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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.
Turns out it's just Rosie O'Donnell
Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em
Hi-rez imaging of the planet shows that there's already three Starbucks stores, a bridge project sponsored by Ted Stephens, and fourteen RIAA lawyers looking for copyright infringers.
Peter
Downsize DC Today!
planet orbiting a red star?
on the same day kryptonite is found
coincidence?
of course!
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Sliders, anybody?
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
The BBC and Scientific American have good quotes from Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, lead author of the scientific paper reporting the results. Others are already calling it "possibly habitable".
Very cool news!
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
I threw this together in a couple minutes after reading this.
http://x014.uploaderx.net/x/astronautcat.jpg
[m]
lose != loose
So, the temperature range indicates that it can probably be made hospitable for humans. Sure, we might have to bring a lot of our own oxygen and water to start with, but otherwise, we just need a colony ship. And, of course, the gravity is pretty strong (2.25 Gs) so we will have trouble with that. And, it being so close to the star, there might be a big radiation problem, forcing humans to go underground. But that wouldn't be too bad, because it would make gravity a bit less of a problem.
What I think is the coolest thing is that this is the smallest extrasolar planet found so far. We are getting close to being able to detect earth-sized planets. Once we do, I think the number of potentially colonizable planets will go up quite a bit.
We are currently developing technologies which allow a maximum speed of 0.6 X the speed of light.
if you create a probe with an ion drive and send it off in the next 10 years we could be looking at surveys of the planet in question by 2070.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You could send them in the third ark, but then who would sanitize our telephones?
You forgot to account for the fact that the radius is 1.5 times that of Earth. The best estimate puts that planet at around 2.25 times earth gravity.
The link in the blog seems to be broken. There is some more information about the planet (Gliese 581 c) on Wikipedia, MSN, and Space.com.
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
When we talk to these people, we don't discuss religion or politics, or work. That just leaves the weather and women. Nothing else matters. Got it?
What?
I am not religious, I am an Atheist. I have no "God" to look forward to meeting (I don't believe anyone else does either but anyway). My biggest hope is that before I die we will have proof of alien life, hopefully a spaceship will land in Times Square so there will be know question about it. This is a very exciting time, every time Scientists make a new discovery like this I feel that much closer to my dream.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Even if the planet consists of zephyr, gravity must be a bitch here
1)It has 2.25G's,
2)It's probably tidal-locked which means quakes so living underground is not easy
3)The surface is probably soaked with radiation where it faces the sun and cold where it does not.
4)If there is any atmosphere it is probably turbulent due to hot and cold sides.
Even if I could travel a light-year a minute for a buck, I'd never consider trying to live there. Next?
So should we classify a planet like this as Class "M"?
Assuming its the same density as Earth, cube root of 5 is 1.7, so 1.7x the radius. Gravity is mass/r^2, 5/1.7^2 x earth, so 1.7 or 70% more. ie surface gravity only goes up with the cube root of mass, for a constant density, so 5x isn't as bad as it sounds. But if it has more rock, and less iron core, the surface might me much nicer.
20 light years. So that would take us 20 years to get there travelling at the speed of light, or slightly longer going not quite as fast?
Only if the radius is the same as Earth's. The moon has roughly 1% of Earth's mass but 16% of its surface gravity because of it's much smaller radius.
Remember: gravitational acceleration is directly proportional to the mass of the planet but inversely proportional to the square of the radius.
If this planet is made of the same stuff as Earth, my guesstimate is that surface gravity would be something like 1.71 times what we're used to.
How do you know he didn't account for that? Maybe he's a 500 lb chair bound computer geek.
Anyone else reminded of Larry Niven's fictional colony world of Jinx?
With the red star, it sounds like the planet JEM in Frederick Pohl's book of the same name.
So when are we going to invent tactran so we can travel there? And are we going to have wild orgies under the gasbags?
..then these new exoskeletons will sure come in handy for moving around..
forgot to add the 10 years development time.. 2088.. still worth it imho. it's time for our species to look at long term goals, even if i'm too tired to remember to add the 10
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Indeed quite unlike our windless, quake-free, constant-temperature planet.
Whew! As long as it's below 2.5G, we're okay. I learned that from Spaceward Ho!
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
and make contact in Bozeman, MT?
If drilling for oil was the motive for planetary colonization, why would it be bad? I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but seriously. I wish Mars had oil. You can make and use oil in an abundant assorted methods.
Life is not for the lazy.
