It’s Official: Astronomers Have Discovered another Earth

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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope discovered an Earth-like planet circling a nearby star within the Goldilocks zone of our galaxy. Kepler-186f is around 500 light-years from Earth in the Cygnus constellation. The habitable zone, also identified as the Goldilocks zone, is the area around a star within which planetary-mass objects with enough atmospheric pressure can sustain liquid water at their surfaces.

While it has been projected that there are at least 40 billion Earth-sized planets circling in our Milky Way Galaxy, this specific finding is labelled the first Earth-sized planet to be discovered in the habitable zone of another star.

In addition to Kepler-186f, there are 4 other planets that circle a nearby star within the Kepler-186f system. What this means is that if the neighbouring star to this planet is just like our Sun, then the likelihood of life on this planet exponentially increases.

“We know of only one planet where life survives – Earth. When we hunt for life outside our solar system, we emphasis on discovering planets with features that mimic that of Earth,” said Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published in the journal Science. “Discovering a habitable zone planet similar to Earth in size is a major breakthrough.”

The neighboring star to Kepler-186f has half the mass and size as our solar system’s Sun and only gets one-third of the energy that we get from our Sun. Kepler-186f circles its star once every 130 days

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45 COMMENTS

  1. .. at something like 600 light years from Earth what are the possibilities of ever communicating with Keper?
    I appreciate in terms of galactic distances this is relatively small none the less significant in human terms.
    Thanks.

      • You can’t even spell it.

        This isn’t useless. It gives us a destination in the future. If we don’t stop destroying earth and we can figure out how to get there, we can move to it… if the life is either non existent or not advanced.

        It’s the question we’ve asked since the dawn of time.

    • None.. Well, you did ask “EVER” communication. We can send a signal to them which they can pick up in 600 years, then they can reply with a signal that we can then see in 1200 years. So, that’s the best case scenario. Unless we invent super-electromagnetic communication.

  2. 1000 years to ask one question and get a reply. Millions of years to travel there. We won’t be going there any time soon…. like thousands and thousands of years to develop that kind of technology. 80,000 years to travel to our nearest star system and its only four ly’s away. I think we are bound to our solar system and may never reach the stars unless an advance race shares their technology with us.

    • I gotta say, I think your wrong. There really is allot of work being done around the earth right now, has been for a long time. If we can find a theory of everything, or most things anyway, who’s to say there is not a way to do this. If u believe out there there is probily a race that can travel anywhere, or at least huge distances, what’s to say we can’t. The hadron collider is looking at new as yet unfound particles we have not detected before. These things could tell us soo much about the universe it’s crazy. Two hundred years ago, a mobile phone would be seen as magic. Not possible? But hear it is. And now not very tech at all. Easy to make. As soon as something new is found, the human mind expands and tec explodes. I would bet my children will see some crazy shit in there life time, and I’d bet there kids will see other planets on tv, wether a human goes there or just something we send to find out, it’ll happen, and it won’t take thousands of years ether. Technology is growing faster than ever, if it keeps growing at this rate, wow, we will see the stars believe me!! Peace

      • Can’t agree more with you. I think this is really a matter of time or as Jack Wagoner says we might be bound to our solar system.
        Taking into account that the universe is still expanding at approximately 160,000 mph (74kps) we might never leave our galactic backyard unless we become a type 2 civilization and have enough energy management to play with space/time, wormholes, anti-gravity, or teleportation totems.
        Anything less, will take us eons just to visit our entire solar system.

        • That is why I feel that we aren’t being visited by aliens from outer space. I this we are being visited from people in the future. Just my theory.

      • Totally agree , people are so shuttered in there minds,it’s not far away from us discovering other planets and travelling great distances through the universe, if someone would have came to me when I was young and told of the technology we have now no one would have believed it.

