Found! Earth-sized planet orbiting star in middle of habitable zone.

[Kyle]

Meet Kepler-186f, the best candidate for life outside this solar system. Orbits an M-sequence star about 500 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus. Kepler-186f is nearly identical in size to Earth and takes about 130 days to orbit Kepler-186 and is nearly dead center in the habitable zone.

Press conference underway.
http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

 

[Topper]

My conclusion:

The star [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_186"]Kepler 186[/ame] is a red dwarf star.
If the planets orbit is inside the habitable zone it is to assume that the rotation of the planet is "star synchronous" (or nearly?), because on a red dwarf star, the habitable zone is close to the star.
But who know, even under this conditions, simple live forms could be possible maybe deep under water (if there is water).
I don't think that the orbit of the planet can be very stable, because there are additionaly 4 more inner planets on that litte radius.
But I don't know the size / mass of the other planets...
So are this conclusion correct or not?
If yes, it's a great achievement from the scientists to proof such a small planet in the habitable zone, but for me, it's not a "second earth" as we are searching for but hoever, it's a little sensation!

 

[Pipcard]

Several years ago, I saw a speculative documentary on National Geographic that involved life on a world ([ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelia_and_Blue_Moon"]Aurelia[/ame]) tidally locked to its red dwarf parent star.

 

[fsci123]

We dont know the mass of the planet yet so we could theoretically rule out the standard silicate planet.

Im going to toss my theory in for fun:

As far as im concerned i will place my bets that the planet is a mini Neptune/water world. It wont be tidally locked but it would have one hell of a climate because of the gravitational influence of its neighbors. Storms would be huge and ever raging and there would be a massive cloud layer that would create an accelerated green house effect.

Life would take several forms...Fish/bird like creatures could exist that would have the ability to swim/fly in the super critical water surface(?). Algae would be the major photosynthetic organism...But atmospheric oxygen would not reach levels similar to that of earth.

 

[ISProgram]

Several years ago, I saw a speculative documentary on National Geographic that involved life on a world (Aurelia) tidally locked to its red dwarf parent star.

I loved that documentary. And [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Planet"]Alien Planet[/ame].

I don't think Kepler 186f is anything special, except that it is Earth-sized and is in the habitable zone of its star...

At the moment, we don't know if it is even tidally locked, and possibly the only other thing definitive about this planet is that it probably doesn't have a H/He atmosphere, since it is so small.

I have also realized that the conditions needed for a habitable planet are rare ([ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis"]Rare Earth[/ame]), and as such, while there is strong probability that there is another habitable planet out there, I somewhat doubt it's this one. Partly, because Kepler observed such a small area of sky and because its been only ONE mission (we need more ).

Just my thoughts. On a side note, the fact that Kepler has found 3,845 planetary candidates AND it only observed that small area of the sky makes it more likely that planetary diversity, and thus one that could be habitable, exist. :thumbup:

 

[Interstellar Planet]

On the kepler discoveries webpage it says that, without an atmosphere, kepler-186f would have a temperature of 180 K compared to 255 K for the earth. It would probably have to have a thick atmosphere or one with a lot of CO2 to be habitable.

It is great to find an earth-sized planet in the habitable zone. It seems like many super earths might have atmospheres that are too thick. But who knows, Kepler-186f might be a gas planet the size of earth, like KOI 314c.