Five new planets raises possibility of super-advanced civilisations : The exoplanets that hint at life billions of years older than Earth

[Cidersomerset]

Now most on here think the chances of life elsewhere is very high and some are
convinced and met them. I have not knowingly , but who knows ? some look
just like us , and some say we are ET's originally from the Lyra region of the
galaxy. Which is interesting to see the picture below in the article. This
discovery/disclosure has been going on for the past decade and more and I
can still vividly remember when we were told there is no proof of 'Exo
planets' ...LOL ...I have put up several threads as these reports are published
and for me I have no doubts we are not alone in this Universe...

From Mail Article below...

So far, the observatory has found 1,013 confirmed exoplanets in 440 systems as well as 3,199 possible planets.

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The artist’s concept depicts Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable
zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from
Earth in the constellation Lyra.














The diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-62, a five-
planet system about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. Credit:
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech - See more at: http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-
system/meteoritescomets-and-asteroids/five-planet-system-with-most-earth-like-
exoplanet-yet/#sthash.N5fX1KqU.dpuf


http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-...exoplanet-yet/


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The exoplanets that hint at life billions of years older than Earth

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QkWBHa0h-Pw

Published on 13 Jul 2015

The exoplanets that hint at life billions of years older than Earth A solar system
including five Earth-sized planets has been discovered which is so ancient it was
born not long after the dawn of time - and experts say it could help find life on
planets far older than we expected. The system's parent star, named Kepler-444, is
117 light years from Earth and 11.2 billion years old. When the sun-like star was
formed out of a primordial cloud of gas and dust, the universe was just a fifth of its
current age. In January, a group led by Tiago Campante — an astroseismology
or 'starquake' researcher at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom —
announced the discovery of five tiny, likely rocky worlds close to an ancient star.
Now he says that discovery could lead to new insights into where alien life could be.

more under link ...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkWBHa0h-Pw

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The exoplanets that hint at life billions of years older than Earth: Five new planets
raises possibility of super-advanced civilisations

By David Icke on 14th July 2015 New Physics



The exoplanets that hint at life billions of years older than Earth: Five new planets
raises possibility of super-advanced civilisationsSolar system's parent star, named
Kepler-444, is 117 light years from Earth 11.2 billion-year-old star formed when
the universe was a fifth of its age Five Earth-sized planets orbit the star with years
equivalent to 10 days Find shows Earth-sized planets have formed throughout
universe's history

By Mark Prigg For Dailymail.com

Published: 20:34, 13 July 2015 | Updated: 21:14, 13 July 2015

A solar system including five Earth-sized planets has been discovered which is so
ancient it was born not long after the dawn of time - and experts say it could help
find life on planets far older than we expected.The system's parent star, named
Kepler-444, is 117 light years from Earth and 11.2 billion years old.When the sun-
like star was formed out of a primordial cloud of gas and dust, the universe was
just a fifth of its current age.



A solar system including five Earth-sized planets has been discovered, which is so
ancient, it was born not long after the dawn of time. This artist's impression shows
Kepler-444, 17 light years from Earth. Its planets (also shown) were detected from
the dimming that occurs when they transit the disc of their parent star

In January, a group led by Tiago Campante — an astroseismology or 'starquake'
researcher at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom — announced
the discovery of five tiny, likely rocky worlds close to an ancient star.Now he says
that discovery could lead to new insights into where alien life could be. 'This system
gives us hope that there are other habitable worlds that we can't detect because we
don't have enough observing timespan yet,' Campante told Nasa's Astrobio.net.
Upcoming observatories could change that, he added. Whether life can live for
billions of years, however, is pure speculation.

'If intelligent life develops in a system as old as this one, would it still exist or
would they extinguish themselves?' Campante asked.That makes them roughly the
same size, or slightly smaller than Earth.'There are far-reaching implications for
this discovery,' said Dr Tiago Campante, from the University of Birmingham's
School of Physics and Astronomy.

'We now know that Earth-sized planets have formed throughout most of the universe's
13.8 billion year history, which could provide scope for the existence of ancient life in
the Galaxy.'By the time the Earth formed, the planets in this system were already older
than our planet is today.



The planet hunter strikes again: Astronomers made the discovery after trawling
through four years' worth of data collected by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope (illustrated)

'This discovery may now help to pinpoint the beginning of what we might call the 'era of
planet formation.'He said in a talk earlier this year: 'Earth-size planets may have readily
formed at earlier epochs in the universe's history when metals were more scarce.'
However, the chances of an advanced race of beings living on any of the planets are
remote, despite Kepler-444 being 25 per cent smaller and 700 degrees cooler than the sun.

Each of the worlds is so close to its star that its year - the time taken to complete one
orbit of the star - is less than 10 days long.At that distance, the planets would be much
hotter than Mercury and unable to support Earth-like life.The system's innermost planet
is the size of Mercury, the middle three are the size of Mars, and the outermost is
slightly smaller than Venus.



The scientists found an ancient planetary system containing five planets (shown at the
bottom of the illustration, compared to other planets at the top). The system's
innermost planet is the size of Mercury, the middle three are the size of Mars, and the
outermost is slightly smaller than Venus


Astronomers discovered the system after trawling through four years' worth of data
collected by Nasa's Kepler space telescope.Dr Campante's team conducted the research
using a technique called asteroseismology, which involves 'listening' to vibrations
caused by sound trapped within a star.The oscillations led to tiny pulse-like changes in
brightness, which allowed the researchers to measure the star's diameter, mass and
age. The planets were detected from the dimming that occurred when they passed
across the face of the star.By measuring the minute fading of light coming from the star
the scientists were able to calculate the relative size of the planets.

