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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.
Proxima Centauri is a flare star. Good luck with it being Earth-like.
Also it's insane to think that humans could ever fly like birds in the sky, that the horseless buggy could ever outpace a solid 8-steed-wagon, or that the demons causing polio will ever be driven out by the power of Christ.
You fucking moron.
4.25 light years is still 24,984,158,550,305mi and we really don't have anything that can travel fast enough to get us there in less than tens of thousands of years.
Nope, anti-matter is not just a theory. It has been confirmed to exist in the first half of the last century: https://home.cern/topics/antim...
Antimatter can be used as very efficient rocket fuel, so you would have to carry less weight.
The problem however is how to do efficient production of antimatter.
Also, you would still have to carry some kind of propellant with you.
No, what AC was pointing out was that a mere 100 years ago, people made sweeping statements like "no one in our lifetime will ever fly". We were flying in commercial jet airliners less than 30 years later, and landing on the moon another 20 after that. The pace of advancement in the last 100 years has been enormous, and shows no real signs of slowing down. The idea that there's 0 chance that any of us will see an interplanetary or interstellar mission is crazy.
"No, what AC was pointing out was that a mere 100 years ago, people made sweeping statements like "no one in our lifetime will ever fly". We were flying in commercial jet airliners less than 30 years later, and landing on the moon another 20 after that."
What?
100 years ago was 1916. Man first flew in a ballon in 1783.
Gliders? Otto Lilienthal was well know in the 1890s
Airplanes The Wright Brothers first flew was Dec 17, 1903. By 1916 hundreds of different aircraft had already flown including some pretty large aircraft.
"We were flying in commercial jet airliners less than 30 years later,"
The first jet commercial airliner the Comet did not enter service until 1952 which is well over 30 years later.
"The idea that there's 0 chance that any of us will see an interplanetary or interstellar mission is crazy."
I think you are right about interplanetary flight. I hope that we will see that in a life time. Manned Interstellar fight is where you are very much off. The difference in scale between going to Mars vs going to a star system is HUGE. Maybe we will see some supper shocking tech like an unexpected breakthrough in FTL flight.
But the odds are massively in favor of none of us today living to see a manned interstellar mission. Un manned we may live to see one launched but I doubt that we will see it arrive.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I would refute this.
The laws of physics are not 'made' by men - at least not in the sense of 'made up', it's based on what nature tells us it is. If nature had shown us something else, our physical laws would be something else as well. If you want to argue that our knowledge is not perfect, I'll grant you that. In fact, this has been known to science for quite some while.
But what most lay people do not seem to understand, is that, while our current laws aren't perfect, they're astonishingly accurate nevertheless and *anything new* (aka, new physics) would NOT contradict what we already observed for the last 400 years. Any new physics, thus, would not go *against* our current physics, but would merely improve upon it, specifically in extreme situations (like in the singularity of a black hole), where our current laws break down.
It would NOT suddenly allow for CoM and CoE to be broken, like the EM device would. Because if a microwave-oven would be able to brake CoM, we would *ALREADY HAVE OBSERVED* the consequences of such a thing. A microwave hardly is an extreme situation where our laws break down, after all. And if that's all that it takes to break CoM and CoE, we would already have seen the consequences in the universe around us. This is because IF the CoM principle could be violated (and by mere resonance of microwaves, no less), it would mean that fundamental laws vary depending on localisation. This in turn would mean, the speed of light varies, the strong nuclear force would change, etc., and thus whole swats of matter would spontaneously disintegrate into atomic and subatomic particles and exotic matter, and flood the universe . This, however, we have not observed, not even once, for the last 400 years. Hence, the extreme unlikelihood of such a claim.
As said, any new laws would still need to adhere to all previous predictions and observations. Since we never observed any of the consequences of such a thing, it is EXTREMELY unlikely to be true. About as unlikely as that we'll discover tooth-fairy magic holds the universe in check.
That's why I think people thinking a microwave-oven (which the EM device basically is) is going to get us to the stars, are, indeed, extremely funny. :-)
Well, sometimes they're pretty annoying too, granted. That's because they're fanatical in their ignorance, and are not prone to any arguments whatsoever. So after a while it gets tiring.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---