Don't you have some carbon offsets to go buy
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
And right now my Guide describes it as only "Harmless"! Let's go!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Has anyone found their real science paper on the matter? I searched the usual suspects to no avail and I'm getting mildly annoyed that they'd make a press release without also releasing the scientific paper at the same time or earlier....
I don't doubt that they've done it, I'm just curious to find out how they came about it...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No info on the atmosphere but its certainly exciting news.
It's not as bad as you think. The exoplanet's diameter is 1.5x that of Earth, and since gravitational force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two objects, the surface gravity on the exoplanet isn't five times that of Earth's. The article says 22 m/s*s versus Earth's 9.8m/s*s.
It's not a stretch at all to think that life could have evolved there under those conditions.
The first thing that popped into my mind when I read the description, for some reason, was the world of Charn from the Chronicles of Narnia, with this huge, dim red sun in the sky.
So 5x the earth's mass equals....like a freakin lot of gravity!
I wish you wouldn't toss around these fancy technical terms like that!
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
Or perhaps, into tomato chutney.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I haven't run any mathematical models, but given that there's a Neptune-mass (15 Earth mass) planet orbiting inside this planet's orbit (5.4 day orbit vs 13 day orbit), I'd guess that that's enough of a disruption to at least prevent a 1:1 tidal lock. There may be some kind of lock at another resonance (eg Mercury's 2:3 lock) but that would allow for rotation relative to the star and thus more-even heating.
2.25 gees is uncomfortable but tolerable (carry someone your own weight piggyback and you're almost there), and largely irrelevant to any water-dwelling critters.
However, the larger problem -- that I didn't see any of the articles explicitly raise -- it that there's likely a Venus-like greenhouse with the temperature much hotter than the 0-40C based on the equilibrium temperature of a rocky body at that distance from the primary. We can hope not, but we'd need a reason why not.
Based on our system, anything Venus-size or larger has a thick atmosphere, except Earth, and Earth is an anomaly because it got whacked by something massive (Mars mass) late in its formation, blowing most of the volatiles -- and the material that makes up the Moon -- off the planet altogether. (However, such late-stage super-impacts may be not all that unusual; it could explain some other oddities of our system, such as Uranus's tilt.)
-- Alastair
(Obligatory Futurama Quote)
From the Futurama episode Love and Rocket:
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Quite confusing.
Only if you eat 800 volts of fish on the way.
please note: If you state measure in incorrect units for the type of measurement you will create great confusion.
Weight is measured in Newtons and Mass doesn't change no matter what planet you are living on.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
I was staring at that a while; I knew I did something wrong when I didn't get exactly 0. Of course you can't set a = c, a is an acceleration. Duh! I also lost my paragraphing because I posted as HTML.
My excuse is that I hit submit instead of preview. I've been an anonymous coward for a long time (note the UID) so I was unaware of these quirks of membership. Otherwise I wouldn't have posted this before noting that there's no way that shouldn't have come out to exactly 0.
Nevertheless, c happens to be a really really big number, so what I actually calculated in Newtonian Mechanics when setting a = c would be accelerating to light speed in one second, and then doing the same in one second on the other end. In relativity, T comes out to, survey says: less than 42 seconds, coming to a halt beside the target planet. Interestingly, even making the planet 10 times closer or 10 times farther only changes the result by a few seconds.
Someone get Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, and a Mac ASAP!!
More like human steak for aliens following these directions...
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
At 134 million mph (one-fifth the speed of light) we could get there in a quick 5 generations or so. At the current record of about 25,000 mph (achieved by Stafford, Young and Cernan on May 26, 1969, almost 38 years ago), it would take more than half a million years to make the journey. I was getting all set to pack but I think there's gonna have to be a breakthrough or two first.
We are currently developing technologies which allow a maximum speed of 0.6 X the speed of light.
if you create a probe with an ion drive and send it off in the next 10 years we could be looking at surveys of the planet in question by 2070.
Correct me if I'm wrong (IANARS), the Voyager 1's current velocity is 17.2km/s which translate to 0.000057c. This is currently earth's fastest spacecraft. Shouldn't we be thinking about breaking 0.00006c before 0.6c? And a 0.6c probe within 10 years? Are you kidding?
I for one welcome our 5 times more massive overlords!
My other sig is a knife wound.
If this planet has 2.25 earth's gravity, then maybe we can adapt ourselves to it by traveling there in a ship with a centrifuge, and slowly increasing the speed of the centrifuge. By the time we get there (which with current technology, will take a lot longer than 20 years) we'd have adapted to handle the increased gravity. And as an added bonus, if we ever came back to earth, we'd be able to jump a lot higher.
