NASA spots smallest Exo-planet yet discovered


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(CNN) -- A NASA spacecraft has detected a rocky planet that is the smallest ever discovered outside the Sun's solar system, the agency announced Monday.

The exoplanet -- so named because it orbits a star other than the Sun -- has been dubbed Kepler-10b. It measures 1.4 times the Earth's diameter and was confirmed after more than eight months of data collection, the agency said. It is the first rocky, or Earth-like, planet discovered by Kepler.

"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, deputy science team leader for the NASA mission. "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."

Kepler-10b's size and rocky composition would make it more likely than gaseous planets to contain liquid water, and perhaps life of some kind, if it were the right distance from its star, NASA said. However, it is much too close to the star -- 20 times closer than Mercury is to the Sun.

Kepler-10b's star is about 560 light years from Earth, according to NASA.

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Im wondering of what practical use this information could be...

Any ideas?

I went through the article like...

nod nod... ahem... yeah... nod nod...

Glassed Silver:mac

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Im wondering of what practical use this information could be...

Any ideas?

I went through the article like...

nod nod... ahem... yeah... nod nod...

Glassed Silver:mac

Just that we have the ability to detect planets fairly close in size to Earth, which is around the right size range to have a solid surface, liquid water, and hold an atmosphere.

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Just that we have the ability to detect planets fairly close in size to Earth, which is around the right size range to have a solid surface, liquid water, and hold an atmosphere.

Yea, I got that part...

I was just wondering what we are going to do with this specific tidbit, as the planet is extremely far away....

Glassed Silver:mac

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Yea, I got that part...

I was just wondering what we are going to do with this specific tidbit, as the planet is extremely far away....

Glassed Silver:mac

Does it really matter what is done with the data?, We are learning and discovering new things, that's all that should matter.

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Yea, I got that part...

I was just wondering what we are going to do with this specific tidbit, as the planet is extremely far away....

Glassed Silver:mac

This one is, there are a lot of stars to search. One thing that's interesting is if we get really good at identifying these planets then we can do more focused radio listening with SETI.

This planet itself isn't such an amazing find (it just adds to the statistics about the prevalence of planets of this type) but the fact that we could detect it is a pretty good advancement.

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Yea, I got that part...

I was just wondering what we are going to do with this specific tidbit, as the planet is extremely far away....

Glassed Silver:mac

Plan our invasion?

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Im wondering of what practical use this information could be...

Any ideas?

I went through the article like...

nod nod... ahem... yeah... nod nod...

Glassed Silver:mac

At one point we were only able to detect other stars so there we no confirmation that other stars had planets that might support life.

Then we were able to spot large gas giants orbiting remote stars. This proved that other stars had at least some orbiting planets but gas giants aren't the most likely place to find life.

Now, we're able to spot rocky earth-like planets that are almost as small as the earth. Generally they still need to be about 50% bigger than the earth for us to find them.

Eventually, I think we'll find that there are many earth-like planets out there and as long as some are in their sun's Goldilocks Zone then the chance of confirming extra-terrestrial life will become very likely.

Those that are worried about alien invasion fleets should remember that we are far, far more likely to find simple single celled organisms and bacteria then we are to finding anything remotely as complicated as us.

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