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Any one that is observant and has a open mind already knows that their is more going on in Space then what the news is reporting to us. Astronomers at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Hawaii, using data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, estimate there are tens of billions of Earth-size, possibly habitable planets in our Milky Way galaxy.
Given that there just more than 7 billion of us on this planet, that means a planet for each of us with some spares for your picky neighbors. Or a vacation planet or two for you, maybe.
And the closest may be circling a star you can see if you look up into the heavens tonight.
“When you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye. That is amazing,” UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura, the leader of the team that analyzed data from the Kepler, said in a press release.
To be sure, the astronomers haven’t seen any of the planets themselves. They came to their conclusions like this:
Photos: Where life might live beyond Earth Photos: Where life might live beyond Earth
The Kepler telescope photographed 150,000 of the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way every 30 minutes for four years. It looked for when orbiting planets passed between the camera and the star, causing a slight change in brightness of that star. Analyzing the data, the astronomers say, they found 3,000 planet candidates.
The astronomers narrowed that number by focusing on just 42,000 stars like our sun or a bit cooler. That brought the number of planets down to 603. But only 10 of those were about the size of Earth in the so-called “Goldilocks zone,” just the right distance from the star where temperatures are suitable for life as we know it.
So how did they get a number of planets in the billions? By using a computer model with fake planets to test the validity of the algorithms used in the calculations.
“What we’re doing is taking a census of extrasolar planets, but we can’t knock on every door. Only after injecting these fake planets and measuring how many we actually found could we really pin down the number of real planets that we missed,” Petigura said in the press release.
Using the data, the astronomers calculated that 22% of stars in the Milky Way similar to our sun have planets like Earth in their “Goldilocks zone.” As there are about 20 billion stars similar to the sun in the galaxy, the possibilities add up quickly — more than one for each of us Earthlings.
In other space news..
India on Tuesday launched its first spacecraft bound for Mars, a complex mission that it hopes will demonstrate and advance technologies for space travel.
Hundreds of people watched the rocket carrying the Mars orbiter take off from the east-coast island of Sriharikota and streak across the sky. Many more across the country watched live TV broadcasts.
Officials at the space center described it as a “textbook launch.” If the mission is successful, India will become only the fourth nation to visit the red planet after the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe.
“Capturing and igniting the young minds of India and across the globe will be the major return from this mission,” mission director P. Kunhikrishnan said from the launch site.
Via:CNN
Any one that is observant and has a open mind already knows that their is more going on in Space then what the news is reporting to us. Astronomers at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Hawaii, using data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, estimate there are tens of billions of Earth-size, possibly habitable planets in our Milky Way galaxy.
Given that there just more than 7 billion of us on this planet, that means a planet for each of us with some spares for your picky neighbors. Or a vacation planet or two for you, maybe.
And the closest may be circling a star you can see if you look up into the heavens tonight.
“When you look up at the thousands of stars in the night sky, the nearest sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is probably only 12 light years away and can be seen with the naked eye. That is amazing,” UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura, the leader of the team that analyzed data from the Kepler, said in a press release.
To be sure, the astronomers haven’t seen any of the planets themselves. They came to their conclusions like this:
Photos: Where life might live beyond Earth Photos: Where life might live beyond Earth
The Kepler telescope photographed 150,000 of the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way every 30 minutes for four years. It looked for when orbiting planets passed between the camera and the star, causing a slight change in brightness of that star. Analyzing the data, the astronomers say, they found 3,000 planet candidates.
The astronomers narrowed that number by focusing on just 42,000 stars like our sun or a bit cooler. That brought the number of planets down to 603. But only 10 of those were about the size of Earth in the so-called “Goldilocks zone,” just the right distance from the star where temperatures are suitable for life as we know it.
So how did they get a number of planets in the billions? By using a computer model with fake planets to test the validity of the algorithms used in the calculations.
“What we’re doing is taking a census of extrasolar planets, but we can’t knock on every door. Only after injecting these fake planets and measuring how many we actually found could we really pin down the number of real planets that we missed,” Petigura said in the press release.
Using the data, the astronomers calculated that 22% of stars in the Milky Way similar to our sun have planets like Earth in their “Goldilocks zone.” As there are about 20 billion stars similar to the sun in the galaxy, the possibilities add up quickly — more than one for each of us Earthlings.
In other space news..
India on Tuesday launched its first spacecraft bound for Mars, a complex mission that it hopes will demonstrate and advance technologies for space travel.
Hundreds of people watched the rocket carrying the Mars orbiter take off from the east-coast island of Sriharikota and streak across the sky. Many more across the country watched live TV broadcasts.
Officials at the space center described it as a “textbook launch.” If the mission is successful, India will become only the fourth nation to visit the red planet after the Soviet Union, the United States and Europe.
“Capturing and igniting the young minds of India and across the globe will be the major return from this mission,” mission director P. Kunhikrishnan said from the launch site.
Via:CNN
@ people really thinking there are some forms of life out there...
