Kepler 22b, new planet or super earth: How to ascertain it?

December 11, 2011 | Filed under: Business | Posted by:

NASA scientists have discovered Kepler 22b, a new planet or super earth. But do we have means to ascertain or make a definite claim about it asks M Sundaram?

NASA’s new finding, Kepler 22b has made people sit up and take notice. This is a planet that NASA says may support the life and vegetation. Though it may take decades or centuries in making things more clear about Kepler 22b as many analysts have said that saying something definite about some planet as far away as 600 light years away is well nigh impossible, people are overjoyed with the finding.

For many of us, the distance of 600 light years may be very difficult to comprehend. One light year away if measured in our kilometer term is at least 10 trillion kilometers away from our earth. So you can ‘easily’ calculate as to how many years it may take to actually take you to that super planet that NASA scientists are talking about.

A reader has sent this sarcastic response, “Interesting discovery! What did it cost the American taxpayer for NASA to make this discovery? What do they really expect to learn from their telescopic observations? Think about this: The planet is 600 light years away (folks, that is 3,526,800,000,000,000 miles); it is reported that it would take 20 million years to reach the planet, which would indicate a required sustained average of 22,315 mph to get there. Sorry, but the whole space exploration operation begs the question: What have we really learned that will benefit us, and ad what cost?

But most of the people seem very happy to know that the planet looks like earth and may be the first planet to support vegetation.

With the new finding, NASA may silence many a voices that were seeking further slashing of its funding. Kepler mission has reportedly discovered as many as more than 1200 planets, but this is the first one that it claims may support vegetation. Kepler Mission or NASA Discovery mission number 10, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets.

Kepler has been very intricately designed to detect stars millions of kilometers away. When a planet crosses in front of its star as viewed by an observer, the event is called a transit. Transits by terrestrial planets produce a small change in a star’s brightness of about 1/10,000 (100 parts per million, ppm), lasting for 2 to 16 hours. This change must be absolutely periodic if it is caused by a planet. In addition, all transits produced by the same planet must be of the same change in brightness and last the same amount of time, thus providing a highly repeatable signal and robust detection method.

A NASA report says, “Once detected, the planet’s orbital size can be calculated from the period (how long it takes the planet to orbit once around the star) and the mass of the star using Kepler’s Third Law of planetary motion. The size of the planet is found from the depth of the transit (how much the brightness of the star drops) and the size of the star”.

But it is clear that most of the findings of such missions are speculative and there is a whole lot of assumptions playing into it. So don’t be very ecstatic. It is just an assumption that there is some planet that may support human life. We are sooooooooo far away from having right technology to find anything worthwhile about it.

Shortlink:

Posted by on December 11, 2011. Filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
  • Vilaskumar

    Hi to all..
    I just need more information about Kepler 22b planet. If any body have more information than please send to my email Id(vilaskumar1989@rediffmail.com) mainly about density, gravity etc..
    Thank you

  • http://nvonevs.com Fearne

    wow this is so exiting!! just imagine if we could move down to “Kepler 22-b” and live!! how cool would that be??!! or just imagine if aliens live there or something??!! or just imagine if people already live down there!! or just imagine if the people down there are just as exited to find earth as we are in finding “Kepler 22-b”!

  • Rodolphe Brun

    You are right, the planet is very far away. But maybe you are forgetting that a little more than a century ago, we did not have cars. It took us bearly 70 years to actually walk on the moon. I will not be surprised, once we set our mind to it. That it could take us a century or less to find a way to get to that planet and to get to it relatively quickly.

  • suryateja

    Thats good, but still a lot of technology is needed to reach kepler22b and we need not go there and start new life. Instead we have to save our earth and life on it from extinction. Let us save our mother Earth instead of searching a new home..

  • suryateja

    The new Earth is very far from us of the order 600 light years. That is a large distance to be achieved with our present technology. Fast journey to the planet can be achieved through worm holes. We have to still find out a lot about the worm holes. That is about their presence and properties and functions. If we find out the nearest way possible to kepler22b we will be the most lucky for having a new home for continuation of our offspring.

