I'm not a scientist, can't cope with the math, but I really enjoy layman reports.

SciFi geek, but I'm mostly in it for the girls...

Thanks for posting.

For example, if Venus had Earth's atmosphere, it would be a bit warmer but easily habitable by Earth lifeforms.

We don't have any idea what the planet's atmosphere is like. It might not even have one. Mars appears to have lost almost all of its atmosphere when its core solidified, so that it no longer had a magnetic field.

We also have no idea what the planet's mass is. It's slightly larger in diameter than Earth, but planets don't have a fixed density. So it could actually have less gravity than Earth....or it could have way more.

They found one that they described as being like styrofoam.

wouldn't a less dense planet imply a smaller mantle-core and larger atmosphere causing an even worse greenhouse effect, provided there are significant greenhouse gasses on the planet (whether in the atmosphere or ocean or rocks?)

The planet was found using the 'transit' method. So all we know is the diameter of the planet and the period of its orbit. And that diameter only includes the solid parts of the planet, not the atmosphere. If it has one.

There's a whole lot of possible configurations of the planet and atmosphere, plus the interaction with the much closer star and its solar wind.

the extra heat cause more of that to get into the atmopshere (rather than remain in the rocks and ocean) and cause a runaway?

But it seems plant life ate up a lot of the CO2. On the plus side the massive amounts of oxygen they put out resulted in some big ass bugs.

And we don't know that to be true. Methane could be more rare, for example.

I suppose it depends some on the ingredients of the atmosphere. But I would guess you are right. My quick calculations say Venus gets about 50% more solar radiation than Earth, but the massive insulating properties of the Venusian atmosphere make it even hotter than that would suggest. My guess is Kepler 438b would fall somewhere between Earth and Venus climate-wise. "Cosy" may be the interstellar real estate codeword for "hot as hell."

Oh, further down in the article it says they expect Kepler 438b may have a mean temperature of 60 degrees Celsius, which works out to about 140 degrees Fahrenheit (or 14 furlongs if I got the right conversion factors there). That's Death Valley in July plus a smidge. Not pleasant. In fact, at that temperature it takes about 30-35 minutes to pasteurize milk. So, let's name the planet Pasteur.

I think it was something called "Worf Drive ??

Please save us from ourselves

5.88 trillion=one light year in miles....hope we discover 'warp' speed soon......

Eight new planets where life could exist found

By Ellie Zolfagharifard

8:31 AM Wednesday Jan 7, 2015


Eight new planets have been discovered in the 'Goldilocks' zone of their stars, orbiting at a distance where oceans and life could exist.

The discovery doubles the number of small planets less than twice the diameter of Earth that are believed to be in the habitable zone of their parent stars.

Among these eight, astronomers said there were two that were the most similar to Earth of any known exoplanets to date.

'Most of these planets have a good chance of being rocky, like Earth,' said lead scientist Dr Guillermo Torres, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, US.

The two most Earth-like planets, known as Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, both orbit red dwarf stars that are smaller and cooler than the sun.

With a diameter just 12 per cent bigger than Earth, Kepler-438b has a 70 per cent chance of being rocky, the scientists have calculated.

More:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=11382935&ref=rss

We took the money spent on wars and used it for space research? We are going to need a new planet soon.

Hundreds of years. Their lives were measured by Keplerian visitors.