NASA Discovers Six-Planet Solar System

Multi-planet systems are extremely rare, and none with more than three planets have ever been found, until now. Credit: NASA/Kepler mission/Wendy Stenzel

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: A six-planet system has been discovered by NASA's space-telescope Kepler, and is the first known transiting planetary system beyond our own that has more than three planets orbiting a sun.

The planets are much smaller than many that have been discovered outside of our Solar System, which are often referred to as ‘hot Jupiters’ – a class of large planets that have a close proximity to their parent stars.

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My Comment: if they found six .... I am sure that it will only be a matter of time before they find seven.

Is There Life Out There?

Hunting: Nasa's planet-hunting telescope is finding whole new worlds of possibilities in the search for alien life

Chances Of Finding Aliens Given A Boost After Nasa Finds Evidence Of Over 1,200 MORE Planets - And 54 Of Them May Be Able To Support Life! -- The Daily Mail

The chances of finding alien life were given a boost last night after Nasa revealed it had found evidence of more than 1,200 planets in orbit around far distant stars.

If the findings are confirmed, it will more than triple the number of known planets outside our own solar system in one fell swoop - and, amazingly, 54 of them could be able to support life.

Only two potentially habitable planets have previously been found outside earth's solar system, so Kepler chief scientist William Borucki said 54 is 'an enormous amount, an inconceivable amount'.

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Earth-Like Planets Common In Outer Space

The red dwarf star Gliese 581 is only 20 light years away from Earth, and a number of planets orbiting, including one in the middle of the star's habitable zone that is only three to four times the mass of Earth, with a diameter 1.2 to 1.4 times that of Earth. Credit: Lynette Cook/NASA

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Planet Earth is not so special after all; there's one orbiting roughly every one in four Sun-like stars, according to a five-year astronomy study.

The study, published in the journal Science, used Hawaii's twin 10-metre Keck telescopes to scan 166 sun-like stars within 80 million light years, or about 757 trillion kilometres.

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Does ET Live On Goldilocks Planet?

From The Daily Mail:

An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged.

Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it.

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Distant World Could Support Life

ANOTHER WORLDGliese 581 (upper left in this artist’s depiction) has six confirmed planets, including one (foreground) that orbits the star at a distance hospitable to life. Lynette Cook

From Science News:

Scientists have spotted an Earth doppelgänger that may have the right specs to harbor life, in the Libra constellation just 20 light-years distant.

Although details about conditions on the planet’s surface remain a mystery, the find suggests that many more potentially habitable planets are likely to be found. The discovery is reported online September 29 at arXiv.org and will be described in an upcoming Astrophysical Journal.

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Freshly Discovered Earth-Like Planet Orbiting Nearby Star Could Be The First Truly Habitable Exoplanet

Gliese 581 Digital Sky Survey/ESO

From Popular Science:

A couple of math geeks recently calculated that the discovery of the first “habitable” exoplanet would be announced in May of next year -- but a few stargazers from UC Santa Cruz and their colleagues simply couldn’t wait that long. In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, the astronomers report the discovery of what may be the first truly habitable earth-like exoplanet orbiting the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581.

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Discovery Of The First Earth-Like, Habitable Exoplanet Will Be Announced In May Of 2011 (Maybe)

Kepler's View at First Light NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

From Popular Science:

The numbers are in, the data has been analyzed, and the date is now set: the discovery of an earth-like, habitable planet will be announced in May of next year. At least, that’s the conclusion reached by two professors at Harvard and U. of California, Santa Cruz, whose mathematical projections say that given the current pace of exoplanet discoveries, the finding of a suitable planet for life is right around the corner.

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This Planet Smells Funny

Image: An artist's concept of GJ 436b peeking out from behind its parent star, an M-dwarf much cooler than the sun.

From Space Daily:

Giant planet GJ 436b in the constellation Leo is missing something. Would you believe swamp gas? To the surprise of astronomers who have been studying the Neptune-sized planet using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, GJ 436b has very little methane (CH4).

"Methane should be abundant on a planet of this temperature and size, but we found 7000 times less methane than what the models predict," says Kevin Stevenson of the University of Central Florida (UCF). Stevenson was lead author of a paper reporting the result in the April 22, 2010, issue of Nature.

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Alien Oceans Could Be Detected By Telescopes

Image: The reflection of light or "glint" could reveal the existence of Earth-like planets.

From The BBC:

The next generation of telescopes could reveal the presence of oceans on planets outside our Solar System.

Detecting water on Earth-like planets offers the tantalising prospect they could sustain life.

Scientists hope the reflection of light, or "glint", from mirror-like ocean surfaces could be picked up by a US space telescope set for launch in 2014.

The research by US astronomers has been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Astronomers To Detect Alien Volcanoes

This artist's conception shows an extremely volcanic moon orbiting a gas giant planet in another star system. Credit: Wade Henning

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: Astronomers may soon be able to detect volcanic activity on planets outside our Solar System, providing further insight into ‘Earth-like’ alien worlds, according to a recent paper.

When large, explosive volcanic eruptions occur, they emit high quantities of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. Without an eruption, however, sulphur dioxide only occurs in an Earth-like stratosphere in very small amounts.

