hmmm...if I remember correctly they mentioned that it is either completely covered with water or is completely dry. One thing for sure the planet surface is very hot. And it is bigger than Earth by 3 times at least.
There is a planet, about 5 billion light years away, with water, and possibly land. Let's all go there?
link It's 20,4LY away and is 4,3 billion years old (earth is 4,57 bil old). It's probebly tidal locked with eternal day on one side (but they tought the same abouth mercury so if it's not tidal locked it's orbit is under twelve days) Also It's sun is 1/3th the size of ours but the planet is 14 times closer therefore their sun apears 65,33 times bigger (probably ?apparent size= size/0,5*distance²?)
It seems to be just a matter of technology till we discover a truly Earth-like planet and the emanations of life and maybe even industrial pollution in it's atmosphere.
true modern techniques can only get you so much... Still a decend candidate at the 87 closest star out of 200E9 stars (min estimate of the milky way) Their probably around 2 298 850 575 of those planets around (in the milky way alone). A shame it will probably take until 2020 before the more interesting planets are found.
The HST is a mere 96 inches but has done amazing things. A few next generation telescopes with much larger mirrors and used to provide a very long baseline array could be quite amazing, showing planets like Earth with ease and maybe large areas like capital cities by their artificial lights at night.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/exoearthimager.html This one would allow a 30 to 40 pixel image for a planet 10LY away
We're still some decades away before we can put a series of telescopes in one of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points with a manned base to look after them. But a time to look forwards to as I think we will start seeing life elsewhere in the universe.
20 years at most. And imagen a even larger one in a solar orbit so in stead of gaving a virtual telescope sized 1OOO's of miles you get one of several AU (1AU= sun earth distance). It would be scifi but the sort of scifi that is verry probable in 50 years time
orcot. I'd hope that something like that is possible in my life time and that I'll be around to see life discovered elsewhere in the universe.
