Kepler space telescope's discoveries include four planets that could hold liquid surface water, believed to be key for life

Scientists added a record 715 more planets to the list of known worlds beyond the solar system, boosting the overall tally to nearly 1,700, astronomers said on Wednesday.

The additions include four planets about two and a half times as big as Earth that are the right distance from their parent stars for liquid surface water, which is believed to be key for life.

The discoveries were made with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope before it was sidelined by a pointing system problem last year. The telescope, launched in 2009, spent four productive years staring at 160,000 target stars for signs of planets passing by, relative to the telescope's line of sight.

The tally of planets announced at a Nasa press conference on Wednesday boosted Kepler's confirmed planet count from 246 to 961.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/27/nasa-finds-new-planets

Combined with other telescopes' results, the headcount of planets beyond the solar system, or exoplanets, now numbers nearly 1,700.

"We almost doubled, just today, the number of planets known to humanity," astronomer Douglas Hudgins, head of exoplanet exploration at Nasa headquarters in Washington, told reporters on a conference call.

The population boom is due to a new verification technique that analyses potential planets in batches rather than one at a time. The method was developed after scientists realised that most planets, like those in the solar system, have sibling worlds orbiting a common parent star.

The newly found planets reinforce evidence that small planets, two to three times the size of Earth, are common throughout the galaxy.

"Literally, wherever (Kepler) can see them, it finds them," said astronomer Sara Seager, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "That's why we have confidence that there will be planets like Earth in other places."

Like the solar system, which has eight planets plus Pluto and other so-called "dwarf planets," the newly found exoplanets belong in families.

But unlike the solar system's planets, which span from inner Mercury to outer Neptune some 150 times farther from the sun than Earth, the Kepler clans are bunched in close.

Most of the planets fly nearer to their parent stars than Venus orbits the sun, a distance of about 67m miles (108m km.)

Nasa and other space agencies are designing follow-on telescopes to home in on planets in so-called "habitable zones" around their parent stars where temperatures would be suitable for liquid surface water.

Two papers on the new Kepler research will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Via Reuters

Mightymoe, I'm about to say something that may sound stupid (it won't be the first time and it won't be the last either)
But I don't believe for one minute that water is the key for all life.
Yes I know it is on this planet, but I reckon that maybe there could be other life forms out there that don't need water.
Just because we depend on it doesn't mean that every single life form in the Universe depends on it.
In much the same way that we need oxygen I don't believe that all life forms do.
We need water and oxygen because they are on this planet if you get my drift.

Anyway, I live on my own planet, but it's a happy place.

no, your right, we just base life on what we know it as, meaning water/carbon, that's why they look for earth-like planets, the best way we know to look for signs of life...with the vastness of the universe, anything is possible..

good point funky.

I wonder,how I didn't think like that yet.

I'm agreed with you over the two points that for some live's oxygen and water may not be the need.

but I'm disagreeing over your another point that we need water & ox bcoz they are on this planet.

I would rather say that we are here bcoz of their existence.

They discovered a planet a while back that is a solid diamond.
A bit too big for my tiny fingers

I would rather say that we are here bcoz of their existence.

Yes I agree and that's what I kind of meant, I didn't word it quite right, but you are correct.

yea, i read about that... i was reading yesterday about how gases like helium and hydrogen can turn to solids from the pressures and heat at the cores of some planets and stars, making me think that the diamond planet might be a core left over from a gas giant planet that had all the gases striped away by it's sun...

The reason why we use life as we know it as a model in order to establish what other planets are capable of sustaining life is because it is life as we know it. It's the only way we know that it exists. Saying that life may not require water is saying that life may not be as we know it. That is fine to say, but there is no evidence whatsoever to support positing such life. Science is all about positing thngs that are based upon the evidence we have...

Really, since when is science based on eveidence we have. Most of it is but some of it is just a guessing game.
Hawkins being a prime example.
You contradict yourself when you say,'there is no evidence whatsoever to support positioning such life', so while there is no evidence then my guess is as good as anyone else's.

Sorry funky, but you're ill-informed. All life as we know it requires water. There is no life that we're aware of that does not require water. Every bit of evidence suggests that, and there is no evidence that doesn't. "Evidence" here being every instance of life that we know of. We know of no life form which doesn't require water.

That's just the way it is.

That sad, we can imagie all sorts of things, however, those things exist only by means of our imagination.

science is about 50% imagination, just because we don't know something doesn't mean it can't exist...it jut means it's a possible, not to be discounted...

.. why does my dog.. seem to know.. when he scratches at the door.. I'll let him out... is he not communicating with me.. he must reason that that's what this means.. I scratch you let me out... and it's more then conditioning.. are a learned response... he seems to know. and understand.. so in order to have a dialogue. with my dog... I would just have to establish.. a dialogue he can understand.. and relate to... I see a bowl.. he sees his food receptacle.. but the screwy part is we both know what it's.4.hmm.. just a screwy thought..lol
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..like I said just a screw thought.. Lol

Science isn't based on evidence, it relies on evidence. Imagination helps us dream up what may be. Evidence proves if we are right or not.

Evidence is integral to science and is used always. Imagination is what furthers science.

wow, smart too!

all science starts with imagination, then come the proving stage...

you and franky are correct here, just because we don't know something does not mean it can't be true...we don't know, thats what science is for...

Well said Mel. IMO creativesoul's comments are an example of the rigid narrow attitude that has developed within the academic establishment and it limits the potential for new discovery.

I' not sure how much "imagination" science consists of. Rather, it seems to me that that statement is untenable and/or unjustifiable. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that imagination isn't sometimes key, if by "imagination" I mean the ability to infer, deduce, and/or envision something novel, something new. Nothing you've said here contradicts anything I've said. I fail to see the counterargument or point which applies to my own.

What is the following supposed to mean?



"...just because we don't know something doesn't mean it can't exist."

That sounds like nonsense to me. I mean, things that exist aren't the sort of things that can be known. It doesn't make much sense to talk about knowing my car, or the sun, or some such. Knowing "something", when talking about knowing about the world and/or ourselves as opposed to knowing how to breathe or walk or some such, usually refers to knowing something about something. I know my car in the sense of I know what my car looks like, how it drives, etc.

To know something is to know something about something. One cannot know something about that which does not exist, real, imagined, or otherwsise.

Of course things exist which we are unaware of. At least, that's the only reasonable inference I can make based upon the history of human knowledge.

Rubbish. Gratuitous and irrelevant assertion anyone?

It's always easiest to attack a position by first misconstruing it.

Well done.

.. do fish drink water..??.