  • AAT

    where is it b and what it worth i pay 1000000000007868 for it

  • mobius

    Actually I had thought of another possible way but its extreme. basically its the deconstruction of a human via nanites then direct theses nanites to said planet (about the speed of sound) where then they reassemble. of course by the time they would reach kelper the earth would no longer exist due to the expansion of the sun

  • kevin

    Yes Kepler 22b is very far away and at the moment it seems impossible to get to…..
    But people said we would never make to the Moon and said it was silly to think about going to Mars, but this will happen.
    These findings and explorations are fantastic and opens up many questions about whats out there.

  • Unknown

    if nasa had asked one person to be used in a experiment wich ment traveling somehow to this planet i would

  • cameowalkin

    Twenty years ago, I’d died in my sleep and, meeting the Lord in space in my flight toward Heaven, He stopped me, showed me what was needed (from me) here in Earth, and before He sent me back, as we were talking, He turned me to face Earth. It didn’t exactly look like Earth; it was blue, but appeared as a giant bright turquoise pearl, with a sheath of razor-thin, white atmosphere swathing it, and without the typical land formations. I thought it was the spirit-form of Earth, being that I myself was in spirit form, so I thought that governed how I saw things.

    Now I realize that Kepler 22b IS the NEW Earth (I was seeing it as it really IS) that the Lord was talking about in Revelations; and only the HOLY will ever get to live on it. And I realize since He knew what He was sending me back into, He gave me sight of our future hopes of home. Be fearless, Sons of God, because your rewards are far greater than you can ever imagine!

  • Dustin

    In all honesty, if all the money that was invested toward researching other planets were put into technology that could be used to get there, it would be money better spent. I’m not saying that it isn’t research that doesn’t need to be done, but maybe you should invent the hammer before you invent the nail? I like what NASA is doing, and in all honesty the typical person that says “NASA is too expensive” is actually wrong. With over 200 million tax payers in the nation, a program that costs us 3 billion dollars a year only cost us each $15 per taxpayer a year. What’s wrong with $15 a year to make scientific discoveries of this magnitude? I think they should offer a $10 billion reward to the firm that invents and proves through trial, the technology that gets a manned vehicle up to 1/2 the speed of light, and $20 billion to the firm who invents faster-than-light travel, if it were possible.

  • Miller

    Yes another planet for us to rape and destroy. We can’t even take care of our own planet. We can teach the aliens about business and how to be greedy and steal from your fellow neighbor, outsource to save a buck and how to destroy their own planet. To capitalize on things like fast food or coffee chains that would be put on every corner to fatten them up and make them unhealthy so they can drive up medical care and die an unhealthy death. Teach them to forget about what life is to suppose to be about like sunsets, spending time with their family and oh yeah reading a book. We can show them what material things are and how having a nice car can make them shallowly feel better. Think about your comment about a century ago “not having cars”… Think about this, in over a century we still have cars that barley last more than a decade without having some sort of problem. Cars are made to break… How messed up is that? My final rant of the evening. We can blind them with nice shinny objects, crapy Tv shows, video game consuls, Fast food, gadgets that have no purpose, a piece of green paper that means more a persons life and most of all we can show them how to run a country or planet because do such a good job.

  • random civilian

    Just imagine the possibilities ! If this planet is in a later stage of evolution , like when the dinosaurs roamed , and will follow the same evolutionary path, we could learn do much! Or if this is where the supposed “aliens” are coming from! just imagine!

  • Danielle

    Even if we found a way to make it to Kepler 22b, how would people get there before they die? It says it would take 20 million years to get there. And how would we keep the fuel supply going if that was the way we would travel there? If we created several super-ships that could hold a countries’ worth of people, then maybe we could sustain a normal lifestyle there until we reached the new planet. Plus, it is 600 light years away, so what we are seeing now from Earth is Kepler 22b’s past. It could have changed while we were observing from Earth and traveling there. I agree with suryateja’s first comment. If we push extra hard on our recycling and cutting down on pollution, then we just might be able to save Earth, at least until the sun explodes.

  • word

    another planet we are itching to f up

  • itzy

    wait if we moved over there and found out how long it took to orbit then we would have to change how long a yea is and how long a day is and an hr an everythuign like that…we would technacly need to start all over again just to build stuff

  • Wayne

    Keppler 22b is merely earths twin, 2.5 times bigger beautiful more precious but o so tough to get it into our minds that its just an accusation. Sure we have the technology to get ther we have batteries and in space we kan float! Which means if u have so much momentum u kan go a long ways. Not to be rude but no one in our century will evry reach keppler its up to our futures future in due time im sure nasa will discover the gravity and gasses waters organisms living or even so called aliens on keppler. It is an amazing find but we as americans will never know the real truth behind this all.

