Planetary News: Kepler (2011)
Kepler Discoveries Suggest a Galaxy Rich in Life
By Amir AlexanderFebruary 3, 2011
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The search for distant Earths in the depths of space took a giant leap forward with the discovery of 5 Earth-size planet candidates orbiting in the habitable zone – the region around a star where liquid water is stable. If follow up observations confirm the discovery, the five planets would be among the first ever detected which could have water on their surface, and possibly – life.
The 54 habitable-zone planets detected by Kepler all orbit stars that are substantially smaller than the Sun. As a result, the habitable zones are closer to the stars, and the planets’ orbital period consequently shorter. The detection of Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars will take a few more years, simply because Kepler will need to observe at least 3 transits, which for a planet with an Earth-like orbit will take around 3 years.
Even so, the implications of the spacecraft’s discoveries are already transforming our view of the universe and of ourselves within it. “Kepler can only see 1/400 of the sky” noted Borucki. “[It] can only find a small fraction of the planets around the stars it looks at,” because most orbiting planet do not transit, and are therefore invisible to the probe. “If you account for those two factors our results indicate that there must be millions of planets orbiting the stars that surround our suns.” And if planets are plentiful in the Milky Way, then life could be as well. “Kepler, said Borucki,” is the first step towards the detection of life in our galaxy.”
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Kepler in the way it is discovering new planets is also helping to prove the point I have been making which is, "What we see happening in space is happening now, not light years ago as our cosmetologist and scientist would have us believe."
Kepler was launched in march 2009 and trails the earth as it orbits the sun at a distance of around 18 million miles.
It fixes its gaze permanently on one patch of sky looking for galaxies and planets that we cannot see from earth.
As you will note from the above passages copied from The Planetary News, Kepler has been successful in discovering a galaxy that may have life among the planets located within it and the scientists rightly are excited about this find as it could hold the answer we all have been wondering about. "Is there life out there?"
The point I am trying to make is that it took from 2009 until this year for Kepler's search to unveil the exciting galaxy that shone through the dark patch of sky it had been focusing on.
Through the ages, since mankind has been observing the skies, none of the galaxies we are now discovering by probing deeper into space has ever projected its image close enough for us to detect them from earth. You would think if the light was projected the way scientist say, some of these images would have reached us without us have to probe deeper into space for them considering the speed light travels at.
If as the scientists believe, what we see as we look at distant galaxies through telescopes from earth, or even by the assistance of The Hubble Telescope that the light reaching us in the image it portrays is an event that happened millions of light years ago, then the image of this new galaxy that Kepler has discovered should reach us soon and we should be able to view it from earth by the means available to us as I mentioned.
If this were so there would be no need to send observation crafts out into space as the image would reach us eventually according to the speed light travels.
We all know how vast the universe is, and as it stands there are galaxies and planets that will never be seen from earth no matter how long you wait for a light to shine through.
We have to reach out to these new galaxies, travel across space to get closer to them before we will be able to see their image, and if and when we do, what we will find is a planet with whatever activity that is taking place, happening at the time we observe it, not as it was billions of years before we discovered it.
When Christopher Columbus discovered America he was on a different time zone from the one he left in Europe, but what he observed on the shore from his ship was happening at that time and not sometime in the past.
We can travel to America in hours now in comparison to the months it took Columbus, and arrive in a different time zone, but the result is still the same. "what we will observe will be happening at that exact time"
It would be no different if we could travel through space and reach the galaxy Kepler discovered, we would be at a different part of the universe and in a different time zone but we would be observing what was happening on these planets at our time of arrival not some time in the past.
The light will be traveling from that galaxy and it might reach earth, but the image of the galaxy or the planets in it will not be seen from earth, only the fading rays as they pass like time ever onward until they are no more.
