New habitable planet “Kepler-22b” discovered – like earth Filipinos could migrate

By: Denis Somoso

How could be the new Philippines inside the Kepler-22b planet? Do you think that there could be another Spratlys disputes in Kepler-22b Planet? Do you think that China will still lead in economy if they could have a chance to grab a piece of Spratlys Island in the Kepler Planet? Which country could be your favored neighbor? China or America? For me I want to be a neighbor with Indonesia, Thailand and East Timorese as we have similarities in culture, belief, language, looks or accent of the face, skin texture and we looks like 1 family a light brown or naturally tropical  tanned color so there will be no color discrimination among neighbors as everyone looks like 1 family.

 

An artist's concept of Kepler-22b, a roughly Earth-size world orbiting within the habitable zone of a sun-like star 600 light years from Earth. (Credit: NASA)

A new habitable planet in the other solar system has been discovered. Though we need to wait for another 3 years more to confirm if human in Earth is welcome to migrate to this new Kepler -22b planet but the report is positive that human could live and exist in this new planet.

Kepler-22b planet's life is faster than the earth as 1 year is only 290 days or 75 days faster compare to the Earth. The temperature of this planet is expected to be better  or almost the same as what in earth for 72 degree Fahrenheit or 22 Degrees Celsius, a very good  temperature to plant banana, potato, apple,  and vegetables.

As published by NASA (December 6, 2011); for the first time, astronomers using NASA's Kepler space telescope have confirmed a roughly Earth-size planet orbiting a sun-like star in the so-called "Goldilocks" zone where water can exist in liquid form on the surface and conditions may be favorable for life as it is known on Earth.

Along with the confirmed extra-solar planet, one of 28 discovered so far by Kepler, researchers today also announced the discovery of 1,094 new exoplanet candidates, pushing the spacecraft's total so far to 2,326, including 10 candidate Earth-size worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars.

Additional observations are required to tell if a candidate is, in fact, an actual world. But astronomers say a planet known as Kepler-22b, orbiting a star some 600 light years from Earth, is the real thing.

"Today I have the privilege of announcing the discovery of Kepler's first planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star, Kepler-22b," Bill Borucki, the Kepler principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center, told reporters. "It's 2.4 times the size of the Earth, it's in an orbital period (or year) of 290 days, a little bit shorter than the Earth's, it's a little bit closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, 15 percent closer.

"But the star is a little bit dimmer; it's a little bit lower in temperature, a little bit smaller. That means that planet, Kepler-22b, has a rather similar temperature to that of the Earth...If the greenhouse warming were similar on this planet, its surface temperature would be something like 72 Fahrenheit, a very pleasant temperature here on Earth."

It is not yet known whether Kepler-22b is predominantly rocky, liquid, or gaseous in composition, but the finding confirms for the first time the long-held expectation that Earth-size planets do, in fact, orbit other suns in the habitable zones of their host stars.

That, in turn, greatly improves the odds for the existence of life, as it is commonly defined, beyond Earth's solar system.

"I think there are two things that are really exciting about Kepler-22b," said Natalie Batalha, the deputy science team lead at Ames. "One is that it's right in the middle of this habitable zone.

"The second thing that's really exciting is it's orbiting a star very, very similar to our own sun. This is a solar analogue, almost a solar twin, very similar to our own sun and you've got a planet 2.4 times the size of the Earth right smack in the habitable zone."

Equipped with a 95-megapixel digital camera, Kepler was launched from Cape Canaveral on March 6, 2009. The camera is aimed at a patch of sky in the constellation Cygnus that's the size of an outstretched hand that contains more than 4.5 million detectable stars.

Of that total, some 300,000 are believed to be the right age, have the right composition and the proper brightness to host Earth-like planets. More than 156,000 of those, ranging from 600 to 3,000 light years away, will be actively monitored by Kepler over the life of the mission.

To find candidate planets, the spacecraft's camera monitors the brightness of target stars in the instrument's wide field of view, on the lookout for subtle changes that might indicate a world passing between the star and the telescope. By studying the slight dimming--comparable to watching a flea creep across a car's headlight at night--and by timing repeated cycles, computers can identify potential extra-solar worlds even though the planets themselves cannot be seen.

 

Earth's solar system and that of Kepler-22b drawn to scale, showing the habitable zones of both stars and the relative sizes of familiar planets. (Credit: NASA)

But it's a challenging observation. For a planet like Earth passing in front of a star like the sun, the sun's light would dim by just 84 parts per million. To make sure an observation indicates the presence of a real planet and not some other phenomena, measurements over multiple orbits are required. For Earth-like planets in habitable-zone orbits, a full three years is needed to confirm an initial observation.

In June 2010, the Kepler team announced 312 planet candidates, most smaller than Neptune, in data collected over the first four months of the mission. In February 2011, based on 13 months of data, the number grew to 1,235 potential planets orbiting 997 stars.

The latest announcement pushes the total number of candidates to 2,326 possible planets orbiting 1,792 stars. Of that total, 367 stars--about 20 percent--show signs of multiple planet candidates.

Twenty-eight confirmed planets have been found in the Kepler data. Including Earth-based telescopes, more than 600 extrasolar planets have been found to date. But most of them are huge Jupiter-class worlds orbiting well outside the habitable zone.

With Kepler, "we're getting very close, we are really homing in on the true Earth-size habitable planets," Batalha said.

Also in the hunt: The SETI Institute, or the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, in Mountain View, Calif.

Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research at the institute, said a radio telescope array that was looking for signs of radio signals in the Kepler field of stars that might indicate the presence of intelligent life is back in operation after a budget-driven hiatus earlier this year.

"I'm really pleased to announce as of 6:18 this morning, as the Kepler field rose over the observatory, the ATA (Allen Telescope Array) was back on the air, continuing the search for Earth analogues."

The Allen Telescope Array, originally funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is being used to make systematic observations of stars in the Kepler field, on the lookout for any signs of artificial signals.

Citing a 1993 paper by Carl Sagan and four colleagues that used data from NASA's Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft as a test for detecting life on Earth, Tarter said "one of the strongest pieces of evidence for life, indeed intelligent life on Earth, was the presence of narrow-band pulse-amplitude-modulated radio transmissions."

"While there may be some uncertainty about how to define the habitable zone, an exoplanet that could be detected through the techno-signatures of its inhabitants would surely qualify as an Earth analogue," she said.

About William Harwood

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He has covered more than 125 shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune, and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia." You can follow his frequent status updates at the CBS News Space page.

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Greece could Jump S&P CC rating Eurozone Jump -1& -2 down – PHL as ease

Philippines + up ratings

While the Philippines is still lobbying to have the investment grade ratings for its high liquidity and foreign currency reserves continued to grow in October 2011, giving the Philippines more than enough of a defense against a deteriorating global economic situation as it ranks now up to thethe 26^th highest World Gross International Reserves higher than many countries in Europe – S&P and Fitch stick the Philippines' rating as ease though it deserves upgrade.

Currently, Fitch Ratings has put the country one notch below investment grade while Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's have it rated two notches lower. This is after four recent upgrades by the agencies.

Last month, the country repaid 7% of its outstanding foreign debt, about $1.3 billion at a premium of nearly $1.7 billion, the secretary said, as part of a series of broad economic and government reforms it is undertaking to improve the country's image and governance.

The repayment of debt is expected to save the country from making expensive interest payments and takes it a step closer toward its policy goal of reducing foreign currency debt. Like other countries in the region, the Philippines, which is the largest issuer of foreign debt with nearly $16 billion outstanding, hopes to protect its economy from the swings of the currency trade by reducing its dependence on such debt.

As the Philippines economy continue to bubble, the countries GIR will also grow upward. The country's GIR now higher than the reserves of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Australia, and most countries in Europe.

Japan remains the 2^nd highest followed by Russia & Saudi Arabia. France ranks 13^th lower than South Korea's 8^th notch. United Kingdom is on the 20^th of $114,180 Billion GIR.

Eurozone Jump -1 & -2 ratings down

Confirming earlier reports, Standard & Poor's put its ratings of 15 Euro zone countries on watch negative, implying it could lower credit ratings of countries including Germany and France.

Ahead of an EU summit Thursday and Friday, S&P said the 15 countries are at risk of a downgrade depending on what comes out of the meeting. The move, S&P said, was "prompted by our belief that systemic stresses in the eurozone have risen in recent weeks to the extent that they now put downward pressure on the credit standing of the eurozone as a whole."

S&P said Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg could have ratings lowered by up to one notch, while France, also currently AAA, and the rest of the governments, including Italy and Spain, and could see ratings lowered by up to two notches.

The ratings agency, which cut the U.S. rating one notch from AAA in August after the debt ceiling debate failed to generate significant deficit reduction plans, said the systemic stress in the Euro zone comes from five factors:

(1) Tightening credit conditions across the eurozone;

(2) Markedly higher risk premiums on a growing number of eurozone sovereigns, including some that are currently rated 'AAA';

(3) Continuing disagreements among European policy makers on how to tackle the immediate market confidence crisis and, longer term, how to ensure greater economic, financial, and fiscal convergence among eurozone members;

(4) High levels of government and household indebtedness across a large area of the eurozone; and

(5) The rising risk of economic recession in the eurozone as a whole in 2012.

Currently, we expect output to decline next year in countries such as Spain,

Portugal and Greece, but we now assign a 40% probability of a fall in output for the eurozone as a whole.

Of those factors, S&P said its review will focus on the political, external and monetary scores it assigns the region's government's, considering both "country-specific and Euro zone-wide issues that appear to us to be limiting the effectiveness of efforts to resolve the market confidence crisis." S&P will also consider the borrowing requirements of governments and European banks, as well as the European Central Bank's policy settings, which to date have not included any signals of a willingness to act as a lender of last resort. (See "What Bernanke & Friends' Latest Move Means For Markets.")

Seth Setrakian, co-head of equities at First New York Securities, highlighted the issue of high levels of government and household indebtedness mentioned by S&P, arguing that all the bailout discussions currently in effect or on the table increase, rather than decrease indebtedness in some fashion. Germany's resistance to a full-on rescue of countries like Italy without stringent debt and deficit restrictions is a positive in Setrakian's view, even if it makes trading a challenge in a highly volatile market. "For once, somebody is willing to take short-term pain for long-term gain."

Earlier Monday, France's Nicholas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel said they were determined to rework treaties in order to allow for sanctions on countries that to not meet fiscal guidelines, while the Italian government announced €30 billion in austerity measures aimed at cutting its debt load under new Prime Minister Mario Monti.

Greece, the country that kicked off the European debt crisis more than a year ago, was not one of the country's placed on watch by S&P Monday. Of course, that's because the ratings agency believes there is already "a relatively high near-term probability of default," as connoted by its CC rating.

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