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NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a new batch of verified exoplanets, including nine that are potentially habitable:
NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date. "This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth."
Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope's July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of "planet." An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.
[...] In the newly-validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.
Also at NPR and The Register .
False Positive Probabilities For All Kepler Objects of Interest: 1284 Newly Validated Planets and 428 Likely False Positives (DOI: 10.3847/0004-637x/822/2/86)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 11 2016, @12:57PM
How many within reach of a physical probe in the next 100 years?
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 11 2016, @02:10PM
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] the closest confirmed exoplanet (which happens alos to be the closest potentially habitable one) is about 10.5 light years away. So if we manage to accelerate a probe to about 10.5% of the speed of light, we can reach it in the next 100 years (but will have to wait another 10.5 years to learn about it). Given that the a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vehicle_speed_records#Speed_records_relative_to_the_Sun">fastest space probe ever reached 252,792 km/h (157,078 mph), which is just about 0.023% of the speed of light, I'd say unless we make enormous progress in space probe propulsion, the probability of reaching it in the next 100 years is, to a very good approximation, zero.
Now there are unconfirmed exoplanet candidates at Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light years away. So maybe if we are lucky, we have to improve space probe propulsion "only" by a factor of about 200 in order to have a visit in the next 100 years.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday May 11 2016, @10:45PM
Well, Yuri Milner [wikipedia.org] plans to do just that [nytimes.com]. He is mostly known for mail.ru, but also a big investor in all the usual suspects.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Wednesday May 11 2016, @09:01PM
There's some concepts on doing some space-time manipulations to get moving really fast to distant objects. The theories to accomplish this is almost figured out. The really hard part is to use the possible physics in a way that it fits a possible engineering solution. Or one ends up with something like, it can be done but we need the energy that comes from converting the planet Jupiter into energy according to E=mc^2.
You could also have a look at the development of the electromagnetic thruster without reaction mass [wikipedia.org], that has been tested with success in the laboratory. But that has not yet been tested in space. The point is that it may not be limited by exhaust speed. There's other designs which use plain electromagnetic radiation too. However both methods will be limited to the speed of light. Once you load one video, youtube will suggest more along the same theme.
Some videos that you may look into. The main concept is to create a warp bubble and manipulate surrounding space as energy efficient as possible or it will not be possible. Keep your head cool and watch for hard science fact and not dreams but don't dismiss anything either just because it doesn't fit with what is supposedly known.
NASA Warp Drive Project - "Speeds" that Could Take a Spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in Two Weeks [youtube.com]
NASA unveils its warp drive concept spaceship IXS Enterprise [youtube.com]
NASA Tests 'Impossible' Engine, Finds Out It's Really Fast [youtube.com]
NASA Success at Testing EMDrive which may lead to Warp Drive [youtube.com]
It seems quantum mechanics is a path to learning new things about physics at least.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday May 11 2016, @11:14PM
And all the necessary energy may be just here [wikipedia.org] (search for Alcubierre Drive) - no Jupiter destruction necessary.
Of course, it will create a certain signature and aliens will show up to invite us into the community...
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday May 12 2016, @02:02AM
How will energy be had from the Casimir effect?
And how to change the energy density of vacuum?
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday May 13 2016, @12:15AM
It was intended as a partial joke and I am not qualified for the "scientific" discussion.
However, the basis for it was that energy in theory is z(-3) which is 120 orders of magnitude more than what is observed. Once they used analytic continuation though, they got results that agree with the experiments. Now speculations are that perhaps energy is z(-3) after all and what we observe is a projection from some higher dimension universe. Hence my "proposal" to pump it from over there exactly like in Ian Banks novels. Anyway, that's how it was described to me by some adepts over a few drinks)
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday May 13 2016, @01:47AM
How does one even get the ability to affect anything like this? or even pump it?