WASHINGTON – Earth seems to have its first fuzzy photos of alien planets outside our solar system, images captured by two teams of astronomers. The pictures show four likely planets that appear as specks of white, nearly indecipherable except to the most eagle-eyed experts. All are trillions of miles away — three of them orbiting the same star, and the fourth circling a different star. None of the four giant gaseous planets are remotely habitable or remotely like Earth. But they raise the possibility of others more hospitable. It's only a matter of time before "we get a dot that's blue and Earthlike," said astronomer Bruce Macintosh of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He led one of the two teams of photographers. "It is a step on that road to understand if there are other planets like Earth and potentially life out there," he said. Macintosh's team used two ground-based telescopes, while the second team relied on photos from the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope to gather images of the exoplanets — planets that don't circle our sun. The research from both teams was published in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science. In the past 13 years, scientists have discovered more than 300 planets outside our solar system, but they have done so indirectly, by measuring changes in gravity, speed or light around stars. NASA's space sciences chief Ed Weiler said the actual photos are important. He compared it to a hunt for elusive elephants: "For years we've been hearing the elephants, finding the tracks, seeing the trees knocked down by them, but we've never been able to snap a picture. Now we have a picture." In a news conference Thursday, Weiler said this fulfills the last of the major goals that NASA had for the Hubble telescope before it launched in 1990: "This is an 18 1/2-year dream come true." There are disputes about whether these are the first exoplanet photos. Others have made earlier claims, but those pictures haven't been confirmed as planets or universally accepted yet. The photos released Thursday are being published in a scientifically prominent journal, but that still hasn't convinced all the experts. Alan Boss, an exoplanet expert at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Harvard exoplanet hunter Lisa Kaltenegger both said more study is needed to confirm these photos are proven planets and not just brown dwarf stars. MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager, at the NASA press conference, said earlier planetary claims "are in a gray area." But these discoveries, "everybody would agree is a planet," said Seager, who was not part of either planet-finding team. The Hubble team this spring compared a 2006 photo to one of the same body taken by Hubble in 2004. The scientists used that to show that the object orbited a star and was part of a massive red dust ring which is usually associated with planets — making it less likely to be a dwarf star. Macintosh's team used ground-based telescopes to spot three other planets orbiting a different star. That makes it less likely they are a pack of brown dwarf stars. The planet discovered by Hubble is one of the smallest exoplanets found yet. It's somewhere between the size of Neptune and three times bigger than Jupiter. And it may have a Saturn-like ring. It circles the star Fomalhaut, pronounced FUM-al-HUT, which is Arabic for "mouth of the fish." It's in the constellation Piscis Austrinus and is relatively close by — a mere 148 trillion miles away, practically a next-door neighbor by galactic standards. The planet's temperature is around 260 degrees, but that's cool by comparison to other exoplanets. The planet is only about 200 million years old, a baby compared to the more than 4 billion-year-old planets in our solar system. That's important to astronomers because they can study what Earth and planets in our solar system may have been like in their infancy, said Paul Kalas at the University of California, Berkeley. Kalas led the team using Hubble to discover Fomalhaut's planet. One big reason the picture looks fuzzy is that the star Fomalhaut is 100 million times brighter than its planet. The team led by Macintosh at Lawrence Livermore found its planets a little earlier, spotting the first one in 2007, but taking extra time to confirm the trio of planets circling a star in the Pegasus constellation. They are about 767 trillion miles away, but are actually visible with binoculars. The star in this solar system is HR 8799, and the three planets are seven to 10 times larger than Jupiter, Macintosh said. "I've been doing this for eight years and after eight years we get three at once," he said. http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Hubbl...1841//s:/ap/20081113/ap_on_sc/sci_new_planets http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081113/ap_on_sc/sci_new_planets one day technology is going to advance so much we'll be able to see picture perfect another planet like google earth :drool:
ive always find this kind of stuff interesting but yet frightening... maybe ive watched too many movies... but if there really are planets that are habitable what would they look like etc....isnt that a bit scary =/?
ofcourse its theory as no one has been there, im sure there are planets but ones supporting (PHYSICAL) life i highly doubt. That aside, the picture is awesome, i love astronomy.
are u saying that because you're religious or because you're scientific? anyways the universe is pretty infinite, any logical astronomer or scientist that studies the stars would not doubt (unless they are religious) that there is a big possibility there is life on other planets. We can't admit it until there's proof but we all know its there without a doubt. Evidence shows that we are just one of 1 of an infinate planet/stars out of the whole universe but none that we could find so far that supports life. Even if the odds were 1 in a trillion its pretty much there, i would not be as ignorant to not say we are the only planet that supports life out of the whole infinate universe, its clearly there we but the whole damn universe is so big its almost impossible to find. a planet + star has to be at a certain angle and distance to be inhabitable like earth %99 of them aren't but who knows there can be extreme species out there that can live in that environment
I don't believe the universe is infinite, the universe being infinite is just 1 theory, so if that theory is untrue there is a limit to what is out there. it all comes down to "i think", "i belive", "no dubt there must be," etc etc, its a matter of faith. I dont believe there are people walking about on other planets but i wouldnt go as far as to say there isnt a planet that couldnt support life if life was on it. im 100% sure the universe is inhabited by beings that are not physical though.
and thats why im not religious , i don't limit myself to what i can do or think about im just sayin the universe is so big it can go on and on forever because we have yet to find the end of it but"if" the universe wasn't infinite there are still enough stars/galaxy's/planets to be found. Life comes down to the rotation of the planets,postions of the stars and placements it happens to fall into. I can see how some religious people can't accept this because it has to do with the big bang theory. it's more concrete evidence then pulling tales out of thin air but i do not want to get into an argument about god on this.
what we can agree on is the universe is awesome. i would like to buy a telescope but they cost about £500. maybe when i leave home and get my own place.
