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New planet Kepler-22b could already be inhabited with life form.

'Zeus

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An artist's illustration of Kepler-22b (Pic: NASA)

A new planet detected orbiting a star 600 light years away could have continents, oceans and life, it was revealed today.

The planet, Kepler-22b, is about twice the size of Earth and may have a surface temperature of around 22C - similar to a warm spring day in the UK.

It is the first so-called "super-Earth" known to lie within the "habitable" zone of a Sun-like star.

Dubbed the "Goldilocks zone", this is the orbital band where temperatures are just right to allow the existence of surface liquid water.

This means the planet could have continents and oceans just like the Earth. And where there is liquid water, there could also be life.

Scientists believe Kepler-22b may not only be habitable, but possibly even inhabited.

"This discovery supports the growing belief that we live in a universe crowded with life," said Dr Alan Boss, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, who helped identify the planet from data obtained by the Kepler space telescope.

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An artist's illustration of Kepler-22b (Pic: NASA)


The telescope, launched by the American space agency Nasa, is watching 155,000 stars looking for tiny dimmings in brightness that betray the presence of planets.

Kepler-22b's host star, in the region of the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus, is slightly smaller than the Sun and about 25% less luminous.

The planet orbits the star in 290 days, compared with the Earth's 365, at a distance 15% closer than the Earth is from the Sun.

It lies right in the centre of the star's habitable zone, where potentially perfect conditions exist for life.

Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than the Sun have recently been found at the very edges of their habitable zones. Their orbits more closely resemble those of Mars and Venus.

A report on the discovery will be published by the Astrophysical Journal.

Dr Douglas Hudgins, Kepler programme scientist at Nasa headquarters in Washington, said: "This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin."

The planet was spotted after making a "transit" across the front of its parent star, causing the star's brightness to dip. At least three transits are needed before such a signal can be confirmed as a planet.

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Mercy

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Yeah, I've known about this planet for a while now, I think at first it was called HD 8551, well, not those numbers but it had HD as beginning.
 
ImmaculateShadow

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Gorillazz said:
OK. So the discovery of life on other planets will not be in our lifetime.
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Well ... That all depends on your perspective of what the future holds from humanity.

I'm quite confident that within my life time, probably within the next 20-30 years, we'll have figured out how to prolong life (indefinitely?) through integration with nano technology and computing technology.

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The iPhone in my pocket takes up about 25-50x less space than a home computer 20 years ago and has hundreds of thousands times more computing power.

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The same iPhone has a million times more computing power and is a million times smaller than the computers of the 50's.

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Do you see the trend? With the advent of exponential growth in computing power verses size we should be curing cancer, exploring space (inner and outer), prolonging life, solving real human problems in no time.

Kepler - 22B here we come!!!!

I imagine that in the future the Earth will be the mecca of human existence - the planet we all revisit time and time again but which is kept mostly uninhabited for having just undergone the birth of the human race.

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I mean all the shit we put the earth through the least we could do is give it some space after we figure out how to harness the power of stars like superman.

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:pwease:
 
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Majora

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Problem is that it is 600light years k? 600years to travel there with speed of light. Nothing is/will ever be faster than light. Yes maybe prolong life but not up to 600years, no sir!
 
Alphonse Elric

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This is very interesting, I wish I could live to see what this planet looks like. But I don't think I'll see it in my lifetime sadly. Hopefully they get more pictures of the surface of the planet during my lifetime at least. ^.^
 
ImmaculateShadow

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Gorillazz said:
Problem is that it is 600light years k? 600years to travel there with speed of light. Nothing is/will ever be faster than light. Yes maybe prolong life but not up to 600years, no sir!
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Well it would be much easier to fold space. If we are talking theoretical space travel you can have your as fast as the speed of light - I'll contemplate the tesseract and be there before you've hit the throttle on your light speed drive.

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Besides - if we can preserve ourselves on the cellular level why couldn't we live to be 600 years or older?
 
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