NASA Discovers First Earth-Size Planets Beyond Our Solar System

[james_davis_nicoll]

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.

Comments

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

I mentioned this to a guy in my office and his response pretty much sums up my feelings now: we're passed the point where finding an Earth-sized planet, even in the Goldilocks Zone, will be surprising or exciting. Now, it's pretty much "Call us when you detect oxygen in the atmosphere."

[dewline.livejournal.com]

A shame, that sort of reaction.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Not at all; it means that what was 20 years ago a possibility has become an accepted reality. And that's awesome.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

We've passed the point of asking "Is it out there?" By now even the lay public is confident such planets are out there, it's just a matter of time until we find them. And discovering an Earth sized planet in the Goldilocks Zone will justify more funding and examination, not a media circus.

Like you, I try to view this as a good thing.

Interestingly, most science fiction put the 'finding new planets faster than the newspapers can report them' stage later in Future History than building the first starship, never mind before the first moon colony.

[(Anonymous)]

Few people foresaw just how good our observational techniques would be by this time: perhaps this is not unrelated to "stealth in space." (Also, in early SF FTL often seemed "just around the corner...")

Bruce

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Wondering what the details were on this latest press conference.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

A planet smaller than Mercury was actually found back in 1994, but it was orbiting a pulsar.