Yay, more earthlikes had been found!!!

[PuffyEichhorst]

Hey guys,

I stumbled over this articel in the guardian and other news:

"Astronomers have added 219 candidates to the growing list of planets beyond our solar system, 10 of which may be about the same size and temperature as Earth, boosting their chances of hosting life.

Scientists found the candidates in a final batch of Nasa’s Kepler Space Telescope observations of 200,000 sample stars in the constellation Cygnus.

Nasa's Juno probe captures dramatic first close-up images of Jupiter

They include 10 newly discovered rocky worlds that are the right distance from their parent stars for water, if it exists there, to pool on the surface. Scientists believe liquid water is a key ingredient for life.'

I would like to check this out, but it's not really on my actual path. But i give it a go when i returned from my trip next week! Was somebody faster?

Saludos,
Bronco!

 

[Sapyx]

NASA's definition of "Earth-like" is not the same as ED's. Since we literally have no idea at the moment what conditions on these planets might be like as our current tech cannot measure the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere at all reliably. So by "Earth-like" they mean terrestrial, solid planets (analogous to the "High Metal Content" planets in ED) that are roughly Earth-sized and roughly in the "Goldilocks zone" of habitability. The vast majority of these "Earth-like" planets NASA and other astronomers have found so far are likely to be devoid of life in the ED universe, since life-bearing planets in ED are relatively rare.

 

[marx]

NASA's definition of "Earth-like" is not the same as ED's. Since we literally have no idea at the moment what conditions on these planets might be like as our current tech cannot measure the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere at all reliably. So by "Earth-like" they mean terrestrial, solid planets (analogous to the "High Metal Content" planets in ED) that are roughly Earth-sized and roughly in the "Goldilocks zone" of habitability. The vast majority of these "Earth-like" planets NASA and other astronomers have found so far are likely to be devoid of life in the ED universe, since life-bearing planets in ED are relatively rare.

Exactly. A good place in Elite to watch this "in action" would be the Trappist-1 system, (re)created with the orbits that the team found. Out of the seven NASA-Earth-like planets there, only one managed to satisfy the conditions to become an Elite-Earth-like world, and the rest turned out to be barren.

 

[PuffyEichhorst]

Ya, earthlike ist obviously too much said and from the desription they would not appear like the 'earthlikes' in elite whith huge oceans. Just imagine they would, what a great discovery it would be...
But i'm not sure if i saw this 'cygnus' constellation in elite they were talking about. I have been around the sol system only a few times...

 

[Sapyx]

Ya, earthlike ist obviously too much said and from the desription they would not appear like the 'earthlikes' in elite whith huge oceans. Just imagine they would, what a great discovery it would be...
But i'm not sure if i saw this 'cygnus' constellation in elite they were talking about. I have been around the sol system only a few times...

A "constellation" is a group of stars that appear to be close together in the sky as seen from Earth.The stars usually aren't actually close together, though, as a typical constellation is a combination of dim stars that are nearby, with bright stars that are far away. So "Cygnus" looks like a roughly rectangular patch of sky from Earth, but in-game, "Cygnus" would be a wedge-shaped slice of space, centred on Sol and pointing out tot he edge of the galaxy. Stars that are "in Cygnus" vary from 61 Cygni, only 11 LY from Sol, all the way out to Cygnus X-1, 6000 LY away.

Many of the newly announced Kepler planetary systems haven't had their distances calculated yet; they can;t be entered into a 3-d star map like the one in ED without an accurate distance.