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Can We Spot Volcanoes On Alien Worlds? Astronomers Say Yes

This artist's conception shows an extremely volcanic moon orbiting a gas giant planet in another star system. New research suggests that astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope could potentially detect volcanic activity on a distant Earth-sized planet by measuring volcanic gases in its atmosphere. Credit: (Credit: Wade Henning)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2010) — Volcanoes display the awesome power of Nature like few other events. Earlier this year, ash from an Icelandic volcano disrupted air travel throughout much of northern Europe. Yet this recent eruption pales next to the fury of Jupiter's moon Io, the most volcanic body in our solar system.

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Kepler Probe Ffinds Two Saturn-Sized Planets Orbiting A Single Star 2,000 Light Years Away

An artist's impression of the two Saturn-sized planets as they orbit the same star

From The Daily Mail:

Two giant Saturn-sized planets have been spotted passing in front of the same star, Nasa scientists announced today.

It is the first time more than one planet has ever been discovered 'transiting' a single star.

The two planets were discovered by the space telescope Kepler and will give scientists vital information about how planets were formed and how they interact with each other.

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A Trick Of The Light -- Mankind’s Ability To Look For Planets Like Earth Just Got Five Times Bette

First rock from the sun

From The Economist:

THREE centuries have passed since the polymath Sir Christopher Wren predicted that “a time will come when men will stretch out their eyes—they should see planets like our Earth.” By most astronomers’ accounts, that time is just about nigh. Indeed, detecting big planets orbiting other stars is no longer tricky—nearly 450 such exoplanets have been catalogued. Smaller, rocky planets orbiting at a comfortable distance from their stars—as the Earth does—remain more elusive.

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Good Prospects For Extraterrestrial Life? Rocky Planets 'Are Commonplace' In Our Galaxy

An artist's impression of a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star. (Credit: NASA-JPL / Caltech / T. Pyle (SSC))

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 17, 2010) — An international team of astronomers have discovered compelling evidence that rocky planets are commonplace in our Galaxy. Leicester University scientist and lead researcher Dr Jay Farihi surveyed white dwarfs, the compact remnants of stars that were once like our Sun, and found that many show signs of contamination by heavier elements and possibly even water, improving the prospects for extraterrestrial life.

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Small, Ground-Based Telescope Images Three Exoplanets

This image shows the light from three planets orbiting a star 120 light-years away. The planets' star, called HR8799, is located at the spot marked with an 'X.' (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Palomar Observatory)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010) — Astronomers have snapped a picture of three planets orbiting a star beyond our own using a modest-sized telescope on the ground. The surprising feat was accomplished by a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using a small portion of the Palomar Observatory's Hale Telescope, north of San Diego.

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Stellar 'Pollution' May Be Remains Of Watery Planets

Sucking up rocky pollutants (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

From New Scientist:

A lost generation of planets may now be no more than a whiff of pollution in the atmospheres of their dead parent stars. If so, it would suggest that rocky planets are common, and hints that most such planets have water.

White dwarfs – the dense remnants of ordinary stars – usually have very pure atmospheres dominated by the lightweight elements hydrogen and helium, because heavier elements tend to sink into a star's interior. But about 20 per cent of white dwarfs are tainted by traces of heavier elements.

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Jumbo Planets Spotted Orbiting Backwards Around Nearby Stars

ESO/L. Calçada

From USA Today:

Wrong way planets -- two of nine jumbo planets reported Tuesday by European astronomers -- orbit opposite their star's rotation, unlike our own solar system.

The discovery means six of 27 "hot Jupiters", gas giant worlds orbiting close-in to their stars reported in recent years by the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) team, orbit the wrong way around stars. The WASP team searches for "transit" planets, ones that cause dips in the light from their stars, revealing their orbit's characteristics.

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Polluted Old Stars Suggest Earth-like Worlds May Be Common

From Space.com:

Earth-like planets should be a fairly common feature of other solar systems in our galaxy, a new study of stellar senior citizens suggests.

More than 90 percent of stars in the Milky Way, including our own sun, end their lives as a white dwarfs. Traditionally, these dense stellar remains haven't been the first place that astronomers look for signs of planets outside our own solar system. Instead, exoplanet searches have focused on stars like our own sun.

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Turning Planetary Theory Upside Down: Nine New Exoplanets Found, Some With Retrograde Orbits

Exoplanets, discovered by WASP together with ESO telescopes, that unexpectedly have been found to have retrograde orbits are shown here. In all cases the star is shown to scale, with its rotation axis pointing up and with realistic colours. The exoplanets are shown during the transit of their parent star, just before mid-transit. The last object at the lower right is for comparison and has a “normal” orbital direction. The size of each image is three solar diameters. (Credit: ESO/A. C. Cameron)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2010) — The discovery of nine new transiting exoplanets has been announced at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting. When these new results were combined with earlier observations of transiting exoplanets astronomers were surprised to find that six out of a larger sample of 27 were found to be orbiting in the opposite direction to the rotation of their host star -- the exact reverse of what is seen in our own solar system.

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Astronomers Discover 2 Shortcuts For Locating Earth-Like Planets

A young star with planets forming, illustrated here, may retain chemical clues about the worlds that surround it. ESO/L. Calçada

From Discover Magazine:

Astronomers Discover 2 Shortcuts for Locating Earth-Like Planets.

Since the discovery of planets outside our solar system in the 1990s, astronomers have tallied more than 400 extrasolar worlds, many unlike anything known before. Two recent studies show that the formation of planets may leave detectable chemical signatures in their host stars, a finding that could help scientists zero in on planetary systems even more quickly and speed the search for worlds similar to Earth.

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