First they found Kryptonite, now they've found a habitable planet with a red sun and stronger gravity.
All hail the son of Jor-El!
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. --Aristotle
The guy in this article makes the prediction that this planet is tidally locked with it's sun just as our Moon is with Earth, because...
So I'm left wondering about this planet. Does it rotate once every orbit due to the gravitational interaction with its star? This is what has happened to every moon in the solar system; they spin at the same rate they go around their parent bodies, so they always show one face to their parentThat is false. While many moons in the solar system are indeed tidally locked, they do not present a single face to their host planet at all times, with the exception of Charon.
Similarly, none of the planets in the solar system present a single face to the sun, with the exception of Uranus (which has nothing to do with tidal locking)
No.
The best theoretical ion drive I've read about has an Isp of 10,000 seconds. That translates into an exhaust velocity of 100 kps (rounding up a bit).
Speed of light: A touch less than 300,000 kps.
Plugged into the rocket equation:
Mf+Mp / Mp = e^{300000/100) = 2.72 ^ 3000
Well, the Windows calculator tells me that's 5.0899334329769958439246007097416e+1303
That's the ratio of ("fuel" and payload) to payload.
Um, even if I screwed up somewhere, and I'm off by a factor of a million, that ain't good.
We are currently developing technologies which allow a maximum speed of 0.6 X the speed of light.
if you create a probe with an ion drive and send it off in the next 10 years we could be looking at surveys of the planet in question by 2070.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong but according to http://nmp.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/ionpropfaq.html, ion drives only deliver 10x the efficiency of chemical rockets. So to reach 0.6c, wouldn't an ion drive require more propellant than exists in the universe?
That's really close. The chances of it supporting life (what we know if it, anyway) are propbably low. The planet will be bombarded by radiation and magnetic interference. Not to mention that close it'll be tidal locked like some of the Moons in the Jovian system, which would make dough out of the crust. That planet better have one hell of a magnetic field and atmosphere if it plans to support life.
you can pretty safely bet that if its covered with mountains or oceans has life or not the planet still likely has faster broadband internet service available at more affordable prices then anything you can get in the U.S.
Don't blink, you'll miss summer.
Seriously, what kind of life exists in such a static environment?
Sorry if I sound like a dick, but pretty much everything you've said is wrong. Somebody else already 'splained the surface gravity being about 2.2g so I'll skip that bit.
Gravitational pressure? WTF?
I think you are confusing water pressure (which is equivalent to the weight of the water column above you) with gravity which is pretty much the same at the bottom of the sea as it is on the surface. I will also point out that life happily exists at the bottom of our deepest ocean trenches, 35,000 feet down, where the pressure is about 16,000 psi. The fishies down there are made of "organic cell structures" and are not "instantly crushed from the pressure". "How can this be?" I hear you ask. Because the cells are filled with water, which as you have stated correctly (about the only thing correct in you entire post) does not compress.
Pounds are also a measure of weight, so GP is not using an inappropriate unit. There is no American/Imperial unit for mass, which is why mass is always measured in SI/metric units.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Yes, I can picture it now- a world without war, a world without hate.
I can also picture us attacking that world, 'cause they'd never expect it.
i call DIBS!!!
If it is already inhabited then they could be twice as strong as us on average. With the higher radiation only things that could survive that extreme would remain and could better survive a radiation poisoned battlefield. The increased gravity would also mean stronger technology, airplanes would need stronger engines, spacecraft would need more thrust to break the orbit of their planet, all equipment would be better shielded against the radiation. If it is inhabited and they are on roughly the same technology level as us we had better hope they are friendly.
The star is a variable, so it may periodically hammer planets in a close orbit with massive flares. If the planet was covered in a sea that might offer enough protection from the hard radiation of the flares to let life develop. It's surprising that a planet in this new orbit wasn't disrupted by the Neptune size giant closer to the star.
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
Chief Astronomer Zantooli
Emperor Clantos! I have disturbing news.
Emperor Clantos
Oh no. Not another android strike?
Chief Astronomer Zantooli
No your magnificence. Our automated tachyon telescope has locked on to a planet called Earth. It has detected our presence. Worse still, it has intelligent life and we are also detecting atom power weapons.
Emperor Clantos
Atom power weapons! My gods. They might use them against us! We must send a fleet of space troopers at once to confiscate them.
Chief Astronomer Zantooli
That's a bit risky. They might see them coming and kill a few of them. That won't do anything for your popularity.
Emperor Clantos
Hmm, you're right.
