Earth’s far-off ‘cousin’ could support life

[The Greater Ohio Valley]

If there is sentient life out there then I for one want to meet them and sample the local cuisine.

What if they eat dirt? Or slime? Or radioactive isotopes?

[Alcase]

Just like millions of other planets in that direction.

[Nervium]

If there is sentient life out there then I for one want to meet them and sample the local cuisine.

What if they eat dirt? Or slime? Or radioactive isotopes?

We must do whatever, in the name of Science!

[Northwest Slobovia]

Kepler-186f was discovered using NASA’s Kepler telescope, which scanned the Milky Way for Earth-sized planets with the potential to support life.

Kepler-186f is the fifth and outermost planet found orbiting around the dwarf star Kepler-186, 500 light years (roughly 4828 trillion kilometres) from Earth. It lies in the star’s “habitable zone”, at the right distance for it to harbour liquid water and so, potentially, life.

Stephen Kane, of San Francisco State University, a co-author of the paper in the journal Science, said: “Some people call these habitable planets, but we have no idea if they are.

Note that last line; it's important. The actual results -- not JPL's "artist's conception" -- are behind Science's paywall, but due to the wonders of deep linking and cut&paste, I can show some of it.

Kepler-186f doesn't get a lot of light, in fact, it gets less light than Mars:



bigger

A crude analysis would then it the planet colder than Mars, but since the star it orbits is cooler and redder than the sun...
1) It's probably a bit warmer than that, since a greater proportion of the light is in heat (infrared)
2) but by the same token, the smaller fraction of visible light is troublesome for there being life there, because water absorbs both IR and UV light, so there's less light for photosynthesis and less light to see by.


The article goes on to mention that the estimates of the planet's mass are very, very loose, and it could be a gas giant; but the authors think that that's unlikely:

Although photometry alone does not yield planet masses, we used planetary thermal evolution models to constrain the composition of the Kepler-186 planets. These theories predict that the composition of planets with radii less than about 1.5 R⊕ is unlikely to be dominated by H/He gas envelopes (23). Although a thin H/He envelope around Kepler-186f cannot be entirely ruled out, the planet was probably vulnerable to photoevaporation early in the star’s life, when extreme ultraviolet flux from the star was significantly higher. Hence, any H/He envelope that was accreted would probably have been stripped by hydrodynamic mass loss (23). Although Kepler-186f probably does not have a thick H2-rich atmosphere, a degeneracy remains between the relative amounts of iron, silicate rock, and water, because the planet could hold on to all of these cosmically abundant constituents. Mass estimates for Kepler-186f can therefore range from 0.32 M⊕ if composed of pure water/ice to 3.77 M⊕ if the planet is pure iron, and an Earth-like composition (about 1/3 iron and 2/3 silicate rock) would give an intermediate mass of 1.44 M⊕ (table S3).

... as a side effect, we don't know what sort of atmosphere the planet has, so take the artist's depiction as pure wishful thinking. My astronomically well-placed source tells me that NASA HQ is to blame for that, and the Kepler team would rather not say that the world is "Earth-like". Take all such claims with a pound of salt.

[San Mazer]

Think about it guys, if this planet is harboring a reasonably advanced, sentient civilization, I say we try and send out some satellites that can record the daily lives of it's inhabitants!

Think "The Truman Show" crossed with that South Park episode (That involved the alien morphing into a talking taco). Hundreds of years from now, our civilization will truly ascend to it's ultimate form... by observing the lives of inferior civilizations for entertainment!

[Nervium]

Think about it guys, if this planet is harboring a reasonably advanced, sentient civilization, I say we try and send out some satellites that can record the daily lives of it's inhabitants!

Think "The Truman Show" crossed with that South Park episode (That involved the alien morphing into a talking taco). Hundreds of years from now, our civilization will truly ascend to it's ultimate form... by observing the lives of inferior civilizations for entertainment!

Indeed! And the time to get there (a few thousand years) will be totally worth it!

[Blazedtown]

Think about it guys, if this planet is harboring a reasonably advanced, sentient civilization, I say we try and send out some satellites that can record the daily lives of it's inhabitants!

Think "The Truman Show" crossed with that South Park episode (That involved the alien morphing into a talking taco). Hundreds of years from now, our civilization will truly ascend to it's ultimate form... by observing the lives of inferior civilizations for entertainment!

More like thousands unless we develop FTL. At light speed its a 500 year one way trip. Using an orion drive, a one way trip using a momentum limited drive would take 15,217 years.

[San Mazer]

Think about it guys, if this planet is harboring a reasonably advanced, sentient civilization, I say we try and send out some satellites that can record the daily lives of it's inhabitants!

Think "The Truman Show" crossed with that South Park episode (That involved the alien morphing into a talking taco). Hundreds of years from now, our civilization will truly ascend to it's ultimate form... by observing the lives of inferior civilizations for entertainment!

Indeed! And the time to get there (a minor 700 years, that is, with the fastest technology available) will be totally worth it!

And if we could get the TV networks convinced, they'd provide more funding than NASA ever could. Truly our future in space rests with our media corporations.

