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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cybele" data-source="post: 9390367" data-attributes="member: 333594">NASA has announced that their planet-hunting spacecraft, Kepler,  has discovered 1,235 potential new planets around alien stars. Of  these, five of them are about the right size, and in about the right  place, to potentially support life.                      The Kepler spacecraft was launched specifically to search for planets  around other stars, and so far, it seems to be doing a bang-up job.  While it can't see other planets directly, it watches their stars for  little dips in brightness that occur when the planets pass between the  star and Kepler. From this data, Kepler can tell about how big the the  planet is, where it orbits, how hot it is, and even what it's made of.  Discovering inhospitable gas giants around other stars is old news  nowadays, but five of these new planets are in the habitable zone,  meaning that they're located a comfortable distance from their star,  they're not too hot and not too cold, and liquid water could be stable  on their surfaces. Also, they're about the same size as Earth, implying a  friendly sort of gravity. Of course, we have no idea (yet) what the  surfaces of these planets are actually like, but so far, all signs point  to class M.  Kepler has also found a pretty wild multi-planet system, consisting  of six planets, five of which somehow manage to orbit their star (a  yellow dwarf) closer than Mercury orbits the sun. Astronomers didn't  know that such a system was physically possible until they found one.  It's not likely that any of these planets support life, but it's the  first indication that solar systems like ours may not be entirely  unique.  So what's the next step? Well, Kepler is going to keep looking for  planets, and as soon as we can figure out a way of telling whether the  promising ones have breathable atmospheres and friendly aliens who just  want to help you have a good time, we can send an interstellar scoutship out there to make first contact. <img src="http://dvice.com/assets_c/2011/02/kepler11-thumb-550xauto-56793.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /><img src="http://dvice.com/uploads/kepler11b.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /><img src="http://dvice.com/uploads/keplerc.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> </blockquote>

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