OH SHI- IT'S SAURON!!!1 lol dude, wouldn't a planet that supports life imply that life can develop on it? if there is another earth like planet out there, the way it was develop would also be similar to that of earth itself. if there are bacterae on the other planet, there will be life other than those on earth. you can't have a planet with water and plant, and not have life.
depends on where your faith is, if it takes an evolution viewpoint then what you say would supposedly be true, a Christian viewpoint is that God created the earth and God put all life therein, so IF and i emphasis the word 'IF' for arguments sake there was a planet capable of having life it doesn't necessarily mean life would be on it. but as it goes i/we haven't explored the universe so its a matter of where your faith and belife is at.
There could be other forms of life that might exist that does not require water or oxygen in order to have life. You can't take what is on Earth and think that everything must be like Earth in order for other forms of life to exist on other planets.... Maybe on other planet, oxygen is deadly for them, you will never know ^^
@ master_g: forget faith, i'm talking pure straight science. lol good call there, but yea, what i'm saying is, those life who's oxygen is deadly for example, would not live there... but others, much like ours, would... it's like we can't live on jupiter for example, but who knows it's just that if the other world has developed the same way ours had, forget God, life should exist.
Firstly. NO i wont forget faith, and hearing about it from me is part of the package if you quote my stuff expecting a reply. so let me know if you can deal with it as i see it as pointless in writing a reply only to receive the above. Now every belief we have about history, other countries, science, biology, etc., exists because of FAITH. You only believe as you do because you believed the person who told you the information. You don’t know who discovered America. You simply have faith that what was told to you is indeed true. Neither do you know if general Custer died at the hands of Indians, or if Napoleon really existed. We cant live without FAITH. Try it. Say to yourself, “Today, I refuse to exercise and faith at all.” Then before you eat your corn flakes, go through every flake, scientifically testing it before you eat it. Refuse to trust that the manufacturers have obeyed health regulations and mixed the ingredients correctly. Do the same tests on the milk before you pour it on the corn flakes, in FAITH. You don’t know that the milk processors have done their job and given you pure milk. They may have mixed in something that could be harmful to your health. Don’t trust the sugar producers either. God only knows what they did while they were processing the sugar. Then check the microscope and other tools used for your analysis. How can you really trust that the information you gather for them is reliable? Don’t trust your weight on the chair at the breakfast table. Don’t believe today’s weather forecast or ay news item until you actually go to the proper location and see for yourself if what they say is true. Even then you will have to trust you natural senses (which cant always be trusted). Before you drink your coffee, don’t trust the cup is perfectly clean. Wash it yourself. Don’t use untested water, in FAITH. We really don’t know what is in it nowadays; it may be contaminated. And be sure to analyze the coffee. If you decide to take a taxi to work, you will have to trust your life to the vehicle and its driver, and trust the other drivers to stay on their side of the road. You will have to trust elevators, stairways, airplanes, the post office and banks. BELIVE ME – WE EITHER LIVE WITH FAITH OR FALL VICTIM TO PARANOIA.
thats just being ignorant because you can't look past god for even a second to think on both ends, big reason why aruging with deeply religious people is pointless. sure we can think on the faith end too because my faith can be as little compared to your faith or a million other peoples faith who have different faiths and it doesn't have to do with a god faith but more like myself faith and other people faith and faith in hard concrete science, basically if you're talking about faith it can be illogical because you can have faith in santa clause and it might not be real but only to yourself and a buncha 5 year olds.
i didn't mention God, i was talking about faith, faith doesnt necessarily involve God as i would like to think my above post showed, but maybe your talking about an older post, arguing is pointless regardless of who it is because it results in nothing positive. it is true i CANT/WONT look past God, im sure everyone has caught onto that by now. i did not understand the second paragraph but anyway i said my piece so ill leave this thread alone now, the pic was nice though.
look you just simply don't get it im not going to bother explaining and yes you pretty much can't look past god or are limiting yourself for its sake. But again if you're talking about faith i cannot argue against that because its your faith u can make it up to be anything you want. We're talking science not faith, if everyone had faith we wouldn't need to goto the doctor. You can have faith in everything and anything but this is science we're talking about that the odds are like 1 in a billion that there are other planets out there just like earth.
I don't see what faith has to do with another planet in the universe being habitable... The universe is far too big to say that it is impossible for there to be life on another planet... Its almost like saying that the earth is flat and that it's impossible that the earth is round. But if we do find life on another planet I would wonder how the being would look like; and also I would also wonder if they have a religion. I guess another question I would have is that if there is life on another planet besides ours would that discredit the bible? Since according to the bible there is only one god so it does get really confusing...