Professor Bill Chaplin, who co-authored the study, said: 'The first discoveries of
exoplanets around other sun-like stars in our galaxy have fuelled efforts to find other
worlds like Earth and other terrestrial planets outside our solar system.



'We are now getting first glimpses of the variety of galactic environments conducive to
the formation of these small worlds. Kepler-444, which is 11.2 billion years old, is a
quarter of the Sun's size but bright enough to be seen with binoculars in the
constellation Lyra (illustrated)

'As a result, the path towards a more complete understanding of early planet formation
in the galaxy is now unfolding before us.'Kepler-444 is a quarter of the Sun's size but
bright enough to be seen with binoculars in the constellation Lyra.Professor Steve
Kawaler, a member of the team from Iowa State University, said: 'This is one of the
oldest systems in the galaxy.'Kepler-444 came from the first generation of stars. This
system tells us that planets were forming nearly seven billion years before our own
Solar System.'Planetary systems around stars have been a common feature of our
galaxy for a long, long time.'

THE KEPLER MISSION SO FAR

Kepler is a space observatory launched by Nasa in 2009 to discover Earth-like planets
orbiting other stars.It's designed to survey our region of the Milky Way in a bid to
discover Earth-size exoplanets.It works by detecting regular variations in brightness of
stars, which are caused by orbiting exoplanets passing in front of them.

Kepler: NASA's mission to find habitable planets

So far, the observatory has found 1,013 confirmed exoplanets in 440 systems as
well as 3,199 possible planets.

In November last year, astronomers said there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-
sized planets orbiting in habitable zones within the Milky Way, based on the data
collected so far.

Kepler was originally built to last three-and-a-half years, and since then, experts
have worked to extend its life. But in August 2013, Nasa announced it had given up
trying to fix two failed reaction wheels, meaning that the mission had to be
modified.The 'K2 extension' was announced in May last year, meaning that the
partially paralysed observatory will detect habitable planets around smaller and
dimmer dwarf stars.

Last month, Nasa announced that Kepler had found its 1000th confirmed exoplanet.
Read more: Ancient exoplanets raise prospects of intelligent alien life | Fox News
Ancient Star Raises Prospects of Intelligent Life - Astrobiology MagazineThe star is
named Kepler-444 after NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission, which first made a
tentative discovery.The star was originally dubbed KOI-3158, but has just been re-named.

Astronomers have shown that it hosts five planets with diameters ranging between
those of Mercury and Venus. Untitled (40)‘A solar system including five Earth-sized
planets has been discovered which is so ancient it was born not long after the dawn
of time – and experts say it could help find life on planets far older than we
expected.The system’s parent star, named Kepler-444, is 117 light years from
Earth and 11.2 billion years old.When the sun-like star was formed out of a
primordial cloud of gas and dust, the universe was just a fifth of its current age.’

Read more: The exoplanets that hint at life billions of years older than Earth: Five
new planets raises possibility of super-advanced civilisations

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...#ixzz3fra5fLK9
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook


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74 New Earth-Like Exoplanets | S0 News June 4, 2015

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IrmOfVxPLGA

Published on 4 Jun 2015

Did somebody say STARWATER?
Observing the Frontier Conference: https://www.eventjoy.com/e/suspicious...


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Discovery of Earth-size planets, search for intelligent life

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jVfyeBplREw

Published on 5 Nov 2013


New data from the Kepler Spacecraft shows one in five of the sun-like stars in the
universe have Earth-size planets. The potential for habitable planets has fueled
excitement in the search for intelligent life. Jeffrey Brown speaks to one of the lead
researchers, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley.

[Cidersomerset]

I don't know if this is accurate or not , but I find it interesting and is from
the Billy Meir material. Some of it is about the prophets and Billies lineage
is something you need to go into and see if it resonates with you or not.
4 mins into the second segment he talks about some of the races that
have come to Earth , from Lyra ,Vega and the Sirius regions , the Chinese
and Japanese came later from other regions.

I don't know if there is anything to it , but it is thought provoking and
interesting imo....

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Human origins from the pleiadians part1

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DG58wnOUZ3U

Uploaded on 21 Feb 2008
where all human race comes from

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8g35BsIW2LI

[Cidersomerset]

I just finished watching this presentation by Gary and it is very good , it gives
a political/ media background to the subject and how in 1953 US policy changed
toward official UFO reporting which fed into the mainstream media . From there
he goes thru a brief history of the subject quoting some cases and speculating
into the foreseable future...............
===================================================

UFO's , Politics and the Media - Gary Heseltine Lecture - 18th April 2015

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=igOq_q3Zwuw

Published on 26 Apr 2015


Gary Heseltine presents his new lecture 'UFO's and the Media at UFO
Academy's 'into the unknown' UFO conference held at the beautiful
setting of High Elms Manor, Watford, Herts, UK on the 18th April 2015.
Please subscribe to our magazine 'UFO Truth Magazine', details can be
found at https://www.ufotruthmagazine.co.uk

And if you would like to join us at our conference later this year in
September 2015, ticket details can be found at http://www.ufotruthmagazine.co.uk/201...
If you like to know more about UFO Academy, details can be found at http://www.ufoacademy.com/
Remember ... The Truth is Already Here!

[Cidersomerset]

The Belgian wave is one of the best reported UFO cases with thousands of
witness's . General Wilfried De Brouwer , a colonel at the time was in charge of
operations including Belgian Air defences at the time , comments on the case 25
years later. The craft was real and still unexplained , whether it was ET ? or secret
space programme ? There is no doubt it happened.

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Belgium General says incredible UFO case is a mystery - Exclusive

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tdEALPvl_4Q

Published on 22 Oct 2014


In this video, retired Belgian Air Force General Wilfried De Brouwer discusses a wave
of triangular UFOs he investigated in 1989 and 1990. He was in charge of the Belgian
Air Force's official investigation. They never came to a definite conclusion as to where
the mysterious triangles came from. De Brouwer also discusses the controversial
photograph that was allegedly taken in Petit-Rechain.

Get more UFO News at: http://www.openminds.tv


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UFO belgium UFO belgie

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wlXQAmiFmyY

[Cidersomerset]

Belgium UFO Triangle Sightings ...............

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=MBcplcCQxOc

Published on 9 Feb 2013
BELGIUM UFO WAVE EN 1990

Documentary piece of the famous Belgium ufo sightings of
89-90,huge flying triangles were seen silently hovering over
the countryside and over Brussels

[Cidersomerset]

UFO Case Review - Belgian UFO Wave, 1989 - 1991

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=taGuuHv5Bsc

Published on 25 Nov 2014


Because most of the "classic" UFO cases come from the United States, we are
used to seeing witnesses come up against the brick wall of government secrecy
in their search for explanations. The wave of sightings over Belgium in the late
80s and early 90s offers a striking contrast to this pattern; government authorities
cooperated with witnesses and civilian research groups to investigate the string of
unusual phenomena, and in the end, an Air Force study concluded that craft of
unknown origin were indeed violating Belgian airspace. This honest admission from
the Belgian government effectively disproves the idea that public disclosure would
incite mass panic, and the transparent operation of the Air Force study provides a
useful precedent for the kind of government-backed UFO science that could operate
in the U.S. and elsewhere.

This video contains footage from an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, available for viewing here:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ge7c-a...

[Cidersomerset]

Two other mass UFO sightings in the US .......................


=================================================


UFO Case Review - Hudson Valley Sightings, 1981-1995

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=yfevVrSDb-g

Published on 22 Sep 2014


There is a popular misconception that UFO sightings tend to be restricted to small
groups of witnesses in isolated areas, without corroboration from other sources.
However, it takes only one case to smash to this long-held myth. The Hudson
Valley sightings, in which an estimated 7000 witnesses saw gigantic formations
of lights drift silently through the sky north of New York City, spanned more than
13 years through the 80s and early 90s. The sheer number of independent
witnesses to unexplained lights and craft attests to the reality of their claims,
and the consistency of their various reports compels us to take a more serious
look at the UFO phenomenon, even in the face of official denial.

================================================
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The Phoenix Lights! One Of The Best UFO Sightings Of All Time

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=b2yAqYXMUYI

Published on 13 Feb 2015


The phoenix lights documentary. One of the best ufo sightings caught on tape of all time.
Is the phoenix lights proof of extraterrestrials, unknown phenomena or top secret military
aircraft? Whatever the case may be the phoenix lights will probably always remain a mystery.
Please like, comment and subscribe for more epic videos!

[Cidersomerset]

New Horizons: Images reveal ice mountains on Pluto

By Paul Rincon
Science editor, BBC News website
7 hours ago.From the section Science & Environment

Pluto surface

A new picture of Pluto's surface shows evidence of active geology and mountains
comparable to the Rockies Pluto has mountains made of ice that are as high as
those in the Rockies, images from the New Horizons probe reveal.They also show
signs of geological activity on Pluto and its moon Charon.On Wednesday, scientists
presented the first pictures acquired by the New Horizons probe during its historic
flyby of the dwarf planet.

The team has also named the prominent heart-shaped region on Pluto after the
world's discoverer Clyde Tombaugh.The spacecraft sped past the dwarf planet on
Tuesday, getting as close as 12,500km and grabbing a huge volume of data.



This exceeds what we came for
Dr Cathy Olkin, New Horizons science team

Mission scientist John Spencer told journalists that the first close-up image of
Pluto's surface showed a terrain that had been resurfaced by some geological
process - such as volcanism - within the last 100 million years.

"We have not found a single impact crater on this image. This means it must be a
very young surface," he said.


Short vid on link................http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33543383

Media caption
Mission scientist John Spencer explains what the images have revealed

This active geology needs some source of heat. Previously, such activity has only
been seen on icy moons, where it can be explained by "tidal heating" caused by
gravitational interactions with a large host planet.

"You do not need tidal heating to power geological activity on icy worlds. That's a
really important discovery we just made this morning," said Dr Spencer.

Alan Stern, the mission's chief scientist commented: "We now have an isolated,
small planet that's showing activity after 4.5 billion years."

Prof Stern said the discovery would "send a lot of geophysicists back to the drawing
boards".

This same image shows mountains at the edge of the heart-like region that are up
to 11,000ft (3,300m) high and which team members compared to North America's
Rocky Mountains.John Spencer said the relatively thin coating of methane, carbon
monoxide and nitrogen ice on Pluto's surface was not strong enough to form
mountains, so they were probably composed of Pluto's water-ice bedrock.

"Water-ice at Pluto temperatures is strong enough to hold up big mountains," he said.



Charon has a chasm running 4-6 miles deep

The thin frosting of nitrogen and other volatiles on top of water-ice bedrock was
intriguing, said Prof Stern, because Pluto's tenuous, mainly nitrogen atmosphere
was constantly being lost to space.He recently co-authored an academic study with
colleague Dr Kelsi Singer making some predictions based on such a scenario.

"What Kelsi and I predicted was that if we saw steep (water-ice) topography on
Pluto with only a volatile veneer, there must be internal activity that's dredging
nitrogen up through cryo-volcanism or geysers or some other process that's active
into the present on this planet," the mission's chief scientist explained.

"We haven't found geysers and we haven't found cryovolcanoes, but this is very strong evidence that will send us looking."

In memoriam

Scientists have named the heart-shaped region Tombaugh Regio, after the
astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930.The new, close-up image of Charon has
revealed a chasm 4-6 miles deep and also further evidence of active resurfacing.

"Originally I thought Charon might have an ancient terrain covered in craters... it
just blew our socks off when we had the new image," said Dr Cathy Olkin.

"Going from the north-east to the south-west is a series of troughs and cliffs...they
extend about 600 miles across the [moon]. It's a huge area and it could be down to
internal processing."

A striking dark region at the moon's pole may be a thin veneer on top of redder
material, she added. It has been informally named Mordor, after the region in the
fictional land of Middle Earth in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books.The first well
resolved picture of Pluto's small moon Hydra reveals an elongated body with a
surface predominantly made of water-ice. In addition, scientists have come up with
a good estimate for its size: 43km by 33km.

"Hydra is not a planet," team member Hal Weaver joked.



Nasa says the little moon Hydra has a surface primarily composed of water-ice

The snap contains only a few pixels because the moon is so small and distant; New
Horizons took the shot from a distance of 400,000 miles (650,000km).The pictures
were sent back to Earth during the course of two data downlinks on Wednesday.
Significantly, all these images are at a much higher resolution than anything we
have seen so far.The mission team has told New Horizons this week to send down
only a small fraction of the total data it carries. Part of the reason is that the probe
continues to do science, observing Pluto from its night side.The intention is to keep
looking at it for about two more full rotations, or 12 Earth days.

Follow Paul on Twitter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33543383

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Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=y7gkrbeYXzo

[Cidersomerset]

Pluto's Mordor moon awesomeness: NASA gurus’ great discovery

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=r3-FUe8ax1E

Published on 15 Jul 2015


NASA holds a briefing on the New Horizons’ mission to Pluto at the Johns Hopkins
Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. On July, 14 the New Horizons space
probe flew past Pluto at close range, passing only 12,500 kilometers (7,750 miles)
above the dwarf planet on the outskirts of the solar system.

RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air

[Cidersomerset]

Young 'alien Jupiter' planet discovered


4 hours ago.....From the section Science & Environment


51 Eridani b


The young, Jupiter-like world could yield clues to the formation of our own Solar System

A planet 100 light-years away resembles an infant version of Jupiter, astronomers say.
The new world, known as 51 Eridani b, is only 20 million years old - a toddler by astronomical standards.
The alien world could yield clues to the formation of our Solar System, which has an unusual lay-out.
The find was made by the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), which looks for faint, young planets orbiting
bright, relatively nearby stars.

The new world shows the strongest methane signature ever detected on an alien planet. Previous
Jupiter-like exoplanets have shown only faint traces of methane, making them very different from
the heavy methane atmospheres of gas giants in our Solar System.

The astronomers also detected water, using GPI's spectrometer instrument.

These findings indicate that it might be similar to planets in our Solar System, yielding additional
clues to the formation of giant, astronomical bodies.

51 Eridani b

The GPI detects alien planets through a process of direct imaging

The vast majority of alien solar systems that have been discovered are very different from our own,
with massive planets - so-called "hot Jupiters" - orbiting close to their stars. This is partly because
such systems are easier to detect with the techniques currently used to search for planets orbiting
distant stars.

"Previous search methods couldn't find systems like our own, with small, rocky worlds close to their
star and large, gas giants at large distances like Jupiter and Saturn," said co-author James Larkin,
from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "The search for large planets at large separations
from their star is exactly the goal of GPI. These solar systems are likely much more similar to our own."

Studying such worlds should reveal how common our Solar System architecture truly is.

A tale of two theories

Astronomers believe the gas giants in our Solar System formed slowly - by building up a large core over
a few million years and then pulling in a huge amount of hydrogen and other gases to form an atmosphere.
This is known as a "cold-start".But the Jupiter-like exoplanets that have been discovered so far are much
hotter than models have predicted. This hints that they could have formed quickly - as gas collapses to
make a scorching planet in what is known as a "hot-start".

Gemini South


The GPI is installed at the Gemini Observatory in Chile

The core build-up process can also form rocky planets like the Earth. But the fast collapse process might
only make giant gas planets. The planets in our Solar System are 4.5 billion years old, but at just 20 million
years old, 51 Eridani b might be young enough to reveal clues about how it was created.

"This planet really could have formed the same way Jupiter did; the whole solar system could be a lot like
ours," said co-author Bruce Macintosh, from Stanford University's Kavli Institute.

The new gas giant is roughly twice the mass of Jupiter. Until now, the gas giant planets that have been
directly detected have been much larger - five to 13 times Jupiter's mass.

It orbits a little further from its parent star than Saturn does from the Sun and has a temperature of 430C
(800F), hot enough to melt lead, but still rather cold compared with other alien gas giants, which reach
temperatures above 540C (1,000F).The Gemini Planet Imager is installed on the 8m Gemini South
Telescope in Chile. It began science operations in 2014.Other scientific instruments designed to detect
exoplanets do so indirectly, by, for example, detecting the dip in starlight as a planet passes in front of
its parent sun. GPI instead searches for light from the planet itself - referred to as direct imaging.

The astronomers use adaptive optics to sharpen the image of a star, and then block out the starlight.
Any remaining incoming light is then analysed, with the brightest spots indicating a possible planet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33922503

[Cidersomerset]

What makes a planet habitable?

By Christopher Watson
Queen's University, Belfast

17 August 2015

From the section Science & Environment


Kepler has been looking for rocky worlds that could possibly retain liquid water on their surface

Scientists are looking for more rocky worlds that could possibly retain liquid water on their surface

Water in liquid form is thought to be a necessity for life on Earth.

Naturally, some say that life may flourish under other conditions, and perhaps even in the
absence of water. While that may be true, take a look around - life seems to do quite well
here on Earth and we've yet to find it elsewhere in our Solar System. Based on this, let's
look at the classical definition for the habitable zone as the region around a star, such as
our own Sun, where the temperature of any orbiting planet permits water in liquid form.
Astrophysicists are extremely good at calculating the temperature of a star and then,
taking into account the distance of a planet from its host star, it is easy to work out the
planet's "equilibrium temperature".The starlight (in our case, sunlight) that falls onto
the planet is reradiated as heat and, hey presto, we have our actual planet
temperature - simple. Except it isn't.

Greenhouse gases

What if the planet sports a blanket of white clouds? Clouds are reflective and therefore
will cool the planet, acting to push the habitable zone closer to the star. Amusingly,
if we calculate this "equilibrium temperature" for the Earth, taking into account its
beautifully reflective clouds, then it turns out that we live outside the classical
habitable zone! The same calculation for Venus gives an expected equilibrium
temperature of about -10°C, but in reality it is more like 450°C.

What happened?

Clouds and bright sun

Clouds' reflective qualities cool the planet and mean the habitable zone can be closer to a star

Both these planets have greenhouse gases present in their atmospheres, warming
the planet up and driving the outer boundary of the habitable zone further away
from the star (while clouds drive the inner boundary closer to the star).

The very latest habitable zone definitions use simulations of these cloud and greenhouse
effects - widening and blurring the crude classical definition.

Throw into the mix that we currently can't study the atmospheres of rocky terrestrial
exoplanets (and therefore have no idea whether they have clouds, greenhouse gases,
or even an atmosphere at all!) - then to say "that planet is habitable" is impossible,
for the time-being at least.

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What is an exoplanet?

◾Planets beyond our Solar System are often given the term "exoplanet"

◾The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, orbiting a pulsar (a neutron star that emits electromagnetic radiation)

◾A few years later, the planet 51 Pegasi B was found orbiting a star similar to the Sun

◾More than 1,000 have been detected to date using several techniques

◾Thousands more "candidates" await confirmation

◾Many of these worlds are large planets believed to resemble Jupiter or Neptune

◾Many gas giants have been found to be orbiting very close to their stars

◾This has prompted new ideas to describe the formation and evolution of solar systems

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Just to complicate matters, the habitable zone also depends on the type of star
the planet orbits. The more massive and hotter the star, the further out the
habitable zone will lie.

Conversely, small cool stars will have a habitable zone that is much closer in.

Indeed, "red dwarf" stars are so cool and dim that a planet in the habitable
zone might have a "year" that lasts only a few days, so feeble is the red dwarf's light.

Stellar blasts

This would raise other problems for life on such a planet. Red dwarfs like to chuck
out large flares, stellar eruptions that release charged particles and X-rays. Given
the close proximity of the planet, this might cause substantial atmospheric losses.
High doses of radiation also tend to be harmful to biological material, and X-rays
are capable of dissociating water - thereby depleting any water supply. Not ideal.
Maybe things are better around hotter stars, where a habitable planet would lie
further way from any nasty stellar blasts? Well, now we run into another problem,
that of the lifetime of the star.

These are artistic representations of the only known planets around other stars
(exoplanets) with any possibility to support life as we know it


Massive, hot stars are real gas-guzzlers. Yes, they may have far larger "fuel tanks"
(they have a lot more mass to "burn"), but they gobble that fuel much, much faster,
and die much younger than small, frugal cool stars. For example, some of the most
massive stars may live for only a few million years, while our Sun will hang around
for about eight billion years. Based on our knowledge of how life evolved on Earth,
it is unlikely that even simple life would have time to evolve around stars that are
all that much hotter than our Sun.Returning to the diminutive red dwarf stars at the
other end of the scale, these can hang around for about 100 billion years. Perhaps if
a planet DID hang on to its atmosphere, then over such a long time life might evolve
to cope with being frequently doused in radiation?