Chief Astronomer Zantooli
I suggest that we just vaporise the whole planet immediately. It's the safest way.
Emperor Clantos
Vaporise them!? Shouldn't we at least try to evacuate all their civilians first?
Chief Astronomer Zantooli
Not a good idea your magnificence. Again it puts our space troops at risk from enemy fire. Also, it would alert them and give them time to move their weapons somewhere else.
Emperor Clantos
But our people will surely complain about our killing so many civilians.
Chief Astronomer Zantooli
I'm not so sure. Who really cares about people so far away? If anyone kicks up a fuss we'll just say it's their government's fault for hiding the weapons amongst the population. Anyway, they use the same argument themselves all of the time when it comes to these people they call "terrorists". Whenever they detect them in an area, they just vaporise it without warning. If anyone complains about civilian deaths, they just blame it on the terrorists for "Hiding amongst the population".
Emperor Clantos
Hmmm. A clever transferral of blame indeed. These Earth people sound just like us. It's a shame we have to destroy them.
Organic cell structures usually contain water and as you point out water is incompressible (more or less) so how would they get crushed?
>4) If there is atmosphere like ours with water in it, it will hold some of the heat as it passes out of its suns rays and therefore should be just as turbulent.
A planet orbiting this close will likely be in tidal lock with one side always facing the star. This would have unplesant effects on any atmosphere.
I think it's interesting that in our extremely nascent explorations outside the solar system, we've already managed to locate practically a clone of earth. As other articles I read about this point out, this has major implications for how many other planets must exist that have conditions that would support life, i.e. if you sample .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000001% percent of the population and are already finding things, there must be a whole lotta more places out there just like it. Which is fascinating, because it essentially presents you with the following dichotomy: either you believe in creationism, or you believe in aliens. There's really no in between. Either we occupy a special, god-given place in the universe, or life as we know it began through the random agglomeration of organic compounds billions of years ago, in which case it would be practically a mathematical certainty that the same thing happened elsewhere.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
What about people that gain weight going from ~ 120lbs to say, 260. As its done over time, the body adapts and they are still able to walk around and live normally (although it does have adverse health effects) I think it is possible for people to adapt, but it will not be comfortable, especially for the first generation, and they will probably live a lot shorter. If this doesn't work however, It may however be possible to genetically engineer humans to live on high-G environments, increasing muscle mass, and bone density and thickness, as well as cardiovascular improvements.
I am aware of one experiment of putting someone in a high-G centerfuge and subjecting him to 1.5G's. The experiment was terminated early, due to the participant having a mild heart attack. Keep in mind, the participant wasn't given time to acclimate to the new environment gradually, and the experiment was short in duration, lasting only about a week, as it was designed more towards seeing if a high-G environment could help astronauts overcome loss of muscle mass and bone decalcification faster than normal after returning to earth, rather than colonization of a high-G environment.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
Raise your hand if you feel you were born about 100 years too early.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Initially while you were selective breeding/ genetically engineering stronger and more adapted humans, you'd have to use powered exoskeletons for working, and then spend a lot of the rest of your time in a water environment. Floating does wonders in that gravity/mass/weight regard.
I deny the existence of God, and this does not need to be un-scientific.
If the universe was created by some sentient being (I do not deny the possibility of this), then sure, some may call that God, I would just say that it is an alien life-form with great powers, not worth anything more than any other sentient being.
Now, giving you a Star Trek analogy, the being Q could easily be seen as God. But he is not God, even if he is omnipotent. He is a sentient being just like you and me.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Well actually, water can compress nbut only very little, and with significant pressure (obviously too much pressure would tend to cause the water to change phase, rather than compress). The real reason why the cells are fine is that the water inside the cells is at the same pressure, so there is no pressure gradient.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Many if not all red dwarfs are flare stars, which may pose a serious radiation problem for nearby life. If the planet is tidally locked, that might actually help.
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?
The probe would have to be autonomous, anything beyond orbit of the star would have to be achievable by the probe's own logic. It might take intrasolar readings of the planet, which while remote would be far better than anything we could do from Earth.
Attempting planetary orbit would probably be too risky. Better to leave it in solar orbit sending back data.
Most of the cost would be in designing the probe, and getting it into orbit. Why send only one, which may fail en route? Send a dozen or so, and hope at least one survives. If more do, set them up as array antennas, or risk attempting planetary orbit with one.
"possibly habitable" ?
