

706 Earthlike Planets Discovered By NASA Spacecraft  - cwan
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/kepler-spacecraft-finds-hundreds-possible-planets-100618.html

======
Anm
Not only are the 706 planets only potential candidates, but I believe they
include all possible planets, not just the "earthlike" planets. The article is
poorly written in that manner, and the headline here is magnifying the error.

That said, 306 of the 706 have already been confirm. No stats on the number or
percentage of false positives in that first batch.

~~~
pvg
The article is quite clear - "NASA's Kepler spacecraft hunting for Earth-like
planets around other stars has found 706 candidates for potential alien worlds
while gazing at more than 156,000 stars packed into a single patch of the
sky."

Potential. No claim that any of them are 'earth-like'. The person who wrote
the title either doesn't know how to read or is being deliberately
sensationalist.

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robryan
706 promising candidates, not confirmed. As many people are pointing out there
they are aiming for 3 transits to confirm something is a planet, it doesn't
seem to be clear though whether those 706 are including things that have
transited more than once in the 43 days which would indicate very short
orbits.

Should note to that most exoplanets don't transit their star when viewed from
earth. A quick Google search suggests that only 54 of the first 333 exoplanets
discovered did.

~~~
BahUnfair
There are other methods to finding planets. Most of the early Hot Jupiters
were found by measuring the "wobble" of a star - a bulge at the surface -
caused by the gravity of the massive gas giant careening around it.

Also, the title is wrong, just because the telescope is looking for earth like
planets doesn't mean it can't find gas giants as well.

~~~
robryan
I'm aware, just pointing out that the transit method that kepler uses can only
pick a percentage of planets even if they are of significant enough size to be
found because from our viewing angle they don't transit.

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mkramlich
I say we attack immediately. Not wise to take chances they _might_ be
peaceful. ;)

~~~
dkuchar
hawkings:

[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece)

Life on this planet is predicated on material transformation/consumption.
that's what we do - we eat and excrete our environment. no reason to believe
it would be fundamentally different on other planets.

~~~
metamemetics
Surely there is enough _uninhabited_ bodies of matter\resources in space to
preclude the necessity of fighting with aliens over them for the next 100,000
years?

~~~
sliverstorm
Perhaps; perhaps not. There's many situations it would be worthwhile.

\- They want to kill us just because

\- They have already occupied virtually everywhere else, and want more (our)
space

\- We are in the way of their wave of expansion, and they don't care (and are
set to steam-roller over us)

\- Earth or nearby planets are valuable to both them and us, and equivalents
are too far away (nobody says FTL travel is possible)

There have been plenty of wars (not every single one, but plenty) here on
Earth already that demonstrate that.

~~~
metamemetics
The fact that a human has killed another human in the past is hardly
sufficient reason for recommending Xenocide as de facto future policy, mein
Fuher.

~~~
sliverstorm
Did you examine my hypothetical scenarios? They all basically revolve around
_another race_ that wants to commit xenocide _on us_. Or can you simply not
conceive of a scenario where humans are not the superior species calling the
shots? If we are not the only sentient race, then there's bound to be quite a
few out there, and I can guarantee you we aren't the best, the strongest, the
most adept or adaptable, or the most competent. There's always someone better,
and odds are if the other race finds us, they are superior (they managed to go
exploring and expanding before us).

The history of human wars is purely an example demonstrating that even when
there is enough land to go around, there are times when you have to fight
(unless of course you are ambivalent towards your own survival). To use your
apparently favorite example, Hitler, America engaged in WWII and yet did not
win a scrap of land. Nor did America want land. Was this just some stupid
unjustified, unreasonable mistake?

~~~
metamemetics
Straw man, argument 'self-defense == bad' not present.

Possible arguments:

1) The ethics (and humor) of pre-emptive strikes

2) Given that the proportion of resource-containing matter forming planets
inhabited by sentient life to total resource-containing matter in the galaxy
approaches insignificance, it seems _extremely_ improbable that homo sapiens
will ever be engaged in a competition for resources with sentient alien life
at a time point where homo sapiens still exist and have not evolved into
several other species.

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itistoday
My favorite comment there:

 _Aerospace_Cadet wrote: Wouldn't any planet found no matter it's size or
location be considered alien?_

~~~
petercooper
Not in one particular instance: if we saw Earth. Current ideas about the shape
of the universe don't make this an entirely impossible proposition (just an
_extremely_ unlikely one that we'd stumble across our own image from billions
of years ago, and I, personally, don't buy it at all).

This idea is covered in an episode of Astronomy Cast. I forget which, but most
likely [http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-78-what-is-the-
sha...](http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-78-what-is-the-shape-of-the-
universe/)