  • Pankaj Dahiya

    hi to all

    if any tell more about this news so please send me invitation to my account (pankajdahiya11994@gmail.com) .

    again if any one please do it

  • Seth Brown

    well i am ready to move to a new home planet

  • http://www.lainerei.com Alex Craig

    The Millinieum Falcon could get there in a couple of days. We just need to invent light speed.

  • ERIC.D.RIGGINS

    HERE WE GO TALKING ABOUT GOING SOME WERE WHITOUT ASKING THE PEPOLES WHOM LIVE THER .BECAUSE LIFE IS LIVEING THER. WE NEED TO SEND RADIO WAVE OR SOMETHING FIRST TO TRY TO SPEAK TO OR SEE IF LIFE IS REALY THER BEFOR JUST SHOWING UP??

  • TBT

    Eeerrr… at light speed it takes 600 years, not “a couple of days”, since the planet is 600 ly away. That said, for somebody travelling very close to light speed actually feels time pass much slower; in other words, it would be 600 years for people on the Earth, much less for the people on the space ship (I know it’s strange but that’s how it is, according to relativity).

  • Val

    I’m not surprise, of course, that this planet may support life. In fact, the numerical odds of there being other planets IN THE UNIVERSE besides Earth with INTELLIGENT life alone is astronomical, imagine life in general! We are but one of nine planets in our solar system and there may be MILLIONS of other solar systems IN OUR GALAXY alone! Factor in the millions of galaxies that exist in the universe and that gives you an astronomical number of opportunities for intelligent life. Besides, who is to say that intelligent life has to be based on our geo-climactic planetary model? Life consisting of different ELEMENTS in ANOTHER GALAXY or even in another solar system could yield highly intelligent life under very different circumstances than Earth’s!

    As to space travel, there are theories out there, scientific ones, mind you, that suggest that by applying a highly-powerful magnetic force on space can cause space to “bend” causing time displacement that affects the space-time continuum and, therefore, the time it would take to get from Earth to say Kepler 22b! We just don’t have the technology; but other far more intelligent life may ALREADY be doing that and may have already visited Kepler 22b let alone EARTH!

    Only our ignorance and arrogance can sustain a claim that we are all alone, as intelligent life, in this infitely large universe! I, for one, am not THAT arrogant!

  • niche

    Some eventually will design;the technology to reach the stars not. any time soon but very interesting topic….

  • Mike McCormick

    This is a great discovery. No two ways about it! This is early man looking across the creek and wondering what was on the other side and wishing he had a ways and means to get there. That is where we are standing now and we are wondering what is out there and how do we get there. We are looking at something that will overtake us with wonder and excitement the more we learn about it and the more we push ourselves to seek answers. The universe is probably loaded with life. We don’t need empirical evidence to prove this-we just need to be patient, look and learn. Unfurl the sails and plot a course…we are off!

  • Mike McCormick

    This is a great discovery. No two ways about it! This is early man looking across the creek and wondering what was on the other side and wishing he had a ways and means to get there. That is where we are standing now and we are wondering what is out there and how do we get there. We are looking at something that will overtake us with wonder and excitement the more we learn about it and the more we push ourselves to seek answers. The universe is probably loaded with life. We don’t need empirical evidence to prove this-we just need to be patient, look and learn. Unfurl the sails and plot a course…we are off!

  • Sam

    If its 600 light years away from earth, then what ever we see today thru telescope is 600 yr old data(because the light will take that much time to reach earth) how much of this information is credible? Is is somthing just to put NASA in headlines??? Finding something that will travel faster than light is highly impossible(They claim they found something But how much faster). So even if we have a device that will travel at the speed of light, it will still take more than 10 generations life time to reach there… Why do we need to spend billions of dollars in something which is practically not viable and do something useful with that money?

  • Kshitij Kapoor

    hi,
    if it iz 600 light years ago that means v have seen the image vich is 600 light years old so at current it mite b possible that the planet is in very advancd stage!!! or migth be at par wid earth in terms of envirnmnt nd humans!!!