I propose the colonists use the name WeMadeIt
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
Dr Eric Reed has already carried out important preliminary work in this area
But of course Congress cut our^whis funding, just when it was most vital for the future of humanity. And just as I^dthe research team was off to the Cricket World Cup on in^w^w^w^w^wJamaica - a leading world source of centrifuge compatible monkeys.
Oh, science, I pity you for your vicious poltical masters.
Won't someone please think of the colonists' children?
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
I think I've just figured out where the Simpsons are going next.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, I think I'm getting an idea how we can reach this planet. I need a Macbook, a Dell running Linux, and a ticket for me and the geek to Redmond.
But seriously, though, if we're off in la-la land supposing we can instantly accelerate to high relativistic speeds, I don't think it would be far-fetched to imagine someone made some inertial dampeners or something.
Who do we send? I feel a spacecraft containing the world's finest public telephone sanitizers (in fact, all of them) would be most suitable to lead the way.
A technology victory is in reach! I urge everyone to contact their local governors, and hopefully we can get enough cities building spaceship parts to launch before 2020.
The nature of statistics means that just because we find an "Earthlike" planet it doesn't mean we're any closer to finding another "earth".
You're confucing something there. Ballmer only does chairs. It's Mr. T who throws people helluva far.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
1. Announce plan to establish society there
2. Get $$$$ from government to finance
3. Defer results for many years
4. Profit
Halliburton are you available?
This AP article actually claims that the planet's surface gravity is about 1.6 times that of Earth, so maybe he's really 625 pounds. ...wow, I shouldn't have pictured that.
butter the donkey
It might just come true...
According to another article I read, gravity is only 1.6 times that of earth.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070425/ap_on_sc/habit able_planet
My guess would be it's very unlikely that we would find earth-like life on that planet.
:D
And it would be too much trouble to send humans there anyway.
So how about we try something different (which I probably saw on star trek some time ago) and send some bacteria, microbes or anything that could evolve to human-like life?
Imagine in millions of years our "children" find out about their past and their forefathers
On the other hand our bacteria could destroy already developed life on that planet.
A tough question at least for me.
I'm as happy as the next guy to see progress on the extrasolar planet front, but I don't think this is much more than a next step along the way... so far.
According to the stuff I was reading recently about Proxima Centauri, it's a lost hope as a place for earth-like life, mainly because it's a red dwarf, and hasn't been around long enough.
I can see the Dr. Evil making plans now.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Gravity...
OK. We know that F = G Mm/r^2
So, if the Mass is five times bigger... and the radius is twice that of earth, the force will be 5/2^2 = 1.25G
I don't think that we are able to accurately measure the size of the planet, but the site above quoted 1.5 times earth's radius. That would give us 5/1.5^2 = 2.22G
Plug your own numbers in and take your choice
I am proud to announce the same day formation of the Centre for the Destruction of Gliese 581 c. A non-profit organisation committed to the pointless destruction of the fantastic new world.
Our website is at:
Centre for the Destruction of Gliese 581 c
apt-get install deathstar && deathstar alderaan && echo "You're far too trusting"
The real issue perhaps with the gravity is the effect of living in zero gravity for the voyage to get there, and then transitioning to 2+G in a day! Perhaps using a centrifugal ship to gradually ramp up the gravity en-route. That'd give generations, wouldn't it? Then what if your signed up & three generations into the voyage & it turns out you're the weakest link, or there is a sudden realisation that your crew of super athletes should have been composed exclusively of lard asses... ...bummer dude!
thx e
Right...
We don't know to a lot of precision the size & mass of the planet. The real point is that it's probably NOT 5 times Earth's gravity.
Okay, so far all they know about it is its approximate mass and distance from its primary, and the length of its year (which is very much shorter than Earth's). The latter is approximately in the zone that would allow for temperatures such that water, if there is any, could be liquid, and suddenly it's Earth-like?
There are a lot of variables that go into determining whether a planet would actually be habitable at all, much less Earth-like. How much atmosphere has it got? What's the composition of the atmosphere? *Does* it have any significant amount of water (liquid or otherwise)? How long is its "day" (i.e., rotational period)? (Does it even have a day/night cycle, or is it tidally locked?) How massive is its moon, and what's its orbital period? Does it even _have_ a moon?
I'd expect suitable answers to these and many other questions before I'd be willing to call it "Earth-like".
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
...it's not worth bothering, since at 2.25G it will never be profitable.
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
Classic.
Don't forget the Neptune-mass object that's still inside the orbit of the super-earth. I would guess its gravity would prevent a complete tidal lock.
