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The possibility of alien life has captivated our imaginations for generations. Now that possibility just got a big boost as Kepler’s managed to find and confirm a potentially Earth-like planet. It’s just 600 light years away and occupies that magic ‘habitable zone’ around its star, like the Earth does around the sun.
Kepler-22b is 2.4 times the size of Earth, has a 290-day orbit around its star, which itself is G-class — a bit cooler and smaller than our own G2V-class Sun. We don’t know much else about the planet, it could be mostly gas for all we know at this stage, but it’s the first confirmed habitable zone planet.
Kepler’s mission is to search for planets that may contain life — at least as we know it — as defined by criteria that include the possibility of water and a suitable temperature, balanced by distance to a star and potential atmosphere. Currently it’s found 54 potential candidates, but Kepler-22b is the first to actually be confirmed as a planet. Hopefully we’ll see more confirmed in the next couple of years. But let’s hope if they do contain life, they end up being more Vulcan than Independence Day-type aliens. I quite like living, and on Earth for that matter. No stinking alien is going to take that away from me without a puny, insignificant fight. [NASA via Geek]
Can I sign up for email notification when it’s possible to move there?
I’ll start packing now
Total disconnect and contradiction between headline and story.
Time to go back to school to LERN WOT WURDS MEEN, Sam.
No need to be a douche about it. And besides, ‘Earth-like’ is quite open to interpretation. If you gonna douche-out. Douche-out at NASA as its paraphrased directly out of the source article.
I’d say pointing out a piss-takingly misleading headline is a need to be a douche.
Title: “Earth-like planet found and CONFIRMED”
Article: “find and confirm a POTENTIALLY Earth-like planet”.
HMMM.
The NASA article doesn’t even come close to implying this actually is an Earth-like planet. The closest it says is that it COULD be Earth-like. There’s nothing misleading in the NASA article or headline.
Actually, it does. If you’re going to be pedantic about semantics, fair enough. The missing qualifier of ‘potential’ does denote a fair bit. But, its a headline. Get over it. It still does not give you carte blanche on being a tw@. If you had an issue with it #correct it.
“Time to go back to school to LERN WOT WURDS MEEN, Sam.”
Reread that, even you think youre a douche now.
You know what? I don’t think Sam is going to have nightmares from me taking the piss to make a point. If you think that makes me a douche, I can live with it. Thanks.
what are you on about?
I can’t read what I think you are calling english?
You better word up the the BBC as well, they seem to have the same journalistic problems as Sam…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16040655
And afterward, you’d better get that caps lock key looked at. It seems to cause you misspell words in a manner that looks suspiciously ironic.
Nah, I won’t be doing that, as I didn’t read the story on the BBC myself. Maybe you could do it, seeing as they have actually made the same error?
Yes, we’ll have no douche-ing around here please, Thomas.
After eight years of top-flight higher education, I’ve had enough of ‘school’ thanks. Earth-like as in within the habitable zone, just like Earth… or, Earth-like perhaps? But thanks for reading.
Thanks for replying.
So when you say ‘Earth-like’ in the headline, that’s actually your own interpretation of the phrase, which contradicts the use in the NASA article?
Tell me I’m wrong to think that you’ve either misunderstood the article you’ve linked to, or that you’re deliberately misrepresenting it in a more attention-grabbing headline, to get people to click through to the post?
You’re wrong on both counts I’m afraid. As I said before, I used Earth-like as a contraction within the headline. If I was to put the full “One of the First Exoplanets To Be Found By the Kepler Mission Has Been Confirmed as Being a Planet Within the Potentially Habitable Zone, Similar to the Orbit That the Earth Enjoys Around the Sun”, I would have been shot. So, to say Earth-Like, contracts all that gubbins about zonal position to two hyphenated words. Simply that. No more, no less. It’s your interpretation that defines Earth-like to be mean than that. The planet is Earth-like, in that it is within the habitable zone and actually a planet.
Cool. I appreciate you taking the time to give a reasoned answer.
I will ask you this though, would NASA agree with the statement that they have found and confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet?
Considering they’ve coined the phrase ‘Earth’s twin’ for Kepler missions, perhaps. But then maybe not — they’d probably have preferred the full headline.
So at our current tech it’ll take us like 20 million years to get there and even if we could travel the speed of light it’ll take us 600 years. I don’t think it is worth worrying about unless we have proof of life on the Planet. Until then I think we should focus on something closer to home until we can put our bodies into hibernation, being able to live far longer or travel a lot faster in space.
Only a blink of an eye for warp/hyperspace-capable aliens bent on making us their mid-flight snack.
Anyone seen the film ‘Another Earth’? The earth got closer and closer. It made me wonder….. Did the 2 earth’s collide??
When does starbuck open there?
Open? This is where the people who own, run and work in Starbucks come from.
I thought they were from the planet Bucks?
And what exactly do you think this planet is called?
Good question. Maybe we’ll find out when SETI points its ATA at it.