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Analysis of Spacecraft Data Reveals Most Earth-like Planet To Date
sciencehabit writes: Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Kepler satellite have boosted the tally of known or suspected planets beyond our solar system to more than 4000, they reported at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Most are inhospitable — too big, too hot, or too cold for any conceivable life form. But another team seeking to verify Kepler candidates announced they had identified eight new potentially habitable planets, including some close to Earth in size and situation. Unpoetically named 5737.01, one candidate has an orbital period of 331 days and is 30% larger than Earth, Mullally says. That’s good news, because scientists here reported yesterday that planets more than 1.6 times the mass of Earth are unlikely to be dense rocky worlds like ours — assumed to be the only plausible habitats for life.
I'm not seeing the good news. If it has a similar density to Earth, it will have a mass about 1.3^3 ~= 2.2 times the mass of Earth.
They have all the chemical ingredients, saturn and jupiter both have water clouds containing droplets of water and since we don't know how life actually got going it could well be possible for it to start in a gas giant and at least sustain bacteria or virus sized lifeforms. Even in earths clouds there are bacteria floating about as we've discovered in the last decade or so.
Is she dense and rocky?
Analysis of Spacecraft Data Reveals Second Most Earth-like Planet To Date
FTFY.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Problem is that with current knowledge and technology we would NEVER be able to get out of our solar system alive, much less actually make it to the nearest star. We *might* be able to send probes, but we are talking about missions that will have to last multiple decades on internal power supplies and whatever fuel they start with. There is no way that humans would survive the trip on any craft we could hope to construct in our lifetimes.
The exploration of "space" we do will be limited to our solar system by physics and our biology and without some kind of break though in getting things moving faster than light, it is within this solar system we and our offspring will all die.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Before we can "invest in technology" we need to have some theoretical basis for said technology to work. Our current understanding of physics provides no plausible mechanism for a living human to travel to these planets. Unless there is a fatal flaw in relativity, it is possible (if not probable) that practical interstellar travel is essentially impossible.
Before we can "invest in technology" we need to have some theoretical basis for said technology to work. Our current understanding of physics provides no plausible mechanism for a living human to travel to these planets. Unless there is a fatal flaw in relativity, it is possible (if not probable) that practical interstellar travel is essentially impossible.
Totally agree, but you are attacking the SyFi culture where it's just expected that Captain Kirk can just order up "warp 8". Einstein pretty much condemned us and our offspring to die with the confines of the Solar System and the chances he was wrong do seem pretty remote so far.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Even a generation ship like you describe poses technical problems that may very well be insurmountable.
One issue is small particles in space (micrometeorites). While the space station may have managed to avoid catastrophic impacts over a decade, the probability of a major impact on a ship traveling for centuries at even a very small fraction of the speed of light hitting *something* in space becomes extremely high. At those speeds, a golf ball size object would slice through any known material like a hot knife through butter and could easily breach every single pressurized chamber on the ship. You would need some sort of powered force field- a technology that does not exist and has no known theoretical basis for its existence.
Another issue is food and biology. Previous attempts and creating a small closed ecosystem (biosphere) were miserable failures. It may very well be that there is a minimum size for such an ecosystem to be sustainable- a size that may not be feasible for a spacecraft.
A third issue is propulsion and power. The generation ship proposes relatively slow travel as a solution to the tyranny of the rocket equation. But even the generation ship must provide power for centuries. Even using nuclear fuel, the amount of fuel required to power the spacecraft essentially indefinitely would become extreme. Plus, getting the spacecraft up to even a very low cruising speed (by interstellar standards) of .01c would require a huge amount of any known type of fuel, and an equal amount of fuel to slow to a speed that it could orbit the new planet. What happens if it turns out the destination planet is not actually habitable? There would be no fuel left to choose an alternate destination. At that point, the generation ship offers no advantage over a colony on the moon.
A final concern is one of need. Interstellar travel proponents often use the argument that the Earth may one day become too small to support the human population and/or uninhabitable, requiring a new planet. But until the sun starts to begin its decay in billions of years, it's difficult to imagine a scenario where interstellar travel is more feasible than simply fixing earth. Human population size will likely decline as birth control becomes ubiquitous (the developed world already has a birthrate below replacement). Any civilization with the technology to create a closed ecosystem with an indefinite lifespan for a generation ship could just as easily create such an ecosystem on earth or bio engineer a solution to what ever disaster has befallen earth.