Most of these planets are discovered indirectly (by watching the movement of the star, or if astronomers are really lucky, partial eclipses), so it would be near impossible to determine their composition, let alone see their surface.
One can only speculate.
hypercube Hungary. September 17 2011 06:22. Posts 1915
On September 17 2011 06:12 OscarN wrote: could anyone tell me if they could magnified to see the planets surface?
Won't happen for a very very long time.
But it turns out it's easier to see what sort of elements and molecules there are in the planet's atmosphere than to image the surface. This will almost certainly happen in the next 10-20 years for some Earth-like planets.
"[...] you wanna have a future where you're expecting things to be better, not one where you're expecting things to be worse."
On September 17 2011 06:22 simansh wrote: How does something that it so many times as heavy as earth support life? (as we know it) Doesn't the gravity make it impossible?
There's no way to know for sure if it does have life or not but I don't see why gravity would be a big problem.
There's complex life deep in the oceans under 100s of times the atmospheric pressure.
And smaller animals have less problem with gravity because the strength of their support structure increases decreases slower than the their mass.
Finally, the difference in gravity is probably not that big. It's around 1.5 times the Earth's gravity if it has the same composition as Earth (maybe slightly higher).
"[...] you wanna have a future where you're expecting things to be better, not one where you're expecting things to be worse."
Sausafeg United Kingdom. September 17 2011 06:58. Posts 45
That is awesome! The thing is - can it support human life? 3.6 times the earth size means 3.6 times the gravity.. wouldn't we have to be like super strong just to stand there? (this isn't dbz) where we all train with super gravity on xD.. I'm curious to know how scientists would go about colonizing a planet that is like earth but with more gravity.
Danger_Duck Burkina Faso. September 17 2011 08:45. Posts 571
On September 17 2011 07:16 xSeraphiel wrote: That is awesome! The thing is - can it support human life? 3.6 times the earth size means 3.6 times the gravity.. wouldn't we have to be like super strong just to stand there? (this isn't dbz) where we all train with super gravity on xD.. I'm curious to know how scientists would go about colonizing a planet that is like earth but with more gravity.
It would take a long time to get there, what if you slowly turned the gravity up on yourself and could (if you had the ability to travel there I would assume you could). If it took many generations and you had someway to survive that might work. But I'm no scientist.
Last edit: 2011-09-17 09:10:34
It is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.- John Stuart Mill
On September 17 2011 07:16 xSeraphiel wrote: That is awesome! The thing is - can it support human life? 3.6 times the earth size means 3.6 times the gravity.. wouldn't we have to be like super strong just to stand there? (this isn't dbz) where we all train with super gravity on xD.. I'm curious to know how scientists would go about colonizing a planet that is like earth but with more gravity.
So, while gravity does correlate to the size of the planet, it does so at a very small rate. For instance Jupiter is around 1300 times the size of Earth but it's gravitational field is only ~2.5 times stronger than Earth. In effect, yea there will be more gravity there, but not so much that it would feel abnormal too that large of an extent and human bones could easily support the added gravity. However, if it were a super large planet like Jupiter humans could always use some sort of metal support to move around I guess.
On September 13 2011 05:55 ampson wrote: Now let's get to work on that faster-than light travel? Looks sweet. But why is it called SUPER EARTH?
probably cus it's a lot bigger than actual earth?
It's great. now our parasitic race can take other planets and pollute the hell out of them after we overpopulate this one to the point of death =/
what a depressing thought
Well, technically earth isn't overpopulated at all, just very mis-managed. There is more than enough viable land and food for every person alive on the earth, it's just that because of money, it's not available to people who are poor.
That is one of the main reasons that we'll never go to another planet, we can't manage our own well enough to reap it's potential sustainable resources and be able to form a coordinated plan to go somewhere else. It is sad though, I agree.
edit: thought I should source my statement source look at "carrying capacity"
Last edit: 2011-09-17 11:04:09
"You have to remember something: Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn." Arnold Schwarzenegger
[Poseidon] Netherlands. September 18 2011 07:18. Posts 58
On September 13 2011 09:19 hotbreakfest wrote: Currently we can see up to 42 billion light years into space. We are an insignificant speck dust on a speck of dust on a speck of dust on a speck of dust on a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert. I think that says just about enough.
So you explain to me, how a universe that is 13.9 billion years old, can see up to 42 billion light years
it takes light a year to travel a light year(duh) so 42 billion light years it would take 42 billion years.
So if the big bang happened only 13.9 billion years ago, how can we see up to 42 billion light years?
we can't?
I think the last figure was 13.5 billion light years
Imagine how life on another planet 3.6 times as large as earth would look! The muscles on those animals!
Short answer as to why we can see around 47 billion light years away (the furthest image taken so far):
The speed at which the universe is expanding is not constant. Rather, everything in the universe is expanding away from each other linearly proportional to the distance between the objects.
The rate at which the universe is expanding is increasing.
I can understand the universe itself being 47 billion light years old the problem i'm having is how can we SEE something 47 billion light years away since the light coming from it would have to travel longer than the age of the universe...
