Give me a break! NASA discovers Earth's twin - just 60% bigger, 1400 light years away (that's travelling at the speed of light for 1400 years to get there, people); and possibly 1.6 billion years older, hint, hint, more advanced.

Every television station on earth is reporting this story as though its the biggest discovery in our lifetime. If you Goggle the story you'll even see a picture of the planet, without a mention it is actually only a representation. NASA has no idea what the planet actually looks like.

I'm sorry, but everything about this discovery is shear speculation and given that it is totally impossible to ever get close enough to know if there is life, water, or a favourable atmosphere, this whole story is nothing more than a magnificent extrapolation of data to fit someone's agenda.

I'm not being a Grinch, I would love to see friendly, earth-like intelligent life discovered; I would love seeing the proof we are not alone; I would love a more advanced world to provide us the answers to end war and improve life for all beings on Earth, but a photo of a dot billions of miles away, that is likely to have a planet orbiting it "in the Goldilocks Zone" just seems too much like a convenient scientific sound bite with an ulterior motive of generating enough research funding to keep a bunch of astronomer nerds employed for the rest of their lives.

The dumbing down continues...

Pardon my scepticism.

Pardoned and shared.

CH,

Part of the search for life outside our solar system has to find planets that could support life. The criteria being:

1 The star is similar to ours in age and luminescence,
2 The planet is in the "goldilocks" zone where the temperature makes life capable,
3 The planet is similar in size and constitution to ours (ie not a gas giant)

The point is not that we have found a second Eden with bunnies frolicking, but that we have now found a string of potentially life supporting planets in our local vicinity. That there are 400 billion stars in our galaxy and 50 billion odd galaxies, means that the chances of life on other planets is very high. That we will never be able to reach them is not the immediate issue.

Actually the is no picture of a dot, the planet is identified by the dimming of the stars own light as the planet passes between us and the star, using spectrometry we may be able to determine some of the chemical characteristics of the planet such does it have an atmosphere and its composition.

The reason the discovery is of such significance is it is the first planet discovered outside our solar system which lies at a suitable distance from its star for life as we know it to exist. The number of planets identified outside the solar system is around 1800 so far we know of only two (inc earth) which are located in the right place and in the right size range for life to be a possibility. Although the number of examples is far to low to make a calculation as to how common earth like planets are, it does tells us that of the billions of stars in our galaxy similar to our own, there must be vast numbers of planets similar to earth.

The speculation that life exists on other planets around other stars now seems much more likely, unfortunately unless some way can be found to communicate faster than the speed of light, we will not be able to communicate with any advanced civilization as in the case of the planet just discovered, just to send a question and get an answer would take 2800 years. It is also possible that from the evolutionary point of view of life that advanced civilizations are a dead end.

Of course it is exciting that scientists are
making progress into different worlds with
the help of NASA's planet-hunting Kepler
mission, a space telescope that according to
an article done by the ABC has scoured more
than 150,000 stars for planets beyond our solar
system since its launch in 2009.

And, of course it is intriguing to consider the
possibility of life existing on another planet
like ours. However the two best candidates apparently
are so far away that learning more about them presents
a big challenge.

But, as the old adage tells us - each journey of discovery
begins with small steps (or words to that effect).

And as David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for
Astrophysics tells us - the first steps have been taken:

"All we can say is that they're promising candidates."

SM, writing in Forbes about Hubble Space Telescope's 25th anniversary three months ago Ethan Seigal wrote:

"Extrapolating this over the entire sky, we find that there are 170 billion galaxies in the observable Universe, and that’s just a lower limit. Given that there’s an astonishing amount of Universe out there that Hubble cannot yet see — and that it can only see the brightest of the most distant galaxies — we may yet find closer to 10^12 (or a trillion) galaxies within our visible Universe."

For his exhaustive descriptions regarding Kepler survey results see:

http://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-many-habitable-planets-are-in-our-galaxy-5bcf6db80c7f

"Picking a middle-of-the-road number leads us to a more reasonable, realistic estimate of around 40-to-80 billion potentially habitable worlds in the galaxy, alone. [That is the Milky Way galaxy... not the other 169,000,000,000 ones!]

That’s not bad, but as you can see, we’ve got a lot of science left to do before we know for sure. Still, at the start of 2015, that’s some amazing progress as far as learning what’s out there!"

I agree with you "That we will never be able to reach them is not the immediate issue" but the odds of a "a second Eden with bunnies frolicking" existing somewhere is arguably above zero.

However, "in the dimension of imagination" if they are Rod Serling's "twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper” it will be worth it.

Ch,

I don't know why you're so cross about it.

Human beings are like that - they like to delve and discover things previously unknown.

Most technologies affect other technologies - space exploration is no different.

Once we thought the sun revolved around the earth - I kinda like knowing the things we've discovered since - even though it's all a bit overwhelming.

hilarous to hear of many scientist wetting their pants about the likelyhood of aliens when they are so blinded they can''t see a Creator. No wonder the world becomes more irrational by the day.

Wm

What's a few trillion galaxies amongst friends.

runner,

"hilarous to hear of many scientist wetting their pants about the likelyhood of aliens when they are so blinded they can''t see a Creator. No wonder the world becomes more irrational by the day."

It's not about finding aliens or even another habitable planet - it's about discovering another solar system with a planet in similar situation in relation to its sun as ours.

Why is this a problem for you, so much so that you ridicule its discovery?

If you believe God created it all, why can't you celebrate this planet's existence as well as the intelligence and curiosity "He" bestowed on mankind which enables us to glean its presence?

