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Astronomers To Announce Discovery of a Nearby 'Earth-Like' Planet (seeker.com)
astroengine quotes a report from Seeker:
Scientists are preparing to unveil a new planet in our galactic neighborhood which is "believed to be Earth-like" and orbits its star at a distance that could favor life, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday. The exoplanet orbits a well-investigated star called Proxima Centauri, part of the Alpha Centauri star system, the magazine said, quoting anonymous sources.
"The still nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like and orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its surface -- an important requirement for the emergence of life," said the magazine.
It's orbiting our sun's nearest neighboring star -- just 4.25 light years away -- meaning it could someday be considered for the world's first interstellar mission.
"The still nameless planet is believed to be Earth-like and orbits at a distance to Proxima Centauri that could allow it to have liquid water on its surface -- an important requirement for the emergence of life," said the magazine.
It's orbiting our sun's nearest neighboring star -- just 4.25 light years away -- meaning it could someday be considered for the world's first interstellar mission.
Minimally, this justifies building one huge honking telescope to get a good look at this planet.
Didn't you read the article? They were able to take a pretty detailed picture already.
#DeleteChrome
I am so relieved that all those colonization spaceships I've sent to Alpha Centauri, over many years of playing Civilization, will have somewhere to land!
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Seems to me I once read that early last century someone said words to the effect of "what's the point of airplanes? Not like they'll ever be able to fly nonstop across the Pacific or anything".
Oddly, your comment reminded me of that....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"With an evironment like that, we can rule out higher life forms."
Centaurians called.
They wanted to know how can we sustain higher life forms on Earth - since we have neither the cyclic megahurricans that are essential to recharge cyclic biotanks, nor we have a proper dark side of the planet where we can comfortably hatch our silicon eggs.
To be frank, they sounded rather narrow minded about any real possibility of life without those things.
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
That would require Intrepid-class starships for the really useful and good holodecks, so that's quite some time into the future.
Actually, holodecks in Intrepid-class starships are notoriously unreliable and liable to tricky failure modes like "the safeguards have somehow been shut off" and "everyone in the simulation is now alive and they all want to kill me".
Enigma
p.s. I realize I've violated the unwritten rules of slashdot by actually reading the article and commenting on what it says, instead of leaping to snap judgment based on the headline alone. In my defense, I actually read the article yesterday, before it was posted to slashdot. :)
If only the solar sail spacecraft had some means of propulsion that could help it slow down at it's destination.
That's a pretty intense rate of deflation. At that rate we'll all be walking around with antimatter keychains next year.
They already sent a Mr. Trump to clear out the humans.
Table-ized A.I.