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Alien Solar System Much Like Ours
MrGort writes "Wired News reports that British astronomers say they found the first sun-like star with a giant gas planet in an orbit similar to Jupiter's, which leaves plenty of room for worlds like Earth and Mars. This system is a quick 90 light years away. The similar solar system to ours means that this gas giant could attract most of the debris, allowing smaller planets closer to the sun to develop like ours did!"
Of course the article said 90 light years, which is way too far to walk (or drive) anyway. (We are 8 light minutes from the sun, and it would take your whole life and part of your kids' to drive that far.)
That's 50 time the distance to Andromeda. Methinks somebody misplaced a few zeros....
This other solar system, it does know that we've patented the planetary creation process... right?
10 billion years of back license royalties... wehooo!
-pyrrho
>> This system is a quick 90 light years away.
This is the problem with the whole "is there life elsewhere in the universe" debate. I call it the "Star Trek Syndrome". People have gotten so used to movies and TV shows where space ships go zooming all over the galaxy that they have lost any understanding of the enormous distances involved.
There probably are planets out there with intelligent life -- maybe lots of them -- but they are so far away that it is impossible to have any contact with them. You can debate all you want about whether or not there's life out there, but you can't change the math.
If we could build a spacecraft capable of a speed of 16 Million Miles per Hour (which we can't -- that speed is far, far beyond any technology we have or have even dreamed of) you could reach Pluto in a few days, but it would take 360 years to reach that system that is only "a quick 90 light years away". Even trying to communicate via radio -- we would send a message and it would be at least 180 years before we got a reply.
Don't worry, kids, it's a NASA site!
And one other detail, we have been mostly unsuccessful at finding intelligent life on earth, what makes us think we can find it somewhere else?
Hate to be pedantic, but using the proper terms aids clarity and, of course, helps one to sound credible, so let me offer this helpful advice:
There is only one "Solar System," and that's the system of bodies orbiting our star, Sol.
The generic term for any other collection of planetary bodies orbiting some random other star is "planetary system." The planets therein are referred to as "extrasolar."
Read the original press release and paper. You will see this usage reflected there.
As the grandparent mentioned, it's a "vibration."
See this e2node and the ones below it for a thorough debunking of the theory.
The aliens on this planet will receive the first television signals from Leave It To Beaver. They will immediately drive their FTL space battleships to earth and blow it up.
This is my sig.
Our solar system is only 9 billion/mrd years old? So they have prior art!
Damnit!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Most of those radio waves are drowned in noise, alone by the fact that there are too many transmitters that share the same frequencies. All those powerful broadcasts for radio and TV are radiated into outer space, but from a long distance one would see a superposition of all those signals for different TV and radio stations, i.e. noise.
The exception is the short-wave radio band. Because one can receive a powerful SW station over the whole world, the frequencies in that band do not overlap. Unfortunately, the ionosphere that reflects the SW broadcasts will also prevent aliens to receive them.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
The same applies to space flight now. We can dream it, but we can't figure out how to do it. Some day, a bunch of different people will come up with a bunch of theories on "super-luminal" travel, then set out to prove their theories. One of them will be proven.
Why are you certain that one of them will be proven?
The universe is what it is, regardless of what we _want_ it to be. This may or may not include mechanisms for FTL travel, but we have seen no evidence of such phenomena occurring to date, and our models of the universe are self-consistent without them.
In the absence of observerations of FTL effects and of a theoretical mechanism by which it would occur, the most reasonable assumption is that it _doesn't_ occur.
If our universe is truly bound by the speed of light, wishing for FTL drives won't change a thing.
The wise thing to do is plan for STL, and continue learning all we can about the universe in the hopes that a loophole eventually shows up.
[ObPedant: Yes, I know about the various types of "space warp" drive proposed; however, these rely on negative energy density, which causes serious problems (does not appear to be consistent with our models of the universe). A few groups have been trying to demonstrate that negative energy density is possible. If they succeed, great, but until then the null assumption holds.]
After reading that, I can definitely walk away with one thing firm in my mind:
You must get laid incredibly often with that schpiel
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
A bit more info from a previously submitted post:
New Jupiter-like Planet Discovered in Sol-like system
A new Jupiter-like planet has been discovered in a circular orbit around a Sun-like star 90 light-years away in the constellation Pupis. What is remarkable about the discovery is that this system is the most like our own solar system discovered to-date. This development lends credence to the theory that systems with small, rocky Earth-like planets are out there. ''This is the closest we have yet got to a real Solar System-like planet and advances our search for systems that are even more like our own,'' said UK team leader Hugh Jones of Liverpool John Moores University. Jones went on to say that, ''Jupiter's position is probably crucial to the distribution of other planets in the Solar System.'' Current thinking on planet-formation indicates a large, Jupiter-like planet in a circular orbit would allow the relatively undisturbed formation of an inner system of smaller Earth-like planets. The newly discovered planet is about twice the mass of Jupiter with an orbit equivalent to the asteroid belt in our own solar system.
I miss the days of logical phyysics, where you could theoretically keep accelerating that entire distance and arrive in less than 90 years.
Anyways, who are we kidding? We are looking for planets like Earth not for life, which will evolve to suit nearly any environment, but to find possible colonization sites.
For that, a smelloscope would be much more useful.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The velocity was increased gradually by using the hydrogen as fuel. Of course, the book said that 3 of these ships were created, and 2 had returned, but that the last one had gone missing, of course. And that the pyramids were basically beacons or antenae, and that there were more pyramids on under one of the poles.
but the point is, if you had a giant hydrogen collector on the front of your ship, you could use that as additional fuel. And you would presumably only be able to accelerate half way, then reverse the process and decelrate the second half of the way, since it would take you just as long to slow down as it would to speed up. So your max speed might be close to 1LY, but not necessarily for very long, depending on the distance travelled.
Just a thought - and if anyone has a copy of that book, I'd love to get my hands on it!
Gerald
How much alike is the other solar system? Does it have a planet Earth, too?! One in which Lincoln and JFK were never assasinated, and Elvis lived to be an old d00d?! And Adolf Hitler became an artist and World War II never happened?! And the Justice League of America fights the bad guys and always wins?!
No, it won't work that way.
In the 1600's, it was possible to make things go through the air. You can throw a rock through the air. Birds can fly outright. It, therefore, was somehow possible to do.
Supersonic flight was believed impossible, but mostly as an engineering challange (resisting massive pressures, etc.) not scientific law.
Superluminal speed is impossible from scientific law. We have never, EVER seen anything or made anything go faster than light. We may be able to get things moving AT the speed of light or close to it, but I doubt beyond.
The only thing we have "seen" which may account for this [that I can think of] is the (currently unknown) path of an electron around a nucleas. But for all we know that may be 4+ dimensional travel, or travel outside our space-time.
- Sig