7 Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby star

[Homer J Simpson]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39034050

[Gyro]

I find it both interesting and frustrating in equal measure: A really exciting discovers... but unfortunately it's 40 lightyears away so we'll never get to go there, see a picture of them, or know for sure. 

[JacquesBBB]

The planets are Earth sized,  but  even when they are in the so called habitable zone, they
will be very different than the Earth.
As  the  star is small and not very hot, in order to have temperature that allows for liquid water,
they need to be much closer to the star.

But the luminosity goes as the distance^2,  while the tidal effect of the star on the planet
goes as the distance^6.

All the planets will then be tidally locked. Which mean that  they will have one hemisphere
always facing the star, and the other one in the dark.

[calexanian]

I am just simply amazed at what they can determine with relative confidence from just crazy small observations. Amazing. Further proof that the universe is just full of planets and most likely life. We need to change our thinking. We think of life as so rare. Because life happened here it almost means it must happen other places. One day we will point a radio telescope at one of these planets and its going to light up like crazy with all sorts of activity. 

[EEVblog]

Apparently they are all tidal locked to the sun so the same face always point to the sun.
Not a very good pre-requisite for life.
 

[EEVblog]

One day we will point a radio telescope at one of these planets and its going to light up like crazy with all sorts of activity.

One of the biggest surprised of the 20th century was that we tried that and found (and continue to find) nothing.
The answer why that is so is as equalling intriguing as finding something.

[MarkS]

One of the biggest surprised of the 20th century was that we tried that and found (and continue to find) nothing.
The answer why that is so is as equalling intriguing as finding something.

We assume a similar (actually exactly the same) technological progression. We are looking for evidence of our technology. If there is life within reach and they have progressed faster or slower than us, we may never see or not see for decades or centuries, evidence of life.

[Brumby]

One day we will point a radio telescope at one of these planets and its going to light up like crazy with all sorts of activity.

It really gives me nightmares to think one of those civilisations (if they exist) pointed their radio telescope in our direction, only to pick up a signal that they decode to an image like this:

[MarkS]

One day we will point a radio telescope at one of these planets and its going to light up like crazy with all sorts of activity.

It really gives me nightmares to think one of those civilisations (if they exist) pointed their radio telescope in our direction, only to pick up a signal that they decode to an image like this:

 

[calexanian]

Could be worse. They could pick up cable news. The death fleets would be launched at us ASAP!

[MarkS]

Correction:

The death fleets *SHOULD* be launched at us ASAP!

[wraper]

Apparently they are all tidal locked to the sun so the same face always point to the sun.
Not a very good pre-requisite for life.
 

Dunno, actually in such conditions you can find stable comfortable temperature zones on the planet.

[VK3DRB]

There is absolutely no evidence or even a hint there is intelligent life on other planets. To say its a matter of when and not if, is bad science.

Assuming there are TRILLIONS of planets around capable of supporting life, there is no evidence whatsoever of any intelligent signal transmitted from a radio transmitter. SETI has found nothing (well nothing proven). One would think, that among the plethora of earth-like planets the human race is not the universe's most advanced race served by a rich set of chemical elements found in nature, meaning at least one planet would have intelligent life capable of transmitting their version of Justin Bieber's Christmas Album. But there is nothing. Zilch. The fact we have heard nothing suggests to the evolutionists there is not even bacteria out there.

The Americans are more optimistic though. Forget Area 51 - they have a line at immigration at LAX with a sign saying "Aliens Queue Here"

The planets are 40 light years away? That means 1977. Then our distant planets should be receiving this about now, showing some weird lifeforms acting strange like lifting up their dresses...

[cheeseit]

The universe could be, and probably is, teeming with life. But inverse-square law, mind-boggling distances, powerful signals radiated only for a very short while and two or more technological civilizations existing at the same point in time makes the chance of us discovering anyone very, very unlikely. Unfortunately. I so wish that we'd discover signs of intelligent alien life, and I can't think of anything bigger than that, but I don't think it'll happen.

Ars of course also has an article on this discovery.

[LordNobady]

I still believe that the best prove of intelligent live in the universe is that thy did not contact us. 

Before we go to look for intelligent live on other planets perhaps we best search on this one first. I have heard rumors mice are intelligent.

[snarkysparky]

Shhhh   Be very very quiet.  Beware the Dark Forest.....

[Red Squirrel]

This is indeed a really cool discovery.  The concept of habitable planets is a really awesome one.  I wonder if they get lot of quakes though, being so close to each other would perhaps have gravitational influence that may even warp it's structure somewhat like the moons of jupiter experience.   They don't seem to mention anything about that though so maybe it's not an issue. 

[CraigHB]

That's the problem with small stars, tidally locked planets in the habitable zone and massive solar flares.  Red dwarfs have some of the strongest flares.  Though because red dwarfs are less bright they're easiest to investigate for planet hunters.  The commonality of planets around stars implies there should be good number of planets out there similar to Earth.  They say there's at least as many planets as stars probably more so even if it's just one in ten thousand, that's still like twenty million Earth like planets just in our galaxy.

I don't think it's strange at all we've not seen evidence of other intelligent life by looking for radio signals in our galaxy.  That's a very narrow set of criteria to look for.  A civilization would have to be on the same technology track as us and their age would have to be similar taking into account the time it takes for signals to propagate.  I don't think it's possible to just pick up local broadcasts on an alien world, signals don't have the strength and our listening equipment is not sensitive enough.  They would have to intentionally broadcast toward us.  Why would anyone do that, I don't think they would.

