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Posted on 01/12/2010 6:10:18 PM PST by KevinDavis
The race to find exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — continues to quicken. Last week NASA researchers announced that the agency’s new space telescope, Kepler, has discovered five new exoplanets, expanding the number of known exoplanets to 422, an increase of about 25 percent in the past year alone. A satellite proposed by MIT researchers could accelerate these discoveries and even detect hundreds of Earth-sized planets — a few of which could be natural candidates for life.
(Excerpt) Read more at web.mit.edu ...
How many are earth like?
that would be awesome
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When they have a satellite that can do spectral analyses of the planetary atmospheres, the first one that turns up free oxygen or free chlorine is going to rock the world.
Hmmmm. Why free chlorine?
What’s wrong with that? I’m thrilled they aren’t using the term earth like for once. In fact more often than not, the people you need to blame is the media.
Free chlorine is so reactive it never lasts long in an environment and using water and other stuff it can be used as an oxidizer in place of oxygen. So if it’s detected it means some mechanism is replacing it. Same with oxygen really. Hypothetically another possible chemistry of life.
They are saying “earth-sized.” NASA is dancing for MSNBC.
Venus is about as close to "earth-sized" as you are ever going to find. It is in just the right orbit too.
If we are ever able to spot "earth-sized" exoplanets, the real trick is going to be distinguishing the Venus-like planets from the Earth-like planets.
Seeingg that most “earth sized” planets would kill everyone, they should get life.
Not really..
That would be a few years off yet; probably a decade or so before we start getting spectra from earth sized exoplanets. Once that data is available we'll know which it is.
>>>They are saying “earth-sized.” NASA is dancing for MSNBC.
That makes no sense at all. “Earth sized” planets would be sought out whether MSNBC exists or not.
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