Astronomy / Space New Exoplanet Discovery!

...in the real world, the Kepler 'scope has found what they think is an 'earth-like' planet, 475 LY from Sol.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30705517

Kepler-438b is being touted as the 'most earthlike' of the exoplanets discovered by the Kepler 'scope... however, I can't seem to find out which SYSTEM it is in - though some sites specify the Lyra constellation.

Lyra consists of about ten stars, according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyra

Has anyone found it? Can you confirm what sort of a world it is? ;)
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
All eight were picked out by Nasa's Kepler space telescope, taking its tally of such "exoplanets" past 1,000.
But only three sit safely within the "habitable zone" of their host star - and one in particular is rocky, like Earth, as well as only slightly warmer.

So out of every 1000 planets that could support some kind of life, 3 of those sit a similar distance from their sun as our Earth does. 3 out of every thousand planets and there are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in our galaxy alone.
 
What I am always amazed at is how freely they use the term "potentially earth-like" when all they can see from this distance is a small distortion of the light of the parent star as it is obstructed by the planet moving in front of it, from our point of view.

From this tiny reduction on light intensity they extrapolate the estimated (!) size of the planet, and it's distance from the main star. All they can probably tell is whether it is in the parent star's habitable zone, and how big it is.

The size, however, says nothing about the stuff this planet is made of. Sure, it is LIKELY that a planet roughly the same size as earth MIGHT be a rocky planet with a metal core, as ours is. Still, that doesn't mean it has an atmosphere, or could sustain one if somehow, in a distant future, we should actually manage to successfully terraform planets. It's also impossible to tell whether there is water on this planet or not.

Any astronomers here who can correct me? I have all my limited knowledge from documentaries. :D

So out of every 1000 planets that could support some kind of life, 3 of those sit a similar distance from their sun as our Earth does. 3 out of every thousand planets and there are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in our galaxy alone.

Careful... you are assuming a bit too much here. "Habitable zone" does not mean "similar distance to their sun as Earth". Every star has a different habitable zone, depending on its radiation output. Bigger stars than our Sun have their habitable zone far out, thousands of lightseconds away, whereas M-Type Red Dwarfs might need an earthlike planet to have such a close orbit that it would be tidally locked like our moon... always facing the star with the same side because the gravity of the star does not allow the planet to rotate.
 
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Michael Brookes

Game Director
...in the real world, the Kepler 'scope has found what they think is an 'earth-like' planet, 475 LY from Sol.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30705517

Kepler-438b is being touted as the 'most earthlike' of the exoplanets discovered by the Kepler 'scope... however, I can't seem to find out which SYSTEM it is in - though some sites specify the Lyra constellation.

Lyra consists of about ten stars, according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyra

Has anyone found it? Can you confirm what sort of a world it is? ;)

It's in this system:

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=2MASS+J18463499+4157039&submit=SIMBAD+search

And it looks like it's already in game but not with the right planet classification.

Michael
 
It says it orbits a red dwarf. I am not an expert but I seem to recall reading that red dwarfs are not very good for developing life.
 
It says it orbits a red dwarf. I am not an expert but I seem to recall reading that red dwarfs are not very good for developing life.

I always cringe at sentences like these. "Life" always meaning "human life". There are many forms of life that could inhabit a planet around an M-Type Star. Just because humans can't walk around on it naked doesn't mean "it cannot sustain life". Pretty presumpuous of us to associate "life" only with "life as we know it".
 
I wonder if David has any plans to update ED to include any new significant finds in real life.
 
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It says it orbits a red dwarf. I am not an expert but I seem to recall reading that red dwarfs are not very good for developing life.

I think you're right. They can be flare stars which release very large coronal mass ejections that would sterilize a planet. And to receive that amount of heat from s red dwarf the planet is probably tidally locked which isn't ideal!
 
Will this get updated at some point?

Also it has an average temperature of 60 celcius, slightly warm at least for humans!

You could live at the poles. The problem with red dwarfs seems to be their activity patterns so things can vary a lot and that is why they're hard to develop life. It is probably easier for them to "sustain life" instead of "developing life" though... if we ever walk the stars.

Again... not an expert. Just read a little about it.
 
Any astronomers here who can correct me? I have all my limited knowledge from documentaries. :D.

Not going to correct you but I will add that it is possible to figure out the chemical composition of the atmosphere of a planet based on the spectrum of light it 'emits'. You can also determine the minerals on the surface from the light reflected off of it. It is quite interesting really.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy#Planets.2C_asteroids.2C_and_comets
 
You could live at the poles. The problem with red dwarfs seems to be their activity patterns so things can vary a lot and that is why they're hard to develop life. It is probably easier for them to "sustain life" instead of "developing life" though... if we ever walk the stars.

Again... not an expert. Just read a little about it.

Even in hot regions Thermophilic life could still evolve and thrive, but yes, for life with human temperature tolerances it would have to be at the poles or close to them, would be a reasonable choice for a colony at a push though, as longs as the solar activity isn't too extreme.
 
It says it orbits a red dwarf. I am not an expert but I seem to recall reading that red dwarfs are not very good for developing life.

The habitable zone for planets will tend to be a lot closer to the parent star in the case of a red dwarf. If our sun (yellow dwarf or G-type main-sequence star ) was a red dwarf, Earth would be a very different kind of planet because we would be too far away.

So the general rule of thumb is... The hotter the star, the further away the habitable zone will be. Below is an image that illustrates this.


View attachment 7150

[EDIT] Also, the current thinking amongst astronomers is that it is more likely to find life around red dwarf stars than any other type simply because its easier (less time consuming) to detect planets in close orbits.
 
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