  • Bead Stallcup

    Since Kepler 22b is about 600 light years distant, it will be interesting to see how the scientists go about determining if there is life on the planet. Suppose for a minute there is, and further suppose that our astronomers pick up radio signals emanating from Kepler 22b. That means aliens on Kepler 22b sent those transmissions around 600 years ago, which means they could as much as 600 years ahead of us in their science and technology. We would be correctly advised to be very cautious, and humble, regarding these creatures, whoever they are, just as it could be foolhardy for an military force of 15th century Europe here on earth to challenge our hi-tech military of the 21st century.

  • http://planetkepler.org/ James

    If Planet Kepler 22B residents are watching Earth then the USA still hasn’t been discovered by Columbus (in their eyes)

  • vidya

    good evening everybody…
    i want to know more information about kepler 22b, about environment, colour, how many moons it has every planet has moon………..
    pls reply………
    thank u………

  • Bead StallCup

    If SETI or their affiliates should detect any non-natural, radio-like transmissions emanating from the vacinity of Kepler 22b then it means the transmissions are probably 600 years old, which means whoever is broadcasting is at least 525 years ahead of us, technologically. If we found a signal…

  • Manakakarosa

    There is a possibility that there could be a wormhole somewhere near our Solar System that would enable a spaceship to be less far away from it. However, that is playing with fire as it may transport it farther away from it.

  • vaibhav singh

    please let me help in this matter my hobby is to kaow about planets

    please let me

  • vaibhav singh

    it is ammaging send some photos on my id

  • Sabelo sabzah maseko

    Oh thats good what allien found.i also hope they will find the way to go.thnx

  • saraah

    wow! how nice
    the life will not end and it is intrestion to know about new earth.
    i wish i could go to space with my family.
    and in milky way i now its not possible there is no cost for dream.

  • cameowalkin

    Hi Saraah, sorry it took me so long to find my way back here … I couldn’t find the bookmark. I like your thoughts.

    When we either pass through the “door” of death (or are transfigured, at the return of Christ, whichever comes first) we’re in our spirit form; you can’t do in a flesh body what your spirit can do w/o it.

    When Christ returns, He’ll transfigure those alive who believe in Him (meaning, give you a celestial body, changing your flesh body), and raise you up. Those who’ve gone on before will return with Him and His army of angels, and as we surround the Earth, Christ says the Word, and our bodies lift up out of the Earth (our dead corpses are transformed and lifted), and our spirits are united & put back into our new celestial bodies.

    This particular event happens before the living are lifted up and transfigured. You’ll know it’s going to happen to you, because Christ (to assure you of His promises) will allow His two witnesses to be killed, lay in the streets dead for 3-1/2 days, & then He’ll lift them up, transfiguring them in front of everyone, in broad daylight. You’ll know these two, because they do miracles, preach the Word, and when they’re killed, the whole world has a big party (because they also punish the people of Earth for their unrepentence — & you know, rich, greedy, self-important people just hate that). When He transfigures & lifts them, the city this happens in has a terrible earthquake, and it gets dark, & 7,000 fall dead — but still, alot of people capture the event on video, and get the film out. This brings the faithful great hope!

    You and your family can walk on this new beautiful planet (with me and Jesus). Just come to Him and stay faithful to Him until He returns; & don’t take the mark (the chip) & also avoid the vaccines, which are loaded w/nanobots & radioactive materials, & live viruses). Maybe saying NO gets you killed; but better to die in Christ, than to live a few more minutes & spend eternity in hellfire. Heaven is SO wonderful (& Hell SO terrible) that it’s only people’s lack of faith and lack of direct experience that stops them from accepting and believing Jesus’ words, which are true.

    We’ll live here w/Jesus for 1,000 years, restoring the Earth (God’s garden), and then we’ll go to our new, beautiful, turquoise, precious home, the new Eden, which we call Kepler 22b, but will be given a new holy name by Jesus in that time.

    In the spirit, physical limitations & impossibilities that hamper human beings, and limitations of time, don’t bother you. It’s so much more profoundly enlivening to be in the spirit, and to be that in a celestial body is to be like one of the angels, yet you’re spirit remembers your human life (as if it was childhood … distantly). There will be so many things for you to share with your family … far more than what our minds can envision.