A tide-locked world, next to a star, isn't going to have a very large habitable zone. Any atmosphere could be expected to freeze solid on the dark side of the world. For starters.
The temperature on Venus is fairly evenly distributed even though Venus rotates very slowly. An atmosphere does have convection, which will counteract any temperature gradients.
Anybody else remember playing Spaceward Ho!? http://www.deltatao.com/ho/
:)
I think I'll have to dig it out again
If such an amplification is possible, then we should be able to gather loads of information about it long before we could ever send a probe to it.
I expect that when we see the first detailed images of the surface, we will find an immense fiery inscription, saying "We apologise for the inconvenience".
"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."
You may be right in even though other planets may have beaches and rivers there are
most likely indigenous life and other circumstances to contend with, for example the
sun emitting a burst of harsh radiation every so often which the indigenous life can
deal with but our species can't.
However we should spend those thousand years experimenting on other planets and discovering
the universe rather than sitting "home" sustaining the Agenda-21 fraud. What our
species has to mature and rid itself of the scum holding us back. Fortunately w
we're making a lot of progress in that area.
I admit not having had the time to scan through all the comments on this article- but it raises an interesting point in my mind, relating to another recently-discussed discovery, that being of the fellow that found "kryptonite" in a Serbian mine... if we have found kryptonite on Earth now, and it would appear (from the gravity/mass/star-type data) we have now found "Krypton" the planet... should we begin to search the midwestern US for a "really strong kid" ??
Rule of Acquisition #19: Satisfaction is Not guaranteed.
Before we try more monkey games does anyone know if what kind of plants grow in high gravity?
Also if there really was a ship that used rotation for artificial gravity couldn't the people or monkeys just live closer to the hub or outer rim as needed to experiment with gravity levels?
"However we should spend those thousand years experimenting on other planets and discovering the universe rather than sitting "home" sustaining the Agenda-21 fraud."
Never heard of A21, I will google it later but I think I get the gist and agree we should not "sit on our hands". However I think for the most part reseach on adapting to (say) mars can be done much more efficiently here on Earth. NASA's "great observertries" project has been an absolute goldmine for science. Autonomous scientific observation from space (both inward and outward) has been a great success and it is a shame it was so casually tossed aside by politics.
Disclaimer: I watched Armstrong walk on the moon as a ten year old, and yes the world did stand together to watch one man. That was a different world, I don't think a game of golf on Mars would achive a similar reaction (if they were playing against martians it may be a different story).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Is your daily driver a formula 1 prepped vehicle? If not I seriously doubt you pull more than 1G on a dry skid pad. (when you say "my car" I'm assuming you are speaking of the vehicle you regularly drive). One of the best production cars for skidpad grip is the Ferrari Enzo and it "only" pulls about 1.05G.
Damn, I'm glad I'm not her manicurist.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I would wonder how this test would work on creatures (or humans) reared from birth in a high-grav environment. I'd imagine that there may be some extra complications to being pregnant if one was initially low-grav native (although perhaps less if they started in high from a young age), but if a child were born and existed from day-1 under high-grav, he/she might very well have normal motor abilities and activities levels. It would also likely follow with the concept that many sci-fi books put forth (Niven/Weber/etc) wherein those natively frow hi-grav planets would end up with compensatory muscular/skeletal structures and possibly even other evolutionary differences over time. This would mean that on Earth, they would be damn strong - or at least rather solid - in comparison to the locals.
Yesterday we had kryptonite being found, today we learn about a large planet which is "earth like" and orbits a red sun (granted a red dwarf not a red giant)... I think we better start watching out for UFO sightings around corn fields.
>> It is [a religion]. Atheism assumes without evidence.
>> That is just as much a matter of faith as believing in creator(s).
> Atheism is as much a religion as not collecting stamps is a hobby.
There is a difference between "I do not believe that god exists"
and "I believe that god does not exist".
The first is a good fit for the stamps analogy, the second is not.
I'd say it's more like calling black or white colors. In many cases, it may be more convenient to do so, but in actuality atheism is to religion as black is to color (that is to say, both tend towards being the lack of a particular value, or null-value).
WARNING: PEDANTIC
Do you really pull 2.25g in your car?
Let's give you the benefit of counting the Earth's gravity toward what you are feeling in your car on the skidpad. So you've got 1g straight down plus a lateral component N, and the total is 2.25.
