A little vote on when we will find the first exoEarth. You don't have to discuss a lot, just a lot of voting, but of course you are still welcome to write a reply in case you feel like doing so

Criterias
- Size: +/- 50% of Earth.
- Mass: +/- 50% of Earth.
- Distance: Earth would mainly consist of liquid water if Earth was placed in this distance from the star in question.

Could i please ask you all to attend to this thread whenever you have time.
Who's actually working with space related stuff?

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Well, lets see

The first two are already done. We've identified planets with those characteristics around pulsars.

As for the third, who knows? Maybe two years, if Corot gets lucky.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

What the... I had heard that exoplanets were found before 1995 orbiting pulsars though 1995 is considered the year of the first proof of an exoplanet, but i didn't know they were this small. I just consulted my favorite exoplanet site where all known exoplanets are listet and i found one the mass of Pluto.

http://exoplanet.eu/planet.php?p1=PSR+1257%2B12&p2=b

But how could we detect exoplanets back in 1992? Are exoplanets or exocomets easier to detect when they are orbiting pulsars? Can't see why this is so - unless they cover for the big flash the pulsars make. But the mass of Pluto, wow. Edit: Gliese 876 d is considered to be the smallest exoplanet to date AFAIK, with a mass of 2.3% of Jupiters mass, found in 2005.

But what about an exoplanet that covers all the three areas stated at once?

COROT shouldn't be cableable of detecting exoplanets the size of Earth with the exception of exoplanets oribiting very close to their parent star. My guess is that Kepler will be the first one to detect the first exoEarth, though i of course would hope it would be COROT

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Yes, because with current technology Doppler shift of pulsar's radio pulses can be measured much more precisely than Doppler shift of visible light.

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I am not sure, but to won't be long now (1-15 years) , but the big question is when will be able to photo them directly. The first time a photo comes back green and blue the money going in to space will triple. (I hope)

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My understanding is that COROT is not quite able to get that low in size. Kepler is a better bet, but I have a good deal of respect for space missions to get delayed. So I said 2015-2020.

Yes, COROT can find exoEarth, but it will be extremely close to its parent star in that case. Therefore, i don't expect COROT to find a planet with the criterias. But a very good point Tom, delays are what you could expect, and then some time for calibration, and i don't think Kepler will find any planet with the criterias so soon.

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

If we're talking planets up to 1.5 Earth-radii, then easily in the 2010-12 timeframe, once COROT and Kepler are done.

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To be fair, most planet hunters tend to disregard the pulsar planets because of their utter uninhabitability. The new rave is planets orbiting main sequence stars.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Well, the gas giants we find are also uninhabitable, but fair enough then. Let's look at the planets around the main sequence stars only

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Touche, but allow me to 'schplain. Even though gas giants aren't "inhabitable" in the "lets land and plant a flag" sense, theoretically it would be possible to visit said planets from orbit (even the epistellars) with a manned spacecraft or a probe. Y'ain't putting man nor beast nor machine anywhere near a pulsar planet with any semblence of operational functionality because of the insane amount of rads being hurled by the pulsar. Totally untouchable, even if we could travel to them.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

OK, i see.. But still something near a planet But fair enough..

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

I've always found it ironic that the first planets found (and first solar system found) were somewhere so outlandish. As a friend said at the time... "I knew the universe was wierd."

It is not ironic, but obvious. Weridoes and anormal things are always easier to see.

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Butterfly.

Voted 2020+

Im thinking rare earth theory...

You must think "rarer" than the theory's authors. Ward and Brownlee claim complex life is rare, not rocks within 50% of Earth's mass. Or even rocks covered with liquid water.

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Is that all you want from a planet?

What about rocks that are sufficiently protected from debris by a gas giant?

That have plate tectonics?

That are out of significant cosmic ray danger?

Not everyone subscribes to the need for these and other criteria, but for me the main reason for finding an earth like planet, is that it is sufficiently earth-like to inhabit (even if we never get there).

Well, that's how OP phrased the question, and by his criteria I answered "2012-2015". I certainly want to see something significantly more Earth-like.
Given your criteria, I too think 2020+ is much more likely.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

How can you be sure? Most pulsar energy is delivered from the magnetic poles which are likely though not necessarily aligned within 10 or 20 degrees of the rotational axis, and the planets are likely near the roational equator. I'm the only one I know of who's guessing that the planets survived the supernova that created the pulsar and only the life in the first 100 meters of the pre-pulsar version of the planets was destroyed or greatly reduced in quantity. The shell of exploding material probably passed by the planets in a few hours, and , for the slow rotators, if any, may not have completely destroyed all of the surface life, if any. The various combinations and permutations of the many possible configurations of the magnetic fields could possibly have even preserved (or added) some atmosphere---giving meaning to the Biblical phrase: "and a new heaven and a new Earth came to be".

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Well I chose 2020+ in the poll because I do not think it will be until towards the end of this century that we will have the instruments in place which will be able to resolve sufficient detail from a small water bearing exoplanet, that we can reasonably call it another earth. The reason this is going to take so long is more a question of engineering and economics rather than science. We could certainly do this much earlier if we had the capability and funds to launch a lot of big instruments to build a large enough planet finding array. It just seems unlikely that the launch capacity for this purpose will become available for at least another 50 years.

However I did resent having my vote grouped together with the NEVER pessimists, I certainly think we will find an "Exoearth" but I feel the range of date offerings in the poll was just too optomistic.

