What you're looking at is a visual representation, to scale, of the stars with "earth like" candidate planets so far found by the Kepler probe. In other words, exo-planets the approximate size of Earth, orbiting their stars at what might be the "Goldilocks zone" where conditions are neither too hot nor too cold, allowing the possibility that liquid water could be found on the surface.
Each star is shown in scale, with Jupiter and Earth transiting Sol by themselves below the first row. You need to view the picture at its original size by clicking here to see the Earth, since the visible dot you're seeing on my blog is Jupiter.
If you scroll down the original image when you get there (and let it load, it's quite large), you'll see that some stars that approximate ours in size do indeed have candidate planets on the order of our Earth. Some stars have more than one candidate planet as well!
Much work is yet to be done to confirm that the planets are indeed rocky type planets that could support liquid water on their surfaces and that they actually fall within the Goldilocks zone, but...just...wow.
For more info on the picture, click here.
6 comments:
I love your fascination with the galaxy!
I hope that a little of my fascination rubs off on everybody that stops by! We are all very fixated on our own little corner of the universe (and rightly so, since that's how we stay alive and happy!) that it's easy to miss all of the wonderful, amazing reality out there.
This is the most awesome picture I've seen a while. I asked my pastor one time what he thought about life on other planets. His reply was, "Why limit God?"
Very very insightful. The Bible was giving to us and documents the creation of our planet and us. Nothing anywhere says anything either way about God creating life on other planets.
One of my life goals is to get Scuba certified. I completed the course in early March. My highest goal, and the one which will NEVER happen, is to go to Mars. I would go even if it was a guaranteed one way trip.
Getting past low earth orbit is a pipe dream, with the current and past idiots running our country.
That's awesome about your SCUBA certification Joe! Congrats and well done!
I'm with you on Mars. I'd hop aboard for a one way shot to another planet, no hesitation. Of course, I doubt they'd be recruiting over-weight former bookstore owners...
I'm as close to certain as one can be without actual proof that life exists elsewhere in the universe. The conditions that lead to life arising are pretty much guaranteed to exist in myriad places, given the unimaginably immense universe we live in. Whether intelligent life eventually evolves once life gets going is a big question mark, but basic life is almost a given.
I'm willing to make a medium sized bet that we will one day find life elsewhere in our own solar system, perhaps on Europa or one of the other moons of Saturn or Jupiter that have liquid water or methane.
Finding proof of extra-solar life is far trickier, since at the moment pretty much the only way to test for it is to infer it from spectroscopy. I'd still lay a wager we'll find it in my lifetime, but a smaller amount of money given the exponentially more difficult problems of finding it.
I find it so interesting how many people long for either extraterrestrial life, or human life in another galaxy. As if there aren't enough goofballs on this planet. LOL! ;o)
And Joe Cool Cat...I always thought the reason we are STILL waiting for Christ's return is because He's out doing for other planets what He did for ours...unless people on those planets are perfect and incapable of sinning and needing redemption.
I wouldn't say that I "long" for extraterrestrial life, but I do look forward to the day that we find it. It will be another step towards the scientific enlightenment that we as a species need to survive. Finding life elsewhere would show that it is as ubiquitous as we are learning that planetary bodies are.
I personally like the idea that life isn't unique to our little sphere, since it's one more piece of evidence (as if we needed it) that humanity isn't remotely special, that we're just another tiny, insignificant form of life in a vast, vast cosmos.
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