Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

32 new space rocks to shoot missiles at. Wonderful.

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

The problems with current extra-solar planet detection methods are numerous and significant, and tend to mean that only very large planets are likely to be discovered. If discovered by infrared emissions, that planet will also have to be reasonably distant from its star to avoid simply being washed out. It is highly unlikely that any planets spotted by scientists using current technology will be capable of supporting life.

However, given the vast distances involved, and the astronomical (pun intended) difficulties in finding such tiny objects as planets against a backdrop of billions of gargantuan balls of superheated plasma, the fact that they have discovered so many planets already, despite these difficulties, does seem to improve the odds of an Earth-like* planet existing somewhere.

* When I say 'Earth-like', I mean a planet roughly the same size, mass and composition as Earth, in the habitable zone of its star system as well as a habitable region of the galaxy it resides in, with a similar atmosphere (either to modern-day Earth, or to prehistoric Earth). When scientists in these articles mention 'Earth-like', however, they are more usually talking simply about rocky planets in general as opposed to gas giants. A planet five times the size and/or mass of Earth is most certainly not Earth-like. Venus is more akin to Earth than one of those, for crying out loud.

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

That's not a revision. That was the guesstimate before.

With more stars in the heavens than grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth it would be high unlikely that their would be no other habitable planets for humans. The first problem is finding them. The biggest problem is getting to them.

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

No, it would simply adabt to the gravity.... I mean technically you should be crushed by all the air on top of you, but you have air inside yourself pushing out through breathing, thats why when you get stuff like used car batteries, take a decompression, plug it in then turn it on, you may have hit with a hammer for no result, but with the air decompressor, its crushed in seconds.

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

Precisely - current methods aren't that effective at finding something as small as Earth.

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

We're getting there. Only a few years ago we could only detect planets more than 10 Earth masses, now we're down to 5 or 6.

High atmospheric pressure is completely different from high gravity. High gravity is the sort of thing you feel when you lift off on a plane, it's the inertia of your body combating the force of acceleration on our body the mass of the planet exerts. Assuming that the 5-Earth-Mass planet is about the same density, the force of gravity would be about 1.7G's. Nothing too major, your life expectancy would go down if you lived your whole life on the planet, but nothing too life-threatening.

On an astronomical scale, those are remarkably Earth-like. I mean, what else can you say about them when you compare them to the likes of Rigel and Arcturus, which are about 2900 times the size of the Earth...

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

when im a granpa, my sons are propably the inhabitats of mars, which i think is quite freaking awesome. altough note, i said propably.

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

You think it's awesome that your children would suffer from severe problems with their muscles, skeletons, immune systems and cardiovascular systems, to say nothing of potentially being exposed to a deadly environment in the event of an emergency or being fried by ungodly amounts of solar radiation?

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

We dont know about any live bearing planets yet.

All we know right now is we look for a similarly sized planet within a hospitable zone from its plant like how far Venus, Earth, and Mars are from the sun.

IIRC a Interferometer is supposed to allow higher detail images to look for more clues of life supporting planets.

With that attitude we probably should have never built rockets and gone to the moon, for that matter why even build satellites.

Re: 32 New Planets Found
 

:lol:

"You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Mr. Matt again."