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Kepler-452b 'Earth's Bigger, Older Cousin'
NASA said
that its Kepler spacecraft has spotted "Earth's bigger, older
cousin": the first nearly Earth-size planet to be found in the habitable
zone of a star similar to our own. Though NASA can't say for sure whether the
planet is rocky like ours or has water and air, it's the closest match yet
found.
The planet,
Kepler-452b, is about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
It's about 60% bigger than Earth, NASA says, and is located in its star's
habitable zone -- the region where life-sustaining liquid water is possible on
the surface of a planet.
A visitor
there would experience gravity about twice that of Earth's, and planetary
scientists say the odds of it having a rocky surface are "better than
even." While it's a bit farther from its star than Earth is from the sun,
its star is brighter, so the planet gets about the same amount of energy from
its star as Earth does from the sun. And that sunlight would be very similar to
Earth's, Jenkins said.
The planet
"almost certainly has an atmosphere," Jenkins said, although
scientists can't say what it's made of. But if the assumptions of planetary
geologists are correct, he said, Kepler-452b's atmosphere would probably be
thicker than Earth's, and it would have active volcanoes.
It takes 385
days for the planet to orbit its star, very similar to Earth's 365-day year,
NASA said. And because it's spent so long orbiting in this zone -- 6 billion
years -- it's had plenty of time to brew life, Jenkins said.
"That's substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet," he said in a statement.
Before the
discovery of this planet, one called Kepler-186f was considered the most
Earth-like, according to NASA. That planet, no more than a 10th bigger than
Earth, is about 500 light-years away from us. But it gets only about a third of
the energy from its star as Earth does from the sun, and noon there would look
similar to the evening sky here, NASA says.
The $600
million Kepler mission launched in 2009 with a goal to survey a portion of the
Milky Way for habitable planets. From a vantage point 64 million miles from
Earth, it scans the light from distant stars, looking for almost imperceptible
drops in a star's brightness, suggesting a planet has passed in front of it.
It has
discovered more than 1,000 planets. Twelve of those, including Kepler-425b,
have been less than twice the size of Earth and in the habitable zones of the
stars they orbit.
Missions are
being readied to move scientists closer to the goal of finding yet more planets
and cataloging their atmospheres and other characteristics.
In 2017,
NASA plans to launch a planet-hunting satellite called TESS that will be able
to provide scientists with more detail on the size, mass and atmospheres of
planets circling distant stars. The next year, the James Webb Space Telescope
will go up. That platform, NASA says, will provide astonishing insights into
other worlds, including their color, seasonal differences, weather and even the
potential presence of vegetation.
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1 comments:
All ideas are striving only without the real space-time physics!
Many brutes physicist,
they dominate the physics today!
The space time physics starts from this gravitational formula!
F=hm(A)m(B)/((dt)²m)
/by karika® 1986/
m=1[kg]
dt= space-time =from 'A' to 'B'=[s]
F= Gravity = [kp]
h= space wavelength =[m]
m(A)= substance mass in 'A' space coordinate =[kg]
m(B)= substance mass in 'B' space coordinate= [kg]
The rest of the ideas are all primitive lies!
So that physicists you may lick it out!