      • I love your optimism Marcus, and I share the same hope that you have. When I was born in 1952 most of the technology we have now was seen as science fiction (I loved Star Trek…all that amazing gadgetry)! How things have progressed. My only fear is that I have also seen the rise a world that is being torn apart by polarised viewpoints and enormous corporate greed, destroying and plundering resources and giving very little back. My children and grandchildren will witness many wondrous things I hope but fear that greed and conflict will ultimately be our species doom. The planet will continue as it did for 4 billion years before we came along but we may be just a passing feature of the infinite variety that have walked the land and swam in the oceans. However, I remain hopeful that one day we will travel beyond the reach of our star into the realms of infinite possibility.

    • That’s a very sceptical way of looking at it. In the last 50 years technology has improved exponentially, so imagine 500 years, then a 1000, I think by then we will at least be travelling outside our solar system if not further.

    • Jack Wagoner , really, where is your imagination and understanding of technology advancements, it’s impossible now but that doesn’t mean it will still be that way in the future, you sound like a skeptic before we went to the moon, impossible they said

    • They said we would need scientists to work for millions of years to achieve flight. The Wright brothers done it 9 days later.

      There’s complex science to work out before hand. We know how to travel at light speed in theory. The main issue is money and time dilation.

  3. Very valid answer Jack, one that had put a stopper on theorists throughout the last 100yrs.
    What we need is to rethink physics. Specifically travelling from A-B. Thinking of their coordinates in 4D. Instead of 3D where the fastest travel between them is a straight line.
    Quantum Physics suggests time lines, bending space and anti-gravity.
    NASA and the world’s elite are already producing element 112 ununpentium in the Hadron Collider at CERN, this is the most likely way to achieve anything close to the speed of light 186,000 miles per second.
    But you are correct we are a long way off, but not that long.

    • It’s probably archaic to imagine that we will reach far flung cosmic destinations with conventional travel (traversing space-time 3 dimensionally). Even at light speed, the amount of time it would take to reach distant regions of our galaxy exceeds that of documented human civilization. It seems more plausible that advanced space travel will involve some type of dimensional “folding” of space-time for instantaneous relocation. As organisms that operate 3-dimensionally, I wonder if this will even be possible for humans themselves, or maybe it will be necessary to upload our cognitive/subjective features into some new format or structure that is able to navigate additional dimensionality in ways that are probably difficult for us to conceive.

  4. The secret is save the earth and not go to another earth like planet we have to understand this. Earth is our home in this univerce and is the most beutifull planet
    thats it

    • Bravo John! I like the dream of Inter galactic travel, hell I would love interplanetary easy jet travel. But being realistic, Kepler, though pretty in mock-up is just a fantasy. We ain’t goin there, no way no how.

      I am of the early years of sci-fi stories and fantasies gang who dreamed of being on the moon in bases and small colonies by now. Heinlein, Norton, Asimov, Bradbury all gave us kids of the 50’s, 60’s the hope that might happen. When we took that first step on the moon, our dreams were truly coming true.

      But it all failed and the Rich just got richer and the whole thing turned into a scam. Hate overcame science, greed overwhelmed mankind need to escape to our sister moon, and eventually planets and we are now facing extinction by our own hand. Sad end to a great bunch of dreams.

      • …Except maybe for that one decent-sized asteroid that collides with Earth. We have a lot to make better on Earth for sure, but I really don’t think it’s wise to keep all our eggs in one basket..

      • The earth peoples just like an apple tree apples. Every fall the apples get rotten and fall, and the tree drops all its leaves and goes dormant. No worries tho. It ain’t dead. Gonna start all over next spring. Rotty apples may seem gross at the time, but all part of a lovely cycle.

    • Who says it needs to be either or? There are enough people and enough resources to potentially do both, as long as we respect and properly manage the resources that we have. Of course since we don’t know what potential future solutions to speed of light limitations of travel there might be (assuming they can be found), we cannot really specify what resources that will require.

      Google from wiki page (not the most reliable of information resources, but…) “NASA’s budget for financial year (FY) 2020 is $22.6 billion. It represents 0.48% of the $4.7 trillion the United States plans to spend in the fiscal year.” Even if you include other potentially relevant non-NASA research only in the US, and bump it to 1% that’s still an incredibly small amount of the total money spent in the US every year. I’d say investing in it is money well spent. I’d also say there is likely room to invest the rest of the money better, change our lives and ways of industry, and our capitalistic economy often immediately to the exclusion of sustainability etc to `save Earth’ — by which of course we mean to keep it habitable and pleasant for humans, the planet itself will after all do perfectly well without us!