Scorching hot

Well, we hit another issue - the fact that the variance in the amount of energy red
dwarfs emit over their lifetime, known as their luminosity evolution, is quite drastic.
Over its lifespan, our Sun will change its luminosity by about 30% (before then
evolving into a giant star).

However, a red dwarf may change its luminosity 10-fold!

So, a planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf now was probably once scorching
hot, and in the future will be freezing cold.

Jupiter and its moon Ganymede

Does Jupiter (seen here beside its moon Ganymede) stop more asteroids hitting Earth?

I haven't even begun discussing some of the "rare-Earth" arguments that point out a
range of factors that affect the Earth that may be necessary for life, but that may be
rare for other planets.

These are things like the presence of Jupiter (which may or may not deflect asteroids and
comets from striking the Earth) or the presence of the moon (which may stabilise Earth's spin).

This may seem all doom and gloom, but I only mean to highlight the difficulties in defining
what might be a "habitable" planet; not that I don't think there are any out there, or that
we can't find them.

Exciting projects, such as the European Space Agency's Plato mission (due to launch in 2024)
aim to find Earth-sized planets, in Earth-like orbits, around nearby Sun-like stars.

These are the type of rocky planets that would be ripe for follow-up, ultimately opening the
possibility for probing directly for biomarkers in their atmospheres. Just over 20 years ago
we didn't know of ANY planets beyond our Solar System (we now know of thousands of
candidates!) and only in the last few years have we been able to find small, rocky alien worlds.

The pace of discovery is astonishing and in 20 years' time I suspect I will look back at this
article and find I was totally wrong about everything.

This is what progress is.

Dr Christopher Watson is senior lecturer in extrasolar planets and low-mass stars at the
Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen's University, Belfast

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33929851

[Cidersomerset]

Fading cosmos quantified in 21 colours

By Jonathan Webb
Science reporter, BBC News


10 August 2015

From the section Science & Environment


Short vid on linkhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33846857
Watch a "fly-through" of one of the five regions in the GAMA survey;
galaxies are enlarged for visibility (video courtesy of Durham University/SDSS/GAMA)

A team of astronomers has published a multi-coloured survey of five
chunks of space - and offered the best estimate yet of how fast the
Universe is fading.They analysed the light from 200,000 galaxies in
21 wavelengths and found that the energy output of the Universe
has nearly halved in two billion years.This agrees with previous
calculations, confirming that the lights are slowly going out right
across this spectrum.The drop is largely due to the falling rate at
which new stars are formed.

The results, which come from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA)
survey, were unveiled at the general assembly of the International
Astronomical Union in Honolulu, Hawaii.

"We used as many space and ground-based telescopes as we could
get our hands on to measure the energy output of over 200,000
galaxies across as broad a wavelength range as possible," said
GAMA's principal investigator Prof Simon Driver, from the
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Western
Australia.The rate at which stars are forming is slowing down
so much that we are now starting to see the total energy output
decreasing Dr Stephen Wilkins, University of SussexHe and his
team are now opening up this huge collection of data for other
astronomers to work on.

"The data release means that a whole lot more people outside the
team are going to be able to jump on the data and do science with
it, which is incredibly important," said Dr Stephen Wilkins of the
University of Sussex, another GAMA team member.He told BBC
News that the strength of GAMA is that it combines so many
wavelengths, where previous surveys have concentrated on a few.
Composite image showing how a typical galaxy appears at different
wavelengths in the GAMA survey.These pictures show a single galaxy,
imaged at some of the different wavelengths in the GAMA survey


Because the team used a variety of the world's most powerful
telescopes - both earthbound and in orbit - their analysis spans
wavelengths from UV light to infrared, including the small strip
of visible wavelengths in the middle.That means they can look
at light from stars that are both young and old, as well as light
that has been absorbed and then re-emitted by dust. So the
new assessment of the Universe's decline includes information
from a huge variety of galaxies, including those hidden behind dust.

'Nodding off'

"We know that star formation peaked a few billion years ago and
has been declining since. This is just a new way of measuring
that decline," Dr Wilkins said."It's a new spin, and it completely
agrees with the previous results - but it's tightened the error
bars as well." Specifically, when the team totted up the total
energy output of galaxies at three different ages, they saw a
steady slump. In total, from 2.25 billion years ago to 0.75
billion years ago, the Universe's output apparently fell by about 40%.

"The rate at which stars are forming is slowing down so much
that we are now starting to see the total energy output of all
the stars decreasing," Dr Wilkins explained. This happens
because the stars that already exist - on average - get older,
smaller and less energetic.

Vista telescope in Chile

One of the instruments involved was VISTA in Chile, the world's largest survey telescope

Prof Driver wrapped the findings into a sad but cosy analogy:
"The Universe will decline from here on in, like an old age that
lasts forever," he said. "The Universe has basically sat down
on the sofa, pulled up a blanket and is about to nod off for an
eternal doze."The eventual end of the Universe is still an awfully
long way off, the team said - and it is far too early to put a date on it.

