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Space & Astronomy

NASA discovers 10 near-Earth size exoplanets

By T.K. Randall
June 19, 2017 · Comment icon 16 comments

Could one of these new worlds be home to alien life ? Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists believe that these new worlds lie in the 'Goldilocks zone' of their respective solar systems.
Discovered with the help of the Kepler Space Telescope, the new planetary haul consists of 219 candidate worlds in total with ten of these being potentially very similar to our own planet.

"There are now 4,034 planet candidates identified by Kepler. Of which, 2,335 have been verified as exoplanets," NASA wrote in a statement. "Of roughly 50 near-Earth size habitable zone candidates detected by Kepler, more than 30 have been verified."

"Additionally, results using Kepler data suggest two distinct size groupings of small planets. Both results have significant implications for the search for life."

The findings were revealed today at a news conference at NASA's Ames Research Center.

"The Kepler data set is unique, as it is the only one containing a population of these near Earth-analogs - planets with roughly the same size and orbit as Earth," said scientist Mario Perez.

"Understanding their frequency in the galaxy will help inform the design of future NASA missions to directly image another Earth."

Source: Independent | Comments (16)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #7 Posted by paperdyer 8 years ago
Only human arrogance and some religions, would think we are alone in the Universe.
Comment icon #8 Posted by Almighty Evan 8 years ago
I'm trying to think of a religion that does not acknowledge god(s), demons, angels and other nonhuman entities in the Universe....
Comment icon #9 Posted by Waspie_Dwarf 8 years ago
Total and utter rubbish!! There are some scientists, a huge minority admittedly, that believe the Rare Earth Hypothesis : Source: wikipedia   Others accept the idea of the Great Filter: Source: wikipedia These ideas are NOT the product of human arrogance but an attempt to explain one simple observation... the fact that despite decades of looking we have not found one single piece of evidence for any other intelligent civilisations out there. What IS the product of human arrogance is simply dismissing an idea because it is no0t the same as your own, particular when the total amount of evidence... [More]
Comment icon #10 Posted by Almighty Evan 8 years ago
Of course, the part after your comma in the above statement generally defines religion/faith, which likely does not fit well at all with the respondee's philosophy. Had not read of the Great Filter before, thank you. Very nice post.
Comment icon #11 Posted by Krater 8 years ago
Did you seriously just cite Wikipedia? That's funny!   "Earth-like"..."Earth size". So what? The real human arrogance is our belief that the life we will eventually find out there will even remotely resemble life on earth or require earth-like conditions to have developed. Life on earth evolved to adapt to the conditions here. Life on other celestial bodies will have evolved to suit said bodies conditions. "Earth-like" need not apply.    
Comment icon #12 Posted by taniwha 8 years ago
Correct. "Life-like" planets would be a lesser arrogance.
Comment icon #13 Posted by Yamato 8 years ago
"Earth-like" confers with the Rare Earth Hypothesis.  If it's so unfathomably rare, then the astronomically improbability of a planet capable of cultivating an advanced species like ours is probably "Earth-like" as a consequence. Not having discovered another advanced civilization isn't evidence that we're alone in the universe, it's evidence that our technological capability of even finding another advanced civilization in the universe is virtually nil.  Even the conditions for determining an intelligent species is somewhat arrogant.   Our embedded tendency to think we're smarter than oth... [More]
Comment icon #14 Posted by Krater 7 years ago
I don't think we have a solid grasp on what it means to be alive or conscious. We only have a vague idea of what that seems to look like here on Earth.   We would probably not even recognize an alien conscious being if it was staring us in the face. The human race is stupidly arrogant.
Comment icon #15 Posted by kartikg 7 years ago
how did such a nice topic about exoplanet turn into religious debate? So much could be learned if people stick to topics. 
Comment icon #16 Posted by Tatetopa 7 years ago
Its worth a read of the article to know how these planets were detected and how long it took to collect the data.  This is a tiny slice of the sky searching for planets with an orbit in the right plane to obscure light from the star.    This method finds only a fraction of the planetary bodies out there.  You know this is a big technical advance.  A few years back, we could only find planets by the Doppler effect; the periodic lengthening or compression of the wave length of light a star  emits as it moves around the center of mass of the star and a large planet.   That method found a ... [More]


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