“Milky Way Home to Billions of Free-Floating Life-Bearing Planets” –Originated in Early Universe
A few hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way. So argues an international team of scientists led by Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Buckingham Center for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, UK. The scientists have proposed that these life-bearing planets originated in the early Universe within a few million years of the Big Bang, and that they make up most of the so-called “missing mass” of galaxies. The team calculated that such a planetary body would cross the inner solar system every 25 million years on the average and during each transit, zodiacal dust, including a component of the solar system’s living cells, becomes implanted at its surface. The free-floating planets would then have the added property of mixing the products of local biological evolution on a galaxy-wide scale.
Since 1995, when the first extrasolar planet was reported, interest in searching for planets has reached a feverish pitch. The 750 or so detections of exoplanets are all of planets orbiting stars, and very few, if any, have been deemed potential candidates for life. The possibility of a much larger number of planets was first suggested in earlier studies where the effects of gravitational lensing of distant quasars by intervening planet-sized bodies were measured.
NASA: “Goldilocks Planet Will Be Found Within Next Two Years”
Certainly you remember the story of Goldilocks and the tree bears told to you as a child by a knowing adult? What does a fairy tale have to do with Space exploration? As the numbers mount, it seems to be just a matter of time before Kepler finds what astronomers are really looking for: an Earth-like planet orbiting its star in the “Goldilocks zone”—that is, at just the right distance for liquid water and life.
“I believe Kepler will find a ‘Goldilocks planet’ within the next two years,” says Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a researcher at NASA HQ who specializes in exoplanet biology. “We’ll be able to point at a specific star in the night sky and say ‘There it is—a planet that could support life!’”
Kepler has already located a few Earth-sized planets, but they are too close for comfort to their parent stars. These recent finds have heightened the sense that a big discovery is just around the corner.
Milchstraße hat Milliarden erdähnliche Planeten
Ein europäisches Forscherteam hat neu abgeschätzt, wie viele lebensfreundliche Planeten es in unserer kosmischen Nachbarschaft geben könnte. Die Zahl fällt extrem hoch aus – auch wenn viele der Himmelskörper wohl regelmäßig von Strahlungsblitzen geröstet werden.
Neue Super-Erde begeistert Astronomen
Ein internationales Forscherteam will einen besonders lebensfreundlichen Planeten in einem nahen Sternsystem aufgespürt haben. Auf der Suche nach einer zweiten Erde halten sie den Himmelskörper GJ 667Cc für den bisher spannendsten Kandidaten.
Senior-Stern lässt geröstete Planeten zurück
In fünf Milliarden Jahren wird es auf der Erde ziemlich heiß: Die Sonne wird sich aufblähen und unseren Planeten verschlingen. Astronomen haben jetzt zwei Planeten gefunden, die durch solch eine Gluthölle gegangen sind – und irgendwie überlebt haben.
The Milky Way’s Two Billion Earthlike Planets
“Aliens could have been pointing their antennas at Earth for 4.6 billion years, without picking up a signal. Maybe the inhabitants [of a Twin Earth] are at the level of the classical Romans … or maybe trilobites. We need to check out hundreds of thousands of Earthlike worlds.”
NASA announced that Kepler has uncovered 1,094 more potential planets, twice the number it previously had been tracking, including more than 500 planets found to orbit stars beyond our solar system. IThe newly discovered Kepler 22-B is the smallest and the best positioned to have liquid water on its surface – among the ingredients necessary for life on Earth. It is 2.4 times the size of the Earth, putting it in a class known as “super-Earths”.
Weltraumteleskop entdeckt erdähnlichen Planeten
Ein Zwilling unseres Planeten, bewohnbar wie die Erde: Das Nasa-Weltraumteleskop Kepler hat nun den Beweis erbracht, dass es ihn gibt. Der Himmelskörper Kepler 22b umkreist in 600 Lichtjahren Entfernung einen sonnenähnlichen Stern – und bietet Bedingungen, unter denen Leben möglich wäre.
Earth Would Be a Flashing “Life Exists Here!” Billboard to ET Astronomers
In two new videos from NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft, bright flashes of light known as sun glints act as beacons signaling large bodies of water on Earth. These observations give scientists a way to pick out planets beyond our solar system (extrasolar planets) that are likely to have expanses of liquid, and so stand a better chance of having life. ‘
These sun glints are like sunshine glancing off the hood of a car. We can see them reflecting off a smooth surface when we are positioned in just the right way with respect to the sun and the smooth surface. On a planetary scale, only liquids and ice can form a surface smooth enough to produce the effect—land masses are too rough—and the surface must be very large. To stand out against a background of other radiation from a planet, the reflected light must be very bright. We won’t necessarily see glints from every distant planet that has liquids or ice.
Astronomen vermuten 50 Milliarden Planeten in Milchstraße
Wie viele Planeten gibt es allein in unserer Galaxis? Mithilfe des Nasa-Teleskops “Kepler” wollen US-Forscher diese Frage beantworten. Die Zählung im All liefert beeindruckende Daten: 50 Milliarden Planeten sollen es sein, Leben könnte auf 500 Millionen existieren.
Space Alert: Kepler Mission Discovers 1st Rocky Exo Planet
NASA’s Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system. The discovery of this planet, called an exoplanet, is based on more than eight months of data collected by the spacecraft from May 2009 to early January 2010.
“All of Kepler’s best capabilities have converged to yield the first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun,” said Natalie Batalha, Kepler’s deputy science team lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “The Kepler team made a commitment in 2010 about finding the telltale signatures of small planets in the data, and it’s beginning to pay off.”
Forscher entdecken lebensfreundlichen Planeten
US-Astronomen haben in den Weiten des Alls zwei Planeten entdeckt. Einer davon weist Ähnlichkeiten zu unserer Erde auf – und ist möglicherweise für die Entstehung von Leben geeignet.
Dimitar Sasselov: How we found hundreds of Earth-like planets
Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov and his colleagues search for Earth-like planets that may, someday, help us answer centuries-old questions about the origin and existence of biological life elsewhere (and on Earth). How many such planets have they found already? Several hundreds.
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