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Earthlike Planet Orbiting Nearby Star
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers in Europe have announced the discovery of a planet with only 5 times the Earth's mass, orbiting a red dwarf star 20 light years away. It orbits the star so closely that it only takes 13 days to go around... but the star is so cool that the temperature of the planet is between 0 and 40 Celsius. At this temperature there could be liquid water. Models indicate the planet is either rocky like the Earth or covered in an ocean. While it's not known if there actually is liquid water on the planet, this is a really big discovery, and indicates that we are getting ever closer to finding another Earth orbiting an alien star."
This is a really big discovery...
And that, my friends, is the understatement of the millennium.
But then our probe's signal transmitter would also be 20 light years away =(
Demented But Determined.
instantaneously by the perspective of the traveller
Unfortunately the traveller would not percieve the passage of time any more, having been transformed into raspberry jam by the accelleration forces.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Indeed quite unlike our windless, quake-free, constant-temperature planet.
Models indicate the planet is either rocky like the Earth or covered in an ocean.
Last time I checked, the Earth's surface is 75% covered by water.
I, for one, am beginning to sense the need for a revolt against the "grass is greener" bandwagon seeking to promote colonization of another planet in lieu of taking proper care of the planet that has always been here for us, Earth. Join me in this revolt by tagging stories inciting the thought of fleeing Earth like some kind of foreclosed duplex -- trashed and slashed -- for the chance at taking over a pristine ecosystem with the tag "theresnoplacelikehome".
Thank you for your support.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Why? What does proof of alien life accomplish?
I think a true atheist wouldn't capitalize "Atheist." Makes it seem like a religion by a different name.
Comment of the year
1) So mice have thicker bones and birds run rather than fly.
2) I don't think quakes are a big problem for life in general.
3 & 4) Complex life forms live around thermal vents where the temprature varies by hundredes of degrees over a few inches. Our own biosphere is also a chaotic system where order "emerges" in the form of a dynamic equilibrium.
"Even if I could travel a light-year a minute for a buck, I'd never consider trying to live there."
I think you missed the point (or maybe you were aiming for cynical humour), we are a long way technologically from colonising the stars, so much so that we are only now infering the existance of interesting targets. We co-evolved with Earth's biosphere and it's very unlikely we will find a hospitable duplicate where we can lay around on a beach or picnic by a river. Given the huge technology gap, our species must first learn how to sustain the only hospitable biosphere we have for millenia before we can "consider" moving to another planet.
"Next?"
Yes, by all means keep this research going, great stuff!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It may not make sense, but if you can travel at light speed (and survive it), or close enough to it, then "instantaneous" travel from your own perspective is close enough to being true. The guy running the blog at the following link worked out that, at constant-g acceleration, you can get there in 3.65 years your time. Of course, you're going basically the speed of light, so you'll miss it if you blink. Plugging in half the distance into his formula and multiplying the result by 2 gives you the ship-time it takes if you accelerated there for half the journey and the decelerated for the other half. Comes out to 6.04 years. Give or take a bit (we were really only given one significant digit -- 20 light years away). Okay, now use his equation with a = c. You'll come out with...a very small number. http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=54
"allow a maximum speed of 0.6 X the speed of light"
... something tells me you're not really a fan of the theory of relativity are you?
I would be willing to bet that humans could live in 2.5 G. The human body is incredibly resilient, especially when it has grown up in a new environment. There are people living everywhere from sea level to several miles up, and in environments ranging from yearly average temperatures of over 30C to under 0C.
This does raise an interesting point, however. A great deal of money and research time has been spent studying how human and animal physiology react to low- or micro-gravity, but I am not aware of any long-term studies of higher G's, such as raising monkeys in a giant centrifuge or somesuch. Sure, this would take a lot of money, but hopefully less than for sending things to space, and it is vital knowledge for space exploration (long-term acceleration or living on these planets are the two key reasons).
The discovery of this planet provides some hope for those of us who hope the human race will escape Earth before we destroy it, or those who hope for Earth-similar life. And we can only expect the discovery of these planets to accelerate in the future, as out technology makes it easier to find them.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
and I use a french press, what's your point?
(mine tastes better than yours too)
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As much as I love the idea, sorry to poop the party but we're forgetting the white elephant in the room: 3D interstellar billiards.
Course correction on the way will be next to impossible, so we'd have to know the exact position of the planet, to the second, of the probe's arrival to the gravitational influence of the planet. Here we are, messing up martian probes with six months' travel time because of measurement glitches, and now this? We'll have to wait much longer for a manned mission.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Errrr, we have liquid water on earth at this temperature. More importantly, what is the air (if any) pressure. That will affect whether you have liquid water at 40C or not.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Hardly. Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
As far as I see, the article only claims a chance for life to be on this planet. I don't see anything in there that talks about there being humans on this planet.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
You'll get better coffee, and they won't try to give you the vocabulary of a corporate whore.
Would it be worth pointing a radio telescope at this thing?
Atheism is certainly not a religion, but I think that's just because it's not organised - it *is* a spiritual conviction (and I'm saying that as an atheist). A conviction based on considerations of plausibility, Occam's razor and so on, of course; a conviction that makes sense and doesn't just assert the existence of big bogeymen in the sky, flying spaghetti monsters and invisible pink unicorns secretly controlling the world; and a conviction that (some? many? most?) people would probably be willing to abandon if presented with strong actual evidence[1] that it is not, indeed correct, but a spiritual conviction nonetheless.
;)
1. Given the claims typically made by religion, such evidence would have to be VERY strong indeed, and withstand a whole lot of attempts to deconstruct it over a very long period of time, but I think most atheists base their conviction on reason rather than irrational beliefs (like most "religious" people seem to do), and therefore, I think that most atheists would be able to willing to reconsider their conviction if provided with compelling, strong, well-tested evidence. But on the other hand, since I *am* an atheist, I think that all this is just a theoretical question, anyway.
butter the donkey
"they will probably live a lot shorter."
And not as old, either!
Hmmmmm. It may well be something that the Earth (ie the planet) can't really afford, but it is something the Human Species MUST do at some point if it wants to survive. More than that, it may be something the Human Species can only really afford to do in the next hundred years or so, because as the Earth fills up with more and more people, all the resources will end up being used, leaving nothing left to attempt to get at least some of our species to "safety".
IMHO, the Human Species cannot afford NOT to do it, and we MUST do it soon or it may be too late!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk