"Earth like planet confirmed." Topic

If you are bothered by gamers that incessantly malign your collections because they are not correct, then you can now reply that they are not of this Earth.

link

This leaves scenario writers a blank page to play with or perhaps contimplete, we were the petri dish and the Supreme Being did have a sense of humour – "ah, that's much better, no fig leaves".

Cheers

There's a big difference between "orbits primary within habitable zone" and "Earth-like" – they still aren't sure what the planet is composed of, and it's 2.4 times the size of Terra. Not like to be a shirtsleeve environment for naked apes.

Typical lousy science journalism.

have you read the 'Known Space' series?

Maybe 'Jinxians' could live there???

"However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid."

A little premature to pop the champagne, what?

Saw that on the news this morning … You know a planet does not have to be Earth-like to support life. I guess some feel if it is an Earth-like planet, if there is life it will look like us … That may or may no be true … But it makes a good news story, regardless …

At only 2.4 times the size of Earth (diameter), I doubt it's gaseous. Even if much of that size is atmosphere, I don't think at that size and that location from its star that it could retain said atmosphere against that star's solar wind without having a significantly dense rocky/metal mass at its center. So in all probability it does have a solid crust over a molten core. The only real question is how much of that crust is covered with water (if any), or if it is a dense atmosphere planet like Venus with no standing liquid bodies. If it is primarily a liquid surface over the inner crust and core, then in all likelihood that surface would indeed be water, given the overwhelming abundance of hydrogen in the universe.

When I have some time to kill, I'll try to guesstimate what the mass would be, assuming a composition similar to Earth, and therefore the planet's surface gravity— unless someone with vastly more knowledge or experience wants to leap in and do the math first (please!).

Earth is pretty dense, for a terrestrial world. The densest I've heard o,f in fact. Lets look at something more normal… say, Mars. Density of 4g/cm3 (Earth is 5.5).

Earth's radius is 6 738km or 673 800 000 cm, so Kepler 22b's would be 1.617x10^9.
Volume would therefore be 1.33x10^28, and at 4 grams per cm3 you'd be at something like 5.3x10^28 grams, or 5.3x10^25 kg.

Calculating gravity at surface… too many long numbers, so I'll just give the force resulting from this planet pulling on a person weighing in at 80 kg: 1085 N. Divide that by 80 kg to get acceleration of 13.56. That would mean something like 1.3 times earth's gravity… though looking back I think I switched up the digits in Earth's radius… if its lower (I think its actually 6378) then the numbers are off by a bit… gravity would probably be a bit higher (as you'd be a bit closer to the center of gravity). Still, not that different from Earth, compared to stuff like gas giants and the moon.

6378 km is correct.

Keep in in mind Parzival's insightful comment. We believe that a planet needs a spinning molten iron core to produce a magnetic field to keep solar wind from stripping atmosphere away. That sort of core automatically produces a much higher (Earth-like) density, which means a smaller radius and a higher surface gravity.

The 22C temperature is quite promising.

1.3G or slightly higher? That's certainly human habitable. Life forms would probably demonstrate less height than Earth forms can reach, just to compensate for the added energy needed to pump blood/water/whatever upward, but that's pure speculation.

Makes a nice homeworld for Squats, though!

(And there's your gaming link.)

Despite the higher gravity, a world 2.4x Earths diameter has it's advantages.

That's 4x the real-estate of Earth. Would take a while for a colony to run out of room…