RE: NASA - 41 New Transiting Planets in Kepler Field of View
August 23, 2012 at 5:23 pm
(This post was last modified: August 23, 2012 at 5:24 pm by Jackalope.)
(August 23, 2012 at 5:13 pm)Ace Otana Wrote: I want more information about kepler 22b. A planet that so happens to be earth like and in the habitable zone of it's star. It could contain life.
Whether it's Earth-like or not is still debatable. However, as Kepler continues to search, we should expect to see more planets in habitable zones found. Slower-orbiting planets require a lot more observation time to find.
Kepler 22b
Wikipedia Wrote:It is thought that the object has a mass similar to that of Neptune[10] (~35 Earth masses[11]). Another possibility is that Kepler-22b is an "ocean-like" world. It might also be comparable to the water-rich planet GJ 1214 b although Kepler-22b, unlike GJ 1214 b, is in the habitable zone. If it has an Earth-like composition, the compression of material in the interior of the planet would give an overall mass greater than 40 Earth masses.[12] Such a planet would also produce surface gravity greater than 7 times that on Earth. This is ruled out to at least 1-sigma uncertainty by radial velocity measurements of the system,[6] suggesting Kepler-22b does not have Earth-like composition. It is likely to have a more volatile-rich composition with a liquid or gaseous outer shell;[8] this would make it similar to Kepler-11f, the smallest known gas planet.