The vectors form a right triangle, so a^2 + b^2 = c^2, right?
a = 1, b=N, c= 2.25
a^2 = 1, b^2 = N^2, c^2 = 5.0625
1 + N^2 = 5.0625
N^2 = 4.0625
N = 4.0625^.5 = ~2.01
Sports cars with special tires pull lateral around 1.0 G. Formula 1 cars and other extreme ground effects cars pull 2 g and more, but most people are never in one of those.
So, either
1) I've screwed up my physics
2) You've got a very uncommon car
3) Even adding regular gravity to what you can pull on a skidpad, you're maxing out your automotive G's closer to sqrt(2) = ~1.4
Well, that was fun. BTW, I agree with your point. 2.25G wouldn't kill us, tho I bet it would greatly reduce the lifespan of one's knees, hips and back. Certainly SOMETHING could live there tho. Probably alien warrior badasses who, should they come to Earth, could jump 50 feet and throw cars around like they were toys. That'd be cool, apart from how much it would suck. Hopefully we could get them hooked on television.
-- "Oh. This guy again."
Any wormsign? How's the spice production?
mmmm, traveling without moving...
one two three four five ?!! That's the combination on my luggage!
Will the Jesuits be the first to get there?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Stories like this now instantly get accepted as fact as soon as they're released. It's a long way from the old days when these stories got bashed and tested over and over. Unless you accept everything the moment it's announced, you can't be in today's science.
We now have somewhere to send the "B" ark.....all we have to do now is build it and five away all the free seats.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
For very large values of nearby...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Maybe archeologists will soon find the remains of the B-ark that brought our ancestors here
and we can salvage some of the necessary technology to build a new one.
On the other hand something really bothers me about settling another planet with rejects of descendents
of B-arkers. We also have to remember the fate of those that our ancestors left behind.
I believe that the original erroneous criteria for B-ark passenger selection was that the person appeared to be useless.
Because the end results were catastrophic and because we are B-ark descendants we need
to come up with different selection criteria or at least be more careful in applying the original criteria.
If this ends up qualifying everyone on the planet then we don't need to build the ark.
A more useful criterion might have something to do with a genetically based predisposition toward control of others.
But then again we might not need to build the ark because as in the previous case we all qualify.
Maybe for the sake of the other remaining life forms on this planet we should just build the stupid ark and get out
of here before we finish off the worthwhile life forms.
I, as I'm sure many geeks have, wondered what I would weigh on such a world.
I came up with gravity being 2.145x what it is on Earth on Gliese C.
So, unless I've made a mathematical error or bad assumption below (feel free to chide me for doing so), I would weigh over 400lb on Gliese C. I guess I'd better stop eatin' the junk.
d_E radial distance from center of the Earth
d_G radial distance from center of Gliese C
m_E mass of Earth
m_G mass of Gliese C
F_gE acceleration of gravity on Earth
F_gG acceleration of gravity on Gliese C
gP Gravitational proportionality of Gliese C over Earth
The size of Gliese C (per space.com) is 50% greater than earth
d_E = r_Earth = 6,372,797 m
d_G = r_Gliese = r_Earth * 1.5 = 9,559,196 m
The mass of Gliese C (per wikipedia.org) is 4.83 earth masses
m_E = 5.9736x10^24 kg
m_G = m_Gliese = m_Earth*4.83 = 28.852x10^24 kg
G = 6.6742x10^-11 N m^2/kg^2
F_g = (G*m_1*m_2)/d^2 (Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation)
Find the gravitational acceleration on Earth,
F_gE = (G*m_E)/d^2 = (6.6742x10^-11 N m^2/kg^2 * 5.9736x10^24 kg) / (6.37101x10^6 m)^2
F_gE = 9.822 m/s^2 (already known, but I calculated it for giggles as a way to check myself)
Find the gravitational acceleration on the Gliese C,
F_gG = (G*m_G)/d^2 = (6.6742 x 10^-11 N m^2/kg^2 * 28.852x10^24 kg) / (9.559196x10^6 m)^2
F_gG = 21.073 m/s^2
gP = 21.073 m/s^2 / 9.822 m/s^2 = 2.145
Yes, something magical creating matter from nothing and violating the third law of thermodynamics makes much more sense. Scientists must have made up those GPS measurements that show it happening. Although you can evidence of prior eruptions of the hot spot that created Yellowstone National Park trailing up into Canada, it must have been something other than the plates moving as predicted. Of course the entire continent (planet?) must have been underwater, the earth must have gotten bigger but we have the same amount of water?
Actually, the earth used to be larger before a planetoid knocked the moon from it, but it does get slightly larger from asteroids and comets hitting it's surface from time to time.
