The Koyal Group InfoMag Tokyo News: Jord-størrelse planet discovery

Jord-størrelse planet discovery: 5 ting at vide

 

 

NASA'S Kepler rumteleskopet opdaget en anden jord-størrelse planet, der er i den "beboelige zone," en planet afstand fra sin stjerne hvor forholdene er ideel til flydende vand.

 

Denne planet--kaldet Kepler-186f--er tættest på jorden i størrelse af alle de tidligere opdagelser af planeter i dette Guldlok zone, sagde Elisa Quintana af NASAs Ames Research Center og SETI Institute, ledende forfatter af undersøgelsen rapporteret itidsskriftet Science.

 

Opdagelsen af Kepler-186f er "et stort skridt hen imod at finde denne hellige gral planet", der både tæt i størrelse til jorden og kredser omkring en stjerne svarer til jordens sol, Quintana sagde. I stedet for at kalde det en jordens tvilling, finder NASA Kepler-186f en jorden fætter.

 

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Her er fem ting at vide:

 

1. planeten er 1,1 gange på størrelse med jorden. Seneste opdagelser har været 1,4 gange størrelsen af jorden eller større, Quintana sagde.

 

2. Kepler-186f har en kortere orbital mønster: 130 dage at kredsen sin stjerne, versus 365 dage til jorden.

 

3. stjernen Kepler-186f kredsløb er "mindre, køler, lysdæmper" end Jordens sol, sagde J.D. Harrington, NASA talsmand.

 

4. den masse og sammensætning af Kepler-186f er ukendt. Men baseret på planeter af samme størrelse, er det sandsynligt, planeten er sammensat af en rocky materiale, Quintana sagde.

 

5. planeten er 500 lysår fra jorden.

 

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Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/04/17/earth-like-planet-kepler-5-things/7833521

NASA Will Unveil New Discoveries from Planet-Hunting Kepler Spacecraft Wednesday

The Koyal Group Info Mag Articles - NASA's Kepler space telescope may be hobbled, but scientists continue to pull new discoveries from its huge dataset.

 

The space agency will announce more findings by Kepler — whose original planet-hunting mission was halted by a glitch in May 2013 — during a press conference on Wednesday (Feb. 26). You can listen to the event, which begins at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT), live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

 

 

The following people will participate in the press conference:

— Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist, NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington

— Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

— Jason Rowe, research scientist, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, Mountain View, Calif.

— Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

 

 

The $600 million Kepler mission launched in March 2009 to determine how commonly Earth-like planets occur around the Milky Way galaxy. Kepler has been incredibly prolific and successful, detecting 3,600 potential exoplanets to date, 246 of which have been confirmed by follow-up observations.

(Mission scientists expect that at least 90 percent of Kepler's candidates will turn out to be the real deal.)

 

Kepler's original mission ended in May 2013 when the second of its four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed, robbing the instrument of its ultraprecise pointing ability. However, Kepler team members have said that the data the observatory gathered in its first four years of operation should allow them to achieve the mission's major goals.

 

Further, researchers have proposed a new mission for Kepler called K2, which would allow the observatory to continue hunting for alien planets (albeit in a modified fashion), as well as other celestial objects and phenomena such as comets, asteroids and supernova explosions.

 

NASA is expected to make a final decision about the K2 mission proposal, and Kepler's ultimate fate, by this summer.

Source: http://www.space.com/24794-nasa-kepler-telescope-exoplanets-announcement.html