Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by George on December 5, 2011 at 7:00pm

It's a little misleading how they depict the planet as bluish in color with white clouds like earth, since they have no idea what it actually looks like. 

Permalink Reply by Marc Draco on December 5, 2011 at 7:13pm

Oh George! you're such a cynic.

Lol.

The gotcha is its 600 AUs away. Bit too far to pop over and borrow a cup of sugar.

Permalink Reply by Stacy on December 5, 2011 at 8:11pm

True. I don't think we have ever actually visually seen a planet in another solar system. My understanding is we just detect that the planet is there because of its gravitation effects, is that correct?

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on December 5, 2011 at 8:18pm

That's how they do it, yes.  They use the wobble of the star to calculate an estimate of the mass and distance of planets orbiting it.

Permalink Reply by George on December 6, 2011 at 4:14am

Actually the Kepler telescope uses the transit method of detecting planets.  It watches for slight dimming of stars as a planet passes in front of it.  

The wobble method hasn't been performed  yet.

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on December 6, 2011 at 7:29am

Oh.  Well, I've read some stuff about the development of the wobble method.  Blurred the two methods together, I guess.

Permalink Reply by Susan Stanko on December 5, 2011 at 7:50pm

Phil Plait blogged about this.

Permalink Reply by George on December 6, 2011 at 3:38am

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/12/05/kepler-co...

The problem is we don’t know the planet’s mass. Kepler’s transit technique doesn’t find that; it has to be determined using very tricky observations of the planet’s gravity as it tugs o.... Since Kepler-22b’s orbit is 290 days long, that makes this kind of observation much harder (the closer in the planet, the harder it pulls on the star, and the bigger the signal… plus you don’t have to wait as long for it to go around once). 

Permalink Reply by Chris Dodds on December 5, 2011 at 8:27pm

What it looks like isn't really important.  What's important is that this is the first planet outside of our solar system existing in a habitable zone, or the "Goldilocks Zone" as astronomers call it, in history.  At least as far as I know.

Permalink Reply by John Jubinsky on December 6, 2011 at 4:40am

I was going to start a discussion on this discovery but you beat me to it! Actually there have been about 50 other possible goldilocks planets discovered so far:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-nasa-planets-plenty-solar.html 

There is an organization called SETI that is trying to detect life suggesting radio signals from the goldilocks planets.

http://news.discovery.com/space/seti-to-hunt-for-aliens-on-keplers-...

Permalink Reply by Orson_Zedd on December 5, 2011 at 8:36pm

it'll take generations, but we should move there immediately

Permalink Reply by Chris Dodds on December 5, 2011 at 9:25pm

Why exactly? :/

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