MERGED: All About Extra-Solar Planets: News, Updates and Related Topics

[harhar]

Unsa kahay mga alien diha no?

[aj187]

hahahaha wa juy chance mka av0te tah dha,

[gotnowheels]

Our planet is sitting on what we call Goldilocks zone, and there's a lot of zones out there, technically, if naay sun, naa puy ing.ani na zone, and if happens na one planet naa diri na zone, same weight sa earth na kaya mo hold og atmosphere to prevent water from evaporating or feezing, then the planet can hold water, and generate life forms.

[bradfrakz78]

cge kog duwa mga sci-fi, mura nuon kog makatuo nga naa juy nagpuyo lain sa other universe..

[jairoh_]

it could be nga naa jud. pero di pa jud cla ka prove. maybe 100 years from now naa nai mu.post dri sa istorya kabahin ani nga tinuod najud.

[RightLeft]

Were not alone in this Universe.

[ysa2057]

Yeah it is possible and pra nila kita naman ang mga aliens...

[gareb]

merging all threads about extra-solar planets.

[gareb]

"Orphan Planet" Spotted, Orbits No Star
The potential new world is older, colder, and closer than other "rogue" planets.



Starved of starlight, CFBDSIR2149 (artist's conception) gives off a weak glow detectable only in infrared.


Luna Shyr
National Geographic News
Published November 15, 2012

A search for would-be stars called brown dwarfs has yielded something even more elusive: a potential orphan planet.

Some four to seven times the mass of Jupiter, the wandering planet orbits no star, a team of French and Canadian astronomers reported this week.

Scientists believe such objects—also called homeless, free-floating, or rogue planets—can form in one of two ways. Either they're ejected from star systems, or they form independently.

About a dozen such untethered orbs were identified more than a decade ago in the Orion Nebula. Since then the pool of candidates has grown to several dozen. (See "'Nomad' Planets More Common Than Thought, May Orbit Black Holes.")

The latest discovery is the first to be found outside a star-forming region, said Étienne Artigau, an astronomer at the Université de Montréal and a co-author of the study, published Wednesday by the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Compared with other potential homeless planets, the new candidate is also older, colder, and much closer to Earth—approximately 130 light-years away, he said.

Called CFBDSIR2149, the suspected orphan planet appears to reside in a group of young stars, though it isn't gravitationally linked to any of them. This affiliation with the so-called AB Doradus Moving Group helped scientists estimate the planet's age: 50 to 120 million years old.

In Search of Brown Dwarfs

The object's infrared signature was detected when the team—led by Philippe Delorme of France's Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire de Grenoble—was searching for brown dwarfs several years ago. Brown dwarfs, while too massive to be considered planets, are sometimes dubbed "failed stars," because they lack the bulk to initiate nuclear reactions in their core. (Read about a raging storm detected on a brown dwarf.)

The unusual infrared readings suggested that this particular body had a low mass, more like a gas giant planet than a brown dwarf. The team also looked to see if the object was gravitationally bound to anything else, Artigau said.

"There's a small range where a parent star could be," he noted, adding that in astronomical terms, "small" can mean more than a hundred times the distance of Pluto from the sun. "We checked for a nearby star, which would be pretty bright, and found nothing."

The absence of bright light from a nearby star also means less glare, and therefore better conditions for studying the new world more closely. And more study is exactly what's needed to confirm that it's an orphan planet.

[coolnezz]

By Elizabeth Howell | SPACE.com – 19 hrs ago

• View Photo
• ​​This artist's Impression depicts the view from a moon around newly found planet PH2 b.

A team of amateurs has discovered evidence for 42 alien planets, including a Jupiter-size world that could potentially be habitable, by sifting through data from a NASA spacecraft.
Forty volunteers with the crowd-sourcing Planet Hunters project discovered the new planet candidates, which include 15 potentially habitable worlds and PH2 b, a Jupiter-size planet that the team confirmed to be in the habitable zone of its parent star.
This is the second time Planet Hunters project, which is overseen by Zooniverse, has confirmed a new exoplanet discovery. What's more, several candidate planets found by the project may be in the habitable zones of their parent stars. These candidates are awaiting confirmation by professional astronomers.
Researchers suggested this bonanza of planets in the so-called Goldilocks zone around a star, ahabitable zone in which conditions are liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface and potentially supportlife, could mean there is a "traffic jam" of worlds where life could exist, project officials said.
"These are planet candidates that slipped through the net, being missed by professional astronomers and rescued by volunteers in front of their web browsers,” said the University of Oxford's Chris Lintott, who helms the Zooniverse, in a statement. “It's remarkable to think that absolutely anyone can discover a planet.”

Life on an 'Avatar'-like moon
The planet PH2 b was found using data from NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope and confirmed with 99.9 percent confidence by observations at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
Ph2 b is considered much too large to host life. However, any moons orbiting the planet could be strong candidates, astronomers said. The atmospheric temperature on the planet would range between 86 and minus 126 degrees Fahrenheit (30 and minus 88 degrees Celsius) in the habitable zone.
“Any moon around this newly discovered, Jupiter-sized planet might be habitable," stated Ji Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University. He is lead author of a paper about the discoveries, which has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and is available on the pre-publishing website Arxiv.
If a theoretical moon were to host life, it would likely have a rocky core, plus a greenhouse atmosphere of some sort that could have liquid water on its surface, the researchers said.
"It’s very similar to what was depicted in the movie ‘Avatar’ – the habitable moon Pandora around agiant planet, Polyphemus," Wang added.

A telltale dim
Volunteers spotted PH2 b by watching its parent star. As the planet passed in front of the star, the apparent brightness from Earth dimmed.
This is one of two commonly used techniques for finding exoplanets; the other is looking for wobbles in a star's gravityas a planet speeds around it.
Excluding PH2 b, citizen scientists recently discovered 42 planetary candidates, with 20 of those likely in their respective stars' habitable regions.
"These detections nearly double the number of gas giant planet candidates orbiting at habitable zone distances," the paper stated.
Planet Hunters includes participation from Oxford, Yale and several other institutions. Volunteers pour over data from Kepler. Once the strongest candidates are identified, professional astronomers take a look at them.
Planet Hunters has found 48 candidate planets so far. The first confirmed planet, PH1, was revealed in October 2011.
To learn how to participate in the Planet Hunters project, visit: http://www.planethunters.org/