Astronomers confirm planet Kepler-22b as 'Earth-like Twin'

[Gepard]

Because their planet was doomed.

So's ours, if you wait long enough. It'll suck to be whatever's alive on Earth when the sun swells up, but I can't imagine you would argue that means we never should have evolved.

 

[Trekker4747]

^^ All five planets in that Solar System are within the equivalent orbit of Mercury. They would have nowhere to go.

I hope intelligent life never evolved there.

Why not?

Because their planet was doomed.

Erm...

Every planet is doomed. Our planet is doomed. For all we know there's a moon-sized asteroid headed right for us that will impact in 100-years. If not then, at the very least our planet will be destroyed in a few billion years when the sun starts fusing helium.

If this planet once supported life it could've been eons ago, a life that evolved from single-celled organisms to intelligent creatures that eventually destroyed themselves through their own arrogance or evolution kept going and after billions of years of life on the planet it's ability to sustain that life stopped.

There's no reason to wish away the existence of life simply because that existence is or was limited. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for millions of years. Humans in our current form have only been around for about 40-100,000 years and that could all end with a well-timed asteroid at any time.

Life is dirty.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Because their planet was doomed.

So's ours, if you wait long enough. It'll suck to be whatever's alive on Earth when the sun swells up, but I can't imagine you would argue that means we never should have evolved.

Well, that's true. Just sort of a gut reaction, I guess.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Speaking of doomed planets, here are two more new objects that are thought to be remnants of planets that went through the wringer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16279016

It appears they are the roasted remains of planets that spent a period of time inside the outer layers of their star.

Scientists tell Nature magazine that these worlds are therefore likely to have been much bigger in the past.

..

This latest haul was detected around a star known as KIC 05807616. They have diameters that are just 76% and 87% of that of Earth.

What is interesting about this star is that it is a former red giant, a so-called "hot B subdwarf".

Red giant refers to a late phase in a star's life when it has begun to exhaust its hydrogen fuel.

A star in this phase will expand, its outer layers will cool and it will glow a more reddish colour. Our own Sun will go through this phase in a few billion years' time.

But the consequence is that any planets that happen to be orbiting relatively close to the star will likely be engulfed in its expanding envelope of gas.

This will happen to the Earth and it appears to have been the case with the newly detected planets named KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02, which whip around their host star in just a matter of hours.

...

Their presence so close to KIC 05807616 is a tell-tale for what must have happened to them.

Going into the expanding outer layers of a star would have severely eroded the worlds, ripping away any gaseous or liquid material.

What the team sees in its data are probably just the remnant cores of what were once giant gas planets not unlike our own Jupiter.

 

[Kirby]

If they determine that it's covered with pine trees, I look forward to Brad Wright's press release that simply states "apology accepted".

 

[BlazePin]

Pretty awesome :]

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

^^ All five planets in that Solar System are within the equivalent orbit of Mercury. They would have nowhere to go.

I hope intelligent life never evolved there.

Why not?

Because their planet was doomed.

That's an awfully dark outlook, to hope that intelligent life never developed because their planet was going to be doomed at some point in their future.

Maybe they evolved to a level of technology sufficient enough to save themselves. Maybe they figured out how to travel to another star system and transplant their society.

Maybe they're us.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ All true. It's just that the idea of once-living planets migrating into the sun and being broiled struck me as very sad.