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Wow, rarely seen such a close poll race, but i really like the way you've all voted, quite interesting

Should probably not have used the word exoEarth, but i've set up the criterias as i guess you have seen. That was actually what i was making the poll for. We could soon find an exoEarth, but how would we know if it had the criterias to be an exoEarth, this would not to known until we get those great telescopes like Darwin up. So i just wanted to know what you thought based on those three criterias. With those criterias Kepler should be enough and it is only a matter if it is going to find the planet with these criterias, but if that planet is actually an exoEarth we probably won't know until after Darwin is launched. Sorry for any inconvinience.

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

NASA's TPF or ESA's Darwin will find them

launched 2016-2019 period ?

Knowing the funding issue with space science experiments, I don't see a find being done before 2020. Maybe after that.
I do know it can happen. It's just a matter of getting it done with the right probe.

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I don't think COROT can find one... so 2015-2020 is most likely time frame.

Pulsar planets - it's like trying to find "people" on cemetary by digging out the graves... pulsar systems are dead, corpses of what once was star system.

Thus, first out of Solar system planet was discovered in 1995, orbiting 51 Pegasi.

However, there are even earlier reports, but retracted due to bad quality of data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasolar_planet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alrai

The first published discovery to have received subsequent confirmation was made in 1988 by the Canadian astronomers Bruce Campbell, G. A. H. Walker, and S. Yang.[5] Their radial-velocity observations suggested that a planet orbited the star Gamma Cephei (also known as Alrai). They remained cautious about claiming a true planetary detection, and widespread skepticism persisted in the astronomical community for several years about this and other similar observations. It was mainly because the observations were at the very limits of instrumental capabilities at the time. Another source of confusion was that some of the possible planets might instead have been brown dwarfs, objects that are intermediate in mass between planets and stars.

The following year, additional observations were published that supported the reality of the planet orbiting Gamma Cephei,[6] though subsequent work in 1992 raised serious doubts.[7] Finally, in 2003, improved techniques allowed the planet's existence to be confirmed.[8]

References:

5) Campbell, B.; Walker, G. A. H.; Yang, S. (1988). "A search for substellar companions to solar-type stars". Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 331: 902 – 921.

6) Lawton, A. T.; Wright, P. (1989). "A planetary system for Gamma Cephei?". British Interplanetary Society, Journal 42: 335 – 336.

7) Walker, G. A. H.; Bohlender, D. A.; Walker, A. R.; Irwin, A. W.; Yang, S. L. S.; Larson, A. (1992). "Gamma Cephei - Rotation or planetary companion?". Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 - Letters 396 (2): L91 – L94.

8) Artie P. Hatzes; William D. Cochran; Michael Endl; Barbara McArthur; Diane B. Paulson; Gordon A. H. Walker; Bruce Campbell; Stephenson Yang (2003). "A Planetary Companion to Gamma Cephei A". The Astrophysical Journal 599: 1383 – 1394.

The last things i heard about them was:
2015/2020+ Darwin (i recall the last date i heard was the 2020+)
2002 TPF-I
2014 TPF-C

The TPF might not be launched because of budget cuts. We can expect more of Darwin as it is considered a corner stone mission of ESA. But the TPCs will be very interesting in case NASA can finance them.

Though i only have a little knowledge about brown dwarfs i believe they should be considered as planets as i would define a star to make nuclear fusion in order to be considered as stars. So if you ask me:
Brown dwarfs = Big gas planets

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Not necessarily a bad idea, given than terrestrials and gas giants are both nominally planets, despite some glaring differences.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

There truly are some major differences between terrestial and gas planets. However, i am not so sure how we define it exactly. If a gas planet is a planet that contains some gas then Earth is a gas planet, if it should only consist of gas we have yet to find the first one (and might never find it). All planets and other celestial bodies in the solar system has some terrestiality in them, but only a few has gas as you probably already know. Is there a definition of what a gas planet is or has the astronomers just not had any discussions about this as it is pretty easy to determain what everyone can agree on is a gas and what is a terrestial planet in our solar system and amoung exoplanets?

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Surely it should not be all that difficult.

Now that Pluto is downgraded that means Mercury is the only planet as far as we can tell which has no gas surrounding it, Mars may not have much but it certainly does have some, all other planets in our solar system have a well defined atmospheres.

Surely the distinction should be based on percentage of planetary volume.

If more than 50% of the total volume of a planet is made up of gas then it should be regarded as a gas planet. If on the other hand more than 50% of its volume is made up of solid or liquid material then it should be regarded as a rocky or terrestrial planet. After all actually only a small proportion of earth is actually solid, most of the volume of our own world is semi-liquid material, the "solid" crust makes up quite a small proportion earth's volume. So actually calling earth a "rocky" planet is a little bit of a misnomer - though perhaps an acceptable one.

If this rule is applied then it is still reasonable to call Jupiter a Gas Planet even if it does have a liquid core.

The only question I would pose about Brown Dwarfs in this context is are we sure that there are no fusion processes going on inside them. Because if there are then surely that tips the scales in favour of them being classified as stars and not planets.

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That is a good definition, i would have said something like that aswell, or maybe the mass, but if we defined the mass to be over 50% of the total mass of the planet we would get a lot more terrestial planets. But unfortunately i believe astronomers don't have a definition today. I think they should find one before we find those on the borderline. If we had defined a planet as it is defined today before we found Pluto, no one would mind the definition - it made it a lot harder to define a planet after Pluto was found due to the fact that a lot of people really loved this 'planet'.

True. I don't know that much about brown dwarfes, but how hard can it be? We need a given temperature and pressure to make nuclear reactions and i guess we know that of the brown dwarfes, don't we?

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Both Pluto and Mercury have atmospheres.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.