"The rate at which stars form is probably going to decline more
and more," Dr Wilkins said. "So the Universe will, based on our
expectations, become fainter and fainter and fainter. But there's
a huge amount of uncertainty there because we don't understand
so much of the underlying cosmology."

The team's analysis of the great cosmic drowsiness has been
submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society, but is not yet peer-reviewed.

map of areas surveyed by GAMA

GAMA penetrates into space in five wedge-shaped segments
- here compared to the range of other major surveys

Dr Aprajita Verma, an astrophysicist at the University of
Oxford, said GAMA offered a unique and valuable data set
because of its spread of wavelengths.

"We know that galaxies can exhibit very different properties
if you look at them purely in the visible, compared to other
wavelengths," she told the BBC. "This study is making a
census of their emissions, right the way from the UV through
to the sub-millimetre range."

Dr Verma was also pleased the wider research community
would get its hands on the data. "It will spawn lots of new
studies," she said.

Follow Jonathan on Twitter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33846857

[Cidersomerset]

PR Stunt...?



UK team plans 'unsent letter' to aliens

By Jonathan Webb
Science reporter, BBC News, Bradford
1 hour ago....From the section Science & Environment

Bank of radio telescopesImage copyright Science Photo Library

Radio telescopes have been listening for alien life for more than 30 years, so far without success

A network of UK researchers has decided to compose a message to aliens
- but they are divided over whether such a message should be sent into space.

The group will enter the Breakthrough Message contest, which offers a $1m
prize for creating a digital missive that represents human civilisation.That
prize accompanies a new effort to accelerate the search for extra-terrestrial
intelligence (Seti).Experts have argued for decades about the wisdom of
broadcasting into space. Listening out for aliens is one thing, but trying to
contact them raises myriad concerns about what happens when civilisations collide.

The diversity of views was obvious at a conference of the UK Seti Research Network
(UKSRN) in Leeds, where the group's 20 members were split down the middle in an
Informal vote.It's a really interesting question: how do you construct a message that
an alien intelligence could receive? Dr Anders Sandberg, University of Oxford

"We did a show of hands and we were perfectly evenly split," said Dr Anders Sandberg,
speaking to journalists at the British Science Festival in Bradford.Dr Sandberg, a
philosopher from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, found
himself voting twice.

"I'm a typical philosophy department guy. I raised my hand in both cases and they
were all laughing at me." But the group settled firmly in favour of composing a
message, even if it might never leave the planet."What we could agree on was that it
was worthwhile and important to try to devise that message, so that we can reach the
best possible version," Dr Sandberg said.

He and three other UKSRN members have formed a working group to "thrash out the
basics" of how their message might be composed and what it might contain.For example,
they might draft two suggestions: one using pictures, and one using more abstract content
such as language or mathematics.

Other than its $1m (£0.65m) spoils, the details of the Breakthrough Message prize,
funded by tech billionaire Yuri Milner, are yet to be announced. But the competition
is open to anyone.

"There's a fair chance that we'll get beaten by a schoolgirl somewhere, and in that case
more power to her!" Dr Sandberg said.


Prof Stephen HawkingImage copyright Getty Images

In July, Prof Stephen Hawking helped launch Breakthrough Initiatives' investment in Seti

If the British team's bid is successful, Dr Sandberg said they would plough the prize money
back into Seti research, which has historically struggled for funding and credibility in the UK.
"We would use it to build up a slightly bigger Seti research community in the UK, because
this has never really been funded. The giggle factor is pretty high."

Intergalactic advice?

Whoever wins the prize, Breakthrough Initiatives have pledged not to transmit the message
until a "wide-ranging debate" about the risks and rewards has taken place.

"It seems a bit silly in a sense, this prize for a message that they promise not to send,"
Dr Sandberg said. "But on the other hand, from a scientific perspective, it's a really
interesting question: how do you construct a message that an alien intelligence could receive?"

Dr Jill Stuart, who studies space law and policy at the London School of Economics, is not
a member of the UKSRN but welcomed the group's decision to draft an interstellar introduction.
She strongly supports the notion of announcing humanity's presence in the cosmos.

"I'm very explicitly in favour," Dr Stuart said, "not only because I think it's worth trying to
contact them, but because of what I think it makes us do - reflecting back on ourselves,
building a potential regime for how we could communicate, and so on."

But many researchers are much more wary about hitting "send", for various reasons - and
these are arguments Dr Sandberg has heard many times.

"The most naive one would be that aliens will come and eat us or invade us," he said. "That
is probably not very likely. But a more sophisticated version is that we have seen what
happens when more advanced civilisations encounter less advanced ones."

On the other hand, we might learn something important.

"We have a lot of these uncertainties, but we also know that our own civilisation is in a fair
bit of trouble. We face some pretty big threats."That means it might be a good idea to
gamble, and hope there is someone slightly older and wiser out there. If aliens told us
something about how to handle our climate, or artificial intelligence, we might want to listen."

