16 Super Earth's spotted - Greatest Planetary discovery in history!!

sycogrim

sycogrim

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In the largest discovery of planets in history, astronomers have found 16 new 'super-Earth' planets, one of which has a strong potential to support alien life.
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A group of astronomers announced today the discovery of more than 50 new planets, including 16 “super-Earth” planets, one of which has the potential to support alien life. This massive batch of new planets, the largest exoplanetary find to date, were uncovered using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) planet-finding technology at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.


Of those discovered, the planet with the most potential to have an atmosphere suitable for life has been dubbed HD85512b, and orbits within the “habitable zone,” a small area of space in which a planet can retain the potential to contain liquid water. HD85512b, which is 3.6 times the mass of our planet, and about 36 light years away, orbits a star that is slightly smaller and cooler than Earth’s star.


HARPS works by monitoring the movement of stars. A slight wobble in a star indicates that a planet is pulling at its gravity. So far, HARPS has been used to find 150 new planets. Scientists have discovered about 600 planets total, since 1995.


”The harvest of discoveries from HARPS has exceeded all expectations and includes an exceptionally rich population of super-Earths and Neptune-type planets hosted by stars very similar to our Sun,” said Michel Mayor of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, who led the study. ”And even better — the new results show that the pace of discovery is accelerating.”


While searching for new planets has become an increasingly successful endeavor, determining whether the new planets have atmospheres suitable for containing water remains far out of reach. In order to do this, scientists must be able to get an image of the planet in question. But no telescope yet exists that’s capable of viewing distant planets.


Fortunately, construction will begin next year on a telescope, improbably named the European Extremely Large Telescope, which will be able to take such images.
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Sauce


This is truly amazing!!!
 
Wow.. That's amazing! and.. ALIENS!!!!!! Hehe.. Well we can hope.. We must just be the more intelligent race that they show in all of the movies...:) Maybe one day ppl will live there.. Imagine that...:) A looooooong way from home...
 
"European Extremely Large Telescope" Mmm.... LOL

And all we need now is the Enterprise then we will be there in a few warpsecals.

Even if they go at the speed of light will still take a few thousand years. To go say hi to the neighbors.
 
^^ correct me if I am wrong but going to a planet thats 36 light years away and your traveling at light speed does that not make it 36 years to get there?
 
Crzwaco said:
Awesome sause!!!
Now if we only had some way of getting there.
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Post a message on 2-chan saying that the telescope spotted hordes of sailor-suited catgirls - they'll have a superluminal ship ready for you in a month :p

The thing is ... a planet with gravity 3+ times that of Earth ... might be great as an automated farming planet - but it's not really going to work as permanent habitation. But then again, if they can find 16 planets, it means there will almost definitely ... hopefully ... be more earth-sized planets with the right specs out there.

Won't be getting there in our lifetime though, sadly.
 
Always amazes me how they can know all that from a planet 36 light years away. Freaken crazy!

Now we just need to find a stargate:p
 
markface said:
Always amazes me how they can know all that from a planet 36 light years away. Freaken crazy!

Now we just need to find a stargate:p
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Lol that would be effiecent way to get there, to find out if its viable or now. But for now lets hope they figure out FTL so it the rest of the people who want to go dont have dematerilise just to get there.

But it is an amazing find.
 
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How very inconvenient that Physics does not allow us to explore our cosmic surrounds more easily.

Reality is a heartless b****.

To put it simply, the problem with "wormholes" is that they would be exceedingly small and short-lived.
While we may be able to teleport particles over short distances, this technology is in its infancy and would not be a particularly efficient way of transmitting the information that constitutes a large object. Now consider how difficult [not too mention messy] it would be to send a perfect copy of a complex life form between two points....even if you could reassemble it as an exact [and dead] replica [does the Uncertainty Principle make life difficult here?] If I was going to start teleporting anything larger than molecules, I'd start with something relatively simple - like a virus.

Related reading


I would be surprised if any life-forms we do encounter are humanoid. Initially we may not even recognise it for what it is [That's why it is called "alien"] While more exotic biochemistries may be feasible, carbon seems to be best suited as a base for biochemistry resulting in complex life-forms.
 
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phoenix said:
If I was going to start teleporting anything larger than molecules, I'd start with something relatively simple - like a virus.
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It's been done before. We also imagined a virus to be a suitable candidate for initial teleportation tests. Unfortunately, due to excessive enthusiasm and an utterly unexpected early breakthrough, we didn't have adequate safety measures in place at the time of the successful fourteenth test (May 12th, 1993), which led to the regrettable extinction of all life on SDSSp J153859.94-003914.1.

We were subsequently sued by S/1991 (155) 1 in November 1930. The exact date is unclear, as a manifestation of something pink and heavy interfered with our instuments.

We never had g rre tou got nuir m,,d
 
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