I came across this at CNN, just a few minutes ago (was posted at 7:31 pm EDT - So I don't know if someone has beat me to it, yet)

Scientists find most Earth-like planet yet (link)

Are the odds of finding a form of primitive life here good or unlikely? Does anybody know the age of this particular star or the possible age of the planet?

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it could be a waterworld. I am getting a surface gravity of about 2 gee and a high density, assuming the figures for mass and diameter are correct; they probably are a bit off.
Anyway, here is an image of a waterworld I made a while ago;
http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/674...hclouds4lk.jpg
the atmosphere of such a world coud hold a lot of free oxygen even if there is no life; the water would photodissociate into hydrogen and oxygen.

hmm; the gravity is high enough to hold onto hydrogen as well as oxygen; why is this planet so dense? Why isn't it a gas giant?

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I really like the image of the water world.

I’m not sure how something like that could be so dense, to be honest. I really don’t know how they are able to differentiate rocky planets from gas giants.

Is it possible they could be way off and that this turns out to be an anomaly of some kind? Could other bodies create the “illusion” of a small planet because of the way it pulls on the star?

If it were a rocky planet with a high density, I would love to know its composition.

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Incidentally, there is another thread about this planet here
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....498#post974498

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Yeah, I've just noticed. Somebody already beat me to the punch awhile ago. That tells me this could really be important news. I have a feeling we're going to see a few more threads about the same thing.

Too bad I made a duplicate...

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Until they will be able to apply a coronograph to block the star's light combined with a spectrograph ultra high sensitivity instrument able to analyze the planet's dim light we can't be absolutely sure about its composition, if exists water or life there etc..

I had a thought about this discovery that relates more to Life in Space than Astronomy, so I'm putting it in this thread....

When people talk about life on other planets, particularly intelligent life, and work through something like the Drake Equation, the question usually comes up that given various probabilities for the occurance of planets, of life, etc., that there may be hundreds or thousands of civilizations in the Milky Way, so why have none of them have shown evidence of their existence, visited us, or even populated the whole galaxy.

It seems to me that the discussion usually then become how one of the factors in the Drake Equation, such life is rarer or planets are rarer. This latest discovery adds further, strong evidence, that planets like Earth are probably not rare.

My thought is that maybe all of the factors in the Drake Equation are actually quite high; maybe planets, life, even intelligent life are actually quite common. So, why then no signs of this. The answer might be that the last steps are the hardest part. Imagine that Earth like planets with human like civilizations are quite common. But also imagine that, though there is much in physics yet to be discovered, that none of that will give us FTL travel, or other means to travel or communicate across the galaxy with any ease.

Maybe 1000 years from now we will have basically the same technology (as far as space travel) as we do now. Maybe that's why we don't hear from these other civilizations.

Just some random thoughts.

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That's probably the same thought that WKYC has... They put the story in the "strange news" section.

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Or maybe the first steps are the hardest. This new planet has about twice the gravity of Earth. It likely has a thicker atmosphere. I'm not sure about the metal content of the star, but if its lower than ours then making some more advanced materials might be harder there.

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I think by first steps you mean the first steps of civilization. And I can't argue with that. But by first steps, I meant the first "steps" in the Drake Equation - the probability of a star having a planet, that the planet is in the liquid water zone, that life forms, etc.... The more astronomy data I see, the less likely I think these are the limiting steps.

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Well if we discover more planets in this sort of size and temperature range then you may be right. For that reason I feel that planet finding telescopes are one of the most important anstronomical projects for this century. Beyond that the best we can probably hope for in the next century or so are perhaps a few robot fly-by probes. At least those could be quite small vehicles as they would not need to be burdened with life-support and more importantly would not need to carry with them a lot of reaction mass to slow themselves down when they reached their target star system. This saving of mass would of course reduce the burden of accelerating them to a high velocity for the trip. Also not needing to decelerate prior to arrival would reduce the transit time. Of course they would only give us a fleeting glimpse of the exoplanet as they shot by it but even that should be enough to give us some valuable data, at least enough to know if it might be worth further study by future generations.

I still however believe that given the right planetary conditions the emergence of some form life might be relatively common. What I do have doubts about though is whether multi-cellular life always produces a technological civilisation. I think the chances of finding worlds which are rich in "wildlife" is far greater than ever finding worlds with either Star ships or Steam Trains or even Stone Temples.

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Panthalassa. That's as lovely as Perelandra.

Thanks; I took the name from the ancient Panthalassic Ocean, details here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthalassa

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Wonderful news!

More discovery and desensitization!

For earthlings, we live in exciting times folks!

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my bold

Of course, it can be argued that evidence for such visitation exists in the form of ancient religious and mythic texts, megalithic structures, esoteric learning, eyewitness accounts, radar visual events, and more.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

I'll take a petrafied computer chip myself.

You mean like the Antikythera mechanism?
Or other astrolabes already in possession?

Or do you refer to the mythical ME's of the ANE?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Indeed it could be argued.

But I'm willing to bet it would be a tedious, fruitless and far from compelling argument.

Actually, no it can't be argued...at least not on this BB. Any discussion of Sitchinism is not allowed.

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Well, that remark shows how limited your understanding is.

But do you think Sitchin was the first to consider such things?

And are you following me around the BB again, only posting replies to me?

Fixation?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Yeah...I'm a real <removed by Serenitude>...thanks for pointing that out...

As it is all pseudoscience, I don't really care who came up with it first.

When I see uninformed opinions being touted as factual, I WILL RESPOND.

It's not my fault that you just happen to be one of the biggest "offenders" when it comes to posting opinions of that nature...

Kindly get over yourself...I'm simply making up for the 40 days I was away from the board.

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