[SeanB]

The thing with radio is that pretty soon ( under a century) of the discovery of radio we went from a signal with simple modulation ( thus easy to detect as not natural)to a very complex set of spread spectrum transmissions, that to the casual observer, without the knowledge of the spreading key, the rate and the other parameters, is just about the same as pure wideband noise.

This was done to increase data rates, so it is not too hard to think of others not doing the same, and the RF energy from them, well attenuated and with some natural multipath doing a good job of making it undecodable, appearing here as just a slightly increased noise over some wide range.  The same with our transmissions, they are just slightly above the Rf noise of the sun, at those frequencies that are easiest to get out of the atmosphere and into space.

There are no plans to have a very large radio telescope antenna ( and this would have to be large, to cover the range from 10Hz to 100GHz) made and sent out into a solar orbit, well away from the RF noise from Earth, and to look for RF noise above the background.  The existing ones are there to look for deliberate signals, and we are not doing much of that ourselves, just a few tiny beams that were short period.

[calexanian]

The universe could be, and probably is, teeming with life. But inverse-square law, mind-boggling distances, powerful signals radiated only for a very short while and two or more technological civilizations existing at the same point in time makes the chance of us discovering anyone very, very unlikely. Unfortunately. I so wish that we'd discover signs of intelligent alien life, and I can't think of anything bigger than that, but I don't think it'll happen.

Ars of course also has an article on this discovery.

Don't bother me with the facts. I am content here in fantasy land. What you say is true though. the massive expanse of not only space, but time is what keeps me from green 60's Orion slave girls.

[HP-ILnerd]

Having moons themselves (inevitable?) could break a tidal lock.

Also, as there is evidence that Ceres and even Pluto have liquid water oceans, not to mention Jovian or Saturnian moons,  the "habitable" zone issue might not be as big a deal as we once thought.

Fascinating discovery, though.

[nfmax]

The thing with radio is that pretty soon ( under a century) of the discovery of radio we went from a signal with simple modulation ( thus easy to detect as not natural)to a very complex set of spread spectrum transmissions, that to the casual observer, without the knowledge of the spreading key, the rate and the other parameters, is just about the same as pure wideband noise.

To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced signal is indistinguishable from noise"

[nctnico]

There is absolutely no evidence or even a hint there is intelligent life on other planets. To say its a matter of when and not if, is bad science.

The biggest problem is an overlapping period of high technological abilities which would allow contact over great distances. The probability of such an overlap is extremely unlikely given the cosmic timescale. How long will we (humans) retain our current level of technological abilities? Even if it last thousands of years that period is insignificant so projects like SETI are borderline useless. Nevertheless it would be interesting to travel to planets which could have supported life at some point (Mars for starters).

[rrinker]

 Sort of what I was just thinking. Especially back in the beginning of life on Earth, we tend to round off the numbers because of the huge magnitude. So say if one advance we are fairly sure of took 300 million years on Earth. What if on Planet A the equivalent advance took only 200 million years, but the planet was formed around a similar time as Earth? Life thee could be 100 million years more advanced. Or the opposite, it too Planet B 400 million years to achieve the same advance. They could be a million years BEHIND us.
 Or even if the progression takes exactly the same amount of time. If one planet cooled sufficiently to start the process hundreds of millions years before Earth. Or another planet that formed after the Earth was already 400 million years old.
 There could be millions of planets with life, billions even, but the chances for technological overlap that would allow us to talk to each other seems awfully slim.

[VK3DRB]

There is absolutely no evidence or even a hint there is intelligent life on other planets. To say its a matter of when and not if, is bad science.

The biggest problem is an overlapping period of high technological abilities which would allow contact over great distances. The probability of such an overlap is extremely unlikely given the cosmic timescale. How long will we (humans) retain our current level of technological abilities? Even if it last thousands of years that period is insignificant so projects like SETI are borderline useless. Nevertheless it would be interesting to travel to planets which could have supported life at some point (Mars for starters).

The timescale is skewed. There would be more like a normal distribution over time of the opportunity for an advanced civilisation like ours. We might be near the peak, and if we are, the chances of another occurrence of a civilisation like ours would be biased higher at this time. I agree, the period for RF transmissions on earth is relatively very brief, from the first days (Marconi and others), to the loss of the capability to produce radio signals which might disappear with the inevitable collapse of human civilisation, probably relatively soon.

If there are a trillion earth size planets around, you would think there would be at least one one with similar contributing factors to RF transmissions to ours:

Raw materials
Intelligence
Culture
Timing

Or are we so damned unique, being one-in-a-trillion?

With RF transmissions, the CB radio peak of 1977 would be reaching our planets 40 light years away by now. As far as "pointing the antenna to us", the argument is almost irrelevant. There is only, say, 9dB difference in signal power between a beam and an isotropic radiator. There would be a spread of CB signals with the RF biased in every direction. And there were pirates with their 400W linear amplifiers. If the aliens tried to decode the CB transmissions, what would they make of "Breaker, breaker. Are there any YL's on channel for an eyeball?"

Travelling to other planets has already been achieved... Donald Trump is clearly on another planet.