Because the distance the light is traveling is also increasing, at an ever increasing rate (second derivative is positive). Let's say a ray of light leaves point A for point B, and point B is exactly one light year away when the ray of light leaves point A. Now, if the distance remains perfectly constant for one year, the light will reach point B after precisely one year. But what if point A and point B are moving away from one another? Then it would take longer than a year for the ray of light to reach point B, this is what is happening in our universe. Because light has a finite speed (it's bloody fast, but it's finite, it doesn't instantly move from one location to another regardless of distance), it is affected by changes in distance just like anything else. We can see this through redshifts.
Thanks for clearing that up
Whitewing United States. September 18 2011 12:23. Posts 5709
On September 13 2011 09:19 hotbreakfest wrote: Currently we can see up to 42 billion light years into space. We are an insignificant speck dust on a speck of dust on a speck of dust on a speck of dust on a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert. I think that says just about enough.
So you explain to me, how a universe that is 13.9 billion years old, can see up to 42 billion light years
it takes light a year to travel a light year(duh) so 42 billion light years it would take 42 billion years.
So if the big bang happened only 13.9 billion years ago, how can we see up to 42 billion light years?
we can't?
I think the last figure was 13.5 billion light years
Imagine how life on another planet 3.6 times as large as earth would look! The muscles on those animals!
Short answer as to why we can see around 47 billion light years away (the furthest image taken so far):
The speed at which the universe is expanding is not constant. Rather, everything in the universe is expanding away from each other linearly proportional to the distance between the objects.
The rate at which the universe is expanding is increasing.
I can understand the universe itself being 47 billion light years old the problem i'm having is how can we SEE something 47 billion light years away since the light coming from it would have to travel longer than the age of the universe...
Because the distance the light is traveling is also increasing, at an ever increasing rate (second derivative is positive). Let's say a ray of light leaves point A for point B, and point B is exactly one light year away when the ray of light leaves point A. Now, if the distance remains perfectly constant for one year, the light will reach point B after precisely one year. But what if point A and point B are moving away from one another? Then it would take longer than a year for the ray of light to reach point B, this is what is happening in our universe. Because light has a finite speed (it's bloody fast, but it's finite, it doesn't instantly move from one location to another regardless of distance), it is affected by changes in distance just like anything else. We can see this through redshifts.
Thanks for clearing that up
I'm glad I was helpful.
ThorZaIN is an android sent from the future to destroy everyone and everything with his super advanced mechanics and strategies. ~Chill
{CC}StealthBlue United States. December 06 2011 07:54. Posts 15276
For the first time, astronomers have found a planet smack in the middle of the habitable zone of its sunlike star, where temperatures are good for life. “If this planet has a surface, it would have a very nice temperature of some 70° Fahrenheit [21°C],” says William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center here, who is the principal investigator of NASA’s Kepler space telescope. “[It's] another milestone on the journey of discovering Earth’s twin,” adds Ames director Simon “Pete” Worden.
Unfortunately, the true nature of the planet, named Kepler-22b, remains unknown. It is 2.4 times the size of Earth, but its mass, and hence its composition, has not yet been determined. “There’s a good chance it could be rocky,” Borucki says, although he adds that the planet would probably contain huge amounts of compressed ice, too. It might even have a global ocean. “We have no planets like this in our own solar system.”
Kepler-22b is 600 light-years away. Every 290 days, it orbits a star that is just a bit smaller and cooler than our own sun. The Kepler telescope, launched in 2009 to scan the skies for Earth-like worlds, found the planet because it sees the orbit edge on. That means that every 290 days, the world transits the surface of the star, blocking out a minute fraction of its light.
Borucki likes to call the new discovery the Christmas planet. “It’s a great gift,” he said at a press conference here this morning. “We were very fortunate to find it.” The first of the three observed transits occurred only days after Kepler started observing. The third one was seen just before Christmas 2010, shortly before the spacecraft was unable to carry out any observations because of a technical glitch. Says Borucki: “We could’ve easily missed it altogether.”
Wow that's pretty sweet. Since the star is smaller and cooler, that means it may last quite a bit longer than our own. I sure hope they can find its composition, but wouldn't that be pretty hard considering its distance? It would be cooler if we found one closer to Earth though, 600 light years is a long way away.
HellRoxYa Sweden. December 06 2011 08:06. Posts 1522
On September 13 2011 06:37 Enox wrote: this one is pretty old already but it amazes me each time i see it again. seems fitting for this thread
This is amazing, it puts loads of stuff into persective. I love seeing stuff like this.
Cool series of pictures, but the artistic depictions of the large stars are not realistic. No way they have so well defined borders and are almost perfectly spherical, their atmospheres are very thin and their photospheres extended.
off topic: The most realistic first contact scene ever shown in a Hollywood movie!
OscarN Cape Verde. September 17 2011 06:12. Posts 249
![[image loading]](http://h2.abload.de/img/planetenyan.gif)
{CC}StealthBlue United States. December 06 2011 07:54. Posts 15276![[image loading]](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/12/kepler22-b.jpg)
Erasme France. December 06 2011 08:07. Posts 4060
