Earth is made of six components: Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA blocks are all the same.

That was true until today. In a surprising revelation, NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her team have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know today, working differently than the rest of the organisms in the planet. Instead of using phosphorus, the newly discovered microorganism—called GFAJ-1 and found in Mono Lake, California—uses the poisonous arsenic for its building blocks. Arsenic is an element poisonous to every other living creature in the planet except for a few specialized microscopic creatures.

Expand

The new life forms up close, at five micrometers.

According to Wolfe-Simon, they knew that "some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new—building parts of itself out of arsenic." The implications of this discovery are enormous to our understanding of life itself and the possibility of finding organisms in other planets that don't have to be like planet Earth. Like NASA's Ed Weiler says: "The definition of life has just expanded."

Talking at the NASA conference, Wolfe-Simon said that the important thing in their study is that this breaks our ideas on how life can be created and grow, pointing out that scientists will now be looking for new types of organisms and metabolism that not only uses arsenic, but other elements as well. She says that she's working on a few possibilities herself.

NASA's geobiologist Pamela Conrad thinks that the discovery is huge and "phenomenal," comparing it to the Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise crew finds Horta, a silicon-based alien life form that can't be detected with tricorders because it wasn't carbon-based. It's like saying that we may be looking for new life in the wrong places with the wrong methods. Indeed, NASA tweeted that this discovery "will change how we search for life elsewhere in the Universe."

Expand

Mono Lake, in Central California.

[surtur]

If it was, they would have taken over this planet a long long time ago.

maybe our species started after a crash landing and we are the colonization but by accident and they just figured to let it be.

we are just at the beginning stages of evolution anything is possible for our past and future.

Think asking a caveman if he thought humans would ever cook food in a magic box, or do their hunting in a place with pre cut meat that you trade tree bark and ink for, how about flight, or moving pictures on a wall, guns, nuclear bombs, Space flight etc etc... that is where we are right now we are the cave man and we have no clue. I still believe our minds are not even close to being able to handle all that is to be known. we would probably go crazy and kill ourselves because it seems so unrealistic it must be a dream.

But then again i have no clue maybe we are just an anomaly and there is nothing bigger better smarter out there.. but thats not fun ill pretend if i have to.

[Hobble]

How do we know it isn't? There are billions of stars in the galaxy, billions of planets, we have found less than 1000, and those are too far away for us to determine if there is life on them. Any intelligent life form would likely take one look at us and say "best leave these monkeys alone, they aren't even smart enough to handle the bass-ackwards technology they have now"

Couldn't that argument be used for the existence of a God as well?

I mean, look at what we did when he tried to contact us and enlighten us. We killed him.