715 Newly Verified Planets More Than Triples the Number of Confirmed Kepler Planets

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
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http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=324

Must be one that I can live on so I have to pick one out and then figure out how to get there using a worm hole or maybe the LHC can move my craft full of computers and all my satellite dishes without crushing me.......still have my 10ft dish and it does look like that dish they used in the movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1959)

Mike Hewson
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715 Newly Verified Planets More Than Triples the Number of Confi

I don't know 'bout you, Magic but this is an amazing finding :

Quote:
Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.

This will cause an immense impact on our culture when it sinks in.

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
MAGIC Quantum M...
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RE: I don't know 'bout you,

Quote:

I don't know 'bout you, Magic but this is an amazing finding :

Quote:
Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.

This will cause an immense impact on our culture when it sinks in.

Cheers, Mike.

I agree Mike,

But you also know it takes quite a while for reality to sink in on our planet!

(which is why I want my own planet out there)

Cheers

Mike Hewson
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RE: But you also know it

Quote:
But you also know it takes quite a while for reality to sink in on our planet!

We will get denial, conspiracy theories etc all in abundance shortly ie. the faces on Mars crowd. Ideas from the bottom of the beerglass/bong. Medievalism redux. Mystic relevance to the whole gamut of current social & political issues. The topic will turn into a dog's breakfast quick slick. The science of astronomy has always had that annoying habit of displacing Mankind from the center of the cosmos. This finding is roughly equivalent to Galileo finding moons around Jupiter. It cuts to be told that we may be nothing special .... except to ourselves of course. Childishness will come out.

Otherwise : Yeah! Get in quick ! :-)

I'll take the one with a 'year' = 30 days, it has a half Sun mass and so will last a good long stretch. Say thirty billion years maybe? It's quoted as having twice Earth's mass, but as the planet's radius is unknown, then so is the surface gravity. But it still sounds like I'll have to bulk up before I go. As you say, one can just stay in orbit and chat to the locals on a downlink, without any quarantine problem.

So that's sorted. Happy to share that one with you ! ;-)

Now all we need is one of those hyper-jump thingies.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Hey! Way cool ! :-) For Kepler-223 :

Quote:
... The period ratios of consecutive candidates are now estimated (from in side outwards) as: 1.3337, 1.5017 and 1.3336, with uncertainties of < 10^[−4], placing the pairs within 1 part in 10^3 of exact mean motion resonance ...

that being 3 : 4, 2 : 3, and 3 : 4 respectively.

What this means is :

(a) These signals are from objects that are interacting ie. within same star system and

(b) have been so for some time in order for resonances to evolve.

Orbital resonance is a well known characteristic of our solar system planets. The idea is that it is energetically favorable for planets, in the long term, to turn up in certain phases of their orbits when they are either close together or far apart. Or put another way, the tugs and pulls b/w the planets as they orbit the central body causes them to enter regular timing relationships.

A good analogy of this is two grandfather clocks side by side, they will interact in small but definite ways by vibrations through the floor that they stand on, say, and in doing so will start to swing with a constant phase relationship. For instance swinging to the left together and then to the right, or in together then out together etc. Many variants.

( edit ) I should mention that in generality the methodology here is 'fitness to The Duck Test'. Meaning that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck THEN we will call it A Duck. It may in reality, or on closer examination, further data etc turn out to be A Goose With Odd Feathers, A Limp And A Sore Throat. But with whatever may refine the hypothesis it is still going to be Duck-ish. So beware the counter argument/technique of claiming total error when all we really have is a more precise specification. This ( lame duck! ) counter argument is often used in 'debates' like Einstein Sez Newton Wuz Wrong etc .... yielding non-questions based on false premises, straw men and the like.

( edit ) Did I mention that such systems ought be A Really Good Target For SETI Searches ... ??

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
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Yes Mike that may never

Yes Mike that may never change and once we put man on Mars *they* will still say we are hiding the truth from that face on Mars crowd and there are still plenty that say we faked those trips to the Moon even though it is not very far away and I have more miles on my gasoline burning vehicles.
(and where I live the "bong crowd" has passed the "beerglass Crowd" but then they put the two together)

But like I said I still want to make the trip to find my planet as close to the 671,000,000 mph as I can (but I won't mind taking a full 10 minutes to fly past our Star) but then I would like to be more like I was at 30 than I am at 56 and be on a planet where you never age (hey I read about a place like that a few times)

But I still want to have my *Earth-like* things I have here on my new planet.....maybe the LHC can send me the things to watch on tv but then why not just bring that all with me on a multi TB drive.

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspace_(science_fiction)[/url]

Maybe build my own version of the Arecibo RT just a bit larger to listen to what is going on here on Earth.......sure it will be old news but I could try and send the Seti people a signal they have been looking for (ok it might just be me watching an old movie or an episode of Mr Ed or Lost In Space)

2.5 times the size of Earth is enough room for me too so I will just look at the ones the size of Neptune (ok I will need a good telescope with me too)

Johannes Kepler only made it 2 years longer than I am now and Tycho Brahe 2 years less and 400 years later we still use what they discovered ......they would like visiting my new planet but then they would probably be amazed just stopping by my place here on Earth

whatever succeeds for the finite, also succeeds for the infinite

Maybe 400 years from now all the text here will be saved on a single tiny chip.

Cheers

Billy Russell
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Good evening 'crunchers'. Can

Good evening 'crunchers'. Can I say as of last night I have now scanned and marked my 10,000th light curve on the Kepler 'Planethunters' website. Amazingly, I only discovered recently that my 'username' is listed against 2 planet 'candidates' to be confirmed soon! (Kepler ID = SPH10018822). I am extremely proud of that. Regards to all. Billy R.

Mike Hewson
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Well done Billy! That's a

Well done Billy! That's a cool site, let's hope you nail one. :-)

There's alot of good, basic physics to be learnt from the Kepler project. May I strongly recommend the viewing of Dr Natalie Batalha's talk including the question time at the end. She is a lead scientist at Ames and has done a wonderful job of simply explaining the processes. Especially the notion of 'sampling bias' or if you like : if one uses the DuckMeter-5000 then you tend to get Duck matches.

One really cool question is 'what nearby systems might our dear Earth be casting a shadow upon in order for us to be detectable'? You have to get your own head right out of the solarsystem, and then look back towards it from some other system viewpoint to answer that. Another result is how prodigious nature is in producing Earth like bodies in Goldilocks zones, and what if we found an oxygen signature from one of them ? It's these sort of concepts which are very inspiring.

[ It's always best to go to primary sources ie. before some journalist has wordsmithed it. ]

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Indeed their analysis of light curves and survey strategies has strong similarities to the technical issues often discussed here at E@H. Whether it be visible, infrared, radio, gamma photons or 'gravitons' then there is that basic theme of teasing out regularities from within noisy data streams.

( edit ) Correction :

Quote:
It's quoted as having twice Earth's mass, but as the planet's radius is unknown, then so is the surface gravity

... other way around. It's the radius which is known - by the relative area upon the star that is occulted during transits - but the mass may not be. Hence density and composition etc. Interestingly the more complex multi-planet systems, which require alot more analysis to characterise the orbiting components, can yield more unique solutions ( less ambiguous/degenerate ). Hence with time one can 'weigh' the planets by leveraging the higher order ( but lower fractional intensity ) fluctuations. This is hard core, patient, high precision observation and analysis. The Herschels would be proud !

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

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