[Nervium]

Indeed! And the time to get there (a minor 700 years, that is, with the fastest technology available) will be totally worth it!

And if we could get the TV networks convinced, they'd provide more funding than NASA ever could. Truly our future in space rests with our media corporations.

That's a scary thought.

[San Mazer]

And if we could get the TV networks convinced, they'd provide more funding than NASA ever could. Truly our future in space rests with our media corporations.

That's a scary thought.

Think of the (terrifying) possibilities!

[Gauthier]

And if we could get the TV networks convinced, they'd provide more funding than NASA ever could. Truly our future in space rests with our media corporations.

That's a scary thought.

All that money would be funneled into either spaceship battles or Crocodile Hunter... IN SPAAAAAAACE.

[Northwest Slobovia]

Think about it guys, if this planet is harboring a reasonably advanced, sentient civilization, I say we try and send out some satellites that can record the daily lives of it's inhabitants!

Think "The Truman Show" crossed with that South Park episode (That involved the alien morphing into a talking taco). Hundreds of years from now, our civilization will truly ascend to it's ultimate form... by observing the lives of inferior civilizations for entertainment!

More like thousands unless we develop FTL. At light speed its a 500 year one way trip. Using an orion drive, a one way trip using a momentum limited drive would take 15,217 years.

Or substantially longer than all of human history.

Barring fast FTL travel and/or communications working, I'm not sure it's practical to try to talk to or visit another civilization more than a light-decade or so away.

[Nervium]

That's a scary thought.

All that money would be funneled into either spaceship battles or Crocodile Hunter... IN SPAAAAAAACE.

No, try and imagine, bear with me here, a planet colonised;
By Fox News.

[San Mazer]

All that money would be funneled into either spaceship battles or Crocodile Hunter... IN SPAAAAAAACE.

No, try and imagine, bear with me here, a planet colonised;
By Fox News.

No, you are not being pessimistic enough.

A planet colonised;
By MTV.

[Gauthier]

No, try and imagine, bear with me here, a planet colonised;
By Fox News.

No, you are not being pessimistic enough.

A planet colonised;
By MTV.

Worse.

A planet colonised by every Television Reality Show ever created.

[Sensorland]

If it does support life, i imagine they would be somewhat like us, and intelligent, as well.

[Sensorland]

If it does support life, it would be quite interesting to see what lived on the planet. It would also prove something to all those people who say lifeforms on other planets are nonexistent.

I don't think it would change very much. Even if it DOES support life, it would take forever for us to get to it, if at all. I think 80% of us would be dead by the time they get efficient enough technology to make a sustained voyage, but I could be wrong.

And we may reach them, then be turds and take over their planet and colonize it for humanity. Standard human nature.

Standard Human Nature = Stereotypical Alien Nature. We would be the aliens. Humans = The most successful invasive species ever.

[Northwest Slobovia]

I don't think it would change very much. Even if it DOES support life, it would take forever for us to get to it, if at all. I think 80% of us would be dead by the time they get efficient enough technology to make a sustained voyage, but I could be wrong.

And we may reach them, then be turds and take over their planet and colonize it for humanity. Standard human nature.

Standard Human Nature = Stereotypical Alien Nature. We would be the aliens. Humans = The most successful invasive species ever.humans know about.

Fixed that for ya.

[Diopolis]

To answer a question I saw earlier, the spaceship wouldn't be launched from Earth. Instead, the component parts would be launched into orbit where they would be compiled. Also, I'm not about this whole nuclear pulse nonsense, I'd think an ion drive would be more likely.

Nuclear pulse makes more sense, at least for the first stage, due to higher acceleration.

[Terra Sector Union]

Ah another potential candidate for human space colonisation. 500 light years is too far though.

[Divair2]

Another possibility to add to the massive list.

[Oaledonia]

I don't think it would change very much. Even if it DOES support life, it would take forever for us to get to it, if at all. I think 80% of us would be dead by the time they get efficient enough technology to make a sustained voyage, but I could be wrong.

And we may reach them, then be turds and take over their planet and colonize it for humanity. Standard human nature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Or ... propulsion)

It would still take something like 600 or 700 hundred years to get there, but if we wanted to we could built one right now that could get there today. Only thing stopping us is anti-nuclear paranoia on the left and anti-scientific nonsense on the right. We could have hundreds of people on Mars right now if JFK wasn't such a pussy.

Orion battleships were also an idea, just in case spess.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

If there is sentient life out there then I for one want to meet them and sample the local cuisine.

What if they eat dirt? Or slime? Or radioactive isotopes?

What if it's delicious and cures HIV?

[Swanderfeld]

If there is sentient life out there then I for one want to meet them and sample the local cuisine.

What if they eat dirt? Or slime? Or radioactive isotopes?

I thought local cuisine in context of alien was a generally understood term for aliens themselves being the cuisine... unless its silicon based lifeform that breaths out sand, I think its fairly certain we can eat them.

[Destrovia]

We should stop fighting for ten seconds so we can take it over and have a new fighting place.

#Humanity