Follow Jonathan on Twitter


Read More.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34211549

[Cidersomerset]

Hubble sets new cosmic distance record

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent


3 March 2016

From the section Science & Environment



The galaxy GN-z11, pulled out in the inset, is seen only 400 million years after the Big Bang

The Hubble Space Telescope has spied the most distant galaxy yet.It is so far away
that the light from this extremely faint collection of stars, catalogued as GN-z11,
has taken some 13.4 billion years to reach us.Or to put that another way - Hubble
sees the galaxy as it was just 400 million years after the Big Bang.Astronomers say
they are confident about the measurement because they have been able to tease
apart and analyse the object's light.Such spectroscopic assessments are difficult to
perform on the most far-flung sources, but if it can be done it produces the most
reliable distance estimates.The details of the discovery will appear shortly in an
edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

"This really represents the pinnacle of Hubble's exploration of galaxies across
cosmic history," said Yale University, US, astronomer Pascal Oesch, the lead author
on the study."Hubble has proven once again, even after almost 26 years in space,
just how special it is.

"When the telescope was launched we were investigating galaxies a little over half-
way back in cosmic history. Now, we're going 97% of the way back. It really is a
tremendous achievement," he told BBC News.Nonetheless, scientists believe they
are now at the very limits of what the veteran observatory can achieve technically,
and it will most probably fall to Hubble's successor to look even deeper into space.
This is the James Webb Space Telescope, currently under construction and
scheduled to launch in 2018.


One key difference between Hubble and JWST will be the size of their primary mirrors

Its instruments will be tuned to the infrared - to a specific region of the
electromagnetic spectrum where the light from the very first stars to shine in the
Universe should still be detectable.They are probably another 200 million light-
years beyond even GN-z11.Scientists are keen to probe these founding stars and
the conditions in which they were born.They were likely hot giants that grew out of
the cold, neutral gas that pervaded the cosmos back then.These behemoths would
have burnt brilliant but brief lives, producing the very first heavy elements.

They would also have "fried" the neutral gas around them - ripping electrons off
atoms - to produce the diffuse plasmas we still detect between nearby stars today.
Dr Oesch and colleagues say GN-z11 is one-25th the size of the Milky Way with just
1% of our galaxy's mass in stars.

"The surprising thing is how bright it is (for what it represents), and it's growing
really fast, producing stars at a much faster rate," said the Yale astronomer.

"So, it's challenging some of our models, but it's showing galaxy build-up was well
under way early on in the Universe, and it's a great preview for James Webb, which
will be pushing even deeper to see the progenitors of this galaxy."


read more...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35721734

[Cidersomerset]

NASA Confirms 100 New Alien Planets

The revamped Kepler mission is raking in the discoveries, turning up new kinds of worlds.



NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft is still searching for other Earths and
studying the cosmos, despite being sidelined by a mechanical problem several
years ago.

By Nadia Drake
PUBLISHED January 8, 2016

After being crippled by a mechanical malfunction, NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler
spacecraft is back in action and has found a slew of planets orbiting other stars.
Called K2, the revamped mission has already found more than 100 confirmed
planets, the University of Arizona’s Ian Crossfield announced Tuesday at a
conference of the American Astronomical Society. Some of these are very different
from what the spacecraft observed during its original mission; many are in multi-
planet systems and orbit stars that are brighter and hotter than the stars in the
original Kepler field.

It has found a system with three planets that are bigger than Earth, spotted a
planet in the Hyades star cluster—the nearest open star cluster to Earth—and
discovered a planet being ripped apart as it orbits a white dwarf star.Scientists
have also found 234 possible planets that are awaiting confirmation, said Andrew
Vanderburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“It’s probing different types of planets [than the original Kepler mission],” says Tom
Barclay of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “We’re focusing on stars that are much
brighter, stars that are nearer by, stars that are more easy to understand and
observe from the Earth. The idea here is to find the best systems, the most
interesting systems.”

Picture of the hyades cluster



Among the planets discovered by a revived Kepler spacecraft is one in the Hyades
star cluster, the nearest of its kind to Earth.Photograph by NASA, ESA, and STScI

From 2009 to 2013, Kepler stared at the same patch of star-filled sky, watching for
periodic blips in starlight caused by orbiting planets. The mission’s goal was to
determine how common Earth-like planets are, and over four years Kepler
discovered more than 1,000 new planets.

But in 2013, Kepler lost its ability to stare at the same exact spot. After a tweak to
its steering ability, the spacecraft can still peer into the cosmos and study alien
worlds, even if it can no longer dare the universe to blink first.But K2 isn’t looking
only at planets orbiting other stars. Among other objects, it’s also spying on
supernovas, and studying planets orbiting our star. In 2014, it spent about 70 days
observing Neptune, studying the ice giant’s extremely windy weather.

“This is the best view, the longest view of Neptune we’ve ever had—this thing
we’ve known about for hundreds of years,” Barclay says. Now, Kepler is staring at
Uranus, a world that is much more placid than its blue, wind-whipped sibling
Neptune, and will target a population of asteroids that share an orbit with Jupiter.

“The area I get most excited about is the study of bodies in our own solar system.
It’s just so new for us, it’s something we’ve never done before with the spacecraft,”
Barclay says.

“Suddenly we can look at things we can see from our backyard.”

K2 will also attempt to spot planets that are wandering through the galaxy without
stars of their own. The gravity of these free-floating planets can briefly magnify the
light from distant stars and galaxies, producing a fleeting increase in an object’s
brightness. As Kepler stares at the sky, it will look for those brief blips that signify
wandering worlds.

“For free-floating planet candidates, these timescales could be as short as days or
even hours,” says Calen Henderson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Follow Nadia Drake on Twitter and National Geographic’s Phenomena network.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2...s-alien-space/