    • Maybe not. We are allergi to many things here… a symptoms that wild animals don’t adhere to too much. There’s many signs that humanity didn’t start here. Including things like sunburn and allergies.

  5. If it doesn’t have an orbiting moon, then it’s not going to be like Earth. Our moon creates the tides, which drive the wind, and creates weather here. The goldilocks zone is only a part of the equation.

    • Lots of folks keep trying to make that point in all its various forms, but it is simply incorrect. There are no disposable planets. There is no easy Plan B. We can’t reach any similar planet outside our solar system and it could be centuries or never before we are. Have you even considered those the best nearby exoplanets may already be occupied? Because it will be so incredibly difficult, terraforming Mars will teach us how precious Earth really is, not disposable at all, because the struggle to terraform Mars will teach us to appreciate Earth far more profoundly.

    • Couldn’t agree more. The last thing any new planet needs is the human race. Let’s concentrate on fixing our beautiful planet. We haven’t finished exploring ours yet!

  6. I love love this thread. I wish we could all be sitting around the table having this discussion. HOWEVER, my reality today, I am sad to say, we cannot even bother ourselves (as a species) to work on ending a pandemic, sustainable living, etc.. We are a selfish greedy bunch of aliens. If increased technology and intelligence is indeed a fact, we havn’t gained much since, say…1918. Thank God for think tanks such as yourselves… Keep the dreams alive….and always remember that Dreams cannot come true without actions….

    • It just the way one thinks. All the statement made are based on the outside progress we see, give a break and think differently. Instead of taking matter from point A to point B think of creating same matter. Just go in details of how matter is created but not by the traditional way, go in deep in your own hierarchy start from womb. What we are saying is already achieved, we lack in awareness as the facts and findings are not in main stream

  7. Comment: great topic here, y’all heroes who will be remembered for saving this beautiful planet, may Gods favour be upon us to live life to our full potential🙏🙏

  8. This is where Tesla’s cosmic ray research and electro-magnetic frequency come into play…He theorizes that there IS a speed greater than the speed of light and when we figure out how to harness that energy the Universe will be our oyster…The Speed of Dark Theory espouses the WALLS/OUTER MEMBRANE of space are moving/expanding at a faster rate than all the light clustered in the Universe that cannot catch it to light it up…therefore we have the black/dark background we see in the night sky behind all the stars, galaxies and any other light source…we, as a species, will eventually figure out how to harness the Speed of Dark as an energy source and will travel around the Universe at will…we just need to overcome our petty social dysfunctions and antiquarian systems of mob control to survive long enough to get the job done…we DO have the intelligence as a species. It’s just a question of if we have the personality….selah

  9. As a layman, this conversation is just fascinating to me! I especially like Rob Gillette’s theory and the other similar ones!

  10. It would it be awesome to move to a new house, but before that I rather see how I maintan mine. If I don’t take care my own house, how will I expect to live in a new one. Will I bring with me my same bad habits, or I will change my ways before moving to that new earth? What would it be the case to move to a new place if I will continue building greed, hate, violence, hunger to conquering new land? No difference. What if in this new Earth are already citizen in it? Will our pride or sense of owning something is not ours will stop us to cause trouble to the citizens of the new Earth? What is our real intention to be there?
    Before even thinking the possibility of being aliens in a new World, we have to destroy completely our actual ways of living, and thinking. Our bad behaviours, and vile acts. We had to kill greed, violence and burried all those feelings that are killing our own Earth and human race, forever. Until we change all that, as individuals, we can not think of going thru the distant galaxies to even set a footstep on the stars or new worlds. We destroy everything we touch here in our own home. This new worlds don’t need us. We don’t, and aren’t capable to understand our own nature. How will we expect to understand the unknown?
    Our solar system is beautiful, all galaxies and stars mesmeriziang. Yes, technology is developing faster then ever, and helping us to dream. But again, we as earthly humans, we still behind to understand the bast universe we are part of.

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