You know, we wouldn't be having this problem with high-G if we had picked Bulrathi instead of Humans in the first place!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Not entirely correct. If I drop a metal sphere filled with water into the ocean - it will implode (be crushed), because the pressure on the inside is less than the outside. The same is true of a flexible bladder.
The fishes (at the bottom of the ocean) don't implode because the water in their cells is at the same pressure as the water they swim in.
Do they even have them in Toronto? Real coffee shops are not chains. There's only one of each.
If you think Starbucks makes good coffee, you don't know what it's supposed to taste like.
Please do google for Agenda 21. I suggest you start with the documenary "Global Warming Swindle"2 478442170&q=global+warming+swindle
(which ridicules man-made global warming to be sure). You can find that on video.google.com
at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=449956202
I had a saturn iv and moon lander toy when I was a kid meaning I'm a little younger than you,
however I'm sure I would BUY a television to watch the Mars landing.
Starbucks is consistent. It taste the same regardless of where you go. It's not very good, as Starbucks' "trademark" is overroasted beans, but it's better than McDonald's or gas station coffee.
Are there no real coffee shops in Toronto? It's believable, I guess, Toronto is the armpit of Canada after all. Take a trip up to Montreal, I'm sure there's real coffee up there.
Don't let price fool you, good coffee isn't necessarily expensive, and a lot of expensive coffee is awful. Starbuck's pricing is mostly marketing. It relies on people assuming it must be good because it's expensive.
Don't know what you'd change exactly, but you might consider it if characteristics useful to that environment can be reliably added/induced.
I imagine there are good coffee shops in Toronto, I was just poking at you. Starbuck's isn't good coffee. If you think it is, I can only conclude that you've never had good coffee. I don't know Toronto very well, so I can't tell you where to go to find it.
You won't find it in corporate chains, at least not in North America. (Though there are places in the world where even free hotel coffee is excellent compared to North American faire.)
The point isn't that this is a place for us to live. The big deal here is that it's the closest we've found to an Earth-size planet yet, which brings us closer (we hope) in our search for extraterrestrial life. It's not that we're planning to live there--we're hoping to find life in places like that. More accurately, it's closer to the sort of place where we hope to find life. Personally, I don't find it all that exciting as a candidate for life. If I understand these things correctly, when the star expanded to a red giant it likely stripped off the planet's atmosphere. But it is exciting that we've found something so close to the Earth in size. Considering how hard it is to spot planets (by whatever method you use) from distances of light-years, that's pretty impressive.
There are objective differences in quality that aren't subject to taste. The beans that Starbuck's uses are mid range; not crap, but not excellent either. All else being equal, they'd be just fine as commuter coffee. Unfortunately, they then burn those beans for the majority of what they serve. If you order thier "mild" blend, it's sometimes still drinkable, but a long way from quality coffee. They're still handy, because as you say they're everywhere, and most of the time not garbage.
Tim Horton's uses lower quality beans, but they handle them more professionally. Unfortunately, they don't serve anything other than plain coffee, so you're out of luck if you like random crap thrown into it. *That* is a matter of taste, where as bean quality and roasting is not.
For coffee on the go, both are acceptable, because of their ubiquitousness, not their quality. I personally keep one of those Starbucks cash cards, because there's one on my way to class and it's better than the campus coffee. And the employees are much nicer than Tim Horton's.
There really is much better coffee out there. Go out and find it, when you're not in a rush, and enjoy it. Especially if you're making it at home, there's no reason to use Starbuck's beans. A quick Google tells me to suggest either Kensington Market or Roncesvalles (some sort of Ukranian district). I'd thought Toronto had a large Italian district as well, and that's probably also a good place to try.
Besides, in Civilization terms, that was a domination/conquest victory. If you're planning to win that way and end up taking long enough to reach the modern age, you usually end up nuking the $h17 out of the other civs.
Technological victory means that you manage to build a spaceship and send it off to Alpha Centauri before any of the other civs do. And, ironically, then wipe out mankind on Earth, as described in the "sequel" to Civilization, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Man, I can barely live with 2.5G of RAM. I wouldn't buy a cellphone with that little storage. I carry more that 2.5G in mp3 around all the time. No, no one should be forced to live with 2.5G. A 40G mandatory storage should be a basic human right.
On the other hand, raising monkeys in a giant centrifuge? Now we are talking. The movie will be an instant YouTube hit.
We may learn how to get there 1/4th faster by learning from the experiences of the first travellers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is judging all the reasonable data and pehnomena we have and reaching a logical conclussion.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
R-o-c-k-s!
Correct!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.