Photo, above:  NASA's Kepler Mission has discovered the first super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of a star similar to the Sun. A team of researchers, including Carnegie's Alan Boss, has discovered what could be a large, rocky planet with a surface temperature of about 22 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit), comparable to a comfortable spring day on Earth. This landmark finding will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The discovery team, led by William Borucki of the NASA Ames Research Center, used photometric data from the NASA Kepler space telescope, which monitors the brightness of 155,000 stars. Earth-size planets whose orbital planes are aligned such that they periodically pass in front of their stars result in tiny dimmings of their host star's light--dimmings that can be measured only by a highly specialized space telescope like Kepler.

This discovery is the first detection of a possibly habitable world in orbit around a Sun-like star. The host star lies about 600 light-years away from us toward the constellations of Lyra and Cygnus. The star, a G5 star, has a mass and a radius only slightly smaller than that of our Sun, a G2 star. As a result, the host star is about 25% less luminous than the Sun. The planet orbits the G5 star with an orbital period of 290 days, compared to 365 days for Earth, at a distance about 15% closer to its star than Earth from the Sun. This results in the planet's balmy temperature. It orbits in the middle of the star's habitable zone, where liquid water is expected to be able to exist on the surface of the planet. Liquid water is necessary for life as we know it, and this new planet might well be not only habitable, perhaps even inhabited. Numerous large, massive gas giant planets have been detected previously in habitable-zone orbits around solar-type stars, but . . .  [more]

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 1, Block A: The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You Can't Count On by Havil, Julian (1 of 4)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 1, Block B: The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You Can't Count On by Havil, Julian (2 of 4)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 1, Block C: The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You Can't Count On by Havil, Julian (3 of 4)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 1, Block D: The Irrationals: A Story of the Numbers You Can't Count On by Havil, Julian (4 of 4)

Hour Two

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 2, Block A:   A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Kraus and Richard Dawkins (1 of 2)

 

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 2, Block B: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Kraus and Richard Dawkins (2 of 2)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 2, Block C: The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos by John D. Barrow (1 of 2)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 2, Block D: The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos by John D. Barrow (2 of 2)

Hour Three

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 3, Block A: Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose (1 of 4)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 3, Block B: Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose (2 of 4)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 3, Block C: Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose (3 of 4)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 3, Block D: Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe by Roger Penrose (4 of 4)

Hour Four

Astronomers Photograph 'Cherry Blossom' World Around Alien Star

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 4, Block A: Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962 by Megan Prelinger (1 of 2)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 4, Block B: Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962 by Megan Prelinger (2 of 2)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 4, Block C: The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet... by Dimitar Sasselov (1 of 2)

Saturday 31 August 2013  / Hour 4, Block D: The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet... by Dimitar Sasselov (2 of 2)

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