And as for "irrationality" - rationality is the one thing you have to jettison in order to believe in God and an afterlife.

Rationality departs in that case - to make way for faith.

Dear runner,

The reality is - we're really not looking for "aliens,"
but for the planet where God lives - so we can
ask him did it really take seven days to create
our world.

Fear not, runner: "...they are so blinded they can''t see a Creator."

Here is the hand of the creator reaching for Christ's crown of thorns which is now 17,000 light years away from earth.

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2009/b1509/

The naysayers and worshippers of the Hindu lunar god Chandra think this is PSR B1509-58.

I know from experience, The media are attracting people's attention who can think, that the media are inventing stories out of nothing.

Radio waves can't travel very far. The sun sends out charged particles that add noise to radio wave communications. Spare television stations used to show noise on the screen and sound. The noise I believe comes from the sun. Sun spots allows noise to interfere with radio communications. Once radio waves leave earth's magnetic field, noise would overwhelm radio waves.

Mars Rover doesn't exist because radio waves will not travel that far as radio wave spread out as radio waves travel. Radio waves loose power by percentage of what a db power level is.

I Know from experience, Some time in the future, a radio program having intelligent listeners, listeners will be drawn into a confidence trick after being told about media's fantasy stories and how education traumatises students to believe what they are told. It's a confidence trick "we know you know too much, so we won't mess you around" after which they will mess you around.
Happened to myself in 1999. July 1999 DOW is 11,400. October 30, 1999 DOW is 7,200. January 2, 2000, DOW is 11,700. People watching the DOW were told by a radio program, "Markets were going to crash sending the world into a great depression". "Recommended listeners to sell property and head inland, rent and wait". Nothing happened while many people were convinced to sell property cheaply in a hurry; quit their jobs, Radio program tells listeners "not to work anymore, because they know too much".

There are many assassination stories on movie and television media. Having been told about parable stories, media assassination stories are reminding listeners of assassination threats first stated around October 30, 1999. Listen to John Lennon's 1970 song "Working Class Hero" for an example.
Jesus story is about a public execution. Jesus tips money tables over accusing temple priests of tricking people out of their money. Priest manipulated Jesus death. Parable threat public execution published in book, repeated story.

Political power needs the support from citizens in order to carry out unpopular policies and to allow unemployment, poverty, poor mentally stressful education to be unquestioned.
To allow citizens to except poor citizen advancement other than better looking buildings, a believe supported by a 1999 media suggestion that science is the new (religious) magic.
2,500 years of ruling classes often had people building large buildings that when finished created awe-inspiring support for birth-right leaders. Catholic cathedrals were built to have increased belief in a local religion and leaders. Peasants live in poverty, under repressing laws, threats of heresy and going to hell. Priests were aided in the words they spoke by a belief that quality of the awe-inspiring buildings represent, priests and leaders occupied. Visual images and good organisation of progress gives citizens reasons for supporting leaders while citizens lives are maintaining no progress.

Last 200 years of scientific advancement to most citizens allows a belief that science advances will aid future living conditions. Huge parabolic dishes; Voyager space probes; Mar Rover; Pluto planet images; medical scientific advances that are often over the top fantasy are conveying awe-inspiring belief in the capitalist and political systems. This belief by many people allows poverty, investment moneys to be lost and social injustice to continue unquestioned. The appearance is a trade off.
The appearance of the USA Apollo missions landing on the moon not only allowed the Vietnam war to be distracted from, probably increased citizens support for politicians to continue the Vietnam War.

Huge parabolic dishes are propaganda that create beliefs that in technological advanced societies, an increased education is required for future scientific research. Parabolic dishes allows school students a career dream to follow.

Mentally stressful education becomes justified by a need for more scientists, where all that happens is that citizens except education as attempting to move the learning bar higher, teaching methods and long hours of mental stress actually moves the learning bar lower into truck driver skills. Where skilled thinking tradesmen were a valued commodity, mentally stressful education turns teenagers growing into adults into “believe everything they're told” truck driver unskilled labourers. Machines are doing most of the work while limited skilled thinking ability merely presses buttons.

Once motor vehicles are driven by computers as science media often shows, truck drivers become obsolete.

Television news media reports on the last week of July 2015, suicides between ages 14 to 44 are the main cause of deaths in Australia. I will argue that pretend science advancements are allowing citizen to believe that education mental stress is justified. I call it propaganda, allowing mental stress abuses to be increased, education is contributing to mental depression; ADD; ADHD; leading to increased suicides.
Suicide is a natural selection god, human sacrifice population balance, Jesus on the cross religious ideology. I didn't cause it, I merely type what I see. Please don't blame the messenger.

Educational induced mental depression self-medicating creates reasons for teenager: alcoholic drunken abuse creating violence; various drug addictions, leading to suicides and long term mental health problems, leading to increased unemployment and social security dependence.

All the bad things in society are allowed to continue aided by a false sense of faith in leaders, whom justify their actions using Darwin and “two cathedral tower horns” devil religion ideology.

And what if we discovered that the occupants of that world, were killing each other over which one had the better imaginary friend?

I watched a segment on the Alex Jones show yesterday where they interviewed US astronaut Story Musgrave.

http://youtu.be/uEumx-x8wIE

He says its a life changing thing looking upon the planet from space.
Looking at the northern lights and the shimmering of the moon off the ocean on the dark side of the planet at night.

And that there are 50 wars taking place on the planet right now.

Kind of sad in a way how stupid we are.