Astronomers Find What May Be the Closest Exoplanet So Far

The Bad Astronomer writes: Astronomers have found a 5.4 Earth-mass planet orbiting the star Gliese 15A, a red dwarf in a binary system just 11.7 light years away (PDF). Other exoplanets candidates have been found that are closer, but they are as yet unconfirmed. This is more evidence that alien planets are common in the galaxy.

Comments

Time to travel 11 light years

[goombah99]

traveling with a 1G acceleration:
1/2g t^2 = 1/2*11*3E8

so t = 3.3 years to half way. 6.6 years to go all the way and thus 13.2 years for the round trip.

Thus you could easily go there and come back in your lifetime.

Note that this is also Faster than light can make the round trip. However that is not any violation of relativity. THe people on earth would have aged a lot more than 13.3 years during your trip. But you would only have aged 13.3 years.

Re:Time to travel 11 light years

[goombah99]

Let's see if I can work this out correctly;
First assume the spaceships weight negligibly different than the mass of the fuel. The thrust needed to push the weight at a steady 1g will be proportional to the mass of the ship at each interval of time. SO the rate of mass burn is proportional to the mass which means the mass is a decaying exponential.

M = Mo * exp( -g * time / thrust_to_weight )

If you think about this for a moment it becomes clear that any amount of mass would do since as the mass gets lighter it takes less fuel so the ship could go indefinitely at 1g. The problem is the assumption that the ship weighs nothing. so let's fix that.

dM/dt = -g*(M+Ms)/thrust_to_weight.

where Ms = mass of ship and M = mass of fuel.

I'm spacing on how to solve that equation so I'll approximate it by saying that until M = Ms we can mostly ignore the ship mass. therfore for a 6.6 year flight time the fuel required is about:

Mfuel = Ms * exp( g* (6.6 years)/thrust_to_weight )

Mfule = Ms * exp( +303,800,000/thrust_to_weight).

So you need a rather high thrust to weight ratio due to the coefficient in the exponetial.

Let the pillory for my "obvious" math errors begin!

Re:OK Another one

[mark-t]

As a larger planet, however, since force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, the surface gravity of a world otherwise equivalent in density to another ends up rises linearly with the diameter of the planet. If it is of similar composition to earth, then 5.4 earth masses would make it cbrt(5.4) times the size of earth, or roughly 1.75g at the planet's surface. Assuming that the atmospheric density is comparable to earth's (possible, even with greater gravity if the atmosphere itself is proportionally thinner), then this is theoretically survivable by human beings for short periods, or even prolonged ones if they were able to acclimate to the increased gravitation pull gradually, over a span of several years, giving time for skeletal tissue to build up and strengthen the body's structure to survive the increased tension.