
1,284 Newly Validated Kepler Planets - okket
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160510
======
kowdermeister
Remember, just two years and the James Webb telescope will launch if
everything goes according to plans.

[http://jwst.nasa.gov/origins.html](http://jwst.nasa.gov/origins.html)

"One of the main uses of the James Webb Space Telescope will be to study the
atmospheres of exoplanets, to search for the building blocks of life elsewhere
in the universe"

~~~
rybosome
I'm very excited about this. Cannot even imagine how I would feel if we
observed an atmosphere with oxygen in it.

~~~
evaneykelen
...and even more exciting would be an atmosphere with oxygen and pollutants
indicating industrialization [1]

[1]
[https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-21](https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-21)

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f_allwein
Fascinating - the first exoplanet was discovered in 1988, and now there are
more than 2.000 known ones [1]. Plus, for all we know, there may be billions
more to discover [2]. Even though we're never going to reach one in our
lifetimes, these are still interesting times to live in...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet)
[2] [http://phys.org/news/2016-04-limits-
uniqueness.html](http://phys.org/news/2016-04-limits-uniqueness.html)

~~~
billforsternz
I don't think there is any doubt whatsoever there are billions more to
discover, in this galaxy alone. And then of course there are billions of
galaxies.

------
okket
Press Release: "NASA's Kepler mission announces largest batch of planet
discoveries ever"

[https://exoplanets.jpl.nasa.gov/news/1346/](https://exoplanets.jpl.nasa.gov/news/1346/)

Related: "Mission Manager Q&A: Recovering The Kepler Spacecraft To Hunt For
Exoplanets Again"

[http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/mission-manager-
qa-r...](http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/mission-manager-qa-
recovering-the-kepler-spacecraft-to-hunt-for-exoplanets-again)

~~~
outworlder
Regarding the recovery:

If they are able to properly orient the spacecraft using solar pressure alone,
couldn't this approach be purposely engineered for discharging momentum from
reaction wheels in other craft, instead of expending propellant?

Source: [http://www.nasa.gov/kepler/keplers-second-light-
how-k2-will-...](http://www.nasa.gov/kepler/keplers-second-light-how-k2-will-
work)

------
dmix
Is there any reasoning why the distribution of planet sizes aren't following a
bell curve or similar pattern? Maybe due to what materials the planets are
composed of puts them into separated size categories?

[https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/fi...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/fig8-new-20use20this20one.jpg)

~~~
TrevorJ
No idea how valid this is, but it might be because this data set is populated
only by planets that one very particular piece of hardware can spot.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
The main reason Kepler can only see specific kinds of planets is that you need
to see three transits before you confirm it, and that the further out a planet
is from it's star, the less likely it is that it will ever transit.

These two combine to make planets closer to the sun much more likely to be
seen. If there was another Sol in a perfect place and at perfect alignment and
Kepler had been looking straight at it, by now we would have detected Mercury,
Earth, Venus and Mars but nothing else.

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jbmorgado
This would be very interesting to analyze. Any way to get some data about all
these planets in the same place? planet Mass, planet orbit radius, star
category, etc?

~~~
typpo
I created this visualization that shows all exoplanets superimposed on our
solar system with size, orbit, and temperature data:

[http://www.asterank.com/galaxies/](http://www.asterank.com/galaxies/)

Here's the code that I use to suck down exoplanet data, which may be useful to
you:

[https://github.com/typpo/asterank/blob/master/data/pipeline/...](https://github.com/typpo/asterank/blob/master/data/pipeline/run/30_exoplanets/exoread.py)

~~~
Arnavion
I think you meant to link to
[http://www.asterank.com/exoplanets](http://www.asterank.com/exoplanets)

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bawana
so are there any em spikes coincident with the transit of each planet? I mean
if there was a civilization broadcasting into space with analog, we might hear
them. And since they are using radio, we can be pretty sure they would be
technologically inferior to us and unlikely to come over and eat us if we said
hello.

~~~
slackstation
> come over and eat us if we said hello

It's so expensive in energy to do this that it's unlikely.

Even the moon, if it was made of gold bars stacked at the ready to be picked
up and brought back to Earth, it wouldn't be worth it.

Even if you had technology to transport a significant force across the span of
light years, why endanger that with the risk of resistance? Just go to one of
the billions of habitable planets that don't have complex, radio transmitting
intelligences on it.

------
hughes
At least one (Kepler 1229b) earth-sized planet in the habitable zone! That's
very exciting.

~~~
ethbro
"Well, son, there is a reason the planet you live on and all the ones your
friends do are named Kepler or Webb..."

------
DiabloD3
So, when can I move?

~~~
ygmelnikova
Let's see. Using current tech to get to our closest neighbour, Alpha Centauri,
if you leave this afternoon, you should be arriving sometime in the year
102,016.

How about we skip this dream, along with world peace, and make baby steps,
like everybody using their indicators while driving?

~~~
vmasto
AC is only 4.5 years away. If we really wanted to go there we could most
definitely build something that can travel at 0.5c and get there at, say, 6 to
7 years. It's not hard to keep accelerating and decelerating for 1m/s for 15
years with current tech.

~~~
pdonis
_> It's not hard to keep accelerating and decelerating for 1m/s for 15 years
with current tech._

Just to put some numbers to this, I went to my go-to quick reference for these
types of problems is the Usenet Physics FAQ article on the equations for
relativistic rockets:

[http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Rocket/r...](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Rocket/rocket.html)

The key numbers are the trip time T according to the ship's clocks, the trip
time t according to clocks on Earth or Alpha Centauri, the maximum velocity v
achieved by the ship, and the mass ratio M, or kg of fuel needed per kg of
payload. Assuming that we accelerate for half the distance and then turn
around and decelerate for the other half, and that we use an ideal rocket that
converts fuel to energy at 100% efficiency and exhausts all that energy out
the back with perfect collimation (so it all goes into changing the rocket's
momentum and not into heat or some other waste product), the formulas for
these are:

T = 2 (c/a) arccosh (ad/2c^2 + 1),

t = sqrt((d/c)^2 + 2d/a),

v = at/2 sqrt(1 + (at/2c)^2)

MR = exp(aT/c) - 1,

where a is the acceleration, d is the total distance traveled, and c is the
speed of light. The equation for T, assuming that we accelerate halfway, then
turn around and decelerate to arrive at the destination at rest, is

Plugging in a = 1m/s^2, d = the distance to Alpha Centauri, or about 4 x 10^16
meters, and c = 3 x 10^8 m/s, we get

T = 3.9 x 10^8 s, or about 12.7 years,

t = 4.2 x 10^8 s, or about 13.6 years,

v = 1.7 x 10^8 m/s, or about 0.57 c,

MR = 2.7

This is a pretty small mass ratio, but of course it was derived using highly
idealized assumptions. More realistic assumptions would result in a much
larger mass ratio. Also, a maximum speed of more than half the speed of light
would create huge radiation issues requiring heavy shielding, so the payload
mass would be very large.

~~~
pdonis
Oops, one typo here, the formula for t should be:

t = 2 sqrt((d/2c)^2 + d/a